Bribery and Betrayal

INDIA HAS A long history of bribery and betrayal. Mir Jafar was the commander of the Nawab of Bengal’s army. The East India Company (EIC) with its ragtag army of mercenaries seemingly posed no threat to Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah.

But Robert Clive, an English clerk-turned-buccaneer, during his stay in India had read the minds of both Mughal overlords and their Indian subjects. Everything in India, he told his superiors, can be accomplished by bribery and betrayal.

Now a Lt Colonel in the British army, EIC hired Clive to lead a small expedition of troops to overthrow the Nawab of Bengal and capture India’s wealthiest region.

Clive was a pragmatist. He knew his EIC contingent of 3,000 soldiers, made up of 2,200 Indian sepoys and 800 European mercenaries, could not de­feat in open battle the Nawab who com­manded 50,000 well-trained soldiers.

But bribery was another matter. Bengal was not only the richest part of India; it had wealthy Indian seths who were not on good terms with the Nawab. Mahtab Rai was the head of the powerful Jagat Seth banking family. The Mughals charged a reasonable tax of between 10 and 15 per cent on their Indian subjects. But Mahtab Rai was worried the Nawab could one day seize his entire wealth and property.

When Clive approached him with his plan, Mahtab readily agreed to finance EIC’s attack on the Nawab. Crucial to the success of the plan was identifying the Nawab’s seniormost commander, Mir Jafar.

Jafar was assigned to lead the Nawab’s 50,000-strong army against Clive’s 3,000 men. A secret deal was arrived at between Clive and Jafar. The Mughal army commander would receive a handsome purse, financed by the Seth family, and a promise to make Jafar the Nawab of Bengal af­ter Siraj ud-Daulah had been defeated in battle and deposed.

The two armies met on June 23, 1757, on the banks of the Hooghly river. Heavy rain had soaked the battlefield near the village of Palashee (Plassey), 100 miles north of Calcutta.

Jafar ordered his men to lay down arms and surrender. He then completed his part of the deal and killed the Nawab. Clive and the East India Company honoured their promise: Jafar was appointed Nawab of Bengal. Clive became governor of Bengal. The imperial theft of India was now set to begin. Taxes on peasants, farmers, and traders like the seths were tripled to 50 per cent. Within years, fam­ines, rare in pre-British India, became endemic.

Three centuries later, in 2024, the seths haven’t disappeared. Nor has foreign bribery. But a new class of Mir Jafars has been born, remote-controlled by contemporary Robert Clives.

The Seth-Clive-Jafar combination damaged India almost beyond repair. India’s GDP grew by between zero and 0.5 per cent during the 190 years of British rule.

After Independence, between 1947 and 2024, India’s annual GDP growth rate averaged 4 per cent. Had India grown at even half that rate of 2 per cent for 190 colonised years from 1757 to 1947 (the global average growth rate during this period), instead of zero- 0.5 per cent, India’s GDP would have doubled every 35 years. There were over five 35-year periods in 190 years. Simple maths places GDP at 32 times what it was in 1947 in an impover­ished and deindustrialised India.

But bribery and betrayal did not stop in 1947. It continued with small groups of disaffected Indians. Some were simply nursing colonised minds. Others fell victim to inducements by NGOs funded by foreign powers. Some gave in to religious bigotry, declaring their al­legiance to a holy book rather than to the Indian Constitution.

Money often is not the only inducement that leads to betrayal. Ideology and faith are enough. But the tipping factor is psychological. India’s long subjugation by first Muslim invaders and then European colonists stripped some Indians of confidence in their own nationhood.

Such collective national wounds give rise to angst among some Indians. It percolates all the way up to political leaders, academics, journalists, filmmakers, and ubiquitous activists. Our filmmakers will laud a Mahatma Gandhi biopic by British filmmaker Richard Attenborough, but they will not bother to make a Winston Churchill biopic on his role in the Great Bengal Famine. Opposition leaders travel abroad to demean Indian democracy under the tutelage of foreign handlers.

The ghosts of Mir Jafar and Robert Clive live on in independent India. They need to be slayed, one by one.

Bribery and BetrayalBritish imperialismcolonial IndiaMir JafarRobert Clive