Today I will shed some light on Mir Jafar. For a very long time, when Mom was upset with us, she’d say you descendants of Mir Jafar, how can you be any better.
At that time I was seven or perhaps eight years old. It somehow did not awaken my natural curiosity. I thought probably this man was evil and lived near my grandparents home.
In other words I paid no attention. As time passed my brain started mulling inside, telling me it’s worth finding out who this character is.
First thing that aroused my attention was to open the encyclopedia. I looked up, ‘Mir Jafar.’
Lo and behold there was this character in bold English letters, Mir Muhammad Ja’far Khan( 1691- died February 5, 1765 ( Bengal India). He was the first Bengal ruler from 1757 to 1760; 1763 to 1765. Under British influence he helped to defeat the Mughal rule in India. He was an Arab by birth. He helped his brother-in-law, General Ali Vardi Khan, to seize the the government of Bengal in 1740.
His crooked ambition led him to conspire with others to depose the grandson of Ali Vardi khan, who I introduced as Mir Jafar’s brother-in-law in the previous paragraph.
In 1757 he( Mir Jafar) assured Robert Clive, British Governor of Madras, now known as Chennai, that he would enter into an alliance with the British to exclude the French from Bengal and pay 50,000 pounds to the East India Company for the European inhabitants of Calcutta (now Kolkata), he’d make the deal if the British supported his bid to be the ruler of Bengal.
He made a few other promises to convince the British, who themselves were sitting pretty on our home soil, India at that time.
I get the picture, my question is Mir Jafar was a traitor, he was an Arab by birth. We are Bengalis at least this is what we are told. We have nothing to do with Mir Jafar, so why would Mom call us Mir Jafar’s descendants?
Besides we were innocent kids trying our best in school, hoping to get a worthy enough job. Now I see what we were labeled as is untrue. Would you not agree with me? Too bad Mom passed away a long time ago, I lost my chance to tell Mom, as far as History goes, we had nothing to do with that man.
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