Bengal famine of 1943
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The Bengal famine of 1943 occurred in undivided Bengal (now independent Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal) in 1943. It is estimated that over three million people died from starvation, malnutrition and related illnesses during the famine.
Possible Causes
The United Kingdom had suffered a disastrous defeat at Singapore in 1942 against the Japanese military, which then proceeded to conquer Burma from the British in the same year. Burma was the world's largest exporter of rice in the inter-war period, the British having encouraged production by Burmese smallholders, which resulted a virtual monoculture in the Irrawady delta and Arakan Nicholas Tarling (Ed.) The Cambridge History of SouthEast Asia Vol.II Part 1 pp139-40 . By 1940 15% of India's rice overall came from Burma, whilst in Bengal the proportion was slightly higher given the province's proximity to Burma C.A. Bayly & T. Harper Forgotten Armies. The Fall of British Asia 1941-45 (London: Allen Lane) 2004 p284 . It seems unlikely, however, that these imports can have amounted to more than 20% of Bengal's consumption, and this alone is insufficient to account for the famine, although it ensured that there were fewer reserves to fall back on. British authorities feared a subsequent Japanese invasion of British India proper by way of Bengal (see British Raj), and emergency measures were introduced to stockpile food for British soldiers and prevent access to supplies by the Japanese in case of an invasion. A 'scorched earth' policy was implemented in the Chittagong region, nearest the Burmese border, whilst excessively large amounts of rice were exported to the Middle East to feed British troops, and to Ceylon, which had been heavily dependent on Burmese rice before the war, and which was the headquarters of South-East Asia Command. On the 16th October 1942 the whole east coast of Bengal and Orissa was hit by a cyclone. A huge area of rice cultivation up to forty miles inland was flooded, causing the autumn crop in these areas to fail. This meant that the peasantry had to eat their surplus, and the seed that should have been planted in the winter of 1942-3 had been consumed by the time the hot weather began in May 1943. Paul Greenough Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the famine of 1943-44 (New Delhi) 1982 p150; Bayly & Harper Forgotten Armies p285 . This was exacerbated by exports of food, appropriation of arable land, and price inflation which dangerously disrupted the local Bengali harvests and agriculture, leading in 1943 to the onset of a massive famineWartime pressures, the lack of a 'famine code' in Bengal, unlike most other provinces of British India, together with the corruption of the Bengal Provincial Government of the time and the laziness and incompetence of many of the Indian Civil Service in the province, meant that the measures for famine relief which were normally implemented in peacetime were never employed. As the situation spiralled out of control, Lord Mountbatten, the British commander in Southeast Asia, and Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India at the time, both endeavoured to draw attention to and provide food aid to citizens in the famine-stricken regions, but their efforts were hampered by the indifference of the War Cabinet and Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India, in the face of the Quit India movement and wartime demands. Winston Churchill was prime minister of Britain at the time of the famine and, while the Bengal Famine occurred under his watch, his own role in the disaster, and even the extent of his knowledge about the crisis in Bengal, remain a matter of some dispute. (e.g. Sen, 1984.) The Bengal Government failed to prevent rice exports, and made little attempt to import surpluses from elsewhere in India, or to buy up stocks from speculators to redistribute to the starving.
American author Mike Davis and Indian author Amartya Sen specifically linked the 1943 famine and its predecessors in the region to British policies in the state of Bengal. Sen was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for his studies of the Bengal and other famines in Asia and Africa.
Famines and democracies
Citing the Bengal Famine and other examples from the world, Amartya Sen argues that famines do not occur in functioning democracies. Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow provides a discussion of this argument [link] The Bengal Famine may be placed in the context of previous famines in British India. During the British rule in India there were approximately 25 major famines spread through states such as Tamil Nadu in South India, Bihar in the north, and Bengal in the east in the latter half of the 19th century, killing between 30 and 40 million Indians (Bhatia 1985). Though malnutrition and hunger remain widespread in India, there have been no famines since the end of the British rule in 1947 and the establishment of a democratic government. The increase in food to the population is also reflected in the fact that in the 50 years of British rule (1891 to 1941) the population grew by 35% (from 287 million to 389 million) whereas in the 50 years of democratic rule from 1951 to 2001 the population grew by 183% (from 363 million to 1,023 million) [link]. The fact that there have been no famines even with a population that has almost tripled makes it an even more impressive achievement for the democratic government.
\"Food Availability Decline\" or \"Man Made\"
| Year | Rice production (in million of tons) |
|---|---|
| 1938 | 8.474 |
| 1939 | 7.922 |
| 1940 | 8.223 |
| 1941 | 6.768 |
| 1942 | 9.296 |
| 1943 | 7.628 |
The lack of rice due to fall in production being the cause of the famine has by now been questioned by Amartya Sen. He quotes official records for rice production in Bengal in the years leading up to 1943 as reported in the table to the right.
The 1943 yield, while low, was not in itself outside the normal spectrum of recorded variation, and other factors beyond simple crop failure may thus be invoked as a causal mechanism.
Debate about Diseased Rice and Total Rice Yield in 1942 and 1943
It has been argued that the famine was primarily due to an epidemic of brown spot disease Helminthosporium oryzae, affecting the crop. This argument, based on data collected by S. Y. Padmanabhan, has been developed by the historian Mark Tauger.
In the rice growing season of 1942, weather conditions were exactly right to encourage an epidemic of the rice disease brown spot following a cyclone and flooding. The outbreak of the disease caused a variation in the 1942 crop ranging from a 236.6% gain to a 90% crop loss in Bankura and Chinsurah according to Padmanabhan. Tauger argues that Sen's analysis based economic entitlement overlooks the role of food shortage. Tauger argues that that the yield in 1942 was low (based on Padmanabhan's data) causing a serious food shortage in Bengal and was the most important cause of the famine. Others dispute this argument, primarily based on the fact that Padmanabhan's data is yield per acre for different varieties, and from this data it is impossible to estimate total production without knowing the total acreage of the different varieties.
As evident from the rice production chart, there were no significant decline in the rice production in the year 1942. Basically, this famine was purely man-made, perpetrated by the greedy hoarders, rice mill owners and businessmen in collusion with the local administration. And the result was disastrous, that saw the dance of death across british bengal.
The official famine inquiry commission reporting on the Bengal Famine of 1943 put its death toll at about 1.5 million Indians. Source : Famine Inquiry Commission, India (1945a),pp. 109-10.
Years later in 1974, W.R. Aykroyd who was a member of the Famine inquiry commission and was primarily responsible for the estimation, conceded that the figures were an underestimate. Quote by W.R. Aykroyd "I now think it (the death toll) was an under-estimate, especially in that it took little account of roadside deaths". Source: Poverty and Famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation, Amartya Sen
India witnessed multiple famines under the British rule; Independent India has not had a famine ever since the British left Indian soil.
The Famine in Bengali culture
Artists, novelists and film-makers have tried to capture the enormity of the famine in their works. The renowned Bengali painter Zainul Abedin was one of the early documentarians of the famine, with his sketches of the dead and dying. The novelist Bibhuti Bhusan Bandyopadhhay penned his novel Ashani Sanket with the famine serving as both backdrop and protagonist. The novel was adapted in 1973 by Satyajit Ray into an award-winning film, also titled Ashani Sanket. Mrinal Sen also made a film about the famine, titled Akaler Shondhaney (In Search of Famine).References
- Bhatia, B.M. (1985) Famines in India: A study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India with Special Reference to Food Problem, Delhi: Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
- Davis, M. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, 2001, Verso. ISBN# # 1859847390
- Padmanabhan, S.Y. The Great Bengal Famine. Annual Review of Phytopathology, 11:11-24, 1973
- Sen, A. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, 1984, Oxford University Press. ISBN# 0198284632
- Tauger, M. 2003. Entitlement, Shortage and the 1943 Bengal Famine: Another Look. The Journal of Peasant Studies 31:45 - 72
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