Timeline of major famines in India during British rule 1871 to 382 million in 1941. At least 15-35 million people may have died in famines caused by droughts and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon during the British rule. The year 1765 is chosen as the start year because that year the British East India Company, after its victory in the Battle of Buxar, was granted the "Diwani" (rights to land revenue) in the region of Bengal (although it would not directly administer Bengal until 1784 when it was granted the "Nizamat", or control of law and order.) The year 1947 is the year in which the British Raj was
Political warfare in British colonial India required replacing of pre-existing political institutions and replacing them with centralised, territory-wide, and bureaucratic legal-administrative institutions that were controlled by colonial officials. Indirect rule was a form of colonial domination via collaboration with indigenous intermediaries who controlled regional political institutions. Colonial India was a mix of the two types of rule. While the Civil Service ran a large portion of the country, "in peripheral regions, chiefs, princes, sultans, and other indigenous leaders controlled "customary" legal-administrative institutions that were organised along patrimonial lines." Leading colonial officials believed indirect rule was more adaptive and culturally sensitive, far superior to direct rule, in