Swami Vivekananda on Starvation

“They have sucked out blood, they have carried away with them millions of our money, while our people have starved.”

“With the sense of possession comes selfishness and under its influence man never thinks for common good, that clears the path for starvation of others.”

“...amidst wretchedness, poverty and starvation it is too difficult to preach Advaitism and realize the grand dream of Universal Unity...poor must be given bread first and then religion.”

“...in the name of civilizing our country [India] they exploited our country making us poorer day by day. There were perpetual famine and starvation in India. But the British had always been callous to it.”

“Twenty years from 1860-1908 were the years of famine. Nearly 29 million people died during famines from 1854-1901. These famines revealed that poverty and chronic starvation had taken firm roots in colonial India.”

“...the imperialistic drain of wealth from the backward parts of the globe and its piling up in capitalistic areas of the West that causes poverty and starvation in one part and plentitude in another part of the world.”

“As a matter of fact spiritualism cannot progress amidst poverty and starvation. Religion and spiritualism are meaningless to a man who cries out for a piece of bread with a parched throat. It is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics.”

“I was dying of starvation, barefooted I went from office to office and was refused everywhere. I learnt by experience what human compassion is. This was my first contact with realities of life; and I discovered it...had no room for the weak, the poor, the deserted.”

“Culturally it was a time of stagnation. Poverty and starvation were the common phenomenon in the society. The imperial power invested huge capital in India and made enormous profit. The British looked upon India as a place where capital could hope to maintain a heaven. But paradoxically enough, the Indian masses were rotting in poverty and starvation. Thus a great predicament, surrounded India in the 18th and 19th centuries.”