A group of Indian and American researches simulated
soil moisture content during major Indian famines to come to the conclusion.
Wikimedia
Commons
Mar 30,
2019 · 02:50 pm
The 1943
Bengali famine was caused by then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s
policies and not drought, a group of Indian and American researchers have found
in a study published in the journal, Geophysical
Research Letters.
The
researchers came to this conclusion by using weather data to simulate the
amount of moisture present in the soil during six major Indian famines, those
of 1873-’74, 1876, 1877, 1896-’97, 1899 and 1943. Deficit of soil moisture is a
key indicator of poor rainfall and high temperatures.
According
to the study, the first five famines were a result of drought, as concluded by
the soil moisture study, but not the one that happened in 1943.
“There
have been no major famines since independence,” Vimal Mishra told CNN, “And so we started our research
thinking the famines would have been caused by drought due to factors such as
lack of irrigation.”
Mishra,
an associate professor of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, has
co-authored the study, along with Amar Deep Tiwari, Saran Aadhar, Reepal Shah,
Mu Xiao, DS Pai and Dennis Lettenmaier.
The 1943
Bengal famine led to the deaths of an estimated three million people, and is
widely believed by several historians to have been caused or made worse by
British policies of the time.
The study
showed that though the eastern region of India experienced severe drought in
the early-1940s, the amount of rainfall was above average in late-1943, a
period considered to be the peak of the famine.
The
British policies alleged to be the cause of the famine were the heavy
distribution of food and vital necessities to the military during the second
world war, halting import of rice, and the British government not declaring
famine in India.
A destitute mother and child on the sidewalk in
Calcutta during the Bengal famine of 1943-44. Courtesy Kalyani Bhattacharyee,
and Sj. Manoj Sarbadhikar/Wikimedia Commons.
According
to the study, another factor that exacerbated the mortality count of the 1943
famine was the Japanese capture of Burma (now Myanmar), which was a major
source of rice imports in India. The study noted that in the past, famines,
despite being deadly, could not cause much damage due to rice imports from
Myanmar and the British government’s relief aid.
Speaking
to CNN, Mishra said that during the 1873-’74 famine, the Bengal lieutenant
governor, Richard Temple, saved many lives by importing and distributing food.
But the British government criticised him and dropped his policies during the
drought of 1943, leading to countless fatalities.
That the
1943 Bengal famine was a result of wilful negligence by the British government
was accepted and believed strongly across India for quite a while. In 1981,
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya
Sen said that
supplies should have been in abundance during 1943 to control the deaths
brought about by the famine.
Winston
Churchill and the 1943 Bengal famine.
Madhushree Mukherjee’s 2011 book, Churchill’s
Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II,
notes that the famine was caused by heavy exports of food from India. As the
famine got worse, she wrote, 70,000 tons of rice were exported from India
between January and July, 1943.
Despite
Churchill’s War Cabinet being warned about the famine at the time, Mukerjee
wrote, the British Prime Minister was reluctant to devote time and resources to
fix the Indian problem, and instead, strengthen his military operations and
accumulate stocks at home.
“A
concession to one country at once encourages demands from all the others,”
Churchill commented in a memo on March 10, 1943, as quoted in Mukerjee’s book.
“They must learn to look after themselves as we have done. The grave situation
of the UK import programme imperils the whole war effort and we cannot afford
to send ships merely as a gesture of good will.”
Image of
Midnapore famine victim from Chittaprosad's Hungry Bengal, five thousand copies
of which were burned by Indian police. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
In 2017,
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said about Churchill, “This is a
man the British would have us hail as an apostle of freedom and democracy, when
he has as much blood on his hands as some of the worst genocidal dictators of
the 20th century.” He chronicled the havoc wreaked by the British empire on
India in his book, Inglorious Empire.
Since
independence, India’s population has increased manifold, but famine deaths have
been brought under control. “Expansion of irrigation, better public
distribution system, rural employment, and transportation reduced the impact of
drought on the lives of people after the independence,” Mishra’s study said.
The
revelations of Mishra and his fellow researchers’ study vindicated several
Indians as well as others, as seen on Twitter. One user questioned the validity
of a study complimenting Churchill as a human rights crusader.
Also
read:Hi @rights_info, "Human Rights Website", you still have this piece up on "Churchill's Fight for Human Rights". Care to have a rethink? https://t.co/u2lbXcWHOm— Gautam Bhatia (@gautambhatia88) March 30, 2019
Need to calculate how much “3 million Indian lives” converts to in Western lives and see if it’s enough to make people reevaluate his legacy.— Murtaza Mohammad Hussain (@MazMHussain) March 30, 2019
And when told of death by starvation of 3 million Indians, Churchill famously asked why Gandhi was not amongst them. He was a ruthless callous racist https://t.co/lS5WFY9h24— Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) March 29, 2019
Indians have been forever saying Churchill was a flaming bigot. His racist policies killed 3mn in a single year - it was among the swiftest genocide.— Vidya (@VidyaKrishnan) March 30, 2019
But let the white folks do some soil analysis before they make up their mind. https://t.co/9PcMGP0HEJ
You could’ve just listened to the historians on this one... https://t.co/r50wahf7Ke— Audrey Truschke (@AudreyTruschke) March 29, 2019
He diverted all essential supplies to military stockpile causing the great Bengal famine, denied acknowledging the tragedy & when conscience stricken British officials confronted Churchill about the famine, he said, "why hasn't Gandhi died yet?" Yes. Those were his exact words. https://t.co/b4P8X67hi9— Sanjay Gautam (@Sanjayg551) March 30, 2019
Source: scrollin
