A FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST : THE BENGAL FAMINE OF 1770 Monideepa Chatterjee Third Year, Roll No.216 Department of History Presidency University  ABSTRACT This study analyses the argument that the Bengal Famine of 1770 was a disaster in which the most significant role was played by ‘nature’. Obviously, there were other causes too but it was the natural condition of Bengal, which set the stage for the catastrophe. The main culprits were the bad crops of 1768- 69 and the lack of rains for a prolonged period. This had culminated into a severe drought, which brought about the disaster. It has been pointed out by many historians that the famine took away one-third of Bengal’s population. It also had a severe effect on the economy of Bengal. This study briefly traces the horrors of the famine along with the weather and crops of 1769-70 and concludes that it was nature, which played the key role behind the unfolding of the Great Bengal Famine of 1770. 2  A FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST: THE BENGAL FAMINE OF 1770 Still fresh in memory’s eye, the scene I view The shriveled limbs, sunken eyes and lifeless hue Hear the mother’s shriek and infant’s moan Cries of despair and agonizing groans In wild confusion, dead and dying lie Hark to the jackal’s yell and vulture’s cry The dog’s fell howl, as midst the glare of the day They riot unmolested on their prey Dire scenes of horror! Which no pen can trace Nor rolling years from memory’s page efface. The above lines were written by John Shore, later Lord Teignmouth, a British official of the East India Company and a young civilian destined to reach the highest post, a British subject can aspire in the east1. He was also an eyewitness to the disaster of 1770. The horrid scenes of 1770 left an impression in his mind that neither a successful career nor an unusually prolonged period of active life could efface. Yes, such was truly the magnitude of one of the greatest disasters in the times of the East India Company. The Bengal Famine of 1770, also known as the ‘Chiyattorer Monnontor’ in Bengali, was a catastrophic famine that completely changed the scenario of rural Bengal. Coming in the wake of the Maratha invasions and the unparalleled revenue exactions of Siraj-ud-Daula, Mir Qasim & East India Company, the famine must have had many Bengalis wondering whether a darker yuga (age) 1 Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal,1868, P-27. 3 could come or the wrath of the deities had descended upon their society1. The famine is estimated to have caused death to ten million people reducing the population to one third in Bengal, which included Bihar and parts of Orissa. The present study tries to trace and emphasize the ecological condition of 1770 and its preceding years, to trace the natural cause of the catastrophe. Chiyattorer Monnontor, which is derived from its origins in the Bengali calendar year 1776, was preceded by the Deccan Famine of 1630-32 and succeeded by the Challis Famine. In an agricultural country like India, the occurrence of famine was not an unusual phenomenon. The statement of Megasthenes that famine never visited India can hardly be described as accurate. The Famine of 1770, which occurred during the governorship of Cartier, was an unprecedented calamity that befell on Bengal. There was partial failure of crops in Bengal in December 1768 owing to scarcity of rains. In the early months of 1769, the price of grain rocketed. There was not a drop of rain for six months. There was complete failure of the December crops of 1769. Rice was sold in and around Murshidabad at only 3 seers per rupee and sometimes grain could not be purchased. Pestilence raged in almost every part of the country. There was an outbreak of smallpox in Murshidabad2. The Great Famine, which raged in great severity throughout 1770 affected most districts of Bengal-Purnea, Nadia, Rajshahi, Birbhum, Panchet, northern & western parts of Burdwan, Bhagalpore, Rajmahal, Hoogly, Jessore, Malda and 24 Parganas. Purnea district was the worst sufferer. Ducarel, the supervisor of Purnea reported that two lakh people perished in that district alone. He reported “the famine continued for about twelve months in a severity, hardly to be paralleled in the history of any age of the country’’3. A contemporary gives a graphic description of the distress in the following language, “The husbandmen sold their cattle, they sold their implements of agriculture, they devoured their seed grain and they sold their sons and daughters till at length no buyer of children could be found. They ate the leaves of the trees and the 1 John R McLane, Land and Local Kingship in the 18th Century Bengal, 2002, P-194. 2 Shailendranath Sen, A History of Modern India, 2010, P-43. 3 Ibid, P-43. 4 grass of the field and in June 1770, the Resident at the Durbar confirmed that the living were feeding on the dead1.” Like many other great catastrophes, detailed research has been done by various historians regarding the causes of the famine. Many have come up with different interpretations. The economic critics of the British rule, the early nationalist writers and economic historians of Modern India support the “Drain Theory” in the context of the increasing frequency of famines and death toll taken by the famines throughout the nineteenth century, starting with the Bengal Famine of 1770. R.P. Dutt has analysed the causes of the famine and successfully brought out the relation between the famine and the economic drain2. Before the 1770 famine there was a British consensus that Bengal’s economy was deteriorating. The signs were evident in the severe shortage of coins, shrinking of Bengal’s internal trade and the decline in the net land revenue collections. The Calcutta Council had warned in 1768 of the “danger of complete breakdown of the commercial life of Bengal”. Richard Becher, Resident at Murshidabad lamented in 1769 on the economic decline of the Diwani territories. The 1770 famine only confirmed and deepened the crisis, it did not create it3. Various other interpretations regarding the failure of British policies have also come up in due course of research. Fault for the famine is now often ascribed to the British East India Company policies in Bengal. As a trading body, its first priority was to maximize its profit, which came from land tax and trade tariffs. In the April of 1770, the Company announced that the land tax of the following year was to be raised by 10%. The Company is also criticized for forbidding the ‘hoarding of rice’. This prevented the traders and dealers from holding in reserves, that in other times would have helped the population to tide over the crisis period. By the time of the famine, the Company and its agents had established monopoly in grain trading. The Company had no plans for dealing with the grain shortage. Actions were only taken so far they affected the mercantile and trading classes. Warren Hastings has been acknowledged for “violent” tax collection after 1771. It has been seen that the revenues earned by the Company in 1771 were higher than in 1708. 1 Shailendranath Sen, A History of Modern India, 2010, P-43. 2 Shreedhar Narayan Pandey, Economic History of Modern India, 2008, P-203. 3 John R McLane, Land and Local Kingship in the 18th Century Bengal, 2002, P-194-195. 5 Nevertheless, when the subject of discussion is a natural calamity, like the present one, then it is obviously the natural or ecological cause, which becomes more significant than other causes. It certainly seems strange that a province like Bengal, which had three harvests a year, should ever have been afflicted by famine. The failure of one harvest may lead to sufferings, but under ordinary circumstances, there could not be a famine unless there were at least two successive crops failures. The great harvest of the year is the rice crop in December, then follows the spring harvest with its pulse crop in April and lastly, the autumn harvest in September, producing a coarse rice upon which the lower classes of the community mainly subsist. In the discussed famine, the winter harvest was occasioned by premature cessation of rains. In the usual years, the rains commence in the latter part of June and cease in the middle of October. If they stop before the middle of September, the great rice crop, which should ripen in December, withers up and dies. It was to this cause to which the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 could be ascribed to1. In order to analyse this cause thoroughly, a clear picture of the weather and crops of 1769-1770 is needed. ‘The Annals Of Rural Bengal’ by Sir William Wilson Hunter is one of the most important primary sources throwing light on the subject. Hunter writes in his book that in the cold weather of 1769, Bengal was visited by a famine whose ravages two generations failed to repair. He says, in the early part of 1769, high prices had ruled owing to the partial failure of crops in1768, but the scarcity had not been so severe as to materially affect the Government revenues. The rains in 1769, although deficient in northern districts, seemed for a time to promise relief. In the Delta, they had been so abundant as to cause temporary loss from inundation and during the succeeding year of general famine, the whole of southeast Bengal uttered no complaint. The September harvest indeed was sufficient. But, in that month, the periodical rains prematurely ceased and the crop, which depended on them for 1 Fraser’s Magazine, Volume- 90, 1874, P-293-294. 6 existence, withered. ‘The fields of rice’ wrote the native superintendent of Bishenpore at a later period, “have become like fields of dried straw” 1. Calamitous predictions however, were so common of local officers that the governor failed to transmit the alarm. Letters from the President and the Council to the Court of Directors on 23rd November 1769 shows that Mr. John Cartier, who was succeeded by Mr. Verelst, signed the only serious intimation of the approaching famine. On 24th December, Mr. Verelst laid down his office and charge was taken over by Mr. Cartier. In the fourth week of the same month, one district was suffering so badly that little remissions in land tax had to be made. Ten days later, he informed that the distress was undoubtedly very great. New hopes had also arisen for the spring crop now covered the fields and promised a speedy, although a scanty relief. Moreover, it was ascertained that both the banks of the Ganges in the north of the province had yielded abundant barley and wheat harvests. In spite of that, people suffered intensely. The distress continued to increase at such a rate that baffled official calculations. Pathetic & deafening silence under suffering, which usually characterizes Bengalis was broken. In the second week of May, the Central Government woke up to find itself in the midst of universal and irremediable starvation. “The mortality, the beggary,” they then wrote, “exceeds all descriptions”2. About one third of the inhabitants perished in the once bountiful province of Purnea, and in other parts, the misery is equal. Althrough in the stifling summer of 1770, the people went on dying, day and night torrents of famishes poured into the great cities. At an early period of the year, a pestilence had broken out. In March, smallpox ravaged Murshidabad. The streets were blocked up with promiscuous heaps of the dying and the dead. The multitude of the mangled and the festering corpses at length, threatened the existence of citizens. In 1770, the rainy season brought relief and before the end of September, the province reaped an abundant harvest. But, the relief came too late to avert the depopulation. Starving and shelterless crowds crawled despairingly in vain from one deserted village to another in search of food and shelter from the rain. The endemics incident to the season were thus spread over the whole country. Millions of famished wretches died in struggle to live through the few 1 Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal,1868, Volume – 1, P-20-21. 2 Ibid, P-21-24. 7 intervening weeks that separated them from their harvest. Their last gaze was probably fixed upon the densely covered fields that would ripen, only a little too late for them. “It is scarcely possible,” writes the Council, at the beginning of the September reaping, “that any description could be an exaggeration”1. Another detailed account of the season preceding 1770 and that of 1770 is found in the “Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the famine of Bengal”. Sir George Campbell who led a Famine Commission known as Sir George Campbell Commission of 1867 compiled them. He was the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal from1871-1874. Campbell writes,” The only occasion in which Bengal Proper has suffered very wide spreading and extreme calamity from drought since the establishment of British rule, is the Great Famine of 1770”2. Far as Bengal was then removed from its present state of wealth and prosperity, it does not appear that the great misfortune of the last century was occasioned or very materially aggravated by anything other than natural causes. For some years under the British Rule, the province had enjoyed peace and security. It was mentioned in a report of Government of Bengal to the Court of Directors on 9th May 1770 that “not a drop of rain had fallen in most of the districts for six months”3. The particular district of Purnea is also said to have suffered badly. Sir Campbell paints a barren picture of destruction in his account saying, “Bihar suffered to an extreme degree. Northern Bengal especially suffered. Even from the usually moist districts of Rungpore and Dinajpore, the accounts are particularly distressing. Rajshahee, Murshidabad, Rajmahal, Jessore, Hoogly, Birbhum, Burdwan and Calcutta were all sooner or later involved in the calamity”. He says that, the only parts of Bengal, which seemed to have escaped were the districts of Buckergunge and Chittagong. With the exception of this small southeastern tract, the famine involved in greater or lesser degree the whole of Bengal and Bihar. Sir Campbell writes “ In tracing the course of the famine, I find that the first alarm came from Bihar”4. As early as 1st February 1769, the Resident in Bihar reported, very great distress among the Ryots in consequence of long continued 1 Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, Volume – 1, 1868, P-26-30. 2 George Campbell, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine of Bengal and Orissa, P-21. 3 Ibid, P-21. 4 Ibid, P-22 8 drought. From the middle of August there was no rain till the middle of January and then it lasted only a few hours and came too late for general benefit”. The following season commenced very badly. On 28th July, the Resident in Bihar reported that up to the time, “we have only had in some parts a few showers and those so very trifling that little benefit has been received from them. The grain sown sometimes ago is entirely spoilt”1. On 1st August, he repeated the same tale.” Grain has within few days risen to a prodigious price and continues to rise, as there is not only the greatest probability of losing the entire harvest, but a general famine to be dreaded” he says. It has been found that, in North Bengal, the season was especially bad. From September onwards, the march of the calamity seems to have been without abatement. In October, no rain fell. On 23rd November 1769, the Bengal Government formally reported to the Court of Directors, the prevailing distress. Meanwhile, in North Bengal and other districts also, the evil was becoming very great, especially in Purnea. On 25th January, the Government reported home that their apprehensions were confirmed, and the calamity severely fell on all provinces2. In early February 1770, a little rain seems to have fallen in some districts but it was too insufficient for any material good. From that time to the end of May, the drought was universal. Not a drop of rain fell and the country became more and more parched and distressed. On 16th March, the Resident at Bihar submitted a report with enclosures giving the result of enquiries in various districts. “They exhibited” he says, “ a most affecting sense of poverty and distress, much beyond what I myself should gave credited from report”3. In the end of April, the Resident in Bihar reports that the hopes of getting something from the spring harvest have been greatly disappointed, that the price of grain continues to rise and the famine continues to increase. On 2nd May, Captain Harper reports from Fyazabad that “prices there have risen greatly in the last few days and the difficulty of procuring grain increases”. After June and July, things reached their climax. All through August, the famine in Bengal continued with unabated severity. In September, there seemed to be some symptoms of abatement of 1 George Campbell, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Famine of Bengal and Orissa, P-22. 2 Ibid, P-25. 3 Ibid, P-25. 9 the calamity and the dispatches dwell more on all that the country has suffered than the gloomy anticipations. In October, things are decidedly better as grain is much cheaper. On 14th December, the Government informs the Court of Directors that the famine has entirely ceased. This was the detailed account of the course of the famine as provided by Sir George Campbell. This resonates in accord with the account given by Sir William Hunter in The Annals of Rural Bengal. Fortunately enough, abundance returned to Bengal as suddenly as famine had swooped down upon it. On the Christmas Eve, the Council in Calcutta wrote home to the Court of Directors that the famine had entirely ceased. In 1771, the harvests again proved plentiful. It was as if, nature exerted herself to the utmost to repair the damage she had done. Thus Bengal was partly back on its way to glory. There were obviously various reactions on the part of the British as well as Indians. The reports of enormous mortality and needless misery in Bengal fueled criticism of the Company’s rapacious revenue collection, corruption, extortion and monopolistic trading practices of its servants. To many it seemed the height of infamy that the Company, even when the famine was at its height, showed more concern for its revenues than for the people’s distress. The outcry in England over the famine merged with more general criticism of the Company’s conduct and administration1. English historians have naturally little to say regarding an occurrence that involved neither a battle nor a Parliamentary debate. Mill, with all his accuracy and minuteness, could spare barely five lines for the subject. Comments from district officials in 1770 and the succeeding decades leave no doubt that the famine was a major disaster. The recent famine commissioners confessed themselves of being unable to fill in the details2. In the minds of many European commentators, the Bengal Famine of 1770 was a ‘natural disaster’ but in more senses than are usually intended by them. For those who served or defended the East India Company, it was convenient to believe that the famine had been caused by a natural phenomenon. The famine helped to transform 1 Alessa Johns, Dreadful Visitations: Confronting a Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, 2013, 2 Sir William Wilson Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, Volume – 1, 1868, P-19 10 European ideas of Bengal from a garden of seemingly inexhaustible tropical abundance into a land blighted by droughts, floods, smallpox, famines etc. The Bengal Famine was perhaps the first ‘Asian disaster’ to have an impact on Europe. But the famine did little to stimulate a more genuine understanding of the country and its people1. Historians regarding the consequences of the famine have done various estimates. These estimates include the assertion that one third of Bengal’s population perished, that one third of the cultivated area was abandoned, that two thirds of Bengal’s aristocracy was ruined by the famine. Estimates of both pre-famine population and famine mortality were matters of wild guesses, stabs in the dark. James Rennel estimated in 1781 that Bengal, Bihar and Orissa had 10 million inhabitants. Harry Verelst stated in the same year that the population was at least 7 million. James Grant in 1786 estimated that this area contained 10 million people. Subsequent historians have raised their estimates of population. Both N.K.Sinha and Paul Greenough estimated that close to 10 million people perished, implying a pre-famine population of at least 30 million2. The Bengal famine of 1770 thus formed a benchmark of destruction, tearing away the province of Bengal into fragments. In my opinion, the unparalleled catastrophe was of course brought about by the wrath of nature while other external policies and causes definitely aggravated the situation. Nature, malevolent or merely opportunistic, was a register of the precipitous decline from prosperity and order. On a concluding note, the famine of 1770 was a one-year famine caused by the general failure of the December harvest and the lack of rains traced by the present study. It was intensified by the partial failure of crops of the previous year and the following spring. The Bengal Famine of 1770 thus places in a new light those broad tracks of desolation found by the English conquerors throughout the lower valley. The disaster that from a distance floats like a faint speck in the horizon of the British rule, forms 1 Alessa Johns, Dreadful Visitations: Confronting a Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment,2013, Page - 23 2 John R McLane, Land and Local Kingship in the 18th Century Bengal, 2002, P-200. 11 the key to the history of Bengal during the succeeding years. It unfolds the sufferings caused to an ancient rural society. Then finally, it shows how out of the disorganized and fragmentary elements, a new order of things evolved. The Bengal Famine of 1770 is thus, a melancholy tale of how the bountiful rich province of Bengal raced on towards becoming a destitute, a land of desolation and disaster, caused mainly by the wrath of nature. 12 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Campbell George, Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the famine of Bengal and Orissa, M Lawlor at the Chief Commissioner’s office Press. 2. Fraser’s Magazine, Volume- 90, Longman’s Green and Company, 1874. 3. Johns Alessa, Dreadful Visitations: Confronting Natural Catastrophe in the Age of Enlightenment, Routledge Publications, New York, 2013. 4. Mc Lane .R. John, Land and Local kingship in 18th Century Bengal, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. 5. Pandey Narayan Sreedhar, Economic history of Modern India, Readyworthy Publications, New Delhi, 2008. 6. Sen Shailendranath, An Advanced History of Modern India, Macmillan Publications, New Delhi, 2010. 7. Sir Hunter Wilson William, Annals of Rural Bengal, Volume -1, Smith Elder, London,1868. 13