Famines In India

"Whose fault was it? A Dutch naval captain in the area at the time wrote, “This famine arose in part from the bad rice harvest of the preceding year; but it must also be attributed principally to the monopoly the English had over the last harvest of this commodity, which they kept at such a high price that the most unfortunate inhabitants . . . found themselves powerless to buy the tenth part of what they needed to live.”4"

"The ration that Richard Temple distributed to each inmate of these labor camps was only two-thirds of what he had given out during his successful relief in 1874—1,627 calories per day instead of 2,500. In fact, the new daily ration for the starving Indians of 1876 had 123 fewer calories than the ration for an inmate in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald in 1944. The Temple ration of one pound of rice a day—no meat, no vegetables—was half of what felons in Indian prisons received.10"

"Temple and Lytton imposed the Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 on all of the lands under their control, which outlawed any private relief donations that might undercut the price of grain set by the open market. The law was backed up by the threat of imprisonment. Meanwhile, as the people of India starved, over 300,000 tons of grain was exported from India to Europe.11"

"...Lord Salisbury, the secretary of state for India, waffled on the proper response to the hunger. On the one hand, he tried to distance himself from countrymen who “worshipped political economy as a sort of ‘fetish’ ” and who considered “famine as a salutary cure for over-population.” On the other hand, he congratulated Disraeli for not being fooled by “the growing idea that England ought to pay tribute to India for having conquered her.”Salisbury denigrated the idea “that a rich Britain should consent to penalize her trade for the sake of a poor India” as a “species of International Communism.”"

"..An English publisher tried to get his fellow journalists to investigate what was going on in India. “For long weary years have we demanded the suspension of [the land tax] when famine comes and in vain. With no poor law in the land, and the old policy once more set up of letting people pull through or die, as they can . . . we and our contemporaries must speak without reserve or be partakers in the guilt of multitudinous murders committed by the men blinded to the real nature of what we are doing in the country.”"

"An 1878 government report on the famine absolved the government of all responsibility and blamed it entirely on the weather. The official estimate was that 5.5 million died in the British territory, not counting the native states, but various scholars later estimated that either 10.3, or 8.2, or 6.1 million died across India during the 1876 famine."

"With their victory at Plassey (see “Seven Years War”), the British (in the form of the East India Company) ended up ruling Bengal, but right away they got off to a bad start. In 1769, the seasonal rains failed to come to India, and the resulting famine of 1769–70 killed some 10 million people, a quarter of the population of Bengal."

"In spite of all of the past practice the authorities had had before, this new famine went just as badly as the previous ones. The new viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, repeated most of the policies that had killed so many in the earlier famine. Native princes did no better. The maharaja of Indore vetoed all expenditures for relief, while Curzon deported refugees who arrived from the autonomous princely states.20 In the affected regions, as many as one out of every seven peasants was bankrupt and evicted. As the Indian peasantry became broken and driven into the cities, the British hold on the subcontinent strengthened."

"With the local scarcity of grain, food prices soared. A Methodist in Hyderabad wrote, “The people had no reserves either of strength or grain to fall back on, the debts of the previous famine still hung around their necks, money was impossible to get, for lenders tightened their purse strings when they saw no chance of recovering their loans.”"

"British authorities saw cheaters everywhere and suspected that many of the Indians applying for relief had “buried hoards of grain and ornaments.”23 Tests designed to keep as many Indians as possible off the dole prevented a million people from collecting relief in the Bombay Presidency."

"Three-fourths of a million bushels of grain was exported from Berar province in the north even as 143,000 people starved to death there.25 When Kansas Populists in the United States shipped 200,000 bags of grain to ease the famine “in solidarity with India’s farmers,” British officials taxed the shipment.26 The standing order among officials was that “the revenue must at all costs be gathered in.”"

"Cholera swept through the starving refugees. A Western doctor described one camp: “Millions of flies were permitted undisturbed to pester the unhappy victims. One young woman who had lost every one dear to her, and had turned stark mad, sat at the door vacantly staring at the awful scenes around her. In the entire hospital I did not see a single decent garment. Rags, nothing but rags and dirt.”"

"In spite of the worldwide population explosion that characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the population of India suffered an absolute decline between 1895 and 1905—the only time this has happened since the first census was taken in 1872.29 The mortality of the 1899–1900 famine has been estimated at either 19.0, or 8.4, or 6.1 million—in the same level of magnitude as the 1876 famine. This time, however, the British government report written after the fact recognized that the famine came from the failure of the economy more than a failure of weather. There had been plenty of grain in Burma and Bengal that could have been sent south and west to feed the starving:"

"By 1892, a quarter of India’s total government revenue went to maintain the burden of the government itself: supporting British pensions, the India Office, and interest on the debt. Very little of this was put back into the local economy; most went to banks and retirees in Britain. These home charges drained off whatever surplus the peasant economy could produce, including the grain from good harvests that normally would have been set aside to cushion against bad years. Then, in 1896, the monsoon rains failed to come, and the crops failed. Once again, the price of grain shot up beyond the reach of the common Indian. Once again, people starved."

"One witness described a child of five he found among starving peasants: “Its arms were not so large around as my thumb; its legs scarcely larger; the pelvic bones were plainly shown; the ribs, back and front, started through the skin like a wire cage. The eyes were fixed and unobservant; the expression of the little skull face solemn, dreary and old. Will, impulse, and almost sensation, were destroyed in this tiny skeleton, which might have been a plump and happy baby. It seemed not to hear when addressed. I lifted it between my thumbs and forefingers; it did not weigh more than seven or eight pounds.”18"

"A missionary described a Muslim farmer who sold his land, then his house, then his cooking utensils to buy food for his family. When that ran out, he gave his son to the missionaries to keep. After tearfully assuring the boy that this didn’t mean he didn’t love him, and that he had no choice, the man walked away, leaving his son to be raised as a Christian.19"

"Let’s jump ahead a hundred years to a time when the whole of India had been brought under British control, and the East India Company’s authority had been transferred to the Crown. In 1874, a drought in the northeastern Indian provinces of Bengal and Bihar ruined the harvest. Starvation loomed for millions of unlucky peasants, but the local official, Sir Richard Temple, leapt into action and set up a model welfare system to ease hunger. Importing a half-million tons of rice from Burma, he distributed it freely to the poor. Thanks to Temple’s prompt action, only twenty-three people starved to death in that famine. It has been called “the only truly successful British relief effort in the nineteenth century.” Temple was severely reprimanded for his extravagance in feeding the hungry natives in his charge. The Economist scolded him for teaching the Indians that “it is the duty of the government to keep them alive.” He was scorned all across the governing class for spending public money and meddling in the natural order of things. Humbled by the criticism, Temple learned his lesson and wanted to make amends. The opportunity came quickly, in 1876, when the monsoon rains failed to arrive across a much larger area. The earth dried up and died. Crops shriveled; livestock wasted away. When Temple took the job of supervising the relief effort of this new famine, he was desperate to prove that he could stay within budget. “Everything must be subordinated,” he promised, “to the financial consideration of disbursing the smallest sum of money consistent with the preservation of human life.”"

"...The guiding philosophy at the time was that relief should be difficult to obtain in order to discourage the poor from becoming dependent on government handouts.8 Recipients were expected to work hard for their supper, digging ditches and breaking stones. The camps accepted only the able-bodied and healthy into their public works projects, and they hired only workers from at least ten miles away, on the theory that a long walk would weed out the weaklings. Hundreds of thousands were turned away as too weak to be of any use. Most British authorities agreed that helping the poor only created a cycle of dependency. The finance minister declared, “Every benevolent attempt made to mitigate the effects of famine and defective sanitation serves but to enhance the evils resulting from overpopulation.” Lytton argued that the Indian population “has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil,” and that any relief would simply be absorbed in further unrestrained breeding.9 A later government report concluded, “If the government spent more of its revenue on famine relief, an even larger proportion of the population would become penurious.”"

"Husbands deserted wives and wives husbands; elderly dependents were left behind in the villages; babies and young children were sometimes abandoned. According to a survey carried out in Calcutta during the latter half of 1943, some breaking up of the family had occurred in about half the destitute population which reached the city.[235]"

"Bengal is a vast cremation ground, a meeting place for ghosts and evil spirits, a land so overrun by dogs, jackals and vultures that it makes one wonder whether the Bengalis are really alive or have become ghosts from some distant epoch.[246]"

"Conditions in certain famine hospitals at this time ... were indescribably bad ... Visitors were horrified by the state of the wards and patients, the ubiquitous filth, and the lack of adequate care and treatment ... [In hospitals all across Bengal, the] condition of patients was usually appalling, a large proportion suffering from acute emaciation, with 'famine diarrhoea' ... Sanitary conditions in nearly all temporary indoor institutions were very bad to start with ...[249]"

"The robbing of graveyards for clothes, disrobing of men and women in out of way places for clothes … and minor riotings here and there have been reported. Stray news has also come that women have committed suicide for want of cloth ... Thousands of men and women … cannot go out to attend their usual work outside for want of a piece of cloth to wrap round their loins.[89]"

"The Moslem proselytizers would not give a morsel of food to the dying Hindu mothers or their children, would rather stand watching them breathing their last and would save them, from that dire agony only if those unfortunate Hindu women and children renounced their cherished Hindu faith and accepted the Moslem religion before they fell victim to death. These nefarious activities are glorified as religious conversions and cherished tacitly or otherwise as justified means of gaining further political strength by the Moslem community as a whole. Hundreds of famished Hindu children are bought as you buy vegetables or picked up by the roadside and sent to conversion centres by those proselytizing Moslem agencies. The public every now and then shudders to read incidents reported from these starving parts to the effect that vultures or foxes or wolves keep watching the dying human beings and drag children even before they breathe their last to feast themselves on human flesh. Are these wild hearts anyway more beastly than those human beings who as religious apostles keep watching helpless Hindu women and children suffering from the terrible agonies of hunger but would not rescue them unless and until they were spiritually dead and these servants of God could drag them into their Islamic fold."

"Corpses lay scattered over several thousand square miles of devastated land. 7,400 villages were partly or wholly destroyed by the storm, and standing flood waters remained for weeks in at least 1,600 villages. Cholera, dysentery and other water-borne diseases flourished. 527,000 houses and 1,900 schools were lost. Over 1000 square miles of the most fertile paddy land in the province was entirely destroyed, and the standing crop over an additional 3000 square miles was damaged.[171]"

"Nixon bitterly said, “The Indians need—what they need really is a—” Kissinger interjected, “They’re such bastards.” Nixon finished his thought: “A mass famine.”"

"It is true that lack of rain causes famine but it is also true that the people of India have not the strength to fight the evil. The poverty of India is wholly due to the present rule. India is being bled till only the skeleton remains…all the vitality of the people is being sapped and we are left in an emaciated state of slavery."

"Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential incidents — in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions."

"How marvellous are the Lord’s way? One might almost say that the divine intention has been to make the parents disappear in order that their children might be led to the mission……… The last two periods of famine have brought to the Catholic Mission thousands of orphans………"

"The mighty peril is the entire starvation of the country [India] by foreign exploiters and its complete and hopeless dependence on aliens for almost all articles of common use."

"Although the drought in Kalahandi was a moderate natural disaster, the starvation deaths were a completely avoidable man-made disaster."

"In the great famine which raged through Indostan in the year 1770, and the ravages of which were particularly felt in every part of Bengal, the Jungleterry is said to have suffered greatly. I have understood that it was before this time highly cultivated, and filled with industrious husbandmen and manufacturers, and the population was estimated at more than eighteen thousand people. It is, however, at present reduced to a few hundreds, great numbers having been cut off by famine, and others having migrated in search of food. The country I had passed through from Allahabad to Lucknow, and thence to Fyzabad, has the same general character, and there are very few elevations to be seen in it that are considerable. It is in a moderate state of cultivation, in some parts better than others; but where it is neglected, it is evidently more from the want of property in the people, than the natural fertility of the country, which, on the contrary, I believe to be capable of producing the finest crops. The villages, of which there are many, some are comfortable in their appearance, and others apparently distressed. After leaving the flourishing district of Benaras, I could not help viewing with a melancholy concern the miserable appearance of all the territories which were under the absolute direction of Mussulman tyrants… The country from Lucknow to Etaya is in a moderate state of cultivation, but the villages are poor.… The country from Etaya to this place [Jeswotnagur] is very little cultivated; the villages are not populous, and the few inhabitants appear very wretched. On the 16th we halted at O’Kraine, six coss further, almost at the termination of the Nabob of Oud’s country. Through the whole of the last day’s journey I observed scarcely a spot in cultivation; the villages, of which there are several, were in ruins, and the whole presented almost on uninterrupted scene of desolation. On the last day’s march we met a few unfortunate people passing down into the provinces, in order actually to avoid being starved, begging their way.… Between Shekoabad and Fyrozabad are a few spots of cultivated ground. This village takes its name from the Purgunnah, which is a small district within a larger: it was at this time in the hands of a Gosine, or Hindoo Religious; and as the spirit of the Hindoo government is favourable to agriculture in the highest degree, this spot appeared a perfect garden. It must, indeed, be observed, that although the Hindoo governors or proprietors, from the principle of avarice, may sometimes distress, they do not destroy the endeavours of the poor, as the Mussulmans.…"

"Maharajpore. We now pass through every day, the finest country for dust that it is possible to imagine and there is nothing else to be seen, not a blade of grass – the cattle are to be fed by Oude grass, just as we are to be fed by Oude cooks. We shall not pass through the distressed districts but the famine on one side of the country round Cawnpore, where we shall be the day after tomorrow, is very frightful now. A man was here the other day who had just travelled though that part and said the people were dying in hundreds by the roadside. He had sometimes seen twenty and thirty bodies lying close together.… My dearest, I am sick at heart with all this starvation we see about us. Now we are only upon the outskirts of the country where famine is raging but we are among those who have only wandered from it to die, and even here some of the villages are depopulated, the crops are dying fast for want of rain. As yet there are funds at all the civil stations for giving food to all who want it but many die upon the road and everyday we see those who do not seem to have an hour’s life left in them. Every evening all who come are fed with rice but even these were more than three hundred and it was found difficult to prevent them tearing the rice from each other. Some scarcely look human, particularly the children. It made me shudder yesterday to see one little wretch who was lying alone in the middle of the camp tear bread off the loaf with his teeth which it had hardly strength enough to swallow. The mothers offer to sell their skeletons of babies for a rupee. The fathers seem to get what food they can for themselves and to leave women and children for starve – but many men too quietly lie down and die. If rain would come during the next fortnight, the crops for the next year might be saved and then the rich natives who have grain in their granaries might sell it, but it is generally during the Xmas week that the rain comes and there is no appearance of it. Already I feel as if we were only giving a few more days of misery to those we feed, for they must die of hunger at last. Three or four days will take away from the sight of all this suffering but I am sure I will never forget it… January 7th1836 Kanonze. I have not really had the heart to write the last three days – we have been surrounded by people dying of starvation. Some hundred came for food yesterday, a thousand were fed today, but many of them are still lying round the camp, children who have not many hours of life left in them – some of the grown-up people too are nothing but skin and bone, their faces like skulls. Captain Cunningham found many more today, one woman dead and a man and woman dying, many sitting round but taking no notice. There is plenty of grain too in the granaries but the rich natives, from fear of a greater scarcity next year, will not sell it. The distribution of food is grown very difficult, they will not wait for their turns but rush forwards to tear it from each other and the children are nearly crushed. Almost all our native servants have adopted either orphans or children they have bought for a rupee or two – a very common thing in these times of distress – and they generally keep them for the rest of their lives. We are now within three days of Futteghar and there work is provided for all who can work and funds to support the women and children who cannot… January 9th Our poor people are improving a little and have been much less vociferous today. I saw a gentleman today who has come from that part of the country from which these have wandered, and he says the sights there are horrible – hundreds dead and he saw many as he passed stripping bark off the trees and cooking it. Our French servant went out to look for cantaloupes by the side of the river, and found above a hundred lying together and some skeletons upright in the water and passed through a village where but two inhabitants were left. My dearest, I am longing to be away from all these horrors, where I feel that we can do but little good – all that is consumed by man and beast comes to us from Oude. The country is bare even of grass – at the best it is thinly inhabited. But it is no affectation to say that when we sit down to dinner with the band playing and all the pomp and circumstances of life about us, which is just as much kept up in a tent as anywhere else, my very soul sickens at the cries of the starving children outside which never seem to cease."

"We learn that about the middle of last century certain English speculators bought up the whole rice-harvest of India, and thus induced a famine in the land, which swept away three millions of the natives: yet not one of these starving wretches could be moved to slay and eat his household animals; only after their masters, did they famish too. A mighty testimony to the genuineness of a religious belief, with which, however, the confessors themselves have been expunged from "History.""

"The famine of 1769-70 in India, under the East India Company, appalled Horace Walpole and made him feel ashamed of his countrymen: "We have outdone the Spaniards in Peru. They were at least butchers on a religious principle, however diabolical their zeal. We have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurpednay, what you think of the famine in Bengal in which three millions perished being caused by a monopoly of the servants of the East India Company.""

"You see somewhere a man who is starving and if you misunderstand karma — as too many of you do, to the shame of India, in a land where this teaching is of immemorial antiquity — you turn aside from that starving man and say that it is his karma to starve and perish; in those hardened heart of yours you use the will of God as a cover for your lack of love. That man’s karma to starve? Aye, and therefore he is starving! But if a Deva guides you to the place where your brother is starving, it is because he would make you the agent of his beneficence to that man whose evil karma of the present moment has been exhausted by his suffering; the Deva thus says to you: “Man your brother man is starving give him the relief it is his karma to receive, and be my agent in carrying out the law."

"Then comes a year of famine; but the nose-rings and gold elbow-bangles are gone and people starve by thousands. What matters it? They die in Christ, and Rome scatters her blessings over their corpses, of which thousands float yearly down the sacred rivers to the ocean."

"The Lieutenant Governor of Bengal was to the fullest extent responsible for not having made any preparation against the famine. ... The doctrines of political economy had been worshipped as a sort of "fetish" by officials who, because they believed that in the long run supply and demand would square themselves, seemed to have utterly forgotten that human life was short, and that men could not subsist without food beyond a few days. They mechanically left the laws of political economy to work themselves out while hundreds of thousands of human beings were perishing from famine."

"He (George Curzon) was likewise determined to prevent famine from being used as a cause for reform. With hunger spreading on an unprecedented scale through two-thirds of the subcontinent, he ordered his officials to publicly attribute the crisis strictly to drought. When an incautious member of the Legislative Council in Calcutta, Donald Smeaton, raised the problem of over-taxation, he was (in Boer War parlance) prompdy "Stellenboshed." Although Curzons own appetite for viceregal pomp and circumstance was notorious, he lectured starving villagers that "any Government which imperilled the financial position of India in the interests of prodigal philanthropy would be open to serious criticism; but any Government which by indiscriminate alms-giving weakened the fibre and demoralised the self-reliance of the population, would be guilty of a public crime.""

"And what lesson did the British draw from these catastrophes? The most comprehensive official survey, the Report on the Famine in Bombay Presidency, 1899-1902, conceded that much of the excess mortality might have been avoided by "widespread gratious [home] relief from the beginning," but insisted that "the cost could have been such as no country would bear or should be called upon to bear"..."

"How do we weigh smug claims about the life-saving benefits of steam transportation and modern grain markets when so many millions, especially in British India, died along railroad tracks or on the steps of grain depots?"

"Sir William Hunter, estimated that 40,000,000 of the people of India were seldom or never able to satisfy their hunger. In 1901, 272,000 died of plague introduced from abroad, in 1902, 500,000 died of plague; in 1903, 800,000; in 1904, 1,000,000. We can now understand why there are famines in India. Their cause, in plain terms, is not the absence of food, but the inability of the people to pay for it. It was hoped the railways would solve the problem...the fact that the worst famines have come since the building of the railways...behind all these, as the fundamental source of the terrible famines in India, lies such merciless exploitation, such unbalanced exploitation of goods, and such brutal collection of high taxes in the very midst of famine...."

"So great an economic drain out of the resources of the land," says Dutt, "would impoverish the most prosperous countries on earth; it has reduced India to a land of famines more frequent, more widespread, and more fatal, than any known before in the history of India or of the world."

"According to British records, one million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million between 1825-1850, 5 million between 1850-1875 and 15 million between 1875-1900. Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years ! The British must be proud of their bloody record. It is probably more honorable and straightforward to kill in the name of Allah, than in the guise of petty commercial interests and total disregard for the ways of a 5000 year civilization. Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, India was bled dry and there were no resources left."

"The Great Bengal Famine of 1770 reminds us that taxes have a destructive power, and may be used to deny freedom of religion or belief as well. This is why we support Tai Ji Men dizi (disciples) in their protest—and support the “Declaration of the International Day Against Judicial and Tax Persecution by State Power” as well."

"Inhabitants were reduced to the direst extremity. Life was offered for a loaf, but none would buy. Dog’s flesh was sold for goat flesh. The pounded bones of the dead were mixed in flour and sold. Men began to devour each other, and the flesh of a son was preferred to his love. The number of deaths caused obstructions in the roads. Those lands which had been famous for fertility and plenty of resources retain no traces of production."

"During the first 80 years of the 19th century 18,000,000 of the Indian people perished of famine. In one year alone - the year when Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, assumed the title of the Empress, - 5,000,000 of the people of Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted - a region twice the size of Wales - 1/4 of the whole population perished in the famine of 1876-77. I shall never forget my own famine experience; how, as I rode out on horseback, morning after morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, half devoured by dogs and vultures; and how - still sadder sight - children, 'the joy of the world' as the old Greeks deemed them, had become its ineffable sorrow there, forsaken even by their mothers, their feverish eyes shining from hollow sockets, their flesh utterly wasted away, only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of loathsome disease engendered by the starvation... Everyone who has been in India in famine times, and has left the beaten track of western made prosperity, knows how true a picture this is."

"Surat (Gujarat)- Great famine, highways unpassable, infested by thieves looking not for gold but grain; Kirka- Town empty. Half inhabitants fled. Another half dead; Dhaita- Children sold for 6 dams or given for free to any who could take them so they might be kept alive; Nandurbar (Maharashtra)-No space to pitch a tent, dead bodies everywhere. Noisome smell from a neighboring pit where 40 dead bodies were thrown. Survivors searching for grains in the excrement of men and animals. Highway stowed with dead bodies from Surat to Burhanpur... In Bazar lay people dead and others breathing their last with the food almost near their mouths, yet dying for want of it, they not having wherewith to buy, nor the others so much pity to spare them any without money. There being no course taken in this Country to remedy this great evil, the rich and strong engrossing and taking perforce all to themselves."

"...in the name of civilizing our country [India] they exploited our country making us poorer day by day. There were perpetual famine and starvation in India. But the British had always been callous to it."

"Culturally it was a time of stagnation. Poverty and starvation were the common phenomenon in the society. The imperial power invested huge capital in India and made enormous profit. The British looked upon India as a place where capital could hope to maintain a heaven. But paradoxically enough, the Indian masses were rotting in poverty and starvation. Thus a great predicament, surrounded India in the 18th and 19th centuries."

"They have sucked out blood, they have carried away with them millions of our money, while our people have starved."