Plassey Battle Monument -A Monument to India's Slavery.
Since childhood I had been reading about Plassey and how the battle here on that fateful day changed Hindoostan’s destiny forever . So when I went to Calcutta ( Kolkata) I was determined to travel to this place and after a five hour journey on road plus a ferry crossing and about 150 kms away we found an avenue of shaded trees both sides of the road leading to an obelisk in commemoration to the Battle of Plassey .
It lies in the field where the battle took place .Outside its periphery walls a statue of Siraj-ud-Daula in gold colour has been put up.The British had built a dak bunglow that stands to this day , where they would come and stay and is now a pwd rest house .This really is a memorial to the British betrayal and deceit of India that began from here .This is how this battle ensued .
When Siraj-ud -Daula became the nawab of Bengal post Alivardi’s death he asked the British , nestled in the hamlet they called Calcutta, to trade on same terms as they did during Murshid Ali Khan’s reign .His envoy was slapped by the British officer and expelled from Calcutta .Enraged the envoy went back to Murshidabad , the then capital city of Bengal , and remarked to the nawab “ What honour is left to us , when few traders , who have not yet learnt to wash their bottoms reply to the ruler’s order by expelling his envoy ?”
With honour at stake Siraj marched to Calcutta and occupied it in June 1756 .Six months later the soldiers of EIC re-occupied Calcutta on January 2, 1757 .
Siraj's attempts for truce and negotiations were spurned and a conspiracy was hatched to expel him between the British agent at Murshidabad , Jagat Seth the biggest banker of Bengal and Mir Jafar his military paymaster .
And so on 23rd June 1857 in the fields of Plassey , few miles away from the capital ,warring armies went into the battle .The British were led by Clive along with nearly 3,000 soldiers .Suraj forces tried to encircle the British but Mir Jafar and forces under his command did not take part .Rain fell incessantly and seeing the deceit of his commander Siraj retreated to Murshidabad . Clive marched onto Murshidabad where Mir Jaffar was installed on the throne and Siraj was caught by Mir Jafar and Killed . “It was the successful culmination of an intrigue “ is how the eminent historian Percival Spear put it .British who celebrate their feats , even of deceits , have called this as one of the greatest British battles .
Mir Jafar was put on the throne of Bengal , after paying a great amount of money , as a reward for betraying Siraj-ud-Daula .This paying of money to prop on thrones by the royal in their internal strifes continued unabated .Clive’s successors put Mir Kasim having stuffed themselves from riches of the new king , only to again take bribe to re-instate Mir Jafar .There was a new bidder ,in Najim-ud-Daula , who paid for deposing Mir Jafar again few years later .What started at Plassey became a norm thereafter by EIC setting up Indians against each other and favouring one against the other by taking rewards not acknowledged as bribes .
The British from hereinafter remorselessly pursued their quest of loot and plunder of Hindoostan .Clive remarked ‘ To stop is dangerous , to recede ruin .”
As the British East India Company extended their area of dominance by subjugating kingdom after kingdom the ruler was simply given a choice between annexation and annihilation or subjugation that came with price tag attached to it .The pretence of ruling for the welfare of the oppressed .
George Bernard Shaw said ‘When an Englishman wants something , he never publicly admits to his wanting it ;instead his want is expressed as a ‘burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants.’
Writing in her book ‘Indian Summer’ Alex von Tunzelmann , the British historian , aptly put it “ In the beginning , there were two nations . One was a vast , mighty and magnificent empire , brilliantly organised and culturally unified , which dominated a massive swathe of the earth .The other was an undeveloped , semi -feudal realm , riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its literate , diseased and stinking masses .The first nation was India .The second was England .”
Almost twelve decades later the Britons priding on their imperial conquests patted themselves on their excesses as Viceroy , Lord Mayo opined “ We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race.”
American historian Will Durant in his magnum opus ‘The Case for India’ wrote “The British conquest of India was the destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without scruple or principal, overrunning with fire, sword, bribery, murder a country temporarily disordered and helpless bribing and murdering , annexing and stealing , and beginning that career of illegal and ‘ legal ‘ plunder which has now ( 1930 ) gone on ruthlessly for one hundred and seventy three years ”
Charles Napier a megalomaniac , who is mostly known for the conquest of the Sindh, had no illusions on what the British were up to “Our object in conquering India , the object of all our cruelties , was money ..Every shilling had been picked out of blood . “We shall yet suffer for the crime assure as there is God in heaven."
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