1890s-in-india

"The outbreak of the plague epidemic in Bombay in 1896 fundamentally changed the relationship between the colonial state and its subjects. This was the first instance when the state acquired special legal and judicial powers for an apparently humanitarian cause: to prevent the spread of the epidemic. To do so, it specifically targeted the poor and the migrant workers, seen as the carriers of the disease, restricting their movements, demolishing their homes, and subjecting their bodies to medical experiments. This became the model for subsequent governments to use disease or epidemics to justify authoritarian measures, all the way into the current pandemic."

"The Epidemic Diseases Act gave the colonial government the right to inspect and isolate anyone suspected of being infected with plague, in public places, trains, ships and inside their homes. It simultaneously protected the state or the government officials from any legal action while acting under the act. Prior to this, the colonial government had in 1895 introduced the Pilgrim Ships Act to control the movement of Haj pilgrims from South Asia on health grounds. This gave local authorities in India new powers to board the pilgrim ships at any time to carry out inspections and apprehend any passenger in the name of disease prevention. The two acts combined to provide the colonial authorities almost unrestricted power to restrict the movements of the poor, migrant workers, and Muslim pilgrims."

"The act was used in large parts of the plague-affected localities of Bombay and Pune, to demolish dwellings and clear the cities of so-called ‘vagrants’, beggars, and migrant labourers. These measures continued to be the mainstay of the colonial state's anti-plague campaign well into the first part of the twentieth century. The government used the acts to prohibit immigration from India, particularly from the infected areas; to to suspend railway travel to certain areas, and to obstruct of the pilgrimage to Mecca. After the plagues ceased, the Epidemic Diseases Act was employed rarely, perhaps because there were few such sudden pandemic outbreaks."

"Three things are noticeable about this political aggression of the Muslims. First is the ever-growing catalogue of the Muslim's political demands. Their origin goes back to the year 1892. In 1885 the Indian National Congress was founded. It began with a demand for good government, as distinguished from self-government. In response to this demand the British Government felt the necessity of altering the nature of the Legislative Councils, Provincial and Central, established under the Act of 1861. In that nascent stage of Congress agitation, the British Government did not feel called upon to make them fully popular. It thought it enough to give them a popular colouring. Accordingly the British Parliament passed in 1892 what is called the Indian Councils Act. This Act is memorable for two things. It was in this Act of 1892 that the British Government for the first time accepted the semblance of the principle of popular representation as the basis for the constitution of the Legislatures in India. It was not a principle of election. It was a principle of nomination, only it was qualified by the requirement that before nomination a person must be selected by important public bodies such as municipalities, district boards, universities, and the associations of merchants, etc. Secondly, it was in the legislatures that were constituted under this Act that the principle of separate representation for Musalmans was for the first time introduced in the political constitution of India."

"Cholera swept through the starving refugees. A Western doctor described one camp: “Millions of flies were permitted undisturbed to pester the unhappy victims. One young woman who had lost every one dear to her, and had turned stark mad, sat at the door vacantly staring at the awful scenes around her. In the entire hospital I did not see a single decent garment. Rags, nothing but rags and dirt.”"

"In spite of the worldwide population explosion that characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the population of India suffered an absolute decline between 1895 and 1905—the only time this has happened since the first census was taken in 1872.29 The mortality of the 1899–1900 famine has been estimated at either 19.0, or 8.4, or 6.1 million—in the same level of magnitude as the 1876 famine. This time, however, the British government report written after the fact recognized that the famine came from the failure of the economy more than a failure of weather. There had been plenty of grain in Burma and Bengal that could have been sent south and west to feed the starving:"

"In spite of all of the past practice the authorities had had before, this new famine went just as badly as the previous ones. The new viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, repeated most of the policies that had killed so many in the earlier famine. Native princes did no better. The maharaja of Indore vetoed all expenditures for relief, while Curzon deported refugees who arrived from the autonomous princely states.20 In the affected regions, as many as one out of every seven peasants was bankrupt and evicted. As the Indian peasantry became broken and driven into the cities, the British hold on the subcontinent strengthened."

"One witness described a child of five he found among starving peasants: “Its arms were not so large around as my thumb; its legs scarcely larger; the pelvic bones were plainly shown; the ribs, back and front, started through the skin like a wire cage. The eyes were fixed and unobservant; the expression of the little skull face solemn, dreary and old. Will, impulse, and almost sensation, were destroyed in this tiny skeleton, which might have been a plump and happy baby. It seemed not to hear when addressed. I lifted it between my thumbs and forefingers; it did not weigh more than seven or eight pounds.”18"

"A missionary described a Muslim farmer who sold his land, then his house, then his cooking utensils to buy food for his family. When that ran out, he gave his son to the missionaries to keep. After tearfully assuring the boy that this didn’t mean he didn’t love him, and that he had no choice, the man walked away, leaving his son to be raised as a Christian.19"

"By 1892, a quarter of India’s total government revenue went to maintain the burden of the government itself: supporting British pensions, the India Office, and interest on the debt. Very little of this was put back into the local economy; most went to banks and retirees in Britain. These home charges drained off whatever surplus the peasant economy could produce, including the grain from good harvests that normally would have been set aside to cushion against bad years. Then, in 1896, the monsoon rains failed to come, and the crops failed. Once again, the price of grain shot up beyond the reach of the common Indian. Once again, people starved."

"With the local scarcity of grain, food prices soared. A Methodist in Hyderabad wrote, “The people had no reserves either of strength or grain to fall back on, the debts of the previous famine still hung around their necks, money was impossible to get, for lenders tightened their purse strings when they saw no chance of recovering their loans.”"

"British authorities saw cheaters everywhere and suspected that many of the Indians applying for relief had “buried hoards of grain and ornaments.”23 Tests designed to keep as many Indians as possible off the dole prevented a million people from collecting relief in the Bombay Presidency."

"Three-fourths of a million bushels of grain was exported from Berar province in the north even as 143,000 people starved to death there.25 When Kansas Populists in the United States shipped 200,000 bags of grain to ease the famine “in solidarity with India’s farmers,” British officials taxed the shipment.26 The standing order among officials was that “the revenue must at all costs be gathered in.”"