ABSTRACT
This journal, which had a short life span, 1871–1873, features in this edition a long article by a Native Indian who lays out the political and religious complaints about England’s long regime in India. At one point the writer notes the long-standing ‘incompetency of English officials’ in India and boldly states how condescending they were in their attitudes towards the Indians: ‘The treatment which the natives receive at the hands of the English is of a piece with this. A native is a liar; perjury is habitual to him; morality he has not; bigotry and ignorance are his strongholds’. The writer then states:
The Government of Bengal deliberately allowed the exportation of rice to distant places, though perfectly well aware that the inhabitants of an adjoining district, Orissa, were dying for want of it. The result was that hundreds of thousands of lives were lost! The loss India suffered in consequence of this neglect of duty by Government no one can adequately measure, and there can be no hesitation in point to this act as one of the most inhuman and savage that was ever perpetrated by any one. It has not escaped us that there have been justifications of the conduct of the Bengal Government, with what truth will be judged from the following letter in the ‘Asiatic’ of March 28, 1871. 47
