This paper looks at how the British Raj, economic exploitation, ecological change, and famines were interrelated events during the late 19th century in Central India. It analyzes the impact of colonial state policies in the context of the material condition of the people on the one hand, and environment on the other. The commercial agenda of the British imperialism contradicted rather than complemented the survival needs of the people. How did the British justify noninterference in the face of acute crisis like the famine? This question forms the theoretical background to the paper. Other significant aspects of famine, such as scarcity, hunger, disease and death, form the main backdrop.
More
than 30 million famine related deaths occurred in British
India between 1870 and 1910, a phenomenon Mike Davis, in
his recent book, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines
and the Making of the Third World, has called the "Late
Victorian Holocaust". The Deccan region of central
India was the worst victim of these famines. This paper
analyzes the official ideology, the reasons, and consequences
of these famines.
Just
as the Europeans justified the Atlantic slave trade in terms
of civilizing the savage, Christianizing the heathen, and
making the barbarian productive through a work ethic based
on reason, so was the British imperialist project in India
and Asia. Here the so-called `tropics' were condemned as
naturally unhealthy, diseased and famine prone. Overtly
implying that somehow European weather, climate and geographical
environment was healthier than the conquered territories.
But the most influential ideology behind the Western imperialism
was the classical political economy propounded by Adam Smith
in his Wealth of Nations. Accordingly, a laissez-faire
doctrine of market capitalism was introduced in the
late 18thcentury, which guided the European
imperialist project whereby government interference in the
economy was objected to even in the face of acute crisis
like the famine. Although it should be noted here, this
market capitalism was in fact imposed on conquered territories
with the might of European gunboats and arms. However, the
Malthusian theory of population was later added to this
doctrine, whereby famine was regarded as a natural check
to overpopulation, relieving the state and government from
the responsibility of expenditure on relief. However, the
driving ideas behind the Indian Famine Commission Reports
of the 19thcentury were those of Jeremy Bentham.
The utilitarian principle that relief should be bitterly
punitive in order to discourage dependence upon the government
was purely Benthamite. The reports relieved the British
Government of India from any responsibility for the horrific
mortality. It was asserted that the cheap famine labor could
be fruitfully used in modernizing projects such as the railways,
road construction, and repair of tanks, stone and masonry
works, etc., the famine reports further held that the calamity
was caused by natural phenomenon and that human agencies
have no control over it. |
