Empire: World History - 171. The Bengal Famine: Chaos in Calcutta

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

By 1943, the price of rice was beyond unaffordable for most in Bengal, and people were dying in the streets. Despite government censorship of letters, news spread about the famine and the tide turned with the introduction of a new Viceroy. Yet when aid eventually did arrive from other regions of India, it was so chaotically handled that some food shipments were halted at the station. Listen as Anita and William are joined again by Kavita Puri to explore the legacy of what is sometimes dubbed “Churchill’s Famine”. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Duremberg. And once again, we're joined by Kavita Puri, who was with us for the last episode, which would have made some very difficult listening, I know to some of you. She recently made a rather brilliant podcast for the BBC called Three Million.

Do go and have a listen to. And hopefully, are they going to turn it into a book? Because they really ought to turn it into a book, the whole story of this. It would make a brilliant book. Have you thought of that? No, that's a great idea. I'm going to call my agent now. Thanks, guys.

I'll call your agent because I think having it there so that you could actually sort of delve in and get more detail would be fabulous. Just in the last episode to remind people, Kavito, we left a desperate situation in Bengal where people from the countryside were now flooding into the cities and asking for things as basic as the starch water from boiled rice because they didn't anticipate anyone would give them actual food. Just the stuff people were throw away to keep them alive. And they're still dying in enormous numbers, even in Calcutta, which is the party central of Asia. And their bodies are deemed to be littering the street. So there is a concerted plan to clear their bodies and clear them. But not to feed them. But not to feed them.

Did anyone at this point, when people are actually collapsing in hundreds, if not thousands, in the cities, is there another plea from the viceroy to London to do something about it? And if there is, what shape, form, time does it take? So we're now in the epicentre of the famine, which is around July, August. 1943. And the viceroy then, Linlithgow was really, really concerned. And he goes back to London. Remember, he's already told them that there is a food crisis in India. And in 1943, that no early months, he has been raising the alarm. But now, in August, he says to the war cabinet that famine conditions have begun to appear in Bengal. And, crucially, it could threaten the war effort. And so he goes to the war cabinet and he asks for around half a million

in tons of grain to alleviate the famine, what he calls conditions. And the war cabinet, this is early August, they're about to engage in a really kind of big offensive in Italy, says it could perhaps be able to deliver 150,000 tonnes, but not more. And the viceroy is incredibly despondent at that point. It says, I cannot be responsible for the stability of India now. That's quite severe from a man who was the ultimate establishment figure, who did not criticise the government, did not march out of line. and was always a yes man, was given the job because he was such a yes man. It's hugely, but also remember, when he talks about the stability of India,

he's not just talking about famine conditions in Bengal. He is afraid that the Japanese could invade Bengal and perhaps advance further into India, but also the population is incredibly restive. They don't want the British there. And so a lot of the British kind of colonial forces were not only dealing with the Japanese, they were also dealing with the Indian population as well. Do the Japanese get wind of what's going on? And do they use it for propaganda?

Because, you know, if you are the enemy and you can point to, you know, the British and you say, look, these people cannot even look after their own colonies. I mean, do they do that? Do they reproduce things like that? Do they point out that, you know, Britain is not a good steward of India so that Indians may rise up and like Sebastianobos cross sides and go and fight with them? So it's really interesting you say that because they were pamphleting India at the time. And if you look at those pamphlets and one of them is in the Imperial War Museum, the one that they have is, and they write these in Hindi and in Bengali.

It shows Winston Churchill sitting with his wife Clementine at a Sunday dinner, a Sunday roast lunch probably, with a massive turkey. And underneath the dinner table is a dead Bengali. And so they were using this, the famine as propaganda, to say come join us. It's important, I think, for the British and American audiences listening to this to understand also how much over the great swathes of Asia, the Japanese who we regard as almost the equivalent of the Nazis, how in Asia during the period of the war, they were regarded as liberators. And there are still places you can go in, for example, Java, Jakarta, in Indonesia, and you will see tabloes of the Japanese liberation of Indonesia from the Dutch. And that's still there today. And very much. in Bengal, particularly in left-leaning Bengali intellectual circles, the Japanese are seen as potential liberators. A lot of people, like the Bose, hopes that they can be the means for the rebirth of Asia. The background to this is a lot of, in the 1930s, pan-Asian reaching out. They're all brothers. They've all come from the same cultural roots, Buddhism and so on. And it's time for Asia to rise up and throw out the imperialists.

Yeah, but I mean, it is slightly based on bullshit. I mean, because if you look at the conduct of the Japanese forces towards Indians in, say, Kohima, it is absolutely bar back. They are massacred and left dead by the side of the road. Of course, but this is something, though, which is very current in the conversation. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, we have the Indian National Army that does heed the call and does decide that that's actually the right side to fight on. And you have this bizarre situation sometimes where you have Indians with the Indian National Army that are supported by the Japanese fighting Indians in the British Indian Army, which makes your head spin. It's happening, not just sometimes, that is a major issue across the

Eastern Front all over Imphal and the Burma. Absolutely. And part of that pamphleting was it wasn't just a hearts and minds operation. They were trying to persuade people in the British Indian Army to come and fight with them. But it's quite important to say at this time that officially in India, there was no famine, even though they were communique to London saying that famine conditions were appearing because famine, the word famine, was banned from publication in India. And that was partly because they were worried that the enemy would use it as propaganda. So banned by, what, the censorship office, you know, Defence of India Act kind of stuff, is it under that? Emergency rules passed by the colonial government in India. And the censorship of letters going out

of Bengal that the word famine is actually excised and passages removed. Yes. I mean, that is a kind of whole other thing. I mean, there's always a censor in war. But, the censor in Britain was particularly vigilant for Indian soldiers who were in the Middle East receiving letters from their own families. From their own families talking about famine. And you know, it's quite interesting talking to academics who've researched this because they say the colonial censor was so moved by this avalanche of despair that was coming through the letters of famine that he couldn't excise them. I'm sorry to press you on this point and I've asked you before in the last episode. But again, let's focus on Churchill himself because a lot of

the Indian allegations, as you've said, are put specifically at the door of Churchill, who in this country is still regarded as our greatest war hero. What was Churchill's attitude in 1943? And particularly, what did Leo Amory, the Indian secretary, record of Churchill's attitude towards Bengal and the starving Bengalis? So it's really interesting reading Leo Amory's diaries, who was, it's worth saying the Secretary of State for India at the time. He was, he was, records in one passage that by autumn of 1943, where it was pretty clear what was going on, Leah Amory records in his diary in September that Churchill was prepared to admit that something should be done, but very strong on the point that Indians are not the only people starving in the

war. And he goes on to say, and this is a direct quote, the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks. That's horrible. Yeah. I mean, the point, the point point about Churchill was when he knew, and this is the heart of it really, did he do enough to alleviate it in the middle of a war? You know, there was a war that was going on in lots of different fronts and it all revolves around shipping because shipping was absolutely crucial for the war effort to take people and weapons and food. And so there was a finite number of ships that they had and they would have had to release them in order to kind of send food grain. And so the question is, did he do enough once he knew? Could he have done more? And then the kind of

really difficult question, which you're alluding to William, is did his clearly derogatory attitudes to Indians? And it's important to say that people at the time, including Amory, including Wavel, including other people, were very shocked by his language. Well, shocked by his language. So it's not just us today saying it's racist. At the time it was regarded as shocking. It was. So did his attitude, derogatory attitude towards Indians, did that affect his response to the famine? And that's something we don't know, but is very kind of heartily debated. Yeah. I mean, while all of this is going on, let's just remind people of the human toll that is being taken because by the August of 1943, the authorities are removing a thousand. A thousand bodies a day from the streets of Calcutta. A thousand people a day are being cleared like refuse on the streets. Ian Stevens, I want to know about him because he fascinates me.

So you've got all these censorship laws in place to stop people from even using the word famine. Tell us a bit about Ian Stevens. Ian Stevens was the editor of the statesman newspaper, which was based in Calcutta. And it was a hugely respected British-owned newspaper known for its editorial integrity. And by this point, by the summer of 1943, Stevens had been in India for probably about 20 years. And he was quite unconventional. He loved yoga. He had Indian friends.

Now, that sounds kind of such a remarkable thing to say. But mixing between the kind of colonial class and Indians didn't really happen. And he did this kind of crazy thing where he refused a chauffeur and he cycled to work along the Charingie Road with no top on because he liked to feel the kind of fresh air on his body. So I heard that he cycled naked, but it's just topless, you're saying. Yeah, it's topless. I mean, of course it's not going to be naked. Right. I thought I wondered about that. Yeah, that's a bit much. But he was the editor of the statesman newspaper. And he, by July 1943, faced a dilemma. And it was probably the biggest dilemma of his life. Because it was

absolutely clear that something had gone horribly wrong. There were starving people all across Calcutta on the very street that he cycled on from his apartment to the statesman newspaper. And he was getting communiques from the countryside, from his correspondence, saying the countryside is totally decimated. And yet he saw no relief action, certainly not in Calcutta. And he couldn't report on it. And that was his job? And so was his job to adhere to the colonial authorities' rules? Or was it actually to do his job as a journalist and report what was actually happening on Calcutta Street?

and defy the censor. What does he do? So what he does, is he looks at these rules, and he goes, hmm, no one says anything about photographs. So he senses photographer out onto the streets of Carcasa, and it's not difficult. The photographer quickly comes back, and the debate they have is these photos are so awful. You know, if we publish them, we're going to put people off. They choose them quite carefully, and he published them on a Sunday, next to the crossword.

It's not on the front page. And these photographs... With captions? I think there's a kind of... the captions, but the captions don't say very much because the pictures are so powerful. One of them is a woman with two children and it's not clear if they're alive or not. And in another a man is about to die. And these again, as I described before, these people who are scantily clad, there is nothing to them. And they're very disturbing. And this is read in Delhi, all the papers

sell, people are trading these papers for higher prices. Very quickly, these pictures get seen in London. and the chief press officer in Delhi is like on the phone to Stevens, what the hell are you doing? But there's nothing they can do about it. He hasn't strictly broken the law. But actually, could it be argued that the British themselves are breaking the law? Because they have something called the Famine Code, which means that a certain number of stipulations have to be met for a situation to be described as a famine emergency. And therefore, then aid kicks in. And those conditions have totally been met.

But the famine code is not being adhered to. So, I mean, Stevens is cleverly not breaking the law. Are the British breaking their own law by not moving? I think the famine code wasn't a law. It was a code, a kind of code of practice that was established in the late 19th century after one of the many horrible famines that happened during Britain's presence. And it set out conditions, indicators that if they were fulfilled, imperial aid would have to go to the people who were suffering.

And I found this extraordinary stash of tiny cassette. tapes from Indian civil servants, which talked about all of the conditions, all of the indicators had been met. They were telling their officers, British district managers who were telling Governor Herbert, but famine was never called. It was never called by the colonial authorities, was never called by the Indian provincial government, because if it had been called, aid would have had to go into the countryside to feed the people and actually food needed to go to those who were fighting in the war effort. So the soldiers and people making arms. and so forth in the factories. And so it was never officially called. But despite all this

sort of denial that this is happening, Stevens has managed to get images out there. And when those images reach Britain, I mean, surely that moves the dial, doesn't it? Because people can see with their own eyes what they're not reading about in their own newspapers. So exactly that. So these images go, what we would say, viral today. It shocks the world. People can't believe that this is happening on the streets of Calcutta. And Stevens is emboldened now. He hasn't been slapped down. And so the following Sunday, he produces more pictures and a scathing editorial. Who does he blame in the editorial? So it's quite interesting. If you read the editorial, he blames the Indian provincial government and the colonial government for not doing anything.

And he also blames, as the editorials go on, the merchants who are hoarding and speculating and profiting. Now, this is an important point because in some of the defenses of Churchill and the British had been made, and I'm thinking here of Zaria Masani again. He says that it wasn't the British running this side of things in Calcutta. It was the provincial government, which was under Indian politicians. Is that a defence that stands up? So the 1935 Act did give the Indian provincial government powers, but they did have responsibility for food, but this was in the war.

So things like when we talked about the Bengal Vagrancy Act, people being moved in the streets, that was from Governor Herbert. But denial policy was carried out by Governor Herbert. Things like the lifting of price controls was a colonial authority act. So because of war, things were slightly muddied. And when I was trying to piece together who made decisions, sometimes it was quite difficult, actually. Of course, the provincial government had some control. But these were not normal times.

This was war. Tell us about your impressions of Governor Herbert. is he standing efficiently and effectively for the welfare of the people he's meant to be governing, or is he failing and obfuscating? So by August 1943, Governor Herbert has taken ill, so he's no longer in position. But, you know, Fazal Huck writes to him in August of 1942, so this is a year beforehand saying famine conditions are present. But again, he is focused on the war effort.

But, you know, if you read the primary sources of the time, people didn't think much of Herbert, certainly not people in the Indian provincial government, Linlithgow as well. Even Linlithgow is against him. Yeah, they're thinking even about removing him. So he was considered quite ineffectual. But I'm still fascinated by these now openly discussed images that are now traveling around the world. So they make their way into a newspaper called the Sunday Pictorial, which, it becomes the Sunday mirror. And the mirror does something really interesting, I think,

which says, you know, these are British citizens who are in these pictures, which must cause a huge stir. What is the response? Because the government now knows that this is out there. People know about this and it will have an impact. So what is their response to that? Exactly. So the Sunday pictorial cause in British subjects. And that, again, it's so interesting because subjects again denote some kind of, there is a moral impetus to protect. You're right, subjects, not citizens. So, you know, you have to look after that. There's a paternalism aspect of it.

Exactly. And what's really interesting is people always say, oh, well, you know, people just look at these events from the gaze of modern day times. But if you look at the time, the way that the papers were talking about the famine, and eventually Parliament would have their first debate about the family in November, This was hugely controversial at the time. I mean, Lord Pethic Lawrence, who leads the debate in November, says this absolutely brilliant thing. Just to clarify, this is November 1943 in the House of Lords.

November 1943, yeah. He says, if this were happening in Britain, would our response be the same? And what he meant was, is our response different because they were Indians? Because they're not white, yeah. Can I just say that Pethic Lawrence's are amazing. So they're also an enormous suffragette. supporting family. They are completely

sort of kick-ass protectives of the suffragette cause. Anyway, as you were. So what he actually says is if this terrible death rate had occurred in any one part of the British Isles, parliamentarians would have been

vociferous in demanding that something should be done. That's so powerful and it just goes to show that there was a really, if you read that debate from the 4th of November, there were others like Pethic Lawrence

were saying we have to do something we can't stand by. This is a disgrace. It's a stain on our nation. This, I have to say, is something I've found throughout my research on colonial India, that you often get people today defending empire saying that historians looking at it are looking at it with the eyes of today, that it's that it's completely illegitimate to do that, that at the time no one saw anything wrong

with this. The complete opposite is true. If, for example, you look at the reaction to Clive, the provincial newspapers in England, are absolutely outraged by what the East India companies doing. And when the news of that 1772 Bengal famine comes, it's in every provincial paper. And Clive is booed in the streets of London. There's always a strong awareness here that the horrors of colonialism are something which people are profiting of, people are coming back, rich from India, having looted, pillaged and seized the assets of the Indians. And this is true in 1772, and it's true right at the end in 1943. The government, though, does something interesting, because in the propaganda war, they have to do something. And is it right that they lean on the BBC

to have an alternative narrative? So I went into the BBC archives, which, And this says so much about the Bengal famine and research. Nobody had ever gone to the BBC and asked for anything about the Bengal famine. Interesting. Isn't it? And actually, I found that in quite a lot of the archives. You know this because there's no reference in the files? No, because I asked them.

I said, has anyone ever asked for this? And they said, no one never has. And even when you're looking in the kind of official archive, it's never labeled Bengal famine. It's labeled something else. So it's quite hard to find all these things. What's it labeled? There's things like World War II or it's, you know, something else. And so it's quite a lot of detective work, which tells you even at the time it wasn't, it wasn't valued.

It wasn't considered important enough. It wasn't the subject in itself. No. Anyway, so I went to the archives and what I found was correspondence between the India office and Rushbrook Williams, who was head of the Eastern Service. And I saw bulletins where they had talked about the famine, some of the worst that was happening and, you know, people being cleared away from the streets. And these had been crossed out. And with bulletins, you know, Anita, there's always time reasons. and whatever, but I could see that people had underlined words they were going to emphasize,

and I found correspondence between the India Office and the Eastern Service that basically said, do you have to give it so much prominence? And, you know, it was difficult for the BBC because they were hearing from their correspondence on the ground. Exactly the same that goes on today. Well, but the thing is this is at a time of war when actually they operate under different rules. So they have to abide by government censorship.

Am I right or wrong about that? That's absolutely right. And there was always a discussion. But that was generally with the Ministry of Information. This came from the India office. And it wasn't saying you must. It was basically saying, could you tone it down? Do you have to give it so much prominence?

So editors could, in essence, have said, well, yes, we do. So it's a failure by the BBC. I hate to press you two BBC girls on this one. I'm asking. I want to know. No, no. And we'll never know. And I did ask the archivists, we'll never know why those paragraphs were crossed out.

And it's worth saying in other bulletins, they did mention it. was the only one we could find. But it was a really bad bit of kind of what was going on. And there were other paragraphs about the famine talking about relief efforts. So this was now October 1943 where relief was beginning to kind of start, which had not been crossed out, which is quite interesting. So very picky. I mean, I'm just really frustrated because something that I worked on, which was the assassination that happened after the Jolianabar massacre. So you've got these two decades later and you've got a man who's assassinated the former lieutenant governor of Punjab. And the government at that time leans on Reuters to say at the trial do not report a single

word that comes out of that man's mouth. Now that to me as well is a don't do it, but it's not your order to do it. You'll be breaking the law. And Reuters complies, which I found really appalling at the time. If you didn't have to do that, why did you do that? But I just wondered what the law said and what people were allowed to do and how defiant media outlets could be. I think having looked at the other bullisons, they did report it. And I know that that Rushbert Williams was really disappointed in this correspondent. Who's Rushbrook Williams? He was the head of the Eastern Service and he did push back.

There was also kind of correspondence with the Director General. And as I say, that was the only bulletin that I found that crossed out the worst of what had happened. But in other bulletins, they did run it. So it's just one particular bit of meddling where they're lent on and others. Well, no. On other days, they did talk about what was going on, yeah. Oh, I mean, as somebody who works for the BBC as well, it is very rare that there is a united front about anything. Is there really?

You might have one program doing one thing, but you have eight other programs doing eight different things. So, yeah. All right, let's talk then. Now that the secret is out, is there any reaction to it from government that now we have to do something? We really do have to do something. Well, they hold that debate on the 4th of November. And now we're hearing the word famine being reported not only in the papers but also in parliament, which is ironic because still in India...

You're not allowed to use that word. So be honest, by that point, it was kind of like the rules were still in place, but no one officially is still calling it a famine. But then a very, very significant appointment is made, which does change things. And Lin Lithgow is no longer viceroy, and he's replaced by Field Marshal Wavel. Who's a much more attractive character in every way, isn't he? He's a much more sympathetic figure. He writes poetry, other men's flowers.

And he's a much-loved figure, unlike Lithka. who's a kind of cold. You've already called him a clot and a rockhead. Listen, it's a good point to take a break. It's a good point to take a break. Join us after the break when we see whether things improve, change in any material way with a new man at the helm. Welcome back.

So just before the break, we had a new viceroy being appointed. Lord Weaver. Archie. Archie to his friends. William's just given a lovely pen portrait of a man who now, I imagine, skips through meadows of flowers and writes poetry. That's a kind of indication that we were given. He was an interesting character because he was very military.

He was an ex-general. And yet he had this sort of rather sensitive and cultured side, which was unusual in British generals of that period. There's another story, I remember, my grandmother's great friend was something called Aris Portal, who was Brad Butler's sister. She was brought up in a Cambridge college and then married this handsome polo player

and was sent off age 18 to some cantooment in India. and a week after her arrival in this contumint is a new bride there's a knock on the door and it's a common dance wife and she says Iris I've heard something terrible please tell me it's not true there's a rumor going round the contumment that you've been reading poetry true story from the horse's right yeah that's hilarious we wouldn't like it to get around

we wouldn't want that to get around Archie Wavel it's not like that so he was commander-in-chief in India It's worth saying that. And while the progress of the Japanese was being made, you know, so he knew India pretty well. I'm not sure poetry is a kind of massively important skill in dealing with famine, but he did a very good thing that Linlithgow never did. So he goes out to India in late October after his appointment by Churchill, and he goes directly to the places that are hit by famine. Linthko never did that.

So he goes to Calcutta and he goes to Midnapore. And remember, Midnapur is one of those places that we spoke about in part one. It was a place where the cyclone hit. Exactly. Cyclone hit. Denial policy had hit hard. It was a kind of hotbed of resistance to the British. It had everything.

And he goes there and he's shocked and he's devastated. And he immediately takes action within days of arriving. So he makes sure that the military is kind of partially diverted from the front line to help relief go into the countryside. Remember, food has been going from the countryside into the kind of city for the war effort. And now he's doing the opposite. And he makes some other important moves.

He establishes gruel kitchens, relief hospitals. At last, finally. This is now two years into the famine. Finally, the authorities are actually doing what any decent Indian government throughout history would have done the minute the family broke out, which is set up up kitchens of food. Yeah, and he also ensures fire

the government in Delhi that Calcutta is now no longer fed from the countryside but outside the province. That's a really important move. You know, a lot of the motivations before have been about the war effort. This is humanitarian. His letters I've read and they're rather amazing. And he reads to us like a rather modern sensibility. He reacts as we would, unlike Linithko, who doesn't. God, you really don't like Linlithgow. I don't. No, he doesn't do you? Did you pick that up? He tried it so well. Just a bit. He doesn't like poetry either. But if you read his diary, he is motivated by compassion, but he also then sets himself on a collision path with Churchill. Because what he realizes is that to stave off further famine, because what happens with famine is that people don't often die from hunger,

you die from diseases. And actually, and as a martyr notes, more people died in 44 than 43. he asked for a significant amount of food imports from the war cabinet. And this really puts him into direct conflict with Churchill. And do you know what else it does? It goes around the world really, really quickly. So just as a quick noodle while you were talking, I thought I'd look up and see what the American newspapers were writing about this. Fascinating to me.

So this is from the New York Times, October the 25th, 1943. Their headline screams in bowl. Wavell drops all to relieve famine. Bengal starvation area visit. may yield new measures, death rate sores, and their first paragraph of it. And you can see why, perhaps in London, people will be grinding their teeth down to the nub. Field Marshal Viscount Wavel's decision to visit the Bengal famine areas within a few days of his inauguration as Viceroy is striking evidence of the seriousness of the famine situation. The Viceroy has brushed aside immediate action

on pressing political problems in favour of a personal investigation of the famine. So it is now out. It is international and anyone now, I guess, who says it's not a problem or nothing to see here, the Americans know now. The New York Times is screaming about it in a headline. So at a time of war, when you're looking for allies in America and American newspapers are writing that this is happening under your nose, this is not a good look, is it? So what happens in London as a result of this? So it's a huge amount of pressure in London, not only from the Americans who remember are, you know, already very much kind of hoping that independence will come to India and leaning on the British for that. But it's also being reported in Germany and Japan.

And this is the kind of last thing that the British wanted. And then you've got Wavel making his demand for a million tons of food aid, which is what he says is needed to stave off a famine. Oh, the famine's here just to solve the famine. Now you haven't staved it off at all. To solve the famine. Exactly. And there is a lot of back and forth then with a war cabinet and Wavel. And if you go through the papers, you can see it. You know, Churchill's saying we can give a little bit of this or we can't give this or we've got this kind of big operation happening. And Wavel almost kind of says, you know what? I'm the wrong guy. If you're not going to help, you need somebody else. And he puts his job on the line. And he writes, and this is so strong and we must remember, he is the viceroy of India. He was chosen. by Churchill, and this is what he says, that the Bengal famine is one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule, and damage to our reputation is incalculable.

He writes that in February 94. I mean... Goodness. Yeah. It's basically back me or sack me. Yeah. Simple. How long has he been in the job?

October, November, December, December, January. Four months. Well, that's it. Impressive. And so how does Churchill respond? Does Churchill finally get it? Well, they're planning for D-Day at this point. So, you know, shipping is needed.

Nobody is thinking about the famine. And so what he does do is finally in April 1944, he does go to Roosevelt. He doesn't want to, but he does do it and he asks for help. But they decline at that point. It's April 94 because, you know, they need their ships for D-Day. And eventually, eventually, Wavell does get his around a million tons of aid, but it's at the end of 1944. So many, many people will have died since then.

But what I think is so fascinating about this kind of discussion between Waver and Churchill is it's so easy to kind of paint colonialists in one way. But actually, Waver was trying to do a good thing. I found this again throughout all my work. There's a whole shade of different opinions as today. As today. And I think, you know, we must remember that too when we talk about colonialism. And there was a lot going on at that period in the war. You can see how shipping was necessary. And these were all these complex calculations going on. And Wave on you all this. He's a military man, but he doesn't stop. He doesn't stop in his demands. And you can see it throughout the papers. So, Covetin, what would you say when you come across someone in a Delhi dinner party that puts it all down to Churchill? It's Churchill's famine. That's what we hear a lot.

He is culpable to it. He didn't create it, but he didn't alleviate. I think that once famine has started, it's really difficult to alleviate. And, you know, if famine conditions were happening in kind of the middle of August, 1942, by this. this point, with 1994, it's kind of, it's happened. What I always say about the famine is it's really, really, really complicated. The causes are complicated. There's no one person that is responsible for the famine. And I do think that partly, perhaps we don't remember famines very well, is because they are really complicated. And I just think it's a very complicated situation.

And what my intention was with the podcast was to lay out all these complications and let people decide for themselves. And also you talk to people. And I'm really interested because there was somebody even at the time because these were numbers, three million dead of starvation photographs of emaciated human beings who don't even look like human beings anymore. But there is a man called Tutu Prasad Batacharya, who does very much what the Kavita Puri school is and goes and talks to people. And Hungary Bengal is what he publishes As early as November 1943 Which talks about individual lives

That have been affected by the disaster It's a book, a pamphlet? What is it? This is an unknown book to me I did not know about it Do you know why? 5,000 copies published All confiscated by the British authorities

All confiscated but one And we think his mum had it But you've seen it Is it right? Yes, I have seen it Bloody out Okay, right, so what's in it? You've got it there.

If you could imagine, no, no, no. It's reaching down. This is very exciting. It's my computer charger. Okay, so it's really important to say that, of course, Ian Stevens did an incredible thing. And someone like Amartia sent says he possibly saved hundreds of thousands of lives by publishing those photographs because then London had to do something. But it is very important to say that Indian journalists and photographers and writers and artists were also documenting the famine at the time. And they were largely also under these censorship rules like Chitra Prasad Bhathacharya.

And he went to Midnapur, remember that district with a cyclone and denial. And so hugely affected by famine and many people had left. And he takes his ink pen and he sketches the people. But what he does is he gives a bio of who they are and he gives names. And when you look at those Stephen's pictures, you see starving, hungry, emaciated people who are on the verge of death, but you have no sense of who they are and there are no names. Whose mother they were, where they lived, what they did, absolutely right.

They are just one of the many three million, exactly. But with Chitra Prasad, when I found the name, the first name of the three million, imagine that. And the name was Kashitra Mahanike. And it's a picture of a man who no longer looks like a man who's being eaten by a wolf. And he describes this. And with other people, he gives a bit more of a sense of who they are. You realize that you feel something for those people.

Otherwise, three million is just a number. It's a statistic. What does it mean? And he gives them dignity. And it was really moving for me to find this. So the British immediately confiscate these pamphlets, obviously, but one remains. And I saw a PDF of it. And it's so explosive.

But it's also quite emotional to see. But it also is the importance in history of not only looking. looking at the kind of the decision makers and who was responsible, all these things are important. But, but like, who are these people? We've talked about how it's received in London and the BBC, in the House of Lords and so on, but how has it received elsewhere in India? How does it affect the movement for independence? Are people aware that the British have failed in their primary responsibility,

which is to keep people of India alive? So at this point, remember, all the Congress leaders are locked up. In prison, yeah. They're in prison after quit India. And Jinnah's out? is out. So I think that when you read the accounts of the time, and even you speak to people today or you look at oral history that was taken in the 60s and 70s, hunger hugely fueled the independence movement and it just accelerated the movement. It was inevitable. And what's really

interesting is that the memory of hunger, and when I say the memory of hunger, I'm not just talking about in 1943, I'm also talking about all these other famines that happen during the British presence, really affected the politics of newly independent India. And one of the huge drivers was that India should never be hungry again or face a famine again because of the legacy of hunger and famine in empire. And it should be said that one of the most effective things that independent India does from the start in 1947, is it extends irrigation programs and anti-famine measures. and particularly in the Deccan and the south, and that from about 1950 onwards there is never another famine in India, because Indians are ruling themselves in a democratic country and can feed their own people. And it's made a priority. And this, if you look at the achievements of the early Nerovian governments, the extension of irrigation and the effective application of anti-famine technology. And then finally, the new varieties of rice, which come in the early 1960s.

and dwarf wheat as well, yeah. Just a final question, because our time together is coming to an end. But of all the people that you spoke to, Kavita, is there one in particular that stands out in your mind who has a memory of this time that particularly affected you? I've just come back from the countryside in Bengal and, you know, no one has ever really... Since your podcast came out. Since my podcast, no one has ever officially recorded the survivors of the famine, which is extraordinary. And there they were. They were living in the countryside. And that tells you so much. much about how famine is remembered and who tells history with regard to this. We should say that these people are now in their early 90s. They won't be there in five years or 10 years time. They won't be. They won't be. And there was such extraordinary, different

but moving testimony. And I met a woman who was 91 and she remembered having to leave her village and look for food. She went to Calcutta and she had to beg for food. And two things she remembered. she remembered on the train journey a mother trying to breastfeed her child and she watched, she was only what, you know, just a child herself, seeing the child die in her mother's arms because she couldn't get breast milk. But she also remembers begging and a little girl giving her bread. And it was the act of kindness that she remembered, which I thought was really interesting. But I think there is something about famine, which is so traumatic.

It breaks taboos. It makes people do awful things or you can't feed a child that is very, very difficult to remember and talk about. Were the accounts of cannibalism in this famine as they have been in 72? So somebody told me a story of a mother being so hungry and someone saying to her, if you're that hungry, why don't you eat the child on your lap, which was really shocking. I haven't heard of accounts of cannibalism. There are well-established ones of 1772. Maybe. But remember, people choose what they tell you.

and that's a very shameful thing to have to admit. And they choose what to forget. But thanks to you, Kavita, and the work you've done again, excellent work that it is. You don't let people forget. Amazing work. And really, you must pursue it. You must write this book.

Yeah, yeah. I think so too. And also, again, you know, sort of numbers are one thing. Numbers are often overwhelming. But to have human faces, human voices, human names to these things. It is such good work. Can't believe you're the first person to collect these Testaments. If you compare it to, for example, partition.

There's so much work on partition testers in every state. The reason is is because all people, all parts of society were affected by partition, and that's not the case for famine, and that's why. Kavita Puri, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnondon. And goodbye from me, William Duremple.