Famines are not caused by Droughts alone . And the British Empire excelled in mass-killings before anyone else in the World. They did everything for self-interest , including railways and later created the dismal science called Economics on the basis of Enlightened Self-Interest. It was an unique gift of the European Renaissance , Internal Enlightenment built on the blood of Empires , similar to modern Western Democracy built on Dictatorships and Sheikhdoms or rapacious Political-Classes for itself regardless of ideologies with their Intellectual henchmen. Till we go back and restart from where the Colonisation of our minds, lands , crops and production processes was started , and re-imagine again, what our Renaissance will be, that which is creative , sustainable and builds communities again , we will just carry on the same machine . This western machine of economics based on endless extraction from colonies , internal or external has to be replaced . Whether the cotton farmers of Vidarbha or our Centralised Food-Supply chains , all our systems were distorted from 18th century onwards . We need a new program , a new world-view . The mass murderers who went under the title of “Viceroys of India” were all pass outs from the East India College and deeply influenced by the rubbish taught there. They actually saw the massive death tolls due to famines as a “positive check” on the population of Indians! This is illustrated in a confidential note sent by to Lord Ripon by one of his subordinates (Ripon was viceroy of India from 1880-1884 CE), “In the words of Couper: ‘If the famine mortality in 1879 be tested, it will be found that about 80 per cent of the deaths come from the labouring classes, and nearly the whole of the remaining 20 per cent from cultivators owning such minute plots of land as to be hardly removed from labourers.’ Although they died more rapidly than any other, ‘still they reproduce themselves with sufficient rapidity to overcrowd every employment that is opened to them.’” In all the famines which took place under the Christian British Raj, there never was a shortage of food in the country overall .In fact during the worst famines, surplus food grains were being exported from India. Nothing illustrates this point better than the graphs below which show that records amount of rice and wheat were being exported out of India, while millions of Indians were dying of starvation. Temple went one step further and instituted relief camps which were not very different to Nazi concentration camps. People already half dead from starvation had to walk hundreds of miles to reach these relief camps, which were hell holes. Additionally he instituted a food ration for starving people working in the camps, which was less than that given to the inmates of Nazi concentration camps. The rations given to prisoners by the Nazis at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944 had a calorific value of 1627 calories, while the “Temple” ration for famine victims was 1500 calories. The same dismal story is repeated again in the terrible famines of 1896-1902. Rice and wheat exports soared to record levels in the years where the famine was at its peak. The most conservative estimates of Indians who died in these two killer famines are 8.4 million while the more realistic estimate is about 19 million. But even while the dance of death was going on, record amounts of tax were recovered from the people by the most violent methods which included murder, rape etc. In Warren Hastings own words, “Notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of the province, and the consequent decrease of the cultivation, the nett collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of I768. . . . It was naturally to be expected that the diminution of the revenue should have kept an equal pace with the other consequences of so great a calamity. That it did not was owing to its being violently kept up to its former standard. Farmers were forced to grow cash crops such as cotton, opium, indigo simply to keep paying off the extortionate demands of the British leeches. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce dictated and controlled the growth of cotton in fertile areas such as Berar (Vidarbha in Maharashtra).The entire social system of Vidarbha was destroyed so that the British could put in place their own rapacious system known as khatedari which was implemented in 1877 CE .The old landlord families were either destroyed or pauperised and the British government became the supreme owner of the farm lands. Crops such as cotton grew readily in the fertile black soil of Deccan but had the side effect of destroying the fertility of the soil. In addition the British parasites even turned cow dung which had acted as a natural fertiliser, into a taxable revenue source. jambudveep.wordpress/2011/01/08/an-explanatory-note-on-the-famines-in-india/
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:26:46 +0000
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