MM Rahmatullah: 23rd June is the Historical Palashi Day. This year marks the 264th anniversary of the Battle of Palashi. There has been a lot of emotional writing about the battle of Palashi. The amount of emotionless and objective writing is relatively low. The Battle of was fought between Nawab Sirajuddaula and the East India company on 23 June 1757. It lasted for about eight hours and the nawab was defeated by the company because of the treachery of his leading general Mir Jafar. Palashi`s political consequences were far-reaching and devastating and hence, though a mere skirmish, it has been magnified into a battle. It laid the foundation of the British rule in Bengal. For the English East India Company, Bengal was the springboard from which the British expanded their territorial domain and subsequently built up the empire which gradually engulfed most parts of India and ultimately many parts of Asia as well.

The Background The battle had a long background that could be traced from the beginning of the East India Company`s settlement in Bengal in early 1650s. The Mughal rulers of Bengal allowed the East India Company to settle in Bengal and trade free of duty on payment of an annual sum of three thousand taka. Within a few years of their settlement at hughli and kasimbazar the company`s trade began to expand rapidly both physically and in terms of capital investment. But their intrusion into the internal trade of Bengal became a cause of conflict between shaista khan, the Mughal subahdar, and the English in the last quarter of the 17th century. After Shaista Khan had left Bengal the English were allowed to settle in Calcutta, purchase the zamindari rights over the three villages of Kalikata, Govindapur and Sutanuti. They established a fort at Calcutta and named it fortwilliam.

The conspiracy and the subsequent Palashi `revolution` was not only engineered and encouraged by the British but they tried their best till the last moment before the battle to persuade the Indian conspirators to stick to the British `project`. The general notions that the conspiracy was `Indian-born`, that the British had no `calculated plotting` behind it, that they had little or no role at all in the origin and/or development of the conspiracy, that it was the `internal crisis` in Bengal which `inevitably brought in the British` and that the British conquest of Bengal was almost `accidental` are hardly tenable any more. The English won the victory at Palashi owing to the strength of their conspiracy leading to treason within Sirajuddaula`s camp. The defeat of the nawab was political and not a military one.