23 June 1757. A mango grove beside the Bhagirathi, a hundred and fifty kilometres north of Calcutta. The guns have been firing since morning.
Then the sky opens. On one side of the field, the Company’s gunners throw tarpaulins over their powder. On the other, the Nawab’s gunners do not.
By evening Bengal has a new ruler, and the man who really won does not wear a crown.
Plassey, Palashi in Bengali, was not a great battle. Barely a few hundred men died. It is famous because of what it started: within eight years of that afternoon, the East India Company, a trading firm from London, was collecting the revenue of all Bengal, and from Bengal it went on to take India.
The young Nawab
Siraj-ud-Daulah became Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha in April 1756, in his twenties, on the death of his grandfather Alivardi Khan. He was proud, quick-tempered and suspicious, and within months he had made enemies of the bankers, generals and landlords who had served his grandfather.
He also quarrelled with the English. The Company had been fortifying Calcutta without his permission, and in June 1756 Siraj marched on the town and took Fort William. Some English prisoners died overnight in a small cell; the “Black Hole of Calcutta”, as the survivors’ account called it, became a byword in Britain, though historians have long doubted its numbers. In January 1757 Robert Clive and Admiral Watson came up from Madras and retook Calcutta.
The plot
What decided Plassey happened before anyone fired a shot. A group of Bengal’s most powerful men wanted Siraj gone: Mir Jafar, commander in his own army; the banking house of Jagat Seth, the richest in India; the merchant Omichund; the general Rai Durlabh; and zamindars including Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia. They made a deal with Clive. The Company would remove Siraj, Mir Jafar would become Nawab, and the Company would be paid handsomely.
Omichund then threatened to reveal everything unless he was promised three million rupees. Clive’s answer was to draw up two treaties: a real one on white paper, and a false one on red paper that included Omichund’s money. Admiral Watson refused to sign the false one, so his signature was forged. Omichund learned after the battle that he would get nothing.
The battle
On paper it was no contest. Clive had about 3,000 men: some 750 European soldiers, about 2,100 Indian sepoys and a handful of gunners, with eight cannon. Siraj had roughly 50,000, with dozens of heavy guns, war elephants and a small party of French artillerymen who hated the English as much as he did. (Accounts of the numbers vary, but every one of them gives Siraj an enormous advantage.)
Both sides traded cannon fire through the morning. Then, early in the afternoon, a heavy rainstorm broke over the field. The Company’s men covered their gunpowder with tarpaulins; the Nawab’s army did not, and its powder was soaked. When the rain eased, Mir Madan, one of the few commanders truly loyal to Siraj, led a cavalry charge, expecting the English guns to be as useless as his own. They were not. He was cut down by grapeshot.
Shaken, Siraj sent for Mir Jafar and begged him to stand by him. Mir Jafar promised he would, and sent word to Clive to push forward. Rai Durlabh advised the young Nawab to pull back. Siraj ordered his loyal troops under Mohanlal to withdraw, and rode away towards Murshidabad. His army fell apart behind him. By five o’clock it was over.
The end of Siraj
Siraj reached Murshidabad at midnight, found that no one would stand with him, and fled upriver by boat. On 2 July, near Rajmahal, he was recognised, betrayed and handed over to Mir Jafar’s family. Mir Jafar’s son Miran had him killed that night. Siraj-ud-Daulah was buried beside his grandfather at Khushbagh, across the river from Murshidabad, where his grave can still be visited.
What was the result of the Battle of Plassey?
June 1757
Clive places Mir Jafar on the throne at Murshidabad. The Company receives the zamindari of the lands south of Calcutta, later the 24 Parganas, and enormous payments; Clive himself becomes one of the richest men in Britain.
1760
Mir Jafar, unable to pay what he promised, is replaced by his son-in-law Mir Qasim.
1764
Mir Qasim tries to break free and is defeated, with the Mughal emperor and the Nawab of Awadh, at the Battle of Buxar.
1765
The Mughal emperor grants the Company the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha: the right to collect their revenue. A trading company is now, in practice, the government.
That is why the battle is famous. Plassey turned the East India Company from a merchant in Bengal into its master, and Bengal’s wealth paid for the Company’s conquest of the rest of India.
Plassey in Bengali memory
Bengal remembers Plassey through its people. In Bengali, a “Mir Jafar” is simply a traitor; you can call someone that today and everyone knows what you mean. Siraj, flawed as he was, became a tragic hero: Sachindranath Sengupta’s play Siraj-ud-Daulah made him one on the Bengali stage, and generations know his story from jatra and film.
Visiting Plassey and Murshidabad
- Palashi, in Nadia district, is on the Bhagirathi about 150 km north of Kolkata. The mango grove is long gone and the river has moved, but a memorial marks the battlefield.
- Murshidabad, Siraj’s capital, is an easy trip from there: see Hazarduari and Murshidabad.
- Khushbagh, the garden across the river from Murshidabad, holds the graves of Alivardi Khan and Siraj-ud-Daulah.
- Namak Haram Deorhi, the “traitor’s gate”, is the name Murshidabad still gives to the gateway of Mir Jafar’s palace.