The Raj Has Failed

Smoke pillars writhed skyward last week from Calcutta's five burning ghats. Emaciated Indians shoveled at least 100 Hindu dead into the ancient fires each day. Possibly greater numbers of Moslem corpses were buried, fellow victims of a bitter, ten-month-old Indian food shortage now grown to famine proportions.

Through Calcutta's crowded streets a destitute army over 100,000 strong roamed foodless, homeless, hopeless. Families were jerked apart as mothers peddled daughters for a few rupees. Sons committed suicide to conserve scanty family stores. All around lay the hunger-shriveled dead awaiting, sometimes for hours, the arrival of corpse-removal squads.

In the famine provinces of Bombay, Madras, Bengal, similar scenes prevailed. At the height of India's planting season, hinterland peasantry left their fields.

Voices from India. Famine is no new tale in India. There were hunger plagues in 1867, 1878, 1897, 1900, costing a total of more than 8,000,000 lives. Despite nearly 200 years of British enlightenment, the causes of famine are what they always were: 1) medieval agricultural methods; 2) a population growing more rapidly than wealth and education; 3) Government failure to act.

To these causes can be added one more: Japanese capture of Burma's "rice bowl," from which came 1,500,000 tons of rice annually to supplement India's average yearly production of 27,000,000 tons.

A firm Viceregal program of food control could ease the tragic shortage, feed all. On-the-scene observers believe that incoming Viceroy and Field Marshal Lord Wavell must, on his arrival, take drastic and energetic action. But the soldier-Viceroy long since confessed himself to be a tired old man.

Voices from England. In London, Food Secretary Lord Woolton said that ships were at sea bearing "thousands of tons of cereals" to India. But his words did not allay a nation's conscience. Said the liberal New Statesman and Nation: "The British Raj has failed in a major test. ..." Observed the ultra-Tory Sunday Observer'.

"[Linlithgow's] Viceroyalty, which was to have inaugurated a vast advance in

India's agricultural wealth, unfortunately closes in a clash between rural and urban economy. . . . Somewhere ... we took a wrong turning, probably when we failed to realize that Indian political parties were more pro-Chinese and more anti-Japanese than we were, and had been anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist when we were appeasers. Their desire was to feel that the war was their war, but it still figures as a war to help Britain and save her Empire."

No other voice of influence, in the U.S. or elsewhere, was raised in behalf of famine relief in India until last week, when Australian Prime Minister Curtin said he was arranging to send wheat.

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