The Christian Artificial Famine Holocaust of BengalBhattacharya
My father Surendra Nath Bhattacharya came to Britain in 1966 from Indian following aninvitation from the British Legion as he was a qualified teacher. Towards the end of thewar, my father had joined the Royal Indian navy, not because he supported Britain but because he needed a job. Indeed, most Bengalis had supported Subhas Chandra Bose(uncle of BBC sports reporter Mihir Bose), Nehru's rival for leadership of the Congress,who led the Indian National Army which fought with the Japanese against the British.Even non-violent Gandhi became captivated by Bose's exploits.My mother Shima brought myself and my two brothers over to London the followingyear, forty years ago. The memory of the British Empire that was indelibly imprinted inthe memory of my father and other relatives of his generation in Bengal was that of thestarving refugees who flooded into Calcutta during the British-inflicted artificial FamineHolocaust during 1942-43 which killed 3 million Bengalis. My father often spoke withhorror of the fact that these starving people did not beg for rice, they were so desperatethey begged for "fanna" the wastewater from the ricepan.Only once in 1997 when Channel 4 screened a programme on this famine has BritishTelevision covered the story of this artificial famine holocaust which was in fact notunique but typical of the British rule in India. There was no shortage of foodgrains butthe British exported Bengal's grain and this resulted in the starvation of 3 million of the poorest in Bengal as prices rocketed. As the 1997 C4 programme showed, the Britishrulers tried to cover up the famine by deliberately reducing the actual death tolls. Noeffort was made to alleviate the crisis until the British owned Statesman newspaper eventually broke the true story. Even then when surplus grain was shipped in from other parts of India, it was not distributed to the needy until after Indian protestors piled updead bodies of famine victims outside the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta. Amartya Senlived through the famine as a boy and it was the memory of the famine that led him totake up economics where he is famous for showing how government policies, rather thannatural disasters, create famine. He has confirmed the figure of 3 million excessmortalities.This artificial famine, witnessed by my family, at the close of British Rule was in facttypical of the entire period of British Rule in India. Maria Mishra showed in her TVseries on the Raj a few years ago that the Mughals and Marathas punished anyone foundguilty of profiteering during famine periods and thus, under Indian rulers, few peoplestarved. The British dismantled these indigenous systems to prevent famines. In 1770, just 13 years after the British takeover in Bengal their policies resulted in the GreatBengal Famine. In parts of Bengal one third of the population died whilst the Britishrulers hoarded grain and other food for export (as also occurred in Ireland during thePotato Famine). Historian Mike Davis has shown in Late Victorian Holocausts howBritish Social Darwinian and "Free Market" ideology resulted in massive famineholocausts during the Victorian era. Whilst millions were starving to death in the Deccan
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