r,
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.

It is sometimes said: "Why harp on these figures? We know them." Our
answer is that the fact is ever harping in the stomach of the people,
and while it continues we cannot cease to draw attention to it. And
Gokhale urged that "even this deplorable condition has been further
deteriorating steadily." We have no figures on malnutrition among the
peasantry, but in Madras City, among an equally poor urban population,
we found that 78 per cent. of our pupils were reported, after a medical
inspection, to be suffering from malnutrition. And the spareness of
frame, the thinness of arms and legs, the pitiably weak grip on life,
speak without words to the seeing eye. It needs an extraordinary lack of
imagination not to suffer while these things are going on.

The peasants' grievances are many and have been voiced year after year
by this Congress. The Forest Laws, made by legislators inappreciative of
village difficulties, press hardly on them, and only in a small number
of places have Forest Panchayats been established. In the few cases in
which the experiment has been made the results have been good, in some
cases marvellously good. The paucity of grazing grounds for their
cattle, the lack of green manure to feed their impoverished lands, the
absence of fencing round forests, so that the cattle stray in when
feeding, are impounded, and have to be redeemed, the fines and other
punishments imposed for offences ill-understood, the want of wood for
fuel, for tools, for repairs, the uncertain distribution of the
available water, all these troubles are discussed in villages and in
local Conferences. The Arms Act oppresses them, by leaving them
defenceless against wild beasts and wild men. The union of Judicial and
Executive functions makes justice often inac