The Idea of India-5

Plassey

If France suddenly decided it should become a monarchy once again, and were to search for a Bourbon to take the crown, last worn more than one and a half  centuries back, the search team may have to fly down to Bhopal, capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, infamous for the Union Carbide gas tragedy.



The coat of arms adopted by the Bhopal Bourbons

For the only surviving Bourbons live there, in a palatial house which proudly has engraved above its main door, the French royal  fleur-de-lis, flanked by two Indian elephants. Their ancestor - Jean-Philippe de Bourbon - arrived in 1560 at the court of Emperor Akbar after various adventures on the way including being kidnapped by pirates. The young 16^th century royal was from an elder branch of France’s ruling family and had to flee his home after a duel gone wrong.

It was a time when many a young European out to make a fortune, would turn to India – which in their eyes was the `Golden Bird’.  As the Mughal Empire crumbled, the Bird once elusive and ruled by haughty princes became vulnerable. Mughal subalterns in various provinces, each the size of a major European nation or larger, continued to pay homage to the Imperial Throne at Delhi, but ruled in their own way, more often at loggerheads, than in alliance with each other.

Europeans traders backed by their Monarchs, had initially set up Mughal sanctioned portside factories. But with the ebbing of Mughal power, they gradually gained greater influence by controlling more and more land and sizable armies which were often lent out to short-sighted warring princes to settle matters in a manner ultimately favourable to the outsider. In the words of one Urdu humourist, “they (Europeans) were granted  firman (grant) for as much land as could be covered by a tent. Little did the Emperor know that their tent was made of stretchable rubber.”

The Europeans were also fighting their own battles on the cold continent and this was carried to the high seas and to the tiny bits of India they controlled.  In mid-18^th century Bengal, then ruled by a young and impetuous Mughal lieutenant, Nawab Siraj-ud-Dowlah, both the French and English fortified their trading posts against each other. Siraj demanded  these fortifications be dismantled. The French complied. However, the English did not heed Siraj's warnings. An angry Nawab then ordered a successful punitive raid to bring the rebel English post on the river Hooghly, Calcutta, to its knees.

Fort St George, the headquarters of the `Honourable Company', sent Robert Clive, a young Englishman who had come out as a clerk to find his fortune in India,  and had risen to be a celebrated young General in the company’s army in Madras, to win back Calcutta.

Clive as versed in the ways of war as in intrigue, bided his time after landing in Bengal. Emissaries were sent to win friends with the many noblemen and tycoons who had grudges against Siraj, or had ambitions to the gaddi (Subaltern throne) themselves, before the Madras force ultimately advanced towards Murshidabad, the capital of Bengal.

The map of the Battle of Plassey

The two sides met in the Mango groves of Plassey on the 23^rd of June 1757. Siraj’s uncle and Commander-in-Chief of his army, Mir Jaffar and several deputies were already in league with the English and these worthies who personally commanded three-fourths of the Bengal Army of 50,000, made no attempts to engage with Clive. Jaffar's canons stayed silent on the plea that the gunpowder was “wet”, while several infantry regiments simply idled around the mango orchards.

Only an advance force under two Brigade commanders, Mir Madan and Mohanlal, remained true to the hapless Siraj. Even their tiny combined forces were enough to make Clive retreat early in the battle. However soon after, Madan fell to a stray shot, while Mohanlal was forced to retreat on repeated orders of Jaffer, just as he was on the cusp of victory.

To his horror, the young ruler, Siraj, saw his army dissolving as a disgusted Mohanlal left the battlefield. An Indian chronicler of that time, Ghulam Hussain, says “Siraj … fearing not only the English in his front, but chiefly the domestic enemies about his person, lost all firmness of mind … (and) joined the runaways himself.” Only to be caught and condemned to a fate of blinding and eventual death.

Jaffar, became the next Nawab (Governor). But the Company, became the real rulers of Bengal with its untold riches. Jaffar in turn was pensioned off to be replaced by his ambitious son-in-law, Mir Qasim, who chaffing under the English tutelage, attempted a short-lived revolt, only to be replaced by old Jaffer once gain.

The Battle of Plassey was, in the words of eminent historian R.C.Majumdar:  “hardly more than a skirmish but its result was more important than that of many of the greatest battles of the world.” True, for it opened the way for the conquest of India, the brightest jewel in England’s crown, by the employees of arguably the world’s first successful transnational corporation. The revenues of the rich province of Bengal, funded the conquest of India. The money, which the sub-continent earned for the English in turn helped fund the establishment of that island nation's global Empire `Over Which The Sun Never Sets.'

In another sense, Plassey was not about military defeat but rather the defeat of an antiquated feudal order up against a new European order welded by the ideas of a New Age, of an India which had started crumbling into blind sub-states, which could not see reason to unite against a common enemy. In a manner it was also the story of when the Idea of India faltered.

A Map of the British Empire in India

(portions shown in pink are British ruled, yellow ruled by Indian Princes)

Previous Blogs in the series : Idea of India , Idea of India 2 , Idea of India 3, Idea of India 4