1757- East of the Cape of Good Hope

by Narendra Mehra

  For the British conspiracy to succeed, they needed another character to act as a go between, a trusted dummy, who would not be a suspect in the eyes of Mir Jaffar for the conspiracy to succeed. They found a tailor made character for this job in the person of Omi Chand, who was one of the five dadni merchants working with the British East India Company. In Indian vernacular, there is a saying:

  Rub millai jori, ik anna, Te ik kori (What a union God created, one is leper and the other a blind)

  Omi Chand and the British freebooters exactly fitted that category once the reader learns more about Omi Chand.

  Omi Chand was tempted to villainy by the British and he fell for the big reward that he was promised (wait for the fate of that reward). Omi Chand was a crook. They say it takes a crook to know a crook. No matter, how well one may sugar coat it, slice it or dice it, it does not change the fact that both were crooks. Omi Chand was a Sikh merchant and his real name was Amirchand, by religion probably a Nanakpanthi Sikh as his name suggests, because the name of a Khalsa Sikh ended with the word Singh. Omi Chand got his start through a Seth family of means, who were dadni merchants for the British East India Company. His mentor Bostom Das Seth, in ill health, requested his help managing the affairs of his estate. Omi Chand made his mentor transfer all his extensive properties by fictitious mortgages in his own name so that he could ward off many of his mentor’s creditors. Bostom Das died shortly afterwards in 1752. Most of the best houses in Calcutta thus passed on to Omi Chand and it was one of those properties, a garden house three miles north of Fort William, where Omi Chand and the British met while hatching their nefarious treachery and the fate of India hung in the balance and the British fortunes were made.

  The association of Omi Chand with the British was on account of his relationship as their broker for the purchase of saltpetre. The business dealings of Omi Chand had suffered a setback because of the change in his fortune. In 1753, the Nawab of Bengal had ordered the stoppage of the sale of saltpetre to the British and all the saltpetre was sold to the Dutch and the Armenians. Being the main ingredient of gunpowder, the British were alarmed. Omichand had taken in rent most of the saltpetre districts of Bihar but he lost it to an Armenian, Khojah Wazid who was friendly with the Mughal Nawab Alivardi Khan, and was able to successfully displace him in 1752-54 and secured the monopoly for himself. Omichand was bitter; he wanted to get even with the Bengal Diwan, EIC therefore saw the opportunity and decided to use him in their treacherous scheme. The British were looking for a scoundrel and they found a perfect scoundrel in Omi Chand.

  The Plan

  If Britain was to prevail in looting the Treasury at Murshidabad, they would have to sabotage the offensive capability of the Nawab. Mir Jaffar was the commander in chief of the Mughal Army, though temporarily removed from power and he was vulnerable and could be manipulated. Those Mughals had a serious weakness; they could easily be corrupted and be bought for power. Well, it took no genius to tempt Mir Jaffar with the Diwani of Bengal in order to neutralize the Mughal forces. The die had already been cast in London; Omichand was only the facilitator for their treacherous aggression. Mir Jaffar was to lay down his weapons in the battlefield and not fight the British. In return, he would be made the new Nawab. Mir Jaffar went along with the plan. He believed the British and later rued the day he fell for their trap. Nor did he realize the far-reaching consequences of his treachery. It was however not easy to approach Mir Jaffar as he was suspected of treachery and being watched by trusted lieutenants of the new young Nawab. Stories go, that they smuggled the copy of the agreement between the British and Mir Jaffar in female under garments. It would be funny but for the tragedy that was to befall India. People have weaknesses and no one is infallible and Omi Chand fell for it too and he not only became a villain of Indian history but realized too late the British treachery and paid for it very dearly.

  Mother of all Treacheries, Cruel Sweep of History

  As soon as the details of the conspiracy were finalized, the British informed their invading army, which had been waiting at Fort St. James for about a year to set sail. It took two months for the news to reach Madras and the flotilla left for the Hooghly River in late fall of 1756 with a force of 3500. The force comprised of both the British and sepoys (Tamil soldiers from Madras presidency) who were trained with the pretext of internal security. They left in five transports and five men-o’-war and it took them two months to reach Calcutta because of bad monsoon weather. The fleet entered Hooghly River from the Bay of Bengal in December 1756 and attacked Fort Boujee. The Hoogly provided navigation to large ocean going vessels and the invading army appeared at Calcutta in January 1757, which was ninety miles inland. Fort William was located at the eastern bank Of the Hooghly River with wide open grounds and broad boulevards on the portside providing clear field of fire. The British had mounted heavy guns on the rampart of the Fort in violation of the terms of their lease, which became another point of contention with the young Nawab. The British had lost possession of the Fort to Siraj-ud-Daula in June 1756 and the British invasionery force comprising of 39th Dorsetshire regiment of foot-1st battalion, 9th Battery, 12th regiment and Royal Artillery and 50 Naval ratings from HMS Tyger, attacked it first as its recovery was paramount to their survival.

  The Nawab had no inkling of the geo political nature of the British attack on India, purely for loot so that they could fund their ambitions for an empire. The Nawab was totally clueless, as he had even dispatched a large part of his force to Delhi to counter the threat posed by Ahmed Shah Abdali and Bengal was without adequate military force. In the meantime, the British were able to smuggle Madam Ghaseti Begum, the aunt of Siraj-ud Dula, in Fort William facility to ensure that their conspiracy did not backfire.

  Siraj suspected the conspiracy and on June 10, 1757 he moved south to Plassey, a small grove at a short distance from Murshidabad. On June 23, 1757, the forces met for the battle of Palashi, named after an extravagantly red flowering tree which gave its name to the village and the Anglicized version became Plassey. Historians have portrayed this confrontation as the ‘Battle of Plassey’, but it was no battle. At best, one can call it a skirmish. The Casualties: four Europeans and fourteen Indian sepoys. Accounts are murky. Mir Jaffar and the other traitors fled as per plan and did not put up the fight. Yar Latif, the Nawab’s General and the forces of Rai Durlabh did not put up the fight either as all had been compromised. Mir Jaffar’s forces were fired upon in retreat as they were set up and the British forces fired upon them and destroyed their military assets, they suffered five hundred casualties. It changed the course of the world and Indian history and made Britain an economic power overnight.

  Omi Chand’s Reward:

  During the conspiracy, Omi Chand was intimately involved with George Williamson who was sub secretary to the British Council, Mr Drake, who was the governor of Fort William, Clive, the Commander in Chief of the British army and Vice Admiral Charles Watson who was the commander in Chief of the British Naval Force. They met several times prior to the Plassey invasion and their relationship was warm and very friendly and they usually embraced each other when they met. Omi Chand took the group to Murshidabad and one William Watts; chief of the British Kasim Bazar factory was appointed his liaison to finalize the terms of the conspiracy. Omichand however did not trust the British as he had every reason not to. Remember that no one wanted to work for them including him, as he was their dadni merchant. So, he asked Clive to put it in writing the terms of the deal, and Clive did. They met to divide the spoils. Clive read the terms of the deal and there was no mention of Omichand. Omichand took out his papers and wanted his share according to the treaty signed by Clive and Admiral Watson. The treaty in Clive’s hand was on white paper; the treaty in Omichand’s hand was on red paper. Watson denied that he ever signed the two treaties. Clive said that he forged Watson’s signatures and gave Omichand a bogus treaty. Power of the sword, even if there was only one treaty, Omichand was not going to get paid. He was had. They say if
one snake bites another snake, which one gets poisoned; well in this case Omichand got poisoned. Omichand left empty handed. His saga was not over yet, he died in December 1758 and the British used him one more time after his death. This was not the first or the last time, the British deceived or tricked for money. There are many instances when they employed similar methods and the one that comes to mind is the treatment of Maori tribes in New Zealand where they similarly switched different color papers. Mir Jaffar did not fare any better. He was reduced to servility by the British and was unable to function as the Nawab of Bengal. The British called all the shots and Mir Jaffar resisted and was deposed in 1760.

  From Omichand’s estate a sum of rupees 37,500 was given to Magdalene and Foundling charities in England at the request of the Executor’s Frankland & Howell. Indian Historical Records Commission published Omichand’s will & there is no mention of any money to be paid to charities in England.

  Technically, the British were in India still at the pleasure of the Mughal Nawab so they appointed another dummy, Mir Ksim Ali Khan, who was the son in law of Mir Jaffar. Kasim refused to accept the British hegemony which precipitated the battle of Bauxar in 1764, giving the British the full potential control of Bengal.

  The Loot

  The estimates of the land and custom revenues in Bengal were stated in the earlier section which amounted to about thirty million rupees a year. The Bengal province also collected revenues from the Bihar and Orissa provinces as well. After the disintegration of the central Mughal imperial authority since 1712, Bengal became effectively independent and hardly any tribute was sent to Delhi right up to the advent of British power in 1760. Bengal was also not in the habit of blowing money like the western regions of the Mughal Empire on cultural and artistic pursuits; instead the money was invested leading to unprecedented growth. From all accounts, the province was flushed with money at the time of Plassey invasion, and very conservative estimates put the accumulated wealth in the Murshidabad Treasury at over forty million British pounds, taking ten rupees to the pound. This will be over £100 billion in today’s money, based on wage differential between then and now. Add another 200 million rupees which were in circulation for trade and commerce. The Mughal treasury also had a very large amount in jewels, diamonds, pearls and precious stones. All that wealth was totally denuded by the British and taken to Britain and the jewels appear to be the heirlooms of the British monarchy. Along with the naval force, the British had also brought with them the coastal force comprising of Grabs and gallivants operated in the Bhagirathi River to transfer all that gold bullion to their ocean going war ships. Grabs were two masted, broad beamed shallow draught craft of about 150 ton capacities. The gallivants were three masted, 70 tons very large row boats, suitable for cargo shifting within those rivers.

  Thus was born the imperial Britain and the British capitalist society and the reader will learn more as this narrative unfolds. The British capitalism originated from the pathology of greed and orthodoxy of plunder and at its roots lays the bestial passions of those people. At the sudden sight of immense gold stockpiles, the sailors and navy men went berserk and they preyed upon each other, some perished at the hands of their own men and those who survived, returned with immense wealth and became instant millionaires Those men were generally rough and ignorant of all matters other than freebooting and sailing, they were savage people not familiar with the ways of the civilized society, they went to sea at an early age when they had not even learnt reading, writing, and arithmetic and very few had opportunity to improve themselves socially and culturally.

  Charles Watson and Robert Clive also came to blows over the loot and Clive challenged him to a dual. Watson was killed on 16 August, 1757 and is buried in Calcutta. The westerners report that Clive helped himself handsomely; some accounts suggest the loot to be about a quarter million pounds & Watson’s about half of that but who knows. The British say that they collected about two and a half million pounds from the pile and they are afraid to admit the rest, as the Indian Diwani laws did not allow the looting of the Indian monies and shipping the amount to England. Diwani rights, (right to collect money on behalf of the Emperor, merely allowed EIC to collect revenues on behalf of the Emperor. The money, technically speaking, is still owed to India.

  In the pursuit of Imperial Britain, the British deliberately targeted the wealth of India and made a mockery of history by publishing false stories of the nature of their role. For British people, history is politics and is very revealing about the mindset of the British Society. Money is the nerve center of all their dealings and right or wrong, fair or foul, they would do anything to lay their hands on money. The British historians to legitimize their despotic rule of about 200 years caricatured a thriving civilization to a dysfunctional, chaotic and a stagnant society which they say was saved by the British dynamism. What that dynamism brought India is that it became a backwater of the third world and a victim of history. However, the wealth of India when it reached Britain, transformed that country from a primitive society to a modern parasitic capitalist society, lifted the standards of life of its people and gave birth to aristocracy. Self-interest and drive for predatory loot deprived the British people of any moral code, which unfortunately resulted in the despotic exploitation of other societies. There is a silver lining though, once people in other cultures and other societies get a taste of the commercial society and capitalist system, it will be hard to stop them in pursuit of their own self-interest. It will probably result in a better world not open to the exploitation by the weakness of the predatory capitalist system.

  Power of the Gun:

  After Watson, the British appointed Vice-Admiral George Pocock and extensively reinforced the naval forces in Bengal as there were losses to nature, trading and military operations that followed. Pocock’s appointment prior to India was to convoy slaves from the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle in Ghana to the slave markets in the Caribbean and North America. The profits in sugar cultivation in Jamaica were lucrative and only the African slaves could stand the heat.

  The forts and castles along the coast of Ghana date back to the later days of the Fifteenth century when the Europeans, particularly the Portuguese, started the seafaring journeys for the eastern trade. Later other Europeans, the Dutch, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Danish and the British followed suit and set up their own trading posts. In 1664, Cape Coast became a British possession and they saw an opportunity for slave trade. In those days the trading nations had to supply gold in return for goods, but the British had no intention to supply gold as that was the national wealth. The British captured and supplied slaves instead, which became a currency, like Indian opium for the Chinese tea. The British built Fort Victoria in 1702, Fort William and Fort McCarthy followed later, they expanded the dungeons in those Forts and the Castle’s damp unlit dungeons served as holding areas till those slaves were shipped out to slave markets in the Caribbean and the United States. Millions of slaves passed through those gates of Hell, the gates of ‘No Return’ and the British had no qualms about the slave trade, no nagging of conscious, no desire to walk in the sunshine. They have made no amends for yesterday. How do you explain slavery and trading in human cargo? Well, the British did it by postulating that the Negroes did not have the intelligence to understand the difference between captivity and liberty that their religion was voodoo and superstitious and they were not enjoying the blessings of Christianity. Convoluted logic. The slave dungeons of Cape Cod Castle were part of their blessing. Britain used the same logic in India; archaic religion, superstition and no justice. Vice-Admiral George Pocock came from such a background and India was headed for a hell of its own.

  When Pocock arrived in Bengal, the soldiers of fortune were making full use of the prevailing anarchy. The British freebooters, the migrant workers, the traders, the bottom feeders and their military and naval people made full use of the political power and virtually shut off every one but their own people. They had plenty of bad blood with the
French and they were the first to feel the heat and so did the other Europeans. The Indian structure of foreign trade with the European was totally destroyed and they demanded silver bullion for their Indian purchases from the Europeans. The British created a lot of trouble for the Dutch as well. They obstructed their weavers, maltreated their gomastas (buyers), seized by force both men and materials from their ships. They shut them off from buying any opium because of the huge profits with the Chinese. The opium was bartered for tea and tea was exported to colonies in North America. They had paid nothing for that tea, so the British stopped importing any more silver from England as the loot of India and the bullion collected from other Europeans was more than sufficient. The practice of sending silver from Bengal to China commenced early in 1757, both the EIC and its private traders entirely monopolized the opium trade as well as the raw silk and cotton piece goods.

  Monopoly practices and exclusive rights to internal trade decimated the ‘native’ merchant and the untrammeled scramble for wealth produced instantaneous British millionaires. Monopolies gave the British the exclusive rights to local produce and the items of daily necessity, and the British gouged and harassed the populace. Those people came from a country that was molded on the lines of serfdom and feudal relations, which had shaped their society. People in Britain did not have the freedom to pursue any occupation and social status and power limited or prevented innovation. The vested interests decided how much competition was to be permitted and in India that competition was reduced to zero so that the British could collect as much local capital as possible. The two hundred fifty two covenanted servants of the company became alchemists; they produced gold out of nothing.