Dr. Mahmudur Rahman, editor of the daily Amar Desh, stated that the Battle of Plassey in 1757 was primarily fought to plunder Bengal’s wealth. He made the remark on Tuesday afternoon at a discussion titled “From Plassey to Bangladesh: Lessons of History and the Present Context,” organized by the Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union. Rahman described the battle as a staged event where local elites like Mir Jafar and Jagat Seth allied with the British East India Company for personal gain, leading to massive exploitation and famine.

He said the British looting caused the devastating famine of 1770, which killed a third of the population in Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, and reduced India’s share of global GDP from 25 percent to 4 percent. Rahman criticized the British for defaming Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah through fabricated stories such as the “Black Hole of Calcutta” and urged the university’s history department to launch a PhD project to uncover historical truths.

Linking past and present, Rahman praised the youth for ending what he called the worst fascism in 2024 without foreign help but warned that internal divisions among revolutionaries could endanger the hard-won freedom.