Famines
No part of the world, including India, was completely immune from famines before the Industrial Revolution.
Megasthenes, a Greek ambassador to India in the 4th century B.C. affirmed that "famine has never visited India, and that there has never been a general scarcity in the supply of nourishing food." An Italian merchant and traveller, Nicolo Conti, visited India in about 1420 A.D. He wrote that "pestilence is unknown among the Indians; neither are they exposed to those diseases which carry off the population in our own countries. According to William Digby, from the beginning of the 11th century to the beginning of the British rule in the 18th century up to 1769, there were eighteen famines, almost all of which were confined to local areas.
After the Industrial Revolution, from about the middle of the 19th century, famines were almost banished from Europe. But in India, during those years famines became much more frequent and disastrous than before. There was nothing unusual about this. While Europe was becoming richer and richer, India was becoming poorer and poorer in the interests of her masters.
There were great famines at the threshold, in the middle,and at the termination of British rule in India. Four years after the British got the right of Dewanee (civil administra- tion) in 1765, there occurred the great famine of 1769-70, mentioned before. Four years before the British left, there was a great famine of 1942-43, even though British India had quick means of transportation, such as railways and fast going steam driven ocean liners, to transport foodgrains from other parts of India or the world.
In 93 years, from 1765 to 1858, India experienced twelve famines and four severe scarcities. In the 48 years, from 1860 to 1908, twenty famines struck India. To com- press the time lag more, from 1876 to 1900, eighteen famines took place in India claiming 26 million lives. From January 1, 1889 to September 30, 1901, according to official figures, two British-Indian subjects passed away from starvation or starvation induced diseases every minute of every day and night. These were actual famines where tens of millions died. Scarcities also prevailed in India since 1880; although the government did not admit it.
Between 1908 and 1942, no major famine occurred in India, although severe scarcities were experienced through- out the country. Famines were thus no longer the strangers or the occasional guests as they used to be in pre-British India; they were, in British India, very much at home.
After about the middle of the 19th century, the nature of famines radically changed. Previously famines took place because of drought conditions prevailing in one or another part of the country. And where there was sufficient quantity of foodgrains, it could not be imported quickly because of the lack of quick transportation. In other words, these were mainly crop famines. But after about the middle of the 19th century, when India had the railways and steamships and hence, food could be imported from other parts of the country or from outside, the people could buy the food, but they were too poor to buy it; as the wages did not increase in proportion to the increase in prices and as there were many unemployed people without any income. In other words, now famines became mainly money famines instead of crop famines. J. Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the British Labour Party and the Prime Minister of Eng- land in 1920's, wrote
"In studying famine, one must begin by grasping what it is and how it presents itself. Even in the worst time there is no scarcity of grain in the famine stricken districts, except, as in the case of Darbhanga in 1906-7, when the famine was caused by floods .At the very worst time in the Gujarat famine of 1900, it was shown by the official returns that there was sufficient grain to last for a couple of years in the hands of the grain dealers of the district. It is, therefore, not a scarcity of grain that causes famine famine has been caused by a destruction of capital and the consequent cessation of the demand for labour. High prices coincide with low wages, and unemployment, and the people starve in the midst of plenty.'
"The famines which have been devastating India' says another British statesman, H. M. Hyndman, "are in the main financial famines. Men and women cannot get food, because they cannot save the money to buy it. Yet we are driven, so we say, to tax these people more."
One George Thompson delivered a series of six lectures in Manchester in 1839, which were published in book form under the title 'George Thompson's Lectures on British India' He wrote "11. The condition of India!-Loo! at the circumstances of the people, impoverished almost to the lowest possible degree. The ranks of society, as nearby as can be levelled. Princes deposed-nobles degraded- landed proprietors annihilated—the middle classes absorbed -the cultivators ruined-great cities turned into farm vil- lages-villages deserted and in ruins-mendicancy, gang robbery, and rebellion increasing in every direction. This is no exaggerated picture. This is the state and the present state of India. Some of the finest tracts of land have been forsaken, and given up to the untamed beasts of the jungle. The motives to industry have been destroyed. The soil seems to lie under a curse. Instead of yielding abundance for the wants of its own population, and the inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own child- ren. It becomes the burying place of millions, who die upon its bosom, crying for bread.'
Then Thompson goes on to describe the horrible famine of 1838, an event which was not 'extraordinary and unfore- seen' and preceded by other famines. This famine which was 'the carnival of death" took place in Bengal Presidency, where "five hundred thousand human beings' perished 'of hunger in the space of a few short months Describing other famines which preceded it, he writes that 'they have continued to increase in frequency and extent under our sway for more than half a century." "Why?" Thompson replies
"Do you ask, why this wholesale destruction of human life? I reply, and while I do so, I am fully aware of the nature of the accusation I bring against the government of India, at home and abroad, and am ready to sustain it- because the people have been virtually robbed of their soil -deprived of the fruits of their industry-prevented from accumulating the means of meeting a period of drought, and are thus doomed to death, should the earth refuse, for a single season, to yield its increase. Our government (says one of the highest authorities) has been practically one of the most extortionate and oppressive that ever existed; and a committee of the Houses of Commons has declared that our revenue system in India is one of habitual extortion and injustice, leaving nothing to the cultivator but what he is able to secure by evasion and fraud. Can any evidence be required more conclusive, in proof of the ruinous nature of our administration, than is furnished by the fact, that famines are becoming almost general, and that they are sweeping off their victims by hundreds of thousands-and that these famines occur in the most fertile districts of the globe, and during a period of profound internal peace? The master evil of the present system in India is the land-tax.
Thompson then goes on to describe the barbaric methods of collecting the back-breaking land revenue," discussed before.
A famous American economist who quotes the noble British lady of the lamp-Florence Nightingale-writes
'We do not care for the people of India" writes Florence Nightingale (in 1878) with what seems like a sob, "The sad- dest sight to be seen in the East-nay, probably in the world -is the peasant of our Eastern Empire.' And she goes on to show the causes of the terrible famines, in taxation which takes from the cultivators the very means of cultivation and the actual slavery to which the ryots are reduced as 'the consequence of our own laws', producing in 'the most fertile country in the world, a grinding, chronic, semi-starvation in many places where what is called famine does not exist.
The price of foodgrains increased fantastically not only in the area where there was an actual scarcity of food- grains, but also in the area where foodgrains were plentiful. This was because the enslaved India had to export food, under the compulsion of paying land revenue and other taxes, to England, famine or no famine. The government of India followed this policy so obstinately that they even turned down, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, the proposal of its own Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir George Campbell, to stop the export of rice overseas from Bengal, a part of which was in the grip of a terrible famine in 1873. Instead, the government thought fit to import rice from Burma to alleviate the suffering. Sir George remarked on this policy of not prohibiting exports, "I have no doubt that in any other country than a British-governed country it would have been done" Why this curious policy of exporting with one hand and importing with another was adopted and in the process 'millions of money were sacri- ficed" (Sir George's words)? The reason was the self-inter- est of England which was always paramount, come what may. Millions of human beings and a huge amount of money were sacrificed without a moments hesitation, if it could put some money into the pockets of the Britons. In both export and import trade, the British and their agents gained directly and indirectly through shipping charges, insurance, commissions, etc. Moreover, by exporting foodgrain to England, Britons also got cheap food. Who sacrificed 'millions of money?' The answer obviously is the people of India
The culmination and fulfilment of British rule in India was reached in the terrible Bengal famine of 1942-43, a 'man-made famine in which 11 million (government's esti- mate) to 3.4 million people (estimate of the University of Calcutta) died. Millions shed their blood and bones for British imperialism, primarily because of the highest paid government's administrative ineptitude, and a certain degree of callousness on their part. The Official Famine Enquiry Commission put the blame where it deserved to be put "But often considering all the circumstances, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it lay in the power of the Govern- ment of Bengal, by bold, resolute and well-conceived meas- ures at the right time to have largely prevented the tragedy of the famine as it actually took place. Further, that the Government of India failed to recognize at a sufficiently early date, the need for a system of planned movement of foodgrains.
The Commission also referred to "The low economic level of the province, to the increasing pressure on land not relieved by growth of industry, to the fact that a consider- able section of the population was living on the margin of subsistence and was incapable of standing any severe econo- mic stress, to the very bad health conditions and low stand- ards of nutrition, to the absence of a 'margin of safety' as regards either health or wealth.
To all competent observers, all the fatal drawbacks in the economy, which the Commission referred to just two years before the British left, were known throughout. Even the official famine commissions appointed from time to time were referring to these problems. For example, after a horrible famine of 1860 in northern India, the government appointed Colonel Baird Smith to enquire into the causes of the famine. He clearly showed that the famine was not due to want of food in the country, but due to the difficulty of the starving people in obtaining food. He also pointed out that the staying power of the people depended greatly on the land system under which they lived. He urged the extension and completion of irrigation works and of roads and communications.
In 1880, the Famine Commission referred before told the government that the main reason of famine was that agriculture was almost the only industry and there was no other industry on which people could depend.
The British were neither prepared to lighten the burden of their iniquitous land revenue and other taxes, nor were prepared to do away with the landlords and money lenders, nor were ready to encourage industries or irrigation, nor were willing to stop sending a considerable portion of peo- ple's revenue to England. Instead of making these funda- mental changes to improve the economy and prevent the famines, the government of India created a Famine Relief Fund to alleviate the sufferings of the victims largely of their own creation.
To recover the money spent on the half-heartedly execu- ted famine relief, the government raised taxes on the already impoverished and over-burdened masses without touching the British created vested interests such as landlords, money- lenders, and plantation owners, or by reducing the extremely extravagant expenditure of themselves, or by lowering the fattest salaries of the British India bureaucrats. The British. government was like Shylock taking not only the whole pound of their large salaries and profits of exploitation, but also the ounce of blood from the masses who had absolutely no voice in administering the expenditure except for only a few years in the 20th century. The result, therefore, of the so-called Famine Relief Fund was squeezing the money out of poverty-stricken, nay famine-stricken, surviving tax payers who would, in the next round, become the victims of the next famine.
An American economist wrote in 1908 "The very efforts made by the government to alleviate famines do, by the increased taxation imposed, but intensify and extend their real cause. Although in the recent famine in Southern India six millions of people, it is estimated, perished of actual starvation, and the great mass of those who sur- vived were actually stripped, yet the taxes were not remitted and the salt tax, already prohibitory to the great bulk of these poverty-stricken people, was increased forty per cent, just as after the terrible Bengal famine in 1770 the revenue was actually driven up, by raising assessments upon the survivors and rigorously enforcing collection.
Ostensibly the Famine Relief Fund was for alleviating the sufferings created by the famines, yet the government of Lytton (Viceroy of India), for example, did not hesitate to use the "famine fund" for the Afghan war--a war waged purely for the imperial interests of Britain, while 1,300,000 were dying in the North-Western Province alone in 1877-78. The total deaths from famine during Lytton's rule (April 1876 to May 1880) were officially estimated to be "between five and six millions" plus the 1,300,000 in the North-Western Province
The British apologists advanced two reasons for the frequent occurrence of famines during their rule; one was that famines were a lamentable necessity of the 'universal peace' brought to India by the British, and the second was that the Indian people produced too many children which caused famines.
British Peace, Law and Order
British imperialists talk of peace, law and order in India as if before their rule, it had been nothing but a coun- try of violent, fighting people who did not know the mean- ing of peace and order. There is no doubt that in 1707, after the death of the last important Mugal emperor, Aurang- zeb, there was confusion and anarchy in some parts of the country, in which the British themselves played an important part. But that did not mean that lawlessness prevailed in India for any length of time. Other parts of the world. including England, were not immune from lawlessness and civil wars.
This period of transition from the fall of Aurangzeb to the establishment of British rule (1707-57) in the words of an eminent Indian historian 'can never be regarded as the normal one, and the whole course of Indian history shows how such periods of anarchy and confusion, usually following the downfall of an empire, were always merely preludes to an efficient and stable form of government.
After the British acquired their empire in India in 1737, they plunged it into total lawlessness and anarchy for about 30 years, as has been indicated before. In the 19th century alone, British carried on, no fewer than 111 wars, military expeditions and military campaigns." As far as security of life and property, and an efficient system of administration based on the rule of law were concerned, an eminent Indian historian affirms that these "had not been established, or at least been largely absent, at the end of the first century of British rule in India. i.e. more than half (53%) the total period of British rule.
The fundamental point is that this so-called peace was established by the British for their own interests. To carry out the policies of exploitation, peace was an essential pre requisite. This could be explained with the help of an analogy of a gang of robbers entering a house. When they enter, they may not be able to do their work if the residents go on fighting with them. The robbers must see that the residents of the house are kept quiet, and remain within the rules of "law and order" established by the robbers. They do this either by killing them outright or by gagging their mouths and tying their hands and feet. And if they are smart and cunning, as the British were, they would create such conditions where the residents would start fight- ing amongst themselves. When they are thus quiet or fight- ing amongst themselves, the robbers can "peacefully" do their business. Also the robbers would see that nobody else who could share or disturb their activities would enter the house. For this reason, they would appoint fellow rob- bers to stand at the entrance to keep an eye and be ready to shoot, if anyone tries to enter. No sensible person would argue that the "peace, law and order' maintained by the robbers is a commendable proposition. The activities of the British in India were very much like those of the robbers in another's house. For the first hundred years, they were busy establishing "law and order" and "peace' by murder- ing, maiming, and kidnapping the people, and tying their hands and fect while looting them; the culmination of this was the so-called Mutiny of 1857 in which the British 'really were guilty of the cruellest injustice on the greatest scale' and when they took at least 100,000 Indian lives' includ- ing the innocent unwanton savage butchery of children and women. And when peace was established after killing so many people, they were able to enhance their activities greatly, although the killing did not stop completely. As a result, millions and millions of people were led to the peace of the grave, and those who were able to survive subsisted with their feet and hands tied. The British did it with the help of their many props and pillars, including the military and the police. At no time, in peace or war, was the ex- penditure on the military, excluding the police, never less than 25% of the total budget; and frequently it was much more than this. This military was ready, like a few robbers standing at the entrance door, to ensure that others didn't disturb the "peace' in the house, while also keeping the Indians quiet, if the police was insufficient for the purpose.
The "peace', "law and order' are desirable only if the laws are good and if the peace and laws lead to the all- around progress of a nation. But if they hinder progress, that "peace" and rule of "law and order" are undesirable, and must be done away with. "However indispensable to civilization peace and order may be, real civilization is not contained in them. They may even be danger to it, should they be promoted by equalizing and levelling," declared an eminent Dutch historian, Jan Huizinga. "Order expresses rather one of the conditions of government, than either its purpose or the criterion of its excellence' said J. S. Mill. 'Peace at any cost' has perhaps never been the human way; rather the most frequently used terms are 'just peace' or 'peace with honour' heard in the past or the present. Even the peace of Christ is defined by Pope Paul VI as follows "Peace without justice, without dignitv, peace through capi- culation to evil is the mark of fear. Peace in justice, a just peace, was defined by John XXIII in his testament the encyclical 'Parcem in Terris' This is the peace of Christ, Pax Christ.
The kind of 'peace' and 'order' the British established in India, is summed up in 1915 by William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State of the United States: "The trouble is that England acquired India for England's advantage, not for India's and that she holds India for England's benefit, not for India's. She administers and she passes judgment upon every question as a judge would were he permitted to decide his own case. "The Britain has demonstrated, as many have before, man's inability to exercise with wisdom and justice, irresponsible power over helpless people. He has conferred some benefits upon India but he has extorted a tremendous price for them while he has boasted of bring- ing peace to the living he has led millions to the peace of the grave; while he has dwelt upon order established between warring troops, he has impoverished the country by legalized pillage. Pillage is a strong word, but no refinement of language can purge the present system of its iniquity.' "Under the British Indian despot" declared India's Grand Old Man in 1897, "The man is at peace, there is no violence: his substance is drained way, unseen, peaceably and subtly-he starves in peace and perishes in peace, with law and order
The apostle of truth and honesty, India's Mahatma Gandhi declared that "the kind of peace which British rule has brought to India, has been worse than war.
The British were not the first in history to call their desolation of India as peace. It was aptly said of the Romans, after they destroyed Carthage completely that 'they have a desolation and call it peace" "Here and there, in east and west, it (Rome) created a desert and called it peace. Similarly "we, too, who have brought to India poverty and degradation have also taught ourselves to dignify cur wilderness with the name of peace.
Even this "peace of the grave' was completely shattered in the last days of the British rule in India in 1946-47, the year of anarchy, confusion, and bloodshed. In other words, British rule in India began and ended with lawlessness and collapse of the peace of desolation, of which they were so proud.
Over-Population
The British told the world that the 'teeming millions' of India were responsible for her growing poverty; thereby absolving themselves completely of the thousands of crimes which they committed against much of the world to support and enrich parasitic Britain, just like Rome in ancient times did to support parasitic Italy. This argument of over- population was like putting the horse behind the cart. In 1957, after independence, an American economist pointed cut, neither density nor growth of population is respon- sible for the poverty that besets India. Poverty is rather the reason why India finds it so difficult to support her large and continually growing population.
In India's history of population growth, the year 1921 is described as "the Great Divide' " Up to 1921, the rate of growth was not only slow but extremely sporadic. From the year 1871, the first available census to 1921, the popu- lation of India (including Pakistan and Bangla Desh) increased by 18.3% During the same period, the popu- lation of Europe increased by 47%. The reason for India's slow rate of growth was a very high death rate due to recurring famines and various diseases and epidemics.
Since 1921, some improvement of transport and com- munication and a little extension of irrigation and a little improvement in public health and sanitation kept off the dangers of widespread famine, except in Bengal in 1942-43. The death rate was still very high from 1921-51; but not abnormally high as before 1921. Diseases like malaria and cholera visited the country; but their death toll was not as abnormal as before 1921. As a result, the population of India from 1921-51 increased by 44%, whereas the world increase was 33% North American increase was 45%. and European increase, including Asian U.S.S.R. was 20% during the same period. Poverty of India, however, does not date from 1921. It is only after 1951, after India's independence, which 'was an even greater watershed than 1921" that population increased at an abnormally high rate surpassing all previous records, because of the sharp decline (from 29.4 to 18.0 per thousand) in the death rate.
According to Kingsley Davis, the average rate of increase of India's population, from 1871 to 1941, was approximately 0.60% per year, less than the estimated rate of 0.69% for the whole world from 1850 to 1940, and also less than Europe, North America and a good many other countries. From 1871 to 1941, the total increase in India's population was 52% The British Isle's increase (even not counting heavy emigration during this period) was 57%, Japan's increase was approx. 120%, and the increase of the U.S.A. was of the order of 230%. The overall increase of population in Europe from 1600 to 1940 was nearly double that of India.
From the point of density of population per square mile during the British domination India's increase was less than that of many other countries of the world. For exam- ple, from 1871 to 1921, the population increase per square mile in India was 5.7% while in England and Wales it was 66.8%. Even today the density of population in India is much less than England, Japan, Belgium and Italy. From the point of view of density, India ranks among countries with a medium density of population.
Why could Europe, North America, and Japan support a larger increase of population at a much high standard of living than India? The reason was that in these indepen- dent countries, the spurt in population kept pace with economic development, the one sparking the other; whereas in the case of India under the rule of the British, India experienced economic regression.
"The cause of Indian poverty" wrote an American author in 1942, 'is not, the rate of population growth, but the fact that India is a case of arrested economic development. In Western countries, the growth of industries encouraged a rapid increase in population and provided for its support.
In India, industrial development has been artificially restricted, and an increasing proportion of the people has been forced to depend on a primitive system of agricultural production, which, in turn, is less and less able to meet the demands placed upon it because of the crippling conditions of land ownership and taxation.
In such a state of 'arrested economic development" the argument that over-population was responsible for arresting economic development, advanced by British imperialists and their lackeys was nothing but a white lie.
If India's over-population was the cause in the British plans of economic development for India, why did the British Government, like any other government concerned for the welfare of its people, not adopt measures such as opening birth control clinics to reduce the birth rate, as the present free government of India is doing? In spite of request to the government to control population growth, the British did nothing, as it did not involve British interests. As an example, an author wrote in 1938 that the Legisla- tive Council of Madras "has, so far without effect, asked the Government to open birth control clinics. Such clinics were opened in the Indian State of Mysore in 1930."
Were Indian Farmers More Conservative Than Farmers of Other Countries?
Another accusation made against the Indians, particu- larly against the Indian farmers, was that they were conser- vative and did not want to change. "It has been usual for Europeans, especially for Americans, wrote an American author, 'to consider all Asiatics as innately more conservative and less open to change than themselves."""" This conserva- tive or "backward" outlook, the British told us, was responsi- ble for lack of progress of the Indian economy in spite of their "best" efforts. The same author states that "while conditions have been so different as to make a conclusion impossible, this is probably untrue. Major General Sir Alexander Walker, a distinguished servant of the East India Company, wrote a paper in 1820 regarding Indian agri- culture when this industry was still flourishing. About the Indian peasants he wrote
"The Indian peasant is commonly well enough informed as to his interest, and he is generally intelligent and reflect- ing. This is the character of his class everywhere. He is attached to his own modes, because they are easy and use- ful; but furnish him with instruction and means, and he will adopt them provided they be for his profit . let him clearly understand that the change would give him less trouble and better crops, and he would adopt it. They have been always ready to receive the roots and seeds of Europe, that suited their climate, and have adopted several which they found to answer their purpose into their regular course of cultivation.
One of the best informed British officials in India, author of many books on India's rural economy, and Direc- tor of Agriculture in Bombay from 1921 to 1927, Dr. Harold Mann, wrote about the farmers of India "After long experience of Indian farmers in many parts of India, I think that this idea of innate conservatism among the rural classes is not correct, and possibly they are really less averse to change than a very large proportion of the farmers of western countries.
This lack of progress and stagnation of economy was not because the Indian farmers did not want to change; but primarily because of the chronic extreme shortage of capital of the great bulk of the cultivating peasantry. This in turn was the result of the land tenure and land revenue policies introduced by the British with two foremost considerations: (1) getting allies in India, so as to consolidate British rule; and (2) securing maximum amounts of revenue from the land.