Читать книгу Modern India - William Eleroy Curtis - Страница 6
IV
ОглавлениеTHE EMPIRE OF INDIA
India is a great triangle, 1,900 miles across its greatest length and an equal distance across its greatest breadth. It extends from a region of perpetual snow in the Himalayas, almost to the equator. The superficial area is 1,766,642 square miles, and you can understand better what that means when I tell you that the United States has an area of 2,970,230 square miles, without counting Alaska or Hawaii. India is about as large as that portion of the United States lying east of a line drawn southward along the western boundary of the Dakotas, Kansas and Texas.
The population of India in 1901 was 294,361,056 or about one-fifth of the human race, and it comprises more than 100 distinct nations and peoples in every grade of civilization from absolute savages to the most complete and complex commercial and social organizations. It has every variety of climate from the tropical humidity along the southern coast to the frigid cold of the mountains; peaks of ice, reefs of coral, impenetrable jungles and bleak, treeless plains. One portion of its territory records the greatest rainfall of any spot on earth; another, of several hundred thousand square miles, is seldom watered with a drop of rain and is entirely dependent for moisture upon the melting snows of the mountains. Twelve thousands different kinds of animals are enumerated in its fauna, 28,000 plants in its flora, and the statistical survey prepared by the government fills 128 volumes of the size of our census reports. One hundred and eighteen distinct languages are spoken in various parts of India and fifty-nine of these languages are spoken by more than 100,000 people each. A large number of other languages and dialects are spoken by different tribes and clans of less than 100,000 population. The British Bible Society has published the whole or parts of the Holy Scriptures in forty-two languages which reach 220,000,000 people, but leave 74,000,000 without the Holy Word. In order to give the Bible to the remainder of the population of India it would be necessary to publish 108 additional translations, which the society has no money and no men to prepare. From this little statement some conception of the variety of the people of India may be obtained, because each of the tribes and clans has its own distinct organization and individuality, and each is practically a separate nation.
| Language. | Spoken by | Language. | Spoken by | |
| Hindi | 85,675,373 | Malayalam | 5,428,250 | |
| Bengali | 41,343,762 | Masalmani | 3,669,390 | |
| Telugu | 19,885,137 | Sindhi | 2,592,341 | |
| Marathi | 18,892,875 | Santhal | 1,709,680 | |
| Punjabi | 17,724,610 | Western Pahari | 1,523,098 | |
| Tamil | 15,229,759 | Assamese | 1,435,820 | |
| Gujarathi | 10,619,789 | Gond | 1,379,580 | |
| Kanarese | 9,751,885 | Central Pahari | 1,153,384 | |
| Uriya | 9,010,957 | Marwadi | 1,147,480 | |
| Burmese | 5,926,864 | Pashtu | 1,080,931 |
The Province of Bengal, for example, is nearly as large as all our North Atlantic states combined, and contains an area of 122,548 square miles. The Province of Rajputana is even larger, and has a population of 74,744,886, almost as great as that of the entire United States. Madras has a population of 38,000,000, and the central provinces 47,000,000, while several of the 160 different states into which India is divided have more than 10,000,000 each.
The population is divided according to religions as follows:
| Hindus | 207,146,422 | Sikhs | 2,195,268 | |
| Mohammedans | 62,458,061 | Jains | 1,334,148 | |
| Buddhists | 9,476,750 | Parsees | 94,190 | |
| Animistic | 8,711,300 | Jews | 18,228 | |
| Christians | 2,923,241 |
It will be interesting to know that of the Christians enumerated at the last census 1,202,039 were Roman Catholics, 453,612 belonged to the established Church of England, 322,586 were orthodox Greeks, 220,863 were Baptists, 155,455 Lutherans, 53,829 Presbyterians and 157,847 put themselves down as Protestants without giving the sect to which they adhere.
The foreign population of India is very small. The British-born number only 96,653; 104,583 were born on the continent of Europe, and only 641,854 out of nearly 300,000,000 were born outside the boundaries of India.
India consists of four separate and well-defined regions: the jungles of the coast and the vast tract of country known as the Deccan, which make up the southern half of the Empire; the great plain which stretches southward from the Himalayas and constitutes what was formerly known as Hindustan; and a three-sided tableland which lies between, in the center of the empire, and is drained by a thousand rivers, which carry the water off as fast as it falls and leave but little to refresh the earth. This is the scene of periodical famine, but the government is pushing the irrigation system so rapidly that before many years the danger from that source will be much diminished.
The whole of southern India, according to the geologists, was once covered by a great forest, and indeed there are still 66,305,506 acres in trees which are carefully protected. The black soil of that region is proverbial for its fertility and produces cotton, sugar cane, rice and other tropical and semi-tropical plants with an abundance surpassed by no other region. The fruit-bearing palms require a chapter to themselves in the botanies, and are a source of surprising wealth. According to the latest census the enormous area of 546,224,964 acres is under cultivation, which is an average of nearly two acres per capita of population, and probably two-thirds of it is actually cropped. About one-fourth of this area is under irrigation and more than 22,000,000 acres produce two crops a year.
Most of the population is scattered in villages, and the number of people who are not supported by farms is much smaller than would be supposed from the figures of the census. A large proportion of the inhabitants returned as engaged in trade and other employments really belong to the agricultural community, because they are the agents of middlemen through whose hands the produce of the farms passes. These people live in villages among the farming community. In all the Empire there are only eight towns with more than 200,000 inhabitants; only three with more than 500,000, and only one with a million, which is Calcutta. The other seven in order of size are Bombay, Madras, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Rangoon, Benares and Delhi. There are only twenty-nine towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants; forty-nine with more than 50,000; 471 with more than 10,000; 877 with more than 5,000, and 2,134 organized municipalities with a population of 1,000 or more. These municipalities represent an aggregate population of 29,244,221 out of a total of 294,361,056, leaving 265,134,722 inhabitants scattered upon farms and in 729,752 villages. The city population, however, is growing more rapidly than that of the country, because of the efforts of the government to divert labor from the farms to the factories. In Germany, France, England and other countries of Europe and in the United States the reverse policy is pursued. Their rural population is drifting too rapidly to the cities, and the cities are growing faster than is considered healthful. In India, during the ten years from= 1891 to 1901 the city population has increased only 2,452,083, while the rural population has increased only 4,567,032.
The following table shows the number of people supported by each of the principal occupations named:
| Agriculture | 191,691,731 |
| Earth work and general labor (not agriculture) | 17,953,261 |
| Producing food, drink and stimulants | 16,758,726 |
| Producing textile fabrics | 11,214,158 |
| Personal, household and sanitary | 10,717,500 |
| Rent payers (tenants) | 106,873,575 |
| Rent receivers (landlords) | 45,810,673 |
| Field laborers | 29,325,985 |
| General laborers | 16,941,026 |
| Cotton weavers | 5,460,515 |
| Farm servants | 4,196,697 |
| Beggars (non-religious) | 4,222,241 |
| Priests and others engaged in religion | 2,728,812 |
| Workers and dealers in wood, bamboo, etc. | 2,499,531 |
| Barbers and shampooers | 2,331,598 |
| Grain and pulse dealers | 2,264,481 |
| Herdsmen (cattle, sheep and goats) | 2,215,791 |
| Indoor servants | 2,078,018 |
| Washermen | 2,011,624 |
| Workers and dealers in earthen and stone ware | 2,125,225 |
| Shoe, boot and sandal makers | 1,957,291 |
| Shopkeepers | 1,839,958 |
| Workers and dealers in gold and silver | 1,768,597 |
| Cart and pack animal owners | 1,605,529 |
| Iron and steel workers | 1,475,883 |
| Watchmen and other village servants | 1,605,118 |
| Grocery dealers | 1,587,225 |
| Sweepers and scavengers | 1,518,482 |
| Fishermen and fish curers | 1,280,358 |
| Fish dealers | 1,269,435 |
| Workers in cane and matting | 1,290,961 |
| Bankers, money lenders, etc. | 1,200,998 |
| Tailors, milliners and dressmakers | 1,142,153 |
| Officers of the civil service | 1,043,872 |
| Water carriers | 1,089,574 |
| Oil pressers | 1,055,933 |
| Dairy men, milk and butter dealers | 1,013,000 |
The enormous number of 1,563,000, which is equal to the population of half our states, are engaged in what the census terms "disreputable" occupations. There are about eighty other classes, but none of them embraces more than a million members.
Among the curiosities of the census we find that 603,741 people are engaged in making and selling sweetmeats, and 550,241 in selling cardamon seeds and betel leaves, and 548,829 in manufacturing and selling bangles, necklaces, beads and sacred threads. There are 497,509 teachers and professors, 562,055 actors, singers and dancers, 520,044 doctors and 279,646 lawyers.
The chewing of betel leaves is one of the peculiar customs of the country, even more common than tobacco chewing ever was with us. At almost every street corner, in the porticos of the temples, at the railway stations and in the parks, you will see women and men, squatting on the ground behind little trays covered with green leaves, powdered nuts and a white paste, made of the ashes of cocoanut fiber, the skins of potatoes and a little lime. They take a leaf, smear it with the lime paste, which is intended to increase the saliva, and then wrap it around the powder of the betel nut. Natives stop at these stands, drop a copper, pick up one of these folded leaves, put it in their mouths, and go off chewing, and spitting out saliva as red as blood. Strangers are frequently attracted by dark red stains upon pavements and floors which look as if somebody had suffered from a hemorrhage or had opened an artery, but they are only traces of the chewers of the betel nut. The habit is no more harmful than chewing tobacco. The influence of the juice is slightly stimulating to the nerves, but not injurious, although it is filthy and unclean.
It is a popular impression that the poor of India live almost exclusively upon rice, which is very cheap and nourishing, hence it is possible for a family to subsist upon a few cents a day. This is one of the many delusions that are destroyed when you visit the country. Rice in India is a luxury that can be afforded only by the people of good incomes, and throughout four-fifths of the country is sold at prices beyond the reach of common working people. Sixty per cent. of the population live upon wheat, barley, fruit, various kinds of pulses and maize. Rice can be grown only in hot and damp climates, where there are ample means of irrigation, and only where the conditions of soil, climate and water supply allow its abundant production does it enter into the diet of the working classes. Three-fourths of the people are vegetarians, and live upon what they produce themselves.
The density of the population is very great, notwithstanding the enormous area of the empire, being an average of 167 to the square mile, including mountains, deserts and jungles, as against 21.4 to the square mile in the United States. Bengal, the province of which Calcutta is the capital, on the eastern coast of India, is the most densely populated, having 588 people to the square mile. Behar in the south has 548, Oudh in the north 531; Agra, also in the north, 419, and Bombay 202. Some parts of India have a larger population to the acre than any other part of the world. The peasants, or coolies, as they are called, are born and live and die like animals. Indeed animals seldom are so closely herded together, or live such wretched lives. In 1900, 54,000,000 people were more or less affected by the famine, and 5,607,000 were fed by the government for several months, simply because there was no other way for them to obtain food. There was no labor they could perform for wages, and those who were fortunate enough to secure employment could not earn enough to buy bread to satisfy the hunger of their families. It is estimated that 30,000,000 human beings starved to death in India during the nineteenth century, and in one year alone, the year in which that good woman, Queen Victoria, assumed the title of empress, more than 5,000,000 of her subjects died from hunger. Yet the population without immigration is continually increasing from natural causes. The net increase during the ten years from 1891 to 1901 was 7,046,385. The, struggle for life is becoming greater every year; wages are going down instead of up, notwithstanding the rapid increase of manufacturing industries, the extension of the railway system and other sources of wealth and employment that are being rapidly developed.
More than 200,000,000 persons in India are living upon less than 5 cents a day of our money; more than 100,000,000 are living upon less than 3 cents; more than 50,000,000 upon less than 1 cent and at least two-thirds of the entire population do not have food enough during any year of their lives to supply the nourishment demanded by the human system. As I have already shown, there are only two acres of land under cultivation for each inhabitant of India. This includes gardens, parks and pastures, and it is not evenly distributed. In many parts of the country, millions are compelled to live upon an average of one-fourth of an acre of land and millions more upon half an acre each, whereas an average of five acres of agricultural land per capita of population is believed to be necessary to the prosperity of a nation.
Few countries have such an enormous birth rate and death rate. Nowhere else are babies born in such enormous numbers, and nowhere does death reap such awful harvests. Sometimes a single famine or plague suddenly sweeps millions into eternity, and their absence is scarcely noticed. Before the present sanitary regulations and inspections were introduced the death rate was nearly double what it is now; indeed, some experts estimate that it must have been several times as great, but no records were kept in some of the provinces, and in most of them, they were incomplete and inaccurate. India is now in a healthier condition than ever before, and yet the death rate varies from 31.10 per 1,000 in the cold provinces of Agra and Oudh to 82.7 per 1,000 in the tropical regions of Behar. In Bombay last year the rate was 70.07 per 1,000; in the central provinces 56.75; in the Punjab, which has a wide area in northwestern India, it was 47.7 and in Bengal 36.63.
The birth rate is almost as large, the following table being reported from the principal provinces named:
| Births per 1,000 pop. | Births per 1,000 pop. | |||
| Behar | 50.5 | Burmah | 37.4 | |
| Punjab | 48.4 | Bombay | 36.3 | |
| Agra | 48.9 | Assam | 35.4 | |
| Central provinces | 47.3 | Madras | 31.3 | |
| Bengal | 42.9 |
Even with the continual peril from plague and famine, the government does not encourage emigration, as you think would be considered a wise policy, but retards it by all sorts of regulations and restrictions, and it is difficult to drive the Hindus out of the wretched hovels in which they live and thrive and breed like rats or rabbits. The more wretched and comfortless a home, the more attached the natives are to it. The less they have to leave the more reluctant they are to leave it, but the same rule applies to every race and every nation in the south of Europe and the Turkish Empire, in Syria, Egypt, the East India Islands, and wherever the population is dense and wages are low. It is the semi-prosperous middle class who emigrate in the hope of bettering their condition.
There is less emigration from India than from any other country. During the last twenty years the total number of persons emigrating from the Indian Empire was only 316,349, less than come to the United States annually from Italy, and the statistics show that 138,660 of these persons returned to their former homes during that period, leaving the net emigration since 1882 only 177,689 out of 300,000,000 of population. And most of these settled in other British colonies. We have a few Hindu merchants and Parsees in the United States, but no coolies whatever. The coolies are working classes that have gone to British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica and other West Indies, Natal, East Africa, Fiji and other British possessions in the Pacific. There has been a considerable flow of workmen back and forth between India and Burma and Ceylon, for in those provinces labor is scarce, wages are high and large numbers of Hindus are employed in the rice paddies and tea plantations.
The government prevents irregular emigration. It has a "protectorate of emigrants" who is intrusted with the enforcement of the laws. Natives of India are not permitted to leave the country unless they are certain of obtaining employment at the place where they desire to go, and even then each intending emigrant must file a copy of his contract with the commissioner in order that he may be looked after in his new home, for the Indian government always sends an agent to protect the interests of its coolies to every country where they have gone in any considerable numbers. Every intending emigrant must submit to a medical examination also, for the navigation laws prohibit vessels from taking aboard any native who does not show a certificate from an official that he is in full possession of his health and faculties and physically fit to earn his living in a strange country. Vessels carrying emigrants are subject to inspection, and are obliged to take out licenses, which require them to observe certain rules regarding space occupied, ventilation, sanitation and the supply of food and water. Most of the emigrants leaving India go out under contract and the terms must be approved by the agent of the government.
The fact that the government and the benevolent people of Europe and America have twice within the last ten years been compelled to intervene to save the people of India from perishing of starvation has created an impression that they are always in the lowest depths of distress and continually suffering from any privations. This is not unnatural, and might under ordinary circumstances be accepted as conclusive proof of the growing poverty of the country and the inability of the people to preserve their own lives. Such a conclusion, however, is very far from the fact, and every visitor to India from foreign lands has a surprise awaiting him concerning its condition and progress. When three-fifths of a population of 300,000,000 have all their eggs in one basket and depend entirely upon little spots of soil for sustenance, and when their crops are entirely dependent upon the rains, and when for a succession of years the rains are not sufficient, there must be failures of harvest and a vast amount of suffering is inevitable. But the recuperative power of the empire is astonishing.
Although a famine may extend over its total length and breadth one season, and require all the resources of the government to prevent the entire population from perishing, a normal rainfall will restore almost immediate prosperity, because the soil is so rich, the sun is so hot, and vegetation is so rapid that sometimes three and even four crops are produced from the same soil in a single year. All the people want in time of famine is sufficient seed to replant their farms and food enough to last them until a crop is ripe. The fact that a famine exists in one part of the country, it must also be considered, is no evidence that the remainder of the empire is not abounding in prosperity, and every table of statistics dealing with the material conditions of the country shows that famine and plague have in no manner impeded their progress. On the other hand they demonstrate the existence of an increased power of endurance and rapid recuperation, which, compared with the past, affords ground for hope and confidence of an even more rapid advance in the future.
Comparing the material condition of India in 1904 with what it was ten years previous, we find that the area of soil under cultivation has increased 229,000,000 acres. What we call internal revenue has increased 17 per cent during the last ten years; sea borne foreign commerce has risen in value from £130,500,000 to £163,750,000; the coasting trade from £48,500,000 to £63,000,000, and the foreign trade by land from £5,500,000 to £9,000,000. Similar signs of progress and prosperity are to be found in the development of organized manufactures, in the increased investment of capital in commerce and industry, in dividends paid by various enterprises, in the extended use of the railways, the postoffice and the telegraph. The number of operatives in cotton mills has increased during the last ten years from 118,000 to 174,000, in jute mills from 65,000 to 114,000, in coal and other mines from 35,000 to 95,000, and in miscellaneous industries from 184,000 to 500,000. The railway employes have increased in number from 284,000 to 357,000 in ten years.
A corresponding development and improvement is found in all lines of investment. During the ten years from 1894 to 1904 the number of joint stock companies having more than $100,000 capital has increased from 950 to 1,366, and their paid up capital from £17,750,000 to £24,500,000. The paid in capital of banks has advanced from £9,000,000 to £14,750,000; deposits have increased from £7,500,000 to £23,650,000, and the deposits in postal savings banks from £4,800,000 to £7,200,000, which is an encouraging indication of the growth of habits of thrift. The passenger traffic on the railways has increased from 123,000,000 to 195,000,000, and the freight from 20,000,000 to 34,000,000 tons. The number of letters and parcels passing through the postoffice has increased during the ten years from 340,000,000 to 560,000,000; the postal money orders from £9,000,000 to £19,000,000, and the telegraph messages from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 in number.
The income tax is an excellent barometer of prosperity. It exempts ordinary wage earners entirely--persons with incomes of less than 500 rupees, a rupee being worth about 33 cents of our money. The whole number of persons paying the income tax has increased from 354,594 to 495,605, which is about 40 per cent in ten years, and the average tax paid has increased from 37.09 rupees to 48.68 rupees. The proceeds of the tax have increased steadily from year to year, with the exception of the famine years.
There are four classifications of taxpayers, and the proportion paid by each during the last year, 1902, was as follows:
