British Raj [View all]

[MichaelMcGuire]

Starving Indian family, 1877.

British grain taxation policies, coupled with drought, caused an estimated 12-29 million Indians to starve to death from 1876-1902. The British administration, headed by the viceroy Lord Lytton (who dismissed calls to feed famine victims as "humanitarian hysterics&quot , not only did nothing to stop the disaster but actually pushed an act of parliament in 1877 that forbade famine relief, for fear it would cut into the record profits being made. They did allow desperate refugees from the countryside to earn their food at work camps in Madras and Calcutta, where their rations were less then that of prisoners at Buchenwald. British troops massacred starving mobs who tried to storm the trains and ships that were exporting their grain to Britain. The Madras Chamber of Commerce suggested the police set up flogging posts to prevent people from stealing the grain.

"Their very eyeballs were gone ... Their fleshless jaws and skulls were supported on necks like those of plucked chickens. Their bodies - they had none; only the framework was left."- a British journalist describes famine victims, 1877