{"id":96202,"date":"2019-12-09T16:58:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T23:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=96202"},"modified":"2019-12-09T16:58:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T23:58:31","slug":"new-soil-study-confirms-1943-bengal-famine-was-caused-by-winston-churchills-policies-not-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/09\/new-soil-study-confirms-1943-bengal-famine-was-caused-by-winston-churchills-policies-not-drought\/","title":{"rendered":"New soil study confirms 1943 Bengal famine was caused by Winston Churchill\u2019s policies, not drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colonial history Courtesy Scroll.IN
<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

A group of Indian and American researches simulated soil moisture content during major Indian famines to come to the conclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The 1943 Bengali famine was caused by then-British Prime Minister \nWinston Churchill\u2019s policies and not drought, a group of Indian and \nAmerican researchers have found in a study published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers came to this conclusion by using weather data to simulate the amount of moisture present in the soil during six major Indian famines, those of 1873-\u201974, 1876, 1877, 1896-\u201997, 1899 and 1943. Deficit of soil moisture is a key indicator of poor rainfall and high temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the study, the first five famines were a result of \ndrought, as concluded by the soil moisture study, but not the one that \nhappened in 1943.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been no major famines since independence,\u201d Vimal Mishra told CNN<\/a>,\n And so we started our research thinking the famines would have been \ncaused by drought due to factors such as lack of irrigation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mishra,\n an associate professor of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, \nhas co-authored the study, along with Amar Deep Tiwari, Saran Aadhar, \nReepal Shah, Mu Xiao, DS Pai and Dennis Lettenmaier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1943 \nBengal famine led to the deaths of an estimated three million people, \nand is widely believed by several historians to have been caused or made\n worse by British policies of the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study showed that though the eastern region of India experienced severe drought in the early-1940s, the amount of rainfall was above average in late-1943, a period considered to be the peak of the famine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British policies alleged to be the cause of the famine were the \nheavy distribution of food and vital necessities to the military during \nthe second world war, halting import of rice, and the British government\n not declaring famine in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A\n destitute mother and child on the sidewalk in Calcutta during the \nBengal famine of 1943-44. Courtesy Kalyani Bhattacharyee, and Sj. Manoj \nSarbadhikar\/Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to the \nstudy, another factor that exacerbated the mortality count of the 1943 \nfamine was the Japanese capture of Burma (now Myanmar), which was a \nmajor source of rice imports in India. The study noted that in the past,\n famines, despite being deadly, could not cause much damage due to rice \nimports from Myanmar and the British government\u2019s relief aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking\n to CNN, Mishra said that during the 1873-\u201974 famine, the Bengal \nlieutenant governor, Richard Temple, saved many lives by importing and \ndistributing food. But the British government criticised him and dropped\n his policies during the drought of 1943, leading to countless \nfatalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the 1943 Bengal famine was a result of wilful \nnegligence by the British government was accepted and believed strongly \nacross India for quite a while. In 1981, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said<\/a> that supplies should have been in abundance during 1943 to control the deaths brought about by the famine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madhushree Mukherjee<\/a>\u2019s 2011 book, Churchill\u2019s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II<\/em>, notes that the famine was caused by heavy exports of food from India. As the famine got worse, she wrote, 70,000 tons of rice were exported from India between January and July, 1943.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Churchill\u2019s War Cabinet being warned about the famine at the \ntime, Mukerjee wrote, the British Prime Minister was reluctant to devote\n time and resources to fix the Indian problem, and instead, strengthen \nhis military operations and accumulate stocks at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \nconcession to one country at once encourages demands from all the \nothers,\u201d Churchill commented in a memo on March 10, 1943, as quoted in \nMukerjee\u2019s book. They must learn to look after themselves as we have \ndone. The grave situation of the UK import programme imperils the whole \nwar effort and we cannot afford to send ships merely as a gesture of \ngood will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Image
Image\n of Midnapore famine victim from Chittaprosad’s Hungry Bengal, five \nthousand copies of which were burned by Indian police. Courtesy \nWikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor<\/a> said about Churchill, This is a man the British would have us hail as an apostle of freedom and democracy, when he has as much blood on his hands as some of the worst genocidal dictators of the 20th century.\u201d He chronicled the havoc wreaked by the British empire on India in his book, Inglorious Empire<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe revelations of Mishra and his fellow researchers\u2019 study vindicated \nseveral Indians as well as others, as seen on Twitter. One user \nquestioned the validity of a study complimenting Churchill as a human \nrights crusader.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since independence, India\u2019s \npopulation has increased manifold, but famine deaths have been brought \nunder control. Expansion of irrigation, better public distribution \nsystem, rural employment, and transportation reduced the impact of \ndrought on the lives of people after the independence,\u201d Mishra\u2019s study \nsaid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colonial history Courtesy Scroll.IN A group of Indian and American researches simulated soil moisture content during major Indian famines to come to the conclusion. The 1943 Bengali famine was caused by then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill\u2019s policies and not drought, a group of Indian and American researchers have found in a study published in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}