An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

In keeping with established British policy, Viceroy Lord Lytton notoriously issued orders prohibiting any reduction in the price of food during a famine. ‘There is to be no interference of any kind on the part of Government with the object of reducing the price of food’, he declared, instructing district officers to ‘discourage relief works in every possible way… Mere distress is not a sufficient reason for opening a relief work’. The historian Professor Mike Davis notes that Lytton’s pronouncements were noteworthy for combining non-intervention with a unique aversion to ‘cheap sentiment’ the prerogative of the unaccountable appointee to high office who is immune to public needs. (Ironically, Lord Lytton’s only qualification for the job of viceroy was that, as Robert Bulwer-Lytton, he was Queen Victoria’s favourite poet.)