Darkest India | Page 5

on "ghens" (a
mixture of buttermilk and coarse flour cooked into a sort of skilly, or
gruel) and bhavtu or bajari bread, or "Sângru." The buttermilk is given
to them by the village landowners, in return for their labour. They are
expected for instance to do odd jobs, cut grass, carry wood, &c. The
grain they commonly get either in harvest time in return for labour, or
buy it as they require it several maunds at a time. Occasionally they get
it in exchange for cloth. Living in the cheapest possible way, and eating
the coarsest food, I don't think they could manage on less than one
annas' worth of food a day."
One of our European Officers, Staff Captain Hunter, who has lived in
the same style for about four years among the villagers of Goojarat, and
who has been in charge of some 30 or 40 of our Officers, confirms the
above particulars. He says that on two annas a day it is possible to live
comfortably, but that one anna is the minimum below which it is
impossible to go in order to support life even on the coarsest sorts of
food.
He tells me that the weavers have assured him that when husband and
wife are working hard from early to late, they cannot make more than
four annas profit a day by their weaving, since the mills have come into
the country and then they have to pay a commission to some one to sell
their cloth for them, or spend a considerable time travelling about the
country finding a market for it themselves. A piece of cloth which
would fetch nine rupees a few years ago, is now only worth three and a
half or four rupees.
Bearing in mind, therefore, the above facts, I should consider that if
India's submerged tenth are to be granted, even nothing better than a
"bullock charter," the lowest fraction which could be named for the
minimum claimable by all would be one anna a day, or two rupees a
month for each adult. As a matter of fact, I have no hesitation in saying,
that there are many millions in India who do not get even half this

pittance from year's end to year's end, and yet toil on with scarcely a
murmur, sharing their scanty morsel with those even poorer than
themselves, until disease finds their weakened bodies an easy prey, and
death gives them their release from a poverty-stricken existence; which
scarcely deserves the name of "life."


CHAPTER IV.
WHO ARE THE SUBMERGED TENTH?
By classifying and grading the various orders that constitute Indian
Society according to their average earnings, and by considering their
minimum, standard of existence, I have sought to prepare the way for a
more careful investigation of those who actually constitute the Darkest
India, which we are seeking to describe. I have narrowed down our
inquiry to the fifty millions, or whatever may be their number, who are
either absolutely destitute, or so closely on the border-land of starvation
as to need our immediate sympathy and assistance.
Strictly speaking it is with the former alone, the absolutely destitute,
numbering as I have supposed some twenty-five millions, that we are at
present concerned. I have, however, found it impossible to exclude
some reference to the poverty-stricken laboring classes, earning less
than five rupees a month for the support of each family, inasmuch as
they are probably far more numerous than I have supposed, and their
miseries are but one degree removed from those of the utterly destitute.
Indeed we scarcely know which is the most to be pitied, the beggar
who, if he has nothing, has perhaps at least the comfort that nobody is
dependent on him, or the poor coolie who with his three or four rupees
a month has from five to eight, or more, mouths to fill! Fill did I say?
They are never filled! The most that can be done in such cases is to
prolong life and to keep actual starvation at bay, and that only it may be
for a time!

Nevertheless, I have restricted the term "Submerged Tenth" to the
absolutely destitute, whom I now proceed to still further analyse.
In doing so I have been obliged to include several important classes
who happily do not exist in England, or who are at any rate so few in
number, or so well provided for, as not to merit special attention. I
mean the beggars, the destitute debtors, and the victims of opium,
famine, and pestilence, without whom our catalogue would certainly be
incomplete.
Including the above we may say that the Indian Submerged Tenth
consist of the following classes:--
I. The Beggars, excluding religious mendicants.
II. The out-of-works,--the destitute, but honest, poor, who are willing