Famines in Indo Pakistan
during British Rule
 By: Tarique Khan Javed,
President, Overseas Pakistani Investors Forum.

Gravest Human tragedy in recorded history:

During British Rule some 30 million people died due to hunger, in famines. The famines were caused by lack of purchasing power and not because there was shortage of food grain in the country, as a whole. While millions died in India, export of food grain to UK continued as usual. To pay the heavy land tax farmers were compelled to sell the grain and starve.

As the British Rule spread from Bengal to Madras, Bombay and Northern India famines followed. Ten million people died in Bengal during early years of British Rule followed by 5 million each in Madras and Bombay by 1906.

Maximizing shareholders return:
British rule was marked by very high level of Taxes in money terms (compared to share in corps by the local Rulers), collected by honest and efficient Co. officials.
The tax collection system was far effective, due to relatively higher integrity of Co. officials, compared to officials of Local Rulers.
While Local Rulers were soft hearted and liberal in granting remissions in times of poor harvest and even opened their granaries to feed the starving subjects. The Colonial Rulers did not believe in any of these wooly thinking and always remained focus on their mission of maximum extraction and transfer to home County.

As a Co. policy no relaxation was allowed to ensure the budgeted collection, aimed at earning a surplus over local cost, so that an attractive return may be given to shareholders of the Co. in England. The return was in the form mostly of food grain and cash corps. This transfer of resource was called “investment”. Co. Official’s
Performance was judged on the basis of how many investments they were able to send home and how many well paid jobs they were able to provide to Britishers. Any soft hearted Officials, who could not stomach these extraction policies, lost his job.

Paragraphs below will illustrate the above process in historical details.

Rigid monetary tax and March of death:

Bengal:
House of Common recorded:
“It was officially estimated by the members of the Council after they had made a circuit through the country to ascertain the effects of famine that about one third of the population of Bengal or about 10 million people had died in this famine.
And while no systematic measure were undertaken for the relief of the sufferers perishing in every village, road side and bazaar, the mortality was heightened by the action of company servants. Their Gomashtas not only monopolized the grain in order to make high profits from the distress of the people, but they compelled the cultivators to sell even the seed requisite for the next harvest”.

Warren Hastings wrote thus to the Court of Directors on 3rd November 1772.

“Notwithstanding the loss of at least one third of the inhabitants of the province and the consequent decrease of the cultivation the net collection of the year 1771 exceeded even those of 1768. It was naturally to be expected that the diminution of the revenue should have kept an equal pace with the other consequences of so great calamity .That it did not was owing to its being violently kept up to its formers standard.” India Office Records.

Banaras:
In May 1775 Banaras was taken over by British. The revenue was Rs.2, 326,560(£237,000). Due to heavy taxation by 1784 the area was struck by famine and the country was desolated. In April 1784 Hastings reported that “I am sorry to add that from Buxar to the opposite boundary, I have seen nothing but traces of compute devastation in every village.”

Oudh:
In 1775 Co extended its power into Oudh. This led to increase in rent, harsh collection measures were employed and people fled from them fields and villages; the country became desolate. In 1779 the Nawab made a request to reduce military expanses but was ignored. The demand of British Government in 1780 stood at £1,400,000.To get such sum the wealth of Begums of Oudh were robbed.

Captain Edwards visited Oudh in 1774 and in 1783.In the former year he had found the country flourishing in Manufacturers, Cultivation and Commerce. In the letter he found it “forlorn and desolate.”

A severe famine visited the province in 1784.

Madras famine.
The evils of uncertain State demand grew with the laps of years; the Madras cultivators remained resource less; the famine of 1877 found them helpless and swept away five million of the population of that province.
Patels and Local Government played good rule but were abolished by British.
Permanent settlement direct with farmers was done between 1802-05 on the basis of 66% of the gross collection from the cultivators.
Between 1792 and 1802 Co. acquired the rich and favorite portion of territory which became part of Madras provinces. Munro increased the revenue of Ceded district from £402,637 to £606,907 within 7 years by 1807.
Malabar was captured in 1792 and Royatwari system was introduced getting rid of Nair and Rajas. In 1804 Royatwari system was introduced. Polygars were suppressed in 1799-1800 and all their land were retained expect immediate village and the hut.
In Tanjore remaining Pattakdors and Rajas were assessed at 117% of previous. Lord Munro laid out details of Ryatwari system in 1807.
Mahalwari system with village was also considered. The cultivator was constrained to occupy field as were allotted to him by the Revenue Offices and whether he cultivated or not, he was saddled with the rent of each.
After end of the Co. Rule, the Crown fixed 1/3rd of the produce as rent but this was virtually the whole of the economic rent. For in small farms yielding a produce of about £12 in the year, the cost of cultivation and profits of agricultural stocks approximate to £7 or £8, and the claim of the Government to £4 as land tax was virtually a claim not to 50%, but to 100% of economic rent.
In 1880 Ripen the new Viceroy laid down a rule that in districts which had been once been surveyed and settled, the land tax would not be raised except on equitable ground of a rise in price.
In 1884 after Ripen left this rule was cancelled by the Secretary of State of India in January 1885.

Ceded Districts or North Western Provinces:
Nawab’s assessment was Rs.13.5 m. British assessment was Rs.15.6m in first year, Rs.16.16m in second year and Rs.16.82 m in third year.
While the Nawab’s demand was only nominal collection being made according to the state of crops .The Co. demand was realized with a rigidity which the people of India had never known before. One collector Mr. Dumbleton complained that the settlement of 1802, “passed beyond a reasonable demand “and that the British Government continued the heavy rates of the Nawab’s Government “without the same elasticity in realizing.”
In 1803 country between Jumna and Ganga were annexed and called conquered provinces. Bondel Khard and Cuttack was also annexed in 1803.
Northern India had been ravaged by the Maharatta war of 1803, and the severe land assessment made by the servants of the Co. gave them no chance of improving their condition. The result was the wide spread famine of 1804.The Govt. was them compelled to admit large remissions of the land revenue, loans and advances were made to the land owners and a bounty was offered to grain exporters in Banaras, Allahabad, Kanpore and Fatehgarh.
Gaunter famine of 1833:
In the Gaunter portion of the Krishna District from 1/3 to ½ populations perished. An epidemic broke out in the following year and “a man in perfect health as hardly to be seen any where.”
The famine of 1833 known as Gaunter famine was the severest on record in these parts.

Captain Walter Compel wrote:
“It is dreadful to see what revolting food human being may be driven to partake of. Dead dogs and horses are greedily devoured by these starving wretches; and the other day, an unfortunate donkey having strayed from the part, they fell upon him like a patch of wolves, tore him limb from limb and devoured him on the spots”.
The Guava District was in ruin in 1844.There were famines in 1835,36,37 and continued in 1838,39 and 40.The population which was 695,016 in 1830 had decreased to 533,836 in 1840

Mahalwari settlement:
In 1882, Mahalwari settlement was made under which 83% of the rental of estates was demanded. In case of settlement with cultivators in common tenancy the state demand was raised to 95% and the system was not permanent.
During this time a famine spread through Northern India, Bengal, CP, Madras and Bombay. It killed millions .A plague desolated the towns of Western India during this period.
A severe famine once more over took India in 1900and lasted for four years.

Famine Commission reported that:
“The rigorous collection of Land Tax as accountable for the permanent indebtedness of the agriculture classes”.

Bombay and Sindh:
The revision settlement commended in 1866 went on slowly and by 1899 (the year preceding the Bombay famine) only half of the villages of the Province had been revised. Increase on average of 30% was obtained on the previous year. Eg: in 000’s
-Ahmedabad from 87, 310 to 109, 294 or 5.2%.
Nasir from 67.7to 93 or 37.5%
Kolaba from 73.6 to 100 or 35.9%
Dharwar from 130 to 187 or 44.2%

After famine these were eventually reduced.

On top of it 12.5 local taxes were imposed.

This led to famine of 1897 and 1900. Govt. after refusing in 1897 had to give in 1900 and the operation of suspended Abatement were made in Sagar, Damah, Jabalpur, Seoni, Narsinghpur, Hoshangabad and Nimer.

Consequences of unbearable tax burden:

Romesh Dutt wrote in 1906:
“A famine, the most intense and the most widely extended yet known, desolated the country in 1897.The famine was not over till 1898.There was a pause in 1899. A fresh famine broke out in 1900 over a large area and continued for a longer period. The terrible calamity lasted three years and millions of men perished. Tens and thousands were still in relief camp when the Delhi Durbar was held in January 1903.”
“The poverty of the Indian population at the present day is unparalleled in any civilized country; the famines, which have desolated India within the last quarter of the nineteenth century, are unexampled in their extent and intensity in the history of ancient or modern times. By a moderate calculation the famines of 1877 to 1889, 1892, 1897 and 1900 have carried off fifteen million people. The population of fairly sized European country has been swept away from India within thirty-five years.
Population equal to half of that of England has perished in India within a period, which men and women still in middle age can remember”.

He added:
“Place any other country under the same condition, with crippled industries, with agriculture subject to a heavy and uncertain land tax, and with financial arrangements requiring one half of its revenue to be annually remitted out of the country and the most prosperous nation on earth will soon know the horrors of famine”.
“A land tax like that which now exists in India” wrote Colonel Briggs in 1830,’ professing to absorb the whole of landlord’s rent was never known under any Government in Europe or Asia.”
He pointed out that “every ancient nation, the Greeks, the Romans and Persian and the Chinese. The right of the State consisted in laying a tax of one tenth of produce Among the Ancient Hindus the right of the King or the State was to levy of grain 1/8 part or, a 1/6 or 1/12 according to the difference of the soil and the labor necessary to cultivate it”.
That the occupant of the land alone was its sole proprietor; that the demand on him for contributory to the support of the state was a sort of income tax viz a limited portion of the produce of his estate; and that this portion was fixed in time of peace, but liable to increase in time of war and that under all circumstances it left a certain surplus profit to the owner equivalent to a rent. Moreover I hope I have established that the sovereign never claimed to be the proprietor of the soil, but of the land tax”.
The disregard of this cardinal principle by the Co. and their endeavors to sweep away the entire profit from the land, leaving to cultivators barely enough to support their lives, were regarded by John Briggs as the main causes of the poverty of India under the British Rule.

Conclusions and lessons:

1. Price system does not become inoperative even for a short while as the law of gravity does not take a rest. During Indian famines price system did not fail; rather it demonstrated that wants become demand only when backed by purchasing power.

2. Local rulers are always better than foreign rulers as what ever they earn have to be spent within the country.
3. In times of food shortage export of food grains should not be allowed.

4. Excessive agriculture taxation should be avoided to ensure that the rural population has enough savings to bridge period of poor harvest.

5. Adequate alternative job opportunities should be available to supplement family income on top of agriculture income.

6. Agriculture taxes should be low and fixed for an extended period to provide stability of agriculture income.

7. Justice demands that an International
Truth and Reconciliation Commission be formed to investigate atrocities like above.

Fixing responsibilities and demanding compensation and apologies.

8. Why did the transport and market mechanism fail after arrival of the British? Dr.Sen of India, in modern times has done lot of work on the subject, which earned him a Noble Prize.

His conclusion is that due to lack of purchasing power the transportation of food grain from food surplus provinces to food deficient province did not take place. Traders knew that even if they took the grain it will not be sold as people did have want but no demand, backed by money.

More work need to be done on the subject, which can earn more Noble Prizes.