62

The East India Company-2

एक दुखी परिवार - 62

The Company saw the rise of its fortunes, and its transformation from a trading venture to a ruling enterprise, when one of its military officials, Robert Clive, defeated the forces of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah , at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. 

A few years later the Company acquired the right to collect revenues on behalf of the Mughal Emperor, but the initial years of its administration were calamitous for the people of Bengal. The Company's servants were largely a rapacious and self-aggrandizing lot, causing the plunder of Bengal that left the formerly rich province in a state of utter destitution. 

The famine of 1769-70, which the Company's policies did nothing to alleviate, may have taken the lives of as many as a third of the population. 

The Company, despite the increase in trade and the revenues coming in from other sources, found itself burdened with massive military expenditures, thereby its destruction seemed imminent. 

State intervention put the ailing Company back on its feet, and Lord North's India Bill, also known as the Regulating Act of 1773, provided for greater parliamentary control over the affairs of the Company, besides placing India under the rule of a Governor-General.

That is how transition ocurred from company control to the control of the British Monarch. India’s slavery under the British monarch began from here, in that formerly the command stayed in the hands of a joint stock company, i.e., in the corporate hands.

((Cont.   .)