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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Famines, floods and cyclones

The disasters that the old records describe in the Telugu country before 1914: the famine of 1791–1792 in the Circars, the Guntur famine of 1832–1833, the Great Famine of 1876–1878, the famines of 1896–1900 in the Agency and the Nizam's state, the sea floods and cyclones of 1787, 1839 and 1864, and the floods of the Godavari, the Krishna and the Musi. Every figure is given as its source gives it.

The Telugu country depended on the monsoon rains, and when they failed, famine followed.12 Its long, low coast also lay open to cyclones and to floods from the sea.34 Its great rivers flooded the deltas they watered.53 This page gathers the disasters that the official records describe, from the first famine with details in 1791 to the Musi flood of 1908.56

About the sources. Almost everything here comes from British and Hyderabad government records: the Imperial Gazetteers of 1908 and 1909, and the district gazetteers of Godavari (1907) and Kistna (1883).1758 They give death tolls as estimates, often worked out from census figures, and they sometimes disagree. The figures below are given as each source gives them.

Where famine struck

According to the Madras gazetteer, only two kinds of country were safe from famine.1 One was the west coast, where the rain hardly ever failed.1 The other was the deltas and other land watered by the great rivers that rise in the Western Ghats.1 In the Deccan, most food grain was sown on unirrigated land after the light rains of the south-west monsoon.1 If those rains failed twice running, scarcity was certain.1

The gazetteer wrote that the four Deccan districts, Cuddapah (Kadapa), Kurnool, Bellary and Anantapur, had suffered “more consistently than any others”.9 It gave three reasons: light rain, poor soil and few large irrigation works.9 Nellore was “not far behind”.9 Much of this table-land was known as “the famine zone”.2

Early famines

The earliest records come from the European traders on the coast. In 1633 the English traders at Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam) wrote home that “the living were eating up the dead”.1 The Hyderabad gazetteer records 1629, 1659 and 1685 as famine years in the Deccan, and 1713, 1747 and 1787 in the 18th century.7

The Godavari gazetteer calls the famine of 1791–1792 in the Northern Circars the first of which details survive.5 In January 1792 the Board of Revenue wrote that many of the poor were “perishing from want”.5 The government spent over 35,000 pagodas (gold coins), about Rs. 1,40,000, on relief, and fed the children of poor families at public cost.5 According to one estimate, a quarter of the people either left or starved.10 Relief works were first opened in this famine.11

The Guntur famine, 1832–1833

In 1832–1833 a run of bad seasons ended in what became known as the Guntur famine.109 It struck Guntur, Nellore, Machilipatnam, Cuddapah, Bellary and North Arcot.9 The Godavari gazetteer says that in Guntur it “covered the country with human bones from Ongole to Masulipatam”.10

In Godavari the trouble began with a hurricane in May 1832.10 Then the rains failed in western India, so the Godavari did not rise and the rice along its banks was lost.10 From March to July 1833, private gifts fed about 3,000 people a day.10 In August the government opened relief works, mostly the digging of tanks.12 Free relief was not allowed, and many people of higher castes chose to starve rather than do earthwork.12

The Godavari gazetteer quotes a witness:12

“A stream of pilgrims flowed night and day towards the south… The great northern road soon became one long graveyard.”12

Thousands of people went to Madras and to other districts.12 Young girls were sold and sent to Hyderabad.12 Grain could move only under armed guard, because hungry villagers tried to seize it.12 The famine ended before the start of 1834.12

The memory lasted. The author of the first Godavari manual found that a man who could not state his age could say how old he was “at the time of the Great Famine”.10 The people afterwards reckoned dates from it.10 In Godavari district the population fell from 738,308 in 1821 to 533,836 in 1839–40, after twelve years of bad seasons.13

The famine also changed policy. The Kistna manual says it brought the idea of a dam on the Krishna back to life, since the river was often full while the crops failed.14 In Godavari, a report on the district’s distress led to the Dowleswaram anicut.13 See also the Krishna anicut.

The Great Famine, 1876–1878

The Madras gazetteer calls the famine of 1876–1878 “the Great Famine”.9 It struck the Deccan districts, Nellore and several Tamil districts.9 In 1876 large parts of the famine zone had only 2.7 to 10 inches of rain.2 The famine lasted twenty-two months and affected fourteen of the twenty-one districts of the Presidency.9

According to the gazetteer, it was “calculated” to have caused 3½ million deaths in the Presidency.9 The state spent 630 lakhs of rupees directly and lost 191 lakhs in revenue.9 In one week of September 1877, more than 2¼ million people were on relief, 700,000 of them on relief works.9 Railways carried grain to the famine tracts, and weavers were paid advances to weave cloth instead of doing earthwork.11 In 1901, twenty-five years later, Cuddapah and Kurnool still had fewer people than before the famine.9

The Godavari delta, by then irrigated, escaped.13 People and cattle fled to it in large numbers from Kurnool, Bellary and Nellore.13 In the Nizam’s state the rains failed in 1876 in Lingsugur, Raichur, Gulbarga, Bhir and Osmanabad.7 Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar had no famine, but severe scarcity.7 The state’s relief works ran from October 1876 to November 1877.7 The gazetteer counts 6¼ million “units” given work and 2 million relieved in poorhouses.7 The famine cost the state 13¾ lakhs, not counting land revenue it let go.7

The Agency and the Nizam’s state, 1896–1900

In 1896–1898 the rains failed in the Godavari Agency, the hill country of the district.13 Bhadrachalam had famine and Polavaram came close to it.13 The gazetteer thought the hill people were hit harder than in 1833.13 It quotes an old man who compared the two famines:13

“There were fewer of us then, and the forests had not been cut down, and there were plenty of roots.”13

The moneylenders refused the usual advances on the coming crop.4 In Polavaram the hill people would not come to the relief works.4 According to the gazetteer, they gathered in gangs and looted 39 villages in seven days.4 In Bhadrachalam a fair number of Koyas came to the works, and nearly Rs. 12,000 was given as free relief.4

In the Nizam’s state, only 15½ inches of rain fell in 1899, less than half the usual amount.15 The famine of 1900 struck mainly the Aurangabad and Gulbarga divisions, west of the Telugu districts.15 The census of 1901 found 394,898 fewer people than in 1891.15 The gazetteer reckoned the true loss at nearly 1½ million, allowing for normal growth.15 The state spent more than two crores of rupees on relief, and the Government of India lent it two crores in 1899.15

After 1900, the Hyderabad government prepared large irrigation schemes for the Telingana districts.16 In the Maratha districts it built roads and wells instead.16 The famines of 1897 and 1900, with plague and cholera, cut the state’s population by 3.45 per cent between 1891 and 1901.17 In the drought of 1900 even the Kolleru lake dried up completely.18

Floods and cyclones from the sea

The coast of the Godavari delta was often flooded by the sea.4 In 1789 the astronomer Michael Topping found that these floods even had a local name, uppena.4 The earliest one remembered came about December 1706, near Coringa.4 On 20 May 1787, after a gale of several days, the sea broke over Coringa, Injaram and Narasapur.19 The Resident of Injaram wrote that “the whole town of Coringa and all the little villages about, with the inhabitants,” had been carried away.19

In 1839 a cyclone struck the whole coast from Visakhapatnam to Narasapur, with a tidal wave over Kakinada (then Cocanada) and Coringa.20 Wrecked ships were said to have been carried four miles inland.21 The salt water spoiled fields, tanks and wells.21 Later cyclones came in 1878 and in October 1904, when thousands of coconut and areca palms fell.21

The worst came at Machilipatnam on 1 November 1864.223 That night the barometer fell fast, and the storm reached the coast at the time of the new-moon high tide.8 A wave 13 feet above the normal high-water mark rushed through the fort and the town.8 Of the 700 people in the suburb of Shevagangapettah, only 70 survived.23 Thirty-three girls of a mission boarding school were drowned.23

The wave reached 17 miles inland.23 A company of soldiers buried more than a thousand bodies inside the fort alone.24 The Kistna manual puts the flood along 80 miles of coast and the loss of life at an estimated 30,000.24 The Madras gazetteer gives the same figures and calls it perhaps the most disastrous cyclone on record.3

River floods

The Godavari and the Krishna flooded often.321 The Godavari gazetteer lists floods of the Godavari from 1614 to 1900.2526 The flood of August 1886 was the highest on record.25 In 1900 the river flooded Dummagudem and drowned a few women and children, and in Amalapuram taluk 4,000 houses were destroyed.26 See Rivers of the Telugu country.

On the Krishna, in July 1853, the river rose 39 feet, topped its banks and flooded the whole delta.27 It happened while the Krishna anicut was being built.27

At the end of September 1908, after days of rain, the Musi suddenly flooded Hyderabad.6 It carried away arches of three bridges and flooded many parts of the city on both banks.6 Pictorial Hyderabad (1929) says that “Thousands lost their lives”.28 It adds that a tamarind tree in what became the Osmania Park saved about 150 people.28 Modern Hyderabad (1914) calls the flood the highest and most disastrous in the city for at least three-quarters of a century.29 It led to the reservoirs of Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar.29

Where the sources disagree

  • The Guntur famine: the loss of revenue. The Madras gazetteer of 1908 puts the loss of revenue, apart from the cost of relief, at 52 lakhs of rupees.9 The Kistna manual of 1883 says the famine “is said to have caused” a loss of revenue in Guntur district of Rs. 2,27,00,000, that is 227 lakhs.14
  • The Guntur famine: its dates. The Madras gazetteer dates it 1832–1834.9 The Godavari gazetteer calls it the famine of 1833 and says it was over before the start of 1834.1012

Footnotes

  1. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 79 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 37 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 14 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 141 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  5. F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, Vol. I (1907), p. 137 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 119, note (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 48 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  8. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 120 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 80 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14

  10. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 138 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  11. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 81 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  12. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 139 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  13. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 140 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  14. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 253 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  15. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 49 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  16. Imperial Gazetteer: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 50 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  17. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (1909), p. 21 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  18. Imperial Gazetteer: Madras, Vol. I (1908), p. 159, “Colair Lake” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  19. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 142 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  20. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 143 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  21. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 144 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  22. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 119 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  23. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 121 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  24. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 127 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  25. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 145 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  26. Hemingway, Godavari (1907), p. 147 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  27. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 256 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  28. K. Krishnaswamy Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad, Vol. I (1929), p. 7 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  29. Modern Hyderabad (Deccan) (1914), p. 84 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

References

Sources (6)
  1. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 14, 37, 79–81, 159. [Public domain]
  2. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Hyderabad State (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1909, pp. 21, 48–50, 119. [Public domain]
  3. F. R. Hemingway, Madras District Gazetteers: Godavari, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1907, pp. 137–147. [Public domain]
  4. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 119–121, 127, 253, 256. [Public domain]
  5. K. Krishnaswamy Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Chandrakanth Press, Hyderabad (Deccan), 1929, pp. 7. [Public domain]
  6. Modern Hyderabad (deccan) (opens in a new tab), 1914, pp. 84. [Public domain]

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