Encyclopedia of Bengali Language and Literature
The Fall of Sirajuddaula and the Rise of British Bengal
Source: Encyclopedia of Bengali Language and Literature
The downfall of the tyrannical Sirajuddaula (Siraj-ud-daula) forms one of the most turbulent chapters in the history of Bengal. Mirza Muhammad Sirajuddaula, also known as Shuja-ud-Daula, was born in 1733 and met a tragic death on 2 July 1757 at only twenty-four. He was the grandson and chosen successor of Alivardi Khan. In 1746, when Alivardi marched against the Marathas, young Siraj was appointed governor of Patna, but his tenure soon became clouded by financial misconduct. He extorted money illegally, particularly from Jain and Bengali financiers and money-changers. Displeased, Alivardi removed him from Patna and placed him in charge of the naval establishment in Dhaka.
In 1717, the capital of Bengal had shifted from Munger to Murshidabad (Gaur), a city where the Jain community wielded considerable influence through their control of money-changing and financial enterprises. The regions of Munger, Rajmahal, and Patna were at the time densely populated by Bengalis, who were known as stalwart warriors and shrewd traders. This area had long been a vital nucleus of Shashankagaur.
With Alivardi Khan’s death on 10 April 1756, disorder engulfed Bengal. Taking advantage of the uncertainty, Shah Quli Khan Mirza Muhammad Siraj seized Murshidabad and proclaimed himself Nawab of Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha. Ghaseeti Begum (Meherunnesa Begum), Alivardi’s eldest daughter, harboured deep hostility toward Siraj. Rajballabh, the treasurer of the Dhaka Nawab family and one of her closest allies, sent his son Krishnaballabh to Calcutta with enormous sums of money to procure arms. From Kidderpore (Now in Kolkata), he collected weapons through Company merchants and forwarded them to Ghaseeti Begum. Additional military supplies were drawn from the cantonment at Shaktigarh in the Burdwan estate. These armaments were stored at the Durga-Makua thana in present-day Howrah before being transported via the Ganges to Gorabazar.
On 18 June 1756, Siraj attacked Calcutta and by 20 June captured the fort at Baj-Baj. After taking his seat in the court within the fort, he summoned Umichand and Krishnaballabh. Leaving Manikchand in charge of the fort, he returned to the capital. But soon Robert Clive arrived from Madras and recaptured it. On 7 February 1757, Siraj concluded a treaty with the British at Alipore, where his administrative headquarters once stood—today the Alipore Civil Court Complex.
In the Metiaburuz area stood a small fort or redoubt belonging to the Nawab, accompanied by an artillery division. Strategically, this post was crucial because it also housed a customs-collection center. It was a hub for trade and communication along the river routes linking Calcutta and Murshidabad. Commercial vessels passing along the Ganges paid duties to the Nawabi administration here, and the fort with its cannons protected the channel. Jahangir had originally built the fortifications of Metiaburuz, including the artillery outpost, to counter Portuguese pirates who prowled the Bengal coast and to regulate the movement of Portuguese ships traveling toward Bandel.
Mir Jafar, the principal military supplier of Siraj’s forces and head of the Palashi cantonment, occupied a central position in the Nawab’s army. Command of the troops rested with Raydurlabh, Yar Latif Khan, Mir Madan, Mohanlal, and the French commander, Monsieur Sinfray (Saffren). Yet Siraj’s feeble leadership, inept governance, and acute financial distress gradually alienated them. He never inspected his army, choosing instead to move around with personal guards and non-military armed retinues. Local sikdars arranged his lodging and meals. He carried a pistol but never practised with it.
Though uneducated, Siraj lacked even the rudimentary sense of statecraft possessed by the Mughal emperor Akbar. Despite Alivardi’s repeated urgings, he neglected military training. Mir Madan—“Mir” signifying commander—was a Hindu convert to Islam and a formidable warrior and swordsman. Alivardi had asked him to train Siraj, but Siraj insulted him and drove him away. Nevertheless, Mir Madan fought valiantly at Plassey.
Siraj was notorious for drunkenness, indulgence, and cruelty. His reputation was further tarnished by accusations of abducting Hindu women from the Nadia–Shrikrishnanagar region. This enraged Raja Krishnachandra of Krishnanagar (1710–1783), who thereafter maintained clandestine contacts with Clive in Calcutta. Siraj had almost no administrative capability. He could not read Bengali, spoke Hindustani, and could only decipher a little Persian. He relied on his wife to read imperial documents sent from Delhi but never issued replies.
His daily routine was idle and undisciplined: rising at 9 a.m., holding court from noon to 2 p.m., and refusing to conduct any political or military discussions after dusk, reserving the evenings for pleasure. He frequently borrowed money from the influential Jagat Seth banking family to ease financial shortages. When they once refused him a loan of three crore rupees, he slapped the patriarch. Outraged, the Jagat Seths conspired with Mir Jafar, Raja Krishnachandra, and Robert Clive. The Seths promised Clive prodigious financial support should he move against Siraj, including funds to repair the Calcutta fort and even money for Clive to purchase property in London.
Ghaseeti Begum became aware of this through Rajballabh. She spoke with Mir Jafar and sent a letter to the Jagat Seths seeking their assistance.
Meanwhile, Britain’s attention in 1756 was not confined to India. In its American colonies, secret resistance against British rule was germinating. King George II occupied the throne. A few decades later, in 1783, those colonies formally rebelled and emerged as the United States.
Mir Jafar stood in stark contrast to Siraj. Physically robust and resolute, he had undergone rigorous training under Mir Madan. He never drank, nor did he engage in immoral acts toward Hindu women. He possessed keen knowledge of revenue administration and considerable insight into English munitions factories. He was linguistically sophisticated—fluent in Persian and Bengali and competent in English. His religious temperament was unusually broad: he bowed in Hindu temples, offered gifts there, and still performed the five daily prayers. He enabled Vaishnava communities to settle in Malda and Behrampore. His financial alliance with the Jagat Seths was deep, and through them, he also cultivated links with Delhi.
He often rode on horseback from the Palashi camp to Burdwan, resting at a place later known as “Ghodadouṛ Choti,” near today’s Burdwan Police Lines. From there, he visited Kanchannagar to meet the Burdwan Raja. Under him lay Shaktigarh and Panagarh cantonments, crucial to the military strength and defensive structure of the Burdwan estate. He built a munitions factory at Pichkuri’s slope and gifted it to the Raja of Burdwan.
Siraj’s debts, inexperience, and oppressive governance steadily isolated him. Local landlords, Mughal mansabdars, and merchant classes turned against him. Within a single year, he dismantled the administrative framework established by Murshid Quli and Alivardi.
Because of Siraj’s violence and erratic rule, Mir Jafar—born in 1691 and dying in 1765—never truly supported him. Importantly, Mir Jafar was not Siraj’s slave or loyal subordinate as Mir Madan had been. He financed his own mercenary troops and was entitled to payment from Siraj for their deployment, but Siraj defaulted three times.
Bankrupt in every sense, Siraj ran his nizamat on heavy loans from the Jagat Seths, the Raja of Burdwan, and Maharaja Krishnachandra. He had no control over the Dhaka diwani. Revenues collected in Dhaka lacked proper accounting. His tribute to the Mughal court was paid using revenue from Bihar and Odisha. Meanwhile, local landlords rebelled one after another, and Mughal mansabdars grew furious with his misrule.
In this climate, Siraj was defeated on 23 June 1757 in the brief Battle of Plassey. From early morning the sky remained overcast; the battle began at eight and ended around six in the evening. Torrential rain soaked the battlefield. Robert Clive personally led the English forces, whereas Siraj did not leave his camp even once. He merely issued occasional orders, while his wife, Lutfaunnisa, astonishingly remained by his side during the battle.
Though Siraj commanded Mir Jafar to join the fight, Mir Jafar stayed passive. He demanded no dues and made no move. His thirty thousand troops stood silently at a distance, spectators rather than participants. Mir Madan, already aged, fought with unwavering courage, but when Ghaseeti Begum’s agents severed Siraj’s supply lines, the Nawab’s forces collapsed. Siraj assumed Mir Jafar would once again fight for him as he had during the Calcutta campaign, but this hope proved delusional.
Siraj did not engage in combat; he neither attacked the English nor fired a cannon, nor killed a single English soldier. His favourite horse had fallen ill, and, ignorant of its care, he did not mount it.
After the defeat, Siraj fled with Lutfaunnisa in disguise to Murshidabad and then set off alone toward Patna. On 4 July, he was captured and killed by Mir Jafar’s son, Miran. Murshidabad was then plundered extensively. A man named Ramcharan Ray, a clerk serving under Clive, seized the moment to loot three boatloads of gold, silver, ornaments, and household treasures from Alivardi’s palace. Travelling along the Saraswati River, he reached Andul in Howrah, where he established a zamindari. His descendant Rajnarayan later built a palace there, still known as the Andul Rajbari.
After Siraj’s fall, his wife Lutfaunnisa faced a shadowed fate. Ghaseeti Begum manipulated her and fled with a portion of the Nawabi treasury to Dhaka. There, Miran attacked them, recovered the treasury, and Ghaseeti was cast into the Padma River. Legends say she cursed Clive before dying, reproaching him for failing to protect her family.
Later, Robert Clive brought Lutfaunnisa and her daughter back from Dhaka and resettled them in Murshidabad. She lived there on a pension granted by Mir Jafar until her death in 1790.
Siraj was remembered as a pleasure-driven, administratively inept, financially ruined, and militarily incompetent ruler. Without foresight, he dismissed Alivardi’s capable officers and replaced them with his own favourites. He expelled Ghaseeti from Alivardi’s palace and forced her to live alternately in Berhampore, Patna, or Dhaka. Ghaseeti, intelligent and graceful, had learned swordsmanship from Mir Madan, Sanskrit from scholars, and even minting techniques from the Jagat Seths’ brother. She possessed every qualification to serve as Bengal’s vicereine.
She became a principal architect of Siraj’s downfall because she believed her husband had been far more capable and that, as Alivardi’s daughter, she possessed the rightful claim to the nizamat. Owing to its political obligations, the British installed Mir Jafar as Nawab after the war.
Mir Jafar died on 5 February 1765.
In 1760, at the age of thirty-five, Clive returned to England laden with immense wealth—at least £300,000—making him one of the richest men of his era. He received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree from Oxford. On 22 November 1774, at his mansion in Berkeley Square, London—purchased with funds supplied by the Jagat Seths—Clive died by cutting his own throat with a knife in his hand at the age of forty-nine.
The death of the oppressive Sirajuddaula on 2 July 1757 inaugurated a new epoch in Bengal’s history. In 1764, Maharaja Krishnachandra Ray of Nadia organised a grand Vedic Vajapeya sacrifice. At a time of political collapse, weakening Nawabi authority, and rising English power, he sought to revive ancient Vedic traditions. He invited kings, landlords, and aristocrats from across Bengal, as well as Nawab Mir Jafar. Though Mir Jafar did not attend personally, he sent a white horse and a gold-hilted sword as a gesture of courtesy. Invitations reached the eminent Vedic scholars of Anga, Banga, Kalinga, Rarh, Gaur, Kashi, Dravida, Utkala, Kashmir, and other regions.
Source: অত্যাচারী সিরাজউদ্দৌলার পতন
বাংলা ভাষা এবং সাহিত্যের বিশ্বকোষ (Encyclopedia of Bengali Language and Literature)