234 DESTINY DISRUPTED
army, marched to Calcutta to extract revenge. He deposed the nawab, and
installed the nawab's uncle in his place. (The so-called battle of Plassey,
which effected this change, consisted of Clive bribing the nawab's body-
guards to go home and then arresting and executing the abandoned
nawab.)
Even then, the British did not name themselves rulers, not even of
this one provincial piece of India. Officially, Bengal remained a Moghul
possession and its government remained Bengali. Clive appointed him-
self a mere employee of this provincial government, setting his own
salary at thirty thousand pounds a year. The East India Company en-
shrined itself as the Bengali government's "advisers," nothing more. For
the sake of efficiency, the company decided to go ahead and collect taxes
on behalf of the Moghul government. And again, for efficiency's sake,
they decided to go ahead and spend the money themselves, directly, locally:
what was the point of sending it to the capital and having it come back
again? Oh, and henceforth the company's private army would take care
of security and maintain law and order. But the company insisted that it
was not now governing Bengal: it was just providing needed services for
a fee.
The first few years of British rule worked out poorly for Bengalis. The
company left day-to-day administration in local hands and focused only
on matters relevant to its business interests. In practice, this meant the
(powerless) "government" was responsible for solving all problems while
the (powerful) company was entitled to reap all benefits but disavowed any
responsibility for the welfare of the people; after all, it was not the govern-
ment. Rapacious company officials bled Bengal dry, but those who com-
plained were referred to "the government." The plundering of the province
resulted in a famine that killed about a third of the population in just two
years-we're talking about an estimated ten million people here.^4 The
famine damaged the company's interests too, however, just as a parasite
suffers when the plant on which it is feeding wilts.
At this point, the British government decided to step in. Parliament ap-
pointed a governor-general for India, brought the East India Company
under control, and sent troops to the subcontinent. For the next hundred
years, there were two British armies in India: so-called "John company"
troops who worked for the corporation and "Queen's company" troops,