There’s a very old and popular lullaby in Bengal which mothers used to sing to make their children sleep. Although it sounds like any other lullaby, it has a long history associated with it that dates back to almost 300 years ago. The lullaby goes like:
Chhele ghumalo, paada judaalo bargi elo deshe
Bulbulite dhaan kheyechhe, khaajnaa debo kishe?
Dhaan phurolo, paan phurolo, khaajnaar opay ki?
Aar kotaa din shobur koro, roshoon boonechhi
A very inelegant translation of the above lines would be:
When the children fall asleep, silence sets in, the Bargis come to our country
Birds have eaten the grain, how shall I pay the tax (to the Bargi)? All our food and drink is over, how shall I pay the tax?
Wait for a few days, I have sown garlic.
This lullaby portrays a coherent psychological fear in the minds of people of Bengal against the Maratha invaders. To give a little more context, under the leadership of Raghoji Bhonsle, the Maratha ruler of Nagpur, the cavalry invaded Bengal six times between 1741-1751. The term “Bargi” mentioned in the above lines is a corrupt form of the word “bargiri” (etymology: Persian) which means “light cavalry”. It was used by Bengalis referring to the Maratha invaders. They plundered and looted the villages, took away their crops and burnt houses time and again. The killings which happened during this period were about 400,000. The kind of the atrocities and reason behind such psychological fear can be clearly understood from the text of an 18th-century Bengali text Maharashtra Purana written by Gangaram. “They shouted over and over again, ‘Give us money’, and when they got no money, they filled peoples’ nostrils with water, and some they seized and drowned in tanks, and many died of suffocation. In this way, they did all manner of foul and evil deeds. When they demanded money and it was not given to them, they would put the man to death. Those who had money gave it; those who had none were killed.”
The atrocities inflicted by these invaders did not stop here. Not only did the Bargis loot the countryside, but as a sign of their effectiveness and success, managed to raid the then capital of Bengal, Murshidabad and even sacked the house of Jagat Seth, the Marwari banker who was one of the richest Indians at the time.
We may get an answer to the question as to why Marathas invaded Bengal, but there are a lot of questions yet to be satiated. Why was Calcutta not attacked by the invaders despite being a hub of Britishers and were the Marathas flag bearer of Nationalism? Also, why didn’t they take over Bengal but continued with invasions? Marathas attacked Bengal because it was ruled by a nawab that owed allegiance to the Mughal Empire. There’s a probability that the Marathas never attacked Calcutta because they were paid off by the British. Although there was a concrete architectural structure “ditch” constructed to guard off the Marathas, it served the purpose of giving citizens a nickname: “ditchers” – people who lived in the south of ditch i.e. “proper” Calcutta. Eventually, the ditch was filled up and came to be known as Upper Circular Road. Then they also had a well-connected system of communication which consisted of towers through which smoke signals were sent and as a result warnings were disseminated and precautions were taken to ward off any impending raid.
The most important question is, why is this part of history so obscure? Some historians believe that what the Marathas did could not be classified as an invasion but as a “raid”. Then other historians criticize the above theory and complain about many parts being deleted from history. The quantum of information on this particular topic is very less. And therefore, after 10 years of raid, violence, massacres, etc. finally in 1751, the Marathas signed a treaty with the Nawab of Bengal. According to this treaty, Mir Habib (a former courtier of Alivardi Khan who had defected to the Marathas) was made provincial governor of Orissa under the nominal control of the Nawab of Bengal. The Nawab of Bengal also agreed to give a tributary to the Marathas with the former agreeing to pay ₹1.2 million of tribute annually as the chauth of Bengal and Bihar and in return the Marathas agreed not to invade Bengal again. The Nawab of Bengal also paid ₹3.2 million to the Marathas, towards the arrears of chauth for the preceding years. The chauth continued to be paid annually by the Nawab of Bengal up to 1758 until the East India Company took over. This continuous destruction ruined the living standards and ripped them off their resources. Maybe the history textbooks have forgotten, but the stories of invasion are still alive in the hearts of the people.
Author: Soumyaseema Mandal
