
India's forgotten holocaust - ragsagar
http://www.tehelka.com/remembering-indias-forgotten-holocaust/
======
joeclark77
Friend of mine just posted this to Facebook. It's sensationalist garbage with
anti-British bigotry thrown in. Draws a false equivalence between Hitler (who
deliberately exterminated millions) and Churchill (whose "policies" were
supposedly unintentionally "responsible" for the famine). That's outrageous
even if the history were true. In fact, it isn't. The article claims that
"Churchill could easily have prevented the famine." This imbues Churchill with
super-powers, and completely ignores the facts of the day: Bengal was a net
importer of food and most of its food came from Burma, which had just been
conquered by the Japanese. Shipping food from Australia or other places might
have been a solution, but Allied merchant shipping was under attack all over
the world from the Japanese and German navies. How would it have gotten there
in time? And why would that have been the default solution, when neighboring
provinces in India had food surpluses and should have been the natural place
to expect aid from. The tehelka article also mendaciously suggests that
"Myanmar" (a country which didn't exist until the 1990s) offered to help feed
Bengal, but the offer was kept secret by cruel British "censors".

Any "help" from "Myanmar" would have come in the form of a conquering Japanese
army. Would they have brought some truckloads of rice with them from Burma?
Sure. Would they have shared it with the Indians? Probably not. And despite
the "censors", I think the Japanese were pretty open about their willingness
to conquer and enslave (er, "help") the suffering Indians. I would invite our
Indian friends to ask the Chinese if that would have been a good deal.

The Wikipedia article on the 1943 famine is a much more serious read.

~~~
cubancigar11
FTFY: Churchill's 'policies' were supposedly _intentionally_ "responsible" for
the famine.

Link to actual wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Governme...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Government_inaction)
(the article has NPOV problems for more than a year now).

For the British apologists, here is the quote to give you some acquaintance
with the subject of Britain induced famines:

"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people
perished of famine. In one year alone—the year when her late Majesty assumed
the title of Empress—5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to
death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted,—a
region twice the size of Wales,—one-fourth of the population perished in the
famine of 1816-77."

"Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of twenty-five
years each. In the first quarter there were five famines, with an estimated
loss of life of 1,000,000. During the second quarter of the century there were
two famines, with an estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter
there were six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the
last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated
mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000. And this
does not include the many more millions (over 6,000,000 in a single year)
barely kept alive by government doles."

\- From an article printed back in 1908
([http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-
new-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-new-
nationalist-movement-in-india/304893/)). The actual article is much more
detailed and better written. And it has less reason to view history from
distorted mirrors than we have 110 years later.

The reason Churchill was different from Hitler was because Hitler had an
effect in Europe, while Churchill was conservatively continuing the thats-how-
people-used-to-think-then policy towards his 'lesser subjects'.

~~~
_delirium
Even so, the comparison with Hitler and the Holocaust is a bit off, I think:
the famine in India is not too similar to an industrialized extermination
infrastructure, with concentration camps, gas chambers, bureaucratized
selection and rail transfer, meticulous record keeping, etc. The uniqueness of
the Holocaust is not just in that a lot of people died, but in how: via the
application of modern infrastructure to produce a large-scale, industrial
death machine.

One can still make unfavorable comparisons to other "evil" figures, where the
analogy is imo closer. If indeed Churchill is responsible for an essentially
deliberate famine, one could compare him to Stalin, and the probably-
deliberate famine in the Ukraine. Or, if he's merely responsible for a large
famine via negligence, one could compare him to Mao, and the probably-not-
deliberate famine in China.

~~~
cubancigar11
Yes, holocaust is going to extreme. But mis-rule on India was extremely
systematic and not just failure of a government. It is sad we cannot give that
tragedy a name of its own.

------
gtirloni
On a semi-related note, yesterday I watched a BBC documentary about Stalin and
couldn't help but notice the similarities with Hitler's actions. And the guy
comes out of WWII as a hero. Not unexpected at all from megalomaniac people
but why the world cared about Hitler and not Stalin? As usual, nothing to do
with helping other human beings but securing power/resources.

~~~
mobiplayer
I don't think much people outside the former USSR, apart from the usual
weirdos, saw Stalin as a hero or a Good Guy™. And inside the USSR being a
dissident wasn't a healthy option.

~~~
_delirium
I don't think people specifically thought Stalin personally was a hero, but
prior to the cold war, Western Europeans had a much more positive view of the
USSR's role in WW2.

For example, here are the answers of French people to the survey question
"Which was, in your view, the nation that most contributed to the defeat of
Germany in WW2?":

    
    
       1945: USSR 57%, USA 20%, UK 12%
       1994: USSR 25%, USA 49%, UK 16%
       2004: USSR 20%, USA 58%, UK 16%
    

Source: [http://www.les-crises.fr/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/sondage-...](http://www.les-crises.fr/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/sondage-nation-contribue-defaite-nazis.jpg)

~~~
xtrumanx
I don't understand your point with the survey.

The USSR did contribute to the defeat of Germany. People's impression of how
much of an impact the USSR had does not mean they thought the USSR was a force
for good.

