Robert, Lord Clive and India

Few men could be more dissimilar than the two outstanding Englishmen in eighteenth-century India. Between them, Robert Clive and Warren Hastings created a new British dominion, yet the dour young factor and soldier, given to alternate fits of depression and bouts of energy, has hardly a point in common with the serene, even-tempered intellectual, equally at ease in the Council-chamber and in the drawing room. Clive’s forthright nature could adequately express itself only in action, fretting at problems and pining in periods of calm or indecision; whereas Hastings, with his subtle mind and complex personality, displayed his full powers only when confronted by situations as complex as he was himself. If the one could rarely hide his feelings, the other seldom succeeded in revealing them. All the world knows what Clive did to Amin Chand (Omichand)¹, and why; but no one yet knows whether Warren Hastings engineered the death of Nand Kumar (Nuncomar in the old textbooks) and what he thought about him. While men still debate the character of Hastings, they argue about the acts of Cliv'e.