"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.
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.
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.
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.
Brahmins aren't the merchant class in the regions where the Bengal famine hit (modern day Eastern Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Northern Bengal). Brahmins in that region (in actuality Bhumihar) were traditionally farmers.
Merchants in that region were primarily from the Marwari, Agarwal, Jains, Punjabi (Jatt+Khatri Sikh+Hindu), Telegu, and Bania communities (depending on the region).
Please don't talk about social structures if you don't have the knowledge - especially about regions which in living memory have had severe caste violence.
So are most Marwaris (Jodhpur region), but a subset of Biradaris migrated east to work in commerce.
Some Jatts
> No Jatts or Khatris were in Kolkata.
Bullshit.
Aroras have always had a decent sized commercial community across the region that was formerly the Bengal Presidency. I know a couple Aroras who's families have been in Kolkata for over a century at this point (rice trading).
And some of the southern Jatts in Rajasthan were called "Marwaris" by the locals in the east (Marwari being a linguistic/regional denonym, not a caste based one). Shouldn't have listed Punjabi Jatts - just waking up.
Also, the Bengal Presidency wasn't only Kolkata - it included a number of other towns and cities that had commercial needs (hence why the communities above entered that segment).
If you are going to argue on the basis of systems you don't understand, at least get your facts right. The class you are blaming is not the merchant class.
It seems quite interesting that this class becomes the focal point of any attack based on ignorance.
Also, your other replies about jatts is definitely not true. There are various sources that class them in the merchant class responsible for agriculture and trading.
1. Germany was knocking at Britain's door when this famine happened. I personally wouldn't spend a lot of effort helping another country after seeing what happened in Germany.
2. The tone of this article sounds like damage control.
War turns even good men cruel, lets leave it at that
The article argues how respectful Churchill was of India and its well being despite him being occasionally racist and awful. I would have tried to see the point in all fairness, but this article seems to portray an agenda to clear the dislike (or hatred) people have on Churchill on account of him being ill and old then.
While I haven't read the primary sources that claim Churchill's efforts in restoring food balance in India, I am not convinced he could not have prevented this from happening in the first place --- after all, Bengal or India was being ruled by them.
Feels like damage control and a beg at cutting some slack.
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.
> 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.
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".
"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.
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.
> 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.
> It might not be wise to accuse people of having an "agenda"
It would be wise to read the comment more carefully before replying. I explicitly did not accuse or suggest anyone of having an agenda, unlike the person I responded to.
> The debate around culpability is vast, nuanced and cannot be settled with reductionist claims like "Churchill was the reason millions died".
I had stated "Churchill's active role in causing the famine" and linked to a guardian article headlined "Churchill's policies contributed to 1943 Bengal famine". There is plenty of supporting evidence supporting both statements in the linked article. If you disagree, I'd be happy to see your supporting evidence, as opposed to unsubstantiated accusations of reductionism.
Actually encyclopedia Britannica supports argument that it was war time measures that caused famine. From same article:
>It was ultimately special wartime factors that caused this difficult situation to become a disastrous famine. Fearing Japanese invasion, British authorities stockpiled food to feed defending troops, and they exported considerable quantities to British forces in the Middle East. They also confiscated boats, carts, and elephants in Chittagong, where the invasion was expected.
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.
>>> "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."
Are you serious? You think, Americans who believe chattel slavery in the US was one of the foremost abominations in human history is trying to extract monetary concessions from rich people? That is some seriously twisted thinking from your part.
The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow is unparalleled, legacy of that is hurting people even to this day, trying lessen the impact of slavery in the US is offensive.
Are you aware that there are several officially sanctioned commissions in the US right now that are recommending huge "reparation" payments, funded through tax? (tax being paid mostly by the well off)
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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.
>> Out of all places do you think Russia is the one which needs more land?
I don't but the ongoing war is for more land
>> Maybe because “the West” doesn’t want to “handle” North Korea (whatever that means)?
NK is propped up by China to distract USA and it's allies. As planned it's worked and USA has no answer to that problem and yet makes bold promises to Taiwan.
I'm just trying to say that strongest country wins no matter what. It's nothing to do with morals. Better strengths ones country in good times.
> As planned it's worked and USA has no answer to that problem
What problem is that? I don’t think US pays that much attention to NK.
From that perspective US has been much more successful than China. The existence of Taiwan as an independent state is a much, much bigger issue for for them than NK is for US.
> I'm just trying to say that strongest country wins no matter what.
Wins what? We’re not living in a grand strategy video game.
Your point on many Europeans seeing Churchill as a saviour and not caring about his victims in colonies is just normal by historical (and modern) times. Romans were proud of all the genocides Caesar committed (and proudly self documented). See for example his own account of the Gallic wars and the killing of women and children of tribes from current day Switzerland (the Helvetii). Obama destroyed multiple countries (non-European) and killed and displaced millions and is considered a hero as well in the West like Churchill is. Joe Biden took all the reserves of extremely poor Afghanistan and is starving 40 million people to there to death today. He is considered a hero in the West as well. So like most things it all depends on where you are and who you talk to and their background (European and non-European for example).
Americans in general (and the US mainstream media in their coverage) frame deaths emanating from the US (and it’s close allies) as collateral damage, killed terrorists, eliminated insurecctionists or mistakes or just even ignore it by omissions. From other countries that are not “allies” they are victims or murdered innocents or massacres or genocides etc… Just look at the favorable coverage of Madeleine Albrights death who said in her very own words that she owned to killing 500,000 Iraqi babies and children and said it was well worth it.
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.
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.
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..."
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."
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
My post didn't try to get to the root cause of the famine, only to observe that the article is deceptively worded. In other comments I talk about the root causes.
The Bengal famine was indeed at least partly man made, but the men who made it were the Japanese and German dictators who were trying to take over the world. Lest we forget the Japanese were attacking India at the time, as well as interdicting shipping routes, and had occupied the regions that would normally have been able to export food to Bengal to relieve famine. Britain meanwhile was being bombed on a daily basis and was fighting for its own survival. It is absurd and offensive to the British to blame them for a famine worsened by a war they didn't start, and which if they had lost would have certainly led to far worse catastrophes in India.
I think you have a bit of an axe to grind. The British were pursuing a fabian strategy which led to intentional destruction of food and food-producing industries. That alone would make it basically impossible to deny that this famine is the result of British policy.
Presumably, since you are defending the actions of the British, you don't actually have any skin in the game - you're not like, a Bengali, who's grandparents starved as children. So I'm curious - why are you so strident? It's obviously not 'absurd' or 'offensive', from a cursory glance at the facts, to conclude that this is an anthropogenic famine.
If you want to argue against the preponderance of obvious facts, you have to do a bit more work, and start with the recognition that you're departing from the normal and prima facie understanding of what has occurred. You can't just try and browbeat people into counterintuitive conclusions with a mass of forceful and cherrypicked assertions.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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"?
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.
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-hoa...
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.
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.
If your opening argument is that the Belgian King creating a corporation to exploit the resources of a big chunk of Africa isn't technically "colonisation" but an example of the kind of bad stuff that happens when there isn't enough colonisation, then you know you're off to a bad start.
I'm going to go off on a tangent here, but uh, what? Even your link doesn't go so far as to suggest that hands being cut off "never happened." It argues Hochschild was incorrect about the practice being deliberate, widespread policy practiced on the living (i.e., the Force Publique went into a village, gathered everybody, and cut off their hands).
Even Gilley, the author of your post, acknowledged that hands were cut off of the dead in order to account for the ammunition used, though he emphasizes that the practice predated the establishment of the Congo Free State. That's also a claim that Hochschild makes in the book itself:
> Although some Congo peoples, like the Pygmies, were admirably peaceful, it would be a mistake to see most of them as paragons of primeval innocence. Many practiced slavery and a few ritual cannibalism, and they were as likely to make war on other clans or ethnic groups as people anywhere on earth. And traditional warfare in this part of Africa, where a severed head or hand was sometimes proof of an enemy killed in battle, was as harsh as warfare elsewhere. In the far northern Congo some women were maimed, as still happens today, by forced clitoridectomies, a practice no less brutal for being a cultural initiation rite.
One doesn't preclude the other. Beyond that, there's a great deal of historical evidence that supports the use of severed hands to account for ammunition used, and also evidence that severing the hands of the living was not unknown. Hochschild cites multiple sources to support this, even if most hands were taken from corpses. Which, given the numbers involved, is still an atrocity. There are diary entries from missionaries, photographic proof from multiple photographers, and more to support this and the presence of atrocities more broadly.
As Hochschild points out in his response[0] to Gilley, "the regime's own Manuel du Voyageur et du Résident au Congo, has detailed instructions for state officials about how to take hostages." The sheer amount of documentary evidence of atrocities in the Belgian Congo is quite clear. We also have diary entries and written reports from some of the perpetrators themselves, including Charles Lemaire, whose quotation Gilley took issue with.
If you really want to talk about "manipulative and deceptive" narratives "driven by a certain political agenda," you probably shouldn't be quoting Bruce Gilley. His reputation for his rather flawed defenses of colonialism, the most famous of which[1] was fiercely criticized even by fellow conservative academics,[3] is well-known. And while some of the response to that article could be labeled as more emotional than about his specific claims and practices, plenty of ink has been spilled criticizing his arguments. Gilley is quite explicit in his defense of colonialism and his arguments for the return of a neo-colonialism today. For those arguments to hold any sway, he pretty much has to find a way to explain away colonialism's sordid history of atrocities and exploitation. At the very least, extraordinary claims such as Gilley's require exceptional documentation he has not provided.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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:
>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.
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.
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.
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.
I am perplexed by your arguments, you seem to be implying Churchill is not as bad Nazis because he didn't hate Indians as much. Well, lot of Indians disagree with your logic, at-least one prominent Indian Shashi Tharoor who isn't an extremist thinks Churchill is no better than the Nazis.
The argument Churchill is great, is the western version of history, a majority of of the world do not agree with that ridiculous assessment, because of the internet western version of history is increasingly getting challenged and I understand it is making you uncomfortable.
Every time I read about WWII maritime logistics, I’m blown away by the sheer scale of it.