The Bachhowali Tope, the famous cannon used at the battle of Plassey, at Hazarduari Palace. The name derives from the legend that the firing of the tope often caused miscarriages in pregnant women

This is where India’s modern history was born; where the country was lost to the British. Here, the nawabs’ rule over undivided Bengal-Bihar-Orissa ended.

Yet, it’s the nawabs who rule Murshidabad town today. These long-dead kings and not the civic fathers put food on the table, for the tangawallah and the young college graduate.

The palaces and mosques the nawabs built at their former capital fetch the dollars and Euros that power the horse-cart economy in a place caught between the medieval and the modern.

In this tourist hotspot, tangas and not Taveras rule the narrow streets, littered with horse dung that the municipality deems it good enough to clean up every third or fourth day. The daily influx of students and other commuters from the villages across the Bhagirathi comes not on buses but in boats, risking the occasional tragedy.

Get off the Hazarduari Express at the station, and the first people to pounce on you are the “guides”, some of them graduates fresh out of college.

They rattle off the names of the “must-visit” sites: Hazarduari Palace, Nizamat Imambara, Nasipur Palace, Katra Mosque, Jafarganj Cemetery, Namak Harami Deori and Traitor’s Gate, which is all that remains of Mir Jafar’s palace.

Over the past decade, Murshidabad has turned into one of the hottest tourist destinations in the state, probably helped by the unrest in the hills up north. For the past five years, the November-to-January peak reason has been attracting over 2,000 foreign tourists.

The tangawallahs surround you, and touts dangle the “best” hotel prices and “discounts”, in peak or off season.

Even the tangas are a direct legacy of the nawabs, having been improvised out of the phaetons and buggies sold off by the erstwhile rulers’ descendants.

“Kolkatay Victoria te jemon tanga chortey chai korta, ekhaneo sahebra ailey tanga chorey ghurtey chai. Tai amader byabsa (just as people want a tanga ride at Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial, so do the tourists here. That’s why we can earn a living),” says tanga driver Mansoor Golam, who lives on loans through the year and pays off his debts during “the season”.

The nawabs hold the reins because the municipality, founded in 1869, and the state government have abdicated responsibility, residents say.

Whatever little development the hotel industry has seen is thanks to private initiative. Ditto the private picnic spots such as Motijheel Park, Park of Joy and Oasis Park that offer visitors a breather from heritage-hopping.

But not more than 10 hotels have come up in recent years, and most tourists still prefer to stay at district headquarters Behrampore and travel the 15km to Murshidabad.

“The government has built a lone youth hostel. There’s no bus terminus,” says Abdur Rouf Khan, 65, army naik turned town historian and social worker.

“Every bus that comes from outside the district is charged Rs 100 by the municipality, and every passenger on it Rs 3. During the three-month tourist season, the daily income just from these charges is more than Rs 1 lakh. Yet the municipality has done next to nothing to boost tourism in Murshidabad.”

So the likes of Golam feel indebted to the nawabs, two-and-a-half centuries after their reign ended in the battlefields of Plassey 60km away when Mir Jafar’s fabled treachery handed Bengal to Robert Clive, setting up India’s capitulation to the British.

The imposing Tripolia Gate welcomes visitors to the Hazarduari (thousand-door) complex, the three-storey, 114-room palace built in 1837 by Duncan McLeod for Nawab Najim Humayun Jah, a descendant of Mir Jafar. Only 900 of the doors are real, though.

Most of the evidence of modernity you see came courtesy the nawabs. The new money from tourism has built air-conditioned restaurants that sit cheek by jowl with arched gateways. Freshly painted hotel boundary walls abut on centuries-old brick structures made of the famed Murshidabadi terracotta.

Tourism’s prospects are limited here, says S.M. Reza Ali Khan “Sahab”, 65, eighth-generation descendant of Mir Jafar. “The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) focuses only on Hazarduari.”

He provides a list of the neglected and crumbling: Sangh Dalan, the palace of last independent nawab Sirajuddaullah’s maternal aunt Ghasiti Begum; Motijheel, the 750-acre lake once used for pearl cultivation; Clive’s home near the lake; the Jafarganj Cemetery “which houses 1,100 of our ancestral tombs” including Mir Jafar’s; the entrance to Mir Jafar’s palace….

“Motijheel is now primarily used for commercial fish cultivation instead of being preserved as a heritage site. The adjoining Motijheel mosque is in a shambles,” says Abdur.

Some others are languishing because they are on the other side of the river. “You have to take a ferry to reach the Rani Bhawani and Jain temples in Azimganj. Sirajuddaullah’s palace at Dahapara is in ruins; his tomb in Khoshbagh, taken over by the ASI, is again difficult to travel to. Once the Khoshbagh-Amaniganj road bridge comes up, things may improve,” hopes Abdur.

Also languishing are the small-scale industries, perhaps with the exception of the silk saris. Ivory and shola carvings and ittar, which once made it from here to all over the country, are a dying art, their practitioners more interested in opening eateries. Bell metal work, especially kaansa utensils, still survives but has been on the downswing for the past 15 years.

Make that 20 years for the Murshidabad mango, a nawabi luxury that resulted in unique flavours with imaginative blends of grafts.

“The nawabs employed mango specialists and conducted research to produce new varieties. Different knives were used to cut different varieties of the fruit. There used to be an ambakhana beside the Tripolia Gate to store mangoes. Our own garden yielded 119 varieties,” says Reza Khan.

The most famous mango was the Koh-e-Tore, named after the hill where Moses sighted the light of God. “That’s a very difficult mango to prepare; very juicy but with very thin skin. Kalapahar, Mulayamjaam, Lashkarshikan, Ranipasand, Nawabpasand and Begumpasand are other famous varieties. Another is Ananas: it neutralises the taste buds through its unique taste, acting as a filler between two other types of mangoes so each can be properly tasted,” says Reza Khan.

But the authorities have failed to preserve what the nawabs created. “Most orchards have been cut down to make way for apartment blocks because the mango business was yielding less profit compared with Malda’s,” says Abdur.

If it were possible, Golam and his ilk would perhaps have voted for the nawabs on May 30.