Madras Famine

Victims of the Madras Famine of 1877 one of the terrible famines that occurred in India during the nineteenth century. Hard to believe that famines such as this were happening in India just 70 years ago within living memory. That these folks' descendents are the people driving the IT and techology boom in South India is remarkable and also a testament to the Indian acheivement. Amartya Sen observes that one of the great things about that achievement is the avoidance famines on the scale of this one despite agricultural failures as bad as those the nineteenth century.

 

The image recalls harsh words of Iqbal in his poem "Reproach".

 

"Your fate poor hapless India, there is no telling –

Always the brightest jewel in someone’s crown;

Your peasant a carcass spewed up from the grave,

Whose coffin is mouldering still beneath the sod.

Mortgaged to the alien, soul and body too,

Alas – the dweller vanished from the dwelling –

Enslaved to Britain you have kissed the rod;

It is not Britain I reproach, but you.”

 

Done