Death and Disease

But it is not only because of our own safety that we have a duty towards Asia. I saw many things in India that shocked me. I had no idea that human beings lived or could live under such conditions. I saw naked children in the streets, their bellies swollen by hunger, their limbs deformed through disease; lepers sitting everywhere; beggars who cannot afford to have any pride, who have no chance of living in accordance with their dignity as human beings.

I saw villages of mud huts, with a whole family living in one small hovel, surrounded by filth and with no drainage or sanitation, paying a large rent; people living in the streets because they had no shelter; people eating scraps from dustbins, because they could not buy food. I visited large blocks of tenements where one very small room would house perhaps a dozen people. I visited a hospital for the destitute and dying, and saw some people dying from disease. The majority were dying from starvation.