The secret behind success of British Raj

M Rajivlochan

This book has a wealth of historical detail, interesting personality vignettes and a good story that has been told well. It is fun reading. Here we learn that Robert Clive, after making his first fortune in India, returned to England to try his hand at politics and stood in elections. Had it not been for the skulduggery that ruined this attempt, Indian history may well have been different. 

We learn of the astonishing insularity and arrogance shown by Indians. Narayan Singh, an agent from Bengal to the English, noticed only their rudeness. “Traders, who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms”, was how he described the English to his masters, without providing any significant analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the company. 

Alivardi Khan, the Nawab of Bengal, was unaware of the British military adventures and, successes, in the Carnatic for five years. For all his villainy, Siraj-ud-Daula remained unconcerned about the equal and opposite villainy that the British might practise. The bravery of Prince Ali Gauhar Shah Alam and the resourcefulness of Alivardi Khan were no match for the devil-may-care attitude of Robert Clive or the relentless ability of Arthur Wellesley for violence. 

There are glimpses of English superiority in military matters. We are told that the success of the English East India Company was the success of its organisational abilities that was able to harness so many individual talents to one objective, the objective of victory and profit. Indians, in the meanwhile, had multiple objectives. Each of their effort was based on individual heroism, with no desire to coordinate with each other. 

Individual glory, as history tells us, is no match for good team work. Indians never realised this. As Major Hector Munro, who plucked victory from the jaws of defeat for the English company at the Battle of Buxar, said, “Regular discipline and strict obedience to orders is the only superiority that Europeans possess in this country”.

This book promises to describe the relationship between state authority and commercial prowess, but is scared of being dubbed immoral. That fear is mostly because there is little description about commerce in this book where the entire story is underpinned by great efforts to achieve commercial success. 

It is the military adventures of the company that attract the author’s attention. The company was first and foremost a business venture. Its unique organisation, based on the ability to record things in detail and, analyse these records for creating strategies, is what enabled it to out-manoeuvre all the other East India companies and Indian businesses. 

In addition, the company was able to create synergies between commercial strength and state power that Indians could not even imagine. It is a matter of detail that till 1750, the European presence in trade was small. All European companies put together accounted for, at best, one third of the Bengal trade for textiles, and up to 20 per cent of the trade in pepper in the Malabar. Asian traders accounted for the rest. Indian businesses and state authorities, knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing, were content to bribe each other. Bribery was the tool used by the house of Jagat Seth to incite the British to set up a military challenge to Siraj.

The house of Jagat Seth, the book tells us, was something of a king maker in mid 18th-century Bengal. But it does not tell us why they did not become kings themselves in the power vacuum in Bengal after the death of Aurangzeb. This is amazing since our own researches show that the rise of the house of Jagat Seth was mostly due to their ability to use the power of the Mughal state to ensure that money due to them by creditors was paid. 

What is wonderful is not that the English East India Company laid claim to empire in India; what is wonderful is that Indian merchants, who were richer, preferred to lay no claim. Might it be that Indian businessmen were and, still are, indifferent to the systematic use of the resources of the state to improve profits? That they presume bribery to be a good in itself?