SEMANTICS!
Daring: the spring, Prime Minister: Indira Gandhi expressed displeasure on several occasions over the reports in.the press of other countries about impending famine in India. The reports’ were greatly exaggerated, she said. In any case, the word "famine" was: singularly inappropriate since all that is’ éver-involved nowadays.in India: in® the event of food shortages - is a + pinched diet, but most certainly not’ famine! me ;
last: March 13, for instance, an “Associated Press dispatch quoted: her as saying: "There' was a time when famine meant people © falling down’ and dying like flies. If this is the meaning, then we. don't have famine. If it means that there will be a period of considerable hardship, there is one now, and it is likely to worsen. .. in a couple of months.
As a’ further contribution to this interesting dispute over the meaning of words we call attention to the following May 6 Reuters, dispatch from New Delhi: :
"Some members of the opposition stated Thursday in the. Indian Parliament that in the regions. affected by famine, the inhabitants. were eating the bark. of trees, leaves: and the waste products. found. in COW” dung. ,
"These declarations were made after Mr. Subramaniam, the min-ister of food and agriculture. made public a telegram from the Orissa government denying an allegation of the opposition that nineteen persons had reportedly died from hunger in that state in the east of India.
"A deputy of the opposition then brandished an album of photographs which he had taken in the state, showing. hunger-stricken chet people selling their. children.
"Another deputy ‘declared that in the state of Uttar Pradesh he had seen people gathering the kernels to be found in cow dung and . human excrement. He likewise stated that mothers were in prison for. having killed their hunger-stricken children. He said that he knew: of a case where a father had poisoned his wife and three children in order not.to see them die of hunger."
* Ok Ox
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi' s concern ‘about not. using a dirty. -word like "famine" to label what is merely a "considerable hardship" stems largely from the unfavorable comparison with China that is conjured up. Since China joined the noncapitalist world, famine has become a thing of the past.. Although the country does not have abundance, the worst. inequities of the capitalist past have been ended and the people are now assured of at least. food and clothing.
The answer of India's ruling class to the challenge of revolutionary China is truly ingenious. If the specter of famine cannot be exorcised, the word can at least be banished from the country's 845 different languages and dialects. And if there's no such word as "famine" in all of India, then that blocks the development of a . revolutionary movement. to put an end to it!
However , these experts in semantics might begin pondering the following question: Haven't “considerable hardships" been known to touch off a revolution?