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Journalism of Courage
Across the Bhagirathi river in Jiaganj, lay the dilapidated mansions of the nawabs of Murshidabad. Some now operate as museums, others stand abandoned. To cross over to neighbouring Azimganj, one must wait for a local bamboo raft boat. Of the two varieties, one is a passenger boat whilst the other carries both passengers and vehicles. “Travelling in the mornings is particularly difficult, because there are long queues,” says Bikram Aditya Roy, a local working at a luxury hotel in Azimganj. During the monsoon and high tides, boating on the Bhagirathi is prohibited by the authorities. “We remain stranded,” sighs Roy, “hoping for the tides to calm down”.
For the onlooker, a trip to Murshidabad feels frozen in time. While the city is expansive, the twin towns of Jiagang and Azimganj, on either side of the Bhagirathi River, are the main attractions. “Jiaganj has most of the tourist sites, and the roads are far better than Azimgunj,” says Basir Khan, a tour guide.
Also in Jiaganj is the house of 82-year-old Syed Reza Ali Meerza, better known as chote nawab, a descendant of Mir Jafar. His room is a museum of memories, its bright green walls adorned with photographs of ancestors and family members. Though largely withdrawn from public life, he continues to fight on two fronts — against the label of namak haram (traitor), and to reclaim family assets that he says were taken over by the Centre.
Sitting on his four-poster bed, sipping tea, chote nawab reminisces about the time gone by — years of wealth and prestige. “Murshidabad was one of Bengal’s richest districts. In Jiaganj were settled the Nawabs, and in Azimganj, the Jains from Rajasthan,” he tells indianexpress.com. “Towering palaces, each having extensive silverware items and an entourage of domestic help and chefs”.Today, his influence is ceremonial at best — he still offers the first anjali at many Durga Puja pandals — but the decline of Murshidabad’s nawabi culture mirrors the fall of the city itself.
This is the story of Bengal’s last independent capital — the capital that could have been.
A small yet commercially viable district of Bengal, Murshidabad is situated on the eastern bank of the Bhagirathi river. Its inhabitants were once described as boat-using people who grew rice as their staple crop.
“The city of Murshidabad was once nearly the size of Delhi, stretching from Baluchar to Amaniganj, a distance of some five miles,” notes JH Tull Walsh in A History of Murshidabad District (1902). In 1704, Murshid Quli Khan, the Diwan of Bengal during the reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, relocated his capital from Dhaka (in present-day Bangladesh) to Murshidabad.
“He then changed the name of the capital from Maksudabad to Murshidabad, after his first name,” says Srestha Das, resident historian at a heritage hotel, Bari Kothi, in Murshidabad. The next five decades, until the Battle of Plassey, are widely regarded as the golden age of Murshidabad.
“Bengal always had a lucrative trade, and the political stability and increase in agricultural productivity during Murshid Quli’s period provided further impetus to such trading activities,” writes Sekhar Bandyopadhyay in From Plassey to Partition and After (2015).
“At its peak in the 1700s, Murshidabad contributed a remarkable 20% to national GDP and 5% to the global market,” says Pradip Chopra, academic practitioner and president of Murshidabad Heritage Development Society.
Among the industries that thrived in the region were silk, indigo, jute, and fisheries. Walsh notes, “The silk trade was one of the earliest of all the industries which occupied the servants of the East India Company in this district.” He reckons that silkworms were either introduced from China or Persia, and that the first written record of Bengal silk dates back to 1621. The earliest silk factory was established in the neighbouring town of Kasimbazar (Cossimbazar).
The region also attracted financiers and bankers, such as the House of Jagat Seth. Having taken control of the mint, these bankers became what Bandyopadhyay calls the “main supportive pillar of the Nawab’s power.”
However, it was under the reign of Alivardi Khan in 1740 that Bengal cut all ties with the Mughal Empire. “All major appointments were now made without any reference to the emperor, and finally, the regular flow of revenue to Delhi was stopped,” writes Bandyopadhyay.
Upon Alivardi Khan’s death in 1756, a battle for succession ensued. While Khan had appointed his grandson Siraj ud-Daulah as his successor, contenders included Khan’s daughter, Ghaseti Begum, and commander-in-chief Mir Jafar. Independent of the Mughal Empire and susceptible to external threat, the Bengal province weakened. Bandyopadhyay notes, “…the advantage was taken by the East India Company, which acquired a foothold in Bengal politics through what is popularly known as the Plassey conspiracy of 1757…”
While multiple theories of conspiracy are associated with Plassey, it is believed that Mir Jafar, along with bankers Umichand and Khoja Wazid, sided with the British to overthrow Siraj ud-Daulah.
On June 23, 1757, Siraj ud-Daulah was defeated by the British forces. Scholars argue that this was largely because Mir Jafar instructed a large contingent of the army to remain inactive. Despite receiving support from the French, Siraj ud-Daulah lost and was later captured and executed.
“Historians have written many stories, but Mir Jafar alone should not be blamed, he only acted on the instructions of the Jagat Seth brothers,” says Roy. “Only outsiders call us traitors,” adds chote nawab. “The real culprits were the financers, the bankers, and Ghaseti Begum”.
Among scholars who concur with this theory is historian Sushil Chaudhury. In Profile of a Forgotten Capital: Mushidabad in the Eighteenth Century (2018), Chaudhury writes, “If Mir Jafar was a traitor, no less a traitor was Jagat Seth… They [the English] knew well that without the help of the Jagat Seths, no political change would be possible in Bengal”.
The House of Jagat Seth, a wealthy Bengali-Jain family of bankers and merchants from Murshidabad, played a formidable role in shaping Murshidabad. The eldest son of the family, Manickchand, went to Dhaka and started a money-lending business. “In Dhaka, an intimate relationship grew up between the newly-appointed diwan, Murshid Quli, and Manickchand,” writes Chaudhury. With the relocation of the capital in 1704, Manickchand also left Dhaka and came to Murshidabad.
According to Chaudhury, “The financial credit and prestige of the house was raised to such a great height by Manickchand and Fatehchand that the Mughal emperor conferred on the latter the title of Jagat Seth (Banker of the World) as a hereditary distinction in 1722.” Manikchand died in 1714 and was succeeded by his nephew Fatehchand.
This affluence, however, was short-lived. “Their greed led to their downfall,” remarks Roy. While Mir Jafar was placed on the throne after Plassey, he was a mere puppet in the hands of the British. Gradually, the influence of the house of Jagat Seth also began to wane.
Das adds, “Legend has it that Goddess Lakshmi, angered by the greed of the Jagat Seths, cursed the Bhagirathi river. This curse is the reason why a bridge has still not been built.” Khan concurs: “The house of Jagat Seth actually stood on the riverbank, but it was swept away by the force of that curse”.
A reading of Jagat Seth prompts a look at the Jains of Murshidabad. A historically prominent and prosperous community, the Jains lived mainly in Azimganj and Jiaganj. “Azimganj contains some large houses, the property of Jain merchants. The town is about three and a half miles from Murshidabad city, and forms part of the Municipality of Azimganj,” wrote Welsh in 1902.
Some of the Jain families to have moved to Murshidabad included the Dugars, Dudhorias, Nahras, Nowlakhas, Singhis, and Golechas. Also known as the Sheherwali community, implying Jain merchants who moved from town to town (sheher), they became financiers to both the East India Company and Indian nawabs. “Arriving in Murshidabad during the 18th century, the Sheherwalis capitalised on the city’s role as a bustling trade hub and the capital of Bengal,” remarks Chopra.
Among the Sheherwali homes that now run as luxury hotels is Bari Kothi on Jain Patty in Azimgunj. Das explains, “This stretch of Azimganj has some of the most luxurious houses, one, Bari Kothi, which functions as a heritage hotel, and others which remain private properties.” Bari Kothi belongs to the Dudhoria family, who moved from Bikaner in Rajasthan to Murshidabad in 1774.
The first to emigrate, according to Walsh, was Harjimal Dudhoria and his sons, Sabai Singh and Maujiram. They started as dealers in country-made cloth in Azimganj, and later started a money-lending business spread across Calcutta, Mymensing, and Jangipur.
The Jains continued to prosper in their business and expanded to multiple industries, including silk, jute, and money lending. However, after the Battle of Plassey, the community suffered a setback. Further, with the rise of Calcutta as the Capital in the 1770s, most Jains moved from Murshidabad to Calcutta.
Several other factors also compelled the Jains to leave Murshidabad, including frequent calamities such as earthquakes and the threat of Naxalite unrest in the 1960s. “The Dudhorias, for instance, only left in the 1970s after being robbed at their residence,” noted Das. Most members of the community are now settled in Calcutta.
Chopra explains that while the Battle of Plassey caused some upheaval, Murshidabad continued as a seat of British administration and witnessed the construction of temples, mosques, and other structures.
Free of Naxalite influence and communal disharmony, Murshidabad, for its inhabitants, is an ideal place to live in. “When I first arrived,” recalls Das, “it felt like a Satyajit Ray movie.” Along with the chote nawab, Roy, and Khan, she strongly detests the media portrayal of the communal strife in Murshidabad in April this year. Correcting the narrative, Roy notes, “The riots happened in Bhagawangola and Lalgola near the Bangladesh border. I don’t understand why the media keeps calling it Murshidabad.”
While winters are the most pleasant here, summers and monsoons see a drop in the number of locals, many of whom migrate as construction workers, as well as tourists. Among the many migrant workers is Jumman SK. “I work in the mango orchards during the summer, and drive a tonga for tourists in the winter.” During the in-between months, Jumman finds work at nearby construction sites and factories.
On being asked about the speciality of mangoes from the region, Jumman shared, “Murshidabad has 101 varieties of mangoes, dating back to the time of Murshid Quli Khan. But only a few can be exported to other cities. We often end up with surplus produce and inadequate demand,” he sighed.
At his home in Tathipara, Prosenjit Dharia, a silk-weaver, has a similar story to share. “It takes five days to weave a silk saree, and we earn 1200 for it. You can do the math,” he says. Demand, according to Dharia, is higher during wedding season and the pujas, but misleading media coverage about the riots has driven away many tourists this year.
The economy remains sluggish. Khan, the tour guide, awaits the onset of winter. “Business will pick up,” he says, sounding hopeful. His decades-old two-day itinerary includes the Katra mosque, the house of Jagat Seth, Katgola Garden, Namak Haram Deorhi (the gate to the erstwhile residence of Mir Jafar), the Hazardwari Palace, and the Jain and Hindu temples across the city. The only addition, of late, has been the house of singer Arijit Singh. For many like Basir Khan, holding onto their heritage is not just a matter of pride but a prerequisite for survival.
A common feature across the historical sites of Murshidabad is the strategic placement of mirrors. “This was to prepare the Nawabs against possible attacks from behind,” explains Basir Khan. Yet, they could not prevent the internal treachery that changed the course of Indian history. What might have Murshidabad been had Mir Jafar not betrayed Siraj ud-Daulah? What if the house of Jagat Seth had not conspired with the British? What if Calcutta had not risen as the capital?
Perhaps, Murshidabad would have been the capital that never was.
