"The Battle of Plassey (1757) thus marked beginning of political supremacy of the English East India Company in India." Critically examine.

Answer:

Plassey was militarily a skirmish rather than a battle, decided by conspiracy more than by arms, yet its political consequences were immense. It gave the Company effective control over the richest province of India and so began its transformation from trader into ruler.

Why it marked a beginning

• Siraj-ud-Daulah was defeated through the treachery of Mir Jafar and the bankers.
• Mir Jafar was installed as a puppet nawab wholly dependent on Company support.
• The Company gained the zamindari of the 24 Parganas and vast indemnities.
• Access to Bengal's revenues financed further conquest elsewhere in India.
• The 'plunder of Bengal' flowed to Britain and eliminated French influence in the east.

A critical qualification

• Supremacy was completed only at Buxar in 1764 and with the Diwani of 1765.
• Plassey conferred influence behind a nawab, whereas Buxar established legal authority.
• The Company remained formally a subject of the Mughal emperor for years afterwards.
• K.M. Panikkar nonetheless called it the beginning of a new epoch in Indian history.

Wider consequences

• The Company's servants amassed private fortunes through the inland trade.
• Dastak abuse ruined Indian merchants who paid duties their rivals escaped.
• The drain of Bengal's wealth contributed to the famine of 1770.
• Bengal's revenues financed the conquest of the rest of India.

The statement is therefore broadly justified, provided Plassey is read as a beginning and not a culmination. As historians observe, it was Buxar that gave the Company legal sovereignty, but it was Plassey that first placed the wealth of Bengal at its disposal and set the process irreversibly in motion.