Churchill’s Mismanagement of the Great Bengal Famine
The most tragic event in Indian History
Source- Wikimedia Commons
Recently, the vandalism of Winston Churchill’s statue in England during the Black Lives Matter protest brought into my notice one of the most inhumane and brutal events that occurred in Indian history — ‘The Bengal Famine of 1943’.
If you are wondering, “How Winston Churchill is associated with the famine in India”, I’d discuss it in the latter part of this article.
Bengal is located on the eastern coast of India and it was the first region conquered by the British East India Company after the ‘Battle of Plassey’. It was called as Bengal Presidency during the British colonial rule in India.
As per the 1941 census, the population of Bengal was about 60 million with an agrarian economy, and rice was consumed as the staple diet with fish as the second major source of food.
The historians understand that a series of natural disasters and civil unrest triggered the pre-famine distress in people but British colonial mismanagement and negligence exacerbated the tragic event leading to the death of two million people out of 60 million and creating a series of shocks and aftereffects.
