TIL Winston Churchill has been blamed for the man made 'Bengal famine' of 1943 that killed between 1 and 3 million Indians.

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.


More info:

Bengal famine wikipedia

BBC: How Churchill starved India

/r/todayilearned Thread Link - telegraph.co.uk