Ending Famine in India

The task of ending famine in India was taken up by many at the beginning of the twentieth century. Only decades earlier, famine in India had been believed to be a necessary evil. Now it was the reason for the increasing activities of doctors, nutritionists, social reformers, agricultural experts, missionaries, anti-colonial activists and colonial administrators, all involved in temporary relief and finding permanent solutions to famine.

The involvement of this panoply of historical actors places Indian famines in the centre of the converging histories of humanitarianism, development, nutrition and (anti-) colonialism. Tracing their activities renders such convergences visible and pushes the boundaries of the history of famines in South Asia beyond its common spatial and temporal frames. Ending Famine in India examines the tripartite relationship of India, Britain and the United States, linking the late-Victorian holocausts with the struggle for food security in the 1950s.

Joanna Simonow is an Assistant Professor in South Asian History at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. She has published on the history of famine relief, nutrition and development in colonial and early postcolonial India in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, South Asia and Studies in Contemporary History.