8
THE BIRTH OF BRITISH INDIA
Calcutta, you know is on the Hooghly, a branch of the Ganges, and as you enter Garden-reach which extends about nine miles below the town, the most interesting views that can possibly be imagined greet the eye. The banks of the river are as one may say absolutely studded with elegant mansions . . . surrounded by groves and lawns, which descend to the water’s edge and present a constant succession of whatever can delight the eye, or bespeak wealth and elegance.
Eliza Fay’s first glimpse of British Calcutta presented to the weary traveler, only recently released from her harrowing captivity in Calicut, a refreshing mix of romantic novelty and the familiar patterns of European civilization, a combination of lush, tropical vegetation and British architecture. As the city unfolded along the Hooghly, with neo-classical mansions lining the shore and the “amazing variety of vessels continually passing on its surface,” it reminded her of nothing so much as the Thames transported to Asia. “The general aspect of the country is astonishing,” she exclaimed. “I never saw a more vivid green than adorns the surrounding fields.” The effect was disorientingly enchanting, “a magnificent and beautiful moving picture; at once exhilarating the heart, and charming the senses: for every object of sight is viewed through a medium that heightens its attraction in this brilliant climate.”1
But despite this seeming idyll, the Calcutta that Eliza Fay entered in 1780 was no less tense and restive than London. France and Britain were at war in India, and everywhere the preparations for the much-feared French attack were being hurriedly completed. Among the soldiers massing in the forts and cantonments in and around Calcutta for the seemingly imminent French invasion was a young Muslim soldier named Dean Mahomet, a man whose life and career would be shaped by the tangled web of European imperialism in India. Dean Mahomet was born at Patna in the state of Bihar in 1759. His family had arrived in the area generations earlier as part of the Muslim service elite of the expanding Mughal Empire. By the time of Mahomet’s birth the Mughal Empire’s hold over its expansive realm was ebbing. Like so many empires before and after, the Mughals had over-reached, with rampant spending on the imperial army and court slowly eroding Delhi’s control over its more distant provinces. One by one, Mughal regional administrators began to usurp de facto control over their provinces, setting themselves up as hereditary rulers under nominal Mughal suzerainty. When the administrator of Bihar declared himself the hereditary Nawab of Bengal and Bihar, Mahomet’s forebears quickly shifted their allegiance to the new power on the ground. It was not the last time their loyalties would change as the reality of local power dynamics shifted.2
In April 1758, a year before Dean Mahomet’s birth, his father made the fateful decision to join the army of the East India Company during a recruiting drive at Patna. The East India Company army, led by Robert Clive, was then engaged in a massive effort to expand it ranks. Before 1750 the Company’s military was tiny, as suited what was still ostensibly a commercial organization. But as the Company gained territory and came into conflict with native states and other expansionist European powers, the need for troops grew. When the Seven Years’ War burst forth in 1754, India quickly became a theater of conflict, with France and Britain fighting to seize greater control of south-eastern India and Bengal. The Nawab of Bengal and Bihar, Siraj ud-Daulah, allied himself with the French and the combined threat of French and Bengali arms pushed the British to expand their army. With European troops thin on the ground, Clive tapped the existing mercenary market to fill his ranks, with the Bengal army growing to about 18,000 soldiers by 1760.
The Company had a desperate need for manpower. With Britain already at war with France across the globe, the Company’s ruthless expansion in Bengal rapidly destabilized local politics. In 1756 the Nawab of Bengal, furious at illegal encroachment by the British, had captured Calcutta, forcing 146 British prisoners into the infamous “Black Hole of Calcutta,” where all but twenty-one died in the choking closeness of a 14-foot-by-18-foot room. The nawab’s gambit failed. His army was defeated by Robert Clive’s Madras army at the battle of Plassey in 1757, and the nawab himself replaced by Mir Jafar, a more pliant British puppet. With victory at Plassey the East India Company began its transformation from commercial enterprise to territorial power.
In the face of these rising tensions, British success in recruiting Indian soldiers at first seems difficult to explain. Why would so many Indian soldiers opt to join the ranks of an aggressively expanding foreign imperial power? India, however, had long been a diverse, pluralistic society. In Mahomet’s native Patna, Hindus and Muslims had long coexisted, and when the British arrived in 1650 to trade for saltpeter, indigo, and opium, they were easily accommodated within a multi-ethnic Mughal state. By the time of Clive’s recruitment drive a century later, then, the British were simply one of many local power blocs wrestling for a piece of the crumbling Mughal Empire. Furthermore, the Muslim military and service elite, from which Mahomet’s family came, had long been separated from the majority of the local populace by religion, language, and customs, leaving them, perhaps, with more fragile loyalties to the state itself. Perhaps most crucially, families such as Mahomet’s relied on military service as their main source of income. As the Mughal Empire faded and the nawab’s power declined, professional soldiers naturally began to look to other quarters for employment. The newly ascendant East India Company thus presented a welcome outlet for those Indians left exposed by the collapse of native powers. Thousands accepted the offer, and by 1760 up to 15,000 Indians were serving in the Bengal army, with the number growing exponentially thereafter, to 27,000 in 1767 and 52,000 in 1782. When the thousands of artisans, porters, and camp followers who supported and supplied the army—two or three for every soldier—are included, the number of Indians employed by the Company military expands even further.3
Coming from an elite local family, Mahomet’s father quickly rose through the native ranks, becoming a subdar, the second highest rank an Indian could achieve, before his early death in 1769 in one of the internecine conflicts that plagued the desperate years of famine. Far from encouraging the Bengali economy, after its victory in 1757 the policies of the East India Company exacerbated, and perhaps did much to cause, widespread famine that killed up to 10 million Bengalis by 1772. “A great dearth overspread the country,” starting in 1769, forcing two local rajas to neglect their annual tribute to Shitab Rai, the naib diwani (deputy governor) of Bihar. Mahomet’s father was sent “to compel them to pay.” With the famine getting worse by the day, resistance was inevitable, and Mahomet’s “lamented father” fell at Telarha after having arrested one of the recalcitrant rajas. The painful memory of his father’s demise remained with him for the rest of his life.4
With his father gone and his elder brother (also a soldier in the Company army) claiming most of his inheritance, Mahomet opted to follow the family trade and seek his fortune with the Bengal army. At the age of 10, the resplendent uniforms and noble bearing of the Company’s military men dazzled Mahomet, and he quickly attached himself, informally at first, to a teenage officer fresh from Ireland. As Mahomet remembered, “nothing could exceed my ambition of leading a soldier’s life: the notion of carrying arms, and living in a camp, could not be easily removed: my mother’s fond entreaties were to no avail.” Mahomet was determined to spend as much time in military company as possible and shadowed the European officers wherever they went. “Whenever I perceived their route, I instantly followed them; sometimes to the Raja’s palace, where I had free access; and sometimes to a fine tennis court, generally frequented by them in the evenings . . . here among other Gentlemen, I one day, discovered Mr. Baker.” The teenage Godfrey Baker—a newly minted cadet in the Third European Regiment of the Bengal Army from Cork, Ireland—was little more than a boy himself, but his attachment to the young Mahomet was real. He would remain supportive of Mahomet for the rest of his life.5
Mahomet remained a camp follower, unofficially attached to Capta
in Baker as he and his unit traveled from post to post in eastern India until a colonial revolt halfway around the world transformed his life. The outbreak of war with France and France’s Indian allies Mysore and the Maratha Empire after 1778 provided an opportunity for Mahomet to obtain a more official role in the Company’s army. The renewal of the global conflict between France and Britain could hardly have come at a worse time for the East India Company. To the dismay of the directors in London, the profits of the East India Company were being eaten away by private trading and the seemingly endless expenses incurred in governing a rapidly expanding British territory. The continued conquest of land brought the Company into almost unceasing conflict with Indian states and European rivals. In 1775, while fighting was breaking out in North America, the Company’s army, led by Alexander Champion and in concert with the allied kingdom of Awadh, was mopping up after a bloody campaign against the Rohillas, the ethnic Pashtun tribesmen who had come to dominate the hill country of northern Uttar Pradesh. That same year the EIC became entangled in a nasty succession dispute in the Maratha Empire that ultimately resulted in open warfare between the Company and the Marathas.
Mahomet could only watch the victories of his comrades from afar. The British position in India had gone from bad to worse, and while Captain Popham marched on Gwalior, Mahomet and his brigade were summoned to Calcutta to defend against a much graver threat. France had declared war on Britain, and although this declaration was ostensibly in support of the American colonies, Company officials were under no illusion that the subcontinent would escape unscathed. Calcutta became a hive of military activity in 1778 as the Company’s headquarters prepared for the near certainty of French invasion. For Mahomet, it would not be the last time that the American War altered his fate.
For the East India Company, already financially pinched by rising costs and falling revenues, the news of war in North America was most unwelcome. As the Company became ever more inextricably linked with the world of Indian politics, the need for men and money to protect its fragile foothold on the subcontinent grew in unison. This need became all the more acute when the war with America began to siphon off British manpower, leaving Governor-General Warren Hastings’ administration in Calcutta with a limited range of options for addressing its shortfalls. The desperate shortage of European soldiers in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially when combined with the ever-present threat of France and her Indian allies, created a range of economic opportunities for local people like Dean Mahomet and his family. With these new opportunities, however, came dire consequences for Indian society, the eroding of native states and the expansion of an often predatory British patrimony.
Back in the 1750s and 1760s, when Clive had begun the rapid expansion of the East India Company army, native rulers had quickly realized the effectiveness of European style arms, training, and tactics. In order to keep up with the British and French, many Indian princes began forming their own military units along similar lines. Such armies, however, were ruinously expensive to maintain, and so many rulers were forced to rent East India Company troops for a negotiated fee. This had two disastrous consequences for native states. First, the rented troops were usually commanded by European officers whose primary loyalty was to the Company or Britain rather than their temporary employer, a fact that fatally undermined the autonomy of the rulers, who were thus at the mercy of the goodwill of both the Company and the Company’s officers. Second, as the British themselves encountered growing fiscal pressure during the American War, they were liable to raise the rates for their troops. Those who could not or would not pay the increased fees were in danger of being replaced by more pliable rulers or having their lands seized by the British. In 1781, Mahomet witnessed this merciless new economic world first-hand.
When France joined America in its war against Britain in 1778, the coffers of the East India Company were already bone dry. The margins had always been tight, but the constant warfare in India, with the Marathas, Mysore, and the Rohillas, only made matters worse. France’s declaration of war thus came at the worst possible time for Hastings and the Company. Fighting with France was sure to erupt on the subcontinent, requiring great sums of money to pay for troops and supplies. In desperation, Hastings turned to his allies, to the many nominally independent states that owed the Company an annual tribute of money or manpower. Hastings focused his fundraising efforts on the young Raja of Benares, Chait Singh, even though he was a British ally and already paid an annual rent of £225,000 to the Company. When Singh succeeded to the throne in 1770, Benares had already been under the suzerainty of the British for five years. The province had been given to the Company by Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh, in exchange for British protection after his defeat by the British at the Battle of Buxar in 1764 and the subsequent Treaty of Allahabad in 1765. While the overlordship of Benares thus passed from the nawab to the British, the rajas of Benares retained considerable independence and the promise of British protection in return for an annual payment. The arrangement would not outlast the American War.
With fears of French aggression inescapable, and with few attractive options for raising the needed funds, in 1778 Hastings demanded a payment of £50,000 from Chait Singh in addition to the usual annual tribute. According to Hastings’ new logic, it is “a right inherent in every government to impose such assessments as it judges expedient for the common service and protection of all its subjects; and we are not precluded from it by any agreement subsisting between the Raja and this government.” The echoes of the American Revolution are chilling. The raja knew he was in a weak position and so he paid up under protest. Although it was supposed to be a one-time extraordinary contribution, the demand for an extra £50,000 was repeated in 1779 and 1780. In 1779, Singh had the temerity to ask that the payment be the last such charge, but Hastings responded to his perceived impertinence by demanding the entire sum in one lump payment rather than the usual installments. Singh begged for more time, but Hastings was unsympathetic, informing the raja that a late payment would be regarded as a refusal to pay. EIC soldiers were sent into Singh’s territory to force the payment, and the cost of the troops was added to the raja’s bill. If this treatment were not enough to engender ill will toward the British, in 1780 Hastings added yet another demand. The raja was told that he was to provide the Company with 2,000 cavalry, despite the fact that Benares’ treaty with the British stipulated that there was “no obligation on him” to raise such troops.6
Once more, Chait Singh complied with Hastings’ ever-growing rapacity. However, the message that the troops had indeed been raised and were ready and waiting to receive their orders failed to reach Hastings (or at least that is what the governor-general later claimed), and so Singh was fined £500,000. As Hastings himself admitted, “I was resolved to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company’s distress . . . In a word, I had resolved to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for his past delinquency.”7
In August 1781, Governor-General Warren Hastings marched from Calcutta with two companies of Sepoys to the ancient city of Benares (modern Varanasi) to chastise Chait Singh. Despite his mission, Hastings’ arrival on the Ganges met with no resistance. The abject young raja even wrote a pleading letter to Hastings, begging the governor-general to “pity me, I pray you, in remembrance of the services done by my father, and in consideration of my youth and inexperience . . . It depends on you alone to deprive me, or not, of the country of my ancestors—what necessity is there to deal in this way with me, who am ready to devote my life and property to your service.”8
Chait Singh’s pleas fell on deaf, or at least highly unsympathetic, ears and Hastings quickly ordered his arrest. The raja submitted quietly, “without any appearance of opposition.” As news of the arrest spread, however, it “roused the indignation” of the soldiers and subjects of Benares, “who were seen in a large body, crossing the river from Ramnagur to the palace, in which he [Chait Singh] was confined.�
�� At one o’clock, the artist and traveler William Hodges, who had accompanied Hastings on his march, heard reports that the raja’s palace was surrounded. A note had been received from Lieutenant Staulker, who had been left in charge of the small British force guarding the Chait Singh, that “the people began to be troublesome,” and that reinforcements were urgently needed. The British leadership had, it transpired, made a disastrous miscalculation. Because they did not expect any opposition to the raja’s arrest, and to allay the raja’s fear “of any intention to carry the punishment further than was really proposed,” the Sepoys had been instructed not to load their weapons, and were not provided with any ammunition. When the raja’s men surrounded the palace, the British detachment was thus in grave peril, defenseless, and at the mercy of a hostile crowd.9
When news of a potential revolt reached the rest of the British party, Major Popham, who led the British forces at Benares, rushed to the relief of the beleaguered detachment. He was too late. “His utmost exertions enabled them to arrive only in time to be melancholy spectators of this horrid slaughter, without the power of avenging it.” The Sepoys guarding Singh were “mostly massacred by this powerful force which rushed onward, like an irresistible torrent, that sweeps all away before it.” With the Company’s forces cut down nearly to a man, the newly free raja fled with his army to Latifgarh and eventually to the relative safety of the Maratha stronghold at Gwalior, while the now defenseless governor-general was pursued by the raja’s avenging army to Chunar, a proverbially impenetrable fort perched on a rocky escarpment 700 feet above the surrounding countryside. Back at Ramangur, British troops under Captain Mayaffre attempted to fight their way out of the town, but being “hemmed in on very side by the narrow streets and winding alleys of the town” and under “the fire of the enemy from all quarters,” Mayafrre and 150 of his men were cut down.10
To Begin the World Over Again Page 36