A rare picture from 1876-1878

Family photo!
About 20 years after the British occupation of India, between 1876 and 1878, the famine famine, known as the Madras famine, suffered more than 50 million Indians and more than 5 million people were killed. Millions starve as family members in this picture.

On the face of it, partly because of famine is the severe drought that hit southern India. But what exacerbated famine was the British government's insistence on exporting a record crop of wheat during the famine to Britain, amounting to 320,000 tons of wheat, under the supervision of Deputy Lord Litton, He also hosted an enormous banquet in England for more than 60,000 people to celebrate Queen Victoria's coronation. In addition, British colonialism sought to cultivate financially profitable crops alongside or rather than to grow grain, as well as to cut welfare spending.

Earlier, the colonial government overtook the Bihar famine in 1874 by importing rice from Burma, but the government of Bengal and its governor, Sir Richard Temple, was criticized for what was considered "excessive spending on charity." So when the Madras famine took place, To India causing millions of deaths.

The tragedy led to the formation of the famine committee in 1880 and the temporary famine law in British India, which caused the emigration of many skilled Indian workers to the British tropical colonies, but also led to the birth of a generation of Indian nationalists who fought for generations for the independence achieved On 15 August 1947.