A GREAT CALAMITY
There were many who anxiously watched the clouds in the year 1876, for if another monsoon season passed by with cloudless sky a famine was inevitable.
Various ways and means were used of predicting the evil days that seemed to be near, but the old gardener in the mission compound had a way all his own, and he confidently asserted to every one that without doubt a famine was coming.
“Every day,” he said, “the Dora came out on the verandah and looked at a little board with a thin glass bottle on it, and in the bottle there was a little mud. And he looked carefully and said, ‘Gardener, there is going to be a famine,’ and I said surely it would come.”
I did not grasp his meaning. “What sort of board and glass bottle and mud was it?” I asked.
“Is there not one on the verandah now?” and he pointed to the barometer; and then I saw that the old man had taken advantage of the methods of Western science in predicting what was to come.
I knew many who lived through the famine of 1876-78. Those who were children during those years were many of them stunted in growth, and some had a look of premature age on their faces. But old men and women remembered a famine which must have had unusual horrors, for all said, “Men ate men in that famine.” I was not willing to believe them, for I had heard my husband say that though thousands died in 1876-78, and men were fierce with the pangs of hunger, he had never seen a trace of cannibalism. When, therefore, some one told me of the famine of 1836, that “men ate men,” I always asked whether they knew of any one who had seen it. A woman did tell me that her mother was told by a neighbour that she saw a woman put her child into a pot to boil it. Her voice sank to a whisper as she told me. It seemed too horrible to tell.
A large proportion of the Madigas live so close to the starvation point all the year round that the first failure of crops brought hunger to their door. When another rainy season passed without bringing sufficient moisture to help the seed to sprout, there was great distress. The Madigas went to the Sudras for aid, but they had no harvest to share with them. They themselves had not enough to eat, and were beginning to sell the substantial silver belts and gold bracelets of the family to buy food. But cattle were dying of hunger and thirst, and the Madigas found an occasional meal by picking the morsel of meat off the bones of starved animals. The red fruit of the cactus became desirable food. Many began to eat leaves, seeds and weeds.
The Ongole Missionary’s daily visits to the “board, thin bottle and mud inside,” showed the anxiety which he felt. He was thinking of ways to meet the approaching calamity. Ten years had passed since he came to Ongole. He counted as his flock 3,269 Christians, nearly all from the Madigas. He had been among them so much, he knew that they were destitute and poor even when harvests were plentiful. The emaciated figures of men and women that were haunting the compound in ever-increasing numbers, calling to him whenever he appeared in the verandah, “We are dying! we are dying!” showed him that something must be done.
The preachers came and went with careworn faces. They knew something of the activity in the mission bungalow, of appeals for help sent to America, of correspondence with the Government in Madras. Ere long they were sent out with a message that all could earn cooley and enough to eat if they came to Razupallem, where the Missionary had taken a contract for digging. The English Government were undertaking relief work of various kinds. The Buckingham Canal, extending from Madras north to Bezwada, on the East Coast, offered relief work on a large scale. The Ongole Missionary had taken a contract to dig three miles of this canal. The relief camp was to be at Razupallem, ten miles east of Ongole and near the coast.
Image: FAMINE-STRICKEN CHRISTIANS.
One of the preachers, with twenty coolies to help him, was sent ahead to prepare the camp. The Missionary came and showed him where to put up the rows of huts, forming little streets. There were palm trees and bamboos growing all along the sea-shore. A man was sent out to negotiate with the villagers for palm leaves and bamboo sticks, with which to build the little huts. Several wells had to be dug, not deep, for water was near the surface. The potters in the surrounding villages were given an advance for pots, that the starving crowd might buy for a copper, and boil their meal over a fire of the dry leaves and sticks to be picked up everywhere.
At the appointed time the preachers came into Ongole from far and near with a multitude of starving people. The Missionary had sent Komatis ahead to Razupallem with bags of grain to sell. He sent word to the preacher who was there to be ready, for a great crowd would come in the afternoon. At two o’clock they began to arrive, and as the preacher and his helpers looked over the plain towards Ongole, the advancing multitude seemed to them like a huge ocean-wave rolling upon them. The huts were soon filled. Families had the first consideration. Those who found no room had to lie under the trees.
But the tumult and the contentions of that night! The Missionary, after seeing that each had sufficient in his hands for an evening meal, had come to the camp. He tried to establish order; but who can reason with hungry men? There was bargaining for pots; there was wrangling over the grain. So eager for food were they that three preachers had to walk up and down among the huts to see that the palm leaves and the bamboo sticks were not used for fuel, or that by carelessness the huts were not set on fire as the food was boiling in the pots.
In the morning the digging began. Thirty preachers were made overseers. Crude picks and shovels were supplied. The men did the digging; the women filled baskets with earth, and carried them away on their heads to empty on one side and return.
During those first few days the Missionary insisted that the preachers, too, must dig. “After you come and show me your hands full of blisters, I shall be certain that you know how it feels to dig, and you will not be hard on any one.” He feared that some might assume a harsh attitude when urging the starving people to work. Several preachers told me they shovelled dirt till the blisters rose, and they showed them to the Dora, and he said, “Right; you will make a good overseer.”
There were Komati Chetties in Ongole, who thought they would take advantage of the thousands in the camp at Razupallem. They brought grain into the camp that was only half ripe. It was cheap, and people bought it. Sickness increased, and the Missionary, as he went about giving medicine, enquired about the food. “Show me the next Komati who brings spoiled grain into this camp.” Soon the preachers sent word to his tent that two Komatis were coming with a new supply. As soon as they saw the Dora coming toward them, they dropped their bags in fear and ran away. The bags were opened, and the half-ripe grain fell into the sand. The Dora stamped upon it with his feet till it was all mixed with sand, and no one could find it to eat it.
After this no grain was sold in the little bazaar of the camp that had not been inspected and pronounced fit to eat.
Wages were good. Those who had worked for a time went home and sent friends and relatives. The sick were brought on litters. Those who were too weak to work were given a subsistence allowance. But there was danger lurking even in the abundance at the camp. Some who came were too hungry to wait; they ate the half-boiled grain out of the pot. And then they lay down and died. Many a time the preachers tried to keep these half-starved arrivals from eating. They gave them “congee” to drink—a kind of gruel—but they would not listen. “Never mind, let me eat; I am dying with hunger”; and the remonstrances of the preachers only angered them in their craving for a substantial meal. There were others so emaciated, no matter how much they ate, they were always hungry. They ate oftener and more than their starved bodies could endure. Soon they were found lying somewhere very still, and those who looked at them found that they were dead.
The death-rate was large. No one knew how many died each day. The living were so full of trouble they could not dig graves for the dead; all they could do was to carry them outside the camp into the cactus hedge. The jackals, dogs, and birds did the rest. There were those whose relations died. None could be found who would dig a deep grave into the hard soil. Yet love clung even where the dullness of despair had taken away the sharp edge of pain. They dug a few feet deep into the sand, and covered the dead one well. At night the howl of the jackals, so like the horrible laughter of fiends and demons, was heard in the distance, and in the morning none cared to go near.
Every one in the camp was sad at heart, and many were full of fear. Cholera was abroad in the camp, and death stared every one in the face. One of the preachers told me how his wife died of cholera on the way to the camp. There were women there without husband or brother to care for them; there were children who had survived their parents, and were now to learn that Christianity is tender toward the fatherless. The roadsides everywhere were lined with the bleaching bones of those who had to lie down on the road to die. The heat was intense, and there was no shade where they were digging. “Our hearts were very heavy,” the preachers told me “and our Dora’s hair turned white during that year.”
Each preacher had about one hundred people working under him. He was responsible for the amount of work which they did, and they received their pay from him every evening. He became acquainted with the company working under him, even though there was much coming and going. Often during the day some of the diggers would sit down for a short rest, and then the preacher would join them and hear them tell, in broken words and a look of utter misery in their eyes, of the scattered families and those who had died; and there was always the wail, “We are all dying!” Then was the time to say comforting words. The people said afterwards, “They told us words which we could not forget.”
Distress was so great, no one thought of those demons that have their eyes ever directed to this earth, thirsting for blood. The demons seemed to have joined together to slay the living, and who could stop, in the search for a morsel to eat, to propitiate them all? The terrors of the famine were greater than the terrors inspired by demons. As for comfort and trust and hope, where in all their cults had the Madigas anything to inspire the firm belief that there is a hand that guides all events and guides them in mercy?
As the preachers sat with an occasional group of those who wanted rest, they said, “Our God does not send trouble because He is thirsting for the lives of men. He has let this come upon us because He saw that men were going all wrong—that they were doing puja to gods in whom there is no salvation. Jesus Christ, by dying for us, has taken all our troubles upon Himself.” And then the preachers would take their New Testament, which they ever had with them, and they would read verses to the people that seemed like balm on their sore hearts and troubled minds—especially “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And they went back to work. But after a time they said, “Read us that verse again out of your holy book.” Never in any of their cults, not in the Ramanuja sect, nor in the Nasriah sect, had they heard such words! And as they were digging the memory of their old cults grew faint in their minds. In their misery they turned to Jesus Christ for His touch of healing.
The contract for three miles of digging was finished after eight months of work. Rain came. The seed was sown with many mantras, but it rotted in the ground. The crowds that came to the mission bungalow in Ongole were so great that though the Dora stood on the east verandah and gave relief to the men to carry home to their families, and the Dorasani stood on the west verandah daily giving grain to the women who had come with their starving children, it was not enough. Four Christians had to act as policemen, wearing a uniform, the pressure was so great. When the servants carried the noon meal the few yards from the cook-house to the bungalow, they had to hold the dishes high above their heads and start on a run, for there were starved creatures everywhere ready to snatch it from them. Every morning the dead were found in the hedge around the compound. They had come for help, but now had no need of it.
The preachers came in from the field, reporting great distress. The Christians were dying, especially the aged and the children. The Missionary could not journey here and there bringing relief. His presence was imperative at headquarters. He had to make his preachers his stewards. They went about, all over the country, with money to give to the Christians. But they had orders not to refuse any one they met in the way starving who asked for enough to buy a meal. They found men greedy and grasping in their demand for help. Even the finer feelings of family relationship were blunt, as the stronger members of families wrangled with the aged and weak, and begrudged them the help they had received.
Again rain came. Bullocks and buffaloes had died; men harnessed themselves to the ploughs. A crop was growing, but a plague of locusts came and destroyed it. Ships came into the harbour at Madras laden with grain, for Government did its utmost to save the people. For the third time, with the help of the Mansion House Fund, seed-corn was given out plentifully in Ongole to all who asked. Sudras came, and for ten rupees carried away bags of seed-corn worth thirty rupees. They promised to give plentifully to the Madigas of the coming harvest. Many a Sudra had gone to Ongole during the famine to tell the Missionary of his distress, and had come away helped and comforted. And many remembered this in the years that followed. The activity at Ongole, the ceaseless readiness to save from starvation the lowest stratum of society, even the Madigas, was a display of the power of Christianity that was a wonder in the eyes of thousands. “It is a good religion,” they said, one and all.
A crop of millet, maturing quickly, tided the people over several months, and then a substantial crop of rice was harvested. A great calamity was over. What were the effects?