India a land of seductive riches,
land of the ohinoor diamond
a priceless gem which legend says was given by the god rishna
to test mankind's greed.
Possessed of such wealth and beauty,
thought rishna, would men behave like beasts?
Or would they think and achieve wisdom?
This is the story of India and its conquerors.
One stormed south across the mountains,
one came from across the seas,
both were hungry for wealth and dominion.
Each would become his own answer to rishna's question
wise man or beast?
For three hundred years the Mughal empire dominated India.
It was a Mughal emperor who created the radiant mountain of white marble
called the Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the world.
The wealth and sophistication of the Mughal court were legendary.
Here, Mughal kings ruled
from the famous peacock throne made of gold, rubies and sapphires.
All these treasures of the Mughal empire
were the legacy of one remarkable man, a poet, a killer,
a wild nomad who was not from India at all.
His name was Babur.
Babur's life began in 1483 in Fergana,
a small kingdom in the highlands of central Asia.
Fergana was one square of a bloodstained checkerboard
of competing dynasties,
each struggling to expand its little empire.
But a little empire wasn't what Babur had in mind.
Babur's dynasty was part Turk and part Mongol
"Mughals" as the Persians called them.
Babur was a direct descendant
of the two greatest conquerors of Central Asian history,
Genghis han and Timur or Tamerlane.
He wanted something that would be worthy of their memory.
From the very beginning,
Babur tried to take inspiration from Genghis and Timur.
These were his two heroes.
And it was probably this reason which had, at times, goaded him
to think of India as his final destination.
Born to nobility, at 11 Babur inherited Fergana.
Almost immediately other warlords tried to take it away from him.
Not surprisingly for one so young,
the fortunes of war started to turn against him.
Before long, he had lost much of his kingdom and his men
deserted in droves to hitch their fortunes to more promising leaders.
All seven or eight hundred of my lords and warriors deserted me.
It was a terrible blow.
I remember, I couldn't help crying.
He was only fifteen.
It was a harsh education which made young Babur's heart ache.
But his early failures toughened him.
If you desire to rule and conquer,
you don't just fold your hands when things go wrong you act.
Action meant war.
And with whichever followers he could muster,
he started to wage guerrilla warfare against his more powerful neighbors.
He and his men seesawed between victory and defeat.
Allies deserted him; enemies became allies.
One day in 1501, he laughed when he realized
a sword he had given to an ally as a token of loyalty one year,
was the same one that almost split his skull in battle the next.
My own soul is my most faithful friend.
My own heart, my truest confidant.
Always, Babur's ambition was to found a great dynasty like his ancestors.
He needed children who would be his heirs.
He admitted he was so shy as a young man,
his mother and sisters had to bully him into sleeping with his first wife.
But before long he had more wives, and a son, Humayun,
on whom the weight of Babur's dreams would fall.
With his succession assured,
the question that now dogged him was: What would he leave his sons?
He had lost his kingdom and was being shut out of Central Asia.
So where was the land in which his dynasty could flourish?
Slowly, Babur's reputation as a warlord was growing
and with it the perception that he might be a future ruler after all.
Lured by the promise of conquest and booty,
warriors of other dynasties began to join him.
In 1504, Babur's fortunes took a decisive turn for the better.
He caught wind of tumult in the Afghan kingdom of abul to the south.
Here, he thought, was a chance.
At the age of 21, Babur rode out of the mountains
with his small band of men and raced toward abul.
Warriors joined him as he approached and they swept into the city.
The battle for abul was short and Babur triumphed.
As he settled into his new home,
Babur immediately fell in love with Afghanistan,
its cool climate, and the beautiful rivers of its fresh upland plateaus.
Abul signified a new beginning, an end to the years of wandering
but not, of course, an end to his dreams of empire.
Not far to the south lay the vast, teeming land of Hindustan, India.
He had heard many stories of its wealth.
He realized it was now within his grasp.
From the time I took abul, I set my heart on Hindustan.
In 1504, the Indian sub continent
Was a disunited mass of independent kingdoms and ultanates
Hindu in the south, largely Moslem in the north.
One of the largest and most powerful of these was Hindustan,
controlled by the sultanate of Delhi.
Babur knew he stood no chance
of directly confronting the armies of Hindustan.
But having taken abul, he lost no time in making an exploratory raid
into the plains of northern India just to see.
With a small army he moved south in 1505.
He was amazed by what he found.
I had never experienced such heat or anything like Hindustan before
different plants, different trees, different animals and birds,
different tribes and people, different manners and customs.
It was astonishing, truly astonishing.
India exceeded his wildest expectations.
He discovered beautifully crafted textiles,
refined sugar, perfumes and spices.
Here indeed was a rich land.
As he headed back to abul, his resolve to return was redoubled.
But he would have to bide his time.
For 20 years Babur made abul his home.
20 years in which he finally had time to taste the pleasures of life.
Until now he had been a clean living and sober young Moslem.
In abul all that started to change.
At that time I had not committed the sin of drinking to drunkenness
and did not know the delight and leasure of being drunk
as it should be known.
Here all the implements of pleasure and revelry were ready and present.
If I didn't drink now, when would I?
He discovered a taste for fine wines,
and the sweetmeats laced with hashish called Ma'jun.
In abul he drank often.
His memoirs filled with parties,
drunkenness and head splitting hangovers.
We drank on the boat until late that night.
We got on our horses, reeling from side to side,
then let them gallop free reined.
The next morning they told me I had galloped into camp holding a torch.
I swear I didn't remember a thing,
except that when I got back to my tent I was extremely sick.
In abul, Babur learned how to let go, but he never forgot that
if he was ever to take Hindustan his troops had to stay disciplined.
He had no qualms about extreme punishments.
I had one of the soldiers clubbed at the gate for stealing a pot of oil.
He died.
The others were successfully cowed by this punishment.
As he explored Afghanistan,
this ruthless nomad who was perfectly capable of
putting entire cities to the sword, became a keen student of flowers.
All sorts grow in these foothills;
I once counted them and found 32 or 33 different kinds.
We named one the rose scented tulip because it smelt
rather like a rose;
it grows all by itself on the Sheikh's plain.
Joy was to sit peacefully in one of his beautiful highland gardens
and write poetry.
He built no fewer than ten gardens in abul.
Before long, Babur's seven wives had produced him eighteen children.
He was devoted to all of them but it was his first born son,
Humayun, who he was determined would inherit a great kingdom.
Babur bided his time, watching and waiting for his opportunity in India.
Finally, in 1526, it arrived.
The Sultanate of Delhi was overtaken by internal strife.
Babur realized his moment had come.
It would be now or never.
Babur marched into Northern India with 12,000 men.
The sultan of Delhi marched to meet him
with 100,000 men and 1,000 armored elephants.
They met on the plain of Panipat north of Delhi.
Babur's trump card was
the discipline of his troops and his Turkish artillery.
The Indian elephants charged
but were met with explosions of canons and mortar.
They panicked, spun, and stampeded.
The whole army fell into disarray.
Just a few hours after it began, the battle became a rout.
The Indians, including their leader, were massacred as they ran.
Babur had just pulled off an astonishing military feat.
Finally, Hindustan was his.
With Hindustan in his grasp, one of the first things Babur did was
to send Hindustani dancing girls
to entertain his wives in their harem in abul.
It was a gracious gesture.
His wives, covered and restrained,
their faces painted stiffly white in the central Asian style,
must have been astonished.
Out of meetings like this, of the stark world of central Asian Islam
with the lush anarchy of India, would arise the glories of the Mughal style.
As Babur took stock of his new possession,
even he well versed in plunder was stunned.
The astonishing treasuries of Hindustan
contained the ohinoor diamond.
Its name, he learned meant "mountain of light."
He was told it was worth enough
to feed the entire world for two and half days.
Offered it as a gift,
Babur refused and left it with his son Humayun.
Suddenly he was less interested in the riches
than in how to govern this strange new land.
But as he surveyed Hindustan, his enthusiasm for it started to melt away.
There is no beauty in its people, no graceful social intercourse,
no poetic talent or understanding, no etiquette, nobility or manliness.
The arts and crafts have no harmony or symmetry.
There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets.
The peasantry and common people parade around stark naked.
Hindustan is a place of little charm.
But Babur was determined
he would build Hindustan into something worthy of his dynasty.
He would introduce Mughal order and symmetry
into what seemed to him a chaotic and senseless land.
He made the princes of Hindustan, the Rajputs,
submit to him and laid foundations for the future empire.
And it dawned on Babur that
it was no longer enough to be a successful conqueror.
To fulfill his dreams for his heirs, he had to become a wise ruler as well.
A sacrifice to god was necessary.
In an extravagant public ceremony, Babur swore off drink.
He had his drinking vessels crushed
and distributed the gold and silver to the poor.
At the age of 43, Babur had achieved his dream of empire.
He settled into Hindustan and continued work on his autobiography
the first ever written in the Moslem world.
I have simply set down what happened.
I have reported every good and evil of father and brother,
every fault and virtue of relative and stranger.
May the reader excuse me.
And everywhere Babur built the square, symmetrical gardens called 'charbagh'
which were the perfect expression of Mughal beauty.
The radiance of nature bound by the rigid geometrical order of Islam.
And it was in his gardens
that he reflected on his turbulent life and his successes in battles,
both with enemies and himself.
The temptations of alcohol had been almost overwhelming.
Two years ago my craving for a wine party
was such to bring me to the verge of tears.
This year, praise God, that desire has completely left my mind.
The one thing that never left his mind was his homeland, Fergana.
One day as he ate a melon he found himself crying
as its flavor brought back memories of the fresh uplands
of his childhood.
He confessed to his youngest daughter that he wanted to retire
and turn the reins of power over to Humayun.
But In 1530, four years after the conquest of Hindustan,
Humayun fell sick.
His doctors gave him up for dead.
It was a catastrophe
the death not only of a beloved son
but the heir to Babur's dynasty and empire.
Babur had learned the wisdom of sacrifice.
But what on earth could he offer God to persuade him to spare his son?
Priests and advisors came with suggestions:
He could sacrifice the ohinoor.
But Babur knew it was a worthless bauble compared to the life of his son.
He decided only one sacrifice could possibly compare.
For days, he prayed fervently to Allah
to take his own life in exchange for Humayun's.
Soon after, Humayun recovered and sure enough, Babur fell sick.
He stayed true to his oath and refused all offers of treatment.
He'd made a deal with Allah a life for a life.
Who was he to renege?
He turned his face to the wall.
Three months later he died, aged 47.
Babur had ruled India for only four years,
but the dynasty he founded would rule it for almost 300.
Akbar, Babur's grandson,
would for the first time unite the subcontinent.
Shah Jahan, Babur's great great grandson, would build the Taj Mahal.
The Mughals laid the foundations of the India we know today.
They were able to create a large empire within India;
they were able to establish the great institutions of empire
through their army, their especially important domestic
and other alliance policies with the Rajputs.
It was a very creative fusion.
Over the generations, Mughal India would become
synonymous with opulence, refinement, and wealth.
Before long it attracted the hungry gaze of yet other treasure seekers.
This time they would come from further west.
Just over three hundred years after Babur died,
India was swallowed by the British empire.
By the end of the 19th century, Britain dominated most of the world
but India was its most valued possession.
Queen Victoria called it the jewel in her crown.
The man who gave all this to Britain was an unlikely conqueror
a tormented soul who came from nowhere,
driven only by an unwavering ambition.
His name was Robert Clive.
1772, The Houses of Parliament in London.
Robert Clive is fighting for his survival.
He has laid the foundations of the British empire in India
and in the process made himself a vast fortune.
Now he stands accused of criminal greed and exploitation.
In the House of Commons he rises to his defense.
Gentlemen, a great prince was dependent on my pleasure,
an opulent city lay at my mercy;
its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles;
I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone,
piled on either hand with gold and jewels!
Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!
Robert Clive will not be bowed.
His life is ending as it began in a furious and lonely struggle.
Born in 1725 in Shropshire in the West of England,
he was given up by his mother as a child and raised by relatives.
It happened at the insistence of his father
an ineffectual lawyer from the minor country gentry,
who barely earned enough to keep the family afloat.
Rejected by his family and naturally unruly,
young Robert was soon running wild in the little town of Market Drayton.
He pioneered the business methods,
which would make him his later fortune as the head of a juvenile gang.
It was a protection racket if merchants agreed to pay a small fee,
the boys would agree NOT to break their windows.
Robert was adventurous, brave and bad.
He was an average student
and much more interested in mischief than in school.
He climbed the church tower of Market Drayton
and hung over the side for the sheer thrill of it.
Robert grew up craving excitement,
but wanted acceptance by his family even more.
When he was 17,
a job as a clerk in the East India Company promised adventure,
money and a chance to redeem his family.
Clive set his sights on India.
On the first of June 1744,
a cutter deposited Robert in a rowboat just off the coast of Madras.
Splashing ashore, he got his first sight of India.
The Madras, Robert discovered, was an exotic melting pot
of Indian, Southeast Asian and European influences.
Here British, French and Dutch traders had established themselves
to take advantage of the astonishingly lucrative trade
in cloth, spices and opium.
In those days the young men who became clerks in the East India Company
were a little bit like the Eurobond dealers of our day.
If you wanted to make a pile...
I mean there was a great risk attached to this
because you could go out to India and promptly die of some dreadful disease.
But there was a chance also, 50/50 really,
that you might make a whole sort of pile of money.
These early European colonialists merged with the Indian population
much more completely than later ones would.
Many traders went native, and began to behave like local potentates.
So they lived as Indians, wore Indian clothes quite often,
certainly adopted Indian manners and customs.
Many of them had harems.
As far as the Indian princes are concerned,
they looked upon the company as another Indian presence,
not as a foreigner necessarily invading.
This was global capitalism in its infancy.
Clive and his friends were pioneers of the system
that would soon dominate the entire world.
But in 1745 Robert was discovering that
the life of a clerk in India was not easy.
His salary was five pounds a year.
He soon felt desperately lonely and more cut adrift from home than ever.
His unhappiness came to a head when several ships appeared in the harbor.
Every European in Madras received
a letter or package from home except Clive.
He was devastated.
Clive had a mercurial temperament.
This apparent humiliation at the hands of his family
plunged him into the depths of depression.
Feeling utterly alone and cast off,
he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Twice it failed to go off.
"Fate it seems must be reserving me for some other purpose,"
he would later tell a friend.
In fact, fate had extraordinary things in store for Clive
wild swings of fortune, dizzying heights but also the darkest depths.
Throughout his life periods of intense,
feverish activity would alternate with bouts of deep despair.
He would probably be diagnosed today as a manic depressive.
Clive soon discovered that opium was the only cure
and he would use it as a medicine for the rest of his life.
Clive got used to loneliness.
The British lived in Fort St. George.
You had the fort and then you had Blacktown outside.
They called it Blacktown, and that's where all the Indians lived.
The British seldom ventured into Blacktown
except when they wanted to go and pick up hookers, basically.
And Clive, certainly it was known
he had this sort of fondness for prostitutes.
Perhaps the one consolation for Clive and his fellow
colonialists was that,
being so far from home, they could do almost whatever they liked.
As a proverb of the time said:
"There are no sins south of the equator."
As Europeans woke up to the phenomenal profits to be made in India,
the competition for trade intensified.
Finally in 1746,
open war broke out between the British and French in India
each side supported by their local allies and clients.
It was just the push Clive needed.
He was galvanized by new energy and enthusiasm.
For the next five years of Anglo French conflict in India,
Clive fought in the militia of the East India Company
where his raw aggression and boundless energy won him
promotions and success at the same furious pace.
In return for his victories against the French,
culminating in the battle of Arcot,
he was rewarded with an appointment
as quartermaster of the company factory at Madras.
He would find a way to make a profit out of the soldiers' provisions.
Now, it doesn't sound very grand,
but the great thing about quartermaster is
You were given a great wad of money
and told to go feed your troops.
And if you could feed your troops
on half the amount of money you'd been given,
then you were allowed to keep the rest.
By the time Clive was 27,
he had made himself a small fortune 40,000 pounds
Clive was also being credited with turning the tide
against the French.
News of his success astonished the family back in England.
His father is said to have remarked:
"Perhaps Robert is not such a booby after all".
Finally Clive was getting the recognition he craved.
Now he hungered for it on a wider stage.
One event would set the seal not only on Clive's fortunes in India
but that of the British as well.
In 1756, the Mughal Nawab, or 'prince of Bengal' Siraj,
seized the British East India Company's fort in Calcutta.
The British in India were furious.
Their outrage soared when stories circulated
about the Mughals' treatment of European prisoners.
When he seized the fort,
Siraj had ordered the imprisonment of all company employees.
The Indians locked their British captives in a cell
designed by the British for Indian captives.
It was tiny 18 by 14 feet
with only a couple of minuscule, barred windows.
The night of June 20th, 1756 was suffocatingly hot.
When the door opened the next morning, at least 40 British were dead.
"The Black Hole of Calcutta" they called it,
and the incident sparked uproar.
It was just what Clive had been waiting for.
Here was a chance to really take control of India
and make a name for himself.
He received command of a small British army.
Clive and his troops hit Bengal like a monsoon.
In 1757, he swept into Calcutta and forced the Nawab's troops to withdraw.
With promises of lucrative deals,
Clive then strong armed an Indian prince
into joining him in a military alliance against Siraj.
With typical guile,
Clive secured the allegiance of his Indian allies with fraudulent treaties.
Finally, he marched into Bengal
with 800 European troops and over 2,000 Indian sepoys.
It was an impressive force
but nothing compared to what Siraj mustered against him.
50,000 well armed men backed up by the French
and 50 pieces of state of the art heavy artillery.
The two armies met near a town called Plassey.
The Nawab's superiority may have seemed overwhelming
but Clive knew that discipline, not numbers, was the key.
The Europeans had already gone through something
like a bureaucratic military revolution
in the organization of their armies.
Everyone is trained to act in unison and it is not heroic battle action
which matters but the discipline of formation
and quick succession to anybody who falls in the field of battle,
exactly as one faceless bureaucrat is replaced by another.
Clive was outnumbered enormously,
but he could use his resources much more effectively.
Faced by the disciplined phalanxes of the British trained troops,
the Mughal army fell apart.
Clive's triumph at Plassey effectively gave India to the British.
Although the British empire in India
would not be formally declared for another 100 years,
India now belonged to the British East India Company.
Clive became known as the Master of Bengal and lost no time
in turning his position into an astonishingly lucrative business.
He had learned the technique years ago as a quartermaster in Madras.
Indian merchants were prepared to do anything
to ensure their continued good relations with the East India Company.
On the same principle,
the Prince of Bengal now paid Clive huge sums to ensure his favor.
On top of this Clive was collecting trade and land revenues.
Within the space of two years he had amassed a huge fortune.
But with the action over,
it was not long before Clive slumped into another cycle of depression,
accompanied now by agonizing pains in his stomach, gout and prostration.
In 1760 he returned to England
as Clive of India a very rich, very famous and very sick man.
When Clive returned to London,
one of the only things that could drag him from his gloom
was the prospect of a spending spree.
He now had wealth, recognition, fame in India
the only thing he didn't have was social position in England.
He decided he would buy his way into the English upper classes.
He hungrily set out to amass property and social status in equal measure.
He remodeled the family home at S0tyche, and bought four more
a luxurious town house in London's Berkeley Square,
two more estates in England and one in Ireland too.
He engineered himself a seat in Parliament and one for his father also.
The power and reach of Clive's money was huge
but not limitless.
The one thing Robert Clive wanted more than anything else was
to be accepted by the establishment and the aristocracy
and for people to consider him a gentleman.
He did flash his money around.
And sadly, people considered him to be rather vulgar.
They didn't like this chap coming back from India out of nowhere
and buying all these estates and big houses and,
you know, sort of buying his own furniture if you like.
Clive soon found himself mired
in the intricacies of the English class system.
Try as he might, spend as he might,
the inner circles of the aristocracy would not let him in.
His rough manners only made things worse for him.
They called him a 'nabob',
English slang based on the Hindi word 'Nawab' or ruler.
The nabob is a pejorative expression for an Englishman
who has given up to bad stomach, bad digestion,
bad temper as a result of overindulgence in India.
And usually plundered India and made a lot of money.
They're something like robber barons in fact.
And their idea was to make a fortune here and then
establish themselves in England as respectable notables.
And try to make a political career there.
Now in England they were looked upon as adventurers who were slightly seedy,
and Clive was a classic example of that.
The English aristocracy closed its doors in Clive's face.
But Clive was not to be put off.
Still intent on his social climb, Clive decided to try a different tack.
To enhance his reputation, he agreed to return to India in a different role.
No longer just the businessman, but now statesman as well.
In 1765, only five years after leaving,
the 40 year old Clive returned to India
as governor of the British East India Company.
He now cast himself as a high minded champion of British interests.
Clive's mission was to clean up the practices of the British in India.
They certainly needed it.
In the eight years since Clive's victory at Plassey,
profiteering had run wild in Bengal.
The British had achieved an effective trade monopoly.
British merchants and soldiers strong armed
and extorted money from Bengali traders
just as Clive himself had once done.
Resentment was seething.
Clive countered the growing unrest with a tone of patrician contempt
for all the practices that had made him rich.
The confusion we behold, what does it arise from?
Rapacity and luxury;
the unreasonable desire of many to acquire in an instant,
what only a few can or ought to possess.
With almost biblical fervor,
Clive launched reforms outlawing the abuses he had instituted.
In a whirlwind 20 months
Clive totally revamped the British East India Company.
By the end of it he was drained.
And it was now that disaster struck.
In 1769 the monsoon rains failed in Bengal.
And in 1770 famine set in.
Hundreds of thousands died as much as one third of the population.
Share prices for the East India Company's stock plummeted.
By 1772 the Company's credit had failed.
Meanwhile stories were circulating that
English merchants were hoarding rice as Indians starved.
There was a public outcry against the company.
People looked for a scapegoat.
Fingers pointed at Clive.
It was a bitter irony.
Only as Clive was at last making a noble hearted effort
to clear up the morass of greed in India,
was he finally accused of being its cause.
A parliamentary committee was formed to investigate the company
and Clive's role in it.
The accusation?
Extortion and profiteering in India.
As usual, energized by the prospect of a fight,
Clive rose magnificently to his own defense in the house of commons.
And it was now he made his famous speech saying that
given the opportunities for self enrichment in India
he was astonished at his moderation.
Clive was cleared but there was no joy in it for him.
He had been stung by the accusations.
He had effectively given India to Britain.
Now he was furiously bitter at what he felt was his country's ingratitude.
He was once again being rejected.
Predictably, he plunged back into depression.
His agonizing stomach pains returned, this time complicated by gallstones.
Even opium did little to relieve the pain.
I have a disease which makes life insupportable, but
which the doctors tell me won't shorten it an hour.
He drifted from one mansion to another,
barely unpacking before setting off for the next.
Little did he know, many in the British government had in fact
been deeply impressed with his reforms of the East India Company.
They were on the verge of giving him control of yet another colony
that was in chaos and on the verge of revolt North America.
Unaware of the honor that was pending,
Clive was consumed by humiliation and despair.
On the 22nd of November, 1774,
as his family prepared to leave the London house
at Berkeley square for Bath they heard a crash in Clive's room.
When they rushed in, they found him dead.
Robert Clive, still only 49 years old, had cut his own throat.
Clive's death created a huge scandal,
there was a sort of big hush up
and a lot of sort of muted whispering going on in the corridors of power
as to whether he had killed himself.
It sounds like he slit his throat with a penknife.
Suicide was a sin.
In grief and shame, Clive's family removed his body by night
and buried him without a headstone in the little church of Moreton say,
outside Market Drayton, the town where he had run wild as a child.
After Clive's death,
the British grip on America loosened and tightened on India.
The profits to be earned there resumed their flow.
A hundred years later, the ohinoor,
the fabulous diamond Babur had dismissed as worthless
compared to the life of his son, was in the British crown jewels.
Rishna's gift had been a test of mankind's greed.
What would they do with all that wealth?
Would they behave like beasts or think and achieve Wisdom?