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April 14, 2002
REVIEW: A decisive battle
RAM Gopal’s How the British occupied Bengal is probably the most comprehensive account yet of this turning point in world history. It covers the battles of Plassey and Buxar and their political context. Sushil Chaudhury, head of the Islamic history and culture department at Kolkata University, concentrates on Plassey and the intrigues preceding it. At the end, he gives figures of the drain of wealth from Bengal, when its export turned into tribute. The system later covered the whole of India, leading to its impoverishment.
Chaudhury calls the Plassey episode a revolution. This term was used by the East India Company’s employees for the overthrow of Sirajuddaula. That was before the French revolution. So the world had not yet acquired its precise modern meaning. However, in retrospect, it seems justified. The British had not just overthrown a major Indian potentate but imposed mercantile relations upon a pre-capitalist economy. Plassey was the defeat of the Indian “feudal” class by the British bourgeoisie.
John Strachey, in his study on the rise of the British Empire, asks two questions about Plassey:
(1) How was it that a trading company dared to take on the government of Bengal, which, although a province of India nominally, was a major power of Asia in its own right?
(2) How could an English-led force of a few thousand defeat Bengal’s 50,000 strong army?
He himself attempts to explain. Every English employee of the English East India Company in India carried on private trade, even while serving the company. This was inland trade, which they conducted duty free. Sirajuddaula’s occupation of Kolkata and his denial of the right of the company or its employees to participate in inland trade without paying taxes and the confiscation of their goods by the Bengal government threatened all the European employees of the company in Bengal with ruin. Their desperation drove them to take on frontally the government of Bengal.
As for the English victory on the battlefield of Plassey, Strachey attributes it to the system of drill in the European armies. This was imparted to the European soldiers as well as the Indian soldiers recruited by the British. Drill turned them into disciplined soldiers, as against the Indians, who fought as hordes. Chaudhury’s description of the events of 1756-57 is clearer. Of course, coming later than those of other authors, he had more sources to draw upon. But his focus was also narrower — the intrigues at the Murshidabad court and the British use of these conspirators to get their way. So the lines are sharper.
Alivardi Khan nominated his 20-year-old grandson, Sirajudaula, his successor. The new Nawab faced the opposition of his aunt and a cousin, Shaukat Jang. He defeated them, the latter falling in battle.
Now, he faced two powerful groups in the court, both entrenched since two earlier Nawabs. The big businessmen, Jagat Seths, Umichand and an Armenian Khwaja Wajid, depended, as did most big businesses in those days, on state patronage: mint, tax farming, saltpetre monopoly, etc. Among these, only Umichand could be described as compradors, being a major supplier to the English company. However, even he could not carry on his saltpetre and opium trade without Murshidabad’s backing.
The other privileged group was that of the commanders, like Mir Jafar, Roy Durlabh and Yar Lateef. They belonged to the landed class but had close connections to the businessmen.
Sirajuddaula, like all rulers, was gradually creating his own group of loyal businessmen and commanders. The established ones, who were worried, talked of deposing him through the usual techniques of supporting some pretender, even a foreign invader when necessary. Their mistake was to join with the British, whom they treated as just another player in the Indian power game.
The British were determined to oust the Nawab because he had banned their lucrative private trade. The European troops were already considered superior to the Indian ones after their victories in South India. But they were not strong enough to take on a power like Bengal. Hence their promotion of a plot within the Murshidabad court.
Here they were helped by one of the quirks of history. As long as there was a French presence in Bengal, a Bengal-French alliance could block their way. But, just then, Abdali attacked Delhi from the west and there were rumours of his moving east. The Nawab had to concentrate his troops in Bihar in view of the danger from the west. The British took the opportunity to attack the French factory and have the Nawab expel them from Bengal. That removed a countervailing force. The next step was Plassey, which reduced Bengal to a protectorate which the British milked mercilessly.
Today, we wonder how the conspirators at Murshidabad could support a foreign power against their own ruler. The explanation lies in the worldview of the feudal ruling class of India, in the readiness of nearly the whole high officialdom of Murshidabad to contemplate entering into such a conspiracy with a foreign power. They behaved as if it was a game that they routinely indulged in among themselves in order to gain an advantage or change a ruler.
They did not understand the nature of the power that they were inviting to acquire the upper hand in Bengal. These nobles regarded Plassey as just another battle where they had out-smarted their own ruler, causing his defeat. They did not even realize what they had done to themselves. The Indian ruling class had indeed “lost the mandate of heaven”.
The landowners of Bengal may have been blind to the historic nature of Bengal’s defeat at Plassey. But they understood well that, henceforth, the company had the upper hand in the province and so flocked to pay court to Clive rather than to their nominal ruler, Mir Jafar.
As to the people of Bengal, who produced the wealth which was the subject of dispute between the local ruling class and the company, were so alienated from their own ruling class, that they remained unconcerned with the victory of the British over “their” Nawab. When Clive entered Murshidabad after Plassey with 200 European and 500 Indian soldiers, the inhabitants, who were spectators on the occasion, remained indifferent spectators and showed no resentment towards the English. They were, in their eyes, just the latest of their conquerors.
The prelude to empire: Plassey revolution of 1757
By Sushil Chaudhury
University Press, Dhaka
Available with Oxford University Press, 5 Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal, Karachi-75350 Tel: 021-4529025
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
ISBN 984 05 1604 3 192pp. Rs590
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