India's forgotten holocaust
tehelka.com
tehelka.com
Any "help" from "Myanmar" would have come in the form of a conquering Japanese army. Would they have brought some truckloads of rice with them from Burma? Sure. Would they have shared it with the Indians? Probably not. And despite the "censors", I think the Japanese were pretty open about their willingness to conquer and enslave (er, "help") the suffering Indians. I would invite our Indian friends to ask the Chinese if that would have been a good deal.
The Wikipedia article on the 1943 famine is a much more serious read.
Link to actual wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Governme... (the article has NPOV problems for more than a year now).
For the British apologists, here is the quote to give you some acquaintance with the subject of Britain induced famines:
"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone—the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress—5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted,—a region twice the size of Wales,—one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77."
"Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over 6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles."
- From an article printed back in 1908 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-new-...). The actual article is much more detailed and better written. And it has less reason to view history from distorted mirrors than we have 110 years later.
The reason Churchill was different from Hitler was because Hitler had an effect in Europe, while Churchill was conservatively continuing the thats-how-people-used-to-think-then policy towards his 'lesser subjects'.
One can still make unfavorable comparisons to other "evil" figures, where the analogy is imo closer. If indeed Churchill is responsible for an essentially deliberate famine, one could compare him to Stalin, and the probably-deliberate famine in the Ukraine. Or, if he's merely responsible for a large famine via negligence, one could compare him to Mao, and the probably-not-deliberate famine in China.
"Churchill’s excuse — currently being peddled by his family and supporters — was Britain could not spare the ships to transport emergency supplies, but Mukerjee has unearthed documents that challenge his claim. She cites official records that reveal ships carrying grain from Australia bypassed India on their way to the Mediterranean"
&
"Churchill’s hostility toward Indians has long been documented. At a War Cabinet meeting, he blamed the Indians themselves for the famine, saying they “breed like rabbits”. His attitude toward Indians may be summed up in his words to Amery: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” On another occasion, he insisted they were “the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans”.
Unrelated to Churchill but worth reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
By that standard, of course, Gandhi would also be worse than Hitler, as he could have prevented massacres during the partition that killed much more people than Hitler ever did. In fact, he is accused of directly instigating several massacres, a hell of a lot "more guilty" than Churchill would be even if this were true. If this is true, Churchill refused to get people out of a big mess they got themselves into (which, granted, does sound like something he might do).
https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/ProblemWithPacifism.HTM
History is full of injustices. I don't see why the present generation of Indians should hold onto what happened to their grandparents generation. We don't need to suffer history now, we get to live in the present - that is the attitude I see in most people in India. That is why India is as peaceful as it is (we have to normalize whatever good or bad is happening to the population - "India" is not an aggregate in the same sense that, say, "Sweden" is an aggregate - so whatever happens in Sweden once a year would happen almost once a day in India, simply based on the relative population sizes).
But if the neighboring provinces had food surpluses, why didn't the authorities manage a transfer?
How else do you get the argument that Churchill was intentionally killing Indians because he "had a bad attitude" toward them and because he didn't risk enough merchant shipping during a world war to ship food there?
I am not sure if you are trolling or you are deliberately distorting the view. India was being ruled by Britain, Indians were paying more taxes (if somehow you think it was just tax and not outright looting) than any living or dead British has ever paid to the crown. Why shouldn't 'hungry Indians' expect to be fed? You do realize your bigotry is very visible when you refer to a famine by 'hungry people expect government to feed them', implying Indians were just lazy. Have you read the article I posted? Have you ever read any historical documents written _by the British themselves_ while the famine was going on?
"What is the cause of these famines... there seems to be no evidence that the rains fail worse now than they did a hundred years ago... rains have never failed over areas so extensive as to prevent the raising of enough food in the land to supply the needs of the entire population... Not because there was lack of food in the famine areas, brought by railways or otherwise within easy reach of all... the chief and fundamental cause has been and is... a poverty so severe and terrible that it keeps the majority of the entire population on the very verge of starvation even in years of greatest plenty, prevents them from laying up anything against times of extremity, and hence leaves them, when their crops fail, absolutely undone—with nothing between them and death...
And the people are growing poorer and poorer. The late Mr. William Digby, of London, long an Indian resident, in his recent book entitled "Prosperous" India, shows from official estimates and Parliamentary and Indian Blue Books, that, whereas the average daily income of the people of India in the year 1850 was estimated as four cents per person (a pittance on which one wonders that any human being can live), in 1882 it had fallen to three cents per person, and in 1900 actually to less than two cents per person.
What causes this awful and growing impoverishment of the Indian people? Said John Bright, "If a country be found possessing a most fertile soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production, and, notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme destitution and suffering, the chances are there is some fundamental error in the government of that country."
Seriously man, try to read the very next paragraph in the article.
I am not calling Indians lazy. I am challenging the assumption that "If it was theoretically possible that somehow X could have saved Y from a famine, no matter how unlikely, then X is responsible for the famine." It is beyond outrageous to argue that Britain intentionally killed millions of Indians based on that stupid theory. It is not I who am infantilizing Indians, but you sir.
I mean, the article was published in 1908 - three decades prior to WW2 and emergence of welfare states in europe - and 100 years ago from today. Yet it is sufficient to refute you! Do I really need to show the triviality in whatever you are trying to debate? Well done creating the strawman of welfare states. And stop referring to systematic famines where millions died by calling it 'hungry naked irresponsible people'. Britain actively and systematically refused to take responsibility of its 'subjects', knowing full well what it implied in human costs, for the only reason that it didn't consider Indians human enough. Churchill is the poster boy of this colonial thinking. Ref.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Indian_indep...
'In response to an urgent request by the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, and Viceroy of India, Wavell, to release food stocks for India, Churchill responded with a telegram to Wavell asking, if food was so scarce, "why Gandhi hadn't died yet."'
For example, here are the answers of French people to the survey question "Which was, in your view, the nation that most contributed to the defeat of Germany in WW2?":
1945: USSR 57%, USA 20%, UK 12%
1994: USSR 25%, USA 49%, UK 16%
2004: USSR 20%, USA 58%, UK 16%
The USSR did contribute to the defeat of Germany. People's impression of how much of an impact the USSR had does not mean they thought the USSR was a force for good.
EDIT: I mean "major governments like the ones involved in WWII".