Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c9.s6: § 19. Later friction between Nawab and Marathas
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c9.s6
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§ 19. Later friction between Nawab and Marathas
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Thus, one source of friction remained open. Another was that the Marāthas could never forget that the entire *subah* of Orissā as defined in the geography of the Mughal Empire had not been ceded to them, but its northernmost district Medinipur was retained by the Nawāb, and that district was a very convenient half way house for raids into Bengal and Bihār. It, therefore, became the ambition of the Marāthas, especially after the battle of Plassey had publicly demonstrated the weakness of the Nawāb's Government, to try to seize Medinipur as their legitimate due. This brought them into conflict with the English, who had now become guardians of the Nawāb's territory.
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A third cause of disagreement was the *chauth* of Bengal, twelve *lakhs* of Rupees a year. This was paid annually to the Marāthas by the Nawāb’s Government up to 1758. The English, having now taken charge of the defence of Bengal, withheld the *chauth* and opened negotiations with the Court of Nāgpur for a guarantee that if the money was paid no part of the Nawāb’s dominion would be troubled by a Marātha force. As that Court could give no really effective assurance, the *chauth* was not paid for some years after. This led to angry diplomatic protests and threats of invasion on the part of the Marāthas, and even a few incursions into the Medinipur and Bardwān districts during the interregnum between the downfall of the Nawāb’s independence and the open assumption of the Government of Bengal and Bihār by the English.
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Alivardi had made the treaty of 1751 with the Marāthas in the hope of giving peace and security to his subjects, but it did not immediately put an end to their misery. In the very year that the treaty was signed, the rice crop of Bengal totally perished in consequence of the failure of rain, and a terrible famine desolated the country. The French factory at Chandarnagar had great difficulty in procuring rice for their ocean-going ships. (*Correspondance du Conseil de Chandernagor avec divers, ii. 435.) True, all large scale invasions of Bengal and Bihār ceased, but Orissā remained the prey of roving bands of Marāthas, under no control of their king. Thus, in January 1753 we find the weavers at Balesar complaining of the great scarcity of rice and provisions of all kinds occasioned by the devastations of the Marāthas, who, six hundred in number, after plundering Balesar had gone to the Nilgiri hills. (Long, Selections, i. No. 110, Bengal Consult. 1 Feb. 1753.)
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Interference from the Peshwā’s side in the Marātha claims on Bengal aggravated Raghuji Bhonslé’s difficulties towards the end of his life. On 21 January 1754 (?) he writes to Sadāshiv Rāo Bhāo : “Raghunāth Rāo has sent his envoy from Hastināpur to Bengal, with a letter for Nawāb Alivardi Khan, asking him to send the *chauth* of Bengal for (the last) three years to him. Hence, he is quarrelling in my jurisdiction. You yourself settled the peace regarding Bengal, and yet his *wakil* has gone and disturbed my administration. Please write to forbid him and also tell Alivardi to act in the terms of the treaty signed.” [S. P. D. xx. 77.] Raghuji died on 14 Feb. 1755, and not as Grant Duff (ii. 74) asserts in March 1753. Jānoji succeeded him, but the royal house of Nāgpur soon fell into extreme poverty. (S. P. D., xx. 80, 103 and 104.)
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When the *chauth* began to fall into arrears from 1759, the Bardwān and Nadīā districts were again overrun by the Marāthas, and revenue collection by the English officers and the Bardwān Rājah's agents alike was stopped.
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Sheo Bhat Sathé, the Marātha governor of Orissā, was a man of restless enterprise and daring ambition. In December 1760, he burst into Bengal and made a dash towards Mungir, passing through the Bardwān and Birbhum districts, the Rājahs of which were suspected of having joined him. This flying column could not go further nor stay there long in fear of the English. Falling back on Medinipur, Sheo Bhat invested Mr. John Johnstone, the English collector of the place, on 22nd January 1761. Johnstone and his sepoys were hard pressed; but the Calcutta Council sent a relieving force with two guns, which promptly arrived on the scene (*c.* 7th February) and the Marāthas immediately decamped, without fighting, towards Katak. Foiled in the field, Sheo Bhat from Katak continued to write letters to Calcutta claiming the *chauth* of Medinipur, which he declared to be a part of the province of Orissā, and urging the withdrawal of the British troops from that town. In April and again in May, the Katak governor threatened invasion if the *chauth* of Bengal was not forwarded to him at once.* The English replied that the Nawāb was writing directly to Jānoji on the subject. (*Calendar P.C.*, i. Nos. 1024, 1082, 1099, 1169, 1109, 1189. *Long, Selections*, i. 552.) The threat was repeated next year in a letter from Sheo Bhat received on 16th February 1762. (*Calendar* i. 1445.) But the Bengal Government was now negotiating with the Court of Nāgpur, and a Marātha envoy Govind Rao Chitnavis arrived at Calcutta early in July to settle the question of *chauth*. Jānoji was distressed by not receiving the twelve lakhs annually from Bengal, and he wrote strongly urging immediate payment. (*Ibid.* 1561, 1536.)
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§ 20. *The English negotiate with Bhonsle for acquiring Orissa.*
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But at this time the friction between the English Company and Nawāb Mir Qāsim began to assume a serious form, and it culminated in war in June 1763. The English, therefore, found it necessary to secure the neutrality of Jānoji by all means. The Calcutta Council wrote to him "asking him to consider them as security for the *chauth* of Bengal and not to assist Mir Qāsim or to distress Mir Jafar. On account of these letters Jānoji refused the bills and money sent by Mir Qāsim, nor did he grant him an asylum in the *subah* of Katak, which the ex-Nawāb desired." (*C. Pers. Corr.* ii. 77.) Evidently some *chauth* was paid at this time, and then withheld, for Jānoji in his letter (received at Calcutta on 17th Feb. 1767) complains that "more than two years have passed without any money being sent to me." This refusal of the English to make a definite settlement of the *chauth* of Bengal and their trick in spinning out for eight years their negotiations for a treaty of friendship with him (as he complained to his envoy Gopālpuri, Gosāin, whose report was received at Calcutta on 16th Oct. 1767, *Calend.* ii. 1154), exasperated Jānoji. But he was weakened by internal dissensions in the Marātha State and too afraid of the all-conquering English army to risk a war in assertion of his treaty rights.
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∗ In a letter to the Company, received in Calcutta on 5th Oct. 1764, Bhavani Pandit, the *diwan* of Orissa, speaks of having received a letter from Janoji stating, "In the time of the former Nawab, the negotiations concerning the *chauth* were never brought to an issue without the approach of an army." (*Long, Selec.* No. 724.)
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In March 1768 Ganesh Shambhāji, "a man of great knowledge, perfectly polite in his manners" and amicable to the English, came as *subahdār* of Orissā. (*Calend.* ii. 892, 1027.)
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The new Chief of Katak, as in duty bound, began to demand the *chauth* from the English as a treaty obligation. But his efforts met with no more success than those of his rougher predecessor. This needs explanation.
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Not only had Orissā been an *annexe* to the *subah* of Bengal almost ever since its incorporation in the Mughal Empire under Akbar, but geography and the needs of territorial defence had decreed the union of the two. This need became all the stronger when the English secured possession of Bengal and the Madras Coast (the Northern Circars), with a foreign territory like Orissā severing the natural connection between the two. The military and political danger of this situation was apparent to the English from the very outset.
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Lord Clive during his second governorship opened negotiations with Jānoji for the cession of Orissā to the Company, on condition that the Company paid half the three years' arrears of *chauth* down and the other half as soon as the Marāthas would vacate the province, the English at the same time guaranteeing the regular payment of *chauth* (12 lakhs) in future. But Clive's offer to Jānoji was not accepted, and the scheme was dropped, though the English continued to cultivate the friendship of the house of Nāgpur, especially under Warren Hastings.
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Lord Cornwallis was so impressed by the value of Orissā to the Company "in its rendering the communication complete between Bengal and our dominions in the Karnātak" that he authorised C. W. Malet, the British envoy at the Marātha Court, to try to obtain this province in exchange for some other British territory with a money compensation for the difference in value between the two. To induce the Marāthas to give up the holy city of Jagannāth, he authorised Malet to agree to "grant particular privileges or even exemption from all Government duties to Marātha subjects on pilgrimage to Benāres, Gayā, and Allahabad, and to Jagannāth when surrendered to us." He even offered to furnish Malet "with the means of making very liberal presents in money, to any of the (Marātha) ministers who should give a decisive assistance in forwarding the accomplishment of the object in question". Ultimately Lord Cornwallis realised that it was "absolutely impossible ever to obtain Katak directly from the Bhonslé family by any other means than by force," and his negotiations, like Clive's before him, fell through. (Ross, Cornwallis Corres. i. 366, 411, 453.) That force it was left to Wellesley to apply.
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§ 21. Harm done by Maratha raids.
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The treaty made by Alivardi with the Marāthas and his payment of *chauth* for Bengal, though it did not bring perfect or immediate peace to Bengal and Bihār, achieved one happy result. It changed the character of the Bargi raids. These were no longer organised invasions decreed by their State, supported by all its resources, and led by its recognised chiefs. Henceforth they were mere predatory incursions by bands of unruly soldiers or some local officer eager for gain on their private account, whose act the Marātha Government disavowed but was not strong enough to prevent or punish. And not only were these raids in future fewer, but their range also was limited to the south-western fringe area of Bengal, namely the country west of Medinipur and south of Bardwān, which as late as 1775 was still marked "Impenetrable" in Rennell's survey map. Considerable harm, however, could be done even by such bands of Marātha soldiers gone out of control and acting as marauders. Warren Hastings* makes this clear.
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In proportion as the strength of the house of Nāgpur decayed through internal discord, lack of far-sighted statesmanship, and incapacity in the rulers, the power of the English increased through their successive triumphs in many a distant quarter of India. So great was the prestige of British arms and British statesmanship even in provinces untraversed by a single British soldier, that no Indian power except Tipu Sultān would willingly provoke an encounter with them. Hence, the most potent cause of the final release of these provinces from the long-drawn agony of Marātha incursions was the recognition of British paramountcy, in fact if not in theory, by the Indian potentates, and the first fruit of that paramountcy, namely *Pax Britannica*, which alone has made the birth of a new India possible.
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∗ Despatch on the Negotiations of 1781, dated 30 April, 1781, Forrest (London ed.) ii. 259.
Linked texts (1)
- Selections from the Peshwa Daftar — Marathi