INDIA. 



149 



twenty <>r thirty years ago; that the wages of 

 unskilled labor have increased twufnld even in 

 ilio linck\\iinl tlisl rids, mid those of skilled labor 



in a larger proporl i while domestic servants 



iid almost double u.s much as they were 

 formerly. Tin- people who work with their hands 

 secure enough to supply their needs, although 

 they often voluntarily remain idle half the time. 

 Where I or:.' annas per diem were the common 

 ihirty year- ago, as they are still in remote 

 districts, unskilled labor now commands, in Bom- 

 bay and other presidency towns, 12 annas or 1 

 rupee. The only classes that are relatively worse 

 oil are the inferior land aristocracy and the peo- 

 ple who have received a liberal education and 

 must depend on their brains, both of which are 

 t he creation of British rule. The main argument 

 against granting a considerable share in the gov- 

 ernment to natives is that the class to which the 

 nat i< malist agitation is mainly confined, and from 

 which nearly all the persons qualified by intelli- 

 gence and training for administrative and legis- 

 lative work would have to be sought, represents 

 only one of the numerous peoples of India, the 

 Hindus of Hciipil, a race that is despised by the 

 sturdy and martial nations which were once its 

 oppressors, and which now furnish the fighting 

 men on whom the English raj depends. 



Partial Famine. Scarcity amounting al- 

 most to a famine was experienced in various 

 parts of central and southern India in 1891-'92. 

 The Government opened relief works for the 

 employment of 248,000 men, and gave gratuitous 

 relief to many thousands, besides advancing large 

 sums to landholders to enable them to give em- 

 ployment to the poor. The expenditure up to 

 March 31, 1892, had been Rx 233,000 for relief 

 and Rx 233,000 in advances, and Rx 381,000 of 

 taxes had been remitted. There were three 

 principal areas where the agricultural condi- 

 tions were particularly unfavorable : (1) the dis- 

 tricts of Bombay and Madras embraced in the 

 Deccan, with a large part of the states of Mysore 

 and Hyderabad and parts of Madras lying to the 

 south and east of these ; (2) Rajputana and some 

 of the parts of the Bombay presidency that lie 

 on its borders ; (3) in Bihar. In parts of Bengal 

 also, and in various other parts of India, as well 

 as in Burmah, much distress was felt ; but every- 

 where food was supplied in sufficient quantities 

 to ward off starvation in a way that was impos- 

 sible before the construction of the railroad sys- 

 tem. In Ajmir, where the population had 'to 

 subsist mainly on imported grain, prices were 

 little higher than in normal seasons; in the af- 

 fected districts of Bombay and Madras they were 

 hardly more than three fourths as high as in 

 77, though the rainfall was less than in 

 that period of scarcity ; and in Bihar there was 

 no alarming rise in prices. The monsoon came 

 earlier in 1892 than usual, and this averted fam- 

 ine, and relieved the Government of the charge 

 for relief that taxed its resources severely. 



The Opium Question. The anti-opium reso- 

 lution passed by the House of Commons in 1891, 

 and the statistics showing the increase in the. 

 consumption of opium circulated by the Society 

 for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, placed 

 the Indian officials, who were agreed regarding 

 the impossibility of sacrificing one of the main 

 sources of Indian revenue, on the defensive, and 



tin y took great pains in 1891 and 1892 to collect 

 evidence tending to show that the opium habit 

 was harmless; that it was not practiced to any 

 extent ; that a large consumption of opium was 

 beneficial to the natives, tx-rausu it warded off 

 malaria; that tin- suppre imi of the public sale 

 of opium would drive the people to rctx-llion ; 

 that, if the Government should cease to trade in 

 the drug, smuggling and contraband trading 

 would spring up on an enormous scale; that if 

 the natives were deprived of opium they would 

 destroy themselves with bhang and ilcoh'ol;that 

 to suppress the cult nation of the poppy would 

 condemn millions to starvation with other ex- 

 travagant and contradictory assertions. Sir \. 

 Mackenzie, Chief Commissioner for Burmah, sur- 

 prised his fellow administrators by recommend- 

 ing that the opium shops should be .closed to all 

 men of Burmese race a proposition to which the 

 Governor-General was unwilling to agree until 

 he could be satisfied that the evil was as great as 

 was depicted, and that its removal would not re- 

 sult in greater evils. In a dispatch in which the 

 members of the Government of India sum up the 

 results of their investigations, they say that noth- 

 ing in the evidence collected by them affords any 

 foundation for the statement that the consump- 

 tion of opium in India has increased during re- 

 cent years, or that there is any cause for appre- 

 hending that the opium habit is likely to spread 

 throughout the country. They show that the 

 result of their action has been to restrict the 

 sale of opium, and they believe it to be impossi- 

 ble to enforce complete prohibition. They point 

 out the difficulty of entirely closing the opium 

 dens, but add that orders have been issued to 

 insert in all future licenses a clause forbidding 

 the consumption of opium on he premises. 



Conquest of Hunza-Nagar. The military 

 reasons connected with Anglo-Russian rivalry 

 in Asia, which led to the establishment of a 

 protectorate over Cashmere and the reduction 

 of Gilghit to a British residency, seemed to the 

 Indian authorities to require the incorporation 

 into the Indian Empire of the little Himalayan 

 states of Hunza and Nagar, which lie beyond 

 Gilghit. on the border of the Pamir. They are 

 situated in a valley surrounded by some of the 

 loftiest peaks of the Himalayas. The only 

 practicable gateway to the country for an in- 

 vading force is the ravine of the Kanjut river, 

 which is closed by the torrent during the sum- 

 mer months. To prevent the construction of a 

 road up this valley as far as Cashmere territory 

 extends, the Hunza-Nagars several years ago 

 sei/.ed the outpost of Chalt Fort. In the au- 

 tumn of 1891 an expedition was sent out from 

 Gilghit, under the command of Col. Durand. 

 Ca-hmere sepoys holding Chalt Fort and a posi- 

 tion further down were re-enforced to prevent 

 attacks that were planned by the Hunzas: but 

 before the expedition could advance to those 

 points it was necessary to build a road along 

 the edge of the cliffs. The Cashmere authorities 

 were not very eager or loyal in providing trans- 

 port for the commissary stores, and consequent- 

 ly the expeditionary force was not ready to 

 march across the frontier from Chalt. Safdar 

 Ali Khan, the Thum or Rajah of Hunza, ex- 

 pecting Russian aid. answered the proposal* of 

 the British commander with insolent defiance. 



