INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

MITIGATIV"E MEASURES. 197
to be sent to hospital We tried every way we
could think of, and found that they would steal,
but would not eat. I think the Ooryahs are
quite a different sort of people from those in all
other parts of India where I have been." Here
is another picture, drawn by the t Daily News'
correspondent during the early part of the present
famine. He first describes the better-to-do
people holding aloof from the groups of wretched
poverty-stricken poor collected for an inspection.
They betoken no sign of sympathy or interest
for the sufferers. "They blush neither that
they lied to tis, nor that while their ribs are
well fleshed and their mud grain-stores far from
empty, their poorer fellow-villagers should have
(orne to this pass. Nor do the latter seem to
11_'el, far less to resent, this indifferenGe. K is­
'!fI;t I it is their fate: it has been the fate of
their forefathers, of their caste, from times immemorial,
to toil when toil and wage offered; to
hunger and to starve when wage and food failed
them."
A very great deal has been said about caste
prejlldices, and there is not the slightest doubt but
that these add an aggravating element to our nu-