The Christian Artificial Famine Holocaust of Bengal

Bhattacharya

My father Surendra Nath Bhattacharya came to Britain in 1966 from Indian following an
invitation from the British Legion as he was a qualified teacher. Towards the end of the
war, my father had joined the Royal Indian navy, not because he supported Britain but
because he needed a job. Indeed, most Bengalis had supported Subhas Chandra Bose
(uncle of BBC sports reporter Mihir Bose), Nehru's rival for leadership of the Congress,
who led the Indian National Army which fought with the Japanese against the British.
Even non-violent Gandhi became captivated by Bose's exploits.

My mother Shima brought myself and my two brothers over to London the following
year, forty years ago. The memory of the British Empire that was indelibly imprinted in
the memory of my father and other relatives of his generation in Bengal was that of the
starving refugees who flooded into Calcutta during the British-inflicted artificial Famine
Holocaust during 1942-43 which killed 3 million Bengalis. My father often spoke with
horror of the fact that these starving people did not beg for rice, they were so desperate
they begged for "fanna" the wastewater from the ricepan.

Only once in 1997 when Channel 4 screened a programme on this famine has British
Television covered the story of this artificial famine holocaust which was in fact not
unique but typical of the British rule in India. There was no shortage of foodgrains but
the British exported Bengal's grain and this resulted in the starvation of 3 million of the
poorest in Bengal as prices rocketed. As the 1997 C4 programme showed, the British
rulers tried to cover up the famine by deliberately reducing the actual death tolls. No
effort was made to alleviate the crisis until the British owned Statesman newspaper
eventually broke the true story. Even then when surplus grain was shipped in from other
parts of India, it was not distributed to the needy until after Indian protestors piled up
dead bodies of famine victims outside the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta. Amartya Sen
lived through the famine as a boy and it was the memory of the famine that led him to
take up economics where he is famous for showing how government policies, rather than
natural disasters, create famine. He has confirmed the figure of 3 million excess
mortalities.

This artificial famine, witnessed by my family, at the close of British Rule was in fact
typical of the entire period of British Rule in India. Maria Mishra showed in her TV
series on the Raj a few years ago that the Mughals and Marathas punished anyone found
guilty of profiteering during famine periods and thus, under Indian rulers, few people
starved. The British dismantled these indigenous systems to prevent famines. In 1770,
just 13 years after the British takeover in Bengal their policies resulted in the Great
Bengal Famine. In parts of Bengal one third of the population died whilst the British
rulers hoarded grain and other food for export (as also occurred in Ireland during the
Potato Famine). Historian Mike Davis has shown in Late Victorian Holocausts how
British Social Darwinian and "Free Market" ideology resulted in massive famine
holocausts during the Victorian era. Whilst millions were starving to death in the Deccan
and the South, the British held the biggest feast in human history to celebrate Victoria
becoming Empress of India. The Delhi Durbar feasted 60,000 plus Britishers and their
Indian princeling collaborators for an entire week. In 1901, medical journal The Lancet
estimated conservatively that 19 million Indians had starved to death in Western India
during the 1890s due to the British, let them starve, policies, exporting Indian grain to the
USA and Europe whilst the natives starved.

Even during the 1939-45 war the British rulers rejected American urgings to build aircraft
factories in India with which to fight the Japanese rather than ship planes across U-boat
infested oceans. But the British refused on the basis that an independent India might then
possess some industries with which to compete with Britain after the war. After all the
entire strategy of British rule had been one of deindustrialising India's thriving textile
industry etc. and keeping India poor as a plantation and a captive market for inferior
quality British products (as compared to western rivals).