Short recap:
Sir Winston ignored pleas for emergency food and aid for millions in Bengal that was left to starve
Their rice paddies were turned over to jute for sandbag production and supplies of rice from Burma stopped after Japanese occupation.
Earlier it was said that Britain could not spare the ships to transport emergency supplies, but author Madhusree Mukerjee has unearthed new documents which challenge this claim.
It has been revealed that ships carrying cereals from Australia were bypassed India on their way to the Mediterranean where supplies were already abundant.
"It wasn't a question of Churchill being inept: sending relief to Bengal was raised repeatedly and he and his close associates thwarted every effort,"
The US and Australia offered to send help, but the war cabinet (UK) was not willing to release ships.
The US offered to send grain on its own ships, that offer was not followed up by the British.
The man-made famine and the contrast between the plight of starving Indians and well-fed British officers dining in the city's many colonial clubs has been described as one of the darkest chapters in British rule on the Indian subcontinent.
Mukerjee blames Churchill's 'racism' for his refusal to intervene.
Churchill is known for derided Gandhi as a "half-naked holy man", and "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
Churchill was known to favor Islam over Hinduism.
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