Part 1 of 2
AFTER the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the East India Company rewarded Mir Jafar for his betrayal of Siraj-ud-Daulah by creating him Nawab of Bengal in Siraj’s place.* Jafar, however, failed to fulfil his promises of large payments from his Treasury once in power, and when his son-in-law Kasim offered to do better, the Company gave him Jafar’s throne.
It was not long before the Company’s high-handed attitude began to grate on Mir Kasim too.* The movement of goods in Bengal was heavily taxed, but the Company’s international trade was exempted. Some Company employees, however, began to dabble in domestic trade, hiding behind the exemption to cut out Indian competitors.
In 1763, Kasim agreed a compromise with Henry Vansittart, Governor of Bengal, but the Council in Calcutta vetoed it. A further two-man delegation to Munger was informed that the Company’s special status was now over.* Kasim kept one envoy hostage; the other was dismissed back to Calcutta, only to be murdered on his homeward road.
Robert Clive returned to Bengal in 1765 (after the events in the story) and began tackling its culture of backhanders and privileges. He likened reforming the Company to the myth of Heracles and the Augean Stables.
Find Munger in Bihar on Google maps. Munger was Kasim’s new capital in place of Murshidabad; it lay in a bend of the River Ganges, and over a hundred miles further from Calcutta – a gesture of independence. Kasim abolished the tax entirely, eliminating the Company’s advantage and helping ordinary Indians.
Part Two
THE Governor and Council of Calcutta, swearing shrill and bloody vengeance, marched over to Mir Jafar’s residence to reinstate him. In Patna, the manager of the Company’s silk factory seized the town, but Kasim crushed the coup, interned hundreds of factory employees, and impounded two supply ships at Munger.*
An army despatched from Calcutta swiftly captured Murshidabad, and Kasim fled to Patna. On October 5th, 1763, news came that Munger too had fallen. Kasim herded around 160 hostages into a courtyard, and ordered his men to open fire.* The horrified sepoys on the rooftops refused, but Sumru, Kasim’s German-born drill sergeant, set about them with his bare hands until they complied.*
Kasim now sought refuge with the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II in Oudh, but on October 22nd, 1764, Sir Hector Monro overcame Shah Alam’s forces, almost six times his own, at Buxar. Kasim retired into obscurity. Shah Alam made peace with the Company; and Mir Jafar resumed his place as Nawab of Bengal.
The silk and calico factory at Patna was founded in 1620; saltpetre was another lucrative product of the Company’s factories there. The town is one the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, founded in 490 BC.
About sixty of the dead were Europeans; they included one infant child. Dr William Fullerton alone was spared, as he had provided medical attention to Kasim. He gave a brief account of it to the authorities afterwards. See also Massacre at Amritsar, in which a similar tragedy unfolded, this time at the hands of the British.
Walter Reinhard (1723-1778) enlisted with the French in Calcutta as part of a Swiss company, deserted after just fifteen days (possibly to the British), and then became a freelance drill sergeant training enemies of the British to British military standards. He adopted the nom-de-guerre Summer, which through his deeply tanned complexion gave rise to the nickname Sombre in French, and finally Sumru among the Indians.