India Under British Rule

Invasion of the Nawab of Oudh.

The Nawab of Oudh had long desired to get possession of the Bengal provinces, and thought to secure them by making the Prince Imperial a cat's paw. He proclaimed that the Prince Imperial had been invested by his father with the government of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. He then sent the Prince forward with a large force to enforce the proclamation, whilst he himself remained behind in Oudh and awaited events.7 To make matters worse, the Hindu officials in the Bengal provinces, who had been dispossessed, or were expecting to be dispossessed, were preparing to join the invaders.

Clive's difficulty.

Mir Jafir was in a panic of fear at the appearance of the Prince Imperial, and proposed to pay him a sum of money to go away. Clive would not listen to the suggestion. He ignored the Prince Imperial and the Great Mogul, and soon routed the invading army. The Prince Imperial then became a suppliant to the British, and implored Clive for help; but Clive had been requested by the Vizier at Delhi to arrest the fugitive, and would not commit himself. He, however, sent a bag of 500 mohurs, about 800l. sterling, to relieve the immediate necessities of the Prince Imperial, and the money was gladly received by the impoverished fugitive.

Wanted, a British army.

Meanwhile, Clive was at his wits' end for money. The Bengal provinces could be held against any enemy in India by a standing army of Europeans and sepoys. Such an army could be maintained for half a million sterling per annum, and the public revenue amounted to three or four millions; but the Nawab refused to disband his own rabble soldiery, and pretended that he could not pay the Europeans.

Solution.

At this crisis Clive received a secret and startling proposal from the Vizier at Delhi, that he should accept the post of Dewan to the Great Mogul for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. In the palmy days of the Mogul empire, every province was governed by two officials, the Nawab and the Dewan. The Nawab kept the peace and administered justice; the Dewan kept the public purse, received the revenues, paid all salaries, and sent the surplus as tribute to the Great Mogul. The later Nawabs had become their own Dewans, and spent the revenue as they pleased, without sending any tribute to the Great Mogul. Had Clive closed with the offer, it would have involved a mortal struggle with Mir Jafir, for it would have deprived the Nawab of all power over the public purse. But it would have removed every financial difficulty, as the Vizier would have been satisfied with a yearly tribute of half a million sterling, or even less, whilst Clive would have had the whole remaining surplus at his own disposal.

Clive's offer to Pitt, 1759.

Clive would not accept the post of Dewan, either for himself or for the East India Company. But he wrote privately to the British premier, the first William Pitt, and proposed that the British Crown should act as Dewan to the Great Mogul. Under such an arrangement, the Crown might have taken over the Bengal revenues, sent half, or a quarter of a million a year to Delhi, spent another half million on a standing army, and devoted another half million to the salaries of the Nawab and his officials; and then might have secured a surplus of two millions a year towards the payment of the national debt. William Pitt, however, was already alarmed at the growing power of the Crown, and he declined taking over the proposed income lest it should endanger the liberties of the British nation.

Turmoils in the north-west.

In 1760 Colonel Clive returned to England, and in 1761 the war with France was over. India might now have been at peace, but the north-west was in a turmoil. The Great Mogul was murdered by his Vizier. The Afghans had slaughtered 200,000 Mahrattas on the fatal field of Paniput, and established their ascendency at Delhi. The fugitive Prince Imperial was proclaimed Padishah, or Emperor, by the Nawab of Oudh, who assumed the title of Nawab Vizier; and the Padishah and his Nawab Vizier invaded Behar and threatened Patna.

Change of Nawabs.

§3. The British at Calcutta were now in sore peril, and there was no Clive to guide them. They deposed Mir Jafir on their own authority, and set up his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. The new Nawab was unquestionably a better man than the deposed Mir Jafir; but the transfer of a throne by a Governor and Council of British merchants was somewhat startling. There was, however, no one to resist the Calcutta traders, and Mir Jafir yielded to his kismet, retired from his post as Nawab, and removed to Calcutta, as a safer residence than Murshedabad.

Mastery of the British.

Mir Kasim agreed to all the British demands. He was bound over to pay half a million sterling for the maintenance of the British army; but he averted money disputes with the Company's servants by ceding three districts in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, which yielded the same amount of revenue, and the British could collect the money for themselves. Above all, the new Nawab agreed, as Mir Jafir had done before him, to free the Company's servants from the payment of all inland transit duties within the Bengal provinces.

Dealings with the Padishahs.

Mir Kasim, accompanied by a British force, took the field against the young Padishah and the Nawab Vizier. The invaders were soon defeated; the Nawab Vizier fled back to Oudh, but the young Padishah remained at Patna. Accordingly, the British determined to get his sanction to their proceedings, and thus to justify their appointment of a new Nawab in the eyes of the people of India and the European nations trading with Bengal. He was without territory or revenue. His throne and capital at Delhi were in the hands of the Afghans. Yet he had been proclaimed Padishah in India, and was legally the Great Mogul. Accordingly, the British determined to recognize his sovereignty, and arrange for the appointment of Mir Kasim as Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, under his imperial seal and commission.

British set up a Great Mogul.

It was somewhat audacious for a handful of British traders to set up a Great Mogul for themselves as lord paramount of India. It was still more audacious to carry out the ceremony of installation in a building sacred to silk and saltpetre. Nevertheless, the work was done. The Company's factory at Patna was converted into a Mogul palace; the centre room into a hall of audience; the dining-tables into an imperial throne. The Padishah was carried in procession to the factory, and enthroned on the dining-tables as the Great Mogul. Mir Kasim paid homage to the sovereign, and was invested with the post of Nawab of the Bengal provinces. In return, the Nawab was bound over to pay a yearly tribute to the Great Mogul of a quarter of a million sterling.

Enthronement at Patna.

The installation of the Great Mogul, and the formal appointment of the Nawab of Bengal, were established facts, but no party was satisfied. The Padishah was disgusted, because the British would not conduct him to Delhi and place him on the throne of Aurangzeb. The Nawab was disgusted at paying a heavy tribute when the Padishah might have been forced by a little pressure to sell the appointment for a bag of rupees. He was apparently bent on breaking off all relations with the British, and there was no objection to his doing so. He moved his court from Murshedabad, which was only a hundred miles from Calcutta, to Monghyr, which was more than three hundred miles. Here he formed an army of picked men, and employed a European deserter, known as Sombre or Sumru, to drill the troops in British fashion, and began to manufacture muskets and cast guns.

No one satisfied.

The quarrel began about the right of the British servants of the Company, under the treaty with Mir Kasim, to carry their commodities through the Bengal provinces free from the payment of all transit duties. The British at Calcutta twisted the privilege of non-payment into a right to carry such native commodities as salt, tobacco, opium, betel, sugar, and oil, without payment; whilst all Bengali dealers were compelled to pay a duty at every station. The British were thus able to undersell native dealers, and monopolise the whole trade of the country. The Nawab protested against this interpretation, and insisted on collecting the duties, unless the goods were bought for exportation by sea. Then ensued quarrels, misunderstandings, frays and reprisals; the Nawab complaining of the loss of duties, whilst the British set him at defiance, and resisted all attempts to collect the duties by force of arms.

Quarrel with Mir Kasim.

Mir Kasim cut away the British monopoly by abolishing all inland transit duties. The Bengali dealers were thus placed on the same footing as the Company's servants. The Company's servants were blind with wrath at this measure. They insisted that they enjoyed a certain privilege under the treaty with Mir Kasim, and that this privilege was rendered valueless, by the general abolition of duties. Accordingly, they proposed sending two of their number to Monghyr to argue the matter with the Nawab.

Fresh exasperations.

The city of Monghyr is situated on the river Ganges, three hundred miles above Calcutta and a hundred miles below Patna. The two British envoys were received and entertained by the Nawab, but told there was nothing to settle; he had ceased to collect duties from his own subjects and the British had nothing to do with the matter. At this very moment a boat arrived at Monghyr on its way to Patna with a cargo of firelocks from Calcutta for the garrison at the British factory. The Nawab at once suspected that the British were preparing for war. He confiscated the firelocks, and kept one of the envoys as a hostage, but permitted the other to return to Calcutta. The latter man was doomed. On his way down the river he was fired upon by the troops of the Nawab, and brutally murdered.

Mir Jafir restored.

When the news of this catastrophe reached Calcutta, the Company's servants seem to have lost their heads. In vain they were told that the British at Patna, and those at another factory, were at the mercy of the Nawab. They swore that they would be avenged although every Briton up country was slaughtered; and they wrote out a declaration to that effect, and each man signed it. The Governor and Council of Calcutta then went in a body to the house of Mir Jafir, and restored him to his post as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, on the condition that he once again levied the duties from Bengali traders. Mir Jafir readily promised, and indeed would have promised anything to recover his lost throne.

Perils at Patna.

Meanwhile, the British at Patna were in extreme danger. They had a European garrison at the factory, but the factory was untenable. They made a desperate effort to seize the town of Patna, and for a few hours were successful. The Mogul commandant was taken by surprise and fled with most of his troops; but the Mogul fortress still held out. The British ought to have stormed the fortress, but delayed on account of the heat. The result was fatal. The European soldiers went to the bazaar for drink, whilst the sepoys plundered the shops and houses, and within a very short time the whole force was utterly demoralised.

British prisoners.

Suddenly, the Mogul commandant met with reinforcements, and returned and recovered the town. The British fled back to the factory, but saw that they were being environed by the Nawab's troops. They hurriedly embarked in boats, in the hope of escaping up the stream into Oudh, but the enemy closed around them. Had they resisted to the last, some might have escaped. As it was they surrendered as prisoners, and were taken to Monghyr, where they found that the British inmates of another factory had been arrested and imprisoned in like manner.

British advance: massacre at Patna, 1763.

An avenging army was soon on its way from Calcutta. Murshedabad was captured, but not without a stout resistance, for the drilled troops of the Nawab were vastly superior to the rabble hosts that had fought at Calcutta and Plassy. The British force, however, overcame every obstacle, and pushed on to Monghyr, whilst the Nawab fled to Patna, carrying his prisoners with him to the number of a hundred and fifty souls. At Patna the Nawab heard that Monghyr was taken by the British, and resolved on exacting a terrible revenge. His prisoners were shut up in a large square building with a courtyard in the centre. He ordered Sombre to slaughter the whole, and the miscreant environed the building with sepoys. The British assembled in the courtyard, bent on fighting for their lives. The sepoys climbed to the roof, but were assailed with a storm of brickbats and bottles from the courtyard. Sombre ordered them to fire on the prisoners, but they hung back, declaring that they were sepoys and not executioners, and would not fire on men without arms in their hands. Then Sombre grew furious and violent; struck down the nearest sepoys with his own hands, and threatened and bullied the rest into obedience. The sepoys yielded to their European master. Successive volleys were fired into the courtyard, until it was strewed with dead bodies. Not a single prisoner escaped that horrible slaughter.

Mir Kasim and the Nawab Vizier.

The massacre at Patna sealed the doom of the Nawab. He fled away into Oudh with his family and treasures, but the avenging Furies were at his heels. The Nawab Vizier received him with ostentatious hospitality, but only that he might strip him of his treasures. The Nawab Vizier declared war against the British for the restoration of Mir Kasim, but it was only that he might eventually get the Bengal provinces into his own hands.

Battle of Buxar, 1764.

The war lasted many months, but was brought to a close in 1764 by the battle of Buxar. The victory gained by Sir Hector Monro at Buxar on the Behar frontier was as decisive as that of Plassy. The Nawab Vizier fled away in terror to the Rohilla Afghans beyond his north-west frontier, leaving his dominions at the absolute disposal of the British; and Sir Hector Monro marched on to the capital at Lucknow and took possession of the whole of Oudh.

British triumph.

The triumph of the British was complete. Mir Kasim lost his treasures and died in obscurity. The Nawab Vizier was a helpless fugitive; neither Rohillas, nor Mahrattas, nor any other power could help him against the British. The Great Mogul was once more a suppliant in their hands. The British were de facto masters of the bulk of the old Mogul empire, and might have taken possession of the whole of Northern India in the name of the Great Mogul. As it was they proposed making over Oudh to the Afghans, and restoring the Great Mogul to the throne of his fathers at Delhi. Before, however, the Governor and Council at Calcutta could change the map of India, the Court of Directors upset their plans by sending out Clive for the last time with the authority of a dictator.

Lord Clive Dictator, 1765.

§4. The Directors of the East India Company had been alternately infuriated and terrified at the news from Bengal. They were extremely angry at the quarrel about the private trade, especially as they had not shared in the profits; but the massacre at Patna filled them with grief and despair. Accordingly Clive, who had been raised to the peerage, was sent to Bengal as Governor, with full power to act as he thought proper.

Settlement of Oudh.

When Lord Clive landed at Calcutta Mir Jafir was dead, and the existing Governor and Council had sold the throne of the three provinces to an illegitimate son for 200,000l. and divided the money amongst themselves. Lord Clive was extremely wroth, but could do nothing. The offenders retired from the service of the Company and returned to England. Meanwhile Lord Clive stopped the expedition to Delhi, restored Oudh to the Nawab Vizier, and secured a handsome sum out of the transaction for the benefit of the East Indian Company.

Company acquire Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, 1765.

But the crowning event in Lord Clive's life was the acceptance of the post of Dewan to the Great Mogul in the name of the East India Company. Henceforth, the Governor and Council at Calcutta took over the revenues of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa from the Nawab's revenue officers, and provided for the military defence of the three provinces. A quarter of a million sterling was paid to the Great Mogul, and half a million to the Nawab at Murshedabad for the salaries of himself and his officials; but all interference on the part of the British with the administration of the Nawab and his ministers and servants was strictly forbidden, as contrary to the policy of non-intervention. Accordingly, the Nawab and his officials were left to govern the country in their own fashion, without a revenue and without an army.

Sorrows of the Great Mogul.

The Great Mogul, however, was not content. He would not live in the Bengal provinces; he wanted to go to Delhi, and he was sulky because the British would not take him there. He set up his little court at Allahabad, half-way between Calcutta and Delhi, and lived like a prince; but he was unhappy. A British brigade was posted hard by, and the officer in command would not allow him to support his imperial dignity by beating the imperial kettledrums, because of the noise.

Agony of Bengal, 1765-72.

The arrangements as regards the Bengal provinces, known in India as the acquisition of the Dewanny, were carried out in 1765. In 1767 Lord Clive returned to England, and the Bengal provinces were reduced to greater misery than ever. There was no one to control the native officials, and they accumulated riches at the expense of the masses. The wealth which the old Nawabs had lavished on their pleasures was at least spent within the three provinces; whereas it was now sent to China to buy tea and silk for the East India Company, or was remitted to England as the private fortunes of the Company's servants. Bengal was drained of its silver, and the masses loudly complained that the British ought to protect them against their oppressors. But non-intervention was the cry both in Bengal and in the British Isles, and nothing was done.

British supervisors.

Meanwhile the revenue had rapidly declined. Before Lord Clive left Bengal he was compelled to do something in spite of his policy of non-intervention. He sent a British civil servant to every district in the Bengal provinces, under the name of Supervisor. The supervisors were to watch and report what was going on, but not to interfere with the Bengali officials.8 They were to collect statistics respecting the land, its produce and capacity; the authorised amount of land revenue and the illegal exactions; the administration of justice and the regulation of trade. The British supervisors could only report what they saw, and what the native officials chose to tell them. One thing was certain: the people were terribly oppressed and the administration was in utter confusion; and so long as the British played at non-intervention it was impossible to apply a remedy.

Famine, 1770-71.

At last the dreadful famine of 1770-71 desolated and depopulated the whole country. Terrible reports reached England that the Company's servants had leagued with the native officials to buy up all the grain and sell it at famine prices. Meanwhile the revenue had rapidly declined, and the blame was thrown on the Bengali officials. Accordingly the Court of Directors resolved to dismiss the Asiatic officials, and to appoint covenanted British servants in their room; and they selected Warren Hastings to be Governor of Bengal, with peremptory orders to carry out the necessary reforms.

Restricted authority of Lord Clive.

§5. The change from Lord Clive to Warren Hastings was most momentous. Lord Clive was a soldier born to command. Warren Hastings was emphatically an administrator born to rule. From the first Lord Clive had shirked all political responsibility. He was content to place the East India Company in the position of Dewan, with the additional duty of maintaining a standing army for the defence of the country, but without attempting to invest it with the ruling powers of a Nawab. So long as the Company took over the revenue, the Nawab and his officials were left to govern the people, and administer law and justice, according to their own will and pleasure. For himself, Lord Clive was content to rule the Company's settlement and some small cessions of territory of no account, and to leave the outside masses in utter darkness.

Vast dominion of Hastings.

Warren Hastings went to Calcutta as absolute ruler over the three provinces. He was a prince amongst princes; the equal if not the superior of any Hindu or Mohammedan ruler within the Himalayas and the two seas. As President of the Council his authority was not confined by the Mahratta ditch, but stretched far away over territories as large, if not larger, than Great Britain and Ireland. He united the powers of British Governor, Nawab, and Great Mogul. He was destined to strip the Nawab of every vestige of authority; to cut down his yearly income from half a million sterling to 160,000l., and to reduce him to the condition of a private Mohammedan grandee dwelling at Murshedabad. As for the Great Mogul, he had vanished from the scene. In 1771 he had quitted Oudh and returned to Delhi with the Mahrattas, and thereby forfeited his pension and empty suzerainty as far as the British were concerned. Later on, the Mahrattas demanded payment of the yearly tribute, but were flatly refused by Warren Hastings.

Career of Hastings ante 1772.

In 1772 Warren Hastings was forty years of age, with very large experiences. He had landed at Calcutta at the age of eighteen, and served as a clerk and warehouseman in the factory at Calcutta. In 1757, after the battle of Plassy, he was Resident at the court of Nawab Mir Jafir at Murshedabad. Later on, during the quarrel with Mir Kasim, he was a member of the Council at Calcutta, and one of the very few who took the part of the Nawab. In 1764 he went to England and became poor. In 1769 he returned to India and was appointed member of the Council at Madras. In 1772 he proceeded to Calcutta to become Governor of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, in other words—to govern territories covering an area of 150,000 square miles, or one-tenth of the great continent of India. Henceforth his dominion extended from the mouths of the Ganges to the foot of the Himalayas, and from the frontier at Oudh to the frontiers at Assam and Bhutan.

Two portraits.

Warren Hastings must be regarded in two different aspects. In 1766, whilst residing in England, his portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and represents a mild, benevolent, and intelligent English gentleman. Twenty years afterwards another portrait was painted, which represents a stubborn and vindictive official, from whom all traces of the mild gentleman had disappeared.9

British rule in Bengal provinces.

§6. The first task of Warren Hastings was to introduce British administration into the Bengal provinces. The work had been easy enough when dealing with the population of towns, who were dependent on the East India Company for employment and protection. But dealing with provinces having a population of twenty or thirty millions of Hindus and Mohammedans, who knew very little of the British, and very little of their laws or ways, was a very different matter, and demanded extreme tact and caution.

Land revenue.

Warren Hastings began the work of government with the reform of the land revenue—the backbone of all administration in India. In those days the task was beyond the strength of any Englishman or body of Englishmen. During the Mahratta invasions and sudden changes of Nawabs the collection of the revenue had fallen into utter confusion, and it was impossible for Europeans to understand local rights or wrongs.

Zemindars and ryots.

The bulk of the land revenue in Bengal was collected by middle men, known as zemindars, from tenant farmers known as ryots. The zemindar was half a landlord and half a revenue collector. He generally possessed some hereditary land which was the family demesne; but outside the demesne were the landholders or ryots, from whom he collected the rents. The zemindar was not a landlord in the eyes of the ryots, because under Mogul law he could not raise the rents. Still he was a great man within his zemindary. He was magistrate, judge, and controller of the village police; and he had armed followers in his pay, who helped the village police in pursuing robbers and collecting rents. He had the right of hunting, fishing, and cutting wood, throughout his zemindary. Moreover, he levied irregular cesses, benevolences or aids, from the ryots, to defray the expenses of a birth or marriage within his own family, or to meet the demands of the Nawab in an emergency like a Mahratta invasion.