“The final judgement on British Rule in India”
India still had to face the greatest
disaster to befall the country in the 20th century: The Bengal
Famine of 1943-44. This was the product of food shortages brought about by the
war. Imports of food grains from Burma were cut off by the Japanese
occupation and the system of distribution for domestic supplies broke down. For
the peasantry, a large number of whom lived at or below subsistence level at
the best of times, the consequences were catastrophic. In Bengal, the price of
rice rose from 7.5 rupees (Rs) a maund in November 1942 to Rs29.7 in May 1943
and by October that year to as much as Rs80 in some places. The poor could not
afford to feed themselves and began to starve. Tens of thousands trekked to Calcutta, only to die on the city streets.
The British administration in the words of one historian responded with a
“callous disregard of its duties in handling the famine”. Not only were no
steps taken to provide against famine, but India continued exporting food grains to Iran at the rate of 3000 tons a month
through 1942. The result was a terrible death toll from starvation and disease
in 1943-44 that totalled more than 3.5 million men, women and children. This
was as Nehru put it, “the final judgement on British Rule in India”.
When Lord
Wavell succeeded Linlithgow as viceroy, he was appalled at how little had been
done to provide famine relief. Part of the problem was Churchill, “who seemed
to regard famine relief as ‘appeasement’ of the Congress”. On one occasion,
when presented with the details of the crisis in Bengal, Churchill commented “on Indians
breeding like rabbits”. As far as he was concerned “the starvation of anyhow
underfed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks”, a sentiment with which
Amery concurred. Wavell himself informed London the famine “was one of the greatest
disasters that has befallen any people under British rule”. It was, he warned,
doing “incalculable” damage “to our reputation”. The government was unmoved.
Later, when he was attending a cabinet meeting in London (April 1945), Wavell had brought
home to him “the very different attitude towards feeding a starving population
when the starvation is in Europe” rather than India. When Holland needs food “ships will of course be
available, quite a different answer to the one we get whenever we ask for ships
to bring food to India”. The previous September, Lord
Mountbatten, the British commander in chief in South East Asia, had made available 10% of his shipping
allocation to carry food to India. Churchill had responded by cutting
his allocation by 10%.
Churchill’s
attitude was quite explicitly racist. He told Amery “I hate Indians. They are
beastly people with a beastly religion.” On another occasion he insisted that
they were “the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans”. Amery was
bemused by his “curious hatred of India” and concluded that he was “really
not quite normal on the subject”. Indeed, Amery was not sure “whether on this
subject of India he is really quite sane”. Provoked
beyond endurance by Churchill’s bigotry, Amery on one occasion said “I didn’t
see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s”. Amery, it is worth
reminding the reader, was not a liberal or progressive, but a hard- nosed right
wing imperialist. And it was not just to Amery that Churchill made his feelings
clear. In February 1945 he told his private secretary, John Colville, that “the
Hindus were a foul race… and he wished Bert Harris could send some of his surplus
bombers to destroy them”. Somewhat predictably, Churchill’s part in the failure
of famine relief in Bengal, one of the greatest cries in the war, is not something that his
innumerable biographers have been concerned to explore. This is really quite
disgraceful. Let us leave the last word on Churchill with N B Bonjaree, the
district magistrate who had loyally helped suppress the Quit India revolt. In
memoirs he writes bitterly of how in the Viceroy broadcast of 13th
May 1945
Churchill had thanked Australia, Canada, and New Zealand for their contribution to the war
effort, but could not bring himself to mention India “although she provided more in men
and material than the rest put together”.
Text by John
Newsinger
From The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of
the British Empire (Bookmark
Publications, 2006)
By North Utsire
Absolutely disgusting, no more than I would expect from Churchill. I do not see him as Britain's greatest PM, I believe he was ONE OF THE WORST, and the greatest disaster ever to befall the British people.
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