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.i Here the so-called ‘tropics’ were condemned as naturally unhealthy, diseased and famine prone.ii Overtly implying that somehow European weather, climate and geographical environment was healthier than the conquered territories.iii But the most influential ideology behind 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 18th century, 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, to this doctrine was later added the Malthusian theory of population whereby famine was regarded as a natural check to over population, relieving the state and government from the responsibility of expenditure on relief.iv However, the driving ideas behind the Indian Famine Commission Reports of the 19th century 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 any responsibility for the horrific mortality. It was asserted that the cheap famine labour 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. The staunch Benthamite cronies like James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill also supported this utilitarian orthodoxyv of the East India Company and the British Empire after 1857.
All the British imperial viceroys, governors, and proconsuls like Lytton, Temple, Elgin, and Curzon strongly adhered to the doctrine that it was the climate and failure of rains that caused failure of crops and famine. It was believed that the empire had to be governed for revenues and not expenditure. And any act that would influence the prices of grains such as charity was to be either strictly monitored or discouraged. Even in the face of acute distress, relief had to be punitive and conditional. So the ‘Temple Wage’ propounded by Sir Richard Temple, a staunch laissez faire doctrinaire on government famine relief was set at only 16-22 oz of food or 1-2 annas with a minimum of 9-10 hours of work per day. The whole idea was to strongly discourage dependence on government relief. Viceroy Lytton (in late 1870s) vehemently supported the Temple wage of below minimum while Curzon (in early 1900s) implemented a tight press censorship to prevent Indian nationalists from making a political capital out of the macabre famine of 1899-1900.vi Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze in their study have suggested that the reasons why famines suddenly seized with the end of British Empire (post-1947) was not so much because the nationalist government was more benevolent but because the free press and public opinion put constant pressure on the government to respond. This kind of pressure could not be exerted under conditions of colonial subjection.
