The Famine in the North-West Provinces.
I shall next proceed to show the manner in which Lord Lytton's internal administration of India was affected by his policy beyond the frontier. As every one knows, there have been, of late years, a series of terrible famines in different parts of India. The desolating effects of these famines last for many years after the actual dearth has terminated. Not only has the cattle been swept away, together with millions of the agricultural population, but those who survive are without capital and without physical strength. The consequence is that large tracts of naturally productive land fall out of cultivation, and remain so for considerable periods of time. There are, moreover, no poor-laws in India for the relief of the starving and the destitute. The administration of State relief, therefore, during such seasons of calamity, is a matter of imperative necessity. In keeping its agriculturists alive, the State is simply providing for its own solvency. It sacrifices for this purpose a portion of the wealth it derives from the land, in order to save the remainder. A combat with famine is to the State in India an act as much demanded by obvious expediency, as in the interests of humanity. This relief is afforded partly by remissions of revenue throughout the stricken districts, and partly by the opening of public works where the starving and destitute may find food and employment. In the winter of 1877-78 a terrible famine fell upon the North-West Provinces. The cultivated land in these provinces is mainly under two descriptions of crops—the rain crops, and the cold weather crops. The rain crops are sown towards the end of June, or shortly after the rains have set in, and are reaped in October and November. From these crops the people obtain the food on which they are to subsist during the winter. In 1877 there was an almost total failure of rain in the North-West Provinces, and the Lieutenant-Governor—Sir George Couper—reported that the "greater part of the crops was irretrievably ruined by a scorching west wind that blew for three weeks." The long and severe winter of the North-West had to be faced by a population destitute of food. Sir George Couper reports as follows to the Government of India on the 11th October, 1877:—
"The Lieutenant-Governor is well aware of the straits to which the Government of India is put at the present time for money, and it is with the utmost reluctance that he makes a report which must temporarily add to their burdens. But he sees no other course to adopt. If the village communities which form the great mass of our revenue payers be pressed now, they will simply be ruined.... Cattle are reported to be dying or sold to the butchers in hundreds, in consequence of the want of fodder, and this will add very materially to the agricultural distress and difficulties if they are called on at once to meet their State obligations."
In making this appeal for a remission of revenue, Sir George Couper was asking for no more than what had been granted by every English Government since British rule was planted in India. But then former Governments had not adopted a spirited frontier policy to which reason, justice, and humanity had to be subordinated. This was what Lord Lytton had done. The hunting to death of an old and faithful ally was certain to prove a costly operation; and he would need for it every farthing which could be wrung from the population of India. Sir George Couper's appeal was therefore rejected, and he was instructed that these destitute creatures were to be compelled to meet their State obligations at once, precisely as if there was no dearth in the land. To this order Sir George Couper returned a long reply, from which we quote the following remarkable paragraphs:—
"If the demand on the zemindars (landlords) is not suspended, the cultivators can neither claim nor expect any relaxation of the demand for rent; if pressure is put on the former, they in turn must and will put the screw on their tenants. All through the dark months of August and September, zemindars were urged by district officers to deal leniently with their tenants, and aid them by all means in their power. Many nobly responded to the call, and it would be rather inconsistent to subject them now to a pressure which may compel them to deal harshly with their tenants. These remarks are offered in no captious spirit.... His Honour trusts that the realizations will equal the expectations of the Government of India, but if they are disappointed, his Excellency the Viceroy ... may rest assured that it will not be for want of effort or inclination to put the necessary pressure on those who are liable for the demand."
Is not this passing strange? Sir George knows that these people are in a state of the direst distress; their cattle dying by hundreds, themselves penniless and foodless; if this demand is made upon them, he has reported that they will "simply be ruined;" but at the exhortations of Lord Lytton he sets to work cheerfully. Neither inclination nor effort shall be wanting in him to make the people experience to the full the agony and the bitterness of famine. Thus it is that a prayerful Viceroy, with the "valued assistance" of his colleagues, provides for the "well-being of the millions committed to his fostering care."
"I have tried," writes one despairing district officer, "to stave off collecting, but have received peremptory orders to begin. This will be the last straw on the back of the unfortunate zemindars.... A more suicidal policy I cannot conceive. I have done what I could to open the eyes of the Commissioners and the Lieutenant-Governor as to the state of the place, but without avail. I have nothing to do but to carry out the orders of Government, which means simply ruin." "The exaction of the land revenue in Budaon," writes another, "and, I believe, in other districts as well, involved a direct breach of faith with the zemindars, which has had the very worst effect on the minds of the native community.... The people are loud in their complaints of the faithlessness of Government, and, to my mind, with ample reason."
But the Government of India having decreed the collection of the land revenue, were now compelled to justify their rapacity, by pretending that there was no famine calling for a remission. The dearth and the frightful mortality throughout the North-West Provinces were to be preserved as a State secret like the negotiations with Shere Ali. By this means it was hoped that the famine would work itself out, the dead be decently interred out of human sight, and Lord Lytton obtain the funds for his hunting expedition without an unpatriotic opposition becoming cognizant of the facts either in India or in England. It is a striking illustration of the enormous space which divides us from the people of India, that such a scheme should have been thought practicable, but stranger still—it was very near to success. An accident may be said to have defeated it. During all that dreary winter famine was busy devouring its victims by thousands. At the lowest computation more than a quarter of a million perished of actual starvation. The number would have to be doubled if it included all those who perished of disease, the consequence of insufficient food and exposure to cold; for, in the desperate endeavour to keep their cattle alive, the wretched peasantry fed them on the straw which thatched their huts, and which provided them with bedding. The winter was abnormally severe, and without a roof above them or bedding beneath them, scantily clad and poorly fed, multitudes perished of cold. The dying and the dead were strewn along the cross-country roads. Scores of corpses were tumbled into old wells, because the deaths were too numerous for the miserable relatives to perform the usual funeral rites. Mothers sold their children for a single scanty meal. Husbands flung their wives into ponds, to escape the torment of seeing them perish by the lingering agonies of hunger. Amid these scenes of death the Government of India kept its serenity and cheerfulness unimpaired. The journals of the North-West were persuaded into silence. Strict orders were given to civilians, under no circumstances to countenance the pretence of the natives that they were dying of hunger. One civilian, a Mr. MacMinn, unable to endure the misery around him, opened a relief work at his own expense. He was severely reprimanded, threatened with degradation, and ordered to close the work immediately.
All this time, not a whisper of the tragedy that was being enacted in the North-West Provinces had reached Calcutta. The district officials dared not communicate to the press what they knew, and in India there are hardly any other means of obtaining information. But in the month of February Mr. Knight, the proprietor of the Calcutta Statesman, had occasion to visit Agra. He was astonished to find all around him the indications of an appalling misery. He began to investigate the matter, and gradually the truth revealed itself. A quarter of a million of British subjects had perished of hunger, pursued even to their graves by the pitiless exactions of the Government.
Mr. Knight made known in the columns of the Statesman what he had seen, and what he had learned from others in the course of his inquiries. The guilty consciences of those who were responsible for this vast suffering smote them. Lord Lytton and Sir George Couper felt that it was necessary to extinguish Mr. Knight—and that speedily. Sir George Couper accordingly drew up a long Minute, vindicating himself from the attacks of Mr. Knight; and this Minute was duly acknowledged in laudatory terms by the Government of India. The Viceroy in Council characterized the Minute as "a convincing statement of facts," and then added that the Government of India needed no such statement to convince it that the "Lieutenant-Governor had exercised forethought in his arrangements, and had shown humanity in his orders throughout the recent crisis." The mortality which Lord Lytton "deplored" with "a deep and painful regret," in so far "as it was directly the result of famine, was caused rather by the unwillingness of the people to leave their homes than by any want of forethought on the part of the local government in providing works where they might be relieved." Lord Lytton "unhesitatingly accepted the statement of the local government that no one who was willing to go to a relief work need have died of famine, and it is satisfactorily shown in his Honour's Minute that the relief wage was ample."
This eulogy on Sir George Couper and all his doings was published on May 2, 1878, after Mr. Knight had begun publishing his revelations in the Statesman. It is to be noted that neither Sir George Couper nor the Government of India denies that the famine has been sore in the land and the mortality excessive. But on February 28—two months previously, and before Mr. Knight had commenced his inconvenient disclosures—Sir George Couper reported to the Government of India that "it may be questioned whether it will not be found hereafter that the comparative immunity from cholera and fever which, owing apparently to the drought, the Provinces have enjoyed during the past year, will not compensate for the losses caused by insufficient food and clothing, and make the mortality generally little, if at all, higher than in ordinary years." At the time when this letter was written, the official mortuary returns showed that the mortality in the North-West was seven and eight times in excess of what it was in ordinary years. There can, therefore, be no question that the confession of that "terrible mortality" which Lord Lytton so deeply "deplored," was wrung from Sir George Couper by the publication of Mr. Knight's letters. But for them, the official record would have stated that the "mortality was little, if at all, higher than in ordinary years." This record is sufficient proof that no adequate arrangements were made to meet a calamity which, according to Sir George Couper, did not exist—at least, not until Mr. Knight insisted that it did. At the same time, it will be as well to give the proof of this in detail, in order to show what the Government of India is capable of saying.
In one of his letters to the Statesman, Mr. Knight averred that there were "no relief works worthy of the name till about January 20, and no works sufficient for the people's need till the middle of February." Sir George Couper replies to this charge as follows:—"The reports already submitted to the Government are, I think, amply sufficient to acquit me of this charge.... In October, Colonel Fraser was again deputed to visit the head-quarters of each division, and, in consultation with the district officers, settle what works should be undertaken to give employment to the poor when the inevitable pressure began." Here Sir George Couper affirms that so far back as October he had foreseen the "inevitable pressure," and made all the necessary arrangements. Nevertheless we find him, so late as November 23, reporting as follows to the Government of India:—
"Although the danger of widespread famine ... has happily passed away, it is a matter of extreme importance that well-considered projects for great public works should be ready in case of future necessity.... Very few projects of this character have been completed for these provinces, and the Lieutenant-Governor thinks no time should be lost in preparing them.... There can be no doubt that the want of such projects would have been felt as a most serious difficulty by this Government if relief works on a large scale had been necessary in the present season."
Thus, we find that up to the close of November no large relief works had been sanctioned, because the "danger of widespread famine had happily passed away." Allowing for official delays, this would make the date when "relief works worthy of the name" were opened tally with the time stated by Mr. Knight—namely, January 20. What, again, Sir George Couper could mean by reporting on November 23, that "danger of widespread famine has happily passed away," is perplexing, for on November 26, or just three days subsequently, he writes as follows:—
"It appears to his Honour that the Government of India fail to realize the extent of the damage caused by the unparalleled failure of the rain this year.... The rain did not come until 6th October, by which time the greater part of the crops was irretrievably ruined.... It is a mistake to suppose that the autumn crop has escaped in the greater part of the Benares and Allahabad divisions, and in the south-eastern districts of Oudh.... The rice crops, which are largely grown in most of the districts in these divisions, have almost entirely perished, and of other crops, the area sown is much less than usual."
On October 11 Sir George Couper reported that if the land revenues was exacted the village communities would be ruined. On November 26 he reported that the crops had been "irretrievably ruined." Nevertheless, on November 23, he reported that no large relief works had been sanctioned because "the danger of widespread famine had passed away." It follows, from this last report, that for whatever other purpose Colonel Fraser may have been deputed to visit the head-quarters of each division, it was not to make satisfactory provision for a widespread famine. No. As Sir George Couper was well aware at the time he penned his reply to Mr. Knight, the object of Colonel Fraser's tour was precisely the opposite of this. These were the instructions he was charged to enjoin upon civil officers and executive engineers:—
"Please discourage relief works in every possible way. It may be, however, that when agricultural operations are over, some of the people may want work. This, however, except on works for which there is budget provision, should only be given if the collector is satisfied that without it the people would actually starve. Mere distress is not a sufficient reason for opening a relief work. And if a relief work be started, task-work should be rigorously exacted, and the people put on the barest subsistence wage; so that we may be satisfied that if any other kind of work were procurable elsewhere, they would resort to it."
In accordance with the letter and spirit of these instructions the famine-stricken multitudes were literally starved off such scanty works as were open. The "barest subsistence wage" was fined down, smaller and smaller, until the people abandoned the works in despair, and returned to their villages to die. Nay, in some places, the public works which had been duly sanctioned in the yearly budget were transformed into relief works; and the labourers upon them, instead of being paid at the ordinary market rates, were reduced to the "barest subsistence wage, task-work being rigorously exacted." A beneficent but economical Government took advantage of the dire extremity to which its subjects were reduced to reap this unexpected profit out of their miseries. None the less, "the Viceroy in Council unhesitatingly accepts the statement of the local government, that no one who was willing to go to a relief work need have died of famine."