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Articles
Did Churchill Exacerbate the Bengal Famine?
- By THE CHURCHILL PROJECT
- | April 8, 2015
- Category: Churchill and the East Churchill in WWII Truths and Heresies
Reviewing a recent book, The Churchill Factor, by London Mayor Boris Johnson, a reviewer repeated a widespread canard about Winston Churchill that really needs to be put to rest:
When there was a danger of serious famine in Bengal in 1943–4, Churchill announced that the Indians “must learn to look after themselves as we have done… there is no reason why all parts of the British empire should not feel the pinch in the same way as the mother country has done.” Still more disgracefully, he said in a jocular way that “the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks.” This is more than amusingly politically incorrect language: it had real consequences. Three million Bengalis died of starvation. A true historian would not have neglected this in order to suggest that the imperialist was making a stand against ‘barbarous practices.”1
There’s a good reason why Johnson omitted the now-famous accusation that Churchill starved the Bengalis: it is not true. Alas, in the words of a wartime statesman, “a lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.”2
The charge stems from a 2009 book accusing Churchill of irresponsibility over Bengal that amounted to a war crime, repeated by scores of sources since. As Churchill once remarked, “I should think it was hardly possible to state the opposite of the truth with more precision.”3
The truth—documented by Sir Martin Gilbert and Hillsdale College—is that Churchill did everything he could in the midst of world war to save the Bengalis; and that without him the famine would have been worse.4
Churchill’s directive to Wavell
On receiving news of the spreading food shortage Churchill spoke to his Cabinet, saying he would welcome a statement by Lord Wavell, his new Viceroy of India, that his duty “was to make sure that India was a safe base for the great operations against Japan which were now pending, and that the war was pressed to a successful conclusion, and that famine and food difficulties were dealt with.” (Italics mine.)5
Churchill then wrote to Wavell personally:
Peace, order and a high condition of war-time well-being among the masses of the people constitute the essential foundation of the forward thrust against the enemy….The hard pressures of world-war have for the first time for many years brought conditions of scarcity, verging in some localities into actual famine, upon India. Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages….Every effort should be made by you to assuage the strife between the Hindus and Moslems and to induce them to work together for the common good.6
It is important, and instructive, that after the world war, famine was the next priority on the agenda—before anything political. Again Churchill expressed his wish for “the best possible standard of living for the largest number of people.”7
Seeking food supplies
Next Churchill turned to famine relief. Canada had offered aid, but in thanking Prime Minister MacKenzie King, Churchill noted a shipping problem: “Wheat from Canada would take at least two months to reach India whereas it could be carried from Australia in 3 to 4 weeks.”8
At Churchill’s urging, Australia promised 350,000 tons of wheat. King still wanted to help. Churchill feared a resultant loss of war shipments between Canada and Australia,9 but King assured him there would be no shortfall. Canada’s contribution, he said, would pay “dividends in humanitarian aspects….”10
The famine continued into 1944, causing Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery to request one million tons of grain. Churchill, who had been studying consumption statistics, now believed India was receiving more than she would need. He remained concerned about the shipping problem, “given the effect of its diversion alike on operations and on our imports of food into this country, which could be further reduced only at the cost of much suffering.”11
The Cabinet cited other causes of the famine rarely mentioned in latter-day denunciations of Churchill: the shortages were “partly political in character, caused by Marwari supporters of Congress [Gandhi’s party] in an effort to embarrass the existing Muslim Government of Bengal.” Another cause, they added, was corrupt local officials: “The Government of India were unduly tender with speculators and hoarders.”12
Continued efforts
Amery and Wavell continued to press for wheat, and in the Cabinet of February 14th Churchill tried to accommodate them. While shipping difficulties were “very real,” Churchill said, he was “most anxious that we should do everything possible to ease the Viceroy’s position. No doubt the Viceroy felt that if this corner could be turned, the position next year would be better.” Churchill added that “refusal of India’s request was not due to our underrating India’s needs, but because we could not take operational risks by cutting down the shipping required for vital operations.”13
The war pressed Britain on all sides; shipping was needed everywhere. Indeed, at the same time as India was demanding another million tons, Churchill was fending off other demands: “I have been much concerned at the apparently excessive quantities of grain demanded by Allied HQ for civilians in Italy, which impose a great strain on our shipping and finances,” he wrote War Secretary Sir James Grigg. “Will you let me have, at the earliest possible moment…estimates of the amount of food which is really needed….”14
Churchill and his Cabinet continued to struggle to meet India’s needs. While certain that shipping on the scale Amery wanted was impossible without a “dangerous inroad into the British import programme or a serious interference with operational plans,” the Cabinet grasped at every straw, recommending:
(a) A further diversion to India of the shipments of food grains destined for the Balkan stockpile in the Middle East. This might amount to 50,000 tons, but would need War Cabinet approval, while United States reactions would also have to be ascertained; (b) There would be advantage if ships carrying military or civil cargo from the United States or Australia to India could also take a quantity of bagged wheat.15
Renewed demands
A month later Churchill was hoping India had turned the corner when his Minister of War Transport, Frederick Leathers, reported “statistically a surplus of food grains in India.” Still, Leathers emphasized “the need for imported wheat on psychological grounds.” What were they? Amery explained that “the peasant in 750,000 villages” might hold back “his small parcel of grain” if no outside aid was in sight. He said he could ship 200,000 tons, “provided that the twenty-five ships required were surplus to the Army’s needs.” But Amery wanted double that quantity.16
Again trying to help, the Cabinet suggested that India had underestimated its rice crop. While agreeing to send the 200,000 tons, Churchill told Amery he could get another 150,000 tons from Ceylon in exchange for excess rice: “The net effect, counting 50,000 tons previously arranged [was] 400,000 tons of wheat.”17
In April, it was Lord Wavell asking not for 400,000 but 724,000 tons! Now the problem was unseasonable weather and a deadly explosion in the Bombay Docks, which destroyed 50,000 tons of food grains. Peasants were still holding back their crops, he said; rumors were circulating “that London had refused to ask America for help.” The exasperated Cabinet retorted: “If we now approached the United States and they were unable to help, it would at least dispel that allegation.”18
One can sense Churchill’s frustration. Whatever they did, however they wriggled, they could not appease the continued demands from India—even after calculations showed that the shortage had been eased.
Appeal to America
Churchill agreed to write President Roosevelt for help, and replace the 45,000 tons lost in the explosion. But he “could only provide further relief for the Indian situation at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions.”19
As good as his word, and despite preoccupation with the upcoming invasion of France, Churchill wrote FDR. No one, reading his words, can be in doubt about his sympathies:
I am seriously concerned about the food situation in India….Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died. This year there is a good crop of rice, but we are faced with an acute shortage of wheat, aggravated by unprecedented storms….By cutting down military shipments and other means, I have been able to arrange for 350,000 tons of wheat to be shipped to India from Australia during the first nine months of 1944. This is the shortest haul. I cannot see how to do more.
I have had much hesitation in asking you to add to the great assistance you are giving us with shipping but a satisfactory situation in India is of such vital importance to the success of our joint plans against the Japanese that I am impelled to ask you to consider a special allocation of ships to carry wheat to India from Australia….We have the wheat (in Australia) but we lack the ships. I have resisted for some time the Viceroy’s request that I should ask you for your help, but… I am no longer justified in not asking for your help.20
Roosevelt replied that while Churchill had his “utmost sympathy,” his Joint Chiefs had said they were “unable on military grounds to consent to the diversion of shipping….Needless to say, I regret exceedingly the necessity of giving you this unfavorable reply.”21
There is no doubt that in those fraught weeks Churchill said things off the record (but duly recorded by subordinates) that were unworthy of him, out of exasperation and the press of war on many fronts. There is no evidence that Churchill wished any Indian to starve; on the contrary, he did his best to help them, amidst a war to the death.
Endnotes
1 Philip Hensher, “Does Boris Johnson Really Expect Us to Think He’s Churchill?” A review of Boris Johnson, “The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History.” The Spectator, London, 25 October 2014. (Churchill’s reference to the Greeks was over a simultaneous Greek famine under Nazi occupation.)
2 Richard M. Langworth, Churchill in His Own Words. London: Ebury, 2012, 576. Quoting Cordell Hull in 1948.
3 Winston S. Churchill, “Speech Given to the House of Commons,” 8 December 1944, op. cit., 325. Greece at the time was experiencing a famine under Nazi occupation.
4 Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill: The Churchill Documents (Hillsdale, Michigan: Hillsdale College Press, 2006 and ongoing).
5 War Cabinet Meeting, 7 October 1943, Confidential Record (Cabinet papers, 65/36). Arthur Herman wrote: “We might even say that Churchill indirectly broke the Bengal famine by appointing as Viceroy Field Marshal Wavell, who mobilized the military to transport food and aid to the stricken regions (something that hadn’t occurred to anyone, apparently).” See “Leading Churchill Myths,” Churchill Centre, The Bengali Famine (accessed 10 November 2014).
6 Winston S. Churchill to Members of the War Cabinet, 8 October 1943. (Churchill papers, 23/11).
7 Ibid. This directive is now in the Churchill Acquired Papers (CHAQ) and the reference is CHAQ 2/3/66/6-7. Madelin Evans of the Churchill Archives Centre writes: “The papers still aren’t publicly available, as the next stage is digitisation before the papers being added to the Churchill Archive Online. The catalogue entry reads:
Printed War Cabinet Paper, note by the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence [WSC] on “India” (9 Oct) with a copy of a “Directive to the Viceroy Designate” [Lord Wavell] by WSC (8 Oct). Subjects of the directive include the need for India to be a “safe and fertile base” for the British and United States offensive against Japan in 1944; famine in India and the need to make every effort to deal with local shortages, stop grain hoarding and ensure a fair distribution of food between town and country; the gap between rich and poor needing examination; that [Wavell] should make every effort to ease tension between Hindus and Muslims and encourage them to work together, as a democratic government can not work without equality; Wavell’s main aims should be to defend the frontiers of India, appease communal differences, rally all sections of society to support the war effort, and maintain the best possible standard of living for the largest number of people; and the British Government’s commitment to establishing a self-governing India as part of the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations [after the war].
8 Winston S. Churchill to William Lyon Mackenzie King, 4 November 1943. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1842/3 (Churchill papers, 20/123).
9 Churchill to King, 11 November 1943. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1942/3 (Churchill papers, 20/124).
10 King to Churchill, 13 November 1943, Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1961/3 (Churchill papers, 20/124).
11 War Cabinet: Conclusions, 7 February (Cabinet papers, 65/41). Churchill stated that “for the four years ending 1941/42 the average consumption was 52,331,000 tons, i.e., 2½ million tons less than the figure cited by the Secretary of State. This difference would, of course, more than make good the 1½ million tons calculated deficit.”
12 Ibid. Burma’s fall to Japan cut off India’s main supply of rice imports when domestic sources fell short in 1942.
13 War Cabinet: Conclusions, 14 February (War Cabinet papers, 65/41).
14 Winston S. Churchill to Sir James Grigg, 19 February 1944, Prime Minister’s Personal Minute M.147/4 (Churchill papers, 20/152).
15 War Cabinet: Conclusions, 21 February 1944 (Cabinet papers, 65/41).
16 War Cabinet: Conclusions, 20 March 1944 (Cabinet papers, 65/41).
17 Ibid.
18 War Cabinet: Conclusions, 24 April 1944 (Cabinet papers, 65/42).
19 Ibid.
20 Winston S. Churchill to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 29 April 1944. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.996/4 (Churchill papers, 20/163).
21 Roosevelt to Churchill, 1 June 1944. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram T.1176/4 (Churchill papers, 20/165).
What a lot of stupid hate from the commenters below, who probably didn’t even read the article. Incredible!
The way this article is written is extremely pretty. It managed to implicate that Winston Churchill was a savior (again) and that he completely and truly believed that Indians were worth saving. If this was case please tell me why the Denial Policy existed. Also don’t use the reason that he wanted to allow the Japanese to not have food supplies. If you checked at the colonization of Indonesia by the Dutch, you’ll find that their scorched earth policy did nothing to frustrate the Japanese slightly and make the denizens of Indonesia a living hell.
To all the posts showing the benefits that India gained of the colonial rule from the British, well that is no better than saying that torture induces pain tolerance. The idea of “India” although primitive, did exist at the time. The “unification” of the provinces would likely have occurred naturally due to the changing world. Our own constitution learned and improvised on other people’s democracy to create a better democracy for India in general.
I would also like to mention that after all this, Indians are very forgiving of the past atrocities that occurred:
Famines (not just 1943)
Jallianwala Bagh
Rowlett Act
1857 mutiny
Scientific Forestry which you’ll find caused a major change and problems for forest villages
Education- This will be a controversial point, but the current education system in India focuses majorly on rote memorization instead of concept learning. This technique is only useful for few but is applied to all. This system was introduced first by the British
The only ways I feel that the British helped in any way is:
The removal of Sati
The helping of the removal of the caste system by letting Dalits such as the Great B.R Ambedkar have an enemy to focus on, allowing him become a major influence on the creation of the constitution of India and adding in the abolition of slavery.
If you mean our article is “extremely pretty,” thanks. If you mean “extremely petty,” sorry! We did not say Churchill was a “savior.” We say he did his level best, given the constraints of a world war, to alleviate Bengal’s shortages—and in the end he succeeded.
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If “unification” implies a united India emerging after independence, this greatly underrates the vast divides among the many religions and nationalities. In 1918, Churchill declared that India should move toward self-government. In 1926, he wrote his wife: “Reading about India has depressed me for I see such ugly storms looming up….only a Muslim-majority state in the northern part of the Indian sub-continent would protect Muslim minority rights if and when the British left.”
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You are right to consider the British Raj’s abolition of slavery, of Sati (“the ladies went to their deaths with dignity, in the manner of a celebration,” one author wrote), and trying to break down the caste system. True, there were atrocities. Churchill railed against them, like Amritsar in 1919, demanding the perpetrators be punished. His early objections to Gandhi were over fear of Brahmin domination, particularly over the Dalits. Yet in 1935 he said Gandhi “has gone very high in my esteem since he stood up for the Untouchables.”
In 1943 he told Sir Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, India’s representative on the War Cabinet: “The old idea that the Indian was in any way inferior to the white man must go. We must all be pals together. I want to see a great shining India, of which we can be as proud as we are of a great Canada or a great Australia.” These are not the remarks of a racist white supremacist.
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The “Denial Policy” (denying rice and boats to Japanese invaders of Burma), was indeed a factor in the famine, but the destructive weather and hoarding by merchants were greater factors. And it should be obvious to any fair-minded person that the invading Japanese had far less benign intentions for a conquered India than the old British Raj. Please see and consider the facts of the matter, and the truth:
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“Chastising Churchill,” by the Indian scholar Zareer Masani.
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“Absent Churchill, Bengal’s Famine Would Have Been Worse,” by Arthur Herman, author of Gandhi and Churchill.
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“Indians are Getting Post-Truth History,” by Andrew Roberts at the Jaipur Literary Festival.
The amount of ignorant bias on the detractors of this well-written article is astounding. Has the extremism and absolute refusal to read multiple sources (As the authors did) gone the way of the dinosaur? Seriously it appears that Tweets are the main source of inspiration for the majority of these detractors, who clearly know one side of a much bigger story. Their focus seems to be on the “racist white man” while denying every letter and message which show a man who understood that the whites were more advanced in his time, but who also thought of all people as having the potential for greatness. Excellent work on the part of Hillsdale authors and their citation of sources. As you state, it’s easy to find flaws in Churchill; I would suggest that it’s much harder to see the errors in ourselves. Sadly self-introspection of our own ideas and perspectives is not natural to many. My hat’s off to you. Thank you for the effort to dispel the extremist misinformation on social media.
I thought they already had, the price for a take away curry is scandalous.
The British-led government of India, Indian politicians plus British officials, ignored the problem as it developed, denied the problem when it became serious, and failed to act to resolve it for a year.
Cultivators and farmers and landlords in India, merchants and traders, and provincial governors hoarded supplies, paralyzed the Indian markets for rice, and blatantly profiteered as the famine progressed.
British Prime Minister’s scientific advisor Lord Cherwell mistakenly said that “India’s yearly production of seventy million tons of cereals made it self-sufficient in grains.”
The US War Department and Army denied food allocations and shipping space to Britain (forcing Britain to ration food at half the level rationed to American civilians, causing Britain to absorb foodstocks from the Empire), and diverted shipping to support for US and Allied military operations.
The Bengal winter rice harvest of 1942 largely failed due to warm, humid and cloudy weather. Incipient famine in border areas of Bengal were worsened by measures to hinder Japanese exploitation of Bengal when it appeared that Japan might conquer the region. A tropical cyclone in October, 1942, destroyed rice crops in Bengal, causing the first wave of starvation.
Churchill’s prejudice against Indians and hatred of Gandhi led him to refuse to place priority on food aid to help. British racism combined with anger over the Indian “ingratitude and treachery” of the Quit India Movement (urging the Brits to get out).
Ill-advised measures to provide aid to famine sufferers, inappropriate choices of foods and an incompetent delivery system, an unwillingness to allow UNRRA and international help that would have exposed local government bungling, and a heartless system of displacing sufferers to camps, all exacerbated the fatality numbers and the suffering.
This article reads like a rather one-sided account. Every statement/action by Churchill is interpreted in the most positive manner, when rather than “he tried to stop the famine but failed due to other priorities” it could easily be read as “he showed little determination in stopping the famine but manufactured excuses so as to justify his withholding of sufficient aid.” The fact that Churchill’s War Cabinet regularly refused to meet the requested relief needs, and appeared to be more generous in supplying relief to virtually every other territory it managed in the region, are interpreted very differently by other observers.
On top of that, the article has carefully quoted the official statements Churchill made supposedly showing thwarted desire to stop the famine, while the famously brutal statements he made in private showing zero compassion for the dying Indians are only alluded to. That appears intentional. One could easily suggest that Churchill was far more careful not to betray his true feelings and motives in official discourse (when the appearance of concern for Indian people was an important point of Britain’s image) and that the private conversations are much more likely to demonstrate his true motivations. Yet the article avoided quoting any of them.
Those brutal statements made in private primarily come from an Indian historian who wrote in “Churchill’s Secret War” but provided very little sources instead for a number simply stating it was something he was known to have said such as describing the Indians as a people “breeding like rabbits” and attributing everything to their own fault. It’s interesting because in reading the minutes you do see Churchill clearly making an attempt to divert supplies to the Indians, but you also seem to ignore the presence of a war during the entire time of the events. The taking of Burma had disastrous effects on the ability to send further aid because of the Japanese blockade. Churchill certainly did deny food but in doing so also denied a pretty sizable amount to all other colonies because of his belief that it was the necessity for all colonies to tighten their belts with a war taking place. You mention that India however bared the weight of a far greater decrease in supplies and ratios than other colonies but that is simply because India was always receiving greater supplies to begin with; other colonies were never receiving anywhere near the amounts of India so it is an unfair comparison to make to say Canada or Australia. Instead Churchill outrightly referred to the events of the famine as “grievous” and stated a need for helping the inhabitants because of a belief in keeping a united empire for the outcome o the war. “The appearance of concern for Indian people was an important point of Britain’s image” does not make sense as a point because at times many of these concerns were expressed in private letters sent to others within government and were even expressed in cabinet minutes which were not given directly to the public. So in saying that Churchill was simply showing concern for the public’s perception is ignorant of the extent to which he was showing this concern in areas where the public and the image of his actions were not being directly reflected. The citations and sources which we see at the bottom of the page are very good support in that they show Churchill and his cabinet attempting to take what actions they could even if very late. The attempt to say Churchill did not care and simply was portraying a facade is so ridiculously bent when you realize Churchill often said some very brash and bigoted things such as we know from Lee Amery’s account (which I’ve been made aware of), but in private such as we see with letters he was making an attempt to ramify the situation. Even Amery, the man who criticized Churchill for his comments about the Indians being a beastly people, admitted that without Churchill the situation would have devolved into something worse.
The “Churchill’s War Cabinet regularly refused to meet the requested relief needs” is true to an extent but not on the basis of they had no desire whatsoever to keep Indians and Bengals alive but to the fact that recordkeeping was so badly mismanaged and authorities were handing Churchill and his cabinet various conflicting reports that they had no idea how to appropriate the correct amount. You can say “but some authorities were providing accurate sums” but Churchill and his cabinet were receiving multiple other, under-exaggerated requests. Also I do not know what you’re talking about when you say he made mass-arrests of the Indian National Congress because he didn’t, he advocated doing so in 1930 when he told the Shadow Cabinet he thought arresting them would dispel their entire movement, which is an awful thing to advocate but one he was not allowed to carry out. If you can find citation or support for claims of him mass-arresting civilians, I will read them, but even in critiques of Churchill I have never seen such claims. It might be possible you’re talking about South Wales were he sent British home forces to dispel a riot, but that action was not one in which he gave the order to fire, he simply sent the troops and the situation escalated as it became far worse.
No mention of the denial policy or that 70,000 to of rice was exported to Europe in the fist half of 1943.
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See note above on Denial Policy; India was a net exporter of rice before the famine. -Eds.
It is sad that the British colonies had to pay for the wars they were never were part of and without any compensation thereafter. In this case it was 3-4 million people who died due to starvation in Bengal. Then they leave the sub-continent without a proper withdrawal plan, leaving millions to die in a bloody partition where a few millions more die and more than 14 million get displaced. No matter how much one justifies, history cannot be always whitewashed. It was equivalent to holocaust but just that more people died due to starvation and violence under the British rule in India!
That is an apt point. The Labour government’s and Mountbatten’s decision to leave prematurely, before border issues were settled, ushered in horrific slaughter. Churchill didn’t speak to Mountbatten for years. At one point he said, “What you did in India was like striking me across the face with your riding crop.” A rather antique expression, but it summed up Churchill’s regret over how things had been handled. -Eds.
India always seemed to be on the edge of famine, back in the day. In 1965, the US sent 18% of its grain production to India to prevent famine.
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In the 20th century to 1943, writes Dr. Tirthankar Roy in How British Rule Changed India’s Economy: Paradox of the Raj,, better methods of agriculture and expansion of railways to move food around eliminated large-scale famines. This balanced book closely analyzes the economic pros and cons of the Raj: huge growth in business and industry, coupled with agricultural stagnation and no improvement in the lot of the poor. -Eds.
On Twitter one is constantly reminded of those bashing a “flawed” Winston Churchill and others. Knowledge handicapped tweets toss around “racist” and “Islamophobe” and “hate monger.” Encouraged by “Community Standards” thought police, this cultivates a constant overhanging fear, dread and paranoia of writers sentenced to a “30 day gulag,” or “disappeared” for violating these “standards.” Churchill fought for individual freedom and liberty. It doesn’t even take a keen BS detector to follow Alan Dershowitz’s advice (In his book The Case for Israel) for those seeking the truth. You only have to look for it.
Even your article suggests Churchill discouraged Canada from sending aid and Canada had to insist on doing so — hardly absolves Churchill.
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No. It “suggests” that Churchill relied on Australia, which was closer and had the shipping. -Eds.
This article is based on the record of people who were paid or patronised by the State like many kings used hire writers to write good things about them. The question should be asked why Australian ship was diverted from way of Bengal to Europe. Churchill and his cabinet kept searching for ways to help Indians for two years. Were not these encouraged by British establishments. Marwaris of Congress Party supporters could be based on popular perceptions but even if it is true, who was in control?
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In the war, grain ships were constantly diverted from the Bay of Bengal because it was a Japanese lake. Australia nevertheless sent 350,000 tons of grain at the Cabinet’s behest. Government in Bengal was run by local functionaries. Professor Tirthankar Roy of the London School of Economics told the Evening Standard: “The British Indian government and the provincial government of Bengal did not take responsibility for bringing in food to the region internally, where there was no famine. The real question is why this didn’t happen, rather than what Churchill did.” -Eds.
This in no way suggests equivalency between Churchill’s position on potential UK shortage and actual starvation in India. Moreover, it’s questionable to blame peasants for, in my opinion, sensibly “hoarding” food to keep their families alive, or for government policy. Furthermore, when you talk of Indian corruption, you seem to be suggesting it’s Indians, when overwhelmingly such individuals were British officials.
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Churchill’s plea to the US President shows (1) his unwillingness to suggest the British Empire couldn’t sustain itself; (2) Churchill’s want to hold on to the empire in Asia; (3) the wish to continue, postwar, to be a global influencer. Consequently, I see nothing in this defense of Churchill to suggest his position on India was not racially orientated. Worse still it’s clear that others—the Canadians, Australians and definitely Wavell and Amery—believed more, could be done to combat the famine.
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Response below. -Eds.
There is proof that Churchill starved India. He diverted Indian food to Europe.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10/how_churchill_starved_india.html
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html
http://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide/
Dear Writer, please get your facts correct. Don’t rush towards conclusion. I really pity your intelligence for the same.
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Since the links above reference gushy press reviews of the Bengal Famine book, you owe it to yourself to read what a balanced historian of Churchill and Gandhi, Arthur Herman, thinks about that book: “Absent Churchill, the Bengal Famine Would Have Been Worse.” Document after document in Hillsdale’s Churchill Document Volume 19 lays out evidence of how hard Churchill and the Cabinet labored to find grain for India, and ship hundreds of thousands of tons, in the midst of a fight for survival. A handful are quoted here. Churchill had his faults, made mistakes, and expressed himself in searing vernacular. But there is no evidence that he willfully acted to aggravate the famine and much that he worked to relieve it. Keep reading. -Eds.
Replying to Mr. King above: No historian has blamed peasants for holding grain they had grown to protect their families. They do blame Bengal grain merchants, and government that didn’t prevent this. See for example Dr. Tirthankar Roy’s essay on the famine in History Today. Or, his more recent comment: “The British Indian government and the provincial government of Bengal did not take responsibility for bringing in food to the region internally, where there was no famine. The real question is why this didn’t happen, rather than what Churchill did.”
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It is an odd leap of logic to divine that Churchill’s appeal to Roosevelt “shows his unwillingness to suggest that the British Empire couldn’t sustain itself.” If he was unwilling to suggest that, he would not have made his appeal. Nor does Roosevelt’s refusal make FDR a racist. There was a world war on. Did Churchill wish to sustain the Empire and to remain a global influence? Undoubtedly. But there is nothing in the documents to suggest Churchill’s actions were racially motivated. The documents also show that he relied for grain on Australia not Canada because of available shipping and shorter distance. It is correct that Wavell and Amery pressed for more to be done. That was their job. Churchill’s job was to juggle limited resources in a global war. All of this is plain. One simply has to read.
A historian friend says the Indian Bengal Famine (1943) “is on its way to surpassing the Dardanelles (1915) as the bludgeon of choice.” Was this Churchill? “I don’t want [my views] disturbed by any bloody Indian.”
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We find that quote only in two discredited biographers, one of whom attributes it to Rab Butler’s diary. If it is there, it is of course hearsay, though not impossible to believe given the context at the time. On the other hand, Butler lost no love for WSC, and vice-versa. -Eds.
Why are people seemingly so keen to blame Churchill for the famine? Where is the balance? From what I’ve read, this is a multifaceted issue at the root of which lie horrendous social inequalities prevalent in Bengal then, inflamed by religious or racist tensions between Muslim and Hindu, and exacerbated by war. Why is nobody blaming the Japanese Government for starting the bloody war in 1941, or is that Churchill’s fault as well?
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Perhaps because so much more than Churchill is being attacked by the cancel-culture. Thank-you for reading, and reflecting. RML
Churchill’s Secret War by Madhusree Mukerjee has the most comprehensive review of the archives and addresses those points of controversy mentioned in previous comments. I invite every interested party to read the book.
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And we invite you to read the most comprehensive review of Churchill’s Secret War: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/churcills-secret-war-bengal-famine-1943/
Eds.
When did Lord Wavell become Viceroy of India?
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15 June 1943 —Eds.
Historical discussion by calm voices is always welcome, though increasingly scarce. Here is one such that makes some new points, pro and con.
No evidence that Churchill exacerbated the Bengal famine? Here is some for you. [Writer provides URL.] Consider taking down the article now? Or at least majorly amending it?
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We are interested in hearing YOUR comments. A URL is not a comment. If you take issue with anything in this article, feel free to explain. We will not however take it down, and have expanded on it, thanks to the Indian historian Zareer Masani. Click here for his essay. —Eds.
The attempt to say Churchill did not care and simply was portraying a facade is so ridiculously bent when you realize Churchill often said some very brash and bigoted things such as we know from Leo Amery’s diaries (which I’ve been made aware of); yet in private such as we see with his letters, he was making an attempt to imrprove the situation.
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Yes, and interesting that the vast majority of bigoted quotes come from Amery, whose diaries are laced with far more of his own than Churchill uttered. See “Hearsay Doesn’t Count: “The Truth About Churchill’s ‘Racist Epithets.'” —RML
The issue of Bengal Famine is larger than the failures of Winston Churchill. The article does a great job of summarizing the PM’s actions after the famine news spread. However, the silence of the action that led to the famine tells a story itself. First, i want to show you some data from this article… [cites a URL]. Cost of Living went up from 103 to 132 in London from 1939 to 1945. US cost of living was similar, 102 to 142. But Bombay and Calcutta were 250 & 180. That’s where the British government and Viceroy failed in 1939: to bring strict rationing and cost controls in India, the same measures that were imposed across the UK. Sure, Churchill wasn’t as bad as some of the post-truth scholars claim, but British government as a whole created a situation where millions lost their lives to an artificial famine. I give credit to Britain for bringing railways, education systems and governance mechanisms to India, but the cost of such trinklings [sic] wasn’t worth the enormous cost of poverty, famine and near slavery that Britain imposed on us. So India, has very little to be grateful to Britain for. On the backs of looting India, did Britain build its industries in the 19th and early 20th centuries? Not sure any amount of polishing by Andrew Roberts can put a gloss on that.
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We’re interested in your opinions; a URL is not an opinion. However, we sent your message to three of our authors on the Bengal Famine and record their responses below. Incidentally, in 1939, India had not yet been invaded. —Editors
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Dr. Andrew Roberts: The provinces controlled prices locally, and by 1942 they were run by the legislative councils rather than the Viceroy So what your correspondent is arguing is that Britain should have been behaving more imperially, not less.
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Dr. Tirthankar Roy: (1) There are two types of misreading here, the first of price data. The famine happened in one province of India. The price of rice, the main cereal, rose there. But other grain-producing areas of India saw neither a famine nor a similar price rise. The London-Calcutta comparison makes little sense. A Punjab-Bengal comparison is more relevant. Punjab had a good crop. Why didn’t more food go from Punjab to Bengal? Blaming the Viceroy won’t answer that question. He didn’t own warehouses. There is also a misreading of the system of governance in 1943. The Viceroy did not govern Bengal, an elected government did. There was denial of a famine, probably fed by bad faith and misinformation. In any case, even if the Viceroy was ready to act to restore supplies it would be difficult to agree on how it should be done. (2) India’s population growth rate, stuck at a near-zero level for centuries, rose from the 1920s. People lived longer lives. Isn’t that the best thing a state can deliver?
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Dr. Zareer Masani: I endorse Dr. Roy’s comments. (1) As he reminds us, Bengal was a province ruled by an elected government under the 1935 Constitution. Of course, the Viceroy could and did intervene from the centre, once the full facts of the famine filtered back, obviously delayed by concerns about the war and Japanese invasion. His scope for action was also limited by the autonomous elected government of a grain-surplus province like Punjab. The War Cabinet, chaired by Churchill, responded with generous food shipments to Bengal during the famine year, though admittedly not as generous as the Viceroy would have liked. There were errors, delays and mismanagement at all levels, but it is nonsensical to suggest a deliberate policy to starve Bengal. (2) Dr. Roy rightly points, as I often do (and Churchill did), to India’s huge population increase under the Raj, a measure of much improved public health, declining mortality and better nutrition. Your correspondent completely ignores the fact that most of the Raj was run by its Indian partners, some in the highest positions, so native agency bears at least some of the responsibility for both its achievements and failings.