Who Was Charnock?

 

I fear that we may have gone far ahead in our journey of the city’s history, but that is what tends to happen when one tries to frame a narrative out of 300 years of intermingled, often obscure facts – often having to sort through fiction (and loving those fictional acounts simply for their colour) to establish the truth, or a semblance of it.

But we must try to keep to the path. We have not strayed much, hopefully, and now we must come back from the houses of Chitpore to the marshes of Sutanuti. The year was 1690 – 24^th August to be precise, the day when Job Charnock landed in Sutanuti for the final time with the ironclad intention to make it the base of business for the East India Company in Bengal. But before that day arrived, there was a lot that happened, and it is a truly fascinating tale.

Charnock was born in Lancashire, England in 1630. According to some sources, he was born in 1640 – much of his early life is shoruded from us as a result of years of neglect, not only in India, but also in his own native land. Although Charnock was credited with founding what would go on to be the second city of the British Empire, he had lived, worked and died as a servant of the East India Company.

It may be argued by some that Charnock had nothing to show for his life in India except for a series of intrigues and skirmishes with the local government and even when he had died, he had not made a single permanent structure for the company to store its records or use as offices. In short, althougn he had been a loyal servant, he was not significant enough to have advanced the cause of British imperial ambitions and had only attained fame through an accident of history.

We shall soon see if these suppositions hold merit, but the fact remains that mainly on account of reasons such as this, Charnock remains an oft neglected personality in his own native land. The situation is more complicated in Kolkata. The Bengalis are quite adept at forgetting their own history except when it suits their material or egoistic purposes and ever since the High Court Ruling of 2003 ousted Charnock from the throne of founder of the city, interest regarding him has dwindled considerably.

Be that as it may, we know that Charnock arrived in India for the first time in 1655 or 1656 as a youth eager to test his fate. He found employment as a junior member of the company and reporting at the Cossimbazar factory for a salary of twenty pounds a year. After brief stints in Balasore and Rajmahal, he was finally posted in Patna in 1659 where he was charged with the task of procuring saltpetre from the local traders – a task he carried on with commendation and honesty. The Patna stint would be prove to be an important chapter in Charnock’s life as it was during his time there that one of the principal legends regarding him was born.

CHARNOCK SAVED A WOMAN FROM SATI AND MARRIED HER 

As per the popular version, Charnock had an affinity for strolling along the Ganges river bank on eveninings with a handful of guards and it was on one such occasion that he had witnessed the infamous ceremony of Sati, where a beautiful young widow was being forced onto the burning pyre of her husband. Charnock was quick to come to her aid and save the day as he and his guards fought off the perpetrators. Charnock had then carried the nearly unconscious woman to his home, where he had accorded her the status of his wife and they had lived together till her death.

There is a lot of debate on whether this incident actually took place in the manner as is recited above, on whether Charnock’s intentions had been honourable and he had truly rescued and married the young woman or had simply made her his mistress through dubious schemes. Although the nameless woman bore Charnock three (some say four) daughters who were married into wealthy and established English families, these accusations simply go on to show the level of hostility Charnock had to face while he was in service of the company.

William Hedges, the first independent Governor of the East India company in Bengal, and Captain Alexander Hamilton (not to be confused with his more illustrious namesake who was a founding father of the United States of America), the gossip-girl of the age, were quite keen to tarnish Charnock’s character in their journals. Most of these were mere hearsay or concocted by twisting the facts in order to humiliate Charnock by presenting him in bad light to the company superiors. Hamilton took particular pleasure in this sort of exercise and Hedges had never been and admirer of Charnock.

Hamiltion had insinuated that Charnock had indeed been present at the site of the Sati ceremoney, but merely as a curious onlooker of that dreadful spectacle. He had had no intention of stopping the thing originally, but had changed his mind later when he had been bewtiched by the beauty of the young woman who was being sacrificed.It was only after lust overpowered him that Charnock decided to save the damsel in distress, took her to his home and spent the following years in quaint happiness, as she bore him three daughters.

If Hamilton paints Charnock as a man fuelled by his own selfish desires and not someone who should be praised as a hero, Hedges goes one step further and portrays him as a carnal monster for whom the company had to lose face and suffer financial losses. According to Hedges, Charnock had “kept” as his mistress a young Hindu Brahmin widow, who had eloped with him which much of her husband’s wealth.

This had resulted in the family of the widow and other conerned members of the Hindu community in Patna to lodge a complaint against Charnock with the Nawab, who had dispatched soldiers to bring the Englishman to justice. Charnock had to placate the Nawab by gifting him five rolls of broad cloth, several beautiful and encrusted swords and three thousand rupees in cash. Hedges went on to comment that such an incident had also occurred in Cossimbazar. The insinuation was clear – he wanted to portray Charnock as a womanizer and rapist.

CHARNOCK WAS HOUNDED BY SEVERAL CONTEMPORARIES

We cannot accord any seriousness to the statements of Alexander Hamilton. That man never had a good thing to say about anyone. A perfect egoist, he found faults in everyone around him. Although, in fairness, he did not assassinate the character of Charnock in the manner of Hedges, having simply questioned the origins of his motives, rather than hint at him being a compulsuive womanizer. We must congratulate Hamilton that he had, at least, written that Charnock had spent a happy life with his wife.

William Hedges

The seriousness of the charges levelled by Hedges, on the other hand, require some examination. We must understand that Hedges was not a friend of Charnock and had been his boss, before getting sacked (probably on Charnock’s recommendation). This would naturally make him harbour a grudge against the man who was so important to the company and he would want to tarnish his image in the eyes of the company’s decision makers.

It had all started when the company had decided that the Bengal arm of its business would operate independently, without interference from Madras. This decision was made since the business in Bengal was rising steadily and it was felt that the distance of some 800 miles that had to be covered before any decision could be taken (as approval had to be taken from Madras) was hindering the potential of trade growth. In keeping with this decision, Goerge Hedges was appointed as the first independent governor of the company’s assets and activities in Bengal.

Hedges had seven members in his council – himself, Job Charnock, John Beard, John Richard, Fancis Ellis, Joseph Wood and William Johnson. Johnson was Hedges’ spy within the council and the factory at Hooghly. It was through the devices of Johnson that Hedges had managed to find a letter complaining about his tactics and lack of efficacy written by Beard to the company directors in England. Hedges couldn’t do anything against beard, but sacked Ellis on charges of pilferage.

It might be possible that with all the problems going on in Bengal ever since he had come at the helm, Hedges might have lost his cool at the end. He earned Charnock’s ire by caomplaining against him to the directors, insinuating that he was responsible for the losses of the company since he had made some ineffectual appointments from among the Indians.

We feel that Hedges should have thought it out more carefully before making Charnock his enemy. By the time of this incident, Job Charnock was a name that was well-known throughout the company. He had proven effective and honest and had hence, gathered some influence in the company. He had been summoned from Patna to Hooghly and awarded a promotion by none other than the hardended Strenshyam Master – the fabled disaster manager of the company. At any rate, Charnock’s standing and influence far outweighed those of Hedges. Charnock got Hedges’ sacked and back to England in 1684 as a response to the latter’s ranting accusations.

Thus, it can be easily seen why Hedges’ account of Charnock would be coloured by jealousy, rage and indignation and hence we cannot rely on them entirely for the truth of the matter. At any rarte, it was fairly common in those times for the officers of the company to fornicate with Indian women – especially those widowed or those who had been abandoned by their polygamous husbands. The reason for this was a severe dearth of female European population in India – partly due to the perils of such a long voyage by sea and partly due to the fact that the availability of eligible bachelors had not yet dwindled in England, as it would a few decades later.

This practise of the officers did pose some problems for the company as the family members and the absentee husbands would miraculously appear to protest and complain this “grotesque” behaviour to the company, which would invaraibly result in providing a compensation in cash or kind to the family and husband of the women, in addition fo the loss of face tha the company suffered in a foreign land. This matter has been addressed in company correspondences several times and only in one of them is it mentioned that the company had to face some problems of a similar nature in Patna and Cossimbazar regarding Charnock and his Hindu wife.

No doubt, the correspondence was influenced by the claims of William Hedges. But it made no difference. Charnock was too infleuntial, too well- connected and too valuable a resource for the company to remove. Charnock had come to Hooghly to stay.