Black hole tragedy occured in Kolkata
At the end of seventeenth century, Siraj-ud-daula had become the Nawab of Bengal and at the same time the British and French were competing to establish their business empires In Kolkata. In 1690 the British built a base for trading purpose, a port and Fort William to protect their business empires. They were feared of French entry in Kolkata for business purpose. Few years later the British started to increase their military strength to stop the French.
Siraj-ud-daula didn’t like this move and ordered the Governor of Kolkata to stop this activity of making the defensive wall immediately. When the British ignored his order, the nawab sent his army to stop them. The army was huge in number – 50,000 men, 500 elephants and fifty cannon. Despite all resistance they started surgical strike to the areas that were too far from Central Kolkata. In that horrible situation, the governor of Kolkata and all of his staff including British inhabitants fled to the ships that were standing in the port.
Many children and women were left behind there. A troop of 170 soldiers were also deployed there to protect the fort from the army of Siraj-ud-daula. John Zephaniah Holwell was the commander of British troops for that day, but actually he was a zemindar to collect all kind of tax and keep making law and order in the town. He hadn’t’ have any military commanding experience before.
Mortars, that were stored in the fort, were fully damaged and unusable by the worms. On 20th June, Sunday Siraj-ud-daula took over the complete fort and told Holwell to surrender by the afternoon. In lack of handling military troops Holwell surrendered with their troops.
Siraj-ud-daula made the night of 20th June a horrible night which became a legend in the human history. They forcibly imprisoned 146 British prisoners including wounded inhabitants and Holwell in 18 feet by 14 feet 10 inches room of the fort, which was made for minor criminals. It was summer season and the jail had only two small windows. The lock-up had not enough space to hold 146 people. Prisoners crushed each other to reach near window. The inside atmosphere of the lock-up had become suffocating.
The Prisoners got small amount of water after begging for mercy from the jail gaurds, who were laughing at them. When they unlocked the jail in next morning at 6 am they found 123 prisoners had died due to suffocation. Only twenty three people were found alive among them. It was very shameful and unforgotten incident that happened on that day.
The incident was referred by Holwell as
“a night of horrors I will not attempt to describe, as they bar all description”.But he had to describe the whole incident about “black hole tragedy” in detail when he returned to England the following year.
In 1950 Professor Brijen Gupta told that only 64 prisoners were probably locked up in the black hole, of whom 43 prisoners were found dead. The order of keeping the prisoners in the black hole was not given by Siraj-ud-daula, even he didn’t know anything about it according to the evidence provided by Professor Brijen Gupta.
The British was in hurry to take revenge. In 1957 Robert Clive defeated the Nawab’s army at Plassey and reoccupied Kolkata and the fort. Siraj later had to sign a treaty with the British and paid compensation to them. The British again got the trading rights in Kolkata.
Extracted from here
Thanks for upvoting my joke. Upvoted this. Good day.
nice , one mistake spelling of Prisoners is wrong .
Please correct it :D
Could you please mention the correct spelling as I am getting same spelling everywhere?
nice writing .. but, I personally believe that the "black hole kill" is just a myth .... a calumny of Englishmen
May be. I wrote what history says.
are the last 2 dates in the article correct??
As per the reference.