Harsh Truth of Bengal Famine !!!
The Bengal Famine one of the most cruel and horrendous deed a civilisation of people could face and that someone could have done yet a not so talked about event in history.
People know what Adolf Hitler did and it is discussed at all lengths in the History textbook but what is not discussed is about a monster named Winston Churchill,yes he is the same person given a lot of credit and spoken of in a lot of ways to show his greatness in the way he administered India under the Not so Great Britain. There are Several historical evidences of what Churchill had done to India including his role in the Bengal Famine wherein he forced the citizens of Bengal to starve without any help ofcourse as a attempt of civilising the uncivilised Indians in the Great Britain way and when it was brought to the notice of others and when people who were affected by this asked the Great Sir Churchill to do something to save the people he unsympathetically said,”But Gandhi is still alive”.
Thus a compilation of a few articles have been added to this blog along with my own understanding of who the Great Churchill of the Not so Great Britain was.Here is an extract of a few below.
The mass starvation that killed three million Indians during the closing years of the Second World War was no act of nature; it was engineered. Britain must face up to this crime, says Jason Hickel.
The Bengal famine stands as one of the single most horrific atrocities to have occurred under British colonial rule. From 1943 to 1944, more than three million Indians died of starvation and malnutrition, and millions more fell into crushing poverty.
For many years, the British blamed the famine on weather conditions and food shortfalls, as if it were an unavoidable natural disaster. Today, most researchers agree that the crisis was human-made, triggered primarily by war-time inflation that pushed the price of food out of reach.
Britain has been accused of not doing enough to alleviate the famine. But recent research by the economist Utsa Patnaik suggests there’s more to this story. Her work reveals that the inflation wasn’t incidental, as most have assumed, but a deliberate policy, designed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes and implemented by Winston Churchill, to shift resources away from the poorest Indians in order to provision British and American troops and support war-related activities.
To understand what happened during the 1940s, it’s important to grasp that it came on the heels of nearly two centuries of colonial plunder. From 1765 to 1938, the British government extracted goods worth trillions of dollars in today’s money, which were either consumed in Britain or re-exported for profit.1 This windfall was used to build domestic infrastructure in Britain, including roads, factories and public services, as well as to finance the industrialization of Western Europe and British settler colonies. Development in the Global North was funded in large part by colonial extraction.
For Indians this system was devastating. As colonial extraction intensified, India’s per capita consumption of food grains collapsed from 210 kilograms per year in the early 1900s down to 157 kilograms per year by the end of the 1930s – what Patnaik refers to as ‘severe nutritional decline’.
What happened during World War Two exacerbated this situation considerably. As US and British troops poured into Bengal to stage military operations against Japan, the colonial government decreed that, on top of existing mechanisms of extraction, all costs associated with Allied activities in the region would be covered by Indian resources, to an unlimited extent, until the end of the war.
Keynes sought to devise a mechanism for shifting resources away from the local population in order to provision military expansion
Keynes, who was a special advisor on Indian financial and monetary policy to Churchill and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was actively involved in planning war-time funding strategies. He sought to devise a mechanism for shifting resources away from the local population in order to provision the military expansion. One option was to tax rich people, but there weren’t enough of them to provide a sufficiently large resource base. The alternative was to tax ordinary people, but Keynes knew that imposing any direct taxation on a population that was already immiserated would likely trigger riots.
So he advocated for an indirect tax, through deliberate inflationary policy. Here’s how it worked. During the 1940s, the colonial government printed extraordinary amounts of money for military expenditure. All this new demand caused prices to soar, particularly for staple goods. The price of rice increased by 300 per cent. But because wages did not rise accordingly, ordinary people were pushed even deeper into poverty, forcing them to dramatically curtail their consumption of food and other goods. Meanwhile, any additional profits that fell into the laps of business owners as a result of the price inflation were taxed by the colonial state.
The inflation was no accident. The impoverishment was no accident. British policy was explicitly designed to ‘reduce the consumption of the poor’, as Keynes put it, in order to make resources available for British and American troops, through a ‘forced transfer of purchasing power’ from ordinary people to the military. The austerity was imposed most harshly on the people of Bengal, who fell into extreme famine, while food supplies were appropriated and diverted for military use.
In the name of the Allied cause, the policies imposed by Keynes and Churchill killed more than three million people – many times more than the total number of military and civilian casualties suffered during the entire war by Britain and the US combined. The scale of this tragedy is almost impossible to fathom. If laid head to foot, the corpses of the victims would stretch the length of England, from Dover to the Scottish borders, nearly 10 times over.l.
During this crisis, a number of officials in India pleaded with Churchill to send aid, but their requests were repeatedly refused. Instead, quite the opposite happened: the British government continued to extract income from India for its own domestic spending, totaling as much as £15 billion ($20 billion), in today’s money, from 1939 to 1944.
Patnaik points out that this intervention cannot be justified in the name of the war effort. Keynes and Churchill chose to finance Allied actions by appropriating food and other resources from colonized peoples, who had no say in the matter – but they could have done it in other ways. For instance, the US and Britain could have used their own resources instead, which would have required taxing their own citizens at no more than £1 per person.
TAINTED LEGACY
This history forces us to reflect on the legacy of figures that are widely celebrated today. It has long been understood that Churchill held white supremacist views. In a 1902 interview, he claimed that ‘the Aryan stock is bound to triumph’ over ‘the great barbaric nations’. He referred to Indians as a ‘foul race’, a ‘beastly people with a beastly religion’. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, there were calls for Churchill’s statue to be removed from Westminster. Boris Johnson, an admirer of Churchill, refused on the grounds that we shouldn’t ‘edit’ Britain’s history. If that’s the case, then we should ensure that the full story of Churchill’s legacy is told – and alongside every statue of him place a memorial to the three million Indians who were killed by his policies and to whom the Allied victory is ultimately owed.
What is required of Britain in light of this history? An apology, to be sure – which to date has never been proffered. But this is also a straightforward case for reparations. Germany has sought to make reparations for the Shoah and for the Herero-Nama genocide, and rightly so. Why shouldn’t Britain do the same?
Patnaik calculate that the absolute value of the drain from 1765 to 1938 amounted to $10.5 billion (not adjusted for inflation), which is more than India’s GDP at the end of that period. They note that if the value of drained goods had been invested at 5% per year, it would have amounted to $1.95 trillion in 1947 and, carrying on the thought experiment, $66 trillion in 2020.
The 1943 Bengal famine, which is estimated to have caused over three million deaths, resulted not from a drought as is widely thought but from the British government's policy failures, say IIT Gandhinagar scientists who have analysed 150 years of drought data.Policy lapses such as prioritising distribution of vital supplies to the military, civil services and others as well as stopping rice imports and not declaring Bengal famine hit were among the factors that led to the magnitude of the tragedy, historians have maintained.
Now, for the first time, researchers have analysed soil moisture database from 1870 to 2016 to reconstruct agricultural droughts.
Between 1935-45, the famine-affected region, which was Bengal, had no drought, the team from the Indian Institute of Technology here found.
"We are trying to understand the entire history of droughts in India and what is the likelihood they will occur in future," said Vimal Mishra, assistant professor at the institute.
"Famines that occurred during the British period caused the deaths of millions. We investigated the factors behind the causes of these deaths -- droughts or policy failures," he told .
The Bengal famine of 1943 was "completely because of policy failure", he said.
Aside from the 1943 Bengal famine, all other famines during 1870 and 2016, appear to be related, at least in part, to widespread soil moisture droughts, Mishra said.
While historians have documented policy failures that led to the Bengal famine, this is the first time scientists have used soil moisture data to show there was no drought in Bengal during the period preceding the famine.
After analysing over 150 years of data for the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers identified seven major droughts and six major famines in India.
"Out of six major famines (1873-74, 1876, 1877, 1896-97, 1899, and 1943) that occurred during 1870-2016, five are linked to soil moisture drought, and one (1943) was not," researchers wrote in the study.
"At the time, there was not much irrigation, groundwater pumping was not happening because electricity or mechanical pumps were not available
The last major famine in the British era occurred in 1943, which is also known as the Bengal famine. The famine resulted in two-three million deaths.
"We identified 1935-45 as a period under drought, but the famine-affected region, which was Bengal, had no drought during this period," said Mishra.
"We find that the Bengal famine was likely caused by other factors related at least in part to the ongoing threat of World War II -- including malaria, starvation and malnutrition," he added.
Previous research has shown that in early 1943, military and other political events adversely affected Bengal economy.
"We did a very solid diagnosis for each famine that happened in Bengal and Bihar -- which was part of the northeastern province of Awadh in the British period," Mishra said.
"What was unique in the 1873-74 famine was that there were 25 million people affected but low mortality due to famine," he added.
According to Mishra, this low mortality was due to food imports from Burma, and timely relief aid provided by the British government. Then Bengal lieutenant governor Richard Temple imported, distributed food and relief money and that saved a lot of lives, he said.
"The famine was over in 1874, with 17 per cent surplus monsoon rainfall and good food production. But Temple was heavily criticised by the British for over expenditure," said Mishra.
In the 1876-77 famine, which affected south India in 1876 and north India in 1877, over 30 million people were impacted. The study suggests that at least six-10 million people died, because measures to provide relief and employment were not taken at the time.
According to the study, the expansion of irrigation, better public distribution system, rural employment, and transportation reduced the impact of drought on the lives of people after Independence.
Mishra expressed the hope that a comprehensive analysis of the history of droughts and famines in the country can help prepare for such disasters in the future.
According to experts, following the Japanese occupation of Burma in 1942, rice imports stopped, and Bengal's market supplies and transport systems were disrupted. The British government also prioritised distribution of vital supplies to the military, civil servants and other "priority classes".
The policy failures began with the provincial government's denial that a famine existed. Humanitarian aid was ineffective through the worst months of the food crisis, and the government never formally declared a state of famine.
It first attempted to influence the price of rice, but these measures created a black market and encouraged sellers to withhold stocks.
The last major famine in the British era occurred in 1943, which is also known as the Bengal famine. The famine resulted in two-three million deaths.
"We identified 1935-45 as a period under drought, but the famine-affected region, which was Bengal, had no drought during this period," said Mishra.
"We find that the Bengal famine was likely caused by other factors related at least in part to the ongoing threat of World War II -- including malaria, starvation and malnutrition," he added.
Previous research has shown that in early 1943, military and other political events adversely affected Bengal economy.
"We did a very solid diagnosis for each famine that happened in Bengal and Bihar -- which was part of the northeastern province of Awadh in the British period," Mishra said.
"What was unique in the 1873-74 famine was that there were 25 million people affected but low mortality due to famine," he added.
This low mortality was due to food imports from Burma, and timely relief aid provided by the British government. Then Bengal lieutenant governor Richard Temple imported, distributed food and relief money and that saved a lot of lives, he said.
"The famine was over in 1874, with 17 per cent surplus monsoon rainfall and good food production. But Temple was heavily criticised by the British for over expenditure," said Mishra.
Therefore ,a comprehensive analysis of the history of droughts and famines in the country can help prepare for such disasters in the future.
Thus,by referring to there historical facts we can easily conclude that the history of this beautiful country of ours and it’s people has been modified,hidden or misrepresented and thus it is important for us,Indians to know the truth and thus help make India get back to its roots of Bharat and this can only be done if people are educated of who they are and what this precious Bharat bhoomi is.
It is also important to know who the real heroes are and thus make India to gain it’s lost glory or diminished in some sense of being Bharat by educating ourselves,empowering ourselves and by uniting for the common cause of making india become the Utkrisht Bharat it was and has the potential of.
Jai Hind!
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