'Sir Winston Churchill, through his policies towards India ...

starved an estimated
two to five million Bengalis to death in the early 19!s', "his is the thesis of
#adhushree #u$her%ee's &oo$.
'martya Sen thin$s the famine was caused &y wor$ers in the Cities eating five times
as much rice as they did previously. #u$her%ee focuses on Churchill's refusal to
release ships to ta$e 'ustralian grain to Calcutta.
"he truth is, under dyarchy, it was the elected (ovt. of Bengal which had the
responsi&ility for declaring a )amine and implementing the )amine Code.
Both Bengal and *un%a& were ruled &y allied political parties who had supported the
*a$istan resolution. Indeed, the *remiers were personal friends. *un%a& had a
surplus, Bengal had a deficit. +owever, Bengal preferred to allege that +indu
hoarders were causing the pro&lem. Shurawardy, according to his sister, tried to
&ro$er a deal such that the Ispahani Business +ouse would get the lion's share of
the profit on the movement of food. She says Shurawardy failed &ecause the
Ispahanis got greedy and refused even to$en participation in this &y others
&usiness houses, -not %ust +indu ones..
#u$her%ee's &oo$ is &ased on the notion that the British *.# had dictatorial
powers. "his was not the case. "he fact is, if *un%a& had sent food to help Bengal,
they they could themselves have &een resupplied from the West. 'fter the fall of
Singapore, which Churchill had demanded should &e defended tooth and nail,
Churchill had &ecome pessimistic. +e was o&sessed with a 'scorched earth policy' of
retreat, which meant that the policy of destroying fishermen's &oats and removing
grain stores from &order areas contri&uted to famine conditions. +owever, it is
noteworthy that once Wavell &ecame /iceroy, and the (ovt. of Bengal had at last
recogni0ed that there was a genuine food availa&ility deficit, then some
ameliorative measures were ta$en.
"he Bengal famine was a golden opportunity for *un%a&i farmers to ta$e mar$et share
from the Burmese and to &uild up Credit &alances -through hoondis. in Calcutta.
Churchill could not have let *un%a& go hungry, it would &e resupplied in any case.
*un%a&is can easily su&stitute wheat for rice, yet they did nothing. Some people
would li$e to shift the &lame to +indu dominated (ovts. of 1.* and Bihar, however,
they did not have the power to prevent transit of food.
"he myth of +indu 'hoarders' was e2posed when Shurawardy's raids showed that people
had less grain inventory than was re3uired for survival, indeed, it was only then
that officials wo$e up to the crisis.
#u$her%ee and Sen, of course, won't accept that #uslim (ovts. can do anything
wrong.
Sarmila Bose has gone further. She says that some Bengali hoodlums committed
genocide on the 1rdu spea$ing *a$istanis in Bangla and then put the &lame on the
*a$istani army. She is the grand,daughter of Sharat Chandra Bose, elder &rother of
'4eta%i'.
#u$her%ee, Sen and Bose are not illiterate people. "hey are trained academics. "hey
are not poor people who have to write whatever their employer tells them or else
starve on the footpath. Why do the write as they do5
"he Communists, on orders of Stalin, supported *artition. "heir theory was that the
+indu middle class, including people with names li$e #u$her%ee, Sen, Bose etc, were
'class enemies'. In fact, the safer thing was %ust to $ill all the +indus %ust to
&e on the safe side.
+owever, this policy was ineffective. 6nly Secular Socialism of (andhi74ehru type
can destroy them completely.