English: Photograph by Willoughby Wallace Hooper

Hunting a tiger was a sport for British officials in colonial India. This 1876-1877 AD photograph shows a wild tiger after it was shot and while it was being cut open for its skin and head trophy.

While these sports were in vogue, one of numerous famines of 19th century ravaged India. In the year when this tiger trophy was killed for pleasure, Digby estimated 10.3 million Indian people starved to death most of which were in South India; Maharatna estimated 8.2 million died. British colonial rule argued that famine relief would be an inappropriate response and would encourage laziness, and the Malthus theory that famine is nature's way of population control. The poverty, misery and diseases wiped out villages and families. Some farmers and their families committed suicide after suffering the trauma and the extended period of starvation. Parents killed themselves so that their children could eat the remaining scraps of food, creating a pool of abandoned and foresaken children.

The 19th century colonial rule was a period of widespread inequality in India.

For more on the famine, see Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, by Mike Davis