Diet and Anarchism in Bengal

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 7, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 14.

Diet and Anarchism in Bengal

There are some people who hold that the anarchism in Bengal, India, is partly the product of defective diet. One writer declares that “nearly all the prisoners I saw were certainly deficient in vitality. The diet of Bengalis of the student type is atrociously inadequate. Recent experiments have shown that the average Bengali of this class has 20 to 25 per cent fewer red corpuscles in his blood than the average country-bred European.” This doubtless might be true in the matter of discontent. It could be very easily seen that a half-starved people would be discontented, and discontent would of course furnish a very fruitful ground for the seeds of the anarchistic doctrines of the West.