Notion Press
Old No. 38, New No. 6 McNichols Road, Chetpet Chennai - 600 031
First Published by Notion Press 2017 Copyright © Bhuvan Lall 2017 All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 978-1-946515-70-4
This book has been published with all efforts taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Contents
1. In Search of Netaji 1 2. The West Finds the East 5 3. Company Bahadur 15 4. The Ghadr of 1857 25 5. Under the British Yoke 35 6. The Sounds of Rebellion 48 7. La Grande Guerre 65 8. A Patriot is Born 85 9. The Young Nationalist 91 10. The Mayor of Calcutta 102 11. An Ambassador at Large 115 12. President Bose 134 13. A World Falling Apart 150 14. The Escape to Berlin 167 15. An Indian in Nazi Germany 176 16. The Fall of Fortress Singapore 189 17. Shaking Hands with the Devil 202 18. Quit India 1942 213 19. From Underground to Underwater 223 20. Onwards to Delhi 243 21. The Springing Tigers 262 22. Defeat, Desertion, Disease, Death and Disaster 289 23. The Roads to Delhi Are Many 306 24. The Graveyard of the British Empire 316 xii | Contents
25. The Point of no Return 340 26. The Man India Missed the Most 357 27. The Ignored National Army 370 28. A Deathless Patriot 379 29. Unity, Faith and Sacrifice 392
Sources 397
Books & Articles for Further Reading 401
Acknowledgements 407 1 IN SEARCH OF NETAJI
n the freezing early morning of Monday, February 8th, 1943, an Indian Onationalist stood at the Kiel harbor at the northern tip of Germany about to board a Unterseeboot, U-180, on a death-defying journey that required extraordinary inner strength. His name was Subhas Chandra Bose. After having spent an eventful one year and ten months in war torn Europe, Bose had bid farewell to Emilie, the queen of his heart and mother of their newborn daughter Anita. The only bit of domestic bliss he would ever enjoy had just ended. Both had looked into each other’s eyes and hoped to meet again. They just didn’t know where and when. Before departing, the forty-six year old Bose wrote out a letter in Bengali, addressed to his elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose, who he referred to as ‘Mej-da’. Sarat and Subhas were brothers with a special bond. Eight years older and different in temperament, Barrister and nationalist legislator Sarat supported his more daredevil brother in every way. For Subhas, his ‘Mej-da’ was the rock on whom he could always rely. Bose penned, “I am again embarking on the path of danger but this time towards home. I do not know whether I shall see the end of this road. I have married here and have a daughter. In my absence please show them the love you have given me all my life.” Then dressed in his dark overcoat and hat the five feet nine inches tall Bose clutching onto his case climbed the final steps. For him the project of national liberation was always above his family life. He had relinquished everything to seek his destiny. That morning he sailed towards the Far East to continue his revolutionary struggle for the freedom of his motherland India. The Unterseeboot, U-180 slowly dived into the deep sea. He was the man Emilie and Anita missed the most. The university town of Augsburg, with its Mozart heritage, is one of the most historically significant cities in Germany – not to mention one of the prettiest. 2 | The Man India Missed the Most
In April 2001, my wife Arti and I made our way through the city’s ancient streets to Stadtbergen for an important meeting. We were welcomed into the home of Anita Bose Pfaff, the daughter of the great Indian patriot - Subhas Chandra Bose. A Professor of Economics at the University of Augsburg, Anita Bose Pfaff is married to Martin Pfaff, a former Member of the Parliament in Germany. We spent a delightful spring afternoon with Professor Anita, discussing the amazing and dramatic life of her father. Over endless cups of ‘chai’ her narration of incidents, events and history gave us valuable insights into the world of a true blue nationalist. On that April day in 2001 when Arti and I departed from Augsburg, some sixty years had passed since Bose had secretly arrived in Berlin to gather support for the sovereignty of India. At the Augsburg railway station, Professor Anita’s parting words to us were, “I am happy to see that my father’s life still inspires you but do the young Indians know much about him?” Fascinated by Bose’s devotion to India and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a journey through his life’s story. I am not the first person to write a book about Subhas Chandra Bose and certainly not the last. So I wrote this book in order to satisfy my own historical curiosity. I also composed it as part of the groundwork towards making a feature film, a television series and a documentary illustrating the captivating life of Bose on screen. The book is aimed at a young audience growing up several decades after India’s independence so the story is not lost in the mist of time. Reminiscences from my father of the immense contribution of Bose to the Indian nationalistic movement were the inspirational stuff of my childhood and the genesis of this enterprise. I also met the followers of Bose, read memoirs, studied biographies, watched films and visited museums, archives and libraries around the world. The people who encountered the charismatic leader Subhas Chandra Bose, concurred he was a giant amongst men. To his followers, evoking his name itself brought out an extra ton of vitality. It is difficult to describe the striking personal impression that is far beyond respect and affection that Bose had on those who came into contact with him. I saw elderly persons of the pre independence era get roused like never before at the mere mention of the man. His name and memory stirs all the old passions and emotions as if the events occurred last week rather than decades ago. Along the way Bose’s inspiring story came alive for me. Bhuvan Lall | 3
The real life exploits and personal sacrifices of Subhas Chandra Bose, who without doubt, paved the way for India’s freedom, are perhaps the most exciting part of the Indian freedom movement. Bose has a unique place in our nation’s history as the only Indian leader to have challenged the British Empire on the battlefield. His armed onslaughts trembled the very underpinnings of the British Raj. Bose’s unrelenting patriotism, his romantic saga, the global voyages, the clandestine escapes, his courageous Indian National Army and his final disappearance have made Bose a near-mythic figure. “He does not die,” emphasized the poet Hilaire Belloc, “who can bequeath some influence to the land he knows.” ‘The Man India Missed the Most’ chronicles the impact of the iconic leader Subhas Chandra Bose on India’s freedom movement in a never-before style. It is a tale of heroism and nationalism, of adventure and sacrifice and of victories and catastrophic defeat. His story illustrates how life can often transcend works of literature in terms of idealistic spirit, dramatic episodes and tragedy. And it is also an account of the ferocious will of a nationalist who refused to give up during the war for India’s Independence. The hard power approach he favored for gaining India’s freedom from colonialism often paralleled and sometimes overshadowed the non-violent civil disobedience movement. The book is a window to the important macro and micro details necessary to view Bose’s life in the context of the world and Indian history. It foregrounds aspects of the Indian freedom movement which mainstream historical narrative has either excluded or only included referentially or even ineffectually. In effect, Bose contribution has not been adequately celebrated in Independent India and we are in danger of loosing sight of the life and work of a man who was much more than a mythical hero. Through a multi-archival research that spans three continents the book takes the reader across the expanse of European imperialism in India from the moment Vasco da Gama sighted the Indian coast in the summer of 1498 to the liberation of Goa in December 1961. It also focuses on the global footprint of India’s freedom movement ranging from the West Coast of North America in San Francisco and Vancouver to the capital cities of European superpowers in London and Berlin and finally to the Asian nations of Japan, Singapore and Burma. The book taps into the single greatest emotional truth of India’s freedom movement – the Indian National Army trial at the Red Fort that affected the withdrawal of the monumental British Raj from India. The book also uncovers the uncomfortable 4 | The Man India Missed the Most facts that have been concealed behind self-serving lies and distortions for more than seventy years. Ultimately no person’s life can be included in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allocated weight to include each idea, each episode and each individual who assisted in shaping a lifespan. I have endeavored to be accurate in spirit to the record and have tried to find the way to the heart and mind of the man. On the eve of the 70th anniversary of India’s independence ‘The Man India Missed the Most’ is an account of heroism and patriotism that should be shared and remembered. It is also a heartfelt tribute to the sacrifices, struggles, daring and compassion of all the men and women who fought for India’s freedom. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading ‘The Man India Missed the Most – Subhas Chandra Bose’, as much as I have relished writing it. Jai Hind, Bhuvan Lall New Delhi 2 THE WEST FINDS THE EAST
n mid May 1498, under the threat of rains and storms, a quadrant of three Imasted sailing vessels bearing Portuguese flags crossed the Arabian Sea into the unmapped unknown. The enterprising captain of the fleet, Dom Vasco da Gama, a thirty eight year old Portuguese sea faring explorer had been chosen by King John and King Manuel of Portugal for this hazardous expedition. In the fifteenth century, long sea voyages were rather like space missions today. Having left port in Lisbon on July 8th, 1497, he had been on the high seas for over ten months. He had travelled over 6,000 miles through the ocean creating a new touchstone for voyagers, as it was the longest journey out of sight of land made at that time. By mid December 1498, the fleet had passed the Eastern Cape of South Africa and sailed into waters previously unidentified by Europeans. Among his crew of the one hundred and seventy one exhausted Portuguese sailors were two Arabic speakers. Also on board was a pilot Ibn Majid who joined at Malindi on the coast of East Africa and claimed to know the direction to southwest coast of India. It had been six years, since Christopher Columbus searching for a sea route to India had landed in the Americas. And as dawn approached on Wednesday, May 18th, 1498, after a protracted and arduous voyage the crew spotted the Ghat Mountains of Calicut on the Indian coast. The West had met the East. Dom Vasco da Gama had pioneered a direct sea route from Europe to Asia by navigating around the southern tip of Africa. The Portuguese sailors were the first Europeans to reach India by sea and had sailed into the pages of history. The sighting of India by Dom Vasco da Gama changed the map of the world. The Portuguese found Calicut far wealthier than Lisbon. Almost immediately every European colonizing power, French, Danish, Portuguese, Dutch and the British directed its efforts toward India. Consequently, the bitterest struggles for the glittering prize were fought on the battlefields of Europe and India alike. The first to arrive in India were traders not invaders. The seafarers from Europe went into India to break the Turkish and Venetian monopoly of trade with the East. 6 | The Man India Missed the Most
Jakob Fugger, also known as Jakob the rich, a late-medieval banker from Augsburg in southern Germany, helped bankroll a Portuguese structure to relocate the pepper and spice trade to Lisbon, a move so prosperous that it delivered a fatal blow to the profit-making status of Venice. Fugger became the first German to do business with India in his time. On December 10th 1510, the Portuguese conquistador Duke Afonso de Albuquerque, ‘the Lion of the Seas’ along with his Admiral António de Noronha swept in from the sea in thirty-eight ships, firing cannons and guns, slaughtered every Indian sighted and conquered the islands of Goa, Bardez and Salcete becoming the first European nation to colonize India. Later Dom Vasco Da Gama was appointed a Viceroy but on his third trip to India he died on Christmas Eve in 1524 in the city of Cochin. Several hundred miles north of Goa, employing fireball spitting field guns for the first time on the Indian battlefields on April st21 , 1526, Zahir-ud-Din Babur, the Turkic-Mongol ruler of Fergana, defeated Ibrahim Lodi’s 100 armored elephants and 100,000 men strong army. Following in the footsteps of his forefather Taimurlane in invading India he soon occupied Delhi with his band of 12,000 soldiers and marked the beginning of the Mughal Raj (rule) in India. And then far away in William Shakespeare’s Britain, on September 24th, 1599, eighty merchants and adventurers met at the Founders Hall in the City of London and agreed to petition Queen Elizabeth I to start up a company to get a monopoly of trade to the east of the Cape of Good Hope. On a freezing New Year’s eve and the last day of the fifteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I granted a Royal Charter to the East India Company (a private company in London) to explore the mysteries of the East and gave the company the right ‘to wage war’ where necessary. The British with their mastery of the seas, cannons and artillery went to India to get a bit of action in the Mughal Empire that was then immeasurably richer than anything in Europe. This was a time when India accounted for around a quarter of all global manufacturing. This commercial enterprise laid the foundation for the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire – India itself. After the second Mughal Emperor Nasir ud-din Humayun fell down the stairs of his cherished library and died, Babar’s grandson, the third Mughal Emperor Abu’l-Fath Jalal ud-din Akbar became the inheritor. Considered by historians as the finest Mughal, Akbar expanded and consolidated the empire in his nearly fifty-year reign to include most of North India from present day Afghanistan in the west to Bengal in the east. There was stability and peace in his reign and Bhuvan Lall | 7
his Minister Lala Todar Mal set up an effective revenue collection mechanism across the empire. The founding Mughals spoke the Turkic language Chaghtai, but Persian became the court language. More Persian books were produced in India than in Persia. According to Francisco Pelsaert, a Dutch traveler, Akbar’s Kitabkhana (library) with its 24,000 volumes was worth as much in rupees as the Mughal arsenal. Barely able to sign his name he had books read out to him. While his father had brought Persian artists to court, Akbar gave them a formal artistic studio to collaborate with Indian calligraphers and painters and create Mughal miniature paintings. Akbar headed a Muslim dynasty and ruled over a Hindu- majority multi faith empire. He invested in the Mughal tradition of religious forbearance, holding interfaith discussions and even advocating a ‘universal religion.’ On October 3rd, 1605, Akbar fell ill with an attack of dysentery, from which he never recovered. Three years later in 1608, after a sixteen-month sea voyage William Hawkins, the Turkish speaking English merchant reached Surat in Gujarat on the first East India Company fleet to India. He had instructions from King James I of England, to arrange a commercial treaty seeking the privilege of trading in fine muslins, printed cottons and spices for the East India Company, with the Indian Emperor. The man who ruled over seventy per cent of India with complete control over the life and death of 100 million subjects was the fourth Mughal Emperor Nurudin Salim Jahangir. By now most of India had one currency, two languages of the court (Persian and Turkish) and a large Mughal army. Jahangir perhaps the richest man in the world at that time wore a large quantity of precious stones around his neck, rubies and emeralds on his arms, had diamonds hanging from his multicolored turban and a large pearl in his pierced ear. Described as a ‘talented drunkard’, the all too hedonistic Jahangir had little interest in Hawkins a man from the distant island of fishermen and wool merchants. The Emperor gave Hawkins a new name ‘English Khan’ but little else. Nevertheless on September 5th, 1612, the East Indian Company founded a small port at Suvali, near Surat, Gujarat in India and established a navy named “Honorable East Indian Company’s Marine’ to protect its trade routes. By 1617 the commercial treaty between the Mughals and the East India Company was in place due to the outstanding diplomacy of Sir Thomas Roe, the first accredited English ambassador to the Mughal Empire. The foundation of the British Indian Army was laid with the ensign and thirty men of Bengal commencing on 1624. The Company never looked back. 8 | The Man India Missed the Most
Earlier, in June 1613, ‘The Clove’, an East India Company ship, had become the first British ship to reach Japan. The Company had already received a warm letter for the King and an official Vermilion Seal Letter granting the British permission to live and trade throughout Japan. By mid seventeenth century the Mughal Raj in India was at the peak of its opulence from the crystalline lakes of Kashmir to the deserts of Sind and the lush forests of every part of India. In 1631, a Dutch naturalist Johannes de Laet published his description of the East writing; “the nobles live in indescribable luxury and extravagance, caring only to indulge themselves whilst they can in every kind of pleasure.” In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the great energetic Mughal metropolises are disclosed to Adam after the fall as ‘future wonders of God’s creation’. To a person of Milton’s time, this was no underestimation, for Agra, with 700,000 residents dwarfed all European cities. The most famous legacy of the fifth Mughal Emperor Shahab-ud-din Khurram Shahjahan was the monumental architecture with which he stamped the Mughal rule across his empire. Shahjahan who inherited the passion for jewels from his father ruled over his large empire from the Quila Mubarak or Lal Quila (the Red Fort) in Delhi. Work on his royal Palace started in 1638, and the Emperor moved in ten years later. The majestic Red Fort known as the symbol of his supremacy and prestige contained all the trappings at the center of Mughal administration: halls for community meetings and another for reserved audience. There were domed and arched marble palaces, plush private apartments, a mosque and elaborately designed gardens. The ramparts of the Red Fort extended for nearly two miles interrupted by two large gates Delhi Gate to the south and Lahori Gate to the west His power was such that no enemy could ever come near the walls of the newly constructed capital city of Shahjahanabad spread over 1,500 acres and built on the banks of the river Yamuna. Here the great Mughal sat on his grandiose Peacock thrown encrusted with hundreds of precious stones and diamonds including the famed Koh-i-noor representing one of the world’s most magnificent dynasties. Over the corner arches of the northern and southern walls in the private hall below the cornice was inscribed the famous verse of Poet Amir Khusrou exclaiming “if there be a paradise on the earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.” The Mughal emblem fluttered on top. And not to be outdone by the magnificence of the Red Fort, nearly hundred and twenty miles south of Shahjahanabad in distant Agra stood one of the most Bhuvan Lall | 9 stunning manmade structures on Earth the domed white marble tomb - Taj Mahal. It is a mausoleum to the memory of Shahjahan’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Over 20,000 masons, stone-cutters, inlayers, carvers, painters, calligraphers, dome builders and other artisans worked on the building of the mausoleum. On completion in 1653 it became the world’s most famous tribute to love and icon of India’s prosperous status. Shahjahan’s eldest son, Darashikoh, a multicultural, wine drinking poet, was heir to the Mughal throne but his younger brother, Abul Muzaffar Muhi-ud-Din Aurangzeb in his quest for power, brutally ousted him. The severity of Aurangzeb’s fundamentalism could not contain the religious diversity of India. By the time of his passing in 1707 the centralized despotism of the Mughal Empire and the escalating rivalry within the Mughal royalty began to destabilize the dynasty. Shivaji, a heroic Indian warrior King, a mixture of a military leader and saint emerged on the horizon at this juncture of Indian history. A skilled horseman, expert swordsman and an indefatigable torchbearer Shivaji wielded the Marathas as one nation holding against the Mughal Empire and employed guerrilla tactics to win wars. He was also a pioneer in setting up a naval fleet to ward off foreign invasions by the sea route. Held against his will in the Mughal court in Agra on August 18th, 1666, he miraculously escaped in a basket disguised as an Indian holy person. The Maratha Empire Shivaji founded covered large parts of Western and Central India and dismembered the large Mughal Empire. While most of India was being gradually divided into small kingdoms by 1668, the East India Company had established factories in Goa, Chittagong, Madras (Fort St. Georges) and three small villages in the east of India called Sutanati, Gobindapore and Kalikata. The last was renamed Calcutta (Fort William) and firmly established as the Indian headquarters of the Company in 1690. Bombay (Castle) was also added to the kitty when it came as a dowry package with Catherine of Braganza in 1661. In Delhi, at the Red Fort, Dr. William Hamilton, the East India Company’s physician treated the tenth Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar of an incurable ailment. Besides rewarding the caring Doctor with jewels, money, a horse and an elephant, the Emperor issued a momentous farman (Permit) in April 1707 that waived all custom duties for inland trade in betel nut, opium, salt, saltpeter, and tobacco for the East India Company. This permission granted by the Mughal Emperor changed the course of world history. 10 | The Man India Missed the Most
On the morning of Sunday, March 11th, 1739, an incursion by tyrant Nadir Shah Afsar destroyed the myth of Mughal Empire’s invincibility. The accumulated wealth of centuries changed hands in moments. An order went forth for the slaughter of Delhi’s inhabitants. Over eight weeks the Mughal capital city of Delhi was vandalized, burnt and dismantled stone by stone. The streets were strewn with corpses like dead leaves. Finally Nadir Shah’s army marched out of Delhi decamping with the Peacock throne, the Daria-e-noor and the Koh-i-noor diamonds and enough spoils and loot to eliminate all taxes in Persia for the next three years. And then in East India on the cloudy morning of June 23rd, 1757, in the infamous and decisive Battle of Plassey, the thirty three year old Colonel Robert Clive led the Company gangsters into the battlefield. With the support of Indian soldiers who had been trained and equipped in the European fashion Colonel Clive emerged as the ruler of Bengal ending the rule of the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud Daulah. A self-taught soldier, Colonel Clive recognized that using the sword and treachery as weapons in India was a faster road to riches than wielding a pen and diplomacy. Colonel Clive had won by purchasing the treachery of the rival army’s chief Mir Jaffer and after the Battle of Plassey gaped at what he saw. As reported by Sir William Wilson Hunter in The Imperial Gazetteer of India (1881) Colonel Clive exclaimed, “The city of Murshidabad is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of London.” He removed from Nawab’s treasury to East India Company’s accounts no less than two and half million pounds. Then following the business plans laid down by Colonel Clive the Company would generate 1.7 million pounds as taxes every year from Bengal, which made it the richest Company in the world overnight. And the British traders became rulers over ten million Indians living in Bengal with twenty-two trading posts across India way ahead of their European competitors the French (Pondicherry and Chandernagore), Dutch (Pulicat), Danish (Tranquebar, Serampore and the Nicobar Islands), Portuguese (Goa) and the Austrians (Bankipur). This was the beginning of an empire built on greed and lust for power. After another triumph at the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the regions of Bihar and Orissa were at Colonel Clive’s mercy. East India Company slowly took charge of the land’s heat, dust and wealth. And for the remorseless Colonel Clive power flowed from the barrel of the gun. Bhuvan Lall | 11
The first authentic record of the existence of a sort of regular Army battalion on Indian soil dates back to the year 1741, when such a unit came into being for carrying out garrison duties in Bombay Castle (now called Mumbai). Seven years later Major Stringer Lawrence, ‘the father of the British Indian Army’, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the East India Company’s field forces in India with its headquarters at Fort St. David, 100 miles south of Madras (now called Chennai). To manage the Company’s military affairs in India local recruitment continued. Later six grenadier companies were combined to form the first regiment of the British Indian Army. Besides regularly paying for the use of the British Indian Army the small Indian kingdoms also became a market for the latest arms and armaments from Europe. In the book, Military History of British India 1607 – 1947, (1977) Harbans Singh Bhatia, has written that the Company had issued the following directions; ‘the natives must be kept as ignorant as possible both of the theory and practice of artillery so that native powers are kept dependent on us for ordinance’. The great European powers met in Paris to put an end to the global conflicts and divide the world from Canada to the Philippines between them on February 10th, 1763. After it had been amassing outposts for 150 years Britain’s representative Duke of Bedford got India for the British. It was a decisive moment for it gave Britain the resources, markets and the manpower to build the empire on. In the process it mapped trade routes, discovered exotic goods and established trading posts that would grow into large cities. The flow of capital from Europe to Asia was reversed, and the East India Company’s shares rose on London’s markets. Around this time in North America, the Boston Tea party was driven by resistance throughout British America against the Tea Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Men thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped 342 chests overboard three ships, the ‘Dartmouth’, the ‘Eleanor’ and the ‘Beaver’, loaded with tea from The East India Company. The American Revolution had been sparked off. It’s thanks to the meticulous safekeeping of diaries and letters by the British Library (nine miles of records, to be exact) the modern historians have exposed much of the company that became the biggest the world had ever seen. Nick Robbins’s The Corporation That Changed The World (2006), reveals how the Company shocked its age with the scale of its executive malpractice, stock market excess and human rights abuse. In doing so, the Company became sort of Frankenstein’s monster. 12 | The Man India Missed the Most
It was a time in human history when East India Company ruled the waves. The sea voyages that took up to two years and were fraught with danger brought back from India spices, textiles and other useful items to Britain and helped transform the country from a relatively dull place to something increasingly exciting. By 1750s, Indian silks, cottons and calicoes made up sixty per cent of the East India Company’s sales. Indian imports created a lifestyle revolution while writer Daniel Defoe described that the company’s calicoes, shipped from India, “crept into our houses, our closets, our bedchambers.” The efforts of the Company’s representative Colonel Robert Clive had turned London into the richest city of the world and East Indian Company into the world’s ultimate Company. And in India Colonel Clive tried to ensure that much of the wealth of the nation went into his pocket as he plundered as much as could. He returned to Britain as the richest self made man in Europe. Soon thereafter, a new word entered the English lexicon. It was a Hindustani word – loot. As the East India Company men were buying stately homes, throwing parties and filling their vaults with silver and art the people of Bengal who were paying for it were facing the most appalling conditions. The East India Company policy of destruction of food crops in Bengal and Bihar to make way for indigo and poppy cultivation for export reduced food availability and contributed to the large-scale famines. In 1770, about ten million people, approximately one-third of the population of the affected areas in Bengal and Bihar, were estimated to have died in the famines that ravaged the land. No official records of deaths were maintained even though it was a human disaster at par with some of the most deadly events in history. It was an unprecedented tragedy essentially driven by the voracity, corruption and unchecked power of a corporate superpower. The economy of Bengal collapsed but so did the share price of the East India Company. In London an enquiry was instituted for Colonel Clive’s barbarity that threatened to confiscate the whole of his fortune. In a belligerent speech in the House of Commons on March 30th, 1772, Colonel Clive nicknamed ‘Lord Vulture’ took the offensive and revealed, “Indostan was always an absolute despotic government” He argued, “The country of Bengal is called, by way of distinction, the paradise of the earth. It not only abounds with the necessaries of life to such a degree, as to furnish a great part of India with its superfluity, but it abounds in very curious and valuable manufactures, sufficient not only for its own use, but Bhuvan Lall | 13
for the use of the whole globe. The silver of the west and the gold of the east have for many years been pouring into that country, and goods only have been sent out in return. This has added to the luxury and extravagance of Bengal.” “My God”, Colonel Clive screamed, “at this moment I stand astonished by my own moderation.” After being exonerated and thanked for his services to the country the cunning strategist and the soldier of fortune was awarded a peerage for his achievement in India to create British India. By 1772, the Company Lord Clive had led was in deep financial difficulty due to poor management, but it was deemed too big to fail by His Majesty’s Government. Starved of funds it was bailed out via the public purse to the tune of £176 million - a decision that outraged the people. On November 22nd, 1774, Robert Clive 1st baron Clive of Plassey, at the age of forty-nine now addicted to opium was found dead. He had taken his own life. Written and adapted by W. P. Lipscomb and R. J. Minney from their London play Clive of India, a feature film released in 1935 by United Artists, was a costume drama that chronicled the life of the so-called, conqueror of India. Like most biopics time was collapsed, details omitted and historical figures reduced to walk on parts. The film was little more than a hagiographic portrait, concerning itself with the charm of the man rather than with the ethics involved in the imperialism for which he stood. On October 19th 1781, far away from India on the other side of the world at the Virginia tobacco port Yorktown in North America, in a stunning reversal of fortune General Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis surrendered the British Army to the forces led by American General George Washington. General Cornwallis’s sword was delivered to Major General Benjamin Lincoln as a mark of capitulation. 8,000 British officers and soldiers became prisoners-of-war, and the British band played the tune, ‘The world turned upside down’, to underscore the military humiliation of the most powerful country in Europe. In London, the India Act of 1784 transferred East India Company’s powers to the parliament - all kickbacks were banned - the British state decided to send out its Governor General to Bengal to rule. General Cornwallis known as the general who lost the American colonies was made a Knight Companion of The Most Noble Order of the Garter and appointed as the third Governor-General and commander in chief in India. He landed in Calcutta on September 12th, 1786 and took charge of the company’s affairs. By 1793, the East India Company under General Cornwallis levied a ‘Permanent Settlement’ on India that privatized the 14 | The Man India Missed the Most land and dispossessed the peasants. The Company swiftly took fifty to sixty per cent of the peasants’ revenue in tax, much more than the Mughal Emperors had ever taken, compelling the peasants into debt and then to sell their land to the moneylenders. Severe suffering and debasement followed for the Indians. By the end of the eighteenth century, a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in Europe due to the French Revolution, the Company Raj owned by stock holders and reporting to a board of directors in Britain had replaced the centuries old Mughal Raj as the rulers of India. It was ‘an empire within an empire’, as one of its directors conceded. The Company had become a formidable arm of British imperial might, with its own army, navy, shipping fleets and jurisdiction over key trading posts in India - where it was known variously as John Company and Company Bahadur. But one major obstacle was still left. Enjoyed reading this sample?
Purchase the whole copy at