Book Review - PLASSEY by Sudip Chakravarti

Plassey: The Battle that Changed the Course of Indian History by Sudeep Chakravarti
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Undue emphasis is placed on a skirmish outside a mango orchard on the banks of a distributary of the Ganges, as a pivotal event in the histories of England and India. The subsequent battle of Buxar, where the remnants of the moghul army and its allies were comprehensively routed by the British (in Clive’s absence, without recourse to subterfuge, treason and conniving), or the 1857 uprising were more momentous events.
I am no historian but this is how I see it – it was a rainy day, most of the forces chose not to fight, the French had an axe to grind with the English and were the most enthusiastic fighters, the fight barely lasted a few hours with the loss of less than six hundred men.
Page 274

The first shot was fired at 8 a.m.

Page 289

It was 8 p.m.
And just like that, the Battle of Plassey was over.

Fifteen pages of "battle" in a book of 392 pages.
The downfall of the cruel and dissolute Siraj-ud-Dawla was inevitable, given his unpopularity and the Machiavellian intrigues of the declining incestuous moghul empire. The greedy and rapacious, albeit disciplined, English just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Altogether, the book is interesting to read, cryptic and chatty at times, rambling occasionally into superfluous trivia.

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