Career
According to 1968"s History of Bengal: Mughal period, 1526-1762, Krishnachandra was "the most important man of the period in the Hindu society of Bengal." He is credited not only with his resistance to the Mughal rule, but with his expansion of and patronage of the arts in his kingdom. Krishnachandra strongly opposed the measure. To illustrate his feelings, legend relates, he had the visitors served the meat of a buffalo calf.
Krishnachandra"s courtiers pointed out that they had taken umbrage at being presented something not forbidden but against custom, but that they expected Krishnachandra to accept their own unorthodox proposal.
Another legend connected to Krishnachandra involved the conflict between his diwan, Raghunandan, and Manikchandra, then diwan of Burdwan but in future to become raja himself. After Raghunandan and Manikchandra quarreled, Manikchandra accused the other man of theft and had sufficient power to order and see to his execution.
In Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal, John McLane speculates that the root of the disagreement may have been Manikchandra"s well-known resentment of Krishnachandra"s patronage of the poet Bharatchandra, who had insulted the Burdwan raj family in a poem in retaliation for their depriving him of his own family estate. Durga appeared to him in the form of Jagaddhatri and ordered him to worship her in one month, which he did, commissioning a sculptor to create a statue of the goddess.
Eminent Shakta poet of that era, Sadhak Ramprasad Senator became well known for his devotional songs, eventually becoming the court poet of Raja Krishnachandra.
During his reign, Krishnachandra was on friendly terms with the British and especially Robert Clive. This relationship served him well in the 1760s when Bengal Nawab Mir Qasim ordered Krishnachandra"s execution, for Clive not only overruled it but gifted Krishnachandra five cannons, the title maharaja, and governance as zamindar of the area of Krishnanagar.
