Kolkata: The Battle of Plassey – in which the victory of the East India Company marked the beginning of British Raj in India in 1757 – has become an election issue in the Krishnanagar constituency, of which the historic place is a part.
This constituency’s result is expected to indicate whether voters support the expulsion of the local Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra from the Lok Sabha on charges of compromising national security.
While the TMC has renominated her, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Amrita Roy, the current head of Krishnanagar’s former royal family.
It was during the Battle of Plassey that the East India Company, under Robert Clive, defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last independent ruler of Bengal. Subsequently, the British began their exploitation of Bengal, gradually expanding their influence to other parts of the country.
In the Battle of Plassey, Clive’s forces got support from the likes of Kolkata-based rich traders Jagat Seth, Umichand and Nadia district’s Maharaja of Krishnanagar, Krishnachandra Roy (1728-1782). He was a zamindar but the East India Company bestowed upon him the title of Maharaja.
It is widely considered that he started the lavish celebrations of Durga Puja to please the new masters, the ‘Company’.
Moitra was controversially expelled from the Lok Sabha in December 2023 and is currently facing probes by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as well as the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has made her support to Moitra evident by deciding to start her 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign from Krishnanagar constituency on March 31.
Since the BJP announced Amrita Roy’s candidature, TMC leaders and supporters have started highlighting how the Krishnanagar royal family betrayed Bengal and India by colluding with the British forces and ushering in foreign rule in India.
A political greenhorn, she was recently persuaded by the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, leader of the opposition in the state assembly, to join the party and contest the election. She, however, has no known background in political or social work.
Responding to the social media criticism of her ancestors’ role, Roy said, during an interview with Aaj Tak Bangla, that everyone knew why Krishnachandra joined hands with the British forces.
“Every Bengali, even the whole of India, knows why Maharaja Krishnachandra sided with the British and fought Siraj-Ud-Daulah. He did so to protect the Hindu Sanatana Dharma. Had he not, none of us would have remained Hindus today. We would have spoken a different language and lived with the identity of a different jati [she meant religion],” the 63-year-old Roy said.
Her comments are in line with the kind of campaign Hindu nationalists often carry out. One of their ideological gurus, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, was busy recruiting Hindus in the British army during World War II, at a time when ‘Netaji’ Subhas Chandra Bose was planning to raise an army against the British colonial forces.
Bose had written about his disappointing meeting with Savarkar saying, “Mr. Savarkar seemed to be oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how Hindus could secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India.”
Even though India’s top nationalist leaders like Mohandas Gandhi, Subhas Bose, and Jawaharlal Nehru saw only British forces as colonisers and not Muslim rulers – because Mughals never sent India’s wealth anywhere abroad and made India their home – Hindu nationalists considered the period of Muslim rulers as foreign rule.
Prime Minister Modi has on repeated occasions spoken of 1,000 years of slavery, which goes against Gandhi and Bose’s reading of Indian history.
On Wednesday evening, Roy broached the matter when PM Modi called her for a telephone conversation. BJP subsequently released an audio recording of it.
During the conversation, the moment Modi mentioned that she was carrying forward the legacy of Maharaja Krishna Chandra, Roy complained, “They (opposition) are criticising my family. They are saying he sided with the British and are calling our family a traitor. They are not saying how much land he donated and did so many other things. They are not saying why he did it (colluding with the British). So, I said that had he not done so our Sanatana Dharma would have been finished. Is it not so?”
She then repeated what she earlier told the media. To this, Modi said, “In our childhood, we used to be taught about Krishna Chandra Roy’s social reforms work and developmental work and Bengal’s model of development. But the people who indulge in vote bank politics will keep bringing baseless allegations and dig out what happened 300 or 200 years ago to defame so that they can hide the evils of current times.” He then advised her to ignore all these.
Also read: Why Bankim Chandra Chatterjee Dismissed the Claim of Mughals Being Colonisers
Historical evidence contradicts BJP candidate’s assertions
BJP candidate Amrita Roy’s presentation of the historic event is as flawed as the BJP’s ‘1000 years of slavery’ theory.
Evidently, there was no religious angle in this conspiracy. Mir Jafar was part of the conspirators, while Mohanlal was Siraj’s general.
In 19th century Bengal, where both Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism were born during the 1860-1880s, Krishnachandra was no ‘hero’ or ‘saviour of Hindus’.
In an essay published in Mainstream, Atul Krishna Biswas, a retired IAS officer and the former vice-chancellor, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University, Muzaffarpur, wrote that Krishnachandra Roy “was the leader of the collaborators in laying the foundation of the British Empire in India” and that Clive rewarded him with “twelve guns used in the battle of Plassey.”
Krishnachandra has been a controversial character. In his earliest biographies published in 1805 and thereafter, he was glorified for his role in the Battle of Plassey. The English newspapers in Kolkata during that period spoke highly of him. However, from the second half of the 19th century, when Indian nationalism was in its nascent state, Krishnachandra gradually appeared as a villain.
In Nabin Chandra Sen’s landmark poetry, ‘Polashir Juddho’ (1876), the poet condemns Krishnachandra and all his co-conspirators and sheds tears for Siraj-Ud-Daulah. One of the lines from the poem says, “Dhik Krishna Chandra, Dhik Umichand!” (Shame on you, Krishna Chandra and Umichand!”
It goes on to say, “Jobon Douratmo Jodi Osohyo Emon/ Na Patiya Ei Heen Ghrinaspodo Fnad/Sommukh Somore Kori Nobab Nidhon/Chhririle Dasotwo-pash, tobe ki ekhon/ hoto tomader namey kolonko emon? (If Muslim tyranny was indeed so unbearable, instead of the Plassey conspiracy, they should have fought the Nawab face to face and that would have saved them from the blemish they receive today.)”
The poem ends with the beheading of Siraj, following which the poet wrote two more lines, “Nibilo Griher Dweep, Nibilo Tokhon Bharoter Shesh Aash (Lamps at homes burned out, India’s last hope came to an end.)”
About this poem, novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the composer of ‘Vande Mataram’, wrote, “A Bengali who does not read this heartfelt cry of the Bengali has his/her Bengali life in vain.”
Chattopadhyay also wrote that Mohanlal, Siraj’s Hindu general, had almost defeated Clive’s army but another conspirator, Mir Jafar, misled Siraj to defeat. Had Mohanlal succeeded (in defending Siraj’s kingdom), India’s history would have been different, Chattopadhyay wrote.
According to Chattopadhyay’s contemporary thespian Girish Chandra Ghosh, Bengalis are to be forever indebted to Sen for being the first to shed tears for the “poor Siraj” and face the ire of the British rulers.
No historical account of Bengal since the birth of nationalism hails or even highlights Krishnachandra for being a saviour of the Hindus, as Roy is now claiming the case to be.
Her argument that had Krishnachandra not conspired with the British to defeat Siraj, Hindus in Bengal would have had to convert to Islam has no historical basis.
It is well-documented in the census reports of 1871, 1891, and 1901, and also in the writings of Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore, Chandranath Basu and U.N. Mukherji, among others, that the main reason behind conversion to Islam was caste oppression and the pathetic state of the lower caste people in Bengal, especially in its eastern part.
This is evident from the fact that large-scale conversions continued even 140 years after Muslims lost power in 1757 and a century after the Permanent Settlement tilted the societal balance in favour of Hindu zamindars, the new elite class emerging due to trade relations with the British. Muslims neither had the power of swords nor the ability to financially reward anyone for converting to Islam.
About her charge that without Krishnachandra siding with the British, Bengalis would have spoken a different language, one may just recall that Bankim Chandra spoke of four kinds of the Bengali language – Aryan, Anaryan (non-Aryan), mixed, and Muslim.
‘Bengali Muslim’ is a community well-defined for over 150 years now. One may refer to the Indian census reports of recent years that would reveal that over 90% of West Bengal’s Muslims speak only Bengali. It is also common knowledge that those in the eastern part fought a bloody war in 1971 to break away from Pakistan in their determination to protect the Bengali language.
