 |
 |
The issue of famines in India is a useful reminder that each of us is not able to know everything, and that that therefore we need to be careful about the way we criticise others lack of knowledge or inclusion, and about the way we suggest others take up issues we are knowledgeable and concerned about. We want to take people with us, not have their defences put up. The World War II famine was brought to light by the letters of Clive Branson to his wife Noreen and published by the Communist Party as a pamphlet 'A British Soldier in India'. Previous famines do seem to have been known about in this country. For example in 1897. Charles Elliott, the Commissioner for Mysore 1877-8, Commissioner for Assam 1881-5, and Lieutenant-Governor, Bengal 1891-5, was living in Wimbledon in 1897 and chaired a meeting to raise money for Indian Famine Relief. It was attended by several Wimbledon VIPs. Over the following months collections in Wimbledon contributed £570.0s.2d to the fund set up by Surrey County Council. Elliott explained that the summer monsoon in 1896 had failed. He recounted his earlier experience as Famine Commissioner in 1877-8, when out of 15,000 orphans in Misaw, only 3,000 eventually lived. William Socialist Democratic Federation branch members Williams and Fred Knee proposed and seconded a resolution protesting at the drain of produce from Indian by Britain. They were outvoted. On Monday 8 February 1897 the national SDF leader Henry Hyndman had spoken on 'Socialism and practical ideas'. He talked about the Indian famine, saying that the money being collected for relief there was from people who were hypocrites, because it was less than a tenth of what they extracted from India every year. Half the inhabitants of India never had their hunger satisfied at any one time. Of 250 millions under British rule, half were on the verge of starvation. Given that ???m pounds worth of produce was taken from India every year, the famine was made by the Government, which had been aware for years of the state of things. The existing crisis was the result of downright deliberate rascality.' Sean