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Home , Bengal famine of 1943, British Raj, Company rule in India

Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150

An exceptional ; Not nature but Churchill’s war effort and British policies that contributed to the famine of 1943.

Bappajit chatterjee (M.A in History)

W.B SET 2018, ASSSITANT TEACHER MALDA, , .

‘Famine or no famine, Indians are breeding like rabbits’ - .

AbstractAbstract- -D roughtsFrom time and immemorial are integral Droughts part andof human famines civilization. are integral Like the part other of countries human 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 1791 in 1783, etc. the Every Doji famine Bara had famine its ofclose 1791 connection, etc. Every with famine crop hadfailure, its closseveree droughtsconnection due with to crop lack failure, of rainfall severe etc, droughts which means due to naturelack of wasrainfall 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 World the British War. policy In this failure paper , that I have actually tried taken to explain about the 3.5 millionBritish of policy lives. failuresBritain’s that war taken time Primeabout Minister 3.5 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, and Orissa) province was widely affected. , (In office 1757-60AD) the first of British 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 in which a third of its population was (10 million approximately) wiped out. The

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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 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 that was standing on ruthless plundering, unlawful warfare and by the assistance of the local .

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 .

Importance of India during the wartime; On September 3, 1939, the declared war on Germany. So did the of India on behalf of nearly 400 million subjects of the . 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 or around the Cape of Good Hope, and across the India Ocean to , and New Zealand. Throughout Second World War, ships would transport food, armaments, and troops from the colonies and 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 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

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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 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 cultivated land some 80 percent is sown with only one crop while the rest grows a double crop. In terms of 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 of population on the land is the ultimate cause of the Bengals economic troubles6. The faulty zamindari system made the cultivators more helpless. The 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 , 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. The commission ‘adjusted’ figures from their statement III and once again the 1943 figure for current supply is not exceptionally low, and higher than that of 194110. So it is clear that 1943 was not a very good year in terms of crop availability, it was not by any means a disastrous year either. The current supply for 1943

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was only about 5% lower than the average of the preceding 5 year. It was in fact 13% higher than in 1941, and there was of course no famine in 1941. Now it’s time to analyze some government policies that actually made the difference.

Centrals attitude towards the problem; an analysis of the centers lackadaisical attitude towards the countries food problems, I would like to quote a few lines from a brilliant dispatch of “” by its correspondent, Shiva Rao. He wrote “strange but significant is the fact that in a country like India, where agriculture is the most important industry, there is no separate department in the for agriculture. The member for education, health and lands is chairman of the imperial council of agricultural research, two of whose officials are now accorded the privilege of being housed in the main secretariat. The rest of the staff is at New Pusa or in Simla, while the bulk of the marketing section has sent to ”. The government of New Delhi cannot escape a major responsibility for the famine in Bengal. If we look back the setup of a separate food section for India it surprises us. It was setup in the 39th month of the Second World War. And when the later food was separated from commerce, it did not have enough time to pay attention to a separate member.

Secondly, for a long time central government took shelter under the excuse that food was the concern of the provincial government. They forgot that one province’s food was not always grown with in the province and that the provinces of India were as interdependent as the counties of Britain. In peace time condition were different. Then neither the provincial government nor the central paid much attention to food. There was and less strain on transport and trade management. The war changed everything, and the centre should have stepped in with an intelligent plan. Surprisingly for 39th month of the Second World War nothing was done. The import and export of foods completely fall under the preview of the centre. Since the beginning of the war, imports of food grains into India decreased gradually until the fall of Rangoon while they ceased altogether. Exports of food, however never ceased until a few months ago. After the fall of Rangoon, India had no margin of safety as regarding food. There was already a 5% shortage overall. The shortage became more acute as food was continued to exported. The famous American writer and editor of ‘scientific American’ Madhushree Mukherjee in her recent book “Churchill`s secrete war: The British empower and the ravaging of India during the world war ll” records that the famine was caused by substantial exports of food from India. Mukherjee`s book depicts a truth more dreadful than any fiction. Mukherjee delves into official documents and oral accounts of survivors to paint a horrifying portrait of how Churchill, as part of the Western war effort, ordered the diversion of food from starving Indians to already well-supplied British soldiers and stockpiles in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, including Greece and Yugoslavia.

The ‘sudden and alarming’ inflation; There have countless records of governments’ policy failure and maladministration in the field of price hiking and black marketing especially in the case of rice (Rice is the most dominant food in Bengal). The famous economist and Nobel laureate professor has given a detailed account from the Indian trade journal in his

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book “Poverty and Famines, An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation”. Mr. Sen wrote, the wholesale price of rice, which had been between Rs. 13 and Rs. 14 per ‘’ on 11 , rose to Rs. 21 by 12 march 1943 and to above Rs. 30 by 21 may; by 20 august it had risen to Rs. 37. There have non official reports of further rises, especially in retail markets, such as in October that rice was being sold in at Rs 80 per mound and in Dacca at Rs. 105 per mound11. The final report of the famine enquiry commission says, After December 1942 reports from various commissioners and officers began to cite a ‘sudden and alarming’ inflation nearby doubling the price of rice and this was followed in January by reports of distress caused by serious food supply problems12 .As a result of it, the rural Bengal or the village sides experienced acute hoarding and black marketing. Soon the rice became out of rich for the poor. They start living with rice water. Not only that, during this time the people of Bengal also suffered from sufficient cheap clothing which they normally get in peace time. The mill owner had to fulfill the needs of the British Indian soldiers who are fighting for Britain. But the government was quiet successful in the case of saving Calcutta (the then provincial headquarter) from the famines effect. The official policy was based on the firm conviction that ‘the maintenance of essential food supplies to the Industrial area of Calcutta must be ranked on a very high priority among their war time obligations’, and as early as august 1942 the Bengal government had explained to the Bengal chamber of commerce that as far as Calcutta was concerned the government promised to do ‘all in their power to create conditions under which essential supplies may be obtainable in adequate quantities and at reasonable prices’.

The Japanese phobia and the government; During the time of world war , an axis power fighting the British led allied nations, had an active naval presence in the in the early 1940s, and had annexed Burma (now ) in 1942. Churchill diverted large supplies of and rice, using thousands of boats, from the coastal areas to deny supplies to Japanese forces should they invade India. This was a part of Britain’s 1942 ‘Denial policies’. Fearing a Japanese invasion via Burma, the British Raj set about devising a double attack. First, rice was denied to along the southern coast of Bay of Bengal, which typically have a surplus of rice. John Herbert, the then governor of Bengal, directed rice and paddy to be removed or destroyed in these cities immediately. The second part of the directive was to deny boats and other forms of transport. All boats that were large enough to carry more than 10 people and corps were destroyed, disrupting the distribution of food. As Mukherjee noted over 46000 boats were destroyed, and the scale of damage led to a near complete breakdown of transportation infrastructure13.

The effect; Now comes the impact and the magnitude of the famine of 1943. There lies a debate over the actual number of people who died in the famine. The official ‘Famine Inquiry commission’ reporting on the Bengal famine of 1943 put its death toll at about 1.5 million. W.R. Aykroyd, who as a member of the commission was primarily responsible for the estimation, has said recently; I now think it was an under estimate, especially in that it took little account of

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roadside deaths, but not as gross an under estimate as some critics of the commission’s report, who preferred three to four million, declared it to be14. An estimated 2.1-3 million, out of a population of 60.3 million died of starvation, or other diseases aggravated by , population displacement, unsanitary condition and lack of . In May 1943, six districts Rangpur, Mymansingh, Bakargunj, Chittagong, Noakhali and Tipperah were the first to report deaths by starvation. Chittagong and Noakhali both “Boat denial” districts in Ganga delta (or Sundarban delta) area were hardest hit. During the period from April 1943 to April 1944 about 260,000 families sold their rice land in full, and had thus lost their only chief means of livelihood; about 660,000 had sold their rice land in part, and about 670,000 had mortgaged their rice land. In other words 1.5 million families had either sold in full or in part or had mortgaged their rice land15. In 1943 alone in one village in , for example, 54 out of a total of 168 families sold all part of their landholdings; among these, 39 did so as a coping strategy in reaction to the scarcity of food16. The hardest hits by post famine impoverishment were women and landless agricultural laborers. In relative terms, those engaged in rural trade, fishing, and transport suffered the most17. The crisis overwhelmed the provision of care and key supplies; food relief and medical rehabilitation were too late, whilst medical facilities across the province were utterly insufficient for the task at hand. Families were disintegrated, with cases of abandonment, child selling, , and sexual exploitation18.

Conclusion- considering the political scenario, neither the state government nor the central government declared 1943 as a year of famine. This means the government did not willing to take the responsibilities, organized work program to minimize the hostile environment and relief operations specified by the famine code dating from 1883. T. Ratherford, the governor of Bengal, explained to the viceroy, ‘the famine code has not been applied as we simply have not the food to give the prescribed ration19. In this predicament in , the government officials turned down the request for importing 600,000 tons of wheat from Australia and Canada. The suffering continues. Last but not the least, the Britishers came to India initially as a trading company. Soon it becomes in the governing position and it begins to think that the main objective is to make a profit by ignoring the condition of the welfare state. Here we see the opposite of the company’s governor generals, who were deeply influenced by Bentham and ’s .

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% Increase in Deaths, July 1943- June 1944

References

1. Revisiting the great 1943 Bengal Famine. https;//:gmsciencein.com. 2. MADHUSHREE MUKERJEE, CHURCHILLS SECRET WAR, The British empire and the ravaging of India during world war 11. Published by- Basic Books, Tranquebar press.2011 3. Sinha and Khera, Indian war Economy. Page -58. Kamtekar, ‘A different war dance’, page-194-195 .

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4. Dr. S.D. Choudhury. Bengal Famine of 1943; Misfortune of Imperial schema. Page -4. Published in www. academia.edu 5. T.G.Narayan. Famine over Bengal. The book company LTD, collage square Calcutta 1944. Page-4 . 6. Ibid- page-4. 7. Amartya sen, Poverty and Famines, An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Clarendon press, OXFORD 1981. Page- 58. 8. Ibid – page-58. 9. Mahalanobis, Mukherjea and Ambika Ghosh Published a report in ‘Sankhya’. 1946. 10. The famine inquiry commission final report, 1945, madras. Printed by the superintendent, government press and published by the manager of publication Delhi. Page-215. 11. A. SEN. “op.cit”.page-55. 12. Famine inquiry commission 1945, appendix vi, extracts of reports from commissioners and district officers. Page-225- 27. 13. MADHUSHREE MUKERJEE, “op.cit” page- 98. 14. Aykroyd, Wallace Ruddel (1975), first published in 1974. The conquest of Famine, Newyork , readers digest press, page-77. 15. PROFFESSOR P.C. MAHALANOBIS, The Bengal Famine, Reprinted from ‘The Asiatic review’. October 1946. Page- 5. 16. O Grada, Cormac (2015) ‘sufficiency and sufficiency and sufficiency; Revisiting the Great Bengal Famine of 1943-44. Princeton university press. Page-38. 17. Mahalanobish, P.c Mukherjea, R.k Ghosh. A sample survey of after effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943, Sankhya, 7(4); 337-400. 18. Greenough, Paul R (1980) India famines and Peasant Victims; the case of Bengal in 1943-44, Modern Asian Studies- 14(2) page-205. 19. Mansergh, N (Ed) 1973, The Transfer of Power 1942-7, vol-iv, London HMSO. Document no 158, page- 363.

Websites: www.wikipidia.org www.archives.in Graphs and maps from www.econstor.eu

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