Constructing South India, 1795–1895 Eugene F. Irschick UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
We know that Englishmen performed a version of dharna (a hunger striketo force a person to pay a sum of money) on the Nawab of Arcot either to get back money that the Nawab owed them or to get him to do things that he did not want to do. It has been shown that Lord Pigot, governor of Madras, in early 1776, shortly before the “revolution” that removed him from power, sought to place a close surveillance on the relations of the Nawab of Arcot with the Muslim prince Hyder Ali and to assure the return of certain important areas (Arni, Sivaganga, Ramnad, Ariyalur, and Variyarpalayam). Lord Pigot accomplished this by a hunger strikedirected against the Nawab. Paul Benfield, an English merchant and moneylender, also used this tactic on many occasions against the Nawab of Arcot to get his tankhwahs—assignments on the taxes of certain tracts of land—paid. John Gurney, “The Debts of the Nawab of Arcot,” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1964), 303. Benfield was by training an engineer and civil architect. It was his demands for restitution for claims on the Nawab relating to some of the revenues of Tanjore that were the basis of the “revolution” that overthrew Lord Pigot. H. Davidson Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, 1640–1800 (London: John Murray, 1913), 3:104.