The Doji bara famine (or Skull famine) of 1791-92 in South Asia was brought on by a major El Niño event lasting from 1789 CE to 1795 CE and producing prolonged droughts.[1] The El Niño event, recorded by William Roxburgh, a surgeon with the British East India Company, in a series of pioneering meteorological observations, caused the failure of the South Asian monsoon for four consecutive years starting in 1789.[2]
The resulting famine, which was severe, caused widespread mortality in Hyderabad, Southern Maratha Kingdom, Deccan, Gujarat, and Marwar (then all ruled by Indian rulers).[3] In regions like the Madras Presidency (governed by the East India Company), where the famine was less severe,[3] and where records were kept, half the population perished in some districts, such as in the Northern Circars.[4] In other areas, such as Bijapur, although no records were kept, both the famine and the year 1791 came to be known in folklore as the Doji bora or the "skull famine," on account, it was said, of the ground being "covered with the skulls of the unburied dead."[4] As in the Chalisa famine of a decade earlier, many areas were depopulated from death or migration. It is thought that a total of 11 million people may have died during the years 1789–1792 as a result of starvation or accompanying epidemics of disease.[5]
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See also
- Timeline of major famines in India during British rule (1765 to 1947)
- Famines, Epidemics, and Public Health in the British Raj
- Company rule in India
- Famine in India
- Drought in India
Notes
- ^ Grove 2007, p. 80
- ^ Grove 2007, p. 81
- ^ a b Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III 1907, p. 502
- ^ a b Grove 2007, p. 82
- ^ Grove 2007, p. 83
References
- Grove, Richard H. (2007), "The Great El Nino of 1789–93 and its Global Consequences: Reconstructing an Extreme Climate Event in World Environmental History", The Medieval History Journal 10 (1&2): 75-98, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/097194580701000203>
- Imperial Gazetteer of India vol. III (1907), The Indian Empire, Economic (Chapter X: Famine, pp. 475–502, Published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council, Oxford at the Clarendon Press. Pp. xxx, 1 map, 552.
Further reading
- Arnold, David & R. I. Moore (1991), Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (New Perspectives on the Past), Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 164, ISBN 0631151192
- Mellor, John W. & Sarah Gavian (1987), "Famine: Causes, Prevention, and Relief", Science (New Series) 235 (4788): 539-545, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1698676.pdf>
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