The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

The profits from Calcutta’s trade were huge and still growing, but what really attracted Indians to this foreign-owned Company town was the sense that it was safe and secure. Throughout the 1740s, while the Carnatic Wars were raging in the south, the Marathas had attacked Bengal with horrifying violence, killing what the Dutch VOC chief in Bengal estimated to be as many as 400,000 civilians.26 In 1750, Bhaskar Pandit, a general of the Maratha leader Bhonsle, invaded Bengal again, this time with 20,000 cavalry. They carried out night raids, pillaging the Nawab’s camp, and destroyed the convoys which brought provisions for his army. The Marathas followed a scorched-earth policy, burning the neighbouring villages to prevent grain from reaching the enemy. The Nawab’s soldiers were thus denied food, conveyance and their own baggage, and so rendered ineffective, something the Company factors graphically described in their letters home.27 Vaneshwar Vidyalankar, the Pandit of the Maharaja of Bardwan, wrote that the Marathas ‘are niggard of pity, slayers of pregnant women and infants, of Brahmans and the poor, fierce of spirit, expert in robbing the property of everyone and committing every sinful act. They created a local cataclysm and caused the extirpation of the people of Bengal villages like an [ominous] comet.’