Indian history: When Maratha general Murarirao Ghorpade defended Robert Clive against the French

In the seventeenth century, the French established trading posts in the coastal cities of Surat, Masulipatam and Pondicherry. Other French territories included Karikal, Mahé, Yanam and Chandernagore. These territories were governed by French officials and were largely self-sufficient. They also developed a reputation for treating their employees and local partners fairly.

The period was such that the French saw the Dutch as their main threat – the two were also involved head-to-head in the War of the Spanish Succession. Correspondingly, this was also the brief period during which the French viewed the British as their friends. When French Governor François Martin thought that the Dutch would besiege Pondicherry, he sent French goods to the English settlement for safety. Later, when the French retained Pondicherry in 1699, Martin again reached out to Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras, a British settlement, to enter into a treaty of neutrality under which the men and ships of Britain and France were not to attack each other. When a French squadron appeared in Indian waters and began to seize English shipping, the Pondicherry Council did its best to limit its captures.

So far, so good.

The French settlement, though, was in its infancy. The population was small, and its presence reasonably feeble. Everything would change forever in 1720, with the entry of the ambitious French general, Joseph Francis Dupleix.

When Dupleix joined his appointment in Pondicherry, he was convinced that it would be possible to make Pondicherry the principal emporium of trade in southern India. And true to his expectations, during the twenty years – 1720 to 1740 – the development of its trade put a different aspect on affairs. Attitudes started changing as early as 1721, when the French believed that English merchants were jealous of their trade to Manila. In 1725, the French settlement of Mahé and the English settlement of Tellicherry were almost in open war on the Malabar coast.

By 1736, the English believed that the French had become “our most dangerous rivals” and at the close of the following year, the English directors wrote: “The most particular intelligence procurable concerning those powerful competitors, the French and their commerce must annually be communicated to us.”

Thus it was that Dupleix saw this relationship changing colour and directed his own charm towards the natives, princes as well as the people, in the manner that was best calculated to gain the esteem of the locals.

There were two people whom he kept a close eye on. One was Chanda Sahib – a man rich with unscrupulous loot – with whom his predecessor had a good relationship. The other was his Maratha neighbour, Murarirao Ghorpade, who possessed a well-trained, independent army. He courted him constantly, given his reputation as the “invisible” horseman.

Manohar Malgonkar says in his book, “The lands Murar inherited were peppered over an extensive stretch of the Carnatic … and they were looked upon by the various Nawabs and the neighboring Palegars as legitimate hunting grounds for plunder and appropriation.”

In order to administer his domains, Murar had entrusted Gajendragadh to his younger brother Daulatrao and Sandur to another cousin. He focused on Gutti and it was during the construction of the wells around the Gutti Fort that a wandering herd of Lambanis, vagabond traders who sold clothes, appeared to be passing through. During the day, the locals interacted with the Lambanis, offering them food and water and making sure they were comfortable. However, in the stillness of the night, this troupe – which was actually a bunch of rogue militia – attacked the locals and started killing the residents, appropriating currency and goods from their homes.

As word of this plunder reached the citadel and was relayed to Murar, he and his troupe of fifty highly trained soldiers came thundering down, stopping briefly at the Gajalakshmi shrine inside the Gutti Fort to take the deity’s blessings.

Indrajeet says, “When Murar rode at full gallop, his body was parallel to the ground. You couldn’t see him and so you couldn’t target him with spears or arrows! He moved so swiftly that the enemy felt that someone invisible had emerged from nowhere and attacked them.”

The rogue militia was routed completely within minutes. Murar defended his people on various occasions with swift, decisive military action. Word spread that if you ever attacked the village around Gutti, the invisible horseman would kill you!

Murar’s stature grew and he made sure he kept it that way. He also made sure that he visited his principalities periodically. Sandur, for instance, with its sparkling river and dark forested hills, was a getaway from the oppressive heat of Gutti and also a chance to take blessings at the Kumaraswamy temple. He also visited Gajendragadh, Koppal (a fort he claimed to maintain for Sambhaji II) and Kolhapur, where his sister Tara lived.

It would seem that Murar was everywhere – and he made sure that his movements and his domains were known.

Meanwhile, things were heating up in Madras.

The favourable trading rights granted by Mughal Emperor Farrukh Siyar to the EIC in 1716 was just the beginning. Madras emerged as a key centre for British trade in southern India, attracting merchants, traders and settlers from across Europe. The Company invested heavily in fortifying Madras against potential threats, including the French, local adversaries and random mercenaries, to protect its trade interests in the region.

Moreover, British officials in Madras actively engaged in diplomatic negotiations with local rulers, including the nawabs of the Carnatic, to maintain stability and secure commercial privileges. Local rulers in the South were enamoured by the British and started soliciting their support in their battles against neighbouring kingdoms. A few also solicited the French.

One of the major figures vital to our story is Britain’s Robert Clive, a part of the British contingent who went out as clerks and became co-opted into the military mentality of the EIC as it expanded across India. In Madras, he worked in the factories but became depressed and isolated in his new circumstances, trying twice to die by suicide. In 1746, when fighting broke out between the British and the French forces in India, Clive gave up his desk and became a soldier. Few can claim to have changed history with a single decision. Robert Clive is one such.

Robert Clive was an extraordinary man. Born in 1725 into the Shropshire gentry, his uncle declared as follows, “I am satisfied that his fighting (to which he is out of measure addicted) gives his temper a fierceness and imperiousness that he flies out upon every trifling occasion. For this reason, I do what I can to suppress the hero so that I may forward the more valuable qualities of benevolence and patience.”

Given Clive’s proclivity to violence, it is believed that, in desperation, his father Richard Clive, a landowner and lawyer, dispatched his unruly young son to India to become a “writer” – a junior clerk – in the East India Company. Evidently, it was an unlikely calling for such a pugnacious young man. Robert Clive came to India in June 1744, after a very long journey.

He was just nineteen years old when he arrived, not in Calcutta but in the Company’s oldest settlement, Fort St George. Here he spent the next two years fidgeting, seated at a high desk, trying to take an interest in the Company’s ledgers or in negotiations with merchants. To relieve the boredom, he spent his spare time in the governor’s library, reading voraciously, rectifying at least in part the deficiencies in his education caused by his misspent youth.

Here is the big difference. Clive arrived almost two decades after Dupleix. He was incumbent to an environment where conversations about the Mughal Empire were about their weakness and vulnerability. The Mughals lost Delhi in 1739 and were a non-entity.

As he looked around, the other power to reckon with was Nizam-ul-Mulk, who was the de facto ruler of the Deccan. However, his controls were not very tight. Now, Clive had to find something meaningful and hopefully combative to do. His opportunity came with the outbreak of the First Carnatic War (1740–1748), in which Britain and France supported rival Indian factions.

How he met and aligned with Murarirao Ghorpade is the stuff of legend.

The key thing to conjecture is why, despite a very successful stint against the French, Robert Clive and Murarirao Ghorpade did not become a united force thereafter.

Excerpted with permission from Murarirao Ghorpade: The Accidental Catalyst Behind Robert Clive’s March Over India, Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta and Indrajeet Ghorpade, Penguin India.