Bharat Ek Khoj—The Discovery of India
A Production of Doordarshan, the Government of India’s Public Service Broadcaster
Episode 39: Company Bahadur

With Amrish Puri as Raza Khan, Jalal Agha as Robert Cave , Tom Alter as Sykes, Rajendra Gupta as Raja Nandkumar, Richard LaneSmith as Middleton, and C.R. Woodward as Johnson. The dancers are Hemswarna Mirajkar and Yuvak Biradari.

Nehru observed that the hundred years that followed the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 saw a complicated and manysided struggle for mastery over India. The Mughal Empire rapidly fell to pieces and their Subehdars (viceroys) and Mansabdars (governors) began to function as semiindependent rulers. The real protagonists for power in India during the 18th century were four: two Indians factions the Marathas, Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan in the south; two foreign factions the British and the French.

Nehru further observes that in Bengal, Lord Clive, with treason and forgery, won the battle of Plassey in 1757, a date that marks the unsavoury beginning of the British empire in India. This was followed by another and more decisive win at the battle of Buxar between the British and the deposed Mir Qasim in alliance with the emperor Shah Alam and the Nawab of Awadh in 1764, and all that remained of the Mughal power in northern India was shattered.

The drama unfolds with the rapid succession of Nawabs of Bengal to the now titular Raja Nanda Kumar. The successors are increasingly emasculated from their revenueearning capacity by the Company and Clive now insists on a more skewed treaty for earnings from comprehensive taxation on all items other than salt. Not satisfied, Clive invites Raza Khan, an old hand from Nawab Alibardi Khan’s time, to join the top echelon. Nanda Kumar is confined to the capital Murshidabad while Clive has freedom of the commercial capital Kolkata, after the Company has extracted the highlylucrative Diwani (revenue administration) of BengalBiharOrissa.

A scheming Clive is seen enjoying Kathak dance in typical period costume, while pressure is mounted for appointing British civilians for the junior revenue jobs at Nawab’s cost. A desperate Raza, wishing to plan for efficient revenue—machinery prevalent in Alibardi’s time is pushed to the wall. Incidents of British graft in Purnea and Dinajpur mount, and the exchequer is on the brink of bankruptcy. Protestations by Raza fall on deaf ears. As Nehru records, an early consequence of the British rule in Bengal and Bihar was a terrible famine, which ravaged the two provinces in 1770, killing over a third of the population of this rich, vast and denselypopulated area.

Warren Hastings appears on the scene and the signed document by Raza is now put to forged use by virtually blackmailing him, besides physically assaulting him surreptitiously. Hasting’s case against Raza is the last straw and the exalted man dies of a broken heart in 1791. Looking back over this period, Nehru says, it almost seems that the British succeeded in dominating India by a succession of fortuitous circumstances and lucky flukes. With remarkably little effort, they won a great empire and enormous wealth, which helped to make them the leading power


Producer Doordarshan
Language Hindi

Credits

Uploaded by Public.Resource.Org
Based on Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India
With Roshan Seth as Jawaharlal Nehru
Om Puri as the Narrator
Produced and Directed by Shyam Benegal
Chief Assistant Director was Mandeep Kakkar
Executive Producer Raj Plus
Script by Shama Zaldi and Sunil Shanbag
A production of Doordarshan