Loyalty has to be earned
“A disgrace to faith, a disgrace to humanity, and a disgrace to the motherland,” Allama Iqbal had said of Mir Jafar, who deceived Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah in the Battle of Plassey against Robert Clive in 1757. His stronger army surrendered without fighting, Mir Jafar became the Nawab, and the move laid the foundation of British rule in India.
Two centuries later, his name is a key phrase in Pakistan’s political rhetoric. All key political and military leaders of Pakistan have been accused of treason, especially those who oppose the military establishment. The most recent recipient of the title is Hussain Haqqani.
Haqqani is back in Pakistan with his side of the story. But Mir Jafar is dead. Does that mean we should not look at the situation he was in? Is loyalty essentially good and defection always bad? Even in the case of Shah Mahmood Qureshi?
Mir Jafar’s boss Siraj-ud-Daulah was a 20-year-old drunken opium addict and a cruel tyrant.
“Mirza Mohammed Siraj, a youth of seventeen years, had discovered the most vicious propensities, at an age when only follies are expected from princes,” British historian Robert Orme wrote about Siraj-ud-Daulah’s youth in Ali Vardi Khan’s palace.” (History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan from 1745)
“Taught by his minions to regard himself as of a superior order of being, his natural cruelty, hardened by habit, in conception he was not slow, but absurd; obstinate, sullen, and impatient of contradiction.” During his youth in Ali Vardi Khan’s palace, Siraj-ud-Daulah “lived in every kind of intemperance and debauchery, and more especially in drinking spiritous liquors to an excess, which inflamed his passions and impaired the little understanding with which he was born,” Omre said.
Orme was no neutral observer. He had been a member of the St Fort St George Council in Madras and was instrumental in sending Robert Clive with a military expedition to Calcutta to avenge what is known as the Black Hole incident of 1756. After recapturing Calcutta, Siraj-ud-Daulah had put 146 British men in a 20 square foot closed chamber. Of them, 123 had died by the next morning. Reports of the incident are perhaps exaggerated, but even the French, who were friends with Siraj, did not have a favourable opinion of him.
“Before the death of Ali Vardi Khan the character of Siraj-ud-Daulah was reported to be one of the worst ever known,” Jean Law, who knew Siraj as chief of the French East India company in the West Bengal city of Cossimbazar, wrote in his memoir.
“In fact, he had distinguished himself not only by all sorts of debauchery, but by a revolting cruelty. The Hindu women are accustomed to bathe on the banks of the Ganges. Siraj-ud-Daulah, who was informed by his spies which of them were beautiful, sent his satellites in disguise in little boats to carry them off. He was often seen, in the season when the river overflows, causing the ferry boats to be upset or sunk in order to have the cruel pleasure of watching the terrified confusion of a hundred people at a time, men, women, and children, of whom many, not being able to swim, were sure to perish.”
The British would refuse him admission into their Cossimbazar factory and their houses, he wrote, “because, in fact, this excessively blustering and impertinent young man used to break the furniture, or, if it pleased his fancy, take it away.”
A Muslim historian of the time, Ghulam Husain Tabatabai, said the following about Siraj-ud-Daulah: “Making no distinction between vice and virtue, he carried defilement wherever he went, and, like a man alienated in his mind, he made the house of men and women of distinction the scenes of his depravity, without minding either rank or station. In a little time he became detested as Pharaoh, and people on meeting him by chance used to say, ‘God save us from him!’”
Peter Harrington defended Siraj-ud-Daulah (Plassey 1757: Clive of India’s Finest Hour) saying Siraj’s “alleged pastime of pulling the wings off birds or watching boats deliberately overturned so that he could watch the occupants drown” were not true. But he did quote Muslim historian Ghulam Hussain Salim:
“Owing to Siraj-ud-Daulah’s harshness of temper and indulgence, fear and terror had settled on the hearts of everyone to such an extent that no one among his generals of the army or the noblemen of the city was free from anxiety. Amongst his officers, whoever went to wait on Siraj-ud-Daulah despaired of life and honour, and whoever returned without being disgraced and ill-treated offered thanks to God.”
Why would Mir Jafar want to be loyal to such a tyrant? Siraj-ud-Daulah only “displayed facets of a character common to oriental dynastic politics of the period”, Harrington says in his defence. That might be true, but then, so did Mir Jafar.
The writer is a media and culture critic and works at The Friday Times. He tweets @paagalinsaan and gets email at harris@nyu.edu