Banking’s Mir Jafars who sold out India to the colonizers

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. One class of Indians that hasn't copped enough of the criticism it deserves for its role in selling out the country to imperialists through the 17th and 18th centuries, is bankers of that time.

Tales of their vast riches and fabulous lifestyles have often been retold. What’s less known is how they were directly responsible for the country’s gradual subjugation to successive invaders, including the French, the Dutch and finally, the British.

Take the Jagat Seths, the 18th-century merchant, banker and money lender family from Murshidabad in Bengal, which was given the honorific title ‘banker to the world’ by the Mughals for its services to the empire. Enormously rich and equally avaricious, it was the financial support of a family member, Mehtab Chand, which helped the armies of Robert Clive at a crucial time in their battle against the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, in the infamous Battle of Plassey.

What makes his actions particularly repugnant is that it was a critical stage of the battle for Hindustan. As William Dalrymple in his book The Anarchy notes, “The alliance based on reciprocity and mutual advantage of these two financial giants (East India Company and Jagat Seth), and the access these Marwari bankers gave the EIC to streams of Indian finance, would radically change the course of Indian history." Jagat Seth wasn't the only one who opened the gates of India to invaders.

There was a whole tribe of sellout artists who had accumulated vast sums during the Mughal era when the poverty and want of the ordinary citizenry were in sharp contrast to the wealth of the nobility and the moneylenders. Records show that a Punjabi trader named Amin Chand brokered the deal between Clive