INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

MITIGATIVE MEASURES. 201
involve themselves thereby in sin. One celebrated
Rishi is even instanced as having murdered
his son to obtain the wherewithal to
appease his hunger.
Such are some of the abstract causes inherent
to India which tend to a&,aravate a season of
want. The concrete causes are quite as formidable;
but they are perhaps not quite so
easily realised with our home experience of the
thousand and one appliances which are all
around and so familiar to us. These, it should
be remembered, are absent in India. At home
we have railways, steamers, &c. &c. "So," you
may reply, "has India, although they are
limited." But in addition, it must not be
forgotten that they are the birth of our
Western civilisation; that they only spring
into existence in times and places suited to
them; that they have no struggle for existence
to encounter. A train, a steamer, an engine
is in a land of plenty at home: there is coal
to feed it, there are men to work it, in abundance:
In India both fuel and men have to be
•
imported. A train would be a helpless or an
ungovernable mass if it were not for the two