Monsoon massacre

For a land that had seen thousands of years of gallantry even as kingdoms shifted from one dynasty to another, it is rather sad how this ‘golden bird’ slipped into the hands of the British. It happened in two inglorious battles, one at Plassey (1757) and the other at Buxar (1764), which were marked by treachery, defection, double-crossing and flight from battle.

Many writers do not even refer to Plassey as a proper battle; they dismiss it off as a skirmish. The skirmish, however, was to change the destiny of the country, forever. On one side was Siraj ud-Daulah, the 23-year-old nawab of the rich province of Bengal, assisted by the French East India Company. On the other side was Robert Clive of the British East India Company. He had with him a clutch of easily-bought men like Mir Jafar, a disgruntled general of the nawab, and Omichund, a merchant.

The nawab was irritated with the British for their expansions in Bengal, and had wrested Fort William from them, which Clive then reclaimed. However, the company felt it was time to stop the nawab and prepared for a military face-off. The two forces met near the village of Polashi (Plassey). The nawab’s army was massive, over 40,000-strong, while Clive commanded around 3,000 men. The battle began at 8am on June 23, with artillery fire from the nawab, which immediately caused casualties in the English side. As the small army could not afford losses, Clive ordered the men to retreat into a mango grove, from the protection of which they fired at the nawab’s’ advancing artillery. As the firing dragged on, there was a short burst of heavy downpour. Clive’s men brought out tarpaulins and covered their gunpowder, the nawab’s ammunition was drenched in the rain.

Later, the nawab’s only loyal general, Mir Madan Khan, made a cavalry attack on Clive’s men, believing that the latter’s ammunition was useless, too. He was killed. The nawab still had the larger force, but since his other generals had all been bought by Clive, they defected. He fled from the battle on camelback (he was later found and executed), leaving easy pickings for his foe. Mir Jafar became nawab for a short time. Omichund realised that he had been paid for his treachery in the same coin. Clive had double-crossed him; the papers promising that the company would pay him a handsome sum for his help turned out to be fake. He is said to have become insane, later. The company, however, got control over Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, and moved from being a trading body to getting a toe-hold in governance.

That toe-hold turned into a firm foothold at the Battle of Buxar seven years later, when the 40,000-strong combined forces of Mir Qasim, Bengal’s new nawab, the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam Khan and the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daulah, were routed at midday by a 10,000-strong superior force under the command of Hector Munro.

Mir Qasim fled the battle with a cache of jewels and disappeared from the pages of history. The nawab of Awadh fled across a river, blowing up the bridge behind him, abandoning both his emperor and his men. The emperor later decided to negotiate with the British. Thus, in half a day’s work, Awadh, Delhi and Bengal came under the company’s control. A control that would remain for the next 100 years, bleeding the country.

“The Prussian military commander Helmulth von Moltke had said that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy,” says author and defence analyst Colonel Harjeet Singh. “Look at what happened in Plassey. Clive was actually sulking he had lost; he also was not sure the defectors would not double-cross him. But then, it rained. And, in the end, the artillery won the day for him. Battles take on their own life as they play out. It is easy to later analyse what went wrong.”

So, what would have happened if Clive had not won that monsoon day? Certainly, Buxar would not have happened. But, would this have changed the fate of the country vastly? It was the time when the French and the British were fighting for supremacy in the subcontinent. While the English got control over the Gangetic plains with these two battles, there would be many more wars between the European powers, in the Deccan and elsewhere. Would the French have become the colonial power here? One cannot say. We only know that the monsoon, which has shaped the country’s destiny for millions of years, turned over another page in its history by sending a brief downpour to Plassey.