But the Hindu peasant is not a begging friar, and may be supposed to have some share of the love of money which is common to humanity; so it is worth while to inquire why he is normally so very poor.  There are two reasons, both of which are so obvious and have so often been pointed out by those who have known him best, that there is little excuse for overlooking them.  The first of them is thus stated in Tennant’s Indian Recreations, written in 1797, before British rule had affected the people of India much in one direction or another.  “Industry can hardly be ranked among their virtues.  Among all classes it is necessity of subsistence and not choice that urges to labour; a native will not earn six rupees a month by working a few hours more, if he can live upon three; and if he has three he will not work at all,” Such was the Hindu a century ago in the eyes of an observant and judicious man, studying him with all the sympathetic interest of novelty, and such he is now.

The other reason for the chronic poverty of the Indian peasant is that, if he had money beyond his immediate necessity, he could not keep it.  It is the despair of the Government of India and of every English official who endeavours to improve his condition that he cannot keep his land, or his cattle, or anything else on which his permanent welfare depends.  The following extract from The Reminiscences of an Indian Police Official gives a lively picture of the effect of unaccustomed wealth, not on peasants, but on farmers owning land and cattle and used to something like comfort.

“Yellapa, like all cotton growers in that part of the Western Presidency, profited enormously by the high price of the staple during the American war.  Silver was poured into the country (literally) in crores (millions sterling), and cultivators who previously had as much as they could do to live, suddenly found themselves possessed of sums their imagination had never dreamt of.  What to do with their wealth, how to spend their cash was their problem.  Having laden their women and children with ornaments, and decked them out in expensive sarees, they launched into the wildest extravagance in the matter of carts and trotting bullocks, going even as far as silver-plated yokes and harness studded with silver mountings.  Even silver tyres to the wheels became the fashion.  Twelve and fifteen rupees were eagerly paid for a pair of trotting bullocks.  Trotting matches for large stakes were common; and the whole rural population appeared with expensive red silk umbrellas, which an enterprising English firm imported as likely to gratify the general taste for display.  Many took to drink, not country liquors such as had satisfied them previously, but British brandy, rum, gin, and even champagne.”

A few pages further on the author tells us of the ruin by debt and drunkenness of the families which had indulged in these extravagances.  The fact is that to keep for to-morrow what is in the hand to-day demands imagination, purpose and self-discipline, which the Hindu working man has not.  He is the product of centuries, during which his rulers made the life of to-morrow too uncertain, while his climate made the life of to-day too easy.  No outward applications will alone cure his poverty, because it is a symptom of an inward disease.