New soil study confirms 1943 Bengal famine was caused by Winston Churchill’s policies, not drought

Colonial history 

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

Scroll Staff

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.

https://youtu.be/eJLCKK-Mvr8

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.

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.

But let the white folks do some soil analysis before they make up their mind. https://t.co/9PcMGP0HEJ

— Vidya (@VidyaKrishnan) March 30, 2019

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

Also read:

75 years since the Bengal famine: How much was Churchill’s bias to blame for the death of millions?

‘The hypocrisy in favour of colonialism needed to be dealt with’: Shashi Tharoor on his new book

Who was the photographer who took these dehumanising images of the Madras famine?

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Source: scrollin

An Act that fails the constitutional test

Lead

Farheen Ahmad  Anmolam

December 26, 2019 00:02 IST

Updated: December 26, 2019 00:47 IST 

Citizenship Amendment Act

 

The government needs to display an accommodative approach in its reaction to the protests against the Citizenship Act

After reading opinion page articles in this daily such as Time to defend India’s secularism, by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan (December 18, 2019), and  A premature denouncement of the Citizenship Act, (December 21, 2019), by Member of Parliament and former Union Minister Subramanian Swamy, one cannot avoid the feeling that the issues require more corroboration and expansion. 

Mr. Vijayan has argued that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019, is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution and impinges on the very ideals of our freedom struggle. He tries to establish that the CAA, being divisive and discriminatory, manifestly violates human rights, and is an attempt to impose the politics and philosophy of Hindutva, to accomplish its vision of a “Hindu nation”. 

Dr. Swamy has attempted to rebut these arguments on three premises: that of the aims and objects of this piece of legislation passed by both Houses of Parliament with a large majority; the historic context for the legislation; and the equation of “Hindutva” with ‘secularism’. The arguments in the December 21 article appear hollow on multiple grounds and mandate rebuttal.

Quite often, conceivably discriminatory laws are camouflaged by language. What requires analysis is a reasonable scrutiny of the cumulative effects of the legislation, read not in isolated silos. Dr. Swamy argues that the need for this Bill arose partly because the Islamic theocratic nations, of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, have brutally persecuted non-Muslim minorities since 1947. However, India’s official position on a number of occasions necessitate us to make a nuanced observation. While exercising its Right of Reply at the 38th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, in 2018, the Indian representative said of Pakistan’s stand: “In its obsession with puritanism, it has unleashed systematic persecution against its own Muslim minorities including Shias, Ahmadiyas, Ismailia and Hazaras, who have been reduced to second class citizens.”

Video: Amit Shah says no link between NRC and NPR | Fact check: Is the government right in denying NPR-NRC link? | Podcast: Will the NPR be the start of the NRC?

It is about rights

In the course of justification, Dr. Swamy has argued that “no Muslims or Jews came to India over the last 70 years on grounds of religious persecution”. It is devoid of constitutional logic because as per the Indian Constitution, even in the absence of an actual claim, rights of an individual persist. The Supreme Court of India has held that “Article 14 was founded on a sound public policy recognised and valued all over the civilised world, its language was the language of command and it imposed an obligation on the State of which no person could, by his act or conduct, relieve it.” It signifies that even if a Muslim or a Jew might not have approached for last 70 years, it cannot be considered as a ground for waiver of right to equality enshrined in Article 14. In order to vindicate the patently unreasonable classification under the CAA, Dr. Swamy appears to have misquoted the Congress Party Working Committee’s resolution of 1947 and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement of 2003 in terms of intent. It is worth noting that their premise for a lenient and humane approach was not based on the specific ground of religion, but persecution. 

Defining persecution

Dr. Swamy’s opinion that “on religious persecution, the Muslims of Pakistan, etc., are not similarly placed” lacks academic rigour. Arriving at a concrete definition of “religious persecution” is a difficult task.

In the context of persecution, religion has to be understood not from the believer’s point of view; rather it is about what it means to its adversaries. For instance, the treatment meted towards an atheist or agnostic gets completely ignored under the parochial understanding of the CAA. Even the agents of persecution can be of various types, including state agencies persecuting one or more religious communities, religious organisations persecuting other religious communities or, individual puritans enforcing conformity on their own people. 

As an illustration, UN experts and special rapporteurs have reported, inter alia, that “the current legal requirement for a separate electoral list for the Ahmadis, who have to declare themselves as non-Muslims in order to vote, is of particular concern”.

On the aspect of human rights, the words of statesman-philosopher Dr. Radhakrishnan should suffice: “This view of religious impartiality, of comprehension and forbearance, has a prophetic role to play within the national and international life. No group of citizens shall arrogate to itself rights and privileges which it denies to others. No person should suffer any form of disability or discrimination because of his religion but all alike should be free to share to the fullest degree in the common life.” 

Basis of Partition

Drawing parallels between Hindutva and secularism appears to be a complete misadventure as minor incidental overlappings may exist between two diametrically opposite philosophies. Contrary to many misinformed, aggressive and irresponsible statements made by some parliamentarians on the issue of Partition and a Hindu Rashtra, let us remind ourselves that the Partition of 1947 did not take place on religious lines. Rather, it was based on a philosophical understanding of the nature of society citizens and leaders wanted. Pakistan opted for a theocratic nature of governance, but our founding fathers coveted a plural, inclusive and modern society based on democratic and secular credentials. The CAA has witnessed large-scale, non-violent protest by both the masses and intellectuals. It is hoped that the Government will display an accommodative approach. To conclude by paraphrasing Edmund Burke, “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great democracy and little minds go ill together.”

Anmolam is a lawyer, running a non-profit organisation BDLAAAW. Farheen Ahmad is a research scholar at the South Asian University, New Delhi

Source: thehindu