After blogs on Apologetics, I have switched gear and am
writing on historical topics in this blog! This topic, especially of the
Company and later the Crown of England of British Raj fleecing Indian rulers
and Indian resources in the 18th century and until when they left in
the 20th century, is a part of my research and written well
documented in my first book, “Values and Influence of Religion in Public Administration.”
I had devoted an entire chapter on ‘Colonial Ethics,’ where in spite of
professing Christianity, they sucked Indian economy dry and left us as a poor
Underdeveloped country.
William Dalrymple gives a detailed narrative of how the power
vacuum that was present in the 18th century Indian subcontinent due
to the decline of Mughal Empire was exploited by the East India Company to
their advantage and how the disunity among the then rulers of Indian subcontinent
like the Maratthas, Tipu Sultan, Nizam of Hyderabad, etc was again exploited by
the British, to play one against the other and win the subcontinent and its
rich resources for themselves. He gives a detailed account of the political
climate of the times, which I happened to read recently.[1]
I will give here some interesting points.
The Company was formed on 31st December 1600 by
218 men in London, ‘Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading to East
Indies,’ after obtaining a royal charter to trade in East Indies (Indonesia). Their
first fleet safely landed back in June 1603, laden with 900 tons of pepper,
cinnamon, and cloves from Acheh, situated in Sumatra, Indonesia, making 300%
profit! Due to intense rivalry from a stronger and richer Dutch East India
Company, the English East India Company (EIC) left the Spice Islands to less
competitive goods, but luxury items, fine cotton textiles, indigo and chintzes[2],
all of which were sourced in India. What a tragic turn of events for us
Indians!
India in 1600s was producing about a quarter of the world’s
manufacturing goods and world’s leader in manufacturing textiles. England was
producing less than 3% of the world’s manufactured goods. This table will soon
be turned. It is also noteworthy that the Mughal Emperor ruling India that time
was the richest in the world, receiving an income of 100 million Pounds (over
10,000 million Pound Sterling today). Mughals kept a large and strong standing
army that when Portuguese where flouting Mughal rules they were attacked and
expelled from Hughli in Bengal in 1632. Sir Henry Middleton of EIC tried
bullying the traders in Surat were attacked and driven away from the area. Only
in 1615 the royal envoy of King James Sir Thomas Roe was granted firman (Imperial Order) by Emperor
Jahangir to conduct trade, that too reluctantly. He allowed them to build a
factory at Surat without giving any major trading privileges. Thus started the
150-200 year old relationship with the Mughal Empire, when the Company behaved
an obedient trader, until when they would swallow it alive.
Aurangzeb, the last strong, no-nonsense Emperor died in 1707
and within next 50 years the Company showed its true colors and started to
gobble up territorial areas in Indian subcontinent. Aurangzeb’s fanatic Islam
and Deccan warfare not only emptied his treasury but also incurred the wrath of
Indian rulers like Maratta Shivaji. After his death, Mughal Empire started to
crumble. With no worthwhile Emperor, local Nawabs and Marathas asserted their
power. Marvari Oswal Jain financiers Jagat Singh became the financiers of the
trade in the troubled times, becoming more powerful than the rulers.
Marattas under Baji Rao, attacked and looted Delhi in 1737.
Nader Shaw a Persian ruler, invaded Delhi in 1739 with a strong army, defeated
Mughal army, looted and massacred the people of India. Some 100000 Delhites were
killed. Their properties and women were captured and enslaved. For full eight
days the massacre lasted and Delhi was torched. Nader Shaw had to be paid an
indemnity of 100 crore rupees just to leave India and go back. He took
Jahangir’s Peacock Throne studded with Kohinoor Diamond before leaving. He left
with a loot worth 87 million Pound of gold, silver, and precious stones. Mughal
Empire was damaged beyond rescue, a terrible blow from which they will never
recover. This showed the way for the others, including European trading
companies to dream of conquering the rich empire.
The French and the English will now fight for ascendancy and
control of the resources of India. This was clinched in favor of the English
at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. By 1755, 60% of all EIC exports from Asia
were passing through Calcutta and it paid 180,000 Pounds to Mughal custom
officers to buy these goods, 75% of it in the form of gold and silver bullion.
This will dry up once the company seized control of Bengal. Without going into
the political debacle that happened in 1757, Battle of Plassey, the amount paid
off to the English Company to have a local leader, Siraj-ud-Daula the Nawab of
Bengal changed and to install another, Mir Jafer in that seat, was a scandal.
The locals, including the Indian financiers Jagat Singh and co, invited the
muscle power of the EIC, which was under the control of Clive then, to effect
this and paid for their services: Clive got 234,000 Pounds and a jagir, a landed estate worth annual
payment of 27,000 Pound, (232 million Pound in today’s equivalent). Clive
became stinking rich and bought estates, lands, and boroughs in England and an
MP seat in British parliament. This was in addition to the loot of jewels,
precious stones and pearls. Bengal, the once rich and flourishing province will
sink into poverty as her treasures and finances were looted and many returned
to England as new “Naboobs!” British never paid for the export of goods
from Bengal thereafter. The land revenue
of Bengal paid for the export!
Another replacement- installing Mir Quasim in the place of
Mir Jafer, brought more payments from the Indians. In the Battle of Buxar in
1765 the Company got the diwani (right
to collect revenue and management) of the richest provinces of Mughal Empire,
Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Now on it was Indian wealth that would help propel
Britain’s economy. The avarice of the British Company, of scrapping as much as
money possible from these provinces directly led to the horrible Bengal famine
of 1770, where in three million people perished.
Though praised for being instrumental in establishing British
rule in India, Clive was put through impeachment proceedings for the excesses
he had committed in India. At the end of a long process, he was exonerated. But
very soon Clive took his life by cutting his jugular veins with a blunt
paper-knife in 1774, at the age of only 49. As it was a suicide he was not given
an honorable burial but was buried secretly in the night in the village church
where he was born, and buried in an unmarked grave, without a plaque. A fitting
end to a rapacious person, who by deceit and bribery, won his wars with the
Indian chiefs, enslaving the country to shop-keepers of Europe.
Very soon the Company would play one Indian ruler against the
other, break their unity and grab the entire of India. In the south Haidar Ali was
ruling the Mysore State. In 1780 Tipu Sultan, his son defeated the English army
in Pollilur in the preset Tamil Nadu. Haidar Ali determined to throw British
out of India, drew up a tripartite agreement with Prime Minister Nana
Phadnavis, of Maratha Confederacy in 1780 and with the Nizam of Hyderabad. But
on his death in 1783, his son Tipu soon lost the advantages and the alliance.
British signed a separate treaty with Maratha in 1782. Tipu died fighting the
English at Srirangapatnam, in the last Anglo-Mysore war of 1799.
Meanwhile Maratha powers, the young Scindia and Holkar on the
death of their respective fathers around 1794, became bitter rivals, paving way
for the British to defeat them separately. The wise and efficient Phadnavis
died in 1800. Shah Alam, the blind Mughal Emperor who was under the protection
of Marathas, was taken under the wings of the British in 1803. Company’s decisions
were thereafter taken with the seal of approval of the nominal Emperor which became
legitimate in the eyes of the people in India.
India would remain in the hands of the Company till 1857,
when the First Indian Independence fight occurred and the country changed hands
to that of the British Crown. It will be take another almost 100 years before
India could really became independent in 1947. For almost 200 years Indian
resources powered the engine of government of Great Britain. Indian itself
became poor. A country that was thriving economically under the Mughals became
a Third World country when the British left. That is the legacy of British Raj
in India.
[1]
William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East
India Company, Corporate violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, Bloomsbury
Publishing, New Delhi, 2019
[2]
Printed glazed calico textiles
