-Mr. Polya teaches biochemistry in the Latrobe University (Australia). He sent me a good answer to a question I made him and, in addition, asked me to sent this following message to whoever I can. I decided to forward all the message, since it´s quite interesting. Maybe someone in the list could add something about India economy during the Bristish colonization.
Alexandre Fenelon
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- REPLY: Dear Alexandre, I have put together some information for you on colonial Indian famines and references (Marx also wrote on colonial India & the smashing of the textile industry) - this information is at the end of this e-mail. I hope it is useful. It is hard to determine the total loss of life involved - considerations of "differential mortality" in comparison with the Bengal Famines of 1769/1770 and 1943/44 and the recurrence of huge famines every 10-20 years would suggest that scores of millions died - if one considers "chronic malnourishment-related" or "starvation-related mortality" as well as explicit famine deaths the total must be of the order of 100 million. My detailed response is at the end of the message. However in the interests of justice and humanity I would be most grateful if you could forward the immediately following message to everyone you know. Yours sincerely, Gideon Polya ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is the message he wants to be published
"Concerning the Bonn-Kyoto "Agreement" on Greenhouse amelioration - something is better than nothing. However the seas are still rising, the forests still burning and millions still starving.
My book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History" (1998; first edition all gone) predicted this disinclination to save the planet.
Planetary salvation requires recognition of the problem and effective action - but the biggest polluters are effectively denying both.
Denial is anti-scientific and dangerous - thus "history ignored yields history repeated".
The man-made Bengal Famine of World War Two that killed millions in British India has been "rubbed out" of history - and presently 20 million people die each year from starvation-related causes.
A summary of this continuing "holocaust denial" is located at the following site:
http://www.sulekha.com/articledesc.asp?md=o&oldurl=/gpolya_austen.html
We cannot walk by on the other side - help save the planet and forward this message to everyone you know.
Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne, Australia" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is what he wrote about India
Colonial famines in India - a summary
The nature and occurrence of famines in India has been reported extensively. About 4 dozen famines occurred in India since the Battle of Plassey (1757) and it is beyond the scope of this book to describe in detail this immense carnage that swept away tens of millions of people in ghastly circumstances. Nevertheless I feel obliged to offer at least the following chronology of imperial mass murder interspersed (in square brackets) with some relevant events elsewhere in the Empire. The major sources for this catalogue are Cook & Stevenson (1991), Ghosh (1944), Greenough (1982), Kachhawaha (1992), Langer (1952), Maloo (1987), Roberts (1958), Sen (1981) and Spear (1965).19
[Battle of Plassey 1757]; Bombay (1759); Bengal, Bihar (1769-1770); Madras (1781); Carnatic, Mysore, Bombay (1781-1783); Thar, Pakar, Sind (1782-1784); Madras, Bombay, Bengal, Oudh, northern India (1782-1784); northern Deccan, Bengal (1787); [invasion of Australia (1788)]; Bombay, Gujarat, Deccan, Hyderabad, Kutch, Orissa, Marwar, Madras (1790-1793); Rajasthan (1796); [inadvertent and "forgotten" second settlement on the East Coast of Australia on Preservation Island in Bass Strait by substantially Bengali shipwrecked sailors bound for Sydney from Calcutta (1797)]; north-west provinces, Kutch, Bombay, central India, Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Deccan (1799-1804); Bombay (1806-1807); Carnatic (1806-1807); Bombay, Sind, Gujarat, Agra, Rajasthan, north-western provinces (1812-1813); Madras (1812-1814); north-west provinces, Rajasthan, Deccan, Sind (1819-1822); Deccan, Bombay, Madras, Gujarat (1823-1825); Sirohi (1824); famine due to over-taxation and disorder in Mewar (1828); Punjab (1827-1828); [abolition of slavery in the British Empire (1833)]; Deccan, Madras (1831-1833); Ajmir, Cawnpore, Bundelkhand, Gujarat, Deccan, Rajasthan, Punjab (1832-1834); Madras, Deccan, Punjab, Gujarat (1833-1835); north-west provinces, Rajasthan, Punjab (1837-1838); Gujarat (1838-1839); Deccan (1845); [the first Maori War (1843-1848); the Irish Famine (1845-1846); the potato famine in Scotland (1848-1849)]; Rajasthan (1847-1849); [the Taiping rebellion and associated famine in China took 20-100 million lives (1850-1864)]; Madras, Deccan, Rajasthan, Bombay (1853-1855); Orissa, Bihar, Gunjam, Hyderabad, Mysore (1856-1857); [Indian Mutiny (1857-1858); end of rule in India by the East India Company (1858); first Indian indentured labourers - 3-year slaves - to South Africa (1860)]; north-west provinces, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat (1860-1862); Deccan (1862); [abolition of slavery in the U.S.A. (1865)]; east coast, Orissa, Bihar, west Bengal, Madras, Deccan, Bombay (1866); north-west provinces, Rajasthan, Deccan, central provinces, Punjab, Gujarat (1868-1870); north-west provinces, Bihar, Oudh, Bengal, Bundelkhand (1873-1874); [cession of Fiji (1874); death of Truganini, the last "full-blood" Tasmanian (1876)]; Madras, Bombay, Mysore, Hyderabad (1876-1878); north-west provinces, Kashmir, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan (1877-1878); north-west provinces, Deccan (1879-1880); [commencement of indentured Indian labour - 5-year slavery - to Fiji (1879)]; west Bengal, Bihar (1884-1885); central provinces (1886-1887); Orissa, Ganjam (1888-1889); Garhwal, Bengal, Bihar, Madras, Rajasthan (1890-1892); central provinces (1894); north-west provinces, Bengal, Madras, central provinces, Bombay, Punjab, Bihar, Hyderabad, Rajasthan, Bundelkhand (1896-1897); Punjab, Rajasthan, central provinces, Bombay, Hyderabad (1899-1900); Gujarat (1900-1902); [the Boer War (1899-1902); death of Queen Victoria (1901); genocide of the Hereros and Namas of South West Africa by the Germans (1904-1907)]; Bombay, Deccan, Rajasthan (1905-1906); Bihar, Bengal (1906-1907); Uttar Pradesh, central provinces (1907-1908); [the First World War (1914-1918); the Armenian Genocide (1915-1920); influenza epidemic killed 27 million world-wide, 17 million in India (1918-1919); end of the indentured labour or girmit of Indians to Fiji (1920); the Russian Famine (1921); last major massacre of Australian aborigines, northwest Australia (1926); famine in China (1928-1930); the Ukraine Famine (1928-1933); large-scale Japanese invasion of China (1937); the Second World War and the Jewish Holocaust (1939-1945)]; Rajasthan (1939-1940); Bengal, Orissa (1943-1946).
In briefly considering this disastrous catalogue we should indicate the more serious of the pre-20th Century famines, namely those in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (1769-1770), Rajasthan, Oudh and elsewhere in northern India (1782-84), Rajasthan, Bombay, Gujarat and north-western provinces (1812-1815), north-western provinces, Punjab and Rajasthan (1837-1838), Madras, Deccan, Bihar, Bengal and particularly Orissa (1866), Rajasthan and northern India (1868-1870), throughout much of India from Hyderabad to Rajasthan and the Punjab (1899-1900). The 1769-1770 and 1899-1900 famines were the worst and the 1943-1944 Bengal Famine was in the same league of massive catastrophe.
While the consistent primary cause of these famines was drought, the ultimate cause of death was lack of resources to purchase food in these times of scarcity - in the parlance of Amartya Sen, a deficiency of "entitlement". 20 The administering power had imposed a system of remorseless revenue collection without realistically accepting responsibility for its millions of starving subjects. This situation was exacerbated by the immense damage done to Indian industry and hence earning capacity by restrictive trading practices of the British, notably through imposition of prohibitive tariffs excluding Indian goods from Britain. This is well illustrated by a dramatic set of statistics relating to Indian textile exports to and imports from Britain in the 19th Century: the value in rupees of cotton goods exported/imported in 1815/16 was 13,151,427/263,800 but by 1832/33 this proportion has shrunk to 822,891/4,264,707. 21 A further major impact was war, both in the sense of paying for this senseless pursuit and the actual damage and disruption caused by war. Thus war conducted by the British or their foes clearly contributed to famines in the period of conquest 1759-1807, the Indian Mutiny period of 1856-1857 and the Second World War period of 1939-1945. I
Cook, C. and Stevenson, J. (1991), The Longman Handbook of World History Since 1914 (Longman, London & New York). Ghosh, K.C. (1944), Famines in Bengal 1770-1943 (National Council of Education, Calcutta, 2nd edition 1987). Greenough, P.R. (1982), Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the Famine of 1943-1944 (Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York). Greenough, P.R. (1988), Famine in Embree, A.T. (1985a) (editor), Encyclopaedia of Asian History (Collier Macmillan, London) pp457-459. Kachhawaha, O.P. (1985), Famines in Rajasthan (1900 A.D. - 1947 A.D.) (Hindi Sahitya Mandir, Jodhpur). Langer, W.L. (1952), An Encyclopaedia of World History (3rd edition) (G.G.Harrap, London). Maloo, K. (1987), The History of Famines in Rajputana (1858-1900 A.D.) (Himanshu, New Delhi). Roberts, P.E. (1958), History of British India Under the Company and Under the Crown (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 3rd edition). Sen (1945), Rural Bengal in Ruins (translated by Chakravarty; cited by Greenough, 1982). Sen, A. (1981a), Poverty and Famines. An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Clarendon Press, Oxford). Sen, A. (1981b), Famine Mortality: A Study of the Bengal Famine of 1943 in Hobshawn, E. (1981) (editor), Peasants In History. Essays in Honor of David Thorner (Oxford University Press, New Delhi). Spear, P. (1965), The Oxford History of Modern India 1740-1975 (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1978). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --
At 09:52 PM 02/08/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Gideon Polya
> Alexandre Fenelon has sent you the following message from
Sulekha.
> Mr. Polya:
>
>A few months ago I was making some research on the effects of English
colonialism in India, while I knew about your book on Jane Austen. I became
quite impressed with your work and with the omission of those famines from
official history (The marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn mentions them, but he
is uncertain to the extent there was an increase of famine deaths during
the colonial period, Rosa Luxemburg also mentions them but I´ve found no
mentions of those disasters among non marxists writers). I would like to
make you some questions, if you could spare your time to answer me.
>1-What is the exact number of famine deaths in the 2nd half of XIX
century? I´ve read about 20-30 million, which added to the Bengal famines
of 1770 and 1943 will give us 35-45 million.
>2-To what extent those famines worsened during British rule and what was
the role of the Bristish colonial system in those disasters?
>3-From what I´ve read (here I have better statistics) there was almost no
growth of the Indian economy during colonial rule (and in fact there was a
dramatic decrease of industrial output on a 70% order on a per capita GNP)
>4-Have you research non marxist sources on famines? Who did write about
them?
>
> Alexandre Fenelon, Belo Horizonte-Brazil
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>http://www.sulekha.com
>Got anything to say?
>
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Dr.Gideon Polya, School of Biochemistry,
La Trobe University,Bundoora, Victoria 3083,
Australia
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