Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/31

 to face them, Krishna Chandra, as said above, left Krishnagar for Shibnibash. On the south of this town he organised a village of cowherds who now are known as the “Gorhos of Krishnapur”; and two miles to the north-west of it, a mart called Krishnaganj. Near to the mart is a village of the same name. The Eastern Bengal State Railway runs through it, and has named a station after it.

Krishna Chandra was the most important personage of this part of Bengal in his time. So some historians say that the conspirators against Sirajuddaula must have sought, and gained, his accession to the plot and that it was with his advice that they made overtures to the English; while there are others who do not make him a party to the conspiracy. But the weight of evidence is in favour of the former story; for the writer of the “Memoirs of Khitish Chandra and his Ancestry” says, that it is a common belief in the Raj family of Krishnagar that Clive after the battle of Plassey presented Krishna Chandra with five cannon, in token of his services to the British power; and that these five cannon are still in the palace at Krishnagar.

Krishna Chandra had to suffer much from the hands of Meer Kasim when he was the Nawab. Quarrelling with the English, Meer Kasim transferred his capital to Monghyr; and while there cruelly persecuted all those whom he suspected to be friendly disposed towards them. Krishna Chandra and Shib Chandra were among the sufferers. They were both for some time kept in close confinement in the Monghyr fort; and they would have had to pay the penalty of death, had not the tyrant been compelled to quit the city for fear of the English.

After the English Governor’s appointment as Dewan of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, he divided the province