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Nagpur Grain Shop Looting of 1896: How Rising Food Prices Turned the City’s Markets into Riot Sites
Grain shops across Vidarbha's Nagpur were broken into and emptied in the last days of September 1896.
The city was not short of food. It had a railway line, an active trading class, and grain still moving through its markets. Troops and volunteers were called in before order was restored, and prosecutions followed.
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The Nagpur Grain Riots of Late September 1896
Nagpur’s grain shops were looted at “the end of September, 1896”, at the opening stage of the wider famine of 1896-97.
Disturbances took place inside Nagpur city and in other parts of the district. Grain prices had risen sharply during that same month.
Prices were counted in seers per rupee, so a falling number marks a dearer grain. Jowar, one of the principal foods of ordinary households, moved from 18 seers per rupee to 14. Rice fell from 12 seers to 9 and wheat from 14 seers to 10. A rupee that had recently bought 18 seers of jowar now bought only 14. A household buying rice lost a quarter of its buying power in the same movement, and wheat buyers faced a similar contraction. Families with fixed or falling cash incomes felt the change at once.
The Nagpur division was not yet in famine on the scale seen farther north. The immediate problem in the city was access to grain at affordable prices. Grain was being demanded for export to places already suffering severe shortages, and merchants were accused of holding back stocks in expectation of still higher prices.
Buyers believed that traders were deliberately worsening the scarcity. Whether every accusation made during the disturbance was accurate cannot now be established, but the belief that dealers were combining to push prices up was strong enough to become part of the historical account of the riots.
The first targets were markets and grain shops. Groups entered commercial areas and began taking grain. Koshti weavers formed an important part of the crowd, and other sections of the town population joined them. Officials described some participants as “badmashes”, a colonial term applied to people regarded as habitual offenders or troublemakers.
That label has to be separated from the economic background, because the crowds also included people whose incomes had been badly hit by food prices and unemployment.
The attacks were serious enough for troops and volunteers to be brought into the city. Military forces restored control and prosecutions followed. Other towns in the district then saw smaller disturbances influenced by events in Nagpur, which shows how fast news of grain prices and attacks on traders travelled between market towns.
The common impression that the looting happened loosely across 1896 and 1897 is not supported. The identifiable grain riot took place in late September 1896. The following year brought worsening scarcity, exceptionally high prices and more property offences, but the attack on the markets and grain shops belongs to the September outbreak.
It also came before the worst prices of the 1897 phase, so Nagpur’s market had reached a social breaking point months before wheat and jowar touched their later peaks.
For Vidarbha, the episode is a rare example of food protest centred on the price and distribution of grain, and not on a complete physical absence of food.
Why Grain Prices and Weaver Incomes Led to Looting in Nagpur
Nagpur entered September 1896 after several difficult agricultural seasons. Rainfall had been abnormal from the early 1890s.
Heavy rain in 1892 and 1893 affected wheat and spring sowings, and excessive autumn rain in 1894 damaged crops again. The harvest of 1894-95 was estimated at only 54 per cent of normal, with jowar at 45 per cent, cotton at 30 per cent and linseed at 23 per cent.
The district did not see general famine that year, but poorer households lost economic strength. By September 1896 many families met the price rise with several weak seasons already behind them.
In 1895-96, autumn rainfall was only about 4½ inches against an average of around 11 inches. The monsoon performed reasonably well until the end of August, which allowed the autumn crop to do better, but wheat and gram produced only about half their normal harvest. Conditions looked brighter in 1896, with abundant rain through August.
The serious deterioration came in September and October, when rainfall fell below 2½ inches during a period crucial for standing crops and the next round of sowing. The area under cold-weather crops shrank from about 615,000 acres in 1894-95 to 514,000 acres in 1896-97.
Even so, the district’s overall harvest was estimated at roughly 67 per cent of normal. That was poor, but better than in several famine-stricken districts elsewhere, which is why the September riot cannot be read as a story of empty granaries.
Nagpur was tied into a wider grain economy. Demand came from famine-stricken regions north of the district, and railway connections let produce travel greater distances, giving merchants access to larger markets.
Food could therefore leave a producing district when buyers elsewhere were willing to pay more. Rail transport could bring grain into a deficient district, but it could equally carry grain away from places where local consumers could no longer match outside prices. Better transport did not automatically mean affordable food for people living beside the routes.
The handloom trade added another pressure. Koshti weavers were numerous in Nagpur, Umrer and other urban centres, and in 1891 the community numbered more than 44,000 people in Nagpur district. Many produced fine cotton cloth, including silk-bordered garments, but the trade was exposed to swings in demand and competition from factory-made textiles.
Their position grew harder in 1896 because the year fell under Singhasta, during which Hindu marriages were widely avoided. Wedding ceremonies normally generated demand for clothing, so fewer weddings meant fewer orders for locally woven cloth.
Weavers therefore faced falling earnings and rising grain costs at the same time. Weaving households were particularly vulnerable when food turned expensive.
Many older handloom workers stayed attached to their craft and were poorly suited to heavy manual labour on conventional famine works.
Their income could collapse rapidly when cloth demand weakened. The people entering grain shops were responding to what their wages could purchase, and harvest figures alone do not account for their anger.
Grain merchants were also holding supplies in expectation of higher prices as famine developed elsewhere. Buyers read this as deliberate manipulation, and accusations of combination among dealers spread through the city.
Adulterated grain sold at high prices is remembered as another source of anger during the disturbances. The grain trader stood at the centre of popular resentment.
Fear of what prices might become played a part as well. The famine farther north was already visible, export demand was rising and local harvest prospects were falling as the September rains failed. For a household spending most of its income on food, waiting for the market to correct itself carried serious risk.
The riot began where four pressures met: reduced purchasing power, expensive grain, expectations of still higher prices and widespread suspicion that stocks were being withheld.
Nagpur was a major commercial and administrative centre connected by rail, not a rural settlement cut off from trade.
The disturbance occurred inside a market system that was functioning, moving grain and producing prices, but on terms that left some urban consumers unable to compete. Across Vidarbha, such a direct clash between price, wages and stock in a city market was uncommon.
Earlier Nagpur Famines and the Scarcity of 1897
The events of 1896 had older precedents. The earliest famine in Nagpur with a substantial surviving record was that of 1818-19, which followed monsoon failure and excessive rain during the cold season. Loss of life was serious.
Another shortage came in 1825-26, when grain sold at about six seers for a rupee and severe loss of life was remembered locally.
The most striking comparison is 1831-32. Heavy rain arrived in November 1831 after autumn crops had been cut but before much of the produce had been threshed and stored, so grain was damaged. Continuous rain then disrupted spring sowing. Seed already in the ground rotted, and blight affected what remained of the spring crop. Shortage continued for months.
By April 1832 grain sold at around eight seers per rupee, and people arrived from Berar and Khandesh seeking food. Later estimates placed the death toll at an exceptionally high level, including thousands in Nagpur city.
The response in the 1830s looked very different from the market conditions of 1896. Grain was distributed from granaries at Nagpur and other centres, food exports were prohibited, prices were fixed and holders of stock were pressed to sell at those rates. Cooked food was also given out to large numbers of people.
These measures show that intervention in grain movement and retail prices had a precedent in Nagpur long before the late nineteenth-century riot. Another scare came in 1868, when rains ended prematurely. A timely shower in September prevented a much more severe failure, and the resulting distress was comparatively limited.
The September riot of 1896 ended, but the food crisis did not. Relief works began in November 1896.
Migration also increased, with labourers travelling from Balaghat and Bhandara towards Berar while others entered Nagpur from more distressed areas to the north. About 16,000 people entered Nagpur district, with roughly 4,000 remaining. The number receiving different forms of relief rose during 1897 and peaked in May at about 18,000 people, around 2½ per cent of the district population.
Weavers needed specialised assistance because labour-based relief was a poor fit for skilled handloom workers. Support was organised around their existing occupation, with yarn supplied through intermediaries and finished cloth purchased. The distress of weaving households was also placed before the Indian Famine Commission.
The arrangement reflected how closely the food crisis was tied to employment and not to harvest failure alone.
Prices kept rising. In July and August 1897, wheat reached about eight seers to the rupee and jowar about eight and a half, so a rupee bought substantially less grain than before the crisis. Serious and petty offences against property rose to roughly 3,300 cases in 1897, against around 1,500 in each of the two preceding years.
The 1896 attacks are unusual because they came before the local price peak and in a district where grain still existed in significant quantities. The crowd went to the place where food passed from stock into sale, which made the market, and not the field, the central site of the confrontation.
In late September 1896, what counted inside the city was the widening distance between grain available for sale and the money in the hands of those trying to buy it.
The longer record of Vidarbha shows repeated conflict between three realities of the amount of food produced, the price at which it was sold and the ability of ordinary households to obtain it. The 1896 riot is the best-documented urban collision of those forces in nineteenth-century Nagpur.
FAQs
Q: Why were grain shops looted in Nagpur in 1896?
A: Grain prices were rising quickly while the incomes of many households, particularly handloom weavers, were weak. Grain was also being exported towards famine-affected areas, and merchants were accused of holding stocks while waiting for higher prices. Suspicion of coordinated price increases intensified hostility towards dealers and led to attacks on markets and grain shops.
Q: What happened in Nagpur after the 1896 grain riots during the famine of 1897?
A: The food crisis continued after the September 1896 disturbances. Grain became even more expensive in July and August 1897, relief expanded, migration increased and recorded property offences rose sharply. These developments belonged to the same broader famine period, but the principal Nagpur grain-shop looting occurred in late September 1896.
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References
Central Provinces District Gazetteers. (1908). Nagpur District, Volume A: Famine and scarcity. Government of the Central Provinces. Maharashtra State Gazetteers digital archive. https://www.gazetteers.maharashtra.gov.in/cultural.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/Nagpur/agri1.htmlSource lines used: Earliest recorded famine of 1818-19, shortages of 1825-26 and 1831-32, grain-price controls during the earlier famine, agricultural conditions from 1892 to 1896, September 1896 grain prices, Koshti involvement, looting of markets and grain shops, military suppression, migration, relief figures, peak prices in July-August 1897 and property-crime totals.
Craddock, R. H., & Central Provinces Revenue Department. (1898). Report on the famine in the Central Provinces, in 1896 and 1897, Vol. I: Report and Appendix I. Secretariat Press, Nagpur. Granth Sanjeevani, Asiatic Society of Mumbai. https://www.granthsanjeevani.com/jspui/handle/123456789/109766Source lines used: Publication details and contemporary government documentation of the 1896-97 Central Provinces famine, including the Nagpur administrative context.
Fraser, A. H. L. (1911). Among Indian rajahs and ryots: A civil servant’s recollections & impressions of thirty-seven years of work & sport in the Central Provinces & Bengal (Chapter IX, “Grain Riots in the Nagpur District”). William Heinemann. Digitised Internet Archive copy hosted by Wikimedia Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Among_Indian_rajahs_and_ryots%3B_a_civil_servant%27s_recollections_%26_impressions_of_thirty-seven_years_of_work_%26_sport_in_the_Central_Provinces_%26_Bengal_%28IA_amongindianrajah00frasiala%29.pdfSource lines used: Dating of the riots to “the end of September, 1896”, occurrence in Nagpur city and other parts of the district, famine conditions farther north, high local grain prices, export demand, withholding of stocks and attacks on grain merchants’ shops.
Maharashtra State Gazetteers. (n.d.). Nagpur District: Population and castes, Koshti. Government of Maharashtra. https://www.gazetteers.maharashtra.gov.in/cultural.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/Nagpur%20District/population_caste.htmlSource lines used: Koshti population, concentration in Nagpur and other towns, dependence on handloom weaving, vulnerability to high food prices and the economic difficulties faced by weaving households.
Maharashtra State Gazetteers. (n.d.). Nagpur District: Manufactures and weaving. Government of Maharashtra. https://www.gazetteers.maharashtra.gov.in/cultural.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/Nagpur%20District/lpwmtc_manufactures.htmlSource lines used: Importance of handloom weaving in Nagpur district, Koshti population figures, competition affecting the occupation and the particular exposure of weaving households during the famines of the late 1890s.
Roy, T. (2007). ‘Deindustrialization’ revisited: The handloom weavers of the Central Provinces of India, c. 1800-1947. Modern Asian Studies. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/abs/deindustrialization-revisited-the-handloom-weavers-of-the-central-provinces-of-india-c-18001947/A2289C427760ED27DAA571A4294F75C0Source lines used: Historical position of Nagpur handloom weavers, evidence submitted to the Indian Famine Commission, vulnerability of weaving households and specialised famine assistance for weavers.
Davis, M. (2001). Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the Third World. Verso. https://blackbooksdotpub.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/davis-mike-late-victorian-holocausts_-el-nino-famines-and-the-making-of-the-third-world-verso-books-2017.pdf Source lines used: Historical interpretation of Nagpur’s high grain prices, economic distress among Koshti weavers, adulterated grain complaints and the deployment of military forces during the disturbances.
Indian Railway Heritage. (n.d.). Famine railways and grain movement in colonial India. https://indianrailwayheritage.com/tag/famine-railways/Source lines used: The two-sided role of railways in famine conditions, including their capacity both to import food and to facilitate exports from producing regions while local prices were rising.
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