Treasure Seekers: Empires of India Page #5

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defense in the house of commons.

And it was now he made his

famous speech saying that

given the opportunities for

self enrichment in India

he was astonished at his moderation.

Clive was cleared but there was

no joy in it for him.

He had been stung by the accusations.

He had effectively given India

to Britain.

Now he was furiously bitter at what

he felt was his country's ingratitude.

He was once again being rejected.

Predictably, he plunged back

into depression.

His agonizing stomach pains returned,

this time complicated by gallstones.

Even opium did little

to relieve the pain.

I have a disease

which makes life insupportable, but

which the doctors tell me

won't shorten it an hour.

He drifted from one mansion

to another,

barely unpacking before

setting off for the next.

Little did he know, many in the

British government had in fact

been deeply impressed with his

reforms of the East India Company.

They were on the verge of giving him

control of yet another colony

that was in chaos and on the verge of

revolt North America.

Unaware of the honor

that was pending,

Clive was consumed by

humiliation and despair.

On the 22nd of November, 1774,

as his family prepared to leave the

London house

at Berkeley square for Bath

they heard a crash in Clive's room.

When they rushed in,

they found him dead.

Robert Clive, still only 49 years old,

had cut his own throat.

Clive's death created a huge scandal,

there was a sort of big hush up

and a lot of sort of muted whispering

going on in the corridors of power

as to whether he had killed himself.

It sounds like he slit his throat

with a penknife.

Suicide was a sin.

In grief and shame, Clive's family

removed his body by night

and buried him without a headstone

in the little church of Moreton say,

outside Market Drayton, the town

where he had run wild as a child.

After Clive's death,

the British grip on America loosened

and tightened on India.

The profits to be earned there

resumed their flow.

A hundred years later, the Kohinoor,

the fabulous diamond Babur had dismissed

as worthless

compared to the life of his son,

was in the British crown jewels.

Krishna's gift had been a test of

mankind's greed.

What would they do with

all that wealth?

Would they behave like beasts

or think and achieve Wisdom?

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