Global Issues
Churchill Denied Relief to Bengal Famine Victims, Book Says
A new book on the Indian famine of 1943, also known as the Bengal famine named after the specific region where it occurred, has squarely put the responsibility for the famine on then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The famine killed roughly three million people and devastated the countryside of then undivided Bengal as World War II raged on the eastern flanks of the Indian subcontinent. Early in 1942, Japan took over Burma, a major rice exporter, and the British government reacted by buying up rice supplies and thereby denying it to the people in Bengal, another major rice-producing region.
The British government in London, the book says, turned away from sending relief to the famine victims even when it was evident that people were dying of hunger. According to archival materials, the Bengal government controlled by the British was also hoarding rice for its employees in Calcutta, the seat of the government in eastern India, and was buying up grains for Allied soldiers fighting the war in Middle East and Africa, says author Madhusree Mukerjee in her new book 'Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II'.
Hoarding, rice denial to the people, and inflationary financing of war efforts by printing money to pay for the goods the government was buying, coupled with the panic in government ranks when they realised there wasn't enough grain, all perpetuated the famine. It raged on for nearly a year before coming to an end thanks to Bengal's own rice harvest.
Mukerjee's research also shows Churchill's contempt for the lives of ordinary Indians that helped him ignore pleas for help.
'If it was someone else other than Churchill, I believe relief would have been sent, and if it wasn't for the war the famine wouldn't have occurred at all,' Mukerjee told IPS from Frankfurt. 'Churchill's attitude toward India was quite extreme and he hated Indians mainly because he knew India couldn't be held for very long. One can't escape the really powerful, racist things that he was saying.'
While a vast body of literature exists on the famine, Mukerjee's book explores whether it was possible to send relief to the victims.
'It certainly was possible to send relief but for Churchill and the War Cabinet that were hoarding grain for use after the war,' Mukerjee said.
The British government had drawn up the Indian Famine Codes during the 1880s to help avoid famine and food scarcity following natural disasters. In October 1942, when there were signs of food scarcity following a cyclone, these codes were not invoked. As economists Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen have said earlier in their book, the famine was 'simply not declared' by the British government.
The role of Indian political leaders during the famine also reveals the British government's unwillingness to intervene.
A regional rebel government - the Tamluk National Government - tried to distribute grains to farmers and residents but its reach wasn't wide enough to make a significant impact.
It was also during this period that almost 90,000 political activists and leaders of the National Congress Party from across the country were behind bars on sedition charges for calling for independence from the British.
'Many of them requested the government that they be freed to help the famine victims but their plea was not granted,' Mukerjee said. 'There was nothing the Congress Party could do.'
The local government, led by the Muslim League party, was also tied by restrictions imposed on them. Chief Minister Fazlul Huq, who had repeatedly warned that rice denial would lead to starvation deaths and famine, was forced to resign.
Private traders, many acting on behalf of the government, controlled food supply to the public. In one instance, a local company which happened to be owned by the chief financier of the Muslim League was paid millions of rupees to buy grains from the market and hold it for the British government.
The media was slow to react, too, because of censorship. Vernacular newspapers in Bengal started reporting on the famine long before the major newspaper of the region, The Statesman, picked up the story in the summer of 1943.
The government, Mukerjee says, had destroyed 5,000 copies of Hungry Bengal, a collection of images and articles on the famine.
Emaciated figures were pouring into the streets of Calcutta from the countryside during the latter half of 1943. But it wasn't enough to raise alarm over the famine outside Bengal.
'Dehydration was a major problem; people who had taken to the road had few serviceable utensils or containers,' Mukerjee quotes a Calcutta resident who lived through the period as saying. '[T]hey would try to carry water in cupped hands or leaves, or in rags stretched tight, back to loved ones who had fallen by the wayside - but it would all dribble through.'
This was just one story of the desperate struggle to survive amid others of hunger that went on to claim, by conservative estimates, 3.8 million lives in Bengal.
A commission was set up in 1944 to investigate causes of the famine but its findings remain controversial to this day due to missing or destroyed files.
As a follow-up to her latest book, Mukerjee wants to look into hunger in modern day India.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service