" began to emerge as moneyed landowners to whom the Company could devolve local responsibility. So even as the old Mughal aristocracy was losing high office, a new Hindu service gentry came to replace them at the top of the social ladder in Company-ruled Bengal. This group of emergent Bengali bhadralok (upper-middle classes) represented by families such as the Tagores, the Debs and the Mullicks, tightened their grip on mid-level public office in Calcutta, as well as their control of agrarian peasant production and the trade of the bazaars. "

― William Dalrymple , The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire