Thread by @HindooHistory

The Wahpeton Times, 1900

"THE SITUATION IN INDIA"

"In attributing India's famines to overpopulation, the Journal falls into a very common error."

#HindooHistory

"The theory that India's famines are due to overpopulation is further discredited by the fact that famines in China, of any great magnitude, are seldom heard of, though China's population is denser than that of India."

"The true cause of India's famines must be sought elsewhere than in overpopulation; and it is easy to find it in the creeds and customs of grotesque and diversified heathenism"

"The prevailing religions of the country create most of the conditions which make all attempts to deal with the famine as a material fact so difficult, if not unavailing"

"Of course, heathenism does not cause the failure of the monsoon, or the scarcity of rain. But it hinders the making of provision against such occurrences in the erection of reservoirs, the extension of irrigation works, etc."

"Fatalism is an ingredient in Brahminism and Buddhism, as well as Mohammedism. If a man is to die by famine, so he must die, and it is impious to try and prevent it."

"Water reservoirs, irrigation works, artesian wells, schemes for making wet lands available, and the like, are therefore condemned, and millions of people will refuse to work on them."

"Any number of varieties of nourishing food, which could be raised or imported in exchange for Indian products, are also forbidden to be eaten on religious grounds"

"The natives for instance, will eat milk and butter, curds, etc, but they cannot be induced to eat beef. So we read of millions of beeves, for which food cannot be found, in the present famine, being allowed to die and their flesh to go to waste..."

"when, if slaughtered as soon as food for them failed, as would be done in America, their beef might have contributed to a vast total to the means of keeping the starving people alive."

"Another feature of the case is that heathen beliefs forbid the intentional taking of life, even that of an insect. This is an especial feature of Buddhism. It results that noxious beasts and reptiles abound and to these are abandoned great area of fertile land"

"Again, it is a maxim among Christian peoples that 'if a man will not work, neither shall he eat.' In India, on the other hand, there are millions of men who will do no work whatever, famine or no famine."

"While there are other millions will do only the special kind of work set aside for their particular castes. This cuts down the productive capacity of the population probably one half."

"There is an idle priest or fakir to be supported for probably by every ten or dozen of the population. Heathenish ceremonies, pilgrimages and penances absorb an immense amount of time and still further diminish the amount that should be given to productive labor"

"And then child-marriage comes in, with its baneful effects on the energies and industrial capacities of the race. The question may be asked, why does not the British government deal with these evils as it deals with them at home?"

"Why doesn't it prohibit child marriages, arrest the fakirs and idle priests as vagrants, break up the abominable pilgrimages to the Ganges by legislative restrictions, etc?"

"The answer is that any open interference by the government with the dominion of the different orders of priests, Brahmins, Buddhist and Mohammedan, would at once light the flames of revolt all over the land"

"This has been learned by costly experience. Some of the grosser rites of heathenism-- like the burning of widows alive with their dead husbands, the throwing of infants to crocodiles or their exposure to birds of prey, and the festival of Juggernaut--the British authorities..."

"have been able to suppress because in such action they had native support among sects opposed to such inhumanities. but to deal with the great mass of evils attendant upon false religions the government is at present powerless."

"It must wait the slow results of the work of Christian teaching and the enlightenment which comes, likewise slowly, from the comparisons made, now more and more frequently, by intelligent Hindus of the conditions of their people with that of Christian communities"

"When India shall be Christianized the problem of dealing with its famines will be solved. England won't touch heathenism and paganism as long as she can tax it and make money out of it no matter to what hardship and degradation it reduces the misguided people"

"But England will rob in broad daylight Christianized and civilized struggling republics, on a pretense of Christianizing them. What depravity on the one hand and able-bodied gall on the other"