For historians of Bengal, the 18th century has been divided in two with the battle of Plassey standing as a decisive marker.
The ‘Rashomon’ approach which Sudeep Chakravarti adopts, transforms Plassey from a military account to a history of deceit, conspiracy, even a lament with layers of fascinating details wedged in between each incident. As the narrative unfolds on June 23, 1757, in a brief battle fought in the mango orchard of Plassey, the East India Company’s army led by Lieutenant Robert Clive defeated the forces of the young Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-daulah. It allowed the company a unique opportunity of transforming one of the richest provinces of the dwindling Mughal Empire into a new administrative unit run by English merchants who collected taxes through means of a ruthless private army.
Birth of a colonial power
The East India Company’s founding charter authorised waging war and it had always used violence to achieve its ends. But the creation of this new administration marked the moment when the East India Company ceased to be a conventional trading company aiming to secure an international market for its silks and spices and became an aggressive colonial power. In less than four decades it employed a security force twice the size of the British army.
Perhaps those who claim that India had won in Plassey and those who sadly relate that it was lost are both right.
These two groups, however, resort to a common binary from which Chakravarti has been able to rescue his readers.
The book has been divided into three parts — the first provides the background i.e. the decline of the Mughal Empire, the rise of the Bengal Suba, the importance of Murshidabad as a centre of trade with its bankers and the process through which trade had become linked with politics. The focus lies on the squabbles, skirmishes and greed of the European companies to gain entry into this world of wealth.
The second section is the ‘build up to the historic moment of conflict’. The author while tracing the building of Fort William and the establishment of the city of Calcutta makes a fascinating study of what has come down in history text books as the Black Hole tragedy. Naming the chapter ‘Horror or Hoax’ he gives us details from archives built by both the British and the Indians.
The conflicting versions of the narrative on one hand reflects the howls of indignation from several generations of British in India and on the other hand clearly indicates that the British had lost all interest in the tragic incident and were far more concerned about losing their most lucrative trading station in Bengal. In relation to this, the Holwell monument, an epitaph for those unfortunate British men and women, became an object of tourist attraction.
Panoramic show
The third and final section is simply named ‘The Battle.’ The incidents are presented in a blow-by-blow account through eight chapters. Using archival documents, letters, memoirs, the author creates a panoramic show in which Clive, Siraj-ud-daulah, Jagat Seth, Mirjafar, even Siraj’s deceitful aunts and the entire harem all come alive and the readers are given a free choice to pick their favourite actors.
Moving away from the Raj’s boring, loving accounts which whitewashed Clive and the Cambridge historians’ arguments that the East India Company’s victory rested on the support given by the Bengal aristocracy, Chakravarti breaks new ground by quoting men like George Bruce Malleson: “The name of Siraj-ud-daulah stands higher than Clive. He was the only one of the principal actors in the tragic drama who did not attempt to deceive.” This proves beyond doubt that the British historians did not speak in one voice.
Chakravarti’s main strength, however, lies in his command over Bengali sources. From colonised historians like Akshay Kumar Moitra, social reformers such as Vidyasagar, creative writers Nabin Chandra Sen to Rabindranath Tagore, Siraj was transformed back and forth from a spoiled brat, a debauch, a brutal ruler to the betrayed, patriotic, last independent Nawab of Bengal. To these has been added newly researched material from Bangladesh. Driven by the need to establish a national identity and an acceptable narrative, layers of meaning have been added to the accounts of Plassey. The process, identified by the author, makes his perspective markedly different from Indian nationalist writings.
This book has been termed as a work of ‘popular history’. It goes beyond the limitations of such a genre and demonstrates how rigorous historical research may be imaginatively presented.
Plassey: The Battle that Changed the Course of Indian History; Sudeep Chakravarti, Aleph, ₹799.
The reviewer was Professor of History, Department of Islamic History and Culture, Calcutta University, and author of From the Karkhana to the Studio: Changing social roles of patron and artist in Bengal .
