The VOC received complaints of corruption about its officials in Bengal. Accordingly, they sent a special committee to investigate its factories in this region in 1684. The committee’s reports... Show moreThe VOC received complaints of corruption about its officials in Bengal. Accordingly, they sent a special committee to investigate its factories in this region in 1684. The committee’s reports exposed several illegal practices of the officials and the growth of Dutch nabobs who lived elite lifestyles under the Mughal administration in Bengal. Consequently, a few officials were charged with corruption and put to trial at the Company’s court. But instances of corrupt behaviour were not reduced in the subsequent years. What was the purpose of sending the committee then and what was the conduct that the VOC directors expected of their officials, both in the Dutch Republic and its factories in Mughal Bengal? This dissertation answers such questions by studying the committee’s operations in Bengal, located at the interface of two very different political settings: the Dutch Republic and the Mughal Empire. It concludes that the socio-political developments in the Dutch Republic and the regional politics in Mughal Bengal affected the situation in the VOC and its policies against corruption of its officials. Show less
The Arakanese kingdom (Rakhine state in modern Myanmar) grew from the fifteenth century AD from a small agrarian state with its nucleus in the hart of the Kaladan valley to a significant local... Show moreThe Arakanese kingdom (Rakhine state in modern Myanmar) grew from the fifteenth century AD from a small agrarian state with its nucleus in the hart of the Kaladan valley to a significant local power by the early seventeenth century. Arakan asserted its influence across the northern shores of the Bay of Bengal. In the first decades of the seventeenth century the Arakanese kings of Mrauk U received tribute from local rulers between Dhaka and Pegu, cities more than a thousand miles apart. The Mughal rulers of Bengal were even forced to build a string of forts to defend the areas around Dhaka and Hugli against Arakanese incursions. From the middle of the seventeenth century the Arakanese state was gripped by a seemingly sudden decline that would culminate in civil war at the end of the seventeenth century and the loss of control over south-eastern Bengal, followed by the conquest of Arakan by the Burmese in the eighteenth century. The rapid rise and decline of the Arakanese state between the early fifteenth and the end of the seventeenth century is the subject of this dissertation. Show less
Ever since Islam came to Bengal in the 13th century (and probably earlier, through individual Muslims' interaction with local bearers of other traditions) it participated, via a merging of Sufi... Show moreEver since Islam came to Bengal in the 13th century (and probably earlier, through individual Muslims' interaction with local bearers of other traditions) it participated, via a merging of Sufi inputs with vernacular strands of Vaisnavism (Vishnuism), tantrism and local folk cults, in a very rich blend of religious beliefs and practices in the lower strata of society. The Fakir, as a sub-section of the Bengali Bául with a more or less defined Muslim identity, are at present the largest group in Bengal perpetuating this form of 'Islamic syncretistic tradition', to use Asim Roy's phrase. In the complex picture of present-day religious politics of East and West Bengal, and in the context of Bangladesh as the second largest Muslim country in the world, these Fakir seem, somewhat paradoxically, to be both under threat and very much alive as contributors to local spiritual and cultural vitality at a grassroots level. Show less
