Darkest India | Page 4

with
health. That the quantity is insufficient to satisfy the cravings of hunger
I can myself testify, having spent a month inside one of Her Majesty's

best appointed Bombay prisons, and having noted with painful surprise
the eagerness with which every scrap of my own coarse brown bread,
that I might leave over, was claimed and eaten by some of my hungry,
low-caste fellow prisoners!
The clothing and the blankets are also of the very cheapest description.
Of course it must be remembered too, that the food and materials being
bought in large quantities, are obtained at contract prices which are
considerably less than the usual retail rates in the bazaar. And yet
notwithstanding these facts it costs the Bombay Government on an
average Rs. 2/4 per month for each prisoner's food, and close upon Rs.
2 a year for clothing, besides the cost of establishment, police guard,
hospital expenses and contingencies. Altogether according to the
figures given in the Jail Report of 1887 for the Bombay Presidency,
including all the above mentioned items, I find that the average
monthly cost to Government for each prisoner is a little over Rs. 6 a
head.
Now it is a notorious, though almost incredible, fact, that in many parts
of India, men will commit petty thefts and offences on purpose to be
sent to jail, and will candidly state this to be their reason for doing so.
Many Government Officials will, I am sure, bear me out in this. Here
we have men who are positively so destitute that they are not only
prepared to accept with thankfulness the scanty rations of a jail, but are
willing to sacrifice their characters and endure the ignominy of
imprisonment and the consequent loss of liberty and separation from
home and family, because there is absolutely no other way of escape!
In Ceylon the jail is familiarly known among this class as their "_Loku
amma_", or "_Grandmother_"!
India has no poor law. There is not even the inhospitable shelter of a
workhouse, to which the honest pauper may have recourse. Hence with
tens of thousands it is literally a case of "steal or starve." I suppose that
nine-tenths of the thefts and robberies, besides a large proposition of
the other crimes committed in India, are prompted by sheer starvation,
and until the cause be removed, it will be in vain to look for a
diminution of the evil, multiply our police and soldiery as we will.

But I am digressing. My special object in this chapter is to show the
minimum amount which is necessary for the subsistence of our
destitute classes.
Another very interesting indication of the minimum cost of living in the
cheapest native style, consistent with health, and a very moderate
degree of comfort, is furnished by the experience of our village officers
to whom we make a subsistence allowance of from eight to twelve
annas per week. This with the local gifts of food which they collect in
the village enables them to live in the simplest way, and ensures them
at least one good meal of curry and rice daily, the rest being locally
supplied.
Here is the account of one of our Native Captains as to how he used to
manage with his allowance of eight annas a week. I have taken it down
myself from his own lips.
"When in charge of a village corps, I received with others my weekly
allowance. When I was alone I used to get 10 annas, and when there
were two of us together we got eight annas each. This was sufficient to
give us one good meal of kheechhree (rice and dal) every day, with a
little over for extras, such as firewood, vegetables, oil and ghee.
"We had two regular cooked meals daily, one about noon and the other
in the evening. Besides this we also had a piece of bajari bread left over
from the previous day, when we got up in the morning.
"For the morning meal we used to beg once a week uncooked food
from the villagers. They gave us about eight or nine seers, enough to
last us for the week.
"It was a mixture of grains, consisting ordinarily of bajari, bhavtu,
kodri, jawar and mat. These we got ground up into flour. It made a sort
of bread which is known as Sângru and which we liked very much.
With it we would take some sâg (vegetables) or dâl. This was our
regular midday meal.
"Including the value of the food we begged, the cost of living was just

about two annas a day for each of us. We could live comfortably upon
this.
"The poorer Dhers in the villages seldom or never get kheechhree (rice
and dal). They could not afford it. Most of them live