The Trial of the Raj: The Impeachment of Warren Hastings
- cepmurphywrites
- May 16
- 15 min read
By Ishan Sharma.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the British East India Company transformed from a commercial company into the ruler of most of India. This work of ambitious governors-general was a process whose brutality and speed shocked many at home. Robert Clive, the conqueror of Bengal and Bihar, was considered a brutal and unforgivable monster even by the standards of the mid-eighteenth century. And his successor, Warren Hastings, ended up put on trial, with several charges that we today would recognize as crimes against humanity. It was the one and only time a high Raj official was put on trial for crimes against the Indian people. But despite a hard-fought trial, in the end Hastings ended up acquitted, and this marked the eclipse of eighteenth-century opposition to imperial atrocities.
It may be necessary to, in broad terms, detail the backstory of the rise of the East India Company to its seat of authority. During the Seven Years War (1756-63), the Company went to war with the both the French in India and the ruling Nawab of Bengal. This saw, in the south, the defeat of the French and the securing of the Nawab of Arcot within its sphere of influence and in Bengal, the establishment of a puppet nawab, and this granted to the Company authority over India’s entire eastern seaboard. In short succession, the Company additionally secured its rule up the Ganges to Bihar, and it secured recognition from the Mughal Empire.
The growth of the East India Company not only had consequences in India, but also on the metropole itself. A great class of Company administrators grew rich and fat on the profits of conquest, and by interfering in the operations of the several company vassals they secured colossal bribes; with all this money, they went back to Britain. This mass of people, of which Robert Clive was merely the highest example, received the title of “nabob”, and its membership secured positions of authority at home.
This class received immediate revulsion from a large section of the British people; to landed gentry and upwardly-mobile middling merchants alike, it threatened to corrupt the British political system (even more than it was already) and they threatened to bring the horrors of imperial conquest and/or “Asiatic principles of government” home. Additionally, the Company itself, not merely these nabobs as individuals, poured money into the British political system to secure its corporate autonomy; that with this autonomy it engaged in several long wars only inspired further revulsion. Additionally, many MPs had shares in the Company, and you can guess what incentive that gave them.
This long crisis reached a breaking point. Bengal saw the 1770 famine, which reduced its population by one-third and left it totally devastated and this, most historians agree, was the fault of Company mismanagement and greed. In 1772, the rapid growth of Company shares showed itself to be a bubble, popping and causing a world credit crisis. Parliament bailed out the Company and though the Regulating Act of 1773 established some restrictions on Company officials, it was a toothless justification for the bailout. Though Clive faced parliamentary inquiry for his brutal conquests, for the famine, and for his venal corruption, he ended up completely vindicated, and he even got to keep a feudal estate to milk for all it was worth. And though the chattering classes, be they Tories like Samuel Johnson, Whigs like Horace Walpole, or Radicals like Thomas Paine reckoned Clive a monster and a war criminal, this was just talk, and none of it entered the insulated political arena.
It was in this environment that Warren Hastings became governor-general of India in 1773. In many ways, he represented a sea change in India’s administration; he was an educated administrator, not an unlearned army man, and unlike Clive he kept a close eye on finances. He was to be the agent of a renewed, efficient Company, free from the scandal of old. But fundamentally, he was more of the same. He was despised by the people he ruled – as a popular ditty went, Haathi par howda aur ghore par jin/Jaldi bhago, jaldi bhago Warren Hasteen, or “Ride the elephant and saddle the horse/Run swiftly, run swiftly Warren Hastings”.
He went to war against the powerful Maratha Empire, running up huge debts. He expanded the Company up the Ganges, conquering Benares, several large feudal estates in Awadh, and the kingdom of Rohilkhand – against the latter, he committed ethnic cleansing against its Rohilla Afghan ruling classes. When Rangpur refused to pay its taxes, Hastings sent collectors who committed a series of slaughters, rapes, and mutilations against its population. Extrajudicial execution was the law of the hour. Hastings and his administrators continued to collect presents from across the Company’s vast estates; no transaction with any princeling or feudatory was complete without them.
And all the while, Hastings maintained a façade of cool disinterest. He claimed that he simply had to conquer and bribe to secure control over the Company’s existing domains and returns for investors. The East India Company continued to connect India to Britain in a great web of horror and corruption.
It would be one specific set of scandals that the eyes of the metropole were drawn to. The Nawab of Arcot, having to pay bribe-money to Company officials of every stripe, was forced into a pile of debt; Company administrators leapt on this, too, by then loaning money to him, and then in lieu of this interest they received title for internal feudal estates. Company officials assured the Nawab that they wouldn’t let him go bankrupt, as his debt simply made them too much profit. They expanded this further to the wealthy princely state of Tanjore, and they wanted (but failed) to expand this to Mysore. Madras’s whole economy was dependent on this money-making scheme. That investors in this corruption scheme became filthy rich nabobs in the metropole made this impossible to ignore. And the issue of East India affairs reached the eyes of one man – Edmund Burke.
Edmund Burke is a well-known historical figure – he is best known for his opposition to the French Revolution, for which he has been dubbed the founder of conservatism, but he is also well-known for his sympathies for the American Revolution and for his opposition to the Protestant Ascendancy of Ireland. But the issue he spent the most time on was the reform of India’s administration. He was an unlikely figure for this role – before and after, he regarded Robert Clive as a great hero – but he became drawn towards it. When Burke’s cousin William, a Company administrator in Madras, informed him of Arcot’s corruption schemes, Edmund took a good hard look – and over the 1770s, he grew more and more concerned with the Company. He grew to believe the biggest threat to the traditional laws and customs of the Indian people were not, as so many of the era claimed, the descendants of Turco-Persian conquerors, but rather British arms and British administrators.
When, in 1781, the ruler of Benares rebelled against Company authority, Burke tried to get the Company’s directors to remove Hastings; it refused. As controversies brewed over the applicability of Indian customary law in Company courts, Burke placed himself within a select committee, and here he became its leading member, harshly criticizing the Company for its political governance and economic management (or lack thereof) of India. When, in 1783, Burke’s close political ally Charles James Fox formed a political coalition with Lord North, bringing to power a strange union of Whig reformers and Tory reactionaries, Burke became a low-ranking cabinet minister as paymaster of the forces. And from this position, he wrote a bill, known to posterity as Fox’s East India Bill. But don’t let that name fool you, it was almost entirely Burke’s work.
Burke believed “a secret veil” had to be drawn over the circumstances of the way India was to be acquired. India was not to be cast aside; that would be a revolution which would let it fall into the laps of the French. Rather, he believed the acquisition was a practical Act of Union between Britain and India, and that in like manner to Scotland, India had to be governed under its laws and respecting its traditional liberties inherited from Mughal times. In its broad strokes, this bill would have invested control of Company patronage to a seven-man commission, with four-year terms, appointed by Parliament, to act as a quasi-judicial body which would both control patronage and investigate it.
The great issue, he believed, was that the Company was a “State in the disguise of a Merchant”, allowing it to act with impunity. In his reckoning, that the commission would not be not dependent on the Crown would allow it to examine and inspect the affairs of the Company without interference from vested interests – and then it would resolve the great breach of trust committed against India and replace it with bonds of harmony and sympathy. Burke legitimately believed that the bill would serve as the “Magna Charta of Hindostan”, a new law to be grafted onto India’s constitution to protect its people’s liberties.
But the bill’s introduction was met with pandemonium; in the eyes of the opposition, this was no bill of Indian liberties, but rather a sword thrust onto the British constitution. By removing power from the Company, they believed this breached the terms of the Company charter – and therefore, its passage would make every British corporation amendable by Parliament. And by placing control in a parliamentary commission, presumably of friends of the Fox-North Coalition, they believed it would give to them powers of patronage so extreme it would allow them to control the entire British system. In other words, it would establish Charles James Fox as dictator of Britain, or as a popular cartoon went, “Carlo Khan”.
Though the bill passed the House of Commons, it faced difficulties in the Lords. King George III, who totally despised the Fox-North Coalition that had been placed on him by the Commons, sent an open letter declaring that any Lord who supported the bill would cease to be his friend. The Lords voted it down, and George used the opportunity to dismiss his government; in its place was a ministry led by the 24-year-old William Pitt the Younger. Though the Commons voted this ministry down, Pitt refused to resign; instead, he called for new elections.
Both sides regarded the 1784 election in near-apocalyptic tones. To the Foxites, it was to decide whether the King would share power with parliament or else rule as a despot; to the newly dubbed Pittites, it was to decide who would rule Britain, George III or Charles James Fox. The election became a sweeping victory for Pitt and his friends, who won nearly every constituency that was competitive. For the next half-century, apart from the ill-fated Ministry of All Talents, the Pittites, or the Tories, dominated British politics; the Foxites, or the Whigs, floundered in opposition. In this way, the question of East India reform became connected with the heights of British politics, and it was defeated for entirely British reasons. And though Pitt did enact into law a reform bringing the Company under some supervision, it was a far more moderate affair with little effect.
For his part, Burke was despondent. He believed the British people had failed India, left them to rot in Company maladministration. Against this, Burke believed he had to reenact Roman history. He had long viewed himself as the Anglo Cicero, charismatically extolling the virtues of the constitution its enemies, but now Hastings would be that infamous Roman governor of Sicily, Verres, destroyed by a tidal wave of charisma.
In the months and years that followed, Burke viewed himself as the avenging prophet of India. He spoke of Indians as “fellow citizens”, despoiled by the Company – and when Hastings retired from his posts and returned to England, Burke had the target in his scope. Organizing with his fellow Foxites, he was determined at nothing less than the prosecution of Hastings for crimes against the Indian people. Left by British law to resort to this, in 1787, Burke submitted charges of impeachment. He spoke of illegal wars of conquest, of mass murder and rape in Rangpur, of extrajudicial murder, and of venal corruption. He spoke of sympathy and charity. He declared there was no latitude at which the immoral became moral, no “geographic morality”. And in the end, the House of Commons voted to impeach Hastings.
![Contemporary art of the trial, printed in the 1920 book "Hutchinson's Story of the Nations"; image courtesy WIkimedia Commons. The book's caption shows the imperialist view of the time: that Hastings was "pursued by them [political enemies] with extraordinary rancour" and "received no reward whatever for his magnificent services to his country."](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/aecf75_3acd76a375554469845fd998073ba6d4~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_147,h_86,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_avif,quality_auto/aecf75_3acd76a375554469845fd998073ba6d4~mv2.jpg)
Trial commenced at the House of Lords. The prosecutors on the side of the Commons consisted of two other leading opposition politicians – Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan – but at its head was clearly Edmund Burke. And though the odds were hardly in favour of conviction – George III considered this case an absurdity, the Lord Chancellor was a diehard supporter of the Company, and though Burke spoke of Christian principle the Lords Spiritual were pro-Hastings – the case commenced. Privately, Burke thought he would likely fail, but he hoped it would put a spotlight on crimes in India that would lead to needed reform.
This impeachment was, at the outset, the occasion of the season. Tickets to the trial went at astronomically high prices, and the elites of Britain gathered around Westminster Hall. In his opening speech, Burke dramatically laid out his arguments, speaking of Hastings as less a man and more a born criminal, violating the very laws of nature for his personal gain. He elucidated, in horrifying detail, the Rangpur atrocities – so horrifying that some observers fainted on the spot. He declared that the Indian people suffered atrocities so great that revolution was justifiable. With sheer force of personality, Burke spellbound the entire political scene of Britain – even Hastings privately stated that, in that instant, he felt like the guiltiest man in the world.
Against this, Hastings and his defence made arguments of they own. Not only did they not deny his charges, they declared that violence and terror were fully legal in this context. They conceded that if he had committed such acts against Britons they would be illegal; against Indians, though they were in full accordance to local laws. Such an argument is, of course, moral relativism of the highest order. But both arguments set the tone for the whole ensuing trial.
Burke’s dramatic speech, and an equally dramatic speech by fellow prosecutor Sheridan which ended with him fainting into the crowd, drew the attention of the entire political scene. But then came the Regency Crisis, drawing eyes away from anything to do with India, and no bold speech could draw eyes away. At one time, Fox spoke of folding the entire impeachment issue, but Burke refused, believing it needed to be seen to the end. Privately, he was filled with doubt; he believed he was faced with the “depravity of England” and its public, but he kept at it; it was even the chief reason he refused to resign from Parliament. When the 1790 election threatened to end the impeachment, Burke successfully fought to continue it.
But beyond a lack of public interest, another issue came to impede business, namely the French Revolution. Most of the Foxite contingent regarded this as a joyous event, which would see the French enjoy the benefits of representative government. But Burke did not, and he regarded the Bourbons as the legitimate authorities of France. This opened a breach between him and his fellow prosecutors, and though the trial proceeded, cooperation between them proved impossible. It further drew yet more eyes away from the impeachment as instead they looked to France.
Additionally, there came another issue. With which procedure, under which law should Hastings be prosecuted? Should the trial be put under the loose law and custom of Parliament, or the stricter forms of a judicial court? Burke argued the former. In the eyes of many, especially lawyers, this was essentially an abandonment of the common law and its replacement with the omnipotent, arbitrary rule of Parliament. In the end, the Lords decided to follow standard judicial procedure, and this further made the possibility of finding Hastings guilty doubtful.
And so, in 1794-5, the trial wound up. Burke gave yet another charismatic, dramatic speech damning Hastings and comparing him to a rat. And when his prosecution came to an end, he resigned his membership in Parliament, exhausted as he was after his public life. He watched the verdict come – and he was horrified. Hastings was acquitted of every charge, some unanimously, others by large majorities, but acquitted all the same. Edmund Burke had lost, over a decade spent on East India reform having come to nought.
In its aftermath, the Company declared its intention to give Hastings a pension from India’s coffers. Burke saw this as a tax on Indian suffering. He saw Company ideology, which he called “Indianism”, a far worse evil than Jacobinism – and considering just how much he hated Jacobinism, that is a statement. And he believed the whole of the British nation was collectively guilty of his crimes, as their court found him innocent. In the last one and a half years of his life, he wondered if the Indian people would regard the impeachment not as a trial of a criminal who violated human nature, but as a giant sham. And it left him despondent.
This trial raises several questions. Firstly, could Hastings had been found guilty? In my estimation, no. George III, his Lord Chancellor, the Lords Spiritual and the other lordships supported Hastings from the outset, and no high rhetoric could change that. Even Burke understood this, as he laid ultimate hopes that the trial would cause a sea change in British opinion, which of course it did not. So, even if events had not gotten in the way, even if the French Revolution had not broken Burke’s alliance with the other prosecutors, the trial was always going to end with a full acquittal. The House of Lords was, in the end, no war crimes tribunal.
Second, could the trial have caused a sea change in British opinion? There were several factors standing in the way of this. Procuring evidence was going to be a tough process, seeing as it dealt with events half a world away, and the public is always fickle. Maintaining public interest beyond the opening statements would have always been tough. In my estimation, even given a more favourable political atmosphere, the trial would have inevitably turned into an overlong drama ignored by the public.
So perhaps we ought to look earlier. Could the East India Bill have been passed into law? Well, the chief reason it failed was because George III was against it, and royal influence was powerful enough to stop it. If he had suddenly dropped dead in 1783 and George IV, friendly as he was with Fox, had come to power, this makes it a lot easier for the bill to pass through the Lords and into law. It would have brought Company patronage under parliamentary control, and the whole company would have had parliamentary oversight. If Burke would have wanted Hastings prosecuted, he would have the influence to establish a more suitable court.
But would this have ended the atrocities? Would it allow for a merry union of Britain and India in bonds of friendship and amity, with both their ancient constitutions growing together? In short, no. In history, the happenings of India were brought under parliamentary control in 1858 and it did nothing. When Reginald Dyer decided to shoot up Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, he did not fear parliamentary supervision; instead, after a token inquiry, he got to live a wealthy hero. As it turns out, however much Burke loathed the atrocities considered them barbarism, his solution was a dead end. That he thought such a thing a solution shows that he was perhaps not fully willing to come to terms with that great paradox that India was, as Sir Henry Maine put it, “the virtually despotic government of a dependency by a free people”.
Additionally, Burke was not some common voice, but rather his era’s leading critic of imperial atrocity. This netted him great opposition, and few followed him – indeed, several accused of being anti-white. Against this he wrote this still-formidable statement: “I have no party in this Business...but among a set of people, who have none of your Lilies and Roses in their faces; but who are the images of the great Pattern as well as you and I. I know what I am doing; whether the white People like it or not”. But nevertheless, the average foe of the Company opposed not its atrocities, but rather its corruption of British politics.
In the nineteenth century, revulsion at imperial atrocity decreased further. Burke declared, “I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people”, but in the nineteenth century, that became a cottage industry involving European intellectuals of every stripe, be they conservative, liberal, or socialist. In such an atmosphere, such a parliamentary commission would be more than useless in stopping atrocities. It could, perhaps, weaken the position of the Company interest within British politics – but this is not the same as preventing atrocities.
In the end, Warren Hastings was swiftly rehabilitated. In the 1810s, the Commons gave Hastings a standing ovation, throwing the impeachment into the abyss of history. Over the nineteenth century, he was remembered as a great hero of empire, and though some like Macaulay were willing to admit he was guilty of several atrocities, they still regarded him as an ultimately heroic figure. The impeachment was remembered as a farce, and it is perhaps better remembered for its extreme length (though funny enough the trial only sat for 145 days) than for its content. And though Edmund Burke, for his efforts, won some plaudits among moderate pre-1914 Indian nationalist, and the British anti-colonial socialist Harold Laski admired him for it, today he is not remembered today as a friend, however flawed, of India, but as the founder of conservatism.
To close, I may as well quote Burke’s ruminations, which he said a few months before his death:
“Let not this cruel, daring, unexampled act of publick corruption, guilt, and meanness go down to a posterity, perhaps as careless as the present race, without its due animadversion, which will be best found in its own acts and monuments. Let my endeavors to save the Nation from that Shame and Guilt, be my monument; The only one I ever will have. Let every thing I have done, said, or written be forgotten but this. I have struggled with the great and the little on this point during the greater part of my active Life; and I wish after my death, to have my Defiance of the Judgments of those, who consider the dominion of the glorious Empire given by an incomprehensible dispensation of the Divine providence into our hands as nothing more than an opportunity of gratifying for the lowest of their purposes, the lowest of their passions and that for such poor rewards, and for the most part, indirect and silly Bribes, as indicate even more the folly than the corruption of these infamous and contemptible wretches.... Above all make out the cruelty of this pretended acquittal, but in reality this barbarous and inhuman condemnation of whole Tribes and nations, and of all the abuses they contain. If ever Europe recovers its civilization that work will be useful. Remember! Remember! Remember!”
In the end, the late eighteenth century was a time of growing colonialism, and Europe was headed towards the great barbarism of its conquests of the nineteenth. More than one trial needed to change to stop it.