Opinion - Star Columnists
Salute. Sir. Marvellous. Incredible.
British policies killed nearly 4 million Indians
in the 1943-44 Bengal Famine
Imperialistic pop culture has
enshrined Churchill only as a military great, a fun drunk, a loyal monarchist
with a penchant for fine speech and a flair for loquacious prose. But the
British PM lacerated the world with tragedies, profiting from plunders and mass
murders, writes Shree Paradkar.
Gary
Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. In his Oscar acceptance speech for
playing the role, Oldman said, “I would just like to salute Sir Winston
Churchill.” He might as well have danced on 3 million dead bodies, writes Shree
Paradkar. (Jack English / Focus Features)
By Shree Paradkar Race
& Gender Columnist
Fri.,
March 9, 2018
By the time I came across the
ledger at the Bangalore Club with Winston Churchill’s name on it in the late
1990s, British rule in India had been sanitized; airbrushed to present a
picture of overall benevolence with a few violent splotches.
The entry in the ledger is
dated June 1, 1899 and names one Lt W.L.S. Churchill as one of 17 bill
defaulters. He owes the club 13 rupees from a time when a whisky cost less than
half a rupee.
Had we then heard that Churchill
once described our beloved city as a “third rate watering place … without
society or good sport,” we would have probably laughed it off as the
irascibility ever only indulged in the great. Jolly good, old chap.
Colonialism of the mind lingers
long after the land is free.
And if we had heard that he once
said, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion,” meh.
He was dead. We were thriving.
There are flawed heroes. Lincoln,
MLK and Gandhi to name a few — men who inflicted injustices on individuals.
Then there are monsters.
Powerful men who lacerate the world
with tragedies. Adolf Hitler, certainly, but his nemesis Churchill, too.
It was only in 2014 that I first
got a glimpse of genocidal mania in the man so lionized for leading his nation
through its finest hour.
It was a piece titled Remembering India’s
forgotten holocaust, in Tehelka magazine that detailed the ghastly origins
of the Bengal famine of 1943 that killed an estimated 3 million people in one
year.
Historians have easily traced it
back to Churchill who had diverted the bountiful harvest from Bengal to Britain
and other parts of Europe. When the locals began starving, he steadfastly
refused to send them food. He said no to rerouting food that was being shipped
from Australia to the Middle East via India. No to the 10,000 tons of rice
Canada offered to send to India, no to the 100,000 tons of rice America
offered. The famine was the Indians’ fault, he told a war-cabinet meeting, “for
breeding like rabbits.”
In his Revisionist History podcast,
Malcolm Gladwell delves into how the historian Madhusree Mukerjee, author of Churchill’s
Secret War, dug into Britain’s shipping archives to uncover evidence that
Britain had so much food at the time that the U.S. had become suspicious they
were stockpiling it to sell it after the war.
In India, she wrote, “parents
dumped their starving children into rivers and wells. Many took their lives by
throwing themselves in front of trains.” Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of
Indian soldiers were fighting alongside the Allied forces.
Yet, what did the actor Gary Oldman
who portrayed Churchill in Darkest Hour say last Sunday when he
received an Oscar for Best Actor? “I would just like to salute Sir Winston
Churchill who has been marvellous company on what can be described as an
incredible journey.”
Salute. Sir. Marvellous. Incredible.
Oldman might as well have danced on
3 million dead bodies, many of whom were too weak to cremate or bury their
loved ones.
Such tributes for a heinous white
supremacist who once declared that “Aryan tribes were bound to triumph.”
Words as hollow as the tunnel-visioned
ideals on which people fashion this man, but they can’t stem the drip of blood
from his hands.
They can’t hide tens of thousands
of Kenyans who were rounded up in concentration camps called “Britain’s Gulags”
under his orders, where thousands were tortured and killed for rebelling
against British rule.
They can’t hide the bodies of the Greek
civilians who were celebrating German withdrawal in 1944, but were killed
by the British army because Churchill thought the communist influence on the
Nazi resisters — who had allied with Britain — was too strong. And we haven’t
even got into his treatment of Iraqis or the wiping out of entire Indigenous
populations of Tasmania.
Churchill was not the first Western
leader to profit from plunders and mass murders. Remember John A. Macdonald?
But imperialistic popular culture continues to enshrine him, despite the Gallipoli
disaster, only as a military great, a fun drunk, a loyal monarch with a
penchant for fine speech and a flair for loquacious prose.
Churchill tried to manipulate
history with the six volumes of his memoirs. Indeed he succeeded so well that
even today the Bangalore Club thumps its chest about his membership there.
“Many a past great … including Sir Winston Churchill” have been members, says
its website.
This compounds the tragedy. Erasing
his crimes pronounces his victims worthless, deems their lives undeserving of
acknowledgement, and leaves their deaths but a footnote in history.
On Twitter @shreeparadkar
Source:
thestar
