The myth of the Black Hole of Calcutta

The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta was one that was believed for decades to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but what really happened would appear to be very different from what the history books used to tell.

It was a story that grew from the days of the building of the British Empire, when everyone in Great Britain was convinced that empire-building was the right thing to be doing – spreading civilization and Christianity to the benighted people of far-distant lands. With that mindset, everything that the British did was right and proper and the actions of “lesser” people to frustrate British ambitions had to be wrong and improper. The Black Hole story fits into that scenario very well.

The East India Company

Britain’s early expansion into India was largely due to the actions of the East India Company, which had received its royal charter as far back as 1600. It pursued its aims – of trading in India on terms that were extremely beneficial to British interests – with considerable energy, which included imposing its will by force if necessary. The Company had its own army and navy, and at its peak in the 1850s it had control of more than 250,000 troops and a fleet that was larger than that of the Royal Navy.

By 1756 the East India Company was throwing its weight about in the region around Calcutta (modern Kolkata) and interfering in the internal affairs of the territory ruled by Siraj ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal. The Company operated from Fort William, its fortified power base in the city.

The Nawab decided to frustrate the Company’s ambitions by launching an attack on Fort William on 20^th June 1756. Seeing what was about to happen, most of the company troops and local recruits deserted the fort and fled, leaving only a token force behind. The fort was therefore easily taken after a short armed struggle, but the Nawab made it clear that he intended no harm to come to the prisoners he had taken. However, the reaction of the prisoners, led by the fort’s commander John Zephaniah Holwell, was far from cooperative so the Nawab ordered that all the Europeans in the fort, including Holwell, should be thrown into its jail briefly as a form of punishment.

The Black Hole Myth

The first element of the myth now comes into play, because the number of prisoners could not have been more than around nine, as opposed to the 146 in the account that reached the history books. In reality, only three of the prisoners died during the night of the incarceration and not the 123 that were claimed as the casualties. The three deaths were not from any mistreatment that they endured but the result of wounds suffered during the previous day’s battle.

The myth was created by John Holwell when he returned to London and put together a report with the title: “A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen and Others Who Were Suffocated in the Black Hole”. He was helped in its composition by two other executives of the East India Company who were not witnesses of the event. Holwell could therefore say whatever he liked because he knew full well that nobody would contradict him.

His account was plainly absurd. The room in question measured 18 feet by 14 feet and was therefore physically incapable of holding 146 people. Holwell included lurid details of the agony-twisted faces of the prisoners as they were denied water by their jailers. However, he was right about one thing, which was that the fort’s jail was not called the Black Hole for nothing – it had no windows and only two narrow ventilation slits, so it would have been impossible to see the faces of anyone in the pitch darkness that would have resulted.

But none of this mattered to the British public, who revelled in the horror story and pushed hard for revenge to be taken on the Nawab, who had dared to inflict such an atrocity on British subjects. The worse the atrocity appeared to be, the more likely it was that they would insist on the strongest possible measures.

Enter Robert Clive

Robert Clive has gone down in history as “Clive of India”, being the general most responsible for winning the battles and skirmishes that brought huge swathes of the subcontinent under British control. He had joined the army of the East India Company as a young man and risen rapidly through the ranks, although his reputation for bravery and skillful command may have been ill-deserved, given his use of trickery and cruelty to gain his objectives.

At all events, he was the man to whom the East India Company turned in order to sort out the problem of the Nawab of Bengal. Clive had little difficulty in recapturing Fort William and then went on to defeat the Nawab at the Battle of Plassey.

Clive used his time in India to enrich himself and acquire large amounts of loot from the various rulers that he defeated. When he finally returned to England he was challenged by Parliament to explain his vast wealth and justify his apparently underhand methods but was completely exonerated. In the end, winning an Empire for Great Britain was justification enough.

Challenging the Myth

It took a very long time for the Black Hole story to be properly challenged and exposed for the lie that it was. The first rebuttal did not come until 1915 with a paper entitled “The Black Hole: The Question of Holwell’s Veracity”, by the secretary of the Calcutta Historical Society. Other investigations were to follow. However, such was the power of the original story that it is still widely believed today, despite its impossibility.

The Black Hole of Calcutta is just one of many examples of “fake news” from past centuries. Telling huge lies has often proved to be profitable, especially when they are believed by enough people. Under search circumstances, why bother telling the truth?

© John Welford

Gandhi's 1930 Salt March

A protest march in 1930 that started with 80 people was seen in later years as a major step on the path towards India’s independence from the British Empire.

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was a London-trained lawyer who sought to fight against the British Raj by wholly peaceful means. One cause of discontent was the tax levied on the Indian population for the purchase of salt, which was essential for the preservation of food in the notoriously hot climate of India.

The protest march began in the state of Gujarat. It lasted for 24 days, averaging ten miles a day. The route of the march led towards Dandi, on the Arabian Sea coast.

As the march progressed it attracted thousands more followers and eventually the procession of people was more than two miles long. Gandhi also addressed large crowds of people at stops along the way and at the march’s conclusion.

At the end of the march Gandhi encouraged his followers to break the law by making their own salt from seawater, this being a significant act of civil disobedience.

The Salt March was the first major example of non-violent direct action against India’s colonial rulers. Seventeen years later Gandhi and his followers achieved their aim when the independence of India was declared.

© John Welford

The Battle of Plassey, 1757

The Battle of Plassey, fought on June 23^rd 1757, decided the fate of Bengal as part of the British Empire. From this point on there was little doubt that Great Britain would be the dominant colonial power in the region, nor that large tracts of the Indian sub-continent would fall into British hands and become the jewel in the crown of the British Empire for the next 200 years.

During the early 1750s there had been four European powers with an interest in exploiting the resources of India for their own benefit, namely Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Portugal, although by the end of the decade only the first two could be considered serious players.

France and Britain both allowed commercial companies to be their agents in the region. In the case of France this was the “Compagnie des Indes”, while for Britain the “British East India Company” ruled the roost. This latter was a remarkable institution in that it was allowed to command its own army and to declare war and peace as though it were a sovereign state.

The East India Company established its main base at Calcutta (modern day Kolkata) in West Bengal, and this city was to become the capital of British India. It was the capture and relief of Calcutta that led to the Battle of Plassey.

On June 20^th 1756 Suraja Dowla, the Nawab of Bengal, captured Calcutta after a four-day siege. When the city fell, a number of British citizens were imprisoned in a small cell and, due to overcrowding, more than 120 of them died in a single night. At least, that was the account given by one of the survivors. The incident has gone down in history as the “Black Hole of Calcutta”, and it did much to strengthen British resolve to punish the perpetrators. The exact circumstances are, however, still shrouded in mystery. It is quite likely that the horror of the incident was exaggerated, and whether it even happened at all is open to argument.

When Calcutta was recaptured by troops sent from Madras, on January 2^nd 1757, it was decided that a British force, led by Robert Clive, should pursue Suraja, who was being aided by the French. This meant proceeding inland up the Hooghly river, which flows past Calcutta.

On 23^rd March Clive captured a French fort at Chandernagore. This was an important step because it meant that the British supply lines to Calcutta could not be interrupted by the French.

Clive caught up with Suraja further up the Hooghly river, beyond the point where its name changes to the Bhagirathi. The Indian troops, together with some French artillery, were camped on the far side of the river from Clive’s direction of approach, near the village of Plassey (modern day Palashi).

Suraja’s force was considerably larger than Clive’s. Suraja commanded 50,000 men and he also had 53 guns available to him, under French control. Clive could only muster just over 3,000 troops and had ten guns. However, that did not dissuade him from crossing the river and massing his forces in a mango grove.

Suraja surrounded the British army in a semicircle and began firing on them. However, a sudden rainstorm had the effect of making the Indian gunpowder useless and the firing was brought to a halt. Instead, the Indians mounted a cavalry charge which was repulsed by the British, who had literally “kept their powder dry”, to the surprise of the Indians.

Clive had something of a “fifth column” in Suraja’s army, in that it contained supporters of a rival Nawab, Mir Jafar. Clive gambled on the probability that, if the tide turned in favour of the British, these supporters would change their allegiance, and the gamble paid off.

Clive was thus able to advance on Suraja’s entrenchments and fire on them at close range. Only the French guns fought to the last as Suraja’s men fled in disarray.

Suraja Dowla did not survive much longer, being assassinated a few days later. Clive established his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, as the new Nawab, but, when Kasim proved to be too independent for Clive’s liking, he was deposed and Mir Jafar took his place.

An important aspect of events surrounding the Battle of Plassey was that the British exploited divisions among the Indians in order to get a firm foothold on India. The British adopted the tactic of supporting one Indian faction against another and then demanding their reward when their side won. Two-thirds of Clive’s army at Plassey were Indians, and his campaign was funded by a powerful banking family who were rivals of Suraja Dowla. By making Mir Jafar the new Nawab, Clive was ensuring that his man was in the seat of power, but only as a puppet with the British pulling the strings.

The Battle of Plassey was not the final action that the British would fight, either against Indian natives or French colonialists, but it set the scene for what was to follow. Eventually the French would give up their claims and local uprisings would be put down with relative ease, as would mutinies of Indian troops within the British army. By the end of the century the dominant position of Great Britain as the overlord of much of India was firmly established, and would be further consolidated in the century that followed. The Battle of Plassey therefore marked a turning point in that British expansion in India was no longer under serious threat.

© John Welford