British Behavior in India: A Contradiction.
The Two Faces of British “Valor”
Across the global empire, British “valor” adapted in accordance with local population and conditions.
In Tasmania, Australia, and the Americas, where indigenous populations were small and unfortified, British “valor” meant brute slaughter. It meant military hunting lines, scalp bounties, and smallpox blankets handed to unsuspecting guests.
In India, brute force against a population of 300 million was impossible. A military force of barely 100,000 British soldiers could never dream of executing the total demographic erasure they achieved in Tasmania or North America. Furthermore, it was a thriving economy which was generating huge revenue collected by local rulers.
So in India, British “valor” wore a different face: deceit, forgery, bribery, and treacherous friendship.
Arrival
The East India Company was created with a royal charter on September 24, 1599. Its main objective was to trade with India by exploring all means possible. For this, the company had to seek the permission of the Mughal Emperor on the throne of India at that time with a royal seat at Agra.
Philip Mason quotes the diary of Peter Mundy, an East India Company servant who traveled from Surat to Agra with a caravan of 109 bullock carts and 268 camels during the Great Famine of 1631–1633.
“When the first East India Company merchants arrived in Mughal India, they traveled upcountry in bullock carts along roads strewn with unburied corpses from recurring famines, only to step off the dusty tracks into imperial palaces where their boots sank into lush, four-inch-thick Persian carpets. They did not build the carpets, nor did they feed the starving. They simply walked over the corpses to sit on the carpet.”
Philip Mason had a narrative to prove that the British did good in India, but that is a half-truth. This one paraphrase shows the availability of huge manpower which could have been motivated to fight or work instead of dying in famines, and the existence of revenue sufficient to sustain a lifestyle which was luxurious beyond the standards of English Courts.
British merchants must have been salivating over both. In the years to come, they did exploit both factors. The mere promise of a salary under the right chain of command ensured them an endless supply of soldiers and revenue to become a formidable empire of the 20th century. But they forgot this underlying fact. It became their fall. Not just an exit from India but the fall of the empire itself.
To achieve this, the merchants were set to do anything to please the opulent local rulers.
Theft to Please Masters
The British did not conquer India on the battlefield. They conquered India inside palace courtyards by posing as humble merchants, trusted advisers, and protective friends. They entered as guests, offered help against local rivals, and then turned on their hosts the moment the time was ripe for takeover.
H.G. Keene, a former East India Company judicial officer, has documented in The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan various aspects of British conduct before they settled on the throne of India to rule it. They were so desperate to please the local rulers that they stooped to any length.
The Theft of Gwalior Fort (1780): When Warren Hastings wanted to capture the impregnable 200-foot rock fortress of Gwalior from Sindhia, Major William Popham did not fight an open battle. In August 1780, Popham hired a gang of local thieves to reveal a secret path up the cliff face. On a dark night, British troops wrapped their footwear in cotton to muffle their footsteps, followed the criminal guides up the rock wall, waited for the guards to fall asleep, and stole the fortress. British historians celebrated this burglary as “military genius,” demonstrating that British valor in India was literally the work of nighttime thieves.
The fortress of Gwalior was held by Mahadaji Shinde (Sindhia), the powerful Maratha ruler. The theft of Gwalior Fort was executed for Chatr Singh, the Jat ruler known as the Rana of Gohad. However, the victory was short-lived: Mahadaji Shinde soon marched back and recaptured the fortress from the Rana.
A careful study will reveal more such endeavors. But the underlying fact, carefully concealed by British historians and by Indian historians after 1947, is simple. The British were no military might. They were sweet-tongued sycophants ready to do anything to get a foothold in India to trade.
The Maratha Victory
In April 1752, Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao signed a historic pact with Mughal Emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur. The Marathas agreed to protect the Mughal Empire from all external foreign invasions (such as Ahmad Shah Abdali) and internal rebellions.
The Payment: In return, the Mughal Emperor granted the Marathas the legal right to collect taxes (Chauth and Sardeshmukhi) across 21 Mughal subahs (provinces), including Punjab, Multan, Rajputana, and Agra. After this pact, the Mughal Emperor officially became a Maratha protectorate.
The Empty Palace
In 1759, the throne of India was occupied by Alamgir II, who had succeeded the deposed Ahmad Shah Bahadur in 1754, under the nominal protection of the Maratha Empire.
In November 1759, the ruthless Grand Vizier of Delhi, Imad-ul-Mulk, grew terrified that Emperor Alamgir II was secretly plotting with the Afghans. Imad-ul-Mulk lured the Emperor to a palace outside Delhi under the pretext of meeting a holy Sufi saint, had him brutally assassinated, and threw his body onto the sands of the Yamuna River. Imad-ul-Mulk then set up a puppet figurehead named Shah Jahan III on the throne.
In January 1761, the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Marathas at the 3rd Battle of Panipat and occupied Delhi. Abdali ousted the assassin Imad-ul-Mulk and deposed the puppet Shah Jahan III. Before retreating back to Kabul, Abdali officially recognized Shah Alam II as the legitimate Emperor of Hindustan.
Because Shah Alam II was still wandering in the east (eventually falling into British hands at Allahabad after the Battle of Buxar in 1764), Abdali placed Shah Alam’s young son, Prince Jawan Bakht, on the throne as temporary Regent in Delhi.
In December 1771, Maratha general Mahadaji Shinde (Sindhia) marched an army to Allahabad, extracted Shah Alam II from British hands, and escorted him back to Delhi.
On January 6, 1772, Mahadaji Shinde re-seated Shah Alam II on the Peacock Throne in the Red Fort, establishing full Maratha military guardianship over the capital.
In 1784, Shah Alam II issued a further imperial decree formally appointing Mahadaji Shinde as the Vakil-i-Mutlaq (Plenipotentiary Vicegerent of the Empire) and Amir-ul-Umara (Commander-in-Chief).
This title gave the Marathas total legal, administrative, and military command over the entire Mughal realm. The Mughal Emperor remained the titular sovereign on paper, but Mahadaji Shinde was the actual ruler of North India.
Now let us revisit Allahabad in 1765 and note the developments there. It is important as this is how the British had their first foothold in India as its ‘legal’ ruler.
The Pretended Servants of the Emperor
In 1765, following the Battle of Buxar, Lord Clive met the fugitive Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II at Allahabad. Clive negotiated the Grant of the Deewani, an imperial decree that granted the British East India Company the perpetual right to collect all land revenues across Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.
In exchange, the British promised Shah Alam II an annual tribute of 26 lakhs of rupees and recognized him as the Emperor of Hindustan.
The British operated under a double deception. They posed as humble “servants” of the Mughal Emperor, striking coins in his name and running court proceedings under Mughal legal codes. But in reality, they were extracting tens of millions of rupees directly from Indian peasants, transferring the wealth back to London while leaving the local Nawab with the burden of governance without a single rupee of revenue.
When Shah Alam II left British protection in 1771 to return to Delhi, Warren Hastings unilaterally stopped paying the promised 26 lakhs annual tribute. Yet, while refusing to pay the Emperor, the British continued to collect Bengal’s taxes based on the very royal decree Shah Alam had granted them.
The Maratha Vacuum and the 1803 Slip-In
After the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the Mughal Empire was a ghost. The real military power in North India belonged to the Maratha Confederacy, led by the brilliant statesman Mahadaji Shinde (Sindhia).
As stated earlier, in 1771, Mahadaji Shinde escorted Shah Alam II back to Delhi and was granted the supreme title of Vakil-i-Mutlaq (Plenipotentiary Regent of the Empire).
However, Maratha indecisiveness and internal division created an administrative vacuum. The Maratha houses squabbled among themselves, failed to consolidate a unified central government over North India, and had employed European mercenary officers to command their armies.
The British did not break down the doors of Delhi; they waited for Maratha hesitation to create an opening. In 1803, General Lake defeated Sindhia’s army, whose commander-in-chief was General Perron (Pierre Cuillier-Perron), a French mercenary officer in Sindhia’s service. Keene records his salary. The troops themselves were Indian. Lake marched into Delhi, took control of the blind Emperor Shah Alam II, and declared the British to be his new “protectors.”
While Indian rulers fought over local titles, the British quietly took over the entire revenue machine of the subcontinent.
They entered India in 1599 as humble merchants seeking permission to trade. By 1803, without winning a single open battle of consequence, they had secured legal control over Bengal’s revenues through a forged imperial decree, installed themselves as the self-appointed protectors of a blind emperor in Delhi, and positioned their commercial machinery to drain the wealthiest civilization on earth.
The next chapter examines what the British did with that power after 1857, when the mask of humble service was dropped entirely.
References
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Keene, H.G. The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan. W.H. Allen & Co., London, 1876. (Primary account of the Deewani grant, Shah Alam II, the Maratha administration of Delhi, and the 1803 British entry.)
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Mason, Philip. The Men Who Ruled India, Vol. I. Jonathan Cape, London, 1953. (Quotes the diary of Peter Mundy describing the bullock cart journey from Surat to Agra during the Great Famine of 1631–1633.)