The Great Famine in Gujarat 1899-1900 - Xavier James L.S.

THE GREAT FAMINE IN GUJARAT-1899-1900

Xavier James L.S.

From 1726 onwards there were three famines with intervals of 87 years in Gujarat.  People in Gujarat had suffered the worst famine in 1899-1900.  At this moment the Catholic Mission in Gujarat was a six years old babe.  It was in the Gujarati Samvad year 1956.  The monsoon failed those two years and there was no storage of food grains.  The British government helped only wherever they could reach out by the means of transportation.  Anywhere 100 K.M. away from the Railway station, people died without any food and drink.  In Saurashtra, people died like flies.  Scenes of horror were common.  This famine affected the mission work of the Catholics to some extent but God worked in his own way in his time.  The protestant missionaries like Salvation Army, Methodists, Irish Presbyterian and Missionary Alliance stopped their evangelization and worked for the human cause.  They helped the famine-affected people of Gujarat with human touch.  On the contrary the so-called good religious Hindus and Jains did not bother about the human beings, but opened hospitals for animals.  The Vaniyas ran away to Bombay to survive the famine. 

At this juncture Archbishop Daloff of Bombay acted promptly and sent two congregations of religious nuns to Gujarat mission to work for the cause of famine-affected victims.  They were daughters of the cross and local Franciscan Tertiaries.  They opened an orphanage for the orphans forsaken by their parents due to the famine.  The Catholics of Bombay helped the famine relief financially.  In four years they sent money worth 35 lakhs today.

In the streets of Ahmedabad the police found 990 orphans and got them admitted into the orphanage of sisters, out of which 466 children died, 362 were reclaimed by their parents after the famine and the police gave the remaining 101 to the sisters.  On 5^th June 1901, this institution was shifted to Anand.  Now it is called St. Francis Xavier Home.  During the famine, five missionaries also died in serving the famine victims.  There were three German Jesuit priests and two nuns.  The missionaries worked in the spirit of their Lord, with efficiency and self-sacrifice.

The expression ‘Chappaniu Christian’ is used by the upper caste people of Gujarat for the Vankar Christians.  They deride the Christians by this name.  They say that the missionaries took advantage of the famine.  However we see that these Christians witnessed the humanitarian acts done to them by the followers of Christ.  Therefore they became Christians.  They also realized that Christianity was a liberating religion.  It liberated people from the clutches of casteism, for example.

The people who criticize never bothered to help their own fellow human beings. They ended up rather in helping themselves and the animals.  

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