ABSTRACT
The explorer Richard Burton encountered four destitute Indians at Mecca, working as servants, hoping to complete their pilgrimage by begging their way to Medina. He feared they would not survive their desert ordeal:
Such, I believe, is too often the history of those wretches whom a fit of religious enthusiasm, likest to insanity, hurries away to the Holy Land. I strongly recommend the subject to … our Indian Government as one that calls loudly for their interference. No Eastern ruler parts, as we do, with his subjects; all object to lose productive power. To an ‘Empire of Opinion’ this emigration is fraught with evils. It sends forth a horde of malcontents that ripen into bigots; it teaches foreign nations to despise our rule; and it unveils the present nakedness of once wealthy India.1
