Poverty in India Quotes

“Famine in India”

“Malnutrition in India”

“Bengal famine of 1943”

“There will always be the poor as long as there are the rich.”

“(The) plebian sort is so poor that the greatest part of them go naked.”

“…the peasants are more oppressed than formerly [and] frequently abscond.”

“There was no middle state. A man must be of the highest rank or live miserably.”

“Wikipedia: Poverty in India”

“The cities look attractive from a distance... Rich men have gardens... The common people live in huts and hovels.”

“Wikicommons: Poverty in India”

“There should be left only so much to the Hindus that neither, on the one hand, they should become arrogant on account of their wealth, nor, on the other, desert their lands in despair.”

“The resultant effect of [Alauddins] policy was that the people in the villages suffered from extreme financial hardship. The poverty of Indians was noticed in the later period by foreigners.”

“[the people of Hindustan lived] “as fishes do in the sea - the great ones eat up the little. For first the farmer robs the peasant, the gentlemen robs the farmer, the greater robs the lesser and the King robs all.””

““Enormous fortunes,” says Macaulay, “were rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this.””

“India’s very definition of comfort is a state of being that is inaccessible to the poor. Often, we pay not for the quality of service, experience, home or education, but for keeping the poor out. Low standards for the poor are embedded in all the cures that India prescribes for poverty.”

“India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors’ opulence.”

“[The peasants have] no possessions or assets from which to pay…[and are] beaten unmercifully and maltreated…They are carried off, attached to heavy iron chains, to various markets and fairs[to be sold], with their poor, unhappy wives behind them carrying their small children in their arms, all crying and lamenting their evil plight.”

“Most towns in Hindustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched material; that there is no city or town (that) does not bear evident marks of approaching decay. (...) In eastern countries, the weak and the injured are without any refuge whatever; and the only law that decides all controversies is the cane and the caprice of a governor.”

“The common people (live in) poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe… their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking…”

“The land is overstocked with people; but those in the country are very miserable, whilst the nobles are extremely opulent and delight in luxury. They are wont to be carried on their silver beds, preceded by some twenty chargers caparisoned in gold, and followed by 300 men on horseback and 500 on foot, and by horn-men, ten torchbearers and ten musicians.”