IN LESS THAN half a century after Thomas Roe received a trading Farman from Jahangir, the English East India Company had steadily expanded its operations and extended its influence along the East Coast — mainly in Madras, Machilipattanam and Bengal; it also had a flourishing factory in Surat. In the same interim, the Mughal Empire had witnessed the fall of two Sultans and the rise of its most bigoted monarch, who underwrote its ruin.
Every fort, every factory and every trading post that the East India Company set up was akin to an independent republic run by rules, regulations and laws designed in England. In India, the Company operated through a maze of Courts and Committees answerable only to the Directors sitting in London. Its Indian partners and employees were bound to the Company’s laws and not to those of the Mughals or other Indian kings in whose domains the EIC functioned. The EIC’s officials stationed in India were also empowered to take penal action — including torture and the death sentence — against Indian citizens in its employ. This naturally led to frequent, violent clashes between the EIC’s men and the locals.
The story narrated in this essay series relates to one such clash that occurred in 1673 and dragged on till 1676. Ever since, it attained widespread notoriety as The Case of Raghu the Poddar in the annals of the EIC and in the public memory of Bengal. The story is instructive at multiple levels and has a contemporary touch to it.
In the 1660s, the nerve-center of the EIC was Fort St. George, Madras, although its forays in Bengal were gradually producing fruits. Aurangzeb had just taken power but Bengal was a torrid mess and he was in no hurry to fix it as long as its governors deposited money into his imperial treasury. They were fabulously corrupt, depraved and ran the province like their personal fiefdom, selling Farmans and demanding extortionate bribes from European traders.
In that decade, the Dutch VOC, although late to the game, made impressive inroads and became formidable competitors to the EIC. In 1663, Wouter Schouten, a Dutch surgeon, described the VOC’s factory at Chinsurah as follows:
There is nothing here in Hooghly…that dazzles more than the Dutch lodge. It is situated on a remarkable square at a musket-shot’s range from the large river, the Ganges, in order to not be washed away. The lodge resembles more of a robust castle: its walls and bastions are carved out elegantly of fine stones…There are also stone warehouses, where both foreign as well as local commodities are stored daily… We strolled through the nice pavements and reached the beautiful and densely populated villages. The English were building their new lodge here, as the older one with its houses, walls and everything else was eroding by bits and pieces, due to the strong currents of the Ganges, every day.
In other words, Mughal-ruled Bengal had become a trade war-zone for transcontinental European corporations. By the 1670s, the Dutch and the English were cutting each others’ throats.
In 1672, a Dutch VOC official imprisoned a local Bengali businessman who owed them considerable money. Even worse, his men humiliated and “drubbed” the businessman’s wife who “so much resented her shame, that she took poison thereupon and died.”
All hell broke loose.
The provincial head of Hooghly, Diwan Balchand issued an angry Mazhar and sent it to Shaista Khan, the Governor of Dacca. Retaliation was swift. Shaista Khan halted the VOC’s business for five months, cut off all food supplies to the VOC and captured its employees. In the end, the Dutch VOC coughed up ₹ 150,000 in fines plus ₹ 200,000 as bribe after which things returned to normal.
The British EIC was quick to learn an invaluable lesson from this incident: don’t mess with the locals even if they are your meanest servants. The lesson came handy in settling the case of Raghu the Poddar.
1. Raghu the Poddar: Cashkeeper at the EIC’s post in Kasim Bazar; from 1671 - 73
2. Anant Ram = A House Broker at the EIC, Kasim Bazar; enemy of Raghu
3. Murad Chand and Neem Chand: Raghu’s business partners
4. Vincent Mathias = Chief of the EIC, Kasim Bazar
5. John Marshall = Vincent’s second-in-command
6. Balchand = The provincial Diwan of Hooghly
7. Joseph Hall = A powerful official in the EIC stationed in Balasore; rival of Vincent Mathias
8. Streynsham Master = Agent of the EIC’s factories in Machilipattanam and Bengal; the man who adjudicated the Case of Raghu the Poddar.
The word Poddar is now a generic surname but it originally meant cashier or treasurer. Raghu was employed as the cashkeeper from 1671-73 when Vincent Mathias had been elevated as the chief of the EIC’s post in Kasim Bazar. Raghu also owned a small shop that dealt in odds and ends. The previous cashkeeper was Anant Ram who bore a grudge against Raghu for taking his job. He silently swore revenge and bided his time.
In 1673, Vincent and his deputy, John Marshall levelled charges of theft and misappropriation against Raghu. Specific charges included shortage of cash “delivered into his charge,” “another Accompt [account] of Cash which the said Podaur [Poddar] was charged with in the Companys bookes,” and the abuse of “the company in the Saile [sale] and Mintage of Silver at Rajmahal.”
Several interesting aspects related to these charges are revealed in the facts of the case. First, “the whole amount of the deficit is nowhere stated.” Second, Raghu had taken the EIC’s silver along with his partners, Murad Chand and Nem Chand in December 1672 and given it for minting. The silver was returned in June 1673. Third, the shortage of cash was “₹ 818 of which Rs. 150 had been recovered by August, 1673.”
August turned out to be fateful for Raghu the Poddar.
When Vincent’s repeated requests for the balance amount were met with evasion, he decided to adopt harsher measures. One day, he summoned both Raghu and his son to his office and repeatedly flogged the son with a Chabuk because Raghu was an old and frail man. Raghu pled with Vincent to give him more time and promised to pay the balance in instalments. Vincent relented because he feared that further violence might lead to the Dutch-like situation narrated earlier in this essay.
He entrusted the recovery of the money to the selfsame Anant Ram, who finally got the chance that he was awaiting.
AUGUST 21, 1673.
At dawn, Vincent Mathias, John Marshall and another official named Richard Edwards left Kasim Bazar for some work. They were slated to return the same evening.
The EIC’s factory was now inhabited by an official named George Knipe and John Naylor and Richard Mosely, both of who were silk dyers. They summoned Raghu to the factory. When Raghu arrived, Knipe asked him to test the value of “two sorts of gold.” Interestingly, the gold was brought by none other than Anant Ram.
Raghu examined the gold and declared his verdict: “there was two rupees [or 12.5 per cent] difference per tola of the two sorts of gold.” With that, he had neatly fallen into Anant Ram’s trap. He accused Raghu of insulting his honour and demanded him to settle his dues on the spot. After much back and forth, Anant Ram ordered guards to seize Raghu and bind him in fetters. And then he did something worse: “with a small switch [a wooden stump] of about half an inche in circumference, [Raghu] received some blowes on the soles of his feet..” After this, Raghu was kept captive for more than an hour and then released.
When Vincent returned in the evening, Raghu and his business partners greeted him at the factory gate but mentioned not a word about the humiliating treatment he had received.
In the wee hours of August 22nd, Vincent and Marshall were rudely awoken by the news that Raghu the Poddar had died at 3 A.M. By the time the news sunk in, Kasim Bazar was abuzz with the rumour that Raghu had either committed suicide or had instructed his partners to poison him; suicide was a time-honoured Hindu custom to avenge an unprovoked insult.
Now, Anant Ram, Vincent and by extension, the EIC were in line of fire.
What happened next will be narrated in the next episode of this series.
To be continued
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