This paper presents selected historical mortality statistics of India and analyses their characteristics and trends. Statistics are collated from a wide range of sources as time series at different regional scales, and particularly for the pandemics related with cholera, plague and influenza between 1817 and 1920. The paper analyses rare burial records in 19th century Calcutta, constructs the global distribution of deaths due to pandemic cholera in the 19th and early 20th century, and provides new mortality estimates of the 1918 influenza pandemic in India. The paper also presents a bibliography of over 250 studies on pandemics and historical mortality in India.