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If the Marathas (and much more so the other Indian powers) were amateurish and adventurist in their methods, the British in India were thoroughly professional. Many of the British leaders were adventurous enough but they’ were in no way adventurist in the policy for which they all worked in their separate spheres. ‘The East India Company’s secretariat,’ writes Edward Thompson, ‘was served in the courts of native India by a succession and galaxy of men such as even the British Empire has hardly ever possessed together at any other time.’ One of the chief duties of the British residents at these courts was to bribe and corrupt the ministers and other officials. Their spy system was perfect, says a historian. They had complete information of the courts and armies of their adversaries, while those adversaries lived in ignorance of what the British were doing or were going to do. The fifth column of the British functioned continuously and in moments of crisis and in the heat of war there would be defections in their favour which made a great difference. They won most of their battles before the actual fighting took place. That had been so at Plassey and was repeated again and again right up to the Sikh wars. A notable instance of desertion was that of a high officer in the service of Scindhia of Gwalior, who had secretly come to terms with the British and went over to them with his entire army at the moment of battle. He was awarded for this later by being made the ruler of a new Indian state carved out of the territories of Scindhia whom he had betrayed. That state still exists, but the man’s name became a byword for treason and treachery, just as Quisling’s in recent years.

Excerpted from pages 302-303 of ‘Jawaharlal Nehru The Discovery of India, by Jawaharlal Nehru