6. WWII’s Bengal Famine
The British Empire had long justified itself with the claim that it governed for the benefit of its colonized subjects. Its conduct during the Bengal Famine of 1943 gave the lie to such pretenses. In the years before the famine, many Bengalis had barely eked out a subsistence from their lands, supplemented by imported rice, mainly from Burma. When the Japanese conquered Burma in 1942, Bengal was cut off from those imports, and the precarious existence of millions of Bengalis was tipped over into famine. It was made worse by the British colonial authorities’ decision in 1942 to adopt a preemptive scorched earth policy in parts of Bengal that they feared the Japanese would overrun after they conquered Burma.
That entailed a “Denial of Rice” policy. It came down to the removal or destruction of rice and other foodstuffs in Bengali districts that had a surplus. With traditional rice imports from Burma cut off, and home grown surpluses destroyed by the British, famine roared through Bengal. Relief efforts were hampered by Churchill’s decision to divert food shipments intended for the starving Bengalis to already well-supplied British soldiers in the Mediterranean. The result was one of the darker moments in a war full of darkness. In order to add to the stockpiles of food in Britain, ships loaded with wheat sailed past Indian cities whose streets were littered with the corpses of those starved to death.
