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History of India The Black Hole Tragedy and its aftermath The British had fortified their position at Fort William in Calcutta, thus breaking their agreement with the Nawab of Bengal. When the wily Nawab Ali Vardi Khan died without a son, his impetuous twenty year old grandson Siraj-ud-daula became the Nawab of Bengal. He decided to march his army of fifty thousand on Calcutta. The thousand man British army had no chance and hence decided to largely flee. In the frantic stampede the vulnerable women and children were left behind with about 170 soldiers. That night on June 20, 1756, according to erroneous British report 146 English prisoners had been sequestered in the dungeons of Fort Williams and only twenty-three prisoners survived. This report of merciless death in the “Black Hole” of Fort Williams did much disservice to the British and Indian relationships that perhaps irreparably was damaged. There was little mention of the fact that the dungeons were built by the British to incarcerate their enemies in this foreign land. The true report recorded shows only 64 prisoners had been incarcerated and twenty one were alive in the morning. Siraj-ud-daula had not ordered the imprisonment or the torture though he was blamed for it. The furor over the prisoner death in captivity brought about a swift action from the British base in Madras. Robert Clive, who now had risen in ranks to the position of Lieutenant Colonel, was once again dispatched. Siraj-u-daula was soundly defeated in the Battle of Plassey, where a mere 800 troops belonging to swashbuckling Clive defeated a fifty thousand strong army of the Nawab. Taking advantage of the hostilities in Europe, the British bombarded the French at Chandarnagar and captured the fortress on the river Hughli. Fort William in Calcutta was recaptured in January of 1757. The French were now totally removed from Bengal and Clive was the new de facto ‘nabob’ of Bengal, able to extract any price both in land and personal wealth. The defeat of Siraj-ud-daula was assisted by his greatuncle, one Mir Jafar, who felt that he was deprived of the nawabship in Bengal after the death of his brother-in-law, Nawab Ali Vardi Khan. Mir Jafar soon was the elevated to Nawab of Bengal but found that he was ruling an empty shell of a kingdom. The real power was with the British, who amassed immense wealth without paying any taxes and effectively ruled the region without taking responsibility. Beginnings of the British Raj
The only power mighty enough to defeat any enemy at this time in Indian history was the Marathas. Peshwa Balaji Rao of Poona sent his brother Raghunathrao to Delhi to assist Nizam of Hyderabad’s grandson to secure his position in Delhi. Nizam’s grandson Imad-ul-Mulk, had designs about usurping the weakened Mughal Emperor and take power away from him. In this regard he was successful, albeit with the help of the Maratha army to provide security. Raghunathrao succeeded in driving the son of Shah Abdali from Lahore back into Afghanistan and Maratha power remained supreme. Shah Abdali returned to Delhi to win again, but was not interested in remaining in Delhi during its hot summer months. He placed a claimant of Mughal Empire, Shah Alam on the throne (whose father Alamgir II was hastily murdered by the grandson of the Nizam, as Shah Abdali approached Delhi). Wretched Shah Alam ruled Delhi for more than forty miserable years, until 1806, even after he was blinded by an Afghan in 1788. Mughal power was slipping into oblivion and this suited the British East India Company very well. In 1760 Robert Clive returned to England as a rich man. He then bought precious stocks of East India Company (at 500 pounds each) in order to be in control of the directorship of the company. Thus Clive, who started as a lowly clerk in the company, and one bullet wound away from suicidal death, managed to amass a fortune in India, and now became the investor-owner of the company. After 1761 Maratha power also got diluted due to infighting between the pentarchy of the Marathas (Gaikwad of Baroda, Holkar of Indore, Sindia of Gwalior, Bhonsle of Nagpur and the Peshwa of Satara). A large contingency of Maratha troops marched against the Abdali Afghans who were then in Delhi, savoring their plunder. The Muslim armies of Delhi, Audh and Bengal joined together and fought a jihadi battle against the Hindu infidel Marathas and defeated them in Panipat in 1761. Seventy five thousand Marathas were killed and another thirty thousand were taken as prisoner. Maratha dominance of both the North and South effectively ended in Panipat in 1761. The French had already been weakened after the defeat in Bengal. They suffered similar fate in the south as well. Further advances by the British in the south resulted in a decisive victory against the French in Wandiwash in the south in 1760. A year later Pondicherry fell into British hands, but later returned as part of the treaty of Paris in 1763. However, Pondicherry’s fortifications had been breached and permanently destroyed and the French remained in India in a much weakened state from then on, without any wild ambitions of territorial gains. By 1764 Bengal had been so rapaciously plundered by the British that the puppet Nawab could not take it any longer. The weakened Mughal emperor in Delhi and the rulers at Audh (which by now was an independent state) saw the writing on the wall, though too late. Their army was soundly defeated by the British forces and the diminished Mughal emperor sued for peace once again.
In 1772 Clive had been called back and replaced by Warren Hastings. Corruption among the company servants including Clive’s alleged abuse of power drew much criticism in London. Clive was kept busy for the next two years defending his actions (and his ill-gotten riches) in India in the British parliament. In 1774, Robert Clive at the age forty-nine successfully committed suicide at his home in London, an act that had eluded him as a young man of twenty-one, because of a malfunctioning handgun. Top | Previous Page | History of India
The Week of November 13, 2005
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In
1765 Robert Clive returned as to govern Bengal. Though he could march
to Delhi and take control of the heart of India, he played a cautious
game. Taking a page out of Dupleix, from whom he had learnt the craft,
he resorted to reap the benefits of the revenue from India’s heartland
but not take the responsibility of governing it. He did not want to
kindle the patriotic spirits of Indians or to damage their conscience at
this juncture and risk losing the enormous power he had amassed in such
a short period in this far off land. The British Raj had been
established at least in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and an enormous sum was
paid to the company from the coffers, tax free, in exchange for promise
of no further military interventions. Mughal emperor Shah Alam was paid
an annual compensation. The Company was officially a ‘diwan’ of the
Mughals and thus was in charge of collecting revenue, under no
obligation to pay anything to the Nawab of Bengal. With the chokehold
and complete control of greater Bengal, the seeds of a British empire
had been sown in India.