Abstract
This chapter explores famine-crimes during 1837-8 with a view to constituting official notions of famine related collective crimes as being expressions of popular action. The author argues that these were suggestive of deep-rooted tensions between society and the colonial state. Since distinctions between known and new ‘criminals’ and between rank and class, tended to blur in collective popular action, official perceptions of crime at this time were ambivalent, with the context of scarcity posing problems of legal classification. The colonial state found it difficult to deem the repeated plunder of hoarded grain as heinous crimes, and found itself on the side of rioters. The chapter also discusses suicides, increasing hunger in women and children, the kidnapping (for ransom) of male children, and the sale of girl children.
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