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From: alt.fan.jai-maharaj@googlegroups.com

Bengal Famine Of 1943: An Apology For This Holocaust Is
Long Overdue From London

By Jaideep Mazumdar
Swarajya, swarajyamag.com
October 27, 2018

[Caption] A family of semi-starved Indians who have arrived
in Calcutta in search of food in 1943. (Keystone/Getty Images)

Snapshot

o The British caused the Bengal famine of 1943.

o The seventy-fifth anniversary of the famine is the apt
time for the British to own up to the holocaust. And start
paying reparations.

A lot has been written about the devastating Bengal famine
of 1943 that wiped out 3.7 million (many put the figure
even higher) people from the face of this earth. Many
accounts of the famine also contain elaborate evidence of
the criminal complicity of Winston Churchill in not just
creating the famine, but also letting the millions die
because he, a racist and white supremacist, hated them.
However, it is never ever enough to retell the terrible,
British-made tragedy that befell Bengal, not at least till
Churchill's successors -- and they continue to enjoy the
wealth created out of the loot of India by the British --
apologise for that horrendous crime against humanity and
pay reparations for it.

Countless historians, economists, and researchers have
described the famine as "man-made" and attributed it to a
combination of factors. While a marginal crop failure in
Bengal, a cyclone that devastated parts of the state and
damaged standing crops, and a fungal infection that
destroyed paddy crops in parts of the province contributed
to the famine, the refusal of the British administration to
step in and provide relief, and diverting foodgrains from
India to feed British soldiers in Europe, led to the
gargantuan tragedy.

It is not without reason that the then British premier
Churchill is made to shoulder a major share of the blame
for the famine. He harboured a pathological hatred for
brown-skinned people and told his secretary of state
Leopold Amery when reports of the famine started reaching
him in mid-1943: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people
with a beastly religion." On another occasion, he told the
war cabinet: "The famine is their (the Indians') own fault
for breeding like rabbits."

Churchill, a white supremacist and a die-hard colonialist
and imperialist, actually prevented British officers posted
in India from providing relief. The extent of his
complicity can be judged from a noting in a file in which
the British administration in India raised concerns about
the increasing number of deaths due to starvation in
Bengal. "In that case, why hasn't (Mohandas) Gandhi died as
yet?" he carelessly wrote on the margins!

Churchill's apologists say the famine was caused mostly by
natural calamities that could not have been prevented. Crop
failure is cited by them as the biggest contributory cause;
they also blame a cyclone that devastated large swathes of
coastal Bengal and a crop disease for the crippling
shortage of foodgrains and, hence, the famine. However,
Churchill's apologists lose sight of the fact that the
extortionist British administration in India was
responsible in the first place for the crop failure.

The British, say historians, had banned farmers in large
parts of India from growing paddy and wheat, ordering them
to grow indigo and opium instead, which could be exported
and would earn huge sums for the British treasury. Thus,
production of foodgrains declined substantially in India,
and there were no buffer stocks when paddy crops in Bengal
failed. Also, thanks to British policies and over-taxation,
farmers sunk deep in debt and had to sell off their lands
to bigger landlords (jotedars). The British encouraged the
rich landlords to exploit the poor and landless in order to
maximise their profits.

The British, being foreign rulers whose only purpose was to
loot India and fatten their coffers, did nothing to
increase agricultural productivity. Incidentally, the
British were also responsible for the famines in 1770,
1783, 1866, 1973, 1892, and 1897 that, between them, took
more than 14 million lives. Sharply declining agricultural
yields and vastly reduced crop area (due to farmers being
forced to cultivate indigo and opium) created a surefire
recipe for disaster. Under British rule, Bengal went from
being a net exporter of rice (till the last days of Mughal
rule) to a net importer of rice. Many other acts by the
British, like the construction of a vast network of railway
lines built on embankments that cut off natural drainage
and thus laid to waste large tracts of fertile farmland,
also created conditions for the famine.

Continues at:

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/bengal-famine-of-1943-an-apology-for-this-holocaust-is-long-overdue-from-london

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

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