How did the conquest of Bengal led to plunder of the province's wealth?
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Answer:
The plundering invasions of the Indian Subcontinent from west and northwest had lasted for limited time periods: from one raid, as in the case of Emir Timur and Nader Shah, to a string of raids over one to two score of years, as in the case of Mahmud of Ghazni and Ahmed Shah Abdali. However, the articles that I have written in this series about the looting of the Subcontinent wouldn’t be complete unless I described the plunder of Bengal carried out by the British East India Company (BEIC) between the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the great Bengal famine of 1769-1773.
This plunder of Bengal is well documented in the British records as Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, the first two governors of Bengal, were both tried in the British Parliament for corruption, though they were exonerated – due largely to wealth induced influence peddling by the rich BEIC.
The first gain to the BEIC was that it immediately acquired all the land within the Maratha Ditch and 600 yards beyond. The ditch was a 3 mile long moat excavated around Calcutta as a protection against Maratha attacks that were ravaging the Central India. The Company also acquired zamindari – read ownership – of all the land between Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal, a length of 80 kilometres along the Hoogly River, effectively taking over the most productive part of the province. This was to have murderous effect on local Bengalis two decades later.
The treaty with the new rulers that it installed required the BEIC to be paid a sum of 22 million rupees, roughly equivalent to 35 billion rupees in current value. This was a cunning condition inserted in the agreement by the BEIC because Bengal’s treasury didn’t have this amount. Clive accepted that half of this amount be paid immediately – two-thirds in gold and silver coins and the rest in jewels – and the balance in instalments. Clive himself pocketed what would be 3 billion rupees in current value. He not only cleaned out the entire accumulated wealth of Bengal but also ensured extortion on future earnings as well, imitating the combined acts of Nader Shah who had plundered Delhi 18 years earlier and Ahmed Shah who was ravaging Punjab at that time. The death toll caused by the Persian-Afghan duo in North India in the three decades between 1739-69 pales before the one induced by the strangling policies of the British in Bengal in the two decades between 1757-77.
Visiting Powis Castle of the Clive estate recently, author William Dalrymple was astonished at the Indian-origin articles stored there. He states that there are more Mughal artefacts stacked in this private house in the Welsh countryside than are on display at any one place in India – even the National Museum in Delhi. The riches include hookahs of burnished gold inlaid with empurpled ebony; superbly inscribed spinels and jewelled daggers; gleaming rubies the colour of pigeon’s blood and scatterings of lizard-green emeralds. There are talwars set with yellow topaz, ornaments of jade and ivory; silken hangings, statues of Hindu gods and coats of elephant armour. The displayed items include Tipu Sultan’s magnificent state tent, made of painted chintz; golden and bejewelled tiger’s-head finials from Tipu’s throne; and two cannons, collected by Clive’s son who was governor of Madras at the time of the Battle of Seringapatam. One jewelled jade flask, taken from the Bengal treasury, was put on sale in 2004 for one million pounds sterling. Beset by personal and political issues, the looter Clive himself committed suicide in 1774.
After the Battle of Plassey, Clive walked into the Bengal treasury at Murshidabad, loaded the entire content in about 200 boats and sailed them to Fort William, the Company head office. While defending against himself charges of embezzling large amounts of money, he stated he was ‘astonished’ at his moderation for not taking more. There were others, too, who by the 1780s held about one-tenth of the seats in Parliament.
The great debater Burke accused Hastings of being ‘a ravenous vulture devouring the carcases of the dead.’ Hastings was, however, acquitted following favourable testimony from those who had enriched themselves in India. For his role in enriching the mother country, he was honoured by Britain by naming a town in New Zealand and a suburb in Melbourne after him.
The Company had also started forcing large food-producing areas to grow indigo and poppy instead, thereby reducing food reserves. The Company had prohibited the ‘hoarding’ of rice that the farmers used to keep in store to cater for the lean periods. Even Warren Hastings admitted to the practices of what he called, ‘violent tax collection’.
All these factors added to the longevity and intensity of the famine that claimed 10 million lives – one third of the population – during its duration. In the meanwhile, Warren Hastings was relentlessly enriching himself and the Company shareholders.