Blog 130 : Of Governor Generals, Viceroys and Famines

Governor Generals, Viceroys and Famines - Part II

The East India Company ruled from 1773 to 1858. During this time, various acts were passed by the British Parliament to control and supervise the activities of the East India Company (EIC). The company rule ended in 1858 in the aftermath of “India’s First War for Independence” or, as the British called it “The Sepoy Mutiny”.

Robert Clive was the first Governor of East India Company, Calcutta, a position given to him by virtue of his military exploits in defeating the French. Surprisingly, he was just a ‘writer’ - a clerk in Calcutta, before getting to lead troops in battles. He did not have - or had even completed - a formal school education before he came to India. In his school days, he was the local thug, who went to the extent of collecting ‘protection’ money from the local merchants. His unruly and violent behaviour often meant trouble for him in his younger days.

His military exploits took him all over India, till he left India in 1767.

At that time, there were three British Governors - Bombay Presidency, Madras Presidency and Calcutta Presidency - with not much of coordination between the three.

They were all brought under a Governing Council set up in London, who appointed a Governor General, with headquarters in Calcutta, who was placed above the Governors of Madras and Bombay.

Warren Hastings was the first Governor General and he took charge in 1773 during a crisis period, when a great famine was already eating the land and its occupants. Born in 1732, although a brilliant student, he could not complete his schooling due to financial constraints and, at the age of 18, he found employment with East India Company in Madras in 1750. As he was Robert Clive’s protege’, his rise was swift.

A great famine between 1769 and 1773 reduced the population of Bengal by a third.  It was argued that the activities and aggrandisement of company officials caused the famine, particularly abuse of trade monopoly and land tax used for the personal benefit of East India Company officials. These revelations and subsequent debates in Parliament reduced Clive's political popularity.

The Great Bengal famine of 1770 was a famine that struck Bengal and Bihar between 1769 and 1770 and affected some 30 million people. It occurred during a period of dual governance in Bengal.

It - the famine - is usually attributed to a combination of weather and the policies of the East India Company. The start of the famine has been attributed to a failed monsoon in 1769 that caused widespread drought and two consecutive failed rice crops.

During a period of dual governance in Bengal, there was no vision in any policy that was promulgated, which led to those in authority fleecing the populace by means of over burdening an already struggling farmer with very high rates of taxation. Corruption was rife, with most English employees of the East India Company lining their own pockets at the expense of the farmer, the merchant, the business houses.

An estimated 7 to 10 million died and about 30 million rendered homeless and without a livelihood and in absolute poverty., from which most could never extricate themselves.

Warren Hastings returned to England after 10 years of service as the Governor General, only to find himself facing impeachment for embezzlement and the murder of an Indian noble. It is reputed that a duelist whom he had wounded was the instigator of the trial that lasted for seven years. He was pronounced ‘not guilty’. 

Innocuous as it sounds, that a trial in London should affect India, in actuality it set the tone and and the stage as to how the colonies should be governed. 

“According to historian Mithi Mukherjee, the trial instituted debate between two radically opposed visions of empire – one based on ideas of power and conquest in pursuit of the exclusive national interests of the colonizer, and one represented by Burke, of sovereignty based on a recognition of the rights of the colonized.”

The trial of Warren Hastings in Westminster in 1788.

I don’t think I have to elaborate as to which ethical - or non-ethical - faction or party won the trial, as it set in motion the oppressive regime and the hegemony that followed.

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Warren Hastings was still the Governor General of the East India Company in 1783 ~ 1784. 

The “Chalisa Famine” in 1783 ~ 1784. Delhi, Western Oudh, Eastern Punjab region, Rajputana, and Kashmir were the most affected, leaving behind a death toll of around 11 million and displacing about 30 million. Once again, official apathy led to the death of such large numbers.

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Lord Cornwallis 1786 to 1792

After Warren Hastings, a John Mcpherson was the Governor General, before being relieved by Charles Cornwallis, Earl and later Lord, was not only the Governor General but also the Commander of the Armed Forces.

One of the more famous - or infamous, depending on your view point - reforms of which he was the architect, which was strictly adhered to by succeeding generations of Britishers, whether East India Company officials or Viceroys of the British Monarchy well into the 20th century, was the ‘Zamindari’ system.

The East India Company and later the British crown, gave large tracts of land - which did not belong to them in the first place - to the favoured intermediaries, who came to be known as ‘Zamindars’. These Zamindars would collect ‘taxes’ from the farmers and the peasants and turn it over to the authorities, sometimes to the tune of 89% of the crops or crop value. The status of the farmer was reduced to that of tenant.

The title given to this act was the “Permanent Settlement Act of 1793”, which gave sweeping powers to the Zamindars.

The Zamindars were chosen on the basis of their loyalty to the British and were, often, landed gentry or successful businessmen, with greed taking over from humanity. They had to pay a fixed amount to the British and keep the rest for themselves.

Thus began the migration of Indian wealth into the coffers set up in the island of the British.

Thus began the oppression of the peasant farmer, as the Zamindar was free to do what he liked, which was, mostly, draconian.

The peasant, unable to satisfy the demands of the Zamindar, lost his agricultural land and starved.

This set the stage for a famine.

In 1792 ~ 1793, the ‘Doji bara’ or ‘Skull Famine’ hit large areas of the Madras Presidency. The death toll, again, was in the region of around 11 million, 30 million displaced. 11 million perished during the years 1788–1794. One of the most severe famines known. People died in such numbers that they could not be cremated or buried.

Map of India (1795) shows the Northern Circars, Hyderabad (Nizam), Southern Maratha Kingdom, Gujarat, and Marwar (Southern Rajputana), all affected by the Doji bara famine.

The ‘Cornwallis Code’ set up administrative, judicial and policing systems all over India which, in turn, had the effect of tightening its grip on India.  

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The Agra famine of 1837–1838 was a famine in the newly established North-Western Provinces of Company-ruled India that affected an area of 25,000 square miles (65,000 km2) and a population of 8 million people. The central Doab in present-day Uttar Pradesh was the most affected, with about a million deaths.

Doab is a term used in South Asia for the tract of land lying between two confluent rivers. It is similar to an interfluve. In the Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary, R. S. McGregor defines it as from Persian do-āb "a region lying between and reaching to the confluence of two rivers. Arable land, cultivable land, lying between two rivers - how can famine hit this area?

George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland, was the Governor General during the period of the famine. Official apathy, along with oppressive Zamindars, combined to cause the deaths of around 5 million.

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The Upper Doab famine of 1860 to 1861 - Agra, Delhi and Eastern Rajputana - 2 million deaths. Famine again in an area that has perennial rivers.

We now come to the era of ‘Viceroys’, legal representatives of the ruling monarch in Britain.

Not that it made any difference to the millions who continued to perish from famines.

Charles Canning was the Viceroy.

Map shows the Doab Region

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Orissa famine of 1866 ~ 1868 where Orissa, Bihar, Bellary and Ganjam district of Madras Presidency were affected. Death toll was one million in Orissa and about 5 million in the rest of the area.

John Lawrence was the Viceroy. In 1866, the first attempt was made to do something about the famine by establishing a Famine Commission.

A committee under the chairmanship of Sir George Campbell attributed the famine, its causes and its spread to the apathy of Government machinery and that was that.

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The Rajputana famine of 1869 ~ 1870 affected Ajmer, Western Agra, Eastern Punjab. Death toll was 1.5 million.

Lord Lawrence was Viceroy in 1869 and Lord Mayo relieved him in 1869. Mayo was assassinated in 1872 by an Afghan rebel while in the Andamans.

Lord Mayo carried  out the first census in India in 1871. In order to exploit the hinterland products, he started the building of roads and railways that other Viceroys after him followed. There is no official anecdotes of his having taken any notice of the famine that ravaged Punjab.

It is ironic to note that one of his Acts, the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, was repealed only last year, in 2023, by the Indian Parliament, to be replaced by a new Evidence Act.

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Bihar Famine of 1873 ~ 1874 was one of the better controlled famines, administered by Bengal. Death toll not mentioned.

Lord Northbrook was the Viceroy during this period.

Cartoon from Punch, "Mending the Lesson" showing Miss Prudence warning John Bull about handing out too much charity to the needy during the Bihar famine of 1873–1874, and the latter's own interpretation of the Law of Supply and Demand.

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Southern India Famine of 1876 ~ 1878 affected Mysore and Hyderabad, which came under the Madras and Bombay Presidencies respectively. Death toll was pegged between 7 to 10 million people.

Lord Lytton was the Viceroy during this period. His Acts of tax increases brought about a decline in the purchasing power of the common man who, then, dissipated into poverty. His government’s official view was that drought was the primary cause of famines that led to people becoming poor.

The high taxation, the drought and official apathy - especially in the face of a government’s thinking on famines - made even slight scarcity into a famine.

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The Great Indian Famine of 1896 ~ 1897 was a pan-India famine that affected Madras, Bombay, Deccan, Bengal, United Provinces, Central Provinces and parts of Punjab. According to contemporary Western journalists’ accounts, the death toll was 12 to 16 milliion.

Lord Elgin II was the Viceroy during this period.

A photograph of a famine-stricken mother with a baby who at 3 months weighs 3 pounds. Photographer: W. W. Hooper. Great Famine of 1876–1878.

Five emaciated children during the famine of 1876–1878, India. Photographer: WW Hooper

"Famine in India" front cover of Illustrated London News, February 21, 1874.

A group of emaciated women and children in Bangalore, India, famine of 1876–1878. Photographer: WW Hooper.

Engraving from The Graphic, October 1877, showing two forsaken children in the Bellary district of the Madras Presidency during the famine.

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Indian Famine of 1899 ~ 1900 affected Bombay, Central Provinces, Berar, Ajmer and parts of Punjab. Estimated death toll was between 7 to 10 million.

Lord Curzon was the Viceroy during the period of this famine.

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The Bengal Famine of 1943 affected the whole of Bengal. The conservative estimate of the death toll was 3 million.

Lord Linlithgow was the Viceroy during the period of this famine, while Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister in the British Isles. This was an avoidable famine as ships loaded with grain were awaiting discharge in Calcutta. But Churchill forbade the distribution of grain to the common people and, instead, diverted all the grain to London for stockpiling for his troops fighting the Second World War. His rather infamous statement was “Anyway, they breed like rabbits”.

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This pattern of over taxation, one or two failed crop, seizure of land due to unpaid taxes, poverty, hunger, famine, displacement and, finally, death, was rampantly visible all over India for nearly two centuries, during the hegemony of the British Raj.

It left independent India impoverished, 70% of the population living below the poverty line.

United Nations (1998) defines poverty as 

“Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth[e] a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.” 

UNHRC has, recently, put a number to it. “Extreme poverty is currently measured as people living on less than 1.90 USD a day. This economic deprivation – lack of income – is a standard feature of most definitions of poverty.”

The Zamindari Act of 1793, brought in by Cornwallis

 Under the Zamindari system, the land revenue was collected from the farmers by the intermediaries known as Zamindars.

• The share of the government in the total land revenue collected by the zamindars was kept at 10/11th, and the remainder going to zamindars.

• The system was most prevalent in West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, UP, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

The common thread that runs through all the famines over this 150 year period is the oppressive policies of, firstly, the East India Company and, later, through the Viceroys, the imperial edicts of the reigning monarch of the day in London - all in the name of the ‘Zamindari System’. The only imperative for them was the denuding of India and filling their own coffers at whatever cost, even if meant the death of millions.

Talking of death tolls, at a conservative estimate, at least Eighty Million lost their lives during this 150 year period and at least Two Hundred Million were dispossessed, displaced and disowned by the authorities in power. The much touted Hitler’s Holocaust seems like breakfast in the face of the deaths of Indians due to famine.

During the 150 years of the enforcement of the Zamindari system, there was no let up and the land was looted, famines be damned. This, more than any other rule, denuded the Indian farmer where he was forced to live in abject poverty, with no hope of succour.

While the Englishman got rich on blood money.

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Rangan