Madhusree Mukerjee...A MUST READ

Luckily I got a hand on this book..a very comprehensive detail on the Bengal famine..Here r just some facts...like just a overview layout of the book.

British prime minister Winston Churchill deliberately let millions of Indians starve to death, the author of a new book has claimed, alleging he was motivated in part by racial hatred.
As many as three million people died in the Bengal famine of 1943 after Japan captured neighboring Burma — a major source of rice imports — and British colonial rulers in India stockpiled food for soldiers and war workers.

Panic-buying of rice sent prices soaring, and distribution channels were wrecked when officials confiscated or destroyed most boats and bullock carts in Bengal to stop them falling into enemy hands if Japan invaded.

Rice suddenly became scarce in markets and, as worsening hunger spread through villages, Churchill repeatedly refused pleas for emergency food shipments.

Emaciated masses drifted into Kolkata, where eye-witnesses described men fighting over foul scraps and skeletal mothers dying in the streets as British and middle-class Indians ate large meals in their clubs or at home.

The “man-made” famine has long been one of the darkest chapters of the British Raj, but now Madhusree Mukerjee says she has uncovered evidence that Churchill was directly responsible for the appalling suffering.

Her book, Churchill’s Secret War, quotes previously unused papers that disprove his claim that no ships could be spared from the war and that show him brushing aside increasingly desperate requests from British officials in India.

Analysis of World War II cabinet meetings, forgotten ministry records and personal archives show that full grain ships from Australia were passing India on their way to the Mediterranean region, where huge stockpiles were building up.

“It wasn’t a question of Churchill being inept: sending relief to Bengal was raised repeatedly and he and his close associates thwarted every effort,” Mukerjee said in a telephone interview.

“The United States and Australia offered to send help but couldn’t because the war cabinet was not willing to release ships. And when the US offered to send grain on its own ships, that offer was not followed up by the British.”

“He said awful things about Indians. He told his secretary he wished they could be bombed,” Mukerjee said. “He was furious with Indians because he could see America would not let British rule in India continue.”

Churchill derided Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi as a lawyer posing as a “half-naked” holy man, and replied to British officials in India who pleaded for food supplies by asking why Gandhi had not yet died.

“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion,” he told Leo Amery, the secretary of state for India. Another time he accused Indians of effectively causing the famine by “breeding like rabbits.”

(This was an opinion held by many within the British state structure, not just Churchill. In order to subjugate and exploit people, demonization must take place, other wise the subjugation and exploitation cannot take place in the 19th century colonial context.)

Amery once lost his temper after one rant by the prime minister, telling Churchill that he could not “see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.”

Amery wrote in his diary: “I am by no means sure whether on this subject of India he is really quite sane.”

“Winston’s racist hatred was due to his loving the empire in the way a jealous husband loves his trophy wife: he would rather destroy it than let it go,” said Mukerjee.

Mukerjee’s book has been hailed as a ground-breaking achievement which unearths new information despite the hundreds of volumes already written on Churchill’s life.

Churchill committed great crimes in India, but he was by no means the only one. Many great crimes were committed by the British in India.

However the other great crime of Churchill, again neglected by astute Indian historians is the re-launch of the Muslim League in the critical year of 1940, with Jinnah at its helm. It was under Churchill that the Muslim League briefly became a fully proactive mass party under British guidance, and Jinnah who I believe was recruited by them as their agent who led this "British proxy party" to undermine the assertive Congress in the final years towards Independence. The British were fully aware of their agent Jinnah's real condition, and that is why they brought forward the date of Independence so early, when all else expected it to be a year or two later. By 1948 the British created the ISI which they controlled and guided with a British officer heading the Pakistan military into 1951, and the Muslim League was effectively folded in 1951. The Muslim League was a party on paper so long as it had the blessings of the British.

“The famine, you could argue, was partly a deliberate act. India was forced to export grain in the early years of war and in 1943 was exporting rice at Churchill’s personal insistence. Britain ruthlessly exploited India during war and didn’t let up even when famine started.”

The Bengal Famine of 1943, was not the first famine artificially created by the British Raj. An estimated 30 million Indians were victims of genocide under the British rule of India from 1757, when the conquest began in earnest until its end in 1947. Clearly Bengal was not the only victim of British misrule, but that other states such as Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and many others suffered in pockets or in large swathes.

The worst famine has to be the 1769 famine of Bengal when 10 million people perished, in a state of 34 million because the East India company gave preference to growing cash crops such as Indigo, Jute and Opium for exports. That event is well documented even though it is further down in history, because the primary perpetrator Warren Hastings was brought to court in a private action in London. The injustice was recognized, if not punished.

And such things went on for the next 200 years.

Though the British colonial perspective was that local Indian rulers were corrupt and incompetent; Indians were work shy; over producing and a lessor people who ought to be treated like little children in the better days. British civilization had to be introduced, and local culture discouraged where possible. The British were in India to build railways and roads, and all modern benefits of Western civilization. A force for good, and clean justice.....with good Victorian Evangelical morality.....and so the official narrative went.