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Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-08-2009, 12:05 PM by Husky.)

Famines continued

More evidence for how the poverty and misery is not remotely Hindu Dharma's fault, but caused by the ideology of christianism. Something entirely contrary to the claim of christians:

1.1 India under the terror of Christianism versus Bharatam under Hindu Dharma

http://india_resource.tripod.com/colonial.html "The Colonial Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs" states that:
QUOTEIn Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.(Note there were famines induced by the islamic rulers that terrorised the nation before christianism arrived, these probably account for a significant number of the pre-British famines. See post 54 for some documented examples of islamic famines.)

Francois Gautier moreover gives us the record after the christian terror rule at http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifac...enial.html, which shows that it was indeed christianism that was squarely to blame:
QUOTESince Independence, there has been no such famines, a record of which India should be proud.

1.2 More christian-induced famines part 1: The Bengal Famine of 1769-1770

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/...s19040.htm
Dr. Gideon Polya (Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History):
QUOTEthe Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10-million victims)
The Bengal Famine of 1769-1770âthe death toll of which was 10 million Indiansâdoes not seem to have been included in Durant's summary, because Francois Gautier, who also finds the British records showing 25 million to have died by 1900, started his calculation at 1800 (not the boundary year of 1770 that Will Durant mentioned but which led him to the same 25 millions by 1900. This means Durant would not have counted the Bengal Famine, just as Gautier's count from British Records did not include it either):

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifac...enial.html
QUOTEAccording to British records, one million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million between 1825-1850, 5 million between 1850-1875 and 15 million between 1875-1900. Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years ! The British must be proud of their bloody record. It is probably more honourable and straightforward to kill in the name of Allah, than in the guise of petty commercial interests and total disregard for the ways of a 5000 year civilisation. Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, India was bled dry and there were no resources left.
In fact, the 15 million victims of the christian famine between 1875-1900 is the lower-end estimate, the higher-end estimate for the same period is 26 million:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/08oct/nationmo.htm
The New Nationalist Movement in India by Jabez T. Sunderland, for The Atlantic in 1908:
(Also at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/190810/na...st-india/2 where the author's name is curiously misspelled as 'Sutherland')
QUOTEDuring the last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000.

1.3 More christian-induced Famines part 2: The Bengal Famine of 1943-1945

Durant's discussion of the christian genocides perpetrated on Hindus through famine, inevitably doesn't include the Bengal famine that came after his book either. However, the book The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire by John Newsinger (Senior Lecturer in History, School of Historical and Cultural Studies at the Bath Spa University, UK) states the following about the Bengal Famine of 1943-44: "a terrible death toll from starvation and disease in 1943-44 that totaled more than 3.5 million men and women." Refer to http://hinduwisdom.info/European_Imperialism.htm

In fact, that "more than 3.5 million" turns out to have been around 4 million:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/...s19040.htm
Dr. Gideon Polya (Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History):
QUOTEThe man-made famine in British-ruled Bengal in 1943-1944 ultimately took the lives of about 4-million people

1.4 Christianism perpetrated deliberate famines on the heathen populace

The following interview with Dr. Gideon Polya, Associate Professor in Biochemistry whose book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History" deals with the topic of the Bengali Famines, shows how the famines were deliberately perpetrated on the population of Bharatam by the callousness of christianism (British), and that they were moreover accompanied by large-scale rape of the victimised populace:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/...s19040.htm
QUOTESummary:
The famine in British-ruled Bengal in 1943-44 ultimately took the lives of about 4 million people. The speaker talks of how this man-made famine is absent from the history books and virtually unknown to most people.

The wartime Bengal Famine has become a 'forgotten holocaust' and has been effectively deleted from our history books, from school and university curricula and from general public perception.

...
I have recently published a very detailed account of this two-century holocaust in British India that commenced with the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10-million victims) and concluded with the World War 2 Bengal Famine (4-million victims) and took tens of millions of lives in between. In contrast to the response to the Jewish Holocaust, these events have been almost completely written out of history and removed from general perception and there has been no apology nor amends made.

...
One of the most extraordinary examples of such whitewashing of history is the sustained, continuing deletion of two centuries of massive, recurrent, man-made famine in British India from British and world history, and hence from general public perception. This massive, sustained lying by omission by two centuries of British academic historians occurred in a society having Parliamentary democracy, the means to readily disseminate information and a steadily expanding literate population. Furthermore, this process of lying by omission continues to this day in Britain and its English-speaking offshoots, such as Australia, countries having free speech, high literacy, democracy, prosperity and extensive media of all kinds.

...
In contrast [to the way the world and history recognises the Jewish Holocaust], during the Second World War, a man-made catastrophe occurred within the British Empire that killed almost as many people as died in the Jewish Holocaust, but which has been effectively deleted from history, it is a 'forgotten holocaust'. The man-made famine in British-ruled Bengal in 1943-1944 ultimately took the lives of about 4-million people, about 90% of the total British Empire casualties of that conflict, and was accompanied by a multitude of horrors, not the least being massive civilian and military sexual abuse of starving women and young girls that compares unfavourable with the comfort women abuses of the Japanese Army.

The causes of the famine are complex, but ultimately when the price of rice rose above the ability of landless rural poor to pay and in the absence of humane, concerned government, millions simply starved to death or otherwise died of starvation-related causes. Although there was plenty of food potentially available, the price of rice rose through 'market forces', driven by a number of factors including: the cessation of imports from Japanese-occupied Burma, a dramatic wartime decline in other requisite grain imports into India, compounded by the deliberate strategic slashing of Allied Indian Ocean shipping; heavy-handed government action in seizing Bengali rice stocks in sensitive areas; the seizure of boats critically required for food acquisition and rice distribution; and finally the 'divide and rule' policy of giving the various Indian provinces control over their own food stocks. Critically, cashed-up, wartime, industrial, Calcutta could pay for rice and sucked food out of a starving, food-producing countryside.

Ultimately, millions of Bengalis died because their British rulers didn't give a damn and had other strategic imperatives. The Bengal Famine and its aftermath for the debilitated Bengal population consumed its victims over several years in the case of complete British inaction through most of 1943 or insufficient subsequent action. Churchill had a confessed hatred for Indians and during the famine he opposed the humanitarian attempts of people such as the Prime Minister of Canada, Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy General Wavell, and even of Japanese collaborationist leader Subhash Chandra Bose. The hypothesis can be legitimately advanced that the extent of the Bengal Famine derived in part from sustained, deliberate policy.

The wartime Bengal Famine has become a 'forgotten holocaust' and has been effectively deleted from our history books, from school and university curricula and from general public perception. To the best of my knowledge, Churchill only wrote of it once, in a secret letter to Roosevelt dated April 29th 1944 in which he made the following remarkable plea for help in shipping Australian grain to India: 'I am no longer justified in not asking for your help.' Churchill's six-volume 'History of the Second World War' fails to mention the cataclysm that was responsible for about 90% of total British Empire casualties in that conflict but makes the extraordinary obverse claim: 'No great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the people of Hindustan. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island.'

This whitewashing of Indian famine extends to two centuries of famine in British India. I have recently published a very detailed account of this two-century holocaust in British India that commenced with the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10-million victims) and concluded with the World War 2 Bengal Famine (4-million victims) and took tens of millions of lives in between. In contrast to the response to the Jewish Holocaust, these events have been almost completely written out of history and removed from general perception and there has been no apology nor amends made. While Tony Blair has apologised for the mid-19th century Irish Famine that took over a million lives, there has been no apology for the World War 2 Bengal Famine.

1.5 Counting the dead from the famines and diseases inflicted on Hindu Bharatam by christianism

One wonders what happened in the years not covered by Durant: the occurrence of christian-imposed genocide through starvation and epidemics. And also in the years of continued christian British rule after his book was published in 1930 (outside the Bengal famine of 1943-1945).

Sticking to the recorded figures of famines and epidemics introduced from abroad and due to low resistance because of malnutrition:
- Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770: 10,000,000 victims of famine
- 1800-1900: 25,000,000 to 36 million victims of famine (upper-limit derived from the higher-end estimate of an additional 11 million victims in the famines of 1875-1900 presented in Jabez T. Sunderland's The New Nationalist Movement in India)
- 1930: an estimated 8,000,000 victims of famine
- Bengal Famine 1943-1945: 4,000,000 victims of famine
- 1901: 272,000 died of plague introduced from abroad;
- 1902: 500,000 died of plague;
- 1903: 800,000
- 1904: 1,000,000
- 1918: 12,500,000
TOTAL = 62,720,000 (62.7 million) to ~73.7 million victims of christianism (British Rule) - just counting those genocided by the starvation and diseases it caused.

Dharampal wrote
http://hinduwisdom.info/European_Imperialism.htm
QUOTEIn India a large number perished by British brutality and deliberate creation of famines, violation of persons bodies and dignity; in Palnad in Andhra, half of the population was said to be have perished every ten years, during several decades after the subjugation of the areas by Britain. It seems as if the intellectuals and leaders of Britain hated India, and felt outraged that in spite of all their brutalities, smashing of Indian institutions, high extortions, and tortures, men made famines and expropriation of Indian resources to the British state, and thus the all round breakdown of Indian society, the Indians on the whole, could not be wiped out that easily. " (source: Despoliation and Defaming of India â By Dharampal published by Bharat Peetham, Wardha Other India Press, Goa p. 1 - 17).
William Samuel Lilly, in his India and Its Problems writes as follows http://hinduwisdom.info/European_Imperialism.htm:
QUOTEDuring the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone -- the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress -- 5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, -- a region twice the size of Wales, -- one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77.

1.6 Christian callousness in inflicting disease and preventing its cure, versus Hindu caring and medicine

Look for the sections on how Hindus inoculated the entire Hindu community against smallpox in the following (the inoculation against small-pox is a Hindu invention) -
http://hinduwisdom.info/Education_in_Ancient_India.htm
http://hinduwisdom.info/Glimpses_IV.htm

http://hinduwisdom.info/Hindu_Culture2.htm
QUOTESmallpox inoculation started in India before the West

Smallpox inoculation is an ancient Indian tradition and was practiced in India before the West.

In ancient times in India smallpox was prevented through the tikah (inoculation). Kurt Pollak (1968) writes, "preventive inoculation against the smallpox, which was practiced in China from the 11th century, apparently came from India". This inoculation process was generally practiced in large part of Northern and Southern India, but around 1803-04 the British government banned this process. It's banning, undoubtedly, was done in the name of 'humanity', and justified by the Superintendent General of Vaccine (manufactured by Dr. E. Jenner from the cow for use in the inoculation against smallpox).

Dharmapal has quoted British sources to prove that inoculation in India was practiced before the British did. In the seventeenth century, smallpox inoculation (tikah) was practiced in India. A particular sect of Brahmins employed a sharp iron needle to carry out these practices. In 1731, Coult was in Bengal and he observed it and wrote (Operation of inoculation of the smallpox as performed in Bengall from Re. Coult to Dr. Oliver Coult in 'An account of the diseases of Bengall' Calcutta, dated February 10, 1731):

"The operation of inoculation called by the natives tikah has been known in the kingdom of Bengall as near as I can learn, about 150 years and according to the Bhamanian records was first performed by one Dununtary, a physician of Champanagar, a small town by the side of the Ganges about half way to Cossimbazar whose memory in now holden in great esteem as being through the another of this operation, which secret, say they, he had immediately of God in a dream.'

English physician Jenner is credited with discovering vaccination on a scientific basis with his studies on small pox in 1796. A group of Fellows of the Royal Society had earlier studied the method of inoculating people in India and submitted its report in the 1760s.Â Dr J. Z. Holwell, one of the members who was in the Bengal Province for more than ten years to study the Indian vaccination method, lectured at the London Royal College of Physicians in 1767 "that nearly the same salutary method, now so happily pursued in England,... has the sanction of remotest antiquity (in India), illustrating the propriety of present practice".

Dr. J. Z. Holwell writes the most detailed account for the college of Physicians in London in 1767 (An account of the manner of inoculating for the smallpox in the East Indies, by J. Z. Holwell, F.R.S. addressed to the President and Members of the College of Physicians in London). He wrote:

"Inoculation is performed in Indostan by a particular tribe of Bramins, who are delegated annually for this service from the different Colleges of Bindoobund, Eleabas, Benares, & c. over all the distant provinces: dividing themselves into small parties, of three or four each, they plan their traveling circuits in such wise as to arrive at the places of the operation consists only in abstaining for a month from fish, milk, and ghee (a kind of butter made generally of buffalo's milk). When the Bramins begin to inoculate, they pass from house to house and operate at the door, refusing to inoculate any who have not, on a strict scrutiny, duly observed the preparatory course enjoined them. It is no uncommon thing for them to ask the parents how many pocks they choose their children should have."

(source: An account of the manner of inoculating for the smallpox in the East Indies - by J. Z. Holwell M.D., F.R.S.).

On the efficacy of this practice Holwell has the following to say:

"When the before recited treatment of the inoculated is strictly followed, it is next to a miracle to hear, that one in a million fails of receiving the infection, or of one that miscarries under it.. Since, therefore, this practice of the East has been followed without variation, and with uniform success from the remotest unknown times, it is but justice to conclude, it must have been originally founded on the basis of rational principle and experiment."

Holwell's detailed account, not only describes inoculation, but also shows that the Indians knew that microbes caused such diseases.

(source: Indian Science And Technology in the Eighteenth Century; some contemporary European accounts - By Dharampal 1971.Â An Account of the manner of inoculating for the Smallpox in the East Indies. Mapusa, Goa: Other India Press. Chapter VIII p. 142 -164.Â The Healers, the Doctor, then and now - By Pollack, Kurt 1968.English Edition. p. 37-8.).

Also refer to Indian Institute of Science - Prevention of Small Pox in ancient India).

The Sactya Grantham - ancient Brahman medical text ~ 3,500 years old describing brain surgery and anaesthetics, contains the following passages giving instructions on small pox vaccination:

âTake on the tip of a knife the contents of the inflammation, inject it into the arm of the man, mixing it with his blood. A fever will follow but the malady will pass very easily and will create no complications.âÂ Edward Jenner (1749-1823) is credited with the discovery of vaccination but it appears that ancient India has prior claim!"Â

(source: We Are Not The First â By Andrew Tomas - A Bantam Book 1971 New York p. 15 - 49). andÂ http://www.habtheory.com/1/habrefs.php).

The Brahmins had a theory of their operations. They believed the atmosphere abounded with imperceptible animalculae (refined to bacteria within a larger context today). They distinguished tow types of these: those that are harmful and those not so. The Brahmins therefore believed that their treatment in inoculating the person expelled the immediate cause of the disease. How effective was the inoculation? According to Dr. J. Z. Holwell, FRS, who had addressed the College of Physicians in London:

âWhen the before recited treatment of the inoculation is strictly followed, it is next to a miracle to hear, that one in a million fails to receiving the infection, or of one that miscarries under it.â

A later estimate by the Superintendent General of Vaccine in 1804 noted that fatalities among the inoculated counted one in 200 among the Indian population and one in 60 to 70 among the Europeans. There is an explanation for this divergence. Most of the Europeans objected to the inoculation on theological grounds.Â

Small pox has a long history in India; it is discussed in the Hindu scriptures and even has a goddess (Sitala, literally âthe cool one") devoted exclusively to its cause. It seems therefore almost natural to expect an Indian medical response to the disease. The inoculation treatment against it was carried out by a particular caste of Brahmins from the different medical colleges in the area. These Brahmins circulated in the villages in groups of three or four to perform their task.

The person to be inoculated was obliged to follow a certain dietary regime; he had particularly to abstain from fish, milk, and ghee, which, it was held, aggravated the fever that resulted after the treatment. The method the Brahmins followed is similar to the one followed in our own time in certain aspects. They punctured the space between the elbow and the wrist with a sharp instrument and then proceeded to introduce into the abrasion âvarious matterâ prepared from inoculated pistules from the preceding year. The purpose was to induce the disease itself, albeit in a mild form; after it left the body, the person was rendered immune to small-pox for life.Â

The Brahmins had a theory of their operations. They believed the atmosphere abounded with imperceptible animalculae. They distinguished two types of these: those harmful and those not so. The universality of this practices ceased to obtain with the arrival of the British. Like many specialists in India, including teachers, the Brahmin doctors had been maintained through public revenues. With British rule, this fiscal system was disrupted and the inoculators left to fend for themselves.

Two of the more important medical arts of India â plastic surgery and inoculations against small pox. Both were indigenously evolved and the accounts we have, come from Westerners sent out to study them. One of these curious facts was the inoculation against small pox disease, practiced in both north and south India till it was banned or disrupted by the English authorities in 1802-3. The ban was pronounced on âhumanitarianâ grounds by the Superintendent General of Vaccine.

(source: Homo Faber: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1500-1972 - By Claude Alvares p. 65-67 andÂ Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1492 to the Present Day - By Claude AlvaresÂ p.66-67).

European colonists from the sixteenth century onwards, gained knowledge of plants, diseases and surgical techniques that were unknown in the West. One such example is rauwolfia serpentia, a plant used in traditional Indian medicine. The active ingredient is today used to treat hypertension and anxiety in the West.

Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone has written: "Their use of these medicines seems to have been very bold. They were the first nation who employed minerals internally, and they not only gave mercury in that manner but arsenic and arsenious acid, which were remedies in intermittents. They have long used cinnabar for fumigations, by which they produced a speedy and safe salivation. They have long practiced inoculation."

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