Clive

by Robert Harvey

  Of the provinces which had been subject to the house of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of India possessed such natural advantages, both for agriculture and for commerce. The Ganges, rushing through a hundred channels to the sea, has formed a vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical sky, rivals the verdure of an English April. The rice-fields yield an increase such as is elsewhere unknown. Spices, sugar, vegetable oil, are produced with marvellous exuberance. The rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish.

  The desolate islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by noxious vegetation, and swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts with abundance of salt. The great stream which fertilises the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of most of its tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India.

  The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussulman despot, and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known throughout the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries; and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms. The race by whom this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe.

  The Castilians have a proverb, that in Valencia the earth is water and the men women; and the description is at least equally applicable to the vast plain of the Lower Ganges. Whatever the Bangalee does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the ways of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people as thoroughly fitted by nature and habit for a foreign yoke.

  When Bengal was at peace, the spoils were immensely lucrative for the British and smaller French and Dutch settlements up the Hugli river. The British had for some time enjoyed an uneasy, if pragmatic relationship with the rulers of Bengal. They had obtained a firman – a grant of trading privileges – from the Mogul Emperor himself at the court in Delhi in 1717. The East India Company had spent a staggering £100,000 in bribes on the cost of the mission so that ‘the Lord of the World and of the Present Age’ should grant ‘the smallest particle of sand’ – the governor of Fort William – the firman.

  However, the wording of the text was vague on several key issues, and friction abounded between the British and Bengali government, usually about money. The Bengali authorities, for example, insisted that the agents of the Company could not trade as private individuals and thus exploit its monopoly in the outside world. The Company merely pretended that their private trade was its own. The Bengali authorities insisted on inspecting cargoes to check that these were not private transactions, and had to be bribed to desist.

  As the settlement expanded from the original three villages granted to the Company, it had to buy land through its local employees, purchasing 38 villages in all. The enclave was prohibited from coining its own currency, which meant it was dependent on the good offices of the immensely powerful Bengali banking community. The settlement’s leaders and a succession of Bengali rulers continued to squabble over these and other issues throughout the early part of the eighteenth century.

  * * *

  In April 1740 a coup that was to have immense repercussions was staged at the Bengali capital of Murshidabad, some 50 miles upriver from Calcutta. The Nawab Sarfaraz was murdered by a tough and shrewd low-born new ruler, Aliverdi Khan, and the countdown began towards the events that led to the ignominious British loss of Calcutta 16 years later. Aliverdi Khan’s ascent to power was fortunate for the Bengalis, who were suddenly attacked by wave after wave of Maratha invaders.

  The first wave came in 1742, and the Marathas got as far as plundering the capital Murshidabad, before being beaten off; a second invasion followed in 1743, and a third the following year. This time Aliverdi Khan held a peace conference – at which, Borgia-style, Baskar Pandit and twenty Maratha commanders were murdered by soldiers hidden behind the curtains of the conference room.

  Enraged, the Marathas returned in 1745, and nearly drove the Nawab from his throne. After several more attacks, Aliverdi Khan in 1751 bought them off with the province of Orissa. Almost certainly, had Bengal been governed by a less tough-minded ruler, India’s richest province would have fallen to the Marathas.

  During this period the European trading settlements understandably began to improve their defences, with the Nawab’s blessing. The British started to build a moat around northern Calcutta, the Maratha Ditch. After the peace of 1751, however, the Nawab told them to stop building. ‘You are merchants. What need have you of a fortress? Being under my protection, you have no enemies to fear.’

  However – as Aliverdi was well aware – the Europeans were now building defences against the possibility that they might have to go to war with one another. Already France and Britain were at war in the Carnatic. Dupleix, at his most ambitious, encouraged de Bussy to march from Hyderabad to Bengal to carve out a French Bengali empire: ‘Nothing can be easier than to humble the pride of that man [Aliverdi Khan] whose troops are as worthless as you already know. By sending to Bengal, Balasore or Masulipatam four to five hundred men … [and] some light artillery – that is all you would need in Bengal, where there isn’t a single fort and the whole country lies open to the first glance. By taking a few precautions we could make ourselves masters of Hugli.’

  Later he wrote, ‘The Nawab is hated there because of his vexations. The English and the Dutch are not in a position to give him any help … You are alone strong enough to become the master of the country which is ripe for invasion because of the tyranny of the present government.’ Unsurprisingly, in view of these threats, the East India Company instructed Fort William to form a garrison, and nearly sixty pieces of artillery were shipped in.

  Aliverdi was too wily an old bird, however, to do more than occasionally threaten the Europeans. On one occasion he compared them prophetically to bees ‘of whose honey you might reap the benefit’, but which, if attacked in their hives, ‘would sting you to death’. On another, he warned his advisers, ‘What have the English done against me that I should use them ill? It is not difficult to extinguish fire on land; but should the sea be in flames, who can put them out?’ Aliverdi sometimes made a show of force: he blockaded trade with the English factories when they seized the goods of an Armenian merchant in 1749. After the murder of the French-sponsored Nasir Jang in 1750, he tried unsuccessfully to seize the French factories.

  In 1756 a new crisis arose when the authorities in Calcutta refused to hand over the estates of two Indians who had died without heirs. Under Bengali law, the land belonged to the state and these lands should revert to the Nawab. The British council at Fort William was indignant: ‘We cannot think of subjecting our flag and protection to so much contempt as to abandon our tenants and inhabitants and permit our estates and properties to be seized and plundered … in case this demand is not laid aside we shall be under necessity to withdraw our factory and take proper measures to secure our employees from these impositions … we have taken to submit rather to a stoppage of our business than suffer this protection of our flag to grow contemptible.’

  Aliverdi did nothing. At around the same time asylum in Calcutta was granted to one Krishna Das, son of a wealthy Indian civil servant who had been deeply involved in court intrigue over the succession to Aliverdi Khan. This was abruptly to become of key importance: for the man described by Orme as ‘always extremely temperate, with no pleasures, with no seraglio and always lived the husband of one wife’, who had shown su
ch remarkable firmness, statesmanship and flexibility in office, died soon after on 10 April 1756 at the remarkable old age – for the times – of 82.

  Four years earlier, by another irony of fate, Fort William had acquired the most stupid, stubborn and incompetent young governor in its history. With Aliverdi’s death, power in Bengal was to pass to a more intelligent, but no less rash and feckless young man. The scene was set for the tragedy that ensued with astonishing rapidity.

  * * *

  Aliverdi Khan’s chosen successor was his favourite grandson, Mirza Muhammad, known by the adopted name of Siraj-ud-Daula – ‘Lamp of the State’, who was aged 27 or 29 when he ascended the throne. Macaulay’s description of him was memorable, although as usual over the top:

  Oriental despots are perhaps the worst class of human beings; and this unhappy boy was one of the worst specimens of his class. His understanding was naturally feeble, and his temper naturally un-amiable. His education had been such as would have enervated even a vigorous intellect and perverted even a generous disposition. He was unreasonable, because no one ever had to reason with him, and selfish, because he had never been made to feel dependent on the good will of others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body and his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness.

  His chosen companions were flatterers sprung from the dregs of the people, and recommended by nothing but buffoonery and servility. It is said that he had arrived at that last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of pain, as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. It had early been his amusement to torture beasts and birds; and, when he grew up, he enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of his fellow creatures.

  There is more reliable evidence to suggest he was one of history’s less savoury rulers. The contemporary historian – and cousin of the Nawab – Ghulam Husain Tabatabai, paints a vivid picture:

  Patrolling every street and every lane with a cohort composed of Aliverdi Khan’s children and grandchildren, he fell into an abominable way of life, that respected neither age, nor sex, but was calculated to prepare from afar the ruin and desolation of that sublime building of fortune and sovereignty which its founder had been rearing with so much toil and danger …

  He had a sport of sacrificing to his lust almost every person of either sex, to which he took a fancy; or else, he converted them without scruples into as many objects of the malignity of his temper, or the frolics of his inconsiderate youth. And having by this time provided himself with a number of like-minded followers, he commenced a course of insolencies, infamies and profligacies; and either out of that ignorance incident to that age, or because of an ardour natural to his constitution (although it was because of his perfect reliance on his uncle’s forbearance), such a course of life became in him his real character. This is so far true that he was observed to be low spirited and melancholy, when he fell short of opportunities to commit his usual excesses and enormities; and they became so customary to him that he acted all along without a grain of remorse, or a spark of recollection.

  Making no distinction between vice and virtue … he carried defilement wherever he went, and, like a man alienated in his mind, he made the houses of men and women of distinction the scenes of his profligacy, without minding either rank or station. In a little time he became as detested as Pharaoh, and people on meeting him by chance used to say, ‘God save us from him’.

  Another historian of the time, Ghulam Husain Salim, wrote:

  Owing to Siraj-ud-Daula’s harshness of temper and indulgence in violent language, fear and terror had settled on the hearts of everyone to such an extent that no one among his generals of the army or the noblemen of the city was free from anxiety. Amongst his officers, whoever went to wait on Siraj-ud-Daula despaired of life and honour, and whoever returned without being disgraced and ill-treated offered thanks to God.

  Siraj-ud-Daula treated all the noblemen and generals of Mahabat Jang [Aliverdi Khan] with ridicule and drollery, and bestowed on each some contemptuous nickname that ill-suited any of them. And whatever harsh expressions and abusive epithet came to his lips, Siraj-ud-Daula uttered them unhesitatingly in the face of everyone, and no one had the boldness to breathe freely in his presence.

  Siraj-ud-Daula was the son of Aliverdi’s favourite son-in-law and best commander, Zain-ud-Din, who had been tortured to death by Afghan mercenaries. In his teens, he had been tainted by the corruption of the Bengali court: his domineering aunt, Ghasita Begum, had a supremely capable army commander, Husain Ali Khan, who threatened the youth’s right of succession. Dark and good-looking, the commander became the lover of the Begum’s bisexual husband; this she was prepared to tolerate. But when the commander also took as his lover Siraj-ud-Daula’s mother, Amina, the infuriated Begum asked for the young prince to send his soldiers to murder him, which he did with relish.

  Siraj-ud-Daula differed sharply from the conventional dissolute prince of India, as described in the classic Raghuvamsa by the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, who is manipulated by a senior minister who ‘accustoms him to the pleasures of a life of luxury and gives him every possible opportunity to indulge in them … he accustoms [the young ruler] to believe that the ruler’s share in royal authority consists merely in sitting on the throne, shaking hands, being addressed as Sire, and sitting with women in the seclusion of the harem’.

  Siraj-ud-Daula was dissipated, but he was also ambitious, hyperactive, and showed considerable cunning, if not statecraft. Apart from his pathological contempt for his own nobility, three other traits stand out: an insatiable sexual appetite; a penchant for frivolous cruelty; and a loathing of the British.

  It was normal for Indian princes to have liaisons with willing girls from noble families; to buy slaves and dancing girls; to take women as spoils of war; to buy women from fathers, husbands and brothers; and to seduce willing partners. The only rule was compliance, or payment of a just price.

  This huge pool of potential partners was not enough for Siraj-ud-Daula. According to his ally, Jean Law, head of the French settlement at Kasimbazar: ‘Hindu women are accustomed to bathe on the banks of the Ganges. ‘Siraj-ud-Daula, who was informed by his spies which of them were beautiful, sent his satellites in disguise in little boats to carry them off.’ Siraj-ud-Daula further outraged convention by violating girls from noble families and insisting that the new bride of his banker, the Jagat Seth, be brought to him so that he could view her – although she escaped with her honour intact. According to Law, Siraj-ud-Daula was also sexually profligate with young men – which did not greatly offend his nobles, although it was looked upon with a certain contempt.

  Siraj-ud-Daula’s cruelty was legendary. He would rip open the stomachs of pregnant women to satisfy his curiosity as to how the child lay in the womb. According to Law, ‘he was often seen, in the season when the river overflows, causing ferry boats to be upset or sunk, in order to have the cruel pleasure of seeing the confusion of a hundred people at a time, men, women and children, of whom many, not being able to swim, were sure to perish’. To the British trader William Watts, Siraj-ud-Daula was ‘that imbecile murderer who breaks birds’ wings and cuts off men’s privities’.

  A contemporary British comment was that he was ‘violent, passionate, of great ambition tinctured with avarice’. He also indulged excessively in alcohol, although Aliverdi made him swear on the Koran to give up this unlslamic pursuit. Apparently considered ‘famous for beauty’, his portraits suggest a weak and delicate face with pursed lips, a large nose and wide, vague eyes. He was prone to high-pitched giggling, fits of violent temper, and alternated hyperactivity with indolence. Perhaps this made the British, in particular, underestimate his toughness and guile.

  Law remarked, ‘the violent character of Siraj-ud-Daula and the general hatred for him had given many people the idea that he could never become subadar (ruler
). Among others the English thought so. They never addressed themselves to Siraj-ud-Daula for their business in the durbar (court) but on the contrary avoided all communications with him. On certain occasions they refused him admission into their factory at Kasimbazar and their country houses because, in fact, this excessively blustering and impertinent young man used to break the furniture or, if it pleased him, take it away’ – an echo of Ghulam Husain Tabatabai’s remarks.

  Law also pointed out that Siraj-ud-Daula was:

  One of the richest Nawabs that ever lived. Without mentioning his revenues, of which he gave no account to the court at Delhi, he possessed immense wealth both in gold and silver coin and in jewels and precious stones which had been left by the preceding three nawabs. Nevertheless he thought only of increasing his wealth. If any extraordinary expense had to be met he ordered contributions, and levied them with extreme rigour.

  Having never known himself of what it was to be in want of money he supposed that, in due proportion, money was as common with other people as with himself, and that the resources of the Europeans especially were inexhaustible. His violence towards them was partly due to this. In fact from his behaviour it appeared as if his object was to ruin everybody. He spared no-one, not even his relations, from whom he took all the pensions and all the offices which they had held at the time of Aliverdi Khan.

  However, Aliverdi had been determined that his spoilt, disagreeable grandson should succeed, and arranged for his chief minister, Rai Durlabh, and army commander and brother-in-law, a bluff, straightforward man, Mir Jafar, to act as his protectors. Protectors he certainly needed: for his aunt, Ghasita Begum, was determined to frustrate him, backing one, then another, pretender to the throne. The most formidable was Siraj-ud-Daula’s cousin, Shaukut Jang.