Plassey is about greed, chicanery & intrigue!

This year the date of the Battle of Plassey comes at a time when millions of people in the USA and the UK are on the streets, vociferously denouncing colonial period machinations and injustice. Thanks to the Internet and a wide variety of historical documents available, a lot about the battle, fought in 1757, is now known to those wanting to read the facts and not the embellished fiction.
The problem with the Battle of Plassey is that both the victors and the losers have glossed up the events leading up to the battle plus the aftermath in such a way that for centuries, the real truth was lost. Well, lost is not the correct word, the facts of the battle were carefully pushed away from the spotlight. Consequently, the British were made to believe that Robert Clive, or better known as 'Clive of India' won the battle with his military prowess, secured Bengal for Britain thus beginning almost two hundred years of enlightenment. On the other hand, the local version painted Siaj as the martyr, spotless in character with unquestionable loyalty to the country and who was betrayed and killed.
Even in that tragic end of Siraj there is a leitmotif of heroism - the valiant fighter who did his best but lost out due to treachery.
In fact, both these versions are utterly wrong.
Clive took the challenge for money It was the Jagath Seths, the wealthiest bankers of India at that time who lured Clive with the payment of three million Pounds to remove Siraj. These bankers had brought Alivardi Khan in power too.
In the meantime, Mir Zafar also pledged to pay the English 2 million to be installed as the Nawab. Another rather dubious character, Amin Chand, who arranged the initial deal between Clive and Mir Zafar to ensure the latter's defection on the day of the battle, also blackmailed the British demanding that unless he is paid 30 lakh Rupees, he would tell of the secret pact to Siraj. So, it was all an affair of avarice and nothing else.
Common narratives and our history books record Siraj as the righteous man who loved his wife and was driven by moral values. In truth, Siraj was a perverted piece of work. Historical documents suggest that on weekends he liked to see people drown on the river after instructing their boats to be sunk. He was also puerile and certainly not a statesman. William Dalrymple has also written in his book "The Anarchy" that Siraj was debauched.
On the other hand, Robert Clive was a soldier of fortune. Honestly put, fair fighting was least of his aspirations because he had come to India as his family was exasperated by his extortion and delinquency in Market Drayton.
He was driven by profiteering and wanted to get rich fast. Obviously, pushing a pen at the East India Company office was not the way to wealth. And so, he showed some courage against the French. That did it and then came the real chance to win the battle of Plassey.
Who needs weapons when one has Machiavellian cunning? So Clive roped in Mir Zafar.
Mir Zafar wanted to be Nawab

Mir Zafar, a soldier from Arab, had no desire to hand over total control to the British. But most don't know that because for ages, inaccurate history books have portrayed him as the demon in the whole charade of Plassey with his name becoming synonymous to betrayal.
In reality, Mir Zafar wanted the throne and his mistake was to have trusted the East India Company. They were outsiders, with no desire to improve the socio economic conditions of the people in Bengal. The company had one goal - take as much as possible back to England.
Not surprisingly, this was also the motto of all its officers, Robert Clive included and therefore, after Siraj fell, he filled barges with gold, stones and valuables from the treasury, promptly taking the loot back to England.
What our history books never mention is that as soon as Mir Zafar found that he was just a puppet at the hands of the British, he made an attempt to drive them away by secretly negotiating with the Dutch. This resulted in the Battle of Chinsurah in 1759 where lady luck once again sided with the British and Mir Zafar was ousted to make way for his son in law Mir Qasim. Now Mir Qasim was in no mood to listen to the British either which resulted in the Battle of Buxar in 1764. Yes, once more, fortune did not favour Qasim and Bengal was lost for good.
Plassey was about political intrigue and endless greed
Plassey was not a battle; it was a travesty because at Mir Zafar's orders most soldiers of the Nawab did not fight; then the rain came and the gunpowder was left to get wet. Nawab's cannons were made useless while the British stole the show.
This was a conflict of elaborate machinations and subterfuge; the allure of money and power rendering weapons and courage useless.
There is no glory in the way Clive manipulated local rivalries; like many who worked for the East India Company, he came to make money and succeeded. No one was bothered about the methods employed because in securing Bengal, Clive beat the French, which was far more important given the Anglo French rivalry of the time.
Battle of Plassey is in fact a part of the Severn Year's War in which Britain and France were trying to outmanoeuvre each other for commercial and naval supremacy.
As for our history, there is no need to glorify Siraj as the martyr or excoriate Mir Zafar as the ultimate traitor. They had major faults and were pawns in an atmosphere of post Mughal period conspiracy.
In commemorating Plassey, the facts should be told and not the sanitized narratives. It was triumph of perfidy!
Towheed Feroze is a journalist and teaches at the University of Dhaka