Grievance and Reform: The Deccan Riots, Famine Commission, and Arms Act

A famine killed millions and a riot burned account books — and the same government that whipped Indians with the Arms Act slowly learned to fight hunger.

The late 1870s and early 1880s brought recurring famine, rural debt, and discriminatory laws to British India. The government’s responses were part repressive, part reformist. This article follows both sides of that story: the grievances, and the reforms that followed them.

1. Riots, Relief, and a Reckoning with Debt

1.1 What were the Deccan Riots of 1875?

• In May 1875, indebted peasants in the Bombay Deccan (Maharashtra) rose against moneylenders.
• They burned account books, looted grain shops, and attacked moneylenders’ houses. This became the Deccan Riots.
• Years of debt, failed crops, and a collapsing cotton boom pushed the peasants past endurance.
• The trouble began in villages like Supa in Poona district, then spread through the Deccan.
• The riots were spontaneous and local, not organised by any political leader, but they forced the government to notice a debt crisis it had ignored for years.

1.2 Why did the peasants target account books?

• The account books, called bahi khatas, recorded every rupee a farmer owed.
• To the peasants, burning the books felt like erasing the debt itself.
• A moneylender’s real power lived in his records, not in his house or his person.
• Historians now read the Deccan Riots as a targeted peasant protest, not a random mob.

1.3 What was the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act of 1879?

• The government answered the riots with the Deccan Agriculturists’ Relief Act of 1879.
• It restricted the sale of peasant land to outside, non-agriculturist moneylenders.
• This made it harder for a moneylender to strip a defaulting farmer of his land.
• The Act was limited and did not end the debt trap, but it was a first legal safeguard for the peasant.

1.4 How does this fit a longer chain of rural revolts?

• The Deccan Riots sit in a line running from the Indigo Revolt of 1859 to the later Munda and Moplah uprisings.
• Each revolt reacted to the same pressures: heavy revenue demands, debt, and the moneylender-tenant squeeze.
• Peasants would act collectively against economic exploitation, even without political leadership.
• Over time, these local revolts fed into the wider nationalist demand for rural justice.

2. Famine Becomes a State Responsibility

2.1 What was the Famine Commission of 1880?

• The famine of 1876-78 killed millions across British India.
• The government’s own policy of standing aside had made the disaster worse.
• In response, it set up the Famine Commission of 1880, chaired by Richard Strachey.
• The Commission recommended relief works: paying people for useful work to prevent starvation.

2.2 What was the Famine Code of 1883?

• The Commission’s ideas were turned into a working rulebook, the Famine Code, finalised in 1883.
• The Code set clear rules: how to declare a famine, organise relief works, and distribute food.
• It used “test work,” relief tied to public labour, so aid reached the starving without breaking the budget.
• Later famines, in 1896-97 and 1899-1900, still killed many, but the Code reduced the worst horrors.

2.3 What is the Famine Commission’s legacy today?

• The Commission and Code together set a lasting pattern: relief works, imported grain, a standing system.
• They turned famine from a natural disaster into a problem the state had a duty to manage.
• India’s modern food-security system, including the Public Distribution System, descends from this beginning.

3. The Arms Act and the Racial Double Standard

3.1 What was the Arms Act of 1878?

• Viceroy Lord Lytton passed the Arms Act of 1878.
• It barred Indians from carrying arms without a licence, while Europeans in India were exempt.
• The British feared an armed Indian population after the revolt of 1857.
• The racial exemption made the double standard plain: a European could carry arms freely, an Indian could not.

3.2 Why did the Vernacular Press Act matter alongside it?

• Lytton also passed the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, aimed at Indian-language newspapers.
• It let magistrates demand security deposits and seize press equipment, with no right of appeal.
• English-language papers were exempted, so the law was read as targeting Indian opinion specifically.
• Lord Ripon, the more liberal Viceroy who followed Lytton, repealed the Act in 1882.

3.3 What were the three registers of grievance?

• The riots, the famine, and the Arms and Press Acts hit Indians on three fronts at once.
• Economic distress came from debt and famine. Civil humiliation came from laws like the Arms Act. Political silencing came from press curbs.
• Together, these three registers fed the discontent that grew into organised nationalism.

4. Two Viceroys, One Pattern, and the Exam Angle

4.1 What did the swing from Lytton to Ripon reveal?

• Lytton, Viceroy from 1876 to 1880, passed the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act, and staged a grand Delhi Durbar.
• Ripon, who followed him from 1880 to 1884, repealed the press act and started local self-government.
• Lytton’s rule leaned on control and display. Ripon’s leaned on reform and conciliation.
• Both Viceroys, in their own ways, pushed Indians closer to demanding real self-rule.