The Poverty Problem in India; Being a Dissertation on the Causes and Remedies of Indian Poverty

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... THE CONDITION OF THE INDIAN PEASANTRY. We cannot open this chapter better than by making the following quotations: --I 'Toil, toil, toil; hunger, hunger, hunger (not actual starvation or it would sooner be all over); sickness, suffering, sorrow, these alas! 2&Q& are the keynotes of their short and sad existences; and who can deny that for these fifty odd millions and more, it were better that they had never been born, better, almost, that stones were, now tied about their necks, and that they 'were cast into the rivers and drowned/ (A. O. Hume). 'I do not hesitate to say that half of our agricultural population-Anever know, from '.:, '/';' ', S year's end to year's end, what it is to have their hunger fully satisfied.' (S+r--Ghrrrfes. Elliott). The above is not an overdrawn picti of our peasantry. It is seldom thm an anti-Congress ruler like Sir Charles Elliott can occupy a common platform with the venerable leader of the Indian National Congress, But these are facts which anybody tnktruQg may read. No amount of administrative sophistry or circumlocutions official reporting can drown the truth that the squalid misery, 'the stifling, nevec'-lifting fog of penury, ' depicted above, is Withering away the vitality of the most sweetly-disposed peasantry in the world. 0 j/ Yes, if evekfjgre was a peasantry which' was its 'country's pride, ' the place of honour must be yielded to the toiling and suffering masses of people, who, under the tropical sun of India, grow and produce, even when the blood of man boils?mrr"" soothos in June, what the whole civilised world takes advantage of, denying themselves even the barest necessities of life. If we want to see martyrs, true, heroic, and self-denying souls, perfectly resigned to their fate, we can find...