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An Exceptional Famine; Not Nature but Churchill's War Effort and British Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150 An exceptional famine; Not nature but Churchill’s war effort and British policies that contributed to the Bengal famine of 1943. Bappajit chatterjee (M.A in History) W.B SET 2018, ASSSITANT TEACHER MALDA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA. ‘Famine or no famine, Indians are breeding like rabbits’ - Winston Churchill. AbstractAbstract- -D roughtsFrom time and faminesimmemorial are integral Droughts part andof human famines civilization. are integral Like thepart other of countrieshuman incivilization. the world IndiaLike other have countrieswitnessed in some the worldserious India famines have fromwitnessed ancient some times. serious During famines the time from of theancient British times. India During there thehave time the of Bengal the ‘British famine India of 1770,’ there the has Chalisa the Bengal famine famine in 1783, of 1770, the Dojithe BaraChalisa famine famine of 1791in 1783, etc. theEvery Doji famine Bara hadfamine its ofclose 1791 connection, etc. Every with famine crop hadfailure, its closseveree droughtsconnection due with to croplack failure,of rainfall severe etc, droughts which means due to nature lack of was rainfall main etc, factor which behind means all nature those famines.was the Butmain ther factore have behind another all thoseexample famines. like the But 1943 there great have Bengalanother famine example which like completelythe 1943 camegreat as Bengal a result famine of British which policy completely Failure. came This as famine a result came of Britishduring thepoli timecy Failure. of the Second This famine World War.came In during this paper the time I tried of the to Secondexplain Worldthe British War. policyIn this failure paper ,that I have actually tried takento explain about the 3.5 millionBritish ofpolicy lives. failuresBritain’s that war taken time Primeabout Minister3.5 million Winston lives. Churchill’sIt was Britain’s political war measurestime Prime that causedMinister the Winston Bengal Churchill’sfamine. political measures that caused the Bengal famine. Keywords- Droughts, Second World War, Denial policy, FAD theory, starvation. Introduction- During the time of the British rule of 200 years, India had witnessed countless famines. It is India’s fate that company’s rule in India starts with a famine (1770 Bengal Famine) and ends with a famine (1943 Bengal famine). In both the cases Bengal (then Bengal, Bihar and Orissa) province was widely affected. Robert Clive, (In office 1757-60AD) the first governor of British East India Company regarded Bengal as the ‘paradise of the earth’ on his speech in house of commons in 1772. After the battle of palassy, the province was completely ruined by the company. In 1770 AD Bengal witnessed the first famine under the British Raj in which a third of its population was (10 million approximately) wiped out. The Volume IX, Issue VII, JULY/2020 Page No : 1988 Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150 1770s Bengal famine mostly attributed with the bad weather and company’s exploitations, But in 1943 Bengal famine, it was Churchill’s (in office 1940- 1945 AD) war time policies that contributed the catastrophe. Recently a study from Indian Institute of Technology situated in Gandhinagar based on soil moisture had confirmed that 1943 Bengal famine was not due to drought1. In a country like India where crop production deeply relies on monsoonal rainfall experienced several droughts in ancient and medieval time. But the rulers were efficient enough in the case of taking responsibilities. For example during the time of king Ashoka, kalinga witnessed a famine. King Asoka minimizes the effect of famine by providing proper relief measures, relaxing the taxes, and giving rehabilitation. But the company came to India as a motive of trading. Soon it took the advantages of political instability which was going on after the death of Emperor Aurangzeb (1707 AD). After winning the battle of pallasy in 1757, the company becomes the de facto ruler of the country. It established a huge empire that was standing on ruthless plundering, unlawful warfare and by the assistance of the local rajas. There have so many debates, dialogue, papers and researches over 1943 Bengal famine. So many scholars debated whether the disaster was inevitable or manmade or the then British prime minister’s deliberate intentions that could be avoided. In this paper I am trying to represent some of the British government policies that are debatable full and came as a result of the indifferences of the government which played a crucial role in the great Bengal famine of 1943. Importance of India during the wartime; On September 3, 1939, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. So did the viceroy of India on behalf of nearly 400 million subjects of the British Empire. The colony was vital to the defense of British interests around the world. It sat in the middle of the supply and communication rout that stretched from the United Kingdom, through the Suez Canal or around the Cape of Good Hope, and across the India Ocean to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Throughout Second World War, ships would transport food, armaments, and troops from the colonies and dominions on the periphery of the Indian Ocean to the United Kingdom, as well as to war theatres around the Mediterranean Sea or in Southeast Asia. The Indian population had to play a significant role in the war. Initially in the war there have 43,500 British and 131,000 Indian troops. Apart from supplying soldiers in the month of May, Mr. Leopold Amery (the then secretary of state for India and a member of Churchill’s war cabinet) oversaw the effort of ship from India around 40,000 tons of grain per month, a tenth of railway engines and carriages, even railway tracks uprooted from less important lines. The colonies’ entire commercial productions of timber, woolen textiles and leather goods, and three quarters of its steel and cement production would be requiring for the war. And then the Indian factories of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were engaging in producing arms ammunitions bombs guns, uniform for the shoulders, parachutes etc2. Apart from United Kingdom, India would become the largest contributor to the empires war providing goods and services worth more than £2 billion3. Winston Churchill, the deified British War Prime Minister who supposedly saved Europe from a monster like Hitler was disturbingly callous about the roaring famine that was Volume IX, Issue VII, JULY/2020 Page No : 1989 Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150 swallowing Bengal’s inhabitants. He casually diverted the supplies of medical aid and food that was being dispatched to the starving victims to the already well-supplied soldiers of Europe. When entreated upon, he said, “Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits.” The Delhi Government sent a telegram to him painting a picture of the horrible devastation and the number of people who had died. His only response was, “Then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?" It is worthwhile to remember that the riches of the West were built on the graves of the East. It is on us to understand our freedom fighters sacrifice and fettered memory and strives to make the most of this hard-won independence that we take for granted today4. The pre famine Bengal; at the time of the great Bengal famine, the Bengal province had 82,000 sq mile that makes largest province in India and had population approximately 63 million people. There are 730 people lived in every square mile. This vast territory was covered by water bodies, rivers, forest, uncultivable land cultivable waste land, and cultivable fields. On the basis of these figures, every person of Bengal gets only 0.58 of an acre to grow his food. Of Bengals cultivated land some 80 percent is sown with only one crop while the rest grows a double crop. In terms of rice tonnage, Bengals annual deficit is around 500000 tons which normally she used to import from Burma and the neighbor’s in peacetime. Between 1921 and 1931 AD Bengals population increased by 10.4% but net sown area only by 1.5% and between 1931-1941 AD there had been a 20% increase in population with practically no increase in sown area5. The Floud commission warned, we consider the pressure of population on the land is the ultimate cause of the Bengals economic troubles6. The faulty zamindari system made the cultivators more helpless. The zamindars are not interested in improving land so long as he can collect rents. Was it a crop failure? It is an established fact that a famine must have an efficient close connection with the availability of food. Few Scholars have tried to explain that, this famine connected with natural calamities like cyclone in Midnapore, flooding, fungus diseases and torrential rain that actually had a dominant effect in food availability. This approach is popularly known as ‘food availability decline (FAD)’. However Blyn in his ‘agricultural trends in India’ 1966 provides fairly comprehensive estimates of agricultural production in India, though yield data are not given separately for Bengal, only for greater Bengal including Bihar and Orissa. But the picture of a better food production situation in 1943 compared with 1941 is confirmed7. Even the rice yield per acre, which is given separately for the Bengal province, is shown to have been higher in the year 1942-43 than in 1940-41, despite the fact that the acreage in 1942-43 was known to be much higher than in 1940-418. Some corrections to the official estimates were carried out by the famine enquiry commission itself, on the line suggested by P.C Mahalanobis and others9. These included corrections also to the trade data, to increase coverage of movements across the frontier by road or by country boat.
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