Our East Indian Company

Mid-19^th century was the height of Victorian Period. To our collective embarrassment between 1756 and 1803, few British officers together with some 300 company clerks backed by a military force of some 200,000 locally recruited Indian soldiers formed the EIC (East India Company) and managed to replace the mighty Mughal Empire. William Dalrymple in his The Sunday Times Best Seller Book The Anarchy — The Relentless Rise of East India Company calls it ‘the most extraordinary corporate takeover in the history’.

The story of EIC and its rise from a humble trading company to becoming a full-fledged imperial power reminds me of the rise of some of our ‘political merchants’ who like EIC established within our state some very profitable factories and a business empire. But first the EIC’s story which started from Bengal which at that time, according to Scot Alexander Dow, was ‘the richest, most populous and best cultivated country’. William Bolt an officer in EIC in 1772 published Considerations on Indian Affairs, a damaging tract against the EIC accusing it of becoming an ‘absolute government of monopolists’ which “impoverished Bengal” and worked against the long-term British interests. His solution was for the Crown to take over Bengal as a government colony, ending the ‘asset-stripping’ of the province by a ‘for-profit company’.

My story today is about our EIC and it starts from its chapters of Sindh and Punjab that we call provinces but much like Bengal in the 18^th century they are the political strongholds of our EIC in this country. A stronghold from where much of the exploitation of the rest of the country took place. But before this story, I want to share with the readers a historical explanation to draw a similarity between the Mughal Emperors of the past and our fast fading from the political scene ‘Democratic Emperors’ that created their own economic empire in this country and ruled us much like the EIC.

When EIC was expanding and fanning out to control much of India, Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah (1719-1748) — called Rangila, the colorful or the merrymaker — sat in the Red Fort Delhi, wearing colorful and flashy clothes studded and embroidered with jewels and pearls. He had little credibility and real power and thus encouraged Persian general like Nader Shah to invade India. Nader Shah’s bloody massacre of the people of Delhi in May 1739 is a dark chapter of history in which it is estimated that over 100,000 people were killed. Nader Shah plundered Delhi and returned to Persia carrying with him the riches of Mughal Empire including Jahangir’s magnificent Peacock Throne embedded in which was both the Koh-i-Noor diamond and the great Timor Ruby.

Subsequent to Nader Shah’s invasion, EIC having noticed that a handful of Persians could take Delhi believed that even they could create their own empire in India. Circumstances on ground favored EIC as Delhi had lost its riches due to Nader Shah’s invasion and could no longer pay the administrative and military salaries. Mughal central authority was weakened and was replaced by regional authority and regional governance. It is under these favorable circumstances that EIC combined its commercial as well as imperial powers to plunder and loot India under the protection of its private army. The most crucial support that the EIC enjoyed during its rise was from the British Parliament and both the British commercial and the imperial powers got together to execute one of the earliest ‘public-private partnership’ to loot India. EIC bought MPs and parliament seats and the British parliament in turn backed EIC with the state power.

No Nader Shah has invaded my country, but my country has also been plundered and looted and our domestically grown EIC headed by the family dynasties of the Zardaris and Sharifs who acted much like Robert Clives of EIC have grown richer and richer and the state has become poorer and poorer. The contrast between the bankruptcy of our state and their vast riches is so huge that it merits investigation which is rightly underway.

British Raj ended, the Sahibs left but even after two hundred and fifty years the ways of EIC were still copied by our ‘political sahibs’ who grabbed political power to extend their commercial interests and protected those interests with the politically acquired state power. Welcome to mine and yours EIC which was homegrown and after being made accountable by the current government has now chosen the platform of PDM to fight the battle of its existence. Unfortunately for them the eyes of the public are fixed more on the ‘correction of their abuses’ rather than the battle they fight for their survival and existence.

Our enslavement at their hands is not much different than the enslavement we experienced at the hands of British Raj. Both have a history of political and imperial rise from a state of nothingness to becoming commercial and imperial powers. Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, called EIC ‘a state in the guise of a merchant’. Could my country be called anything different during the rule of these dynastic families?

Had they been rulers and not merchants, would the country’s treasury be as empty as it is while their riches skyrocketed and heaped? Much like EIC which drew benefits from the British Parliament, our homegrown EIC also utilised the mutually agreed 18^th amendment to weaken the central authority and strength their own autonomous power through provincial politics — the politics of their strongholds, Sindh and Punjab, from where they sit and scheme and plan to weaken the Centre and shift the whole balance of power in in the country in their favor.

Much like the EIC that exploited the growing dissatisfaction of Indian Princes, Maharajas and Nawabs under the crumbling Mughal Empire, our dying domestically grown EIC is trying its best to do the same from the platform of PDM. Had the foundation of the PDM alliance been only for a political purpose and for serving the concerns of the people, it would not have needed any jalsas to sell its political narrative as people would have come out themselves on the streets, like Arab Spring, and swept the government away from power.

In Dec 1772, Robert Clive Rice — who representing EIC laid the foundations for British rule in India — was finally summoned to the House of Parliament and fiercely examined on accusations of embezzlement and bribe taking. He was asked that ‘the very great sums of money appropriated by him and his henchmen to the dishonour and detriment of the state be reimbursed to the Crown.’ But in the end the Parliament in which he had invested a lot cleared him by a vote of 95 for censure to 155 that cleared his name.

Despite escaping formal censure, he became a deeply unpopular figure and was widely regarded around the country as ‘Lord Vulture’. Having fallen from grace, he eventually committed suicide in 1774. In this is a message for our EIC and all those responsible for our national bankruptcy.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2020.

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