When the Empire Watched Millions Die: The Forgotten Famine of 1876–78

 

Today, I want to invite you on a journey, not through time to a glorious past, but into a much darker, more devastating chapter of colonial history. We're going to delve into the shadows of the late 19th century, when a catastrophic famine swept across vast regions of South India: The Great Famine of 1876–78 in Colonial India.

 

A Catastrophe Underestimated: Why Revisit the Great Famine Today?

Between 1876 and 1878, a catastrophic famine swept through vast regions of Colonial India – particularly the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, as well as the princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad. The human cost was staggering, with an estimated 5.5 to 10 million deaths.

So, why revisit this calamity today? Why pull this dark memory from the archives? Because understanding how colonial systems created famines amid plenty can illuminate the underlying structures of present-day disasters. We live in a world grappling with rising food insecurity, intensifying climate shocks, and persistent economic inequality under neoliberal regimes. The Great Famine offers us a chilling case study where poverty, policy, and political ideology intersected with nature to produce human suffering.

Our goal today is to revisit this event through an interdisciplinary lens, combining historical analysis with anthropological inquiry, to understand how a climatic crisis escalated into a social catastrophe under colonial rule.

 

Environmental Trigger or Political Catastrophe? The Colonial Economy's Role

Let's begin with a fundamental question: Was the Great Famine simply a 'natural' disaster, a tragic consequence of failed rains?

While a severe drought certainly precipitated the initial crop failures, and the famine began with the failure of the monsoon in 1876, compounded by continuing drought through 1877 due to a larger El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event, the famine’s destructive capacity cannot be understood without examining the political economy of British imperial governance.

You see, by the late 19th century, India had been structurally integrated into global markets through railways, land revenue systems, and cash-crop agriculture. This agricultural shift, notably after the American Civil War pushed Indian cotton to global prominence, often displaced food crops, making peasants increasingly vulnerable to climatic shocks.

Here’s the critical point: even as people starved, grain continued to be exported from India to England. Official figures reveal that over 320,000 tons of wheat were exported in 1877, right at the peak of the famine, causing food prices in local markets to soar beyond the reach of the rural poor. As the economist Amartya Sen later argued, this famine was not due to the unavailability of food, but to a collapse in people’s entitlements – their ability to access food.

Therefore, we argue that the Great Famine was not merely the result of environmental conditions, but the outcome of colonial policies that produced vulnerability, limited state response, and exacerbated suffering.

 

Imperial Indifference: The Politics of "Relief"

Now, you might ask: Surely the British colonial administration, with its supposed civilising mission, would have stepped in to help? What kind of 'relief' did they offer?

The refusal of the colonial state to intervene was driven not by ignorance, but by a rigid ideology. British administrators, including Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India (1876–80), were deeply committed to laissez-faire economics, believing that state interference in food markets would disrupt the "natural workings of supply and demand".

Lytton explicitly instructed colonial officials to avoid grain price controls and supported Sir Richard Temple, the Famine Commissioner, in implementing a drastically austere relief policy. This led to the notorious “Temple wage,” which provided a meager 1,627 calories per day for adult males doing hard labor – an intake far below medical standards for survival. W. R. Cornish, the Surgeon-General of Madras, critically warned that this diet was "insufficient to maintain health in an able-bodied laborer... particularly under the tropical sun". Yet, Lytton upheld these standards, reinforcing the idea that relief must be minimal to avoid encouraging "idleness". He infamously stated: “Humanitarian sentiments must not interfere with the stern duties of Empire”.

This ideological rigidity transformed famine relief into a system of discipline and abandonment. Famine camps became labour camps, forcing starving people to break stones or dig roads for meager rations. Children, the elderly, pregnant women, and the disabled were often excluded entirely, revealing a deeply gendered and ableist conception of human value. Eyewitness accounts spoke of appalling scenes: "They work till they drop. The dead are removed every morning, often carted off with the still-breathing”. This cruelty, as Mike Davis aptly described it, was “famine by design”.

Underlying these policies was a deeply entrenched racial ideology. Indians were perceived as biologically and morally inferior – supposedly able to withstand more pain, less food, and harder labor than Europeans. Lytton himself framed Indians as susceptible to “degeneracy” if indulged, and Temple described the poor as “habitually inert and accustomed to idleness”. Such narratives delegitimized Indian suffering, transforming hunger into a moral failure rather than a political injustice.

Perhaps the most shocking display of this ethos was Lytton’s Delhi Durbar of January 1877, a grand celebration marking Queen Victoria’s assumption of the title Empress of India. This event cost over £300,000 – a sum that could have provided food relief to millions for weeks. Lytton explicitly forbade any public mention of the famine during the Durbar, ensuring that imperial spectacle took precedence over humanitarian crisis. As Romesh Chunder Dutt later wrote: “While men and women died in the fields and by the roadside, the rulers of the land wasted millions in the pageant of imperial vanity”.

Consider the powerful contrast: In Mysore, a princely state under Indian rule, the Maharaja’s government imported rice from Burma, provided free kitchens, and remitted taxes, leading to a significantly lower mortality rate. Meanwhile, in Madras, Temple and Lytton refused to suspend revenue collection and imposed stringent labor conditions for relief. This underscores that the British response was a policy choice, not an inevitability.

Furthermore, the famine was used to justify the expansion of railways and canals, often presented as famine-prevention measures, but largely designed for commercial and military interests. Relief camps also enabled the state to penetrate rural society, establishing new mechanisms of surveillance, data collection, and labor control – deepening imperial presence.

 

The Famine as Epidemic: Collapse of Body, Ecology, and Society

Beyond direct starvation, what were the other, perhaps even deadlier, consequences of this famine?

While hunger was the first wave, it was soon followed by a far deadlier second wave: outbreaks of epidemic diseases, mass death of livestock, and ecological collapse. Starvation was often the precondition, not the final cause, of death. The real executioner was disease.

• The sub-starvation rations, the infamous Temple wage, barely sustained basic bodily function. Medical officers noted widespread symptoms of severe protein-energy malnutrition, including edema, muscle wasting, blindness, and skin lesions.

• In 1877–78, famine-stricken regions experienced a catastrophic upsurge in infectious diseases. Cholera, smallpox, and malaria swept through weakened populations, especially within overcrowded and unsanitary relief camps. In Madras Presidency alone, over 1.25 million people died of cholera and dysentery.

• The death of livestock was equally catastrophic. Millions of oxen, buffaloes, and goats died, crippling the agrarian economy for years. Estimates suggest that in Mysore alone, over 80% of cattle perished. This collapse ensured that even when rains returned, many farmers lacked the means to resume cultivation, pushing them deeper into debt and landlessness.

• The famine also triggered ecological responses: locust swarms devastated newly planted fields, famine-induced deforestation led to increased soil erosion, and crucial tank irrigation systems fell into disrepair as local communities collapsed. This highlights how famine was not a singular event, but an ecological crisis with cascading effects.

Moreover, the famine uprooted millions. As grain markets failed and local elites hoarded supplies, rural laborers, artisans, women, and entire families became "refugees of empire". Thousands died in transit, with eyewitnesses noting roads littered with corpses. In some villages, entire populations disappeared, and one official reported: “In some districts, we could not find enough living people to bury the dead”. This mass displacement disrupted local economies and social networks, leading to rising crime, breakdown of caste systems, and a sharp increase in orphaned children and destitute widows.

 

Social Disintegration and Inequality: Who Suffered Most?

Let's delve deeper into the societal impact. Did the famine affect everyone equally? Who bore the greatest burden, and how did existing social structures influence survival?

Famine is not only a crisis of food or governance; it is a test of social fabric, and the Great Famine exposed and deepened existing social hierarchies and exclusions – especially those based on caste, class, gender, and religion.

• Caste-Based Exclusions: India’s entrenched caste system became a tool of discrimination. Dalits and tribal communities were often denied entry into relief works or forced to eat separately. Some Brahmin relief workers even refused to serve food prepared or handled by Dalits. As David Arnold argued, “Famine exposed the moral bankruptcy of a social system that privileged ritual purity over human life”.

• Class Asymmetry: While famine touched all strata, it disproportionately devastated the poor. Small landholders, tenant farmers, and labourers bore the brunt, while moneylenders, grain merchants, and large landowners often profited. Grain hoarders sold food at prices 3-5 times higher than pre-famine rates. Many peasants mortgaged land, cattle, or future labour to survive, falling into debt bondage that lasted for generations. As the Indian Mirror noted, “The famine enriched the few and enslaved the many. What the sun did not burn, the moneylender claimed”.

• Gendered Suffering: Famine magnified existing gender hierarchies. Women often ate last and least, meaning female mortality frequently exceeded male mortality. They bore the burden of finding food and protecting children. Many women were abandoned, sold into bonded labour, or forced into sex work. The work-for-food model also favoured able-bodied men, excluding pregnant or lactating women, girls, and the elderly. Colonial records describe: “Women carrying half-dead children, having walked 40 miles, were turned away as unfit for labor”.

• Religious Institutions: Hindu temples, Muslim charities, and Christian missions played varied roles, often stepping in where the colonial state failed. While some offered unconditional aid, Christian missions sometimes linked relief with religious conversion, especially for famine orphans, leading to tensions.

• Social Disintegration: As the famine progressed, traditional community bonds began to fray. Trust dissolved, and in some districts, parents abandoned children. While colonial texts sometimes exaggerated, reports of theft, violence, and even cannibalism were indicative of a deep social collapse. This scale of trauma reshaped social memory, with oral histories still retaining references to this famine as a time of moral darkness.

 

Voices of Dissent: Challenging the Empire's Narrative

Given such widespread suffering and questionable policies, did anyone speak out? Was there any resistance or critique against the British famine policy?

Absolutely. Though the British Raj presented its policies as rational and scientific, the Great Famine did not go unchallenged. A range of voices, from Indian nationalists and public intellectuals to British missionaries, civil servants, medical experts, and even some Members of Parliament, publicly and privately condemned the official handling of the crisis.

• Indian Critics and Economic Nationalism: The famine catalysed early Indian economic nationalism, most powerfully articulated by Romesh Chunder Dutt. In his Economic History of India (1906), Dutt argued that the famine was not a natural calamity but the result of colonial extraction, land revenue demands, and laissez-faire ideology. He declared: “India is governed, not for the benefit of the people of India, but for the benefit of the British merchant and manufacturer”. Other critics like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Dadabhai Naoroji linked famine with land alienation, rural debt, and the "drain of wealth".

• Vernacular Press: Despite repressive laws like the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which curtailed the freedom of non-English newspapers, several vernacular papers and pamphlets played a key role in spreading awareness and questioning colonial narratives. Editorials condemned the unequal distribution of relief, the Delhi Durbar, and the continued export of grain. A Telugu pamphlet from 1878 famously questioned: “Why does the Queen become Empress while her subjects eat dust? Did she ask the gods to withhold the rains, or is it her men who locked the granaries?”.

• British Missionaries and Reformers: Figures such as Reverend William Digby, who published The Famine Campaign in Southern India (1878), personally visited famine districts and exposed the government’s inaction, cruelty, and misplaced priorities. He wrote: “The bureaucrats measured death with cost, and the result was death in abundance and cost in parsimony”.

• Parliamentary Criticism in Britain: Even in Britain, radical MPs like Charles Bradlaugh, alongside Henry Fawcett and William Digby, raised questions in Parliament about grain exports and the Delhi Durbar. Fawcett famously argued: “In a country governed by Britain, no subject should starve while grain fills the holds of ships leaving for British ports”.

However, Lord Lytton’s administration responded to critique with increasing authoritarianism, enacting the Vernacular Press Act and deliberately sanitizing or downplaying famine records. The official death toll of 5.5 million is likely a vast underestimate, with independent estimates suggesting the real figure may have exceeded 8 to 10 million. By suppressing data and censoring media, the Raj sought to control the narrative, yet these dissenting voices fundamentally eroded the moral authority of British rule.

 

Memory, Legacy, and the Unfinished Conversation

Finally, how is this monumental event remembered today? And what are its lasting legacies, particularly given its relative obscurity in mainstream historical accounts?

Despite its immense magnitude, the Great Famine remains underrepresented in both public memory and institutional archives, especially when compared to other famines like the Irish Famine or the Bengal Famine. This relative historical amnesia is itself a product of colonial knowledge production and political priorities.

• Colonial Archival Silences: Primary sources from the colonial period are often fragmentary, sanitized, or ideologically curated. Officials were invested in portraying their response as efficient, minimizing mortality figures, and attributing deaths to "natural causes". Many Indian testimonies, especially in vernacular languages, were simply excluded. As Dipesh Chakrabarty eloquently put it, colonial archives often reduce suffering to administrative categories, making “life disappear into paperwork”.

• Memory in Oral Traditions: In famine-affected regions like Rayalaseema, North Karnataka, and Telangana, the memory of the famine lives on in folk songs, village oral traditions, and cultural taboos. Elderly residents still refer to it as the “Dora poyina kalam” – “the time when the masters vanished” – reflecting the collapse of authority and moral order. These oral memories emphasize loss, betrayal, and abandonment, serving as powerful counter-histories to official narratives.

• Enduring Legacies: The famine’s long-term consequences were vast: the agrarian economy was reshaped by increased indebtedness and loss of livestock, leading to the rise of moneylender-dominated villages. Many landless laborers were forced into bonded labor, tenancy, or out-migration, creating a permanent underclass.

• Postcolonial Silences and Contemporary Recognition: In postcolonial India, the Great Famine has received little official commemoration. No national memorials mark the millions who died, and school textbooks often bypass the event. However, scholars, artists, and activists have begun revisiting the famine through documentaries, academic works, and village storytelling projects, aiming to preserve survivor memories and reframe the famine as part of a global history of imperial disaster-making.

• Debates on Apology and Reparations: In broader decolonization debates, particularly in the UK, the Great Famine has been cited as an example of colonial culpability. Though British governments have never formally acknowledged the event or expressed regret, there are growing calls from Indian scholars and public intellectuals for formal acknowledgment, inclusion of famines in global histories of genocide and structural violence, and memorialization efforts.

 

Conclusion: The Violence of Empire – Lessons for Today

So, where does this leave us? The Great Famine of 1876–78 was not simply a consequence of failed rains or El Niño. It was a catastrophe manufactured at the intersection of natural calamity and imperial ideology. It was a period where colonial policies—rooted in laissez-faire economics, racial hierarchy, and the logic of extraction—exacerbated hunger, spread disease, and fractured the very foundations of Indian society. The refusal to halt grain exports, the imposition of sub-subsistence rations, and the prioritization of imperial pageantry over famine relief are not mere policy failures – they are evidence of structural violence enacted through governance.

From an anthropological perspective, the famine starkly reveals how vulnerability is socially and politically produced, and how hunger can be stratified by caste, class, gender, and religion. From a historical perspective, it marked a turning point, exposing the ethical contradictions of empire and fueling early Indian nationalism.

The legacies of the famine endure: in agrarian debt structures, in forgotten graveyards, in folk memories of betrayal, and, perhaps most painfully, in the silence of national textbooks. This archival erasure and lack of memorialization reflect broader tendencies to obscure the violences of empire behind a rhetoric of modernization and benevolent despotism.

Yet, remembering the famine is not merely an act of retrospection; it is a profound political and moral imperative. As climate change, state austerity, and global inequalities continue to produce new famines in the 21st century, the lessons of 1876–78 remain urgent. They compel us to ask:

• Who counts as deserving of aid?
• Who is blamed for their own suffering?
• Whose lives are deemed expendable?

The Great Famine stands as a chilling case study in how disaster becomes atrocity when power abdicates responsibility. To study it is to confront the violence woven into the very fabric of imperial governance – and to ensure that such violence is neither forgotten nor repeated.