INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

HISTORICAL FAMINES.
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did not belong to us at tllat period, so we are
again left considerably to native reports. The
scarcity extended, however, to Bengal also, and'
with the terrible famine of 1770 still fresh in
the memory, it caused widespread alarm, but
happily the result was not so bad as anticipated.
The famine, nevertheless, raged in the Punjab,
aud in what we now term the N orth-Western
Province, and Girdlestone believes that it extended
to Rajputana. But man was ever prone
to take advantage ofbis neighbour'S misfortunes;
and so the Governor-General, in writing to the
Court of Directors, after depicting the horrors of
the famine prevailing in N orth-Western India,
as witnessed by himself, adds that the people
are on a migratory move; and hoping that they
may be induced to go to Behar (the British
territory), he says: "We have ordered encouragement
to be given to them for that purpose,
both from the humanity of saving them from
the inevitable destruction of a famine, and the
lawful desire, in such cases, of increasing the
subjects of the Company's dominions." This
phase of emigration will be noticed hereafter, in
the account of a subsequent famine.
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