From: “A Short History of the Indian Lands” by Alfred Parry and A. J. Kumar (1983)—
The involvement of Bengal in the wars of the Black Twenties had, by no means, been guaranteed. The country had undergone a dizzying transformation since surviving the Great Jihad at great cost. Whereas much of India had been devastated for decades by the seemingly-endless conflict of the Jihad, Bengal lived on – yet, as the dust settled, it had become clear that substantial debts had been racked up in the process of saving her.
Today it is easy for a history book to breezily dispose of the Privatisation of Bengal in a couple of paragraphs, as though the process was inevitable and predictable. We shall not attempt to do it justice here, but will content ourselves with the observation that it was certainly not perceived as such at the time. Many native Bengalis regarded the Privatisation as an abrogation of responsibilities by the British and American shareholders of the East India Company, not the path to independence it is now seen as. Similarly, the minority of Americans and Britons with an emotional attachment to the EIC and Bengal warned (accurately) that it would be a slippery slope towards losing control altogether. Nonetheless, more and more of the shares of the EIC passed into the hands of Bengalis, not only noblemen but also self-made industrialists. Again, this was not a planned or predictable process, but the consequence of multiple rounds of decisions made by different directors at different times for different reasons, spread over a period of almost fifty years.
As is well known, the ultimate upshot of these decisions was that by the time of the Pandoric War, white directors of Anglo-American descent had been reduced to a plurality on the Board, and many of these had been born in Bengal and no longer felt visceral ties to those distant homeland. Whites nonetheless retained a disproportionate degree of influence, which has reduced since then but never truly disappeared. This was partly because of the wealth of old Company men being grandfathered in, but also because the diverse native peoples of Bengal tended to divide on issues and the whites could act as a casting vote. Conversely, recognition of this issue led some Bengali political commentators to build bridges between native communities in order to try to mitigate it.
Nonetheless, at the end of the Pandoric War there was majority support for formally dissolving ties with the Hanoverian monarchy, seizing the opportunity afforded by the confusion sparked by the Third Glorious Revolution in what was then Great Britain. The Bengalis undoubtedly benefited from the ascension of Lewis Faulkner to the American presidency and his indifferent attitude towards what had once been the British Empire. Bengal lost its titular control over Natal, which became the last colony of Britain (and then England) but, now operating as an independent corporation which still enjoyed most-favoured-nation ties with its old colonial masters, went from strength to strength in the First Interbellum.
At least, until the Panic of 1917, when (like other trading nations) Bengal was badly hit. Again in a pattern repeated around the world, mass unemployment and protests led to political upheavals. While white directors had already ceased to be a majority on the Board, reforms and public pressure meant that it was at this point that the rest of the world started being unsurprised to find Bengali interests represented at conferences by a native rather than a white man. (A similar pattern was seen in Guinea, which took much inspiration from Bengal for its own path forward). In practice, Bengal was rarely represented by one individual alone, reflecting the need to balance interests.
The Bengal Army remained dominated by high-caste Hindus drawn from the brahmin and kshatriya castes,[12] especially Rajput Purbiya soldiers.[13] During the Great Jihad, Nurul Huq had recruited Bengali Muslims to fight for the authorities (despite being an opponent of British rule himself) and refugees from across India had also been recruited into additional forces. While these auxiliaries were eventually permitted to join the Bengal Army, they were strictly segregated and often treated as second-class. The decline of white power in Bengal mostly benefited, in the military, the high-caste Hindus, who saw their association with the military as a vital guarantee of continued influence in a nation where Muslims outnumbered Hindus. This was reflected in the army reforms that had taken place by the start of the Black Twenties in 1922. The regular Bengal Army regiments, comprised almost entirely of high-caste Hindus, were no longer led by white officers – sometimes white Bengalis still served in the officer corps of these regiments, but never as commanding officer. Conversely, all the former ‘auxiliary’ regiments comprised of Muslims (and some other groups, such as lower-caste Hindus recruited from destroyed states like Orissa) were still led by white officers. This represented only one of the many deals made by the remaining white Bengali (a.k.a. Anglo-Bengali or ‘Anglo-Bangla’) community with the Hindus on one hand, and with the Muslims on the other, in order to retain influence.
This is not to say that Muslims and poorer Hindus were cut out of power altogether. Bengal was a true corporate state, with no elections at this point for any office higher than that of village headman. Instead of a parliament, it had an Annual General Meeting of shareholders in Calcutta which held the Board of Directors to account (and often met more frequently than its name implied). It was therefore through this means that the poor and dispossessed sought power. Building on suggestions going back to Nurul Huq himself, Muslims typically formed co-operative building societies which collectively could buy Company shares on behalf of the group as a whole, using profits to invest in buying houses. This did start a never-ending theological debate by imams about what practices were considered compatible with Islamic banking rules, but served to ensure representation by Muslims who were insufficiently wealthy to buy their own personal shares. The practice was copied by poorer Hindus, starting with people of high and middling caste from neighbouring countries who had fled the Jihad and lost everything. By 1922, the AGM was certainly not representative of all Bengalis, and was a body in which the wealthy exerted far more disproportionate power than the poor, but was arguably more democratic than titular parliamentary assemblies in many countries (such as Russia, Danubia and the Ottoman Empire).
These political tensions were mirrored by a cultural flowering, as Bengali literature, poetry and scholarship underwent what is called the Bengali Renaissance. Though it took many years for the wider world to become aware of such works (aided by English and French translations), this explosion of art and science – like a sigh of relief after the survival from the Jihad, as one of its own poets put it – played a key role in the forging of a new, post-colonial Bengali identity.[14]
Away from the tea-houses of Calcutta and Dacca, another form of inequality was betrayed by the formal title of the nation: the Confederacy (or Confederation) of Bengal. ‘Bengal proper’, also sometimes called the Directorate, was ruled directly by the Board of Directors (and therefore indirectly by the AGM). This was roughly the area that had formerly been under the rule of the Nawab of Bengal prior to his overthrow by the British in 1759.[15] The British had set up six minor princelings as titular zamindars (subordinate rulers) but these had been effectively ignored by everyone, and by the Great Jihad two of their lines had gone extinct and their lines formally reverted to direct Company control. Two more have disappeared since and two remain at the time of writing, yet have never been regarded as anything more than local wealthy celebrities.
Things were quite different in ‘Outer Bengal’, the territories surrounding the Directorate which had been acquired since, especially in the upheavals of the Jihad. Lands such as Berar, Assam, Bundelkhand and Orissa[16] were governed in truth through zamindars, and their people did not enjoy the same rights as those of Bengal proper. Some analysts have compared the situation to that of the UPSA in the mid-nineteenth century, where some political forces opposed the annexation of client republics such as Cisplatina, because their wealthy patrons benefited more from a source of cheap labour lacking the rights of Meridian citizens. Tensions between the people of these lands, their rulers and the already-divided Board and AGM in Calcutta were balanced by mutual fear of external powers, especially as China began to expand her influence into northern India. The Board enjoyed relatively good relations with the International Guntoor Region (later the Guntoor Authority) despite the latter including the Circars, coastal lands which had formerly been under the control of Calcutta before the Jihad. Relations with the French, the Siamese and the Concan Confederacy were a little more cool, but it was China which Calcutta saw as the biggest interloper threat.
This brings us back to our starting point; it was by no means guaranteed that Bengal, no longer formally tied into alliance systems through the Hanoverian monarchy, would enter the wars of the Black Twenties. Indeed, historian Peter Trafford has argued that if China had not ‘betrayed’ France through neutrality and had attacked Russia as expected, Bengal would likely have remained neutral, or perhaps even joined the other side! Calcutta’s chief concern remained Chinese influence in northern India and China’s client states were held in deep suspicion; there remains debated evidence on whether both the Bengalis and the Chinese were using subterfuge in the First Interbellum period to try to spark rebellions among each others’ vassals. A minor revolt in the Chinese client state of Gwalior in 1919 might partly be down to a Bengali plot (as some Chinese officials claimed at the time) but this might simply be an excuse for Chinese failure to respond to economic upheavals there, disrupted as almost everywhere was by the Panic of 1917.
Bengal’s participation in the wider war was lukewarm and required bribery and pressure from the French, who wanted Bengal’s sizeable but outdated naval forces (sold by the English and Americans as they modernised) to help fight the Russo-Belgians. When the French were spectacularly defeated at the Battle of Ceylon, the Bengalis largely ceased returning France’s quists and instead focused on their own national concerns. The Russo-Belgian naval forces were not a significant threat to Bengal, providing they lacked sufficient force to engage in commerce raiding, and despite Admiral Van de Velde’s victory, he had to focus everything he had on surviving the enraged French’s counterattacks. Rather, Calcutta’s main concern was with the revolt of the Sikhs in Pendzhab against their Russian overlords. The Bengalis had become concerned with this Russian intrusion into India when made aware of it, but a deeper concern was that a successful Sikh revolt and Russian defeat might lead to the Chinese sweeping in and taking over. This would expand the zone of Chinese influence in northern India all the way to border the Persian client states of Gujarat and Rajasthan – and the Board calculated that, if Persia continued to lose to the Russians, Shiraz’s control might fade from those nations. That would then leave them ripe for the picking by the Chinese, and a domino effect could lead to a nightmare scenario in which China ruled the entirety of northern India – leading to a coast-to-coast railway and a Chinese naval base on the Arabian Gulf!
The Board, supported by the AGM, was determined to stop this from happening, and sought to nip it in the bud by sending an armed expedition to Pendzhab. This represented a sea change in the military practices of Bengal, which had been primarily defensive since the Jihad; even when Bengal had expanded into the Aryan Void in the wake of the final collapse of the Jihad, it had been a slow and cautious consolidation. This bold stroke was very different, and required a very different general to command it – Sardar Sitaram Sinha.[17]
Sinha was of good Bengali Kayastha stock to meet the approval of the high-caste Hindus on the Board, but he was also a maverick who had experience acting as an official observer of the Sino-Siamese front of the Pandoric War. He well understood the unusual circumstances his force found itself in. The Bengal Army was well equipped and trained, slightly behind the times compared to European or Novamundine norms but comparable to the Chinese and Siamese. But while the Bengalis had, more or less, modern weapons and tactics, they faced a journey through some of the most debatable country in the world. The Jihad had devastated the transport networks of northern India and they still had not recovered – in part because the Chinese had rebuilt them in their client states but not elsewhere, leading to new trade routes to get around the continuing decay south and west of these lands.
Chinese-backed states like Oudh, Gwalior and Delhi would not, of course, allow a Bengali army passage through. There was the possibility of appealing to the Concan Confederacy for passage, but Sinha and the Board instead put pressure on Bhurtpore.[18] Bhurtpore was a strange anomaly, a state which had avoided falling into any sphere of influence due to lying at the competing confluence of the French-backed Concan Confederacy, the Chinese in Oudh and the Bengalis themselves. The city had been destroyed during the Jihad and partly rebuilt, though in no semblance of its former glory, and it was ruled by a prince with an extremely questionable claim of descent from its former Siniswar rulers. Money and threats changed hands until Sinha’s army was allowed through, giving passage to the debatable edge of Russian Pendzhab.
In a move typical of the usual careful political balance of Bengal, Sinha was aided by two subordinate sardars, Guha Choudhury and Thomas Swanson. Choudhury was a Muslim, albeit descended from a Rajput family who had converted centuries before, and Swanson was a third-generation Anglo-Bengali. Though his actual ancestry was mixed, Swanson’s visible ethnicity was white, and he was brought along in part due to concerns that the Russians might not respect the Ratisbon Convention unless there was a white senior officer whose mistreatment might become a European media cause célébre. Choudhury and Swanson were there for reasons other than politics, however; they were both talented surveyors, and sought to make more detailed and accurate maps of this part of northern India than had existed since before the Jihad.[19] Some historians therefore formally, if arbitrarily, date the end of the ‘Aryan Void’ or ‘Darkest India’ cultural period to the Sinha Expedition.
Due to the aforementioned transport difficulties, Sinha’s army was an eclectic mix of technologies. A few protguns and protcars were brought along, but not many, and regular logistical transport was provided by horses, oxen and even elephants as much as steam or sun-oil engines. Though mocked by some satirists outside India as a supposed example of being ‘backwards’, this approach stood the Bengalis in good stead when attempting to traverse regions where the roads had not been maintained for decades. Unlike coal or sun-oil, the ‘fuel’ for animal transport was one resource that did not suffer from a lack of organised human maintenance. To put the lie to the claim of being ‘backwards’, the Bengali troops were equipped with potent counter-protgun infantry weapons as a hedge against the ever-present fear of the legendary ‘Tsar’s Armart Legions’ of Russia. Some of these were of a similar design to Germany’s Firefist (which had already been copied by many nations), but more of them were a domestically built springbomb weapon. Though more difficult to use, their cheap and easy construction led to them being copied by less wealthy nations and Kleinkrieger groups as a counter to armies of protguns. Appropriately, the Bengali springbomb design would later be used by the resistance fighters seeking to clear Chinese influence from northern India.[20]
If the army was well-armed and –led, its mission was anything but as coherent. Swanson’s journal recounts Sinha frustratedly talking to one of the Directors about how the Meridian Revolution had begun in 1782 as a consequence of the indecision of French King Louis XV.[21] A force had been sent under de Grasse and de Noailles with the idea of intervening in Spain’s existing revolts in South America, but with no clear guidance of how or on whose side. Sinha feared the same occurring once again, as the Board – based on incomplete and foggy spy reports of what was happening in Pendzhab – tried to decide what action to take with regards to the conflict between the Sikhs and Russians. Was a Russian victory inevitable and potentially leave Bengal with a hostile neighbour after future expansion, if they helped the rebels now? If the Sikhs won, would it only weaken Pendzhab so the Chinese could move in instead? Was there a moral duty to help any other Indian state resist colonialism regardless of the context or consequences? These and other positions were still being inconclusively debated at the time the expedition set forth, in March 1923. An exasperated Sinha was effectively given a free hand to do as he saw fit to advance Bengali interests, a vague order which he knew would result in him taking the blame if things developed contrary to the Board’s desires.
Befitting its excellent organisation, the Sinha Expedition ably managed the difficult task of reaching Pendzhab, arriving in June 1923 – around the same time as the monsoon was battering Calcutta and Dacca back home. The secondary mission of mapping the area was also carried out. Chinese aerodromes from Gwalior observed the Bengali column with evident concern, though China would soon have bigger problems. Aerodromes were another technology which Sinha had elected not to attempt to employ, due to the issues associated with the long supply lines; besides, the Russians themselves could not call on aero support for the most part.
One exception to this was that the Russians periodically sent steerable transports over the rebellious mountains of Afghanistan to help resupply their desperate forces holding out in the Sikh-besieged fortresses of Amritsar and Srinagar. This move was widely criticised in hindsight, seen as a desire by Tsar Paul and the Imperial Soviet to be seen to be doing something, and to pressure their harried soldiers not to surrender, without ever doing anything to follow up on this false hope. As it turned out, this point was crucial to Sinha’s intervention, with the help of Choudhury and Swanson’s maps. Though the fact that Sinha turned up with an army was undoubtedly helpful for making the Sikhs take notice, it was Sinha’s insight into the Russians’ position, a perspicacity born of his experience with other cultures in the Pandoric War, that made the difference. To the surprise of the Sikh commander, Surinder Raj Singh, Sinha was able to deliver a Russian surrender within days. He did so not merely by the show of force of his army, but by publicly and spectacularly having one of the supply steerables shot down by rocket fire; he allowed news of this to be leaked to Chinese spies, who fed it back through the Lectel network built throughout Oudh and Delhi. Soon publicised around the world thanks to the Chinese papers, the action was well known – and, as Sinha already knew from sending spies to meet with him, this is what the Russian commander, General Privalov, needed in order to get away with an honourable surrender. It helped that the tone of the Chinese papers had praised the Russians as heroes who had fought long after hope was lost, perhaps hoping to draw a comparison with their own occupying troops in northern India. Paul and the Soviet could not reasonably castigate Privalov’s men for their surrender; indeed, they also belatedly attempted to glorify them, but Russian public anger slowly began to grow for the perceived betrayal of the brave men.
The publicity blaze also helped make the world aware of how Bengal had changed, the complexity of the balance of its peoples (to an extent, at least) and of its new flag, adopted in 1914. The Sinha Expedition was the first major initiative to be launched under this flag: the designers had taken the old East India Company flag of thirteen red and white stripes with the Union Jack in the canton, and had replaced the Union Jack with the old flag of the Nawab, three gunpowder barrels and a sword in red. In the eyes of the world, a tough new nation had been born.
Sinha had therefore succeeded beyond the dreams of what the Board had hoped; the Sikhs won control of Pendzhab with Bengali help, and it seemed that a strong new ally against external colonial powers had been won. But soon Calcutta, too, would have bigger problems, and Sinha’s men would have reason to be thankful that there were no reliable transport links joining them to what was spreading through the densely-populated heart of Bengal.
So much for the Sinha Expedition; but, thanks to the world of film, the most famous Bengali of the Black Twenties (these days) was not Sinha, or Choudhury or Swanson, or anyone in India itself at all. No, that honour falls to one Taijul Hossain...
[12] For a very brief and over-simplified description, Hinduism has four main groups (varnas) – priest/scholar brahmins, warrior/ruler kshatriyas, merchant/farmer vaishas, and worker shudras. This is not the same as the ‘caste system’ (jati) which is more regional-based and determines vocations more precisely, but the two are often confused and intermixed in western sources.
[13] Both these terms are quite vague and changed over time, but Purbiyas are mercenary troops from Bihar and the east of what is now Uttar Pradesh, and Rajputs is a broader term for noble warriors and rulers, whose precise origin is debated. In both OTL and TTL the Bengal Army was described as being dominated by Purbiyas, though it would be more accurate to say high-caste Hindus in general. This came to an end in OTL with the Indian Mutiny, driven in part by grievances that these soldiers’ pay and privileges had not shifted with inflation for decades, and after the Mutiny Britain turned to other groups when recruiting soldiers. Things are quite different in TTL as the old Bengal Army was the primary force resisting the Great Jihad, and has survived in its old form.
[14] This work is implicitly attributing a Bengali Renaissance to reaction against the Jihad; unbeknownst to the writers, Bengal in OTL underwent much the same cultural flowering around the same time despite a very different set of circumstances.
[15] Way back in Part #8 in Volume I.
[16] This is a bit imprecise, as there wasn’t a state called ‘Orissa’ at the time and this is more of a geographic term, unlike the others.
[17] The Persian-originated term ‘sardar’ (or ‘sirdar’), which has had various meanings throughout Indian history, is here used in the reformed Bengal Army to signify a general or field marshal. Historically ‘subedar’ was used in this meaning, but the EIC employed this rank to mean ‘captain’ (reflecting the subordinated position of the native sepoys at the time) so a different word has had to be introduced once native Bengalis were once again able to achieve high-level command positions.
[18] Spelled Bharatpur today in OTL.
[19] It is worth remembering that in TTL, India has never been held by a single colonial power, and thus nothing analogous to OTL’s Great Trigonometrical Survey of the nineteenth century has ever happened – thus the precise geography of much of the interior was not consistently known even before the Jihad.
[20] The Bengali springbomb design is similar to OTL’s PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) used by British infantry in the Second World War.
[21] Part #12 in Volume I.