The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (23 page)

The princes did not want to be absorbed into a nationalistic India or Pakistan, but their pleas were ignored, the British voided their treaty obligations to the states and left them to the sufferance of India and Pakistan, which had far less toleration for princely sovereignty than the British had. As the princely states were partitioned so was the Indian Army, to which so many British officers had devoted their lives and careers. One such, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, commander in chief of the Indian army, was given the melancholy task of severing the institution he loved along the ethnic and religious lines that would soon demark India and Pakistan.

Winston Churchill had warned that an independent India would degenerate into communal carnage; he was right. Hardened British officers, used to the slaughter of war, found themselves unable to stomach the sadistic mutilations and mass murders that followed independence and partition—with Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu each trying to outdo the other in preying upon refugees, desecrating women, slitting babies from their mothers' wombs, and killing or mutilating upwards of a million people. The Pax Britannica was no more, and not even Gandhi survived the chaos he helped unleash; he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist.

The India of the British Raj was a glorious thing, uniting a subcontinent under a benign, tolerant, and liberal administration that strove to improve the lot of the people it served, providing justice, and ruling with a light hand
and through local rulers wherever possible, showing the mailed fist only to keep the peace, and with an army drawn from the subcontinent's own “martial races.” From its ashes at least something has been saved—Britain's democratic principles; English language and literature, and the idea of a free and popular press; the shared games and food; and a nostalgic affection in many circles, including Indian ones, for what once was.

“Our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great. . . .”

 

R
obert Clive—Clive of India, a man who would conquer a subcontinent for the British Empire (and also predict the Americans would create an empire of their own rather than stay loyal to Britain)—was a boy who loved fighting. His uncle tried to cure him of it, saying that “I do what I can to suppress the hero,”
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but as time would prove, the hero would win out. Clive led a gang of young hooligans who threatened shopkeepers in a year-round version of trick or treat; in this case: pay up or we smash your windows.

He was not lowly born, but rather came from the respectable middle class (his father was a middling country squire turned London lawyer and a member of Parliament). Clive wasn't much of a student, however, and his youthful high spirits eventually congealed into a dour visage. He seemed a young man without bright prospects until his father introduced him to a director of the East India Company, with whom he signed on as a clerk. The job was in Madras, India.

The passage took him through storms and bad seamanship, the loss of many of his belongings, and an unexpected nine-month idyll in Brazil where he taught himself a smattering of Portuguese. Though he would later lead sepoys into battle, Clive never bothered to learn any of the native languages of the subcontinent. But Portuguese was useful with the traders in India, and perhaps it was useful with the young ladies of Brazil. From there he sailed to South Africa and then to Madras where, in June 1744, he was confronted by the heat, smells, and jostling humanity of India. He was not happy. He was lonely, and that little corner of England which was the East India Company's Fort St. George left him feeling stifled. He whiled away his spare hours drinking, and, more important, reading. The unstudious ruffian became an autodidact. His repressed energies yearned for an outlet greater than acting as a clerk for the company. He soon found one—and if he had not he might very well have killed himself. He confided to a friend that he had put a pistol to his head and twice pulled the trigger with no result, convincing him that destiny had something in store for him. That thing was war.

In 1746, in a spillover from the Austrian War of Succession, the French seized Madras. Clive was imprisoned—but not well guarded. Disguised as Indians, he and three of his colleagues escaped to the nearest English settlement (though it was fifty miles away), Fort St. David. Burning with a young man's desire for revenge, he enlisted in the Company's army. In terms of prestige, this was a catastrophic plunge from being a clerk, but it suited both the circumstances and his temperament. Clive was meant to be a soldier—indeed he so distinguished himself in the defense of Fort St. David that he was commissioned an ensign.

His courage extended beyond the battlefield. At a game of cards he accused an officer of cheating. This led to a duel. Clive, with the first shot, missed. The officer told Clive that if he retracted his accusation, he would not fire. Clive responded, “Fire and be damned. I said you cheated, I say so still and I will never repay you.”
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The flabbergasted officer lowered his pistol and that was the end of it—proving if nothing else that Clive had a remarkable facility for avoiding bullets; a talent that is essential for any hero. He dodged them in action after the siege of St. David and showed an equal facility for ducking and weaving his way through slashing sabres while campaigning on behalf of the rajah of Tanjore. He was hot-headed and used his cane to strike men who questioned his courage or the courage of the Company's troops.

Clive, now a lieutenant, would gladly have continued his military career, but the Company was more interested in profits than military glory and conquest (though these kept coming) and took a heavy scalpel to the defense budget. Clive returned to civilian employment but at a much higher level and with the goal of making his fortune. He was a rising young man.

He had a French counterpart, twenty-eight years his senior, haughty, clever, quite brilliant, scheming, and ambitious—Joseph Francois Dupleix, the governor-general of French India who aimed to have India entire by alliances with Indian princes. The British, watching French influence sweep southern India, drew a line in the sands of the Carnatic (southeastern India), backing a rival nawab. The result was a jolly, reputation-making war for Clive.

But it didn't start in a very jolly way. Clive was relegated to supplying the army rather than leading a portion of it. That wouldn't stand—especially as the Company's initial efforts to support its rival nawab, Muhammad Ali, were feeble and embarrassing in the extreme. Clive demanded the rank of captain and said he would serve without pay. It was an offer that
no businessman—and the East India Company was a business after all—could refuse. Duly commissioned, he took the field and soon slipped through enemy lines to the besieged city of Trichinopoly where Ali's forces were outnumbered ten to one (20,000 against 2,000), and 60 Britons stood against 800 French.