Talk:Famine in India

Britain ruled the Indian subcontinent for only about 190 years (1757-1947).
So why is the vast majority of the page dealing with famines during their rule? The Indus River Civilization dates back to 3300 B.C.E and was devastated by a 200 year drought. There is 5000 years of history to discuss and over ⅔ of the page is on one era.EconomicHisorianinTraining (talk) 16:38, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Why don't you make a contribution to the article? GPRamirez5 (talk) 16:43, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Please improve the article by contributing.Germsteel (talk) 07:12, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Please DON'T bother improving the article. It is a waste of time. Wokeness demands a new historical paradigm. 80.41.190.112 (talk) 20:22, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Please DON'T bother improving the article. It is a waste of time. Wokeness demands a new historical paradigm.
 * 3 years later I know you are right. Germsteel (talk) 06:35, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * You might be right about that. Germsteel (talk) 00:01, 27 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The lead sentence for the last year was entirely inappropriate (see below) but you're right that the article shouldn't create its own misconceptions through overemphasis. Famines during colonial rule are the most politically important—they speak directly to the exploitation and inhumanity of the system, which the British at the time and even today prefer to ignore or handwave off—but yeah of course it should be made clear in the article that famines also occurred both before and after for entirely natural reasons and for political reasons also having nothing to do with colonialism. —  Llywelyn II   00:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

General problems with the page.
This page suffers from a few problems. First it seems to insinuate that famines were more numerous/increased under colonial rule. That isn't correct. I quote from Tirthankar Roy's book:

"We cannot be sure if famines were more frequent or less frequent during British rule compared with past rules. The required sources do not exist for periods before the early-1800s... Mixing sources can lead to misleading conclusions about the long history of famines. Historians of Indian famines have often fallen in that trap. For example, one of the best-known works on Indian famines, Famines in India by B. M. Bhatia, estimates that ‘in the earlier times a major famine occurred once every 50 years’, whereas ‘between 1860 and 1908, famine or scarcity prevailed in .. twenty out of the total of forty-nine years’. His source was Alexander Loveday, a Cambridge scholar who wrote an essay on Indian famines in 1914. Loveday did not do any original research but prepared an appendix listing known famines since the beginning of the Common Era. Whereas the post-1800 famines were recorded by the government statistical system, the pre-1800 data came from hagiographies and travelogues. The frequency with which famines occurred in these earlier times depended on the frequency with which hagiographies were written. If this was once in fifty years, we would conclude that famines happened once in fifty years, as Bhatia did. It makes no sense".

I also quote from Abraham Eraly's The Mughal World, India: Penguin, 2007:

"THE SINGLE MOST appalling fact of life in Mughal India was famine, a spectre present at the turn of every season".

The next major problem with this page is the uncritical reliance on Mike Davis. Mike Davis's work has serious issues. For example Davis claims that "were 31 serious famines in the 120 years of British rule compared with 17 famines in the 2,000 years before British rule". Davis quite clearly cites his source for this claim which is a preliminary study of the worldwide history of famine made by Cornelius Walford for the Statistical Society of London back in 1878. However Davis ignores Charles Blair's "Indian famines: Their historical, financial and other aspects …" which states "had noted a significant problem: "… reliable records are only available from the date of our rule in India; and it will be seen ... that subsequent to this time these disasters have been very frequent".

This site: http://www.vinlandmap.info/india-famine/ has also marshalled evidence to the contrary.

That's not all. Next Davis states "Mogul [sic] India was generally free of famine until the 1770s,” while the British colonial state that succeeded it was unable to prevent or mitigate famine because of its rigid adherence to laissez faire and reluctance to intervene in grain markets. Ironically enough, the evidence Davis cites in the three page section of his work devoted to precolonial systems of famine relief in India consists largely of consists largely of unsupported assertions of the superiority of Mughal systems by conservative East India Company officials such as Sir John Malcolm and Mountstuart Elphinstone, who in the 1820s and 1830s were engaged in a polemical debate with “westernisers” in Calcutta over whether British rule should take on “European” or “Oriental” forms.

I again quote Eraly's book "These [relief measures] were, however, only token and random measures, at best palliatives. The amounts spent on famine relief were trivial compared to the extravagant personal expenses of the emperor and the amirs, for instance, the 100,000 rupees disbursed by Shah Jahan for famine relief was a mere one tenth of the annual pin money of Mumtaz Mahal! The Mughal indifference to the woes of the people was not callousness, but culture. It was the same everywhere in the medieval world. Human misery was not seen as misery by medieval rulers, but merely as the common lot. Even if the emperor had viewed it differently, and had wished to help, there was not much that he could do, for he did not have the administrative capability for effective famine relief… For the emperor, famine relief was charity, desirable but not obligatory. His primary concern was to preserve and extend his power, and he would not even suspend military operations to provide famine relief. The attitudes of Hindu monarchs were the same. Thus, 'while people died with the word "bread" upon their lips,' Hemu, the Hindu revivalist, 'valued the lives of a hundred thousand men at no more than a barley corn,' says Badauni; 'he fed his five hundred elephants upon rice, sugar, and butter. The whole world was astounded and disgusted.'For a monarch it was more prudent to feed elephants than people”.

Dharma Kumar goes further and states that the colonial government’s famine relief was no worse than its predecessors.

Davis then refers to the Bengali zamindars as a traditional Indian elite when of course they were a British administrative creation, noted not for their paternalism, as Davis argues, but for screwing as much revenue as they possibly could out of the land the colonial state had given them.

Davis blames the increase in cash crop production and food exports (commercialisation of agriculture) for India’s famines. Fact remains however that even when cash crop production increased in the 20th century, more than 80% of the acreage cropped was given to food crops. The share of exports in total agricultural production in 1871 was only around 10%. Wheat was exported but not more than 5 % of the estimated output was exported. Exportable goods came from just a few districts and at its peak only 10–15% of crop land was devoted to non food exports.

I hope we can discuss and hopefully incorporate some changes which will hopefully balance this page and in turn make it more sound. Xlhat97 (talk) 01:58, 25 November 2019 (UTC)


 * One small correction: although the "zamindari system" of landholding was a British creation, zamindars did indeed exist under the Mughal Empire as part of the nightmare tangle of officials in Bengal "inherited" by the Company in 1764, as witnessed by young British bureaucrat John Grose during the 1770 famine :"'Am I quietly to stand by and see them commit the vilest acts of oppression, without being able to render the aggrieved redress- a hard case indeed on the poor ryots, who must not look to me with hopes of having their cause enquired into, till such time as the Aumils, zemindars and other creatures of Government have enriched themselves at the expense, nay even their ruin ...'"David Trochos (talk) 22:44, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree Zamindars did exist but they did change and weren't traditional elites like Davis thinks they were. According to Percival Spear, Zamindaris were bought as speculation by new money men from Calcutta. The Zamindars also lost their touch with the population when their policing powers were taken. Further more they were never known for their generosity and Davis thinks they were when he says "Moreover, traditional Indian elites, like the great Bengali zamindars, seldom shared Utilitarian obsessions with welfare cheating and labor discipline". Davis is clearly ignorant of all this.

I agree with the rest. I hope we can clean this page.Xlhat97 (talk) 16:31, 8 December 2019 (UTC)Xlhat97.

Davis mentions the British stored the food and increased the prices by exorbitant amounts too. This did in fact happen and did contribute to the massive death toll. Moreover, this is the same exact system that caused the Irish Potato Famine. They had the food, but it was either exported or hoarded away from people who needed it most. Also, Will Durant mentions ancient Indian systems under Hindus and Buddhists generally prevented the large-scale famines that the British caused. Moreover, the British system was purposeful as they did it to the Irish first and then 4 times to India. Unless we're going to argue the British were the most incompetent people in world history, it seems obvious that they starved people to death on purpose. Both Christian Missionaries and US Journalists who were there during the famines and saw them firsthand repeatedly state this as well. 47.20.242.106 (talk) 06:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@47.20.242.106 There are a lot of problems with your assertion. You rely solely on Davis and Durant. Davis thought an actual act existed that banned charity. This was satire. He as I've shown before, is ignorant of Indian history. You forget that Broadberry and Gupta both agree that only 10% of Indian agriculture was geared towards exports.

You mention Durant. Well I'm citing Dharma Kumar and Tirthankar Roy. Both will disagree with the claim that ancient Indian Hindus and Buddhists were better. Cormac O' Grada a famine expert would also disagree with your overall point since he claims that colonilaism reduced famine even though they replaced traditional coping mechanisms. None of these scholars including Amartya Sen would agree on your assertion that this was all done on purpose or your claim (cited below) that it was genocide.

You seem to rely more on appeals to emotion than actual scholars.Further more you're extremely biased and emotional as seen here, I gather you've a problem with Muslims too:

>According to Will Durant, before the Islamic rule, there was no famine in India. Moreover, "famines" after British rule never occurred in the millions or even hundreds of thousands. Britain has had a history of famine even before the subsequent Indian famines due to their brutal treatment of the Irish. And the "unbiased source" you all cite is a British historian who explicitly made it his business to celebrate the British imperial empire. I honestly think none of you care about human rights and you instead support genocide of Indians and Irish people and feel great pleasure when you make such snide, racist comments. There, that "non-political" enough for you all? What matters are facts and the US journalists who were in those areas reported higher death tolls on British territories than the British did. You racist, worthless scumbags

I cited my sources you've done nothing but spew hateful diatribes and insult people. Calm down, have a cup of tea, read around a bit and please stop throwing tantrums like a child. Xlhat97 (talk)xlhat97Xlhat97 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:15, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The Republic of India has suffered from famine and those famines did cause deaths too.
This article states "However these did not materialise into famines due to government intervention". This isn't right. India did suffer from two famines i.e. the Bihar 1966 Famine and the Maharashtra 1973 Famine. It also states "The Maharashtra drought in which there were zero deaths and one which is known for the successful employment of famine prevention policies, unlike during British rule". Again not true.

In Bihar the casualties of the famine are likely to be counted in tens of thousands. This is supported by reports of ‘eye-witness accounts of people eating wild leaves and roots, picking pieces of grain from the dust around railway sidings, undergoing appalling skeletonization, and even starving to death’.

Less than a decade later, yet another major famine took place in India under a democratic government – the Maharashtra famine of 1973. Dyson notes that the famine mortality data for Maharashtra is much better than the Bihar data, and he arrives at a rough estimate of 130000 excess deaths in 1972–1973. This figure is also reproduced in Devereux’s list of twentieth century famines. Xlhat97 (talk) 01:58, 25 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The article also neglects famines within the former territory of British India after independence outside the Republic of India. There was at least one such major famine whose status as such is not seriously disputed (in Bangladesh in 1974). Were there any others? Hairy Dude (talk) 16:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Those famines might be mentioned in passing but are mostly outside the of this article. They should be dealt with via links to Famine in Pakistan, Famine in Bangladesh, Famine in Nepal, Famine in Burma, Famine in Sri Lanka, &c. in a passing mention or in a #See also section. —  Llywelyn II   23:54, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

British Indian Famines as Genocide
I believe we should count Indian famines under British rule as a form of genocide, like the Holodomor. The famines could've been easily prevented if only the British stepped off their land, but they didn't because of the profits. This is a straight-up form of genocide and should be added to the genocide category. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.200.227 (talk) 18:22, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Which sources define them as genocides? Dimadick (talk) 17:03, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Any source that would qualify the Holodomor similarly. 'Genocide'—like 'fascism'—is one of those terms that has just been expanded to essential meaninglessness at the level of 'really bad thing done by one group to another' instead of the technically correct 'deliberate attempt to entirely eliminate a people'.


 * More to your point though, Google pulls in thousands of replies for ['Indian famine' 'genocide' 'British'] so you're right that it can be easily added when someone takes the time to find fairly among the accusations—e.g. in professional scholarship, mainstream papers like the Times of India, or prominent Indian politicians vs. random Reddit and 4chan posters—and adds it with the appropriate phrasing and caveats. —  Llywelyn II   23:50, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * According to the CPPCG (UN Genocide Convention) :
 * Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as
 * ... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
 * (a) Killing members of the group;
 * (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
 * (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
 * (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
 * (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.


 * The Holodomor controversy stems from the fact that some people claim Stalin intentionally wanted to destroy the Ukrainian culture, epopulate certain Ukrainian regions and settle them with Russia, or Russify Ukraine. Crainsaw (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:BIAS
>Famine had been a recurrent feature of life the Indian sub-continental countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, most notoriously during British rule. was the previous, entirely correct, version of the first sentence.

>Famine had been a recurrent feature of life in the South Asian subcontinent countries of India and Bangladesh, most accurately recorded during British rule. This edit by a IP address account in Harrogate, England, created this nonsense about a year back, which (1st) is entirely untrue. Modern independent Indian administration may not be perfect but it cares more and pays more attention to Indian suffering. It records it with an accuracy at least as well as the EIC and Raj functionaries. (2nd) is a patent whitewash. Most obnoxiously under Churchill during WWII, the British absolutely knew certain policies exacerbated famine and that legacy is a huge notorious burden relations between the countries now carry. British colonial administration may have kept better notes than the Moguls but the increased level of famine wasn't a byproduct of more modern methods of accounting.

Assuming the IP represents a biased but interested account, people involved in the page please restore the more honest version or at least arrive at a compromise that emphasizes the importance of this topic to the Raj's bad reputation without pretending that it was a statistical mistake. — Llywelyn II   23:40, 28 February 2023 (UTC)