The Battle

Battle of Buxar fought in October 1764 that set out, a greedy private enterprise East India Company headquartered in London, on a path that changed the South Asia forever and the after shocks are even felt today including what we see today in Afghanistan in 2021. As a kid I have been to the place and unfortunately there wasn’t much there except agricultural fields and few graves for British Officers reminiscent of the bloody battle. Lets look at this war and their main Actors.

Main Actors

British Side

British has won the Battle Of Plassey in 1757 by playing politics and defeated Siraj ud-Daulah, not so good heir to his maternal grandfather Alivardi Khan. East India Company hired majority of Indians in their army and I guess even those days we were more than eager to work for them :). There were little over 7000 strong army on their side of which 859 were British officers and over 5000 Indian sepoys and about 900 cavalry. 85% of the fighting army were made of Indians who were mostly “Sipahi” or cavalry. Hector Munro lead the war from the British side who later became Commander-in-Chief of India.

English also had support of earlier Nawab Mir Jafar who was father in law of Mir Qasim and there were about 12000 men in his army. 

We Indians have fought and died in numerous battles but nobody has written a memoir, nobody has talked of countless lives lost as we fought to earn the living and were mostly sepoys or cavalry and not the leaders. (Remember how Nolan’s Dunkirk didn’t even mention anything about the four companies of Royal Indian Army Service Corps)

Other Side

Now like in football you can have all star team but still loose the game due to coordination. Somewhat similar happened as the other side had a combined army of 40000 men of Mughals, Awadh and Mir Qasim.

Mughals were led by Shah Alam II who was trying to get hold of the seat at Delhi after the death of Alamgir II. Mughals were crumbling after the reign of Aurangzeb probably accelerated by his treatment of non-Muslims. Until then, Mughals were very accommodative to different religions and had many officers from various other communities like Hindus and also allowed and contributed to building of temples belonging to other religions. Shah Alam was a fugitive titular emperor who was on the run after the failed attempt to capture the throne at Delhi.  

Nawab of Awadh was Shuja ud-Daulah, whose father was Safdar Jung (must have heard this name, an area in today’s Delhi), whose looks were definitely not Indian and he was from the Turkic and Iranian Persian Twelve Shia Muslim royal family. He was himself around 7 feet tall and had helped Alivardi Khan against the Marathas.

Mir Qasim had managed to become Nawab of Bengal by conniving with East India Company and had replaced Mir Jafar who was his father in law. He was not happy with the way British treated him and the way business was done in Bengal. Qasim’s initial life and lineage is not kept by any chroniclers but he also came from ancient noble of Persian extraction and his father was probably Razi Khan who was Diwan of Patna and had his own jagir probably in Lohanipur. Razi Khan retired to his own Jagir and was buried in Lohanipur.

Now all the three were of Irani/Persian descent and India was probably a good destination to become rulers and enjoy a good life 🙂

Overall army of 40000 included the ferocious Gossains or the Nagas. There were two brothers Anoop Giri and Umrao Giri who occupied the high posts in Awadh army and there were about 5000 of these naked ferocious fighters covered with paint and ashes. The Rajah of Benaras Balwant Singh who was vassal of Nawab of Awadh was also part of the Army. His minister Behni Bahadur was also part of the army.  Troops of Mir Qasim had English like training and even dress and had trained battallions of Samru (Walter Reinhardt Sombre, a German military strategist) and Madoc (an illiterate and ignorant Frenchmen who deserted his national army and entered the service of Najaf Khan in Delhi.

The Drama – The Game Theory in Play

Mir Qasim was being chased around by British after he publicly went against them. On the other hand Mir Jafar saw an opportunity to get back to the position of Nawab which he did eventually. Mir Qasim was defeated in the Battle of Undwah Nala  by the British but he was able to escape with the his moveable treasure and family to fort of Rohtas. Shuja ud-Daulah was looking at all of this and was thinking of his options. Meanwhile, Mir Qasim got a letter from Nawab of Awadh stating that he will help him. Shuja knew by now, that if he can fight out English he can get all the three territories of Bihar, Orissa and Bengal into his dominion.

British after the victory in the Battle of Undwah Nala were seeing mutiny within their force. Mir Jafar had promised some handsome money to everyone of the force but his treasury was controlled by Calcutta Council who did not open up the coffers and there was huge dissatisfaction with the warriors.  There was change of leadership, formidable Major Adams and Major Knox had to leave the battlefield due to health reasons. The leadership until Munro were not great including Major Carnac who was hated by both officers and sipahis because of his outlandish behavior in battlefield and it was known that he doubted the capacity of the army to beat the enemy. Eventually there was money paid but the Europeans got 6 times the native which created huge discontent and after a small skirmish their demand of matching atleast half of what Europeans got was met. Even then some of the Europeans (mostly French/Dutch) were not satisfied and went and joined the forces under Shuja’s general Samru. We see money and race playing its role in the Army.

Mir Jafar was in touch with Shuja as well as British and was trying to get the Nawab on his side. Shuja on the other hand was dreaming of much larger things. He was looking to use Mir Qasim’s wealth and army and defeat the English forces. Mir Qasim was a clever man, Shuja was being troubled by the Raja of Bundelkhand and Qasim offered to go alone and help him quash the Bundelas. His army trained in European warring methods defeated the Bundelas and Shuja gained more confidence.    

Shah Alam II did not had any big army and he only had support of Rohillas who were of Pashtun ancestry. So the Battle was between Shuja ud-Daulah and English and whoever wins was to gain quite a lot from this.

Shuja ud-Daulah fought valiantly and started the aggression first in Patna where Major Carnac had taken the army. But the disciplined Army of British and able leadership of Munro they were pushed back. Mir Qasim was not a good fighter and he could not command reinforcement for Shuja when required. Shuja backed off and settled in the area between the river Karmanasa (destroyer of religious merit), Durgawti and Ganga (cleanser of sins). Shuja started the second round of the battle and was almost close to winning but unfortunately his supporter Shuja Kuli Khan charged without consulting others and was not just killed himself but gave a huge setback to the brigades of both Samru and Madoc. Another mistake was done by Behni Bahadur who started retreating mistaking that the battle was over. Both these led to Shuja’s defeat and he crossed the Torah Nala and once crossing was done he destroyed the bridge leading his army in complete disarray. 

British eventually gained whole of  North India. Shah Alam and Shuja ud-Daulah signed a deal with British in Allahabad. Mir Qasim lost all his money and died somewhere in the outskirts of Delhi as a tramp. Mir Jafar became nawab of Bengal for another couple of years but mostly as puppet of East India Company.

This war costed Britishers 847 lives out of which 101 were Europeans and only 9 were officers. The other side’s loss was more and upwards of 2000 lives were lost and many were wounded.

Why did I get interested in this?

My ancestral village is somewhat near to the place where this battle was fought and as a kid I got to see the place myself. I was trying to gather more information regarding the same and this post is part of that. I would like to see if there was any chronicler on Shuja’s side and look at their side of story. 

I promise next time I get a chance I will update with pictures and try to get to more depth.

This post is largely based on the Book called “Decisive Battles of India” by Colonel G.B. Malleson

In continuation I can bring the story of General Sumru and his Begum, both of them had an interesting life. Let me know if you would like to know.