40% of their revenue as tax). Frustrated at the British refusal to pay these taxes, Mir Qasim abolished taxes on the local traders as well. This upset the advantage that the European traders had been enjoying so far, and hostilities built up. Mir Qasim invaded the Company offices in Patna in 1763, killing several Europeans including the Resident. Mir Qasim allied with Shuja-ud-Daula of Avadh and Shah Alam II, the incumbent Mughal emperor against the British. However, their combined forces were defeated in the Battle of Buxar in 1764. Qasim also launched a brief invasion of Hindu Kingdom of Nepal in 1763 during the reign of Maharajadhiraja Prithvi Narayan Shah, the first King of Nepal. Kanak Singh Baaniya, Chief Minister of Makwanpur, had requested Qasim's intervention against Shah after he had taken Bikram Sen, the king of Makwanpur, hostage. Qasim dispatched a military force under the command of his general Gurgin Khan to invade Nepal. Khan was swiftly defeated by Shah's army, and retreated. Unlike Siraj-ud-Daulah before him, Mir Qasim was an effective and popular ruler. Their victory at Buxar established the East India Company as a powerful force in the province of Bengal in a much more real sense than at Plassey seven years earlier and at Bedara five years earlier. By 1793 the East India company had abolished the Nizamat (referring to the Mughal suzerainty) and became completely in charge of the former Mughal province. Death Having lost all his men and influence after his defeat at Buxar, Qasim was expelled from his camp by Shuja-ud-Daula on 23 October 1764; fleeing to Rohilkhand, Allahabad, Gohad and Jodhpur, and eventually settling at Kotwal, near Delhi ca. 1774. Mir Qasim died in obscurity and abject poverty possibly from dropsy, at Kotwal, near Delhi on 8 May 1777. See also Mughal Empire Shia Islam in India References Further reading |- 1777 deaths Indian Shia Muslims Nawabs of Bengal Year of birth unknown