Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎532v] (189/238)

402 Famine in India: its Causes and Effects.
as a matter of fact, we know from a recent resolution that he has been
devoting a good deal of thought to the question, and has practically
accepted some of the suggestions recently made for mitigating the rigour
of collection. In a note on p. 18 it is stated that “between one and
two million die of insufficient food in every year of so-called plenty.”
I doubt if there is any good authority for such a statement. A great
many—perhaps rather a larger proportion than in England—always
suffer from “ insufficient food,” and some, no doubt, die of starvation
and misery every year in both countries, but hardly, I think, a million.
I am not aware if there are any trustworthy statistics as to the comparative
prevalence of suicide in India and Europe, but I should be surprised if
suicide from want and misery was not more common in Europe, (except, of
course, amongst widows,) than in India. The digest of Lord Curzon’s
speech on pp. 18, 19, and the statement that all the officials in India and a
great many others have conspired to say what they know to be untrue, is
not very intelligible to me, but is certainly very libellous and offensive. It
is strange that so many writers seem to think officials have neither the
feelings nor the rights of ordinary people, and may be grossly insulted
without the smallest hesitation. Speaking as an official myself, I have no
doubt they are generally quite as conscientious as their critics.
The real question is, Why the ryots, when they have sold their produce,
have no money in their pockets to buy food. That the unskilled labour
ing classes have none is not unusual or surprising, and the only remedy
for them against starvation is to receive their wages in grain or emigrate,
as many of them do in the South of India. Emigration is their great
weapon when their employers are unjust, and many are the devices
resorted to by the large farmer to keep his serfs at home one of the
commonest being to keep a loan running against them, and a udgment of
the court held over them in terrorem —not for actual use, except in case of
attempted flight.
As to the interesting table on p. 25, it must be remembered that it was
not till the Orissa famine of 1865 that we as a nation became fully alive to
our responsibilities in this matter. The really terrible loss of life on that
occasion aroused such indignation that for some time there was certainly a
tendency to find famines where none existed—as, for instance, in Bengal
in 1873—and scarcity was sometimes exaggerated into famine by district
officers afraid of being charged with losing a single life contrary to the
stringent orders then in force. It was partly in consequence of this feeling
that the number of famines largely increased since 1865, so that we have
nine famines in the thirty five years from 1866 to 1900, and, unfortunately
a greater number of provinces were affected in the two last than in any
previous years. Then it will be observed that Madras seems to have
suffered more constantly than any other province, with eleven famines in
119 years—from 1781 to 1900 ; but it must be remembered that Madras
extends from Ganjam to Tinnevelly, 950 miles, with a breadth of 450, and
an area of more than 138,000 square miles, with a great variety of climates,
so that there will often be famine in one part of it while there are copious
harvests in another; and the great famine of 1877 was the only one that