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 strengthen their grip on power. This was either to create a hierarchy of racial types arose, "each arranged into appropriate social classes, whose spiritual and material improvement were entrusted to the paternal direction of gentlemanly rulers" or 'a single hierarchy all its subjects, Indian and British'. The Army and the Civil Service were the main instruments of British power, staffed by only a small number of white officials. This imperial service became, "a large vested interest of the educated upper middle class. By 1913–14, for example, the Government of India devoted no less than 53 million pounds (65 percent of