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to make them understand that feeding the poor meant nothing to
him? Guiding their feet in the way of righteousness - yes; but
feeding merely encourages them to proliferate. After all’ our
Lord said "The poor are always with you, but the Son of Man..."
(This particular Saddhu, I afterwards discovered, could have had
as much money as he cared to ask for from any of the princes of
Rajputana if he had cared to ask for it).
It is possible to emerge from an excellent restaurant in India
and find a starving beggarman and a starving beggar woman lying
on the pavement; to drop them a rupee (a small fraction of the
cost of one's dinner); to see their faces light up with joy : and
to come back a year later to find the starving beggar-man and the
starving beggar-woman lying in the same place, with a starving
beggar-baby between them. The Saddhu of mount Abu would have had
more sense.
The so-called "green revolution", which increased the
agricultural production of India so dramatically after the war by
improved seeds, fertilisers, and methods of cultivation, was
merely an extrapolation. The end result was to increase the
population and the pressure on the food supply, so that the
standard of living - or dying - remained the same.