The Famine in British India

Abstract

Famines were administrative disasters in colonial India which the British government never really acknowledged. Every major famine during the British Raj was preceded and followed by notoriously wooden administrative reports and mathematical speculations about the disaster and possible prevention of the next. This article focuses on the devastating Bengal famine of 1943 and argues that the government used a quantification rhetoric in its report to control and manage famine. The article draws from Susan Leigh Star’s concept of ‘boundary objects’ and highlights the boundary aspects of famine management system as facilitator of networking and cooperation. Famine becomes a metaphor—an elastic multivalent topic that can be used by the government to both frame colonial ideologies and build networks through quantification rhetoric. It is further used by a critical press to quantify compassion and care. The article analyzes the quantification rhetoric of famine by looking at two major discourses: discourse of governance and compassion. The discourse of governance is further divided into the discourses of famine situation and that of relief system.