An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

In other words, the British cannot be accused of ‘doing nothing’ during the 1876-77 famine, but rather of doing much to worsen its impact. India’s grain continued to be exported to global markets, just as Stalin was to do during the ‘collectivization famines’ that beset Russia and Ukraine in the 1930s: in effect, as Professor Mike Davis has written, ‘London was eating India’s bread’ while Indians were dying in a famine. To add insult to injury, the British increased taxes on the peasantry, and railed against those too hungry to be productive as ‘indolent’ and ‘unused to work’. When some Englishmen of conscience objected and mounted relief operations of their own, the British government threatened them with imprisonment. A Mr MacMinn, who out of his own money distributed grain to the starving, was ‘severely reprimanded, threatened with degradation, and ordered to close the work immediately’.