CHAPTER IT.
WHO ARE THE SUBMERGED TENTH ?
BY classifying and grading the various orders that constitute Indian Society according to their average earnings, and by considering their minimum standard of existence^, I have sought to prepare the way for a more careful investigation of those who actually constitute the Darkest India,, which we are seeking to describe. I have narrowed down our inquiry to the fifty millions, or whatever may be their number, who are either absolutely destitute, or so closely on the border-land of starvation as to need our immediate sympathy and assistance.
Strictly speaking it is with the former alone, the absolutely destitute, numbering as I have supposed some twenty-five millions, that we are at present concerned I have, however, found it in possible to exclude some reference to the poverty-stricken laboring classes, earning less than five rupees a month for the support of each family, inasmuch as they are probably far more numerous than I have supposed, and their miseries are but one degree removed from those of the utterly destitute. Indeed we scarcely know which is the most to be pitied, the beggar who, if he has nothing, has perhaps at least the comfort that nobody is dependent on him, or the poor coolie who with his three or four rupees a month has from five to eight, or more* Mouths to fill! ^72 did I say ? They are never filled? 1?he laost that can be done in such cases is to prolong life and to keep actual starvation at bay, and that only it may be for a time!
Nevertheless, I have restricted the term " Submerged Tenth " to the absolutely destitute, whom I now proceed to still further analyse.