“When the nationalist movement was looking for icons, Siraj became the icon of the last independent Nawab of India and Mir Jafar the opposite,” says historian Sekhar Badopadhyay who has authored the book, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India (2004). He explains the “political mythology” thus: “The thing is that nationalism in the modern sense of the term was not there during the Plassey incident. Mir Jafar’s actions had more to do with the internal politics inside the court of Murshidabad and less to do with betraying the nation.”

Politics in Bengal before Plassey

The Bengal subah was the largest and by far the richest subdivision of the Mughal empire, and Murshidabad was its capital. As noted by historian William Dalrymple in his book, The Anarchy (2020), Murshidabad was one of the largest cities in Bengal, its population by some estimates being close to that of London. Under Nawab Alivardi Khan who ruled Bengal between 1740 to 1756, Bengal is known to have experienced a ‘golden age’. “Bengal’s revenues had risen by 40 percent since the 1720s- and one single market in Murshidabad was said alone to handle 65,000 tons of rice annually,” writes Dalrymple. Further, the region’s export products like sugar, opium, indigo as well as textiles produced by its one million weavers were being consumed all over the world.

For most of the early part of the 18th century, a feud was brewing between the English East India Company (EIC) and the Nawab of Bengal over the right to duty-free trade in Bengal granted to the Company by the Mughal emperor. This right had been granted by emperor Aurangzeb through a farman in 1690 in return for an annual payment of Rs 3000. For the EIC, trade from Bengal comprised nearly 60 per cent of the English imports from Asia. After the death of Aurangzeb though, and more so with the ascendancy of Alivardi Khan’s predecessor Murshid Quli Khan as the Nawab of Bengal in 1717, the Mughal farman came to be severely criticised. The Nawab felt robbed of his own state’s revenues by this arrangement and he refused to extend the provision of duty-free trade to the Company officials. What followed was rampant corruption and misuse of dastaks (trade permits) on the part of Company officials.

Adding colour to this economic tussle was the War of the Austrian Succession that broke out in Europe in the 1740s and led to new hostilities developing between the British and the French, both of whom were trading along the Bay of Bengal at the time. Alivardi Khan had kept both these powers under control and forbidden them from any open hostilities. The British, apprehensive of the Nawab’s capability to protect them from a French onslaught, however, had begun fortifying Calcutta flouting Khan’s orders.

The conflict came to a boil in 1756 when 23-year-old Siraj-ud-Daulah succeeded to the throne. While Alivardi Khan’s rule was termed the region’s ‘golden age’, his grandson Siraj-ud-Daulah was hated by almost the entire Murshidabad court. Dalrymple, in his book, writes that “not one of the many sources for the period — Persian, Bengali, Mughal, French, Dutch or English — has a good word to say about Siraj.”

Ghulam Hussain Khan, a contemporary court historian and relative, wrote: “His (Siraj-ud-Daulah’s) character was a mix of ignorance and profligacy… The grandees and commanders had already conceived a dislike of the prince on account of his levity, his harsh language, and the hardness of his heart.”

Upon coming to power, Siraj-ud-Daulah had alienated some of the most important members of the Murshidabad court, most important among them being the Jagat Seths, the great bankers of Bengal. The Jagat Seths, through their machinations, had brought Alivardi Khan to the throne. It was well known that anybody who desired to rule Bengal did well by cultivating Seths’ favour. Siraj-ud-Daulah did just the opposite by getting into a conflict with them early on during his reign.

Then there was Ghasiti Begum, the eldest daughter of Alivardi Khan and Siraj-ud-Daulah’s aunt. Being childless, the begum and her husband Nawazish Khan had adopted Siraj-ud-Daulah’s elder brother Ikram ud-Dualah, who would have been the heir to the throne had he not died of smallpox. Given the reputation that Siraj-ud-Daulah held in the court, most people, including the Company, had hoped Alivardi Khan would appoint his son-in-law as his successor. Unfortunately, though, Nawazish Khan too died of grief soon after the death of his adopted son. Consequently, Siraj-ud-Daulah was declared the Nawab, much against the wishes of his aunt. One of the first things Siraj-ud-Daulah did after his grandfather passed away was to attack the palace of the Begum, killing or disarming her household troops and seizing all her possessions.

The powerful Punjabi Khatri banker Omichund and Raja Krishnachandra Ray of Nadia, who was fashioning himself as the sole monarch of Bengal, too disliked the new Nawab. “Siraj was a self-assertive, young nawab, and being so, the older aristocracy within the court could not accept him,” explains Bandopadhyay.

Mir Jafar, who was related to Siraj-ud-Daulah by blood and was his military general, was part of a large group of court officials and relatives who were aggrieved by Siraj’s accession. Mir Jafar’s resentment was a product of feeling sidelined despite having supported Siraj-ud-Daulah’s military attack against the Company in Fort William, just a few months before the Battle of Plassey. Mir Jafar too dreamt of being the Nawab.

“If I were to apply the logic of per capita accountability in the entire plot against Siraj, Mir Jafar would not appear to have had the strongest agency,” says Arup K Chatterjee, Professor at OP Jindal Global University. “Rather the per capita agency would rest with the Jagat Seths and Ghasiti Begum.” Chatterjee explains that the reason why Mir Jafar came to be held responsible for the betrayal of Siraj had more to do with the fact that he was closest to him. Also, unlike the other conspirators, he received Company protection after Plassey.

Mir Jafar in the Battle of Plassey

Amid this raging internal politics in Murshidabad, the threat of British expansion had been looming on the horizon. The new fortifications in Calcutta were a challenge to the authority of the Nawab. When the British refused to adhere to the warnings of the Nawab, the latter showed his strength by attacking the English factory at Kasimbazar. On June 20, 1856, Siraj-ud-Daulah marched to Calcutta with a troop of 70,000 men to conquer Fort William.

His quick move took the English completely by surprise. Once inside the fort, Siraj-ud-Daulah’s forces plundered everything they could set their eyes on. The British were decisively defeated and the subsequent imprisonment of prisoners of war by Siraj-ud-Daulah’s forces inside the fort came to be remembered infamously as the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’. While recent historians have debunked the exaggerated Company accounts of the Black Hole incident, what cannot be disputed is that the attack by Siraj-ud-Daulah led to the EIC losing its most lucrative trading station.

“The event generated howls of righteous indignation for several generations among the British in India and 150 years later was still being taught in British schools as demonstrative of the essential barbarity of Indians and illustrative of why British rule was supposedly both necessary and justified,” writes Dalrymple.

Within a year, the Company retaliated under the military authority of a young and ambitious Robert Clive who had arrived from Madras after capturing the Maratha fortress at Gheriah. The Company was also aware of the disaffected faction inside the Nawab’s court and did not waste time leveraging this internal disunity. Together they started to plot a conspiracy against the Nawab. On January 7, 1757, Clive declared war on Siraj-ud-Daulah in the name of the Company.

Modern historians have long debated the motives of the British as well as the court faction that led to the Battle of Plassey. Although nationalist history writing portrayed Mir Jafar as the traitor whose betrayal gave British the control over the Indian subcontinent, there were historians such as Rajatkanta Ray who were of the view that plotters inside the Murshidabad court had no intention of founding British rule in India but were rather interested only in their political futures.

Mir Jafar’s self-interest in the entire matter becomes evident because he was reluctant to give his word to Clive till the very last moment. “He was an indecisive and dicey character. He kept Clive hanging in the air till the very end and would have undoubtedly shifted sides over to Siraj if he saw the Nawab winning,” says Tathagatha Neogi, Bengal heritage expert and founder of The Immersive Trails, a Kolkata based heritage walk organisation.

At the same time, Ghasiti Begum and the Jagat Seth Mahtab Chand, who were acting in their self-interest against Siraj-ud-Daulah, were instrumental in instigating Mir Jafar. “Since Ghasiti Begum could not fight on the battlefield, she used Jafar as the puppet,” says Chatterjee. The Jagath Seth on the other hand persuaded and planned with Siraj-ud-Daulah’s advisors not to ally with the French, who could have otherwise supported the Nawab in the battle against the British.

Others like historian Sushil Chaudhury argue in a paper written in 1998 that contrary to popular belief that it was the “Indian conspirators who invited the British to help them in deposing the young Nawab”, records of the war show that “it was the British who were too anxious to bring about the revolution by overthrowing Siraj-ud-Dualah.” He writes: “The British tried their best till the last moment before the battle of Plassey to persuade the disgruntled courtiers of the Nawab to stick to the British project of a revolution.”

Chatterjee points to the role that the Armenians also played in the fall of Siraj-ud-Daulah. The Armenians were a trading community who had fled persecution in Persia and had been settling in India in large numbers since the 16th century. Since the emergence of the English in the trading scene of India, they were trying to anglicise themselves to please the dominant colonial power. “Since the Black Hole incident, the Armenians gathered intelligence for the British and supplied their troops with ration and garrison,” explains Chatterjee. Moreover, being local moneylenders and traders, they also had a hold on the sentiments of the local population towards the Nawab. “Essentially, the Armenians were the entity that led Jafar to believe that the circumstances were not in favour of Siraj and that the kingdom would face rebellion under any circumstances. So be it an honourable battle,” Chatterjee adds.

In a detailed recounting of the battle of Plassey in his book, Dalrymple writes that as Clive marched towards Murshidabad in mid-June, he began to be “increasingly nervous about the ominous silence from the plotters.” Several of his letters to Mir Jafar, seeking assurance of support in the battle, went unanswered.

On June 21, when the Company army was just a day’s march away from Plassey where Siraj-ud-Daulah’s large battalion of 50,000 soldiers had entrenched themselves, Clive presented his doubts to his colleagues who strongly advised against continuing with his campaign. It was only the next morning that he heard from Mir Jafar, committing himself to action with a letter that stated, “When you come near, I shall be able to join you.”

Consequently, Clive ordered his forces to move forward. But even during the war, as Clive found himself outnumbered and surrounded by Siraj-ud-Daulah’s men, he is noted to have thought of surrendering and making peace with the Nawab. It was only after several hours of fighting that the Murshidabad army began withdrawing, under orders from Mir Jafar as had been promised by him to Clive. Soon after, Siraj-ud-Daulah was captured and put to death and Mir Jafar was installed as the Nawab by the Company.
“It is important to note that even though Mir Jafar had initially betrayed his master and joined hands with Robert Clive and made the nawab, he soon realised what Clive was after,” says Bandopadhyay.

“What followed hereafter is often referred to as the ‘Plassey plunder’,” writes Bandopadhyay. He notes that immediately after the war the English army and navy each received hefty sums of £275,000 for distribution among its members. That apart, between 1757 and 1760, the Company received Rs 22.5 million from Mir Jafar, and Clive himself got a personal jagir worth £34,567 in 1759.

“Mir Jafar soon found that he was not able to satisfy the financial demands of the EIC,” says Bandopadhyay. He adds that “as Jafar started on the path of resistance, he was removed by the English and replaced by his son-in-law Mir Qasim. Yet again Qasim too found that he was unable to satisfy the demands of Clive.”

“One can say that both Jafar and Qasim were naive in not understanding the real motives of the British. They themselves were destroyed when they could not meet the demands of the EIC,” Bandopadhyay adds.

Mir Jafar, the ‘traitor’ of Bengal

“Both in the British discourse and parliamentary debates and among Indian narratives of the event till as recent as the 1920s and 30s,” Chatterjee explains, “Jafar is ubiquitously referred to as the puppet king.” He adds: “This ubiquity of Jafar as the puppet king reinforces that he was a traitor because a traitor is generally not considered a strong personality.” The British, he says, were keen on popularising this trope to justify the treacherous battle at Plassey which even many Britons regretted in the 18th century.

Mir Jafar found play even in the nationalist discourse of the freedom movement. “The name Mir Jafar came to mean betrayal,” says Bandopadhyay. Neogi points to the 1908 episode of Narendranath Goswami, an accomplice of the nationalist revolutionaries in the Alipore case who later became a prosecution witness. “He was equated with Mir Jafar in the nationalist newspapers of that time,” he says.
In popular culture, Bengali plays and cinema on the Battle of Plassey reinforced this image of Mir Jafar. Bengali writer Nabinchandra Sen’s Palashir Juddha (1875), for instance, lamented the betrayal. “That play entrenched the idea of Mir Jafar as a villain in popular minds,” explains Neogi.

Bengali Hindu writers of the 19th century had described Siraj-ud-Daulah as a horrible tyrant under whom Bengal had suffered immensely. This narrative changed completely with the emergence of the nationalist discourse in which Siraj-ud-Daulah came to be seen as a tragic hero betrayed by his courtiers. Akshay Moitra’s book Siraj-ud-Dualah, written in 1897, Girish Ghosh’s work on the same theme written during the Swadeshi movement of the early 20th century, and Sachin Sengupta’s play Jatra Pala written in 1938 are but a few examples of works that portrayed Siraj-ud-Daulah as a patriot eliminated by the treachery of Mir Jafar and the British.

In more recent years, the archetype of Mir Jafar as a traitor has remained deeply entrenched in the political vocabulary of Bengal and India. In 2020 for instance, when Suvendhu Adhikari defected to the BJP from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the latter equated him with Mir Jafar. In March 2023, the BJP accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of being the “present-day Mir Jafar of Indian polity” for criticising the Narendra Modi government at an interview in Chatham House in London. Most recently, the name of the erstwhile Nawab came up again when the TMC accused Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, of being a “modern-day Mir Jafar” for his comments blaming the people of Bengal for “poverty of aspiration”.

Meanwhile, far away in Murshidabad, Mir Jafar’s descendants continue to live with the tainted legacy of the 18th-century Nawab, hoping for a time when his name will finally be buried in the pages of the past.