Bengal’s plunder
gifted the British
Industrial
Revolution
Shombit Sengupta
Feb 77, 2010
Who would have believed that one of India’s
least industrialised states today, West Bengal,
was the ignition of the late 18th century
Industrial Revolution in Great Britain? Nobody
talks about how Bengal fired up this turning
point in the West.
From early 17th century, India had a
superior cotton manufacturing industry with
dye technology, mechanical devices and
elaborate division of labour among specialised
craftspeople. Indian cotton was so popular
among all classes of British women that
English silk and wool weavers felt threatened
and rioted. So, by 1725, Britain banned Indian
textiles. But the demand for Indian fabrics
continued. This stimulated the mechanisation of
Britain’s textile industry.
Here’s how Bengal fits in. The East India
Company defeated undivided Bengal’s Nawab
Siraj-ud-Daulah in the Battle of Plassey in June
1757, as the Nawab’s commander-in-chief,
Mir Jafar, betrayed him. This spurred British
domination over India. American historian
Brooke Adams has recorded that the “Bengal
plunder” from the Nawab’s treasury was so
excessive that it fuelled Britain’s Industrial
Revolution from 1760 and changed the world’s
lifestyle forever.
The conquerors remitted an estimated £1 billion to
Britain. Robert Clive, who led troops against the
Nawab, collected £2.5 million for the East India
Company and £2,34,000 for himself. His colleague
William Watts grabbed £1,14,000. To put these
figures in perspective, an annual income of £800
was considered sufficient for luxurious living by
British nobleman of those days.
So, says history, the plunder of Bengal post
the Battle of Plassey sparked the Industrial
Revolution, which rapidly auto-mechanised the
British textile industry. The inventions between
1764 and 1785 were the spinning jenny by
Hargreaves, the water frame by Arkwight, the mule
by Crompton and the powerloom by Cartwright.
John Kays had invented the flying shuttle and coal
began to replace wood in smelting, while in 1768
Watt matured the steam engine.
The spoils from Bengal boosted Britain’s
economy, but its fallout was de-industrialisation
for India. Once England established industrial
capital, it needed markets for selling its
products. It was again Bengal, the first Indian
region the British colonised, that was forced to
absorb these goods so England could sustain
its Industrial Revolution. The drain of wealth
into Britain destroyed India’s industries, and
impoverishment led to a string of famines.
Historian RC Dutt writes, “The people of Bengal
had been used to tyranny, but had never
lived under an oppression so far reaching in
its effects, extending to every village market
and every manufacturer’s loom. They ... had
never suffered from a system which touched
their trades, their occupations, their lives so
closely. The springs of their industry were
stopped; the sources of their wealth dried
up.” This domineering British control pushed
India hundreds of years behind in economic
development.
Those struggling times made our independence
movement look like momentary politics. The
call to abandon British manufactured products,
make handloom cloth or get salt from the sea
without industrialisation once again instigated
de-industrialisation. Can this be considered a
vision for India or was it just a political shock
factor of that time? India today is growing with
industrialisation fuelled by foreign investment
from the West. This is changing the country’s
e c o n o m i c p e r s pective for the better. This
d e v e l o p m e n t i s totally opposite to both
I n d i a ’s d e - i n d u strialisation post-1760 and
t h e i n d e p e n d e n ce movement’s methods
before 1947.
Not only did the British plunder Bengal in 1757,
they created two blunders we still continue to
suffer from. First, their divide-and-rule policy
created fissions between Hindus and Muslims
in Bengal, which persist in pockets throughout
India today. Secondly, they divided Bengal into
East Pakistan and West Bengal, aside, of course,
from creating West Pakistan too. From 1947, up
to 1970, five million people were displaced from
East Bengal. West Bengal is yet to recover from
displacement, which continues till today.
My family fell victim to this political chaos and
had to abandon land holdings and prosperity
in East Pakistan. My father, his widowed
mother and 10 siblings came to squat on a
piece of land with other refugees 30 km from
Kolkata. Economists say West Bengal ranks
third among states in the number of small retail
shops--4.5 million. An estimated 20 million
are directly dependent on these small shops.
I can vouch for this. Every time I return to my
erstwhile refugee colony, my childhood friends
have expanded a section of their house to set
up a small store as they have no other job
opportunity there.
The most frightening part of my refugee colony
childhood was the arrival of the land tax man.
He’d go around tom-tomming a drum, alerting
and threatening people to pay land tax on
time, or else face forfeiture of their houses.
Our thatched roof, bamboo wall, mud floor
house was small, but at least it was better
than the tents the other refugees lived in.
My grandmother Nalini Bala would console
me in this nightmare. I recently heard from
my father that the West Bengal government
subsequently regularised the squatters’ colony
and gave free land rights to refugees where
their houses stood. My pleasure in owning this
miniscule piece of land is more than having
a farmhouse in California. It must have been
the same for landless farmers who were given
land for free. But nobody had taught them the
value of industrialisation, so these landowners
cannot understand why suddenly their land is
required for industrial development. People
have not been educated on the need for a
balance between agriculture and industry.
Without having their buy-in, it’s difficult to have
industrialisation, so West Bengal’s livelihood
continues to be small retail stores.
After economic liberalisation in 1991, while
India flourished, Bengal languished. With no
industry, locals fight each other for power
and money. The central subject today is who
will come to power, not how to industrialise
the state or educate the masses for
industrialisation.
As Bengal still reels under the ghost of the 1757
British plunder, only an evangeIist, a thinker
and implementer can preach to the masses the
value of bringing a balance between agriculture
and industry to change the state’s economy
beyond any political manifestation.
—Shombit Sengupta is an international
Creative Business Strategy consultant to top
managements.
Reach him at www.shininguniverse.com