Colonial Period

Colonial Period (1757-1947) It is indeed unique that the East India Company which was in trading contact with Bengal for about a century since 1650 and which sought extraction of wealth through trade and commerce in conformity with the spirit of mercantilism, finally turned itself into rulers. It may also be noted that the colonial state that the company built in Bengal was, in fact, the first event of the kind in the age of overseas expansions. Elaborating on this otherwise unique event many scholars maintain that the British Empire in India was built in a fit of absentmindedness and that it was never consciously planned by the traders who built it; on the contrary, they were rather against it, and yet the colonial state came into being. It is true that many company directors and also the government expressed unwillingness in establishing political dominance in the east. But it is also true that practical politics in the Bay of Bengal had shaped the course of the company's history in the region more decisively than the adverse theories alluded to in the Board meetings at the centre. The conquering initiatives taken by its field servants like Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, Lord Wellesley and Lord Dalhousie and other smaller imperialists always made their conquests a fait accompli which the centre only accepted.

The establishment of the company's Bengal state was not, of course, the consequence of one battle of Palashi or Buxar. It was a case of uneven development spread over more than a century. For example, ever since the company settled in Hughli in 1651, its only concern was to pursue trade and commerce and secure maximum trade privileges whenever possible. Arrogant and aggressive policy was pursued in the second phase between 1756 and 1765. In the third phase, between 1765 and 1784, came the idea of partial control of the country with the intention of extracting its revenue for financing the company's business in the 'East Indies'. The fourth and final phase, between 1784 and 1793, was marked by the positive and serious actions towards establishing a sovereign colonial state.

Pursuit of Trade and commerce to 1756 The discovery of sea-lanes to the eastern waters brought the western maritime people into direct contact with Bengal. It was predominantly an exporting country from ancient times; but curiously, its export trade was, for cultural reasons mainly, conducted by mostly foreigners. Being encouraged by the Mughal government the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the English and others came by sea to participate in the Bengal export trade. In the competition among themselves in lifting Bengal goods for foreign markets, the English East India Company had a decided advantage over all others. While all other companies were required to pay 2.5 percent or more customs duties to government, the English were exempted from paying any duty at all. They secured a nishan (1651) or patent from the Bengal subahdar, prince Shuja, which allowed the English to trade in Bengal without paying any customs duties in return for an annual tribute of Rs 3000 only.

This extraordinary privilege was to become subsequently a major issue of conflict between the country government and the company. Partly for chronic losses in revenue and partly for pressure from other competing companies, subahdars succeeding Shuja were not equally favourably disposed to the company. With the steady growth of English trade in Bengal, the government was inclined to annul the nishan or at least modify its terms. But the company would not agree to any such proposal and considered the nishan as an irrevocable and inviolable charter of right. The dispute often led to serious conflicts between the government and the company. The protracted Anglo-Mughal war of 1686-1690 had originated from this issue.

The peace treaty of 1690 recognised the nishan of 1651 and also of the foundation of the company's Calcutta settlement. Sir Josiah child, the founder of the Calcutta settlement had made it no secret to all that henceforth the company would apply force, if necessary, in order to defend its rights. The company's volume of trade had increased significantly since the foundation of the Calcutta settlement. In 1698 the company became a country power by acquiring zamindari right over three villages ' Calcutta, Sutanuti and Govindapur. In the same year Calcutta was turned into a self-governed territory under the company. For defence, the Fort William was erected in the same year. In 1700, the Fort William was made a separate Presidency independent of Madras.

The English East India Company's road to dominance was, however, blocked for the time being by the rise of the regionally powerful nawabi regime from the beginning of the 18th century. The success of the three great rulers of Bengal'Murshid Quli Khan (1701-1727), Shujauddin Khan (1727-1739) and Alivardi Khan (1740-1756) in achieving political stability and relative economic prosperity worked as an effective deterrent to the company's increasing influence. Murshid Quli Khan had neither confirmed nor denied the company's privilege of having duty-free trade in the country. The local chowkis (toll stations) of the nawab always expressed their ignorance about any farman or parwanas regarding the privilege and often forced the company's boats to pay tax on merchandise according to the law of the land. The company, being unable to persuade the nawab in implementing the nishan in full, sent a delegation headed by John Surman to Delhi and obtained a farman (1717) from the Emperor Farrukhshiyar. The farman not only confirmed the company's right to duty-free commerce in the country but also made an additional grant of zamindari right over thirty eight mouzas around the company's Calcutta zamindari.

farrukh siyar’s farman of 1717 made the company a constitutionally recognised political power in the region. It is true that a phantom monarch whose control over the subah was more a fiction than a reality conferred the company's new rights. The English were not unaware of the monarch's predicament. And yet they spent money on obtaining the imperial farman. The purpose was only to create a legal basis to put up pressure on the nawab. But the astute and tough Nawab Murshid Quli Khan was able to sustain it and uphold his sovereign right. The succeeding two nawabs (Shaujauddin Khan and Alivardi Khan) were equally successful in maintaining the uneasy peace with the company. But the storm gathered threateningly under Sirajuddaula who tried to contain the company in a non-conventional way.

Road to dominance 1756-1765 Before his death Alivardi Khan, having no son of his own, nominated his grandson Sirajuddaula (son of his daughter amina begum) to the masnad of the subah and accordingly he became the nawab in April 1756. Sirajuddaula, a young man of independent spirit and dauntless character, was not prepared to follow the appeasement policy of his predecessors. He found the conduct of the English grotesque and unbearable. Immediately after his accession to the masnad he issued to the company a preemptory parwana proclaiming his readiness to take necessary action unless they were obliged to comply with his three conditions immediately: that the unauthorised fortification works in and around Calcutta must be demolished, that as aliens they must pursue their legal trade strictly according to the law of the land and finally, they must make over to government all outlaws now under the protective umbrellas of the Fort William authorities. The company refused starkly to accept the nawab's conditions and Siraj also refused to accept the company as bonafide traders in the country. He despatched troops and took over all the English trading factories; and finally expelled the English from Calcutta in June 1756.

But he could not sustain the initial victory. From Madras soon came an expedition headed by Robert Clive and recaptured the city in January 1756. The nawab recognised the reality of confronting a naval force which he lacked and made under the circumstance a formal peace treaty (alinagar treaty, 9 February 1757) with the company to the effect that the company would enjoy all the privileges accorded to the company by the imperial farman of 1717 and that the nawab would give due compensation for the losses sustained by the company and others consequent upon his Calcutta campaign.

Robert Clive, who established himself in the south as a soldier and a diplomat, took the Alinagar Treaty as a truce rather than a durable peace accord. His next step was to make necessary preparations for overthrowing Sirajuddaula who seemed to him to be irreconcilably hostile to English. As he did it in dealing with the princes in the south, he tried to identify and win over nawab's enemies to his side. He set up secret contact with the amirs actually or potentially opposed to the nawab. A conspiracy was hatched up against Sirajuddaula and a secret treaty was concluded in May 1757 with the conspirators headed by Jagat Sheth and Mir Jafar. Clive and the conspirators proceeded according to the secret treaty and staged the battle of Palashi (23 June 1757) deposing Siraj and inducting Mir Jafar into the masnad.

The event of Palashi and post-Palashi developments had established very firmly the political dominance of the company. Yet, for various reasons, it chose to remain a political arbiter without becoming the king of the country. Its manpower was neither oriented to civil administration nor adequate enough to rule an extensive kingdom like Bengal. Moreover, the court of directors was not enthusiastic initially about establishing the company as a territorial power.

However, the company's domination ultimately ended up in a dominion. It was not perhaps in the original scheme of Palashi to establish company's rule in Bengal the way it was done, but the course of subsequent developments led the company to move consciously to the goal of sovereignty. Mir Jafar, the puppet nawab had failed to indemnify the company according to the secret treaty with Clive. Nor was he found very quite serious about paying the compensations. In 1760, he was replaced by his son-in-law, mir qasim. The new nawab quickly settled the indemnity affair by ceding to company's control three large and resourceful districts- Burdwan, Midnapur and Chittagong.

Mir Qasim had his own plan in his mind while he parted with three districts. He wanted to get rid of Clive's constant pestering by disbursing to him all outstanding dues and then assert himself as the real sovereign of the country. According to the plan, the capital was shifted from Murshidabad to Mungher, a distant and not easily accessible hill-fort in Bihar and far from the reach of the English marine strike. He raised there a new army and a new bureaucracy. He dismissed the faithless zamindars and made the loyal ones to pay for the reformed army. Finally he asserted his sovereign status and called upon the company and other private traders to refrain themselves from resorting to unlawful trading activities and to honour the laws of the land. The English paid scant regard to his call. The abuses of dastak continued unabated.

The enraged nawab attacked Patna (July 1763) and captured all company establishments there. Many resisting Europeans were killed including the chief of the Patna factory. Mir Qasim's Patna action had triggered off a full-scale war between the company and the nawab. Mir Qasim won a number of sporadic battles. Finally, he could persuade the emperor and the nawab of Oudh to join him in his war against the English. The combined forces met the British in a decisive battle at Buxar (23 October 1764). The English army defeated the allied troops comprehensively. Meanwhile the company had made a fresh treaty with Mir Jafar and reinstated him as the nawab.

Road to sovereignty The battle of Buxar led to the company's acquisition of Diwani in 1765, which in turn brought the company close to sovereignty. Clive's strategic formulation was that since the emperor and the company were at war, there must be an agreement between the belligerent powers to restore peaceful relations. For Clive it was an opportune moment. It was a time when Mir Qasim was deposed, Mir Jafar dead, and a boy-nawab, nazmuddaula, on the throne of Bengal. But he used the opportunity in a very unexpected way. He founded the company's control in Bengal within the framework of the Mughal state. He concluded a treaty with the phantom emperor imprisoned in the hands of the Marathas at Allahabad. According to the terms of the treaty (12 August 1765) Emperor Shah Alam conferred on the English East India Company the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa 'as a free gift and altamga'. The company would pay under the agreement annually a fixed tribute of twenty six lakh rupees to the emperor and fifty three lakh to the nawab and the balance of the revenue collections from the three provinces would go to the coffer of the company. Clive's Diwani treaty made the company the controller of the resources of the country. Under the Diwani system the people were thus left with two masters to serve: the company and the nawab.

While acquiring Diwani, Robert Clive did not mean to go, as Diwan, into all villages with his revenue bowl in hand and collect tax from every household of peasants and artisans. It was a job of an organised government, which the company was yet to evolve. Clive rather looked for a kind of an intermediate agency, like in the business world, to do the revenue collection job at commission. Syed Muhammad reza khan was selected to stand, so far as revenue collection was concerned, between the company and the taxpayers. He was given the title of Deputy Diwan. All the native establishments were kept intact. Reza Khan, as deputy diwan, was to make settlement, collect revenue, pay the officers and surrender the surplus revenue to the company. The company got the revenue income at no cost of its own. This queer system of Clive which gave him access to resources of the country without any corresponding responsibility is known in history as the Double Government. The system had a set purpose ' financing the company's eastern trade without importing any more gold and silver from home. Bengal had been traditionally exporting more and importing less. So the company had always to adjust in the past the chronic unfavourable balance of trade with Bengal against bullion which it had to import from London to the much criticism of the mercantilist public. Clive's acquisition of the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa solved the problem.

The Double Government was practically no government. Under this system the company had power but no responsibility, and the nawab had responsibility, but no power. Instead of pursuing peaceful trade and commerce, the company people started amassing wealth for themselves by ruthless extortion and plundering. Naib Diwan Reza Khan was constantly warning the Calcutta Council about the imminent collapse of the economy and the state system if the predatory traffic of the company servants was not stopped forthwith. The Calcutta Council paid no heed to Reza Khan's anxieties. Instead of restraining the rampant corruption of the officials, the company sent furthermore European supervisors to every Bengal district in 1767 to keep watch on the affairs of the local officials and also to see how the quantum of revenue could be increased. Appointing district supervisors was, indeed, the first step towards assuming directly the administration of the country.

The District Supervisors were sent out with an express direction to collect all information about revenue administration and local government. Based on their reports the Double Government was abolished in 1772 and the company had directly assumed the responsibility of the diwani administration. Governor Warren Hastings began his state building activities with the restructuring of revenue administration and civil justice. For revenue and judicial administrations Hastings divided Bengal into many distircts. Every district was placed under a European collector vested with unlimited powers.

The structure of the colonial state that Robert Clive and Warren Hastings had built in phases received the parliamentary sanction (1773) in the form of the regulating act of that year. Parliament made Warren Hastings the governor general of the Fort William in Bengal and to assist him a four member council was provided in the Act. The council was to act as the virtual cabinet as well as legislature with the governor general as the head of the government. However, the colonial state building was for the time being impeded by the negative stand taken by the majority members of the council. According to the Regulating Act the governor general had no power to supersede the majority resolution of the council. Three out of four members of the council were prejudiced against Hastings and had been consistently opposing his state building activities. The council was in favour of allowing the Murshidabad nawab to govern his country uninterfered by the company and to this policy the Court of Directors rendered their support.

But the American Revolution had dramatically changed the British attitude to India. For Britain, the Indian situation offered an opportunity to offset the loss of power in the Western Hemisphere. Parliament for the first time took positive decision to establish political power in India. pitt’s india act (1784) provided for a military member in the council and the governor general was empowered to supersede the majority view of the council, if necessary, in the interest of the company and the British nation. Parliament appointed lord cornwallis, a general in the lost American War, as governor general with specific instructions to consolidate the colonial state and establish a permanent system of administration for it. Lord Cornwallis abolished the fiction of the nawabi rule by resuming all powers of the nawab and reducing him to just a pensioner of the company. To govern the state Cornwallis introduced many institutions in the realms of administration, judiciary and revenue collection. He separated the company's civil administration from trade and commerce and introduced a professional civil service as a backbone of the new state. The most remarkable among his state-building works was the permanent settlement that served as a symbiotic link between the rulers and the ruled until the end of the colonial rule. An elaborate judicial code and other institutions suitable for governing the colonial state were established. He also introduced a highly paid and highly organised civil service to administer the colonial state.

The fiction of the sovereignty of the Mughal emperor was, however, still maintained though the company had established the colonial state in Bengal with all the marks of sovereignty. The myth of the Mughal sovereignty was upheld even when parliament declared sovereignty over British India in 1813. The government continued to mint coin in the name of the emperor, an ornate practice which was abolished in 1833 when the Charter Act had asserted absolute sovereignty by changing the constitutional title of the 'Governor General of the Fort William in Bengal' into 'Governor General of India'.

Reduction of Bengal to provinciality The rise of British India in the 19th century was only the blown up form of the company's Bengal kingdom. The expansion led to the absorption of Bengal into the imperial milieu. Even as a province, Bengal lost its pre-eminence in that unlike Madras and Bombay provinces, Bengal was not endowed with an autonomous Governor-in-Council. The Governor General of India acted as the governor of Bengal. And because he was to remain preoccupied with imperial affairs mainly, Bengal administration was looked after on his behalf by a so-called deputy governor selected from one of the Council members and whose tenure seldom exceeded more than a year. One of the secretaries of the Central Secretariat remained in charge of Bengal administration. Thus without a governor-in-Council and without a secretariat of its own, Bengal was reduced to a second fiddle to the empire. In response to the increasing public criticism about the step motherly treatment of Bengal, the Dalhousie administration had at last created under the Charter Act of 1853 a post of Lieutenant Governor for Bengal in 1854, a status it enjoyed until 1905 when Bengal was partitioned into two provinces under separate Lt. Governors. In 1912 when the partition was annulled and the imperial capital shifted to Delhi Bengal got, like Madras and Bombay, the status of a Governor's province for the first time.

Road to Partition and Pakistan Of the measures taken by the administration of lord curzon (1899-1905), the most tumultuous was the Parttion of Bengal (1905). Making the Bengal administration more efficient was the apparent intention of the decision. To achieve the same purpose, public opinion had been demanding the introduction of Governor-in-Council for Bengal in the model of Madras and Bombay. Why the government should divide the province into two parts instead of introducing Governor-in-Council is not clear. Even many serious historians suspect that the partition measure was actually aimed at weakening nationalist politics by dividing the Bengal people communally. There are, of course, critics of Divide and Rule theory. Whatever may be the purpose of the action it did not receive popular support. The nationalist elements became violent in its resistance to the measure. Faced with insurmountable nationalist opposition Bengal was reunified under the new system of Governor-in-Council in 1912. Bengal's partition first and then its annulment under pressure had embittered the Hindu-Muslim relations beyond measure. Most educated Muslims of East Bengal had supported the partition. Their frustrations were reflected in the subsequent politics of Bengal.

In spite of many attempts made by nationalist Muslim and Hindu leaders to restore the amity between the two communities, the gap caused by the event was ever widening. The separatist parallelism between the two major communities was institutionally fostered by the separate electorate system. bengal pact (1923) of chitta ranjan das was, however, successful in bringing the two communities together under a common platform. But with his death in 1925 the compact collapsed. All the Council and local bodies elections since then were held on communal basis. The operation of the India Act of 1935, which had further contributed to communalist politics by providing reserved seats for various communities and professions, had led successively to the formation of the Muslim dominated Ministries since elections of 1937.

The muslim league, which had small influence in Bengal until then became soon the sole spokesman by the 1940s. It is significant that the lahore resolution of 1940, which set out a new dream for the Muslims, was proposed by the premier of Bengal. The election results of 1946, in which the League won all seats reserved for Muslims except two, proved beyond doubt that the Muslims of Bengal were set for Pakistan. But the Congress, which represented predominantly the Hindus, was not initially prepared to accept the concept. The result was continual communal tension and occasional riots that culminated in the great Calcutta killing (August 15-20, 1946) followed by communal riots in Noakhali and Bihar. All these developments had sealed the fate of united Bengal. The Hindu Mahashaba, many leading members of which were activists in the agitations against partition of Bengal in 1905, had first proposed and started agitation for the partition of Bengal on communal lines. The idea under the circumstance was finally accepted by the Congress and the League and accordingly Bengal got partitioned and East Bengal (now Bangladesh) got independence from Britain (14 August 1947) within the framework of Pakistan.

Impact of Colonial Rule It was a meet of two cultures, two civilisations when British and Bengal peoples met politically through Palashi. And at the end of the colonial rule we find many areas where the two cultures conformed. Bengal under colonial setting was made to receive all the governing institutions and practices of the ruling race unmixed or insignificantly mixed with local traditions.

The Governor General-in-Council of the colonial state had no similarity with the previous subahdar-in-darbar. The powers of the subahdars were limited by tradition, customs, and religious injunctions. But the Governor General-in-Council had enjoyed unlimited powers, at least up to the first quarter of the twentieth century. The subahdar had maintained strong local government administered by a long chain of officers from the lowest grampradhan (village chief) and panchayet of the village to the faujdar of the district supported by an intermediate class of administrators called zamindar, taluqdar, thanadar, kazi, qanungo, amin, etc. But the Governor General's local government was simple. Only two civilians (a judge and a collector) armed with unlimited powers ruled a district having a size of hundreds of sq. kilometres. The powers and privileges of the Mughal state was shared between the Hindu and Muslim elites. But the bureaucracy of the colonial state was an all-white affair until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Only the nominally paid jobs and services in the lower rung of the administrative ladder, which were never to be sought by any European, were open to the natives.

Whereas the justice in the Mughal times and before was rendered on the spot by the qazi on the basis of local investigation, the colonial system of justice was based on interrogating the witnesses by vakils. The vakils worked for fees and so did the professional witnesses who were amply available in the court premise on payment. Universal education was in vogue during the pre-colonial regimes when government gave land grants to all educational institutions (tols, pathxalas, maktabs and madrasas) which gave free education to all students. The learned men received madaat-e-maash or subsistence grants (vrttee, mahattran, millaki, waqf). Consequently, literacy rate was then very high. Education became a private affair and very expensive under the British and as a result literacy rate came down to insignificant level in the mid-nineteenth century. Only 4% were literate in 1872, according to Census data of that year, whereas it was above 80% a century earlier, according to Adam's Report on Education.

The most glaring example of British innovation was the transplantation of the system of English landlordism coated with the nomenclature, Permanent Settlement. There were zamindars before this system, but they were then merely rent collecting state agents entrusted with other state responsibilities. The zamindars under the Permanent Settlement were made the absolute owners of the zamindaris that became their private estates like those of their counterparts in Britain. But with a difference. A British landlord had productive participation in the economy as a production partner, whereas a Bengal zamindar proved to be a parasitic element in the production process. He collected from peasants his unearned income (rent and selami) by virtue of his right in land, a property that he got without any investment. The Permanent Settlement was the foundation of the Bengal society on which rested the superstructure of the colonial state. The secret of ruling a great territorial district by only two civilians lay in the ever loyal zamindar class.

Bengal had been traditionally an exporting country. Within half a century of company rule Bengal lost its predominance in the export market. Gradually it was turned into a captive market for British industrial products and an agricultural hinterland for the supply of agricultural raw materials to the metropolitan manufactories. In the process, the former entrepreneurs became landowners by and large and artisans joined cultivation and rural labours. In the mean time, the development of communication and the rise of a consumer market (owing to the growth of urbanisation and of a middle class), had created an environment for modern industries. In the absence of Bengali entrepreneurs, the foreign elements particularly the Europeans, armenians, marwaris, Parsees came to seize the new opportunities. Until the last decade of British rule, almost all the modern industries set up in Bengal including their labour force were almost entirely dominated by the non-Bengali entrepreneurs. Even the industrial labour came from outside of Bengal.

The most distinguishing feature of the colonial rule was its project to bring a socio-cultural transformation with the object of westernising the country, a kind of attempt, which no previous regime had ever undertaken. With few passing deviations, toleration of all faiths and cultures was the hallmark of all those regimes. But the British rulers of the 19th century, imbued with the Utilitarian and evangelical ideas of human progress and emancipation, felt it their moral responsibility and obligation to 'civilise the fallen'. It was this moral and 'civilising' outlook that had animated them to enact reform Acts like abolition of sati and slavery, supressing the thugs, prohibiting child marriage, hooking in Charak Puja, sacrificing child at birth, and so on. Educational reforms had the same object in view' to make the people appreciate and adopt western values and institutions. In administration, western system of bureaucracy and local government institutions was established. Finally, attempts were made to introduce the Westminster method of representative government in phases. The result of all these exercises was that while the age-old native system of social organisation and governance was allowed to go into disuse, the transplantation of western systems found the native soil unfertile to take deep root. [Sirajul Islam]

Bibliography JH Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-Century Bengal, California,1968; Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 1987; Sirajul Islam (ed), History of Bangladesh 1704-1971, 3 vols., Dhaka, 2nd edn, 2000.