Winston Churchill is hailed as one of the greatest statesmen of the last century. A fiery and inspiring orator and a vehement hater of Nazism, he lead his country to victory in World War II. While Churchill's disdain for India and Indians is well known, it will come as a shock to many that he was largely responsible for the death of close to three million Indians in the 1940s. This unknown side of Churchill and his colleagues is brilliantly brought out in journalist Madhushree Mukerjee's Churchill's Secret War (2010).
Bengal is no stranger to famines. But it is forgotten that before 1757 it was one of the richest parts of the world. After 1957, when General Robert Clive founded the British Empire by conquering Bengal, it has witnessed several famines beginning with the first one in 1770. Economist Amartya Sen has observed that famines never occurred in a functioning democracy. The fact that India had suffered so many famines under British rule is evidence of how vicious and ruthless that rule has been.
Mukerjee's book offers a rare and meticulously comprehensive glimpse into India's colonial history and also India's freedom struggle. Almost every page offers a new detail, a new nugget of information that sears into the brain.
The first hints of the famine were visible in 1941 when Bengal's rice supplies from Burma and Thailand was cut by the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia. The government responded, not by rerouting supplies to Bengal, but following a 'scorched earth' policy in Bengal so that food grains could not be captured by invading Japanese. In 1942, there was a terrible cyclone in Bengal that destroyed acres of rice plants. Streets of Eastern Indian cities began lining up with corpses, but instead of sending emergency food shipments, Churchill used the food grains and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe.
The scenes of destitution, as captured by the pen of Mukerjee, are unforgettable. Families tormented by hunger, mothers casting away their babies to die, children feeding on faeces, young women forced into prostitution to survive - the atrocities that Mukerjee describes are heart rending.
Mukerjee writes:
"Despite the horrific ways in which they met their ends, those Bengalis who perished of hunger in the villages did so in obscurity, all but unnoticed by the national and international press. Not so their relatives and neighbours who trekked to the cities. Accounts and photographs of the skeletal figures who swarmed into Calcutta to fall and die on its pavements would travel around the world, prompting offers of relief from several Allied countries, as well as from an Axis collaborator."
Surprisingly, Churchill and his colleagues refused all offers for help citing lack of ships to carry the shipments of food to Bengal. Lord Cherwell, one of Churchill's close collaborators and a deep racist, said that India's famine was of its own making. How could there be famine in Bengal when the rest of India was supplying huge amounts of food to Britain? (This was just when India was forced to become an exporter of grain for the war effort.)
India could have approached the newly set up United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) for emergency supplies. But this was not to be so. Mukerjee writes:
"The War Cabinet did not permit the Government of India to apply for aid - a necessary formality before it could be sent. British authorities did, however, donate $30 million of the colony's wartime earnings to the UNRRA, making India the sixth-largest contributor to the fund."
The nefariousness of the Indian communists is well brought out in the book. The communists initially supported the Axis but changed sides when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. During the famine they placed all blame for it on speculators and the Japanese rather than the Government. "Consequently they stayed out of jail, prevented [stockpiled] food stocks from being looted, suppressed protests, helped distribute whatever relief was available, and acquired political leverage in Bengal." Along with the Muslim League they became very prominent because the Indian National Congress leaders were all in jail owing to the Quit India movement.
Mukerjee leaves us with fascinating character sketches of people involved: the secretary of state Leopold Amery who was castigated as deeply unsympathetic towards the Indian people but whose private papers reveal how he was forestalled at every step by Churchill from lending help to the suffering masses; the freedom fighter Sushil Kumar Dhara who helped establish a parallel government in the 1940s but later surrendered upon Mahatma Gandhi's instructions; and, the compassionate Clive Branson who was stationed in India and who wrote movingly to his wife about the British ill-treatment of Indian subjects.
Bengal is no stranger to famines. But it is forgotten that before 1757 it was one of the richest parts of the world. After 1957, when General Robert Clive founded the British Empire by conquering Bengal, it has witnessed several famines beginning with the first one in 1770. Economist Amartya Sen has observed that famines never occurred in a functioning democracy. The fact that India had suffered so many famines under British rule is evidence of how vicious and ruthless that rule has been.
Mukerjee's book offers a rare and meticulously comprehensive glimpse into India's colonial history and also India's freedom struggle. Almost every page offers a new detail, a new nugget of information that sears into the brain.
The first hints of the famine were visible in 1941 when Bengal's rice supplies from Burma and Thailand was cut by the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia. The government responded, not by rerouting supplies to Bengal, but following a 'scorched earth' policy in Bengal so that food grains could not be captured by invading Japanese. In 1942, there was a terrible cyclone in Bengal that destroyed acres of rice plants. Streets of Eastern Indian cities began lining up with corpses, but instead of sending emergency food shipments, Churchill used the food grains and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe.
The scenes of destitution, as captured by the pen of Mukerjee, are unforgettable. Families tormented by hunger, mothers casting away their babies to die, children feeding on faeces, young women forced into prostitution to survive - the atrocities that Mukerjee describes are heart rending.
Mukerjee writes:
"Despite the horrific ways in which they met their ends, those Bengalis who perished of hunger in the villages did so in obscurity, all but unnoticed by the national and international press. Not so their relatives and neighbours who trekked to the cities. Accounts and photographs of the skeletal figures who swarmed into Calcutta to fall and die on its pavements would travel around the world, prompting offers of relief from several Allied countries, as well as from an Axis collaborator."
Surprisingly, Churchill and his colleagues refused all offers for help citing lack of ships to carry the shipments of food to Bengal. Lord Cherwell, one of Churchill's close collaborators and a deep racist, said that India's famine was of its own making. How could there be famine in Bengal when the rest of India was supplying huge amounts of food to Britain? (This was just when India was forced to become an exporter of grain for the war effort.)
India could have approached the newly set up United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) for emergency supplies. But this was not to be so. Mukerjee writes:
"The War Cabinet did not permit the Government of India to apply for aid - a necessary formality before it could be sent. British authorities did, however, donate $30 million of the colony's wartime earnings to the UNRRA, making India the sixth-largest contributor to the fund."
The nefariousness of the Indian communists is well brought out in the book. The communists initially supported the Axis but changed sides when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. During the famine they placed all blame for it on speculators and the Japanese rather than the Government. "Consequently they stayed out of jail, prevented [stockpiled] food stocks from being looted, suppressed protests, helped distribute whatever relief was available, and acquired political leverage in Bengal." Along with the Muslim League they became very prominent because the Indian National Congress leaders were all in jail owing to the Quit India movement.
Mukerjee leaves us with fascinating character sketches of people involved: the secretary of state Leopold Amery who was castigated as deeply unsympathetic towards the Indian people but whose private papers reveal how he was forestalled at every step by Churchill from lending help to the suffering masses; the freedom fighter Sushil Kumar Dhara who helped establish a parallel government in the 1940s but later surrendered upon Mahatma Gandhi's instructions; and, the compassionate Clive Branson who was stationed in India and who wrote movingly to his wife about the British ill-treatment of Indian subjects.
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