WE CAN QUOTE from Jadunath Sarkar to summarise Murshid Quli Khan’s economic rape of Bengal.
[The] unceasing drain of silver from Bengal kept the volume of true money in circulation here extremely small and the price of local produce very low. Hence, it is no wonder that while Sebastien Manrique about 1638 found rice selling at Murshidabad at four to five maunds a rupee, ninety years later, in Murshid Quli’s time, the price of rice there was still … four maunds… The common people had no economic staying power, no capital, because they could not accumulate any true money or silver coins as savings, though the area under tillage had increased… The land revenue was forced up so high only by the heartless squeezing of the peasantry and inhuman torture... The pressure applied by the Nawab at the top naturally passed through the intermediate grades finally on to the actual cultivators, who were left with the bare means of existence… Thus, while the luxury of Delhi and Murshidabad was pampered, and Murshid Quli every year buried a new hoard in his treasure-vaults, the mass of the people browsed and died like human sheep.
It is these glittering treasure-vaults that Robert Clive found in Murshidabad thirty years after Murshid Quli died. And here is what Clive and his successors did with all this wealth.
The whole of this surplus national stock for sixty years was whisked away to Britain… and a generation later, the gilded pauper in the Murshidabad palace had to beg the Calcutta Government for relief from insolvency. That was the net gain of the Bengal people from Murshid Quli Khan’s and Alivardi’s rule.
This takes us back to Murshid Quli’s dreadful Ijāra system, which was singularly responsible for generating such copious amounts of wealth.
We’ve briefly mentioned Murshid Quli’s preference for hiring Hindus at all levels in his administration because they were highly educated, skilled and talented. They also brought two other prized qualifications to the table. One: they were masters of the Persian language, which was indispensable to the Mughal officialdom. Two, they were honest, hardworking and frugal as contrasted with Quli’s Muslim officers who pilfered state revenue with impunity.
In every sense, Murshid Quli Khan was directly responsible for the renewal of the Hindu political, economic and social power in Bengal. However, he wasn’t doing a favour to Hindus by appointing them to high positions. He was only serving his selfish interests, primarily motivated by his insatiable hunger for riches and power.
The revival of Hindu power in Bengal under Murshid Quli is an understudied chapter. Suffice to say that it proved rather enduring. In less than two decades, Hindus dominated all the top rungs of Bengal’s civil and even military services. They formed a new, powerful zamindari class that spilled over to the twentieth century until Communist rule decimated it. From Alivardi Khan’s regime onwards, a new rank of Hindu bureaucracy had been created. It was the pompous title, Rāy-i-Rāyān, the Chancellor of Exchequer. This term was a Sanskrit equivalent of the familiar Persian title, Khān-i-Khānān.
This emergent Hindu dominance under a Muslim Nawab included the whole of the Bengali Hindu society — Brahmanas, Vaidyas, Kayasthas and what Jadunath Sarkar calls the “confectioner castes.” By the early 19th century, several descendants of these classes called themselves as Rajas. Acharya Jadunath Sarkar makes a revealing observation in this regard.
So many Bengalis, of all the above three castes, claim descent from Rāy-i-Rāyāns that these ancestors must have been chancellors only to district magistrates… Kayasth Ghoshes of Gava (Barisal) are called Dastidars, from having once held charge of the lights of the Bengal fleet under the Nawabi. Old official titles like Bakhshi, (pay-master), Sarkar, Quanungo (keeper of revenue records), Shahna (police prefect), Chakladar, Tarafdar, Talukdar, Munshi, Lashkar, and Khan (!) are still borne by Bengali Hindu families, reminding us of their ancestors’ careers in the age of the Nawabs.
This is a good segue for examining the careers of some prominent Hindu Zamindars created by Murshid Quli Khan.
THE FIRST and the most powerful was Raghunandan. A Varendra Brahmana, he was the second son of Kamadev Moitra, a Tahsildar of the Puthia Raj dynasty which ruled Rajshahi (now in Bangladesh).
When he was a teenager, Raghunandan migrated to Murshidabad for better career prospects and soon got a clerical job in the revenue department. It didn’t take long for him to attract Murshid Quli’s attention. He took this talented boy under his wings and groomed him. Back then, Murshid was just a Diwan of the Bengal Subah. But when hostilities erupted between Murshid and Azim-us-Shan (this story has already been narrated earlier in this essay), Raghunandan stood rock-solid behind Quli.
And when Murshid Quli declared himself as the Nawab of Bengal, Raghunandan’s fortune soared. He became the Nawab’s most trusted confidant in financial matters. He reached the apex of his power when Quli allotted the full Zamindari of Bhushna Paragana. After this, Raghunandan asked and received permission from Murshid to establish a Raj (kingdom) of his own.
This was how the Natore Raj was founded. At the height of this Raj, Raghunandan ruled over half of (undivided) Bengal. It was the largest zamindari in the Bengal Subah. Thanks to the unshakeable confidence that Murshid reposed in him, Raghunandan was pretty much free to do what he wanted. In several farsighted moves, he transferred vast territories to his elder brother, Ramjivan.
However, he was also shortsighted in the patented manner of several early medieval Hindu kings who had failed to see the big picture and lost their dominions and lives to Muslim rulers. Thus, Raghunandan was responsible for the unfortunate downfall and death of a fellow Hindu Zamindar named Sitaram.
That story will be narrated in the next episode.
To be continued
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