In addition to this there are local
cesses, salt tax, etc. The salt tax, which presses most hardly on the
very poor, was raised in the last budget by Rs. 9 millions. The
inevitable result of this poverty is malnutrition, resulting in low
vitality, lack of resistance to disease, short life-period, huge
infantile mortality. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, no mischievous agitator,
repeated in 1905 the figures; often quoted:
Forty millions of people, according to one great Anglo-Indian
authority--Sir William Hunter--pass through life with only one
meal a day. According to another authority--Sir Charles
Elliot--70 millions of people in India do not know what it is
to have their hunger fully satisfied even once in the whole
course of the year. The poverty of the people of India, thus
considered by itself, is truly appalling. And if this is the
state of things after a hundred years of your rule, you cannot
claim that your principal aim in India has been the promotion
of the interests of the Indian people.
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