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Churchill’s Famine: The killing of three million is a story waiting to be retold

125 points by haltingproblem 3y ago

boynamedsue 3y ago
I happen to be reading "Churchill’s Secret War," the book mentioned in the article. It's amazing. Get it if you're interested in this topic.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill's_Secret_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill's_Secret_War
revelio 3y ago
"Famines struck India from almost the beginning of British colonial rule. In 1770, over one million people died of starvation in Bengal, 13 years after Robert Clive’s seizure of the region following the Battle of Palashee (Plassey). Famines across India followed: the most devastating were in 1783-84, 1791-92, 1837-38, 1860-61, 1876-78, 1896-97 and 1899-1900." This is very deceptively phrased. It suggests that there was no famine in India before, and somehow Britain caused that problem to arise for the first time. Other famines in India: 1. 1335-1342 2. 1460 3. 1520 4. 1555 5. 1629-1632, the biggest famine in Indian history 6. 1655 7. 1682 8. 1702-1704 The rule of the East India Company started in the 1750s. The British Raj (Empire proper) in the mid 1800s. Famines continued up to the green revolution. The way the article presents famine as some sort of direct consequence of one set of empires being replaced by another suggests that the article has an agenda that goes beyond history.
- jl6 3y ago
  People hunger for simple good-guy/bad-guy narratives to help make sense of a complex world, and there are many charlatans eager to serve up a big ol’ helping of simplicity that just happens to suit their interests.
  - gishbunker 3y ago
    Stealing food from a nation, resulting in millions of deaths, is a pretty clear "bad guy" move. There are plenty of clear cut bad guy moments in history, falsely equivocating and saying "it's complicated" is a way to undermine critique.
- stainablesteel 3y ago
  these articles will forever pin the blame on the british and not any of the other emperors or conquerors that came before, the brits are just the most recent
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Once you start poking, a lot of popular narratives turn out to be manipulative and deceptive, driven by a certain political agenda. Remember the Belgians and the Congo? Hands cut off etc? Never happened as commonly told, probably one of the biggest hoaxes of history: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoax/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoa...
  - Jibbedeyeah 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - sillystuff 3y ago
    Wikipedia article (and the many sources it references) disagree with your claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S... Begium was brutal in the Congo. Their brutality continued all the way to the mid 20th century, when Belgium (with US help) tortured, murdered, dismembered, and dissolved in acid, the body of the recently independent Congo's prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Belgian police commissioner, Gerard Soete who participated in the dismemberment kept two teeth and two fingers from Lumumba as souvenirs. The single tooth, that could still be found, was repatriated last year, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a state funeral was held. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61838781 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61838781 Belgium's motivation was to continue to steal everything they could from the Congo. The US motivation was specifically to steal the Congo's uranium which was used to produce US nuclear weapons starting from the Manahattan project through the 1950s.
    - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
      oh wow you looked it up on wikipedia - check mate I guess
      - revelio 3y ago
        A page that has only a single citation, no less.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  If we graphed all famines by deaths per capita, would we observe a signal indicating when British colonial rule began? I’m curious to explore this when I’m back at a PC.
  - ralfd 3y ago
    My guess would be ramping up population growth. Any wealth created by colonial rule, and British technology / peace / medicine, would be turned into more people surviving into adulthood.
    - polygamous_bat 3y ago
      > Any wealth created by colonial rule, and British technology / peace / medicine, would be turned into more people surviving into adulthood. As opposed to, what? The destitution that comes with independence? It seems to suggest the colonized people were savages killing each other before the British stopped by so generously.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    You would. Of course. But not necessarily because of western rule causing famine, perhaps because of improved record keeping. Just looking at the spans in GP comment, it seems the gaps are getting shorter.
    - dmix 3y ago
      That's a good point, we probably only know most of the really bad ones or historically relevant ones. Just like volcano eruptions.
    - Waterluvian 3y ago
      Great point. I feel like statistics could have been so much more fun in school had I really embraced the joy of mystery solving.
- newyankee 3y ago
  Next you will go and justify English colonization by stating that the railways British built for transporting goods for their industrial empire actually helped Indians access more grains than they would otherwise get. In Winston Churchill's case there is a lot of evidence which suggests that due to WW2 priorities he let a few million people in India starve. In any case he did not have any love for Indians and considered them to be inferior race anyways. Just because famines have happened in India before, no way does that mean that the damage due to certain famines in British empire could've been reduced especially given that India was the crown jewel in British empire providing so many inputs to the British industrial empire.
  - Retric 3y ago
    All systems can be improved, but perfection is a meaningless yardstick. The most relevant comparison is systems that actually existed. Churchill could likely have saved 100’s of thousands, but I seriously doubt he could have dropped deaths to zero in the middle of WWII. England was forced to ration food domestically, they didn’t have some great surplus to distribute. That 50,000 tons mentioned could have saved lives but wouldn’t have even come close to solving the problem. That’s the nuance of history, people could have done more which would have helped though not actually solving the problem. All those shipments sunk by U-Boats were destroying part of a finite pool of food produced which had already shrunk as economies mobilized for war. Eventually you simply hit a breaking point.
  - throwawayzxx 3y ago
    I think you are wasting your time. Many Europeans see Churchill as a saviour they don't care about victims from colonies. It all boils down to the survival of the fittest. Yesterday Europe, today Russia and tomorrow China. No one can stop that
    - shjake 3y ago
      > today Russia Not exactly the fittest nor really that into survival (suicidal masochism would be a better description)
- haltingproblem 3y ago
  No famines in India that resulted in mass deaths after 1947. If the difference was just governance, Indians vs. British, then the fault lies with the British. The Indian governments inherited British institutions in India but Indian leaders lacked administrative experience. They also did not have the resources of the British empire and had to face the mass horrors and disruption of partition. All this lays the culpability at the door of the British for the Bengal famnine.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    There was a famine in Bangladesh in 1974 that may have killed 1.5 million people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_famine_of_1974 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_famine_of_1974
    - polygamous_bat 3y ago
      Which was also caused by the atrocities of the (arguably colonial) Pakistani military during the Bangladeshi liberation war. If you are trying to argue self-governance can also cause famines, this isn't an example to be used.
    - cppenjoyer 3y ago
      That's about Bangladesh, not Bengal. Bangladesh is a neighboring country of India.
      - ralfd 3y ago
        https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/IndiaPolitical1893ConstablesHandAtlas.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/IndiaPolitica... Bangladesh was part of British Indian Empire and the Bengal region is partly in it.
        cppenjoyer 3y ago
        [flagged]
- treecle 3y ago
  The context here is that the BBC recently produced a documentary about Modi that has been controversial in India. Hence the attack on Churchill and the explicit mention of the BBC.
  - rajup 3y ago
    Do you have anything concrete to share about the evidence and content of the article? If not this comment is just derailing…
  - actuator 3y ago
    You would find India's opposition which supported the said documentary also agrees to the proposition on Churchill. One of the leading voices from it Tharoor has multiple times spoken about it on British TV and universities.
- gnufied 3y ago
  I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine? Quoting from the book: >The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken.[9] One civil servant said the policy "completely broke the economy of the fishing class" in Bengal. The answer seems an resounding yes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:text=In%201942%2C%20as%20a%20result,transport%20should%20it%20invade%20Bengal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:....
  - concordDance 3y ago
    > I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine? Isn't this true of every wartime famine throughout history? My understanding is that famine and hunger were pretty standard during wartime as armies would "forrage" (a lovely euphemism for theft, murder and rape).
    - belltaco 3y ago
      Did you read the link? It was about a strategy of intentionally removing access so that things wouldn't fall into hands of Japan if they successfully invaded. > In 1942, as a result of the Japanese conquest of Burma that began that year, the colonial government in India introduced a "denial policy" in Bengal, a scorched earth policy designed to deny Japan access to food and transport should it invade Bengal. Mukerjee attributes the "scorched earth" approach to Churchill, who reportedly urged it on 14 November 1941.[7] The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken. The analogy would be if the US had sufficient control of Ukraine, and removed and destroyed infrastructure in east Ukraine so that the Russians cannot use it if they capture that territory.
- gostsamo 3y ago
  The way I read it, famines in Indea were one in two generations and the british empire after the agricultural revolution managed to make them every 20 years. Definitely accelerating the future there.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    I'd love to read some serious scholarship on this. One that maybe looks at bones for signs of malnutrition and tries tries to plot famine frequency over time.
    - SanjayMehta 3y ago
      We cremate our dead.
    - vishnugupta 3y ago
      Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate, worked extensively on the causes of famine.
  - revelio 3y ago
    The list comes from a paragraph from Wikipedia, it's not an attempt to comprehensively list every famine. Perhaps someone has done a study on this that has a precise definition of famine and graphs of frequency over time, along with an attempt to disentangle all the different effects. IIRC there's one like that which attempts to show that colonialism reduced development by using satellite images of electric lighting decades later. It seemed very fragile but is at least an attempt to be rigorous.
    - pasabagi 3y ago
      I think your approach could be used to argue that no famines are the result of policy. The Great Famine in China (during the Great Leap Forward) was preceded by several famines of similar magnitude, the most recent being in 1943. One sign that famines are man-made is if the nation involved is a net food exporter for the duration, regardless of historical frequency and/or natural conditions, because then it's basically unarguable that policy decisions are being made that are leading to starvation: the Great Famine in Ireland is the most common example of this, even though it's contemporary to the potato blight.
- cppenjoyer 3y ago
  [flagged]
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  That's rather like saying that the famine in Ukraine caused by Soviet collectivization policies in the 1930s was nothing unusual, since: > "From the beginning of the 11th to the end of the 16th century, on the territory of Russia for every century there were 8 crop failures, which were repeated every 13 years, sometimes causing prolonged famine in a significant territory. The causes of the famine were different, from natural (droughts, crop failures, low rainfall in a certain year) and economic and political crises; for example, the Great Famine of 1931–1933, colloquially called the Holodomor, the cause of which was the collectivization policy in the USSR..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia... It's historically undeniable that Churchill had no qualms when it came to actively destroying resistance to colonial rule, and complete indifference to the fates of the Indian subcontinent's people is no surprise: > "Churchill suggested that chemical weapons should be used “against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment.” He added “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes to spread a lively terror” in Iraq." https://english.alarabiya.net/special-reports/winston-churchill/2015/02/19/Was-Churchill-advocate-of-chemical-weapons-use-in-Mideast- https://english.alarabiya.net/special-reports/winston-church...
  - kyleyeats 3y ago
    It's worth noting if a famine is before or after the Haber process (early 1900s). A famine in the 1900s is unusual.
    - photochemsyn 3y ago
      This is a somewhat simplified view. The prevention of famines is related to a wide variety of factors, not just the availability of nitrogen fertilizer, such as water infrastructure (deep wells, canals, etc. to alleviate droughts), transportation systems like railroads and jet planes (to bring food relief rapidly to famine-stricken regions), political stability (as wars can disrupt water and food infrastructure), etc.
- whack 3y ago
  Your comment excludes all mention of Churchill's active role in causing the famine. One would be tempted to conclude that your comment has an agenda of its own, but I'll assume in good faith that is not the case. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church... > The Bengal famine of 1943 was the only one in modern Indian history not to occur as a result of serious drought, according to a study that provides scientific backing for arguments that Churchill-era British policies were a significant factor contributing to the catastrophe. > Mukerjee has presented evidence the cabinet was warned repeatedly that the exhaustive use of Indian resources for the war effort could result in famine, but it opted to continue exporting rice from India to elsewhere in the empire. > Rice stocks continued to leave India even as London was denying urgent requests from India’s viceroy for more than 1m tonnes of emergency wheat supplies in 1942-43. Churchill has been quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive. > Mukerjee and others also point to Britain’s “denial policy” in the region, in which huge supplies of rice and thousands of boats were confiscated from coastal areas of Bengal in order to deny resources to the Japanese army in case of a future invasion.
  - revelio 3y ago
    These are better points than what the article makes, indeed. There's been an uptick lately of fighting over the Bengal famine. A more neutral evaluation is provided by Encyclopedia Brittanica [1]. The summary is: - Japanese invasions caused rice exports from Myanmar and Singapore to halt. - A cyclone devastated crops, forcing farmers to consume their seed corn. - The Japanese meanwhile were bombing coastal cities and using submarines to interdict shipping. Anticipating Japanese invasion, the British stockpiled food for the troops. - They also exported food for troops elsewhere. - This led to hoarding, shortages and price inflations which triggered famine. - Britain, far from not caring, distributed 110 million free meals, but the scope of the economic chaos meant it wasn't enough. The idea that Churchill actively (as in deliberately) caused the famine isn't supported by history. It's a modern invention by the same sorts of people who assert that only white Americans had slaves, and other historical re-interpretations designed to extract concessions from rich westerners. The reality is far simpler and closer to what people would expect. Churchill didn't want there to be a famine in India, nobody did. The cause was the Axis attempt to take over the world and the fight-to-the-death that this led to. Any attempt to attack Churchill or the British over what happened must, to be intellectually rigorous, reflect on the alternative. Churchill was indeed a racist but compared to Hitler, Churchill's views were nothing. If the Nazis had won the Battle of Britain not only would the British population have been enslaved in forced labor camps, thus ending any question of it aiding India, but the Empire would have come under direct Nazi control and D-Day would have been impossible. With Hitler's full attention and resources on the eastern front it's possible that the Third Reich would have survived and become stable. If that had happened then, given Hitler's views and India's absolute economic weakness in comparison to what a unified Nazi Europe would have had access to, the full scale extermination of Indian and African populations could have followed. Only a major new front by the USA would have been able to stop it. This sort of hypothetical holocaust of Africa is a minor plot point in The Man In The High Castle. So when people complain about the allocation of food in WW2, it seems like they're forgetting how badly things could have easily turned out in alternative timelines. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bengal-famine-of-1943 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bengal-famine-of-1943
- gishbunker 3y ago
  I don't read this as particularly deceptive, or suggesting that there were no prior famines. That said, seeing rate of famines increase as technology for food production improved is a pretty glaring. Churchill (and arguably capitalism more broadly) were absolutely extracting food from India in a way that hurt the Indian people.
- Convolutional 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Jibbedeyeah 3y ago
    Ok tankie.
  - gishbunker 3y ago
    I think it's absolutely reasonable to blame England for famines in Ireland and India, as well as blame Soviet style communism for famines in Ukraine and China. I'm a (non Soviet style) communist, and it's frustrating to me to see both communist and capitalist posters say, "my side did nothing wrong, yours is the killer". Both communist and capitalist regimes have caused famine. We need to observe both and feel comfortable with the idea that even things we agree with sometimes do evil.
  - revelio 3y ago
    This should be obvious enough to not need pointing out, but at the time of the Bengal famine there was a world war in which Japan was invading Asia and Germany was invading Europe. Many of the things that exacerbated the Bengal famine were due to defensive measures designed to avoid even worse deaths if those invasions were successful. In contrast, the famines in the USSR and PRC weren't caused by invasion. They were caused by the collectivization of agriculture for ideological reasons.
    - Convolutional 3y ago
      > Japan was invading Asia and Germany was invading Europe. Many of the things that exacerbated the Bengal famine were due to defensive measures designed to avoid even worse deaths if those invasions were successful. You're talking as if England had not invaded and subjugated India. Gandhi was in prison during World War II due to noncooperatiom with the English invaders, and Nehru and the then big tent Congress party had the same policy. Bose actually went to Japan as he wanted the Japanese to come into India and drive out the English invaders. What was the Dust Bowl famine in the US at the same time but policies of "agriculture for ideological reasons"?
- throwawaymanbot 3y ago
  [dead]
- rajup 3y ago
  This comment reeks of whataboutism. The article is specifically about Churchill’s active role in famines, and how it’s not being talked about much. I’m sure other reasons for famines before and after the British Empire are covered in detail elsewhere.
HL33tibCe7 3y ago
If you’re interested in a counter argument, see https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/winston-churchill-isnt-to-blame-for-the-bengal-famine/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/winston-churchill-isnt-t...
- hirundo 3y ago
  Fascinating article, it argues that Churchill was indeed racist and imperialist toward these people, and yet strove to head off the famine from humanitarian impulses. The more informed histories always seem to be written in shades of grey.
  - zpeti 3y ago
    If Churchill wasn’t a bit racist he probably wouldn’t have thought British culture is superior to nazi culture.
    - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
      Nazi isn’t a race though…
  - HL33tibCe7 3y ago
    Yeah from what I’ve read this seems the most correct take. Churchill was, in today’s parlance, a racist. He saw other races as inferior, I think it’s hard to deny that. But he _did_ still have respect for them, and certainly did not see other races as subhuman or below moral consideration as articles like the OP claim.
- Digit-Al 3y ago
  Very interesting. Thanks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- iamshs 3y ago
  Original article is just Hindu Nationalist 'history' project. Not a single Brahmin merchant released any grain that they hoarded in their warehouses, they were looking for profit. Nobody even bothers to tell this part of the famine. We already hate Churchill for being racist, but complete the picture and tell the role of Brahmins too.
Waterluvian 3y ago
On a purely technical level, importing enough food to feed all the people necessary to prevent 3 million deaths feels staggering. Imagine the convoys. Every time I read about WWII maritime logistics, I’m blown away by the sheer scale of it.
- rainhacker 3y ago
  Not sure how this comment made it to the top. As its not so much about importing food, but exporting it from a starving country. From another post in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104069 "I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine? Quoting from the book: > The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken.[9] One civil servant said the policy "completely broke the economy of the fishing class" in Bengal. he answer seems an resounding yes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:text=In%201942%2C%20as%20a%20result,transport%20should%20it%20invade%20Bengal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:..."
Randomizer42 3y ago
Don't forget about the great famine in Iran during WW1 - that is the REAL HOLOCAUST committed by the English.
- haltingproblem 3y ago
  I have never heard of this!! Please share some resources that you think are unbiased, would love to learn more.
  - dmix 3y ago
    According to wikipedia > So far, few historians have researched the famine, making it an understudied subject of modern history. But otherwise there seems to be plenty of information there. It also mentions: > In recent years, the famine has been subject to conspiracy theories, polarization and historical revisionism in Iran. The official website of Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, published an article in 2015 asserting the view that the famine was a deliberate act of genocide committed by the British, whose documents have been intentionally wiped out in a cover-up attempt. So it's going to be full of online vitriol by competing nationalists, just like the Bengal one generates every time I've seen it brought up.
    - ImAnAmateur 3y ago
      Glad you mentioned that Khamenei article by name. It came up in a search so I was reading it. It seems to be inspired by a work in 2013 that has much the same message. One book especially but three books total. Without paying for those I can't judge the claims fully. The gist of the article is that American sources differ from British ones when it comes to the period of 1917-1919. It spends a big chunk of its length making the case that the Irish famine was an intentional genocide and a cover up by Britain. The thesis of the article seems to be that Britian did the same thing to Iran. I can't come to a clear conclusion. The American sources aren't quoted or cited directly in the article, instead only indirectly through works that used them. At first I thought it was based off of a 2013 work but that is a 2nd edition of something originally written in 2003. I also can't tell how they increased the death count beyond an additional two million. I agree that this article is very likely to be biased. Modern Iranian politics could have an influence. However I can't say more without further research. Here is a quote of a Wikipedia citation of World War 1 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_note-StevenWard-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_no... >Ward, Steven R. (2014). Immortal, Updated Edition: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press. p. 123. ISBN 9781626160651. "As the Great War came to its close in the fall of 1918, Iran's plight was woeful. The war had created an economic catastrophe, invading armies had ruined farmland and irrigation works, crops and livestock were stolen or destroyed, and peasants had been taken from their fields and forced to serve as laborers in the various armies. Famine killed as many as two million Iranians out of a population of little more than ten million while an influenza pandemic killed additional tens of thousands." The core question isn't about if the famine happened, but how bad it was and how intentional it was.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
I don’t know if this is true so maybe I shouldn’t be mentioning it, but: I had a driver for a week in India who I talked with a lot because my wife and our two friends rode in the back seat while I sat up front. One of our longer conversations was about British rule. Our driver claimed that England very purposefully dismantled India’s education system and had the harsh punishment of “hand maiming” that was frequently meted out for even small infractions. Empires, especially when in decline, can be brutal so maybe what our driver told me is true.
- concordDance 3y ago
  There are plenty of rumors and myths floating around amongst taxi drivers in most countries, particularly third world ones in my experience (~15 years living in such countries). I wouldn't put too much stock in it.
  - mark_l_watson 3y ago
    I understand your point about taxi drivers, but our driver was someone very different. He was well educated and a sophisticated gentleman who owned his own nice car. He was also a ‘tour guide’ superstar as far as knowing locals to introduce us to, local activities. We only covered about a 400 mile radius area around Agra. Anyway, I found him believable, but he was just one data point.
- actuator 3y ago
  Well, it is not just the English that dismantled it, it had already gotten weak if you look at India's output to science and research by the time they came. They did very well manipulate the system to be advantageous to them and make it easier for them to rule, which was what most colonisers were doing.
deleted 3y ago
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EGreg 3y ago
They say state socialism killed millions, and point to the Holodomor and Great Chinese Famine as examples. They are not wrong that collectivization did that. But they never stand up and discuss how state capitalism is explicitly behind famines like the Great Irine Potato Famine and the numerous ones in Bengal - with this one postdating Holodomor. In the Irish Potato Famine, 15% of the country perished — it was right next door to the English — and did so largely due to enforcing private property of landlords above human lives of Irish peasants and sharecroppers. Whether it is a Raj government that got set up to protect the state capitalist “East India Company”, or whether it is “wartime communism”, requisitioning food from starving peasants to feed cityfolk is something only a powerful state apparatus can do at such a scale, and at such a scale it is entirely out of touch with the people on the ground. People have suffered under both economic systems, it is just in the USA it is fashionable to associate communism with the State while capitalism has come to be somehow associated the absence of one.
- gishbunker 3y ago
  I'm a communist, and holy shit have both communist regimes and capitalist regimes killed millions upon millions in preventable causes. People here generally jump on communists pretty assertively, but I think it's important to remember that autocracy is only one form of communism, and plenty of communist folks have a strong dislike of the Soviet model. (Just as, I'd imagine, many capitalists dislike the "use force to take food" model described in the article). It drives me up the wall when people say, "communism/capitalism are unique in their killing of 100s of millions!" No, both have caused uncountable human suffering. We should be comfortable accepting that both need study and critique.
Wiki39366 3y ago
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- vidarh 3y ago
  Because for all it's fault most of the commercial media in the UK are worse. The BBC remains consistently more trusted by both left and right than most alternatives.
  - Wiki39366 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - monetus 3y ago
      My hunch is that this user is trolling, but does anyone have any good English language Indian news sites? I keep stumbling into political talk shows where people yell over each other the whole time, so I'm curious.
      - Wiki39366 3y ago
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        deleted 3y ago
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  - OJFord 3y ago
    Or simultaneously accused of left & right bias. Like A Passage to India apparently critiqued as wholly unfair to Anglo/Muslim/Hindu Indians, but an accurate portrayal of the other two, by each group respectively.
- AllegedAlec 3y ago
  > if I say something was evil 80 years ago it's still just as evil today. People and organisations cannot improve and everyone's guilty of the sins of their forefathers.
iamshs 3y ago
Deaths in Bengal famine were due to native Indian administration and hoarding to grains by Hindu merchants. Why do you think Bangladesh never pays any attention to the famine? This re-surfacing of famine myths is Hindu Nationalist project at play. 1) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 2) https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/articles/31i/06_31.1.pdf https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/a... 3) https://www.jstor.org/stable/651058 https://www.jstor.org/stable/651058 4) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 5) https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/brs.2009.0004 https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/brs.2009.0004
- gishbunker 3y ago
  Why were they hoarding grain?
- actuator 3y ago
  All the sources quoted by you are western sources, they might have a reason to be a bit biased on this. Also, you would find the opposition to the current government also supports the proposition on Churchill, its prominent leader Tharoor having voiced it in many forums, so this is definitely not a partisan issue and not some "project at play".
- thunkshift1 3y ago
  From the wiki article on this book: > Reviewing the book in The Sunday Times, Max Hastings wrote: To put the matter brutally, millions of Indians were allowed to starve so that available shipping—including vessels normally based in India—could be used to further British purposes elsewhere. When Churchill's nation was engaged in a desperate struggle, perhaps this reflected strategic logic.
ruralthinker 3y ago
I am offended when many people in the US consider Winston Churchill as a leadership icon. Indian MP, Shashi Tharoor's observation Churchill was no better than the Nazis is the correct one. Winston Churchill had an extremely derogatory attitude towards Indians even for his time. His policies killed millions of Indians. Indians need to re-write history from Indian perspective and tell the true story of Churchill, a genocidal racist who deserves to be in the trash can of history.
- wsgeorge 3y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but this comment lacks so much nuance it actively repeats the wrongs it means to correct. Churchill was a significant leadership icon (WWII). He was also a poor leader (WWI). He held racist views. He was also very witty. People are complex, and one perspective is not enough to do a person justice. Case in point: many people around the world think of Mahatma Ghandi as a very positive cultural and political icon. Except students in the biggest university in my country, who protested [0] to pull down his statue over his racist views. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/14/africa/gandhi-statue-ghana-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/14/africa/gandhi-statue-ghan...
  - ruralthinker 3y ago
    You are missing the point due to your biases, Churchill caused the death of millions, opposed the independence of India. He is not some garden variety racist who just held his offensive views while staying in his basement and did no harm to others.
- HL33tibCe7 3y ago
  > Indian MP, Shashi Tharoor's observation Churchill was no better than the Nazis is the correct one. This is a completely absurd position. The Nazis carried out a deliberate extermination programme, murdering millions their own citizens.
  - actuator 3y ago
    The context is he meant it for Indians, which is true.
sddat 3y ago
Must read book : THE ANARCHY: THE RELENTLESS RISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. You wouldn’t believe this part of history

I happen to be reading "Churchill’s Secret War," the book mentioned in the article. It's amazing. Get it if you're interested in this topic.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill's_Secret_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill's_Secret_War

revelio 3y ago

"Famines struck India from almost the beginning of British colonial rule. In 1770, over one million people died of starvation in Bengal, 13 years after Robert Clive’s seizure of the region following the Battle of Palashee (Plassey). Famines across India followed: the most devastating were in 1783-84, 1791-92, 1837-38, 1860-61, 1876-78, 1896-97 and 1899-1900." This is very deceptively phrased. It suggests that there was no famine in India before, and somehow Britain caused that problem to arise for the first time. Other famines in India: 1. 1335-1342 2. 1460 3. 1520 4. 1555 5. 1629-1632, the biggest famine in Indian history 6. 1655 7. 1682 8. 1702-1704 The rule of the East India Company started in the 1750s. The British Raj (Empire proper) in the mid 1800s. Famines continued up to the green revolution. The way the article presents famine as some sort of direct consequence of one set of empires being replaced by another suggests that the article has an agenda that goes beyond history.

jl6 3y ago
People hunger for simple good-guy/bad-guy narratives to help make sense of a complex world, and there are many charlatans eager to serve up a big ol’ helping of simplicity that just happens to suit their interests.
- gishbunker 3y ago
  Stealing food from a nation, resulting in millions of deaths, is a pretty clear "bad guy" move. There are plenty of clear cut bad guy moments in history, falsely equivocating and saying "it's complicated" is a way to undermine critique.
stainablesteel 3y ago
these articles will forever pin the blame on the british and not any of the other emperors or conquerors that came before, the brits are just the most recent
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
Once you start poking, a lot of popular narratives turn out to be manipulative and deceptive, driven by a certain political agenda. Remember the Belgians and the Congo? Hands cut off etc? Never happened as commonly told, probably one of the biggest hoaxes of history: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoax/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoa...
- Jibbedeyeah 3y ago
  [flagged]
- sillystuff 3y ago
  Wikipedia article (and the many sources it references) disagree with your claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S... Begium was brutal in the Congo. Their brutality continued all the way to the mid 20th century, when Belgium (with US help) tortured, murdered, dismembered, and dissolved in acid, the body of the recently independent Congo's prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Belgian police commissioner, Gerard Soete who participated in the dismemberment kept two teeth and two fingers from Lumumba as souvenirs. The single tooth, that could still be found, was repatriated last year, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a state funeral was held. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61838781 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61838781 Belgium's motivation was to continue to steal everything they could from the Congo. The US motivation was specifically to steal the Congo's uranium which was used to produce US nuclear weapons starting from the Manahattan project through the 1950s.
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    oh wow you looked it up on wikipedia - check mate I guess
    - revelio 3y ago
      A page that has only a single citation, no less.
Waterluvian 3y ago
If we graphed all famines by deaths per capita, would we observe a signal indicating when British colonial rule began? I’m curious to explore this when I’m back at a PC.
- ralfd 3y ago
  My guess would be ramping up population growth. Any wealth created by colonial rule, and British technology / peace / medicine, would be turned into more people surviving into adulthood.
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    > Any wealth created by colonial rule, and British technology / peace / medicine, would be turned into more people surviving into adulthood. As opposed to, what? The destitution that comes with independence? It seems to suggest the colonized people were savages killing each other before the British stopped by so generously.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  You would. Of course. But not necessarily because of western rule causing famine, perhaps because of improved record keeping. Just looking at the spans in GP comment, it seems the gaps are getting shorter.
  - dmix 3y ago
    That's a good point, we probably only know most of the really bad ones or historically relevant ones. Just like volcano eruptions.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Great point. I feel like statistics could have been so much more fun in school had I really embraced the joy of mystery solving.
newyankee 3y ago
Next you will go and justify English colonization by stating that the railways British built for transporting goods for their industrial empire actually helped Indians access more grains than they would otherwise get. In Winston Churchill's case there is a lot of evidence which suggests that due to WW2 priorities he let a few million people in India starve. In any case he did not have any love for Indians and considered them to be inferior race anyways. Just because famines have happened in India before, no way does that mean that the damage due to certain famines in British empire could've been reduced especially given that India was the crown jewel in British empire providing so many inputs to the British industrial empire.
- Retric 3y ago
  All systems can be improved, but perfection is a meaningless yardstick. The most relevant comparison is systems that actually existed. Churchill could likely have saved 100’s of thousands, but I seriously doubt he could have dropped deaths to zero in the middle of WWII. England was forced to ration food domestically, they didn’t have some great surplus to distribute. That 50,000 tons mentioned could have saved lives but wouldn’t have even come close to solving the problem. That’s the nuance of history, people could have done more which would have helped though not actually solving the problem. All those shipments sunk by U-Boats were destroying part of a finite pool of food produced which had already shrunk as economies mobilized for war. Eventually you simply hit a breaking point.
- throwawayzxx 3y ago
  I think you are wasting your time. Many Europeans see Churchill as a saviour they don't care about victims from colonies. It all boils down to the survival of the fittest. Yesterday Europe, today Russia and tomorrow China. No one can stop that
  - shjake 3y ago
    > today Russia Not exactly the fittest nor really that into survival (suicidal masochism would be a better description)
haltingproblem 3y ago
No famines in India that resulted in mass deaths after 1947. If the difference was just governance, Indians vs. British, then the fault lies with the British. The Indian governments inherited British institutions in India but Indian leaders lacked administrative experience. They also did not have the resources of the British empire and had to face the mass horrors and disruption of partition. All this lays the culpability at the door of the British for the Bengal famnine.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  There was a famine in Bangladesh in 1974 that may have killed 1.5 million people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_famine_of_1974 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_famine_of_1974
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    Which was also caused by the atrocities of the (arguably colonial) Pakistani military during the Bangladeshi liberation war. If you are trying to argue self-governance can also cause famines, this isn't an example to be used.
  - cppenjoyer 3y ago
    That's about Bangladesh, not Bengal. Bangladesh is a neighboring country of India.
    - ralfd 3y ago
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/IndiaPolitical1893ConstablesHandAtlas.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/IndiaPolitica... Bangladesh was part of British Indian Empire and the Bengal region is partly in it.
      - cppenjoyer 3y ago
        [flagged]
treecle 3y ago
The context here is that the BBC recently produced a documentary about Modi that has been controversial in India. Hence the attack on Churchill and the explicit mention of the BBC.
- rajup 3y ago
  Do you have anything concrete to share about the evidence and content of the article? If not this comment is just derailing…
- actuator 3y ago
  You would find India's opposition which supported the said documentary also agrees to the proposition on Churchill. One of the leading voices from it Tharoor has multiple times spoken about it on British TV and universities.
gnufied 3y ago
I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine? Quoting from the book: >The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken.[9] One civil servant said the policy "completely broke the economy of the fishing class" in Bengal. The answer seems an resounding yes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:text=In%201942%2C%20as%20a%20result,transport%20should%20it%20invade%20Bengal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:....
- concordDance 3y ago
  > I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine? Isn't this true of every wartime famine throughout history? My understanding is that famine and hunger were pretty standard during wartime as armies would "forrage" (a lovely euphemism for theft, murder and rape).
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Did you read the link? It was about a strategy of intentionally removing access so that things wouldn't fall into hands of Japan if they successfully invaded. > In 1942, as a result of the Japanese conquest of Burma that began that year, the colonial government in India introduced a "denial policy" in Bengal, a scorched earth policy designed to deny Japan access to food and transport should it invade Bengal. Mukerjee attributes the "scorched earth" approach to Churchill, who reportedly urged it on 14 November 1941.[7] The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken. The analogy would be if the US had sufficient control of Ukraine, and removed and destroyed infrastructure in east Ukraine so that the Russians cannot use it if they capture that territory.
gostsamo 3y ago
The way I read it, famines in Indea were one in two generations and the british empire after the agricultural revolution managed to make them every 20 years. Definitely accelerating the future there.
- concordDance 3y ago
  I'd love to read some serious scholarship on this. One that maybe looks at bones for signs of malnutrition and tries tries to plot famine frequency over time.
  - SanjayMehta 3y ago
    We cremate our dead.
  - vishnugupta 3y ago
    Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate, worked extensively on the causes of famine.
- revelio 3y ago
  The list comes from a paragraph from Wikipedia, it's not an attempt to comprehensively list every famine. Perhaps someone has done a study on this that has a precise definition of famine and graphs of frequency over time, along with an attempt to disentangle all the different effects. IIRC there's one like that which attempts to show that colonialism reduced development by using satellite images of electric lighting decades later. It seemed very fragile but is at least an attempt to be rigorous.
  - pasabagi 3y ago
    I think your approach could be used to argue that no famines are the result of policy. The Great Famine in China (during the Great Leap Forward) was preceded by several famines of similar magnitude, the most recent being in 1943. One sign that famines are man-made is if the nation involved is a net food exporter for the duration, regardless of historical frequency and/or natural conditions, because then it's basically unarguable that policy decisions are being made that are leading to starvation: the Great Famine in Ireland is the most common example of this, even though it's contemporary to the potato blight.
cppenjoyer 3y ago
[flagged]
photochemsyn 3y ago
That's rather like saying that the famine in Ukraine caused by Soviet collectivization policies in the 1930s was nothing unusual, since: > "From the beginning of the 11th to the end of the 16th century, on the territory of Russia for every century there were 8 crop failures, which were repeated every 13 years, sometimes causing prolonged famine in a significant territory. The causes of the famine were different, from natural (droughts, crop failures, low rainfall in a certain year) and economic and political crises; for example, the Great Famine of 1931–1933, colloquially called the Holodomor, the cause of which was the collectivization policy in the USSR..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia... It's historically undeniable that Churchill had no qualms when it came to actively destroying resistance to colonial rule, and complete indifference to the fates of the Indian subcontinent's people is no surprise: > "Churchill suggested that chemical weapons should be used “against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment.” He added “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes to spread a lively terror” in Iraq." https://english.alarabiya.net/special-reports/winston-churchill/2015/02/19/Was-Churchill-advocate-of-chemical-weapons-use-in-Mideast- https://english.alarabiya.net/special-reports/winston-church...
- kyleyeats 3y ago
  It's worth noting if a famine is before or after the Haber process (early 1900s). A famine in the 1900s is unusual.
  - photochemsyn 3y ago
    This is a somewhat simplified view. The prevention of famines is related to a wide variety of factors, not just the availability of nitrogen fertilizer, such as water infrastructure (deep wells, canals, etc. to alleviate droughts), transportation systems like railroads and jet planes (to bring food relief rapidly to famine-stricken regions), political stability (as wars can disrupt water and food infrastructure), etc.
whack 3y ago
Your comment excludes all mention of Churchill's active role in causing the famine. One would be tempted to conclude that your comment has an agenda of its own, but I'll assume in good faith that is not the case. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church... > The Bengal famine of 1943 was the only one in modern Indian history not to occur as a result of serious drought, according to a study that provides scientific backing for arguments that Churchill-era British policies were a significant factor contributing to the catastrophe. > Mukerjee has presented evidence the cabinet was warned repeatedly that the exhaustive use of Indian resources for the war effort could result in famine, but it opted to continue exporting rice from India to elsewhere in the empire. > Rice stocks continued to leave India even as London was denying urgent requests from India’s viceroy for more than 1m tonnes of emergency wheat supplies in 1942-43. Churchill has been quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive. > Mukerjee and others also point to Britain’s “denial policy” in the region, in which huge supplies of rice and thousands of boats were confiscated from coastal areas of Bengal in order to deny resources to the Japanese army in case of a future invasion.
- revelio 3y ago
  These are better points than what the article makes, indeed. There's been an uptick lately of fighting over the Bengal famine. A more neutral evaluation is provided by Encyclopedia Brittanica [1]. The summary is: - Japanese invasions caused rice exports from Myanmar and Singapore to halt. - A cyclone devastated crops, forcing farmers to consume their seed corn. - The Japanese meanwhile were bombing coastal cities and using submarines to interdict shipping. Anticipating Japanese invasion, the British stockpiled food for the troops. - They also exported food for troops elsewhere. - This led to hoarding, shortages and price inflations which triggered famine. - Britain, far from not caring, distributed 110 million free meals, but the scope of the economic chaos meant it wasn't enough. The idea that Churchill actively (as in deliberately) caused the famine isn't supported by history. It's a modern invention by the same sorts of people who assert that only white Americans had slaves, and other historical re-interpretations designed to extract concessions from rich westerners. The reality is far simpler and closer to what people would expect. Churchill didn't want there to be a famine in India, nobody did. The cause was the Axis attempt to take over the world and the fight-to-the-death that this led to. Any attempt to attack Churchill or the British over what happened must, to be intellectually rigorous, reflect on the alternative. Churchill was indeed a racist but compared to Hitler, Churchill's views were nothing. If the Nazis had won the Battle of Britain not only would the British population have been enslaved in forced labor camps, thus ending any question of it aiding India, but the Empire would have come under direct Nazi control and D-Day would have been impossible. With Hitler's full attention and resources on the eastern front it's possible that the Third Reich would have survived and become stable. If that had happened then, given Hitler's views and India's absolute economic weakness in comparison to what a unified Nazi Europe would have had access to, the full scale extermination of Indian and African populations could have followed. Only a major new front by the USA would have been able to stop it. This sort of hypothetical holocaust of Africa is a minor plot point in The Man In The High Castle. So when people complain about the allocation of food in WW2, it seems like they're forgetting how badly things could have easily turned out in alternative timelines. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bengal-famine-of-1943 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bengal-famine-of-1943
gishbunker 3y ago
I don't read this as particularly deceptive, or suggesting that there were no prior famines. That said, seeing rate of famines increase as technology for food production improved is a pretty glaring. Churchill (and arguably capitalism more broadly) were absolutely extracting food from India in a way that hurt the Indian people.
Convolutional 3y ago
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- Jibbedeyeah 3y ago
  Ok tankie.
- gishbunker 3y ago
  I think it's absolutely reasonable to blame England for famines in Ireland and India, as well as blame Soviet style communism for famines in Ukraine and China. I'm a (non Soviet style) communist, and it's frustrating to me to see both communist and capitalist posters say, "my side did nothing wrong, yours is the killer". Both communist and capitalist regimes have caused famine. We need to observe both and feel comfortable with the idea that even things we agree with sometimes do evil.
- revelio 3y ago
  This should be obvious enough to not need pointing out, but at the time of the Bengal famine there was a world war in which Japan was invading Asia and Germany was invading Europe. Many of the things that exacerbated the Bengal famine were due to defensive measures designed to avoid even worse deaths if those invasions were successful. In contrast, the famines in the USSR and PRC weren't caused by invasion. They were caused by the collectivization of agriculture for ideological reasons.
  - Convolutional 3y ago
    > Japan was invading Asia and Germany was invading Europe. Many of the things that exacerbated the Bengal famine were due to defensive measures designed to avoid even worse deaths if those invasions were successful. You're talking as if England had not invaded and subjugated India. Gandhi was in prison during World War II due to noncooperatiom with the English invaders, and Nehru and the then big tent Congress party had the same policy. Bose actually went to Japan as he wanted the Japanese to come into India and drive out the English invaders. What was the Dust Bowl famine in the US at the same time but policies of "agriculture for ideological reasons"?
throwawaymanbot 3y ago
[dead]
rajup 3y ago
This comment reeks of whataboutism. The article is specifically about Churchill’s active role in famines, and how it’s not being talked about much. I’m sure other reasons for famines before and after the British Empire are covered in detail elsewhere.

HL33tibCe7 3y ago

If you’re interested in a counter argument, see https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/winston-churchill-isnt-to-blame-for-the-bengal-famine/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/winston-churchill-isnt-t...

hirundo 3y ago
Fascinating article, it argues that Churchill was indeed racist and imperialist toward these people, and yet strove to head off the famine from humanitarian impulses. The more informed histories always seem to be written in shades of grey.
- zpeti 3y ago
  If Churchill wasn’t a bit racist he probably wouldn’t have thought British culture is superior to nazi culture.
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    Nazi isn’t a race though…
- HL33tibCe7 3y ago
  Yeah from what I’ve read this seems the most correct take. Churchill was, in today’s parlance, a racist. He saw other races as inferior, I think it’s hard to deny that. But he _did_ still have respect for them, and certainly did not see other races as subhuman or below moral consideration as articles like the OP claim.
Digit-Al 3y ago
Very interesting. Thanks.
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iamshs 3y ago
Original article is just Hindu Nationalist 'history' project. Not a single Brahmin merchant released any grain that they hoarded in their warehouses, they were looking for profit. Nobody even bothers to tell this part of the famine. We already hate Churchill for being racist, but complete the picture and tell the role of Brahmins too.

Waterluvian 3y ago

On a purely technical level, importing enough food to feed all the people necessary to prevent 3 million deaths feels staggering. Imagine the convoys. Every time I read about WWII maritime logistics, I’m blown away by the sheer scale of it.

rainhacker 3y ago
Not sure how this comment made it to the top. As its not so much about importing food, but exporting it from a starving country. From another post in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104069 "I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine? Quoting from the book: > The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken.[9] One civil servant said the policy "completely broke the economy of the fishing class" in Bengal. he answer seems an resounding yes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:text=In%201942%2C%20as%20a%20result,transport%20should%20it%20invade%20Bengal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:..."

Randomizer42 3y ago

Don't forget about the great famine in Iran during WW1 - that is the REAL HOLOCAUST committed by the English.

haltingproblem 3y ago
I have never heard of this!! Please share some resources that you think are unbiased, would love to learn more.
- dmix 3y ago
  According to wikipedia > So far, few historians have researched the famine, making it an understudied subject of modern history. But otherwise there seems to be plenty of information there. It also mentions: > In recent years, the famine has been subject to conspiracy theories, polarization and historical revisionism in Iran. The official website of Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, published an article in 2015 asserting the view that the famine was a deliberate act of genocide committed by the British, whose documents have been intentionally wiped out in a cover-up attempt. So it's going to be full of online vitriol by competing nationalists, just like the Bengal one generates every time I've seen it brought up.
  - ImAnAmateur 3y ago
    Glad you mentioned that Khamenei article by name. It came up in a search so I was reading it. It seems to be inspired by a work in 2013 that has much the same message. One book especially but three books total. Without paying for those I can't judge the claims fully. The gist of the article is that American sources differ from British ones when it comes to the period of 1917-1919. It spends a big chunk of its length making the case that the Irish famine was an intentional genocide and a cover up by Britain. The thesis of the article seems to be that Britian did the same thing to Iran. I can't come to a clear conclusion. The American sources aren't quoted or cited directly in the article, instead only indirectly through works that used them. At first I thought it was based off of a 2013 work but that is a 2nd edition of something originally written in 2003. I also can't tell how they increased the death count beyond an additional two million. I agree that this article is very likely to be biased. Modern Iranian politics could have an influence. However I can't say more without further research. Here is a quote of a Wikipedia citation of World War 1 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_note-StevenWard-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#cite_no... >Ward, Steven R. (2014). Immortal, Updated Edition: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press. p. 123. ISBN 9781626160651. "As the Great War came to its close in the fall of 1918, Iran's plight was woeful. The war had created an economic catastrophe, invading armies had ruined farmland and irrigation works, crops and livestock were stolen or destroyed, and peasants had been taken from their fields and forced to serve as laborers in the various armies. Famine killed as many as two million Iranians out of a population of little more than ten million while an influenza pandemic killed additional tens of thousands." The core question isn't about if the famine happened, but how bad it was and how intentional it was.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

I don’t know if this is true so maybe I shouldn’t be mentioning it, but: I had a driver for a week in India who I talked with a lot because my wife and our two friends rode in the back seat while I sat up front. One of our longer conversations was about British rule. Our driver claimed that England very purposefully dismantled India’s education system and had the harsh punishment of “hand maiming” that was frequently meted out for even small infractions. Empires, especially when in decline, can be brutal so maybe what our driver told me is true.

concordDance 3y ago
There are plenty of rumors and myths floating around amongst taxi drivers in most countries, particularly third world ones in my experience (~15 years living in such countries). I wouldn't put too much stock in it.
- mark_l_watson 3y ago
  I understand your point about taxi drivers, but our driver was someone very different. He was well educated and a sophisticated gentleman who owned his own nice car. He was also a ‘tour guide’ superstar as far as knowing locals to introduce us to, local activities. We only covered about a 400 mile radius area around Agra. Anyway, I found him believable, but he was just one data point.
actuator 3y ago
Well, it is not just the English that dismantled it, it had already gotten weak if you look at India's output to science and research by the time they came. They did very well manipulate the system to be advantageous to them and make it easier for them to rule, which was what most colonisers were doing.

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EGreg 3y ago

They say state socialism killed millions, and point to the Holodomor and Great Chinese Famine as examples. They are not wrong that collectivization did that. But they never stand up and discuss how state capitalism is explicitly behind famines like the Great Irine Potato Famine and the numerous ones in Bengal - with this one postdating Holodomor. In the Irish Potato Famine, 15% of the country perished — it was right next door to the English — and did so largely due to enforcing private property of landlords above human lives of Irish peasants and sharecroppers. Whether it is a Raj government that got set up to protect the state capitalist “East India Company”, or whether it is “wartime communism”, requisitioning food from starving peasants to feed cityfolk is something only a powerful state apparatus can do at such a scale, and at such a scale it is entirely out of touch with the people on the ground. People have suffered under both economic systems, it is just in the USA it is fashionable to associate communism with the State while capitalism has come to be somehow associated the absence of one.

gishbunker 3y ago
I'm a communist, and holy shit have both communist regimes and capitalist regimes killed millions upon millions in preventable causes. People here generally jump on communists pretty assertively, but I think it's important to remember that autocracy is only one form of communism, and plenty of communist folks have a strong dislike of the Soviet model. (Just as, I'd imagine, many capitalists dislike the "use force to take food" model described in the article). It drives me up the wall when people say, "communism/capitalism are unique in their killing of 100s of millions!" No, both have caused uncountable human suffering. We should be comfortable accepting that both need study and critique.

Wiki39366 3y ago

[flagged]

vidarh 3y ago
Because for all it's fault most of the commercial media in the UK are worse. The BBC remains consistently more trusted by both left and right than most alternatives.
- Wiki39366 3y ago
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  - monetus 3y ago
    My hunch is that this user is trolling, but does anyone have any good English language Indian news sites? I keep stumbling into political talk shows where people yell over each other the whole time, so I'm curious.
    - Wiki39366 3y ago
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      - deleted 3y ago
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- OJFord 3y ago
  Or simultaneously accused of left & right bias. Like A Passage to India apparently critiqued as wholly unfair to Anglo/Muslim/Hindu Indians, but an accurate portrayal of the other two, by each group respectively.
AllegedAlec 3y ago
> if I say something was evil 80 years ago it's still just as evil today. People and organisations cannot improve and everyone's guilty of the sins of their forefathers.

iamshs 3y ago

Deaths in Bengal famine were due to native Indian administration and hoarding to grains by Hindu merchants. Why do you think Bangladesh never pays any attention to the famine? This re-surfacing of famine myths is Hindu Nationalist project at play. 1) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 2) https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/articles/31i/06_31.1.pdf https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/a... 3) https://www.jstor.org/stable/651058 https://www.jstor.org/stable/651058 4) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jid.3635 5) https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/brs.2009.0004 https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/brs.2009.0004

gishbunker 3y ago
Why were they hoarding grain?
actuator 3y ago
All the sources quoted by you are western sources, they might have a reason to be a bit biased on this. Also, you would find the opposition to the current government also supports the proposition on Churchill, its prominent leader Tharoor having voiced it in many forums, so this is definitely not a partisan issue and not some "project at play".
thunkshift1 3y ago
From the wiki article on this book: > Reviewing the book in The Sunday Times, Max Hastings wrote: To put the matter brutally, millions of Indians were allowed to starve so that available shipping—including vessels normally based in India—could be used to further British purposes elsewhere. When Churchill's nation was engaged in a desperate struggle, perhaps this reflected strategic logic.

ruralthinker 3y ago

I am offended when many people in the US consider Winston Churchill as a leadership icon. Indian MP, Shashi Tharoor's observation Churchill was no better than the Nazis is the correct one. Winston Churchill had an extremely derogatory attitude towards Indians even for his time. His policies killed millions of Indians. Indians need to re-write history from Indian perspective and tell the true story of Churchill, a genocidal racist who deserves to be in the trash can of history.

wsgeorge 3y ago
I get where you're coming from, but this comment lacks so much nuance it actively repeats the wrongs it means to correct. Churchill was a significant leadership icon (WWII). He was also a poor leader (WWI). He held racist views. He was also very witty. People are complex, and one perspective is not enough to do a person justice. Case in point: many people around the world think of Mahatma Ghandi as a very positive cultural and political icon. Except students in the biggest university in my country, who protested [0] to pull down his statue over his racist views. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/14/africa/gandhi-statue-ghana-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/14/africa/gandhi-statue-ghan...
- ruralthinker 3y ago
  You are missing the point due to your biases, Churchill caused the death of millions, opposed the independence of India. He is not some garden variety racist who just held his offensive views while staying in his basement and did no harm to others.
HL33tibCe7 3y ago
> Indian MP, Shashi Tharoor's observation Churchill was no better than the Nazis is the correct one. This is a completely absurd position. The Nazis carried out a deliberate extermination programme, murdering millions their own citizens.
- actuator 3y ago
  The context is he meant it for Indians, which is true.

sddat 3y ago

Must read book : THE ANARCHY: THE RELENTLESS RISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. You wouldn’t believe this part of history