Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877Kennedy, James
History
Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877
Kennedy, James
India -- Description and travel; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Biography; Missionaries; Missions -- India
Apart from climate, there is no room for us as colonists. In India we
have not to do with rude tribes, as in America, New Zealand, and
Australia, and in a measure in Southern Africa, that cannot be said to
possess the land over which they and their fathers have long roamed, or
of which they have cultivated a very small part. We have to do with
ancient nations that have taken full possession of the land by
cultivation of the soil, and by pursuit of the arts of civilized life.
We find in India no tribes wasting away before the white stranger, but
a people growing in number under the security of our government. There
are districts in the North-West more densely peopled than any districts
in Europe occupied by an agricultural population. The emigration of
coolies to the Mauritius, to Bourbon, to the coast of South America, and
to the West Indian Islands, has done little to relieve the pressure.
Migration to unoccupied parts of Central India and Assam has been
carried out to a small extent, and it is very desirable this migration
should increase. Non-Aryan tribes occupy a large part of the mountains
and forests of Central and Eastern India. They have no wish for
accession from the people of the plains, and still less do they wish for
the entrance of Europeans. I can say nothing about the mountains of the
South, but so far as I have travelled over the sub-Himalayan range in
the North there is no place for Europeans in it, except for officials or
employers, and managers of native labour, such as tea-planters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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