July 20th, 2001
The post independence image of India from 1947- 1977 was of a country with self respect and capable of charting its own course and providing some kind of alternative to nations reluctant to be camp followers of either the USA or the Soviets. Them happy days are, Alas! over and even the most “pie in the sky” ideas of Mr Bush are greeted with acclaim by the RSS government in power in Delhi.
The 17th Century image of India was “Grande Mogore” or Great Mughal. Rich resplendent powerful and exotic. A gorgeous jewel bedecked figure inhabiting marble palaces ornamented with gold silver precious and semi-precious stone inlay.
This image was obliterated, erased from memory over the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries during which the British came to rule India.
India next came to be represented by a naked boy darkened by suffering, sitting on a bare floor. In front of him an empty plate [thhaalee] and separated from it by his distended stomach diseased and by malnutrition and an enlarged and very sick spleen.
How did the Grande Mogore transform into an Oxfam poster of penury and want?
The British (1757-1947) were not the first to defeat Indian rulers in battle and enslave their subjects. Indian generals have a long history of losing battles leading to the enslavement of the people. From 950 A.D. battles were lost to Afghans and Central Asians. Tens of thousands were made captive and taken away to labour in the lands of the victor.
The quantities of loot and the number of slaves taken by Mahmoud of Ghazni have passed into legend. This was at the beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era.
At the turn of the 15th Century Taimour (Timur or Tamerlane) took away 22,000 Indians to help build and service his capital, Samarqand besides untold wealth looted from the Tughluq Sultan of Delhi, a fellow Muslim also of Central Asian origin.
In 1739, a hundred years after the founding of Shahjahanabad, Nadir Shah a Turki and Persian speaking Central Asian defeated the Emperor Muhammad Shah who was descended from Timur and took away 1000 elephants, 7000 horses,10,000 camels, 100 eunuchs, 200 blacksmiths, one hundred and thirty calligraphists, 200 masons, 100 stone cutters and 200 carpenters besides musicians and dancers. The elephants and camels carried away eleven solid gold thrones including the Peacock Throne and many named diamonds besides huge quantities of gold vessels silver vessels and coin.
Despite all this loot and plunder by Nadir Shah the eunuch Javed Khan built a mosque just outside the Delhi Gate of the Red Fort. It was called the Golden Mosque (Sunehri Masjid) because its domes, the kiosks topping its minarets and its inside walls were lined with gold plate.
Dillee was repeatedly subjected to loot and pillage. Ahmad Shah Abdali, the Rohillas, the Marathas the Jats and the Sikhs each took their toll. Despite this the final or 1857 sack of Dillee by the British saw huge masses of gold and silver available for loot by the British and their allies.
Queen Victoria got the gold crown of the Emperor Bahadur Shah “Zafar” and his crystal throne. Sikh and Punjabi Mussulman families have stories of mule loads and donkey loads of gold being transported from Delhi to the Punjab. The famous Kapurthala Emeralds are said to have been the share of the Raja of Kapurthala who allied with the British in the siege and sack of Delhi and Lucknow. At Lucknow Jung Bahadur of Nepal joined the British in the looting and despoilation.
It was not the looting that transformed India from the Great Mughal to the starving child image.
When Robert Clive won the Battle of Plassey in 1757 he looted the treasury of Murshidabad and sent 200 boatloads of precious materials transported to Fort William This wealth would have been replenished soon enough if the whole system of production and distribution had not been tampered with by short sighted and greedy men from a poor country with no concept of manufacture and trade.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to enslave Indians. At Bandel or Hooghly in Bengal they had a concession for a factory and exceeded their brief by building a fort on it illegally. They started capturing children from the neighbourhood. Forcibly converted to Christianity the poor victims were sold in slavery outside India.
Shah Jahan while still a Prince came to know of this outrage when he was in the Eastern Provinces. After he succeeded (1631) and secured the throne he had Bandel invested (1633) the fort blown up and the area cleared of the Portuguese. There are two splendid folios in the illustrated chronicle of Shah Jahan”s reign [the Padishahnama now in the possession of Queen Elizabeth II] which record the event.
On 13th February 1739 the Mughal lost the battle of Karnal to the Iranian adventurer, Nadir Shah. The Central authority was discredited. Governors of the outlying provinces became independent in all but name and stopped paying tribute. The Marathas and the Sikhs and the Jats stepped into the richest state of them all, Bengal flourished the Nawab Nazim of Bengal, Sirajuddowla was betrayed and defeated at Plassey 23rd June 1757. A worse defeat was suffered by the combined forces of the Nawab Nazim of Bengal Mir Qasim, the Nawab Vizier of Awadh Shujauddowlah and the Mughal Prince Ali Gauhar [later Shah Alam II] at Buxar on 23rd October 1765.
As a result the East India Company”s criminal activities were legitimised. The “factors” or employees of the East India Company took over all the officer jobs whether civil or military. Worse they monopolised trade and commerce and later the plantations and industry. Indians were excluded from all lucrative areas except for being sub agents of the British. The land revenue was raised at every assessment until agriculture stopped yielding returns commensurate with investment, The textile industry was ruined by cheap look alikes of Indian cottons made on Spinning Jennies in Lancashire and Manchester. The shipbuilding industry moved away from Machhchhlipatanam and West Indian ports to England. The areas of wealth production in India were taken out of Indian hands and shut down or sealed off.
The Grande Mogore became a parody in the shape of a starving boy sitting before an empty thaalee.