cover of episode 171. The Bengal Famine: Chaos in Calcutta

171. The Bengal Famine: Chaos in Calcutta

2024/7/24
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Anita Arnand和William Durran:节目回顾了孟加拉饥荒期间,农村民众涌入城市寻求救济的绝望景象,以及即使在加尔各答这样繁华的城市,饥荒导致大量民众死亡,尸体遍布街头的残酷现实。 Kavita Puri:详细描述了1943年7月至8月孟加拉饥荒达到顶峰时,当时的总督林利斯戈向伦敦政府求助,请求提供大量粮食以缓解饥荒,但伦敦政府只同意提供少量粮食的事件。她分析了林利斯戈担心饥荒会威胁到印度的稳定,因为这可能会导致日本入侵,以及印度民众的反抗。同时,她揭示了日本利用孟加拉饥荒进行宣传,将英国描绘成无能的统治者,以此争取印度民众的支持的策略。在亚洲许多地区,特别是印度的左翼知识分子圈,日本被视为潜在的解放者。印度民族军与日本合作对抗英国,导致印度士兵之间出现内战的奇怪局面。 为了避免敌方利用饥荒进行宣传,印度政府禁止媒体使用“饥荒”一词,英国审查部门对印度士兵家书中关于饥荒的描述进行严格审查。许多人将孟加拉饥荒的责任归咎于丘吉尔,而印度大臣利奥·阿莫里记录了丘吉尔对孟加拉饥荒的轻描淡写态度,认为孟加拉人的饥饿不如希腊人严重。丘吉尔是否在了解饥荒后采取了足够的措施,以及他歧视印度人的态度是否影响了他的应对措施,这些都是备受争议的问题。1943年8月,加尔各答每天有1000具尸体被清理。 Kavita Puri:讲述了加尔各答《政治家报》编辑伊恩·史蒂文斯冒着风险,通过发表照片报道了饥荒的真实情况,挑战了政府的审查制度的故事。史蒂文斯发表的照片揭露了饥荒的残酷现实,迫使政府采取行动,同时也引发了关于英国政府是否违反自身饥荒应对规定的讨论。尽管满足了饥荒紧急情况的各项指标,但殖民当局并未正式宣布饥荒,这阻止了对农村地区的援助。史蒂文斯发表的照片在英国引起轰动,迫使政府公开承认饥荒,并引发了关于责任归属的辩论,有人试图将责任推卸给印度地方政府。尽管1935年的法案赋予了印度地方政府权力,但在战争时期,殖民当局仍然对粮食供应等问题负有最终责任。孟加拉省省长赫伯特被认为无能,未能有效应对饥荒。史蒂文斯发表的照片在《星期日画报》上刊登,该报将照片中的人称为“英国臣民”,这增加了政府的压力。 1943年11月,英国上议院就孟加拉饥荒进行了辩论,议员们质疑政府的应对措施,并指出如果饥荒发生在英国本土,政府的反应是否会不同。对殖民暴行的谴责并非现代现象,在历史上,英国民众也曾对殖民行为表示强烈不满。英国政府试图影响BBC的报道,以淡化孟加拉饥荒的严重性,但BBC对孟加拉饥荒的报道受到政府的影响,并非完全压制。BBC内部对新闻报道的立场并不统一。政府对孟加拉饥荒的反应,以及“饥荒”一词在议会和媒体中的使用,都具有讽刺意味。 韦维尔接替林利斯戈成为印度总督,这标志着局势的转变。新任总督韦维尔与前任林利斯戈相比,更具同情心和行动力。韦维尔采取了积极措施来缓解饥荒,包括调动军队参与救济工作,并建立施粥所和救济医院。《纽约时报》报道了韦维尔对孟加拉饥荒的关注,这增加了国际社会对饥荒的关注。韦维尔要求提供一百万吨粮食援助,并表示如果政府不提供援助,他将辞职。尽管面临战争压力,韦维尔坚持要求援助,最终获得了一百万吨的援助,但这已经是在1944年末了。对孟加拉饥荒的责任归咎于丘吉尔是过于简单的说法,饥荒的原因非常复杂。除了官方记录,印度记者和艺术家也记录了饥荒,但他们的作品往往被压制。饥荒极大地加剧了印度的独立运动,新独立的印度政府将避免饥荒作为优先事项。

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This chapter focuses on Churchill's response to the Bengal Famine, highlighting his reluctance to divert resources and his derogatory attitudes towards Indians, which are recorded by Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India.

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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Durranpull. And once again we're joined by Kavita Puri who was with us for the last episode which would have made some very difficult listening I know to some of you. She recently made a rather brilliant podcast for the BBC called...

three million do go and have a listen to and hopefully are they going to turn it into a book because they really ought to turn it into a book the whole story of this it would make a brilliant book have you thought of that no i that's a great idea i'm gonna call my agent now thanks guys call your agent because i think having it there so that you could actually sort of delve in and get more detail would be fabulous

Just in the last episode, to remind people, Kavita, we left a desperate situation in Bengal where people from the countryside were now flooding into the cities.

and asking for things as basic as the starch water from boiled rice because they didn't anticipate anyone would give them actual food, just the stuff people will throw away to keep them alive. They're still dying in enormous numbers, even in Calcutta, which is the party central of Asia. Their bodies are deemed to be littering the streets. There is a concerted plan to clear their bodies and

clear them. But not to feed them. But not to feed them. Did anyone at this point, when people are actually collapsing in hundreds, if not thousands...

in the cities. Is there another plea from the Viceroy to London to do something about it? And if there is, what shape, form, time does it take? So we're now in the epicentre of the famine, which is around July, August 1943. And the Viceroy then, Linlithgow, was really, really concerned. And he goes back to London,

Remember, he's already told them that there is a food crisis in India. And in 1943, the early months, he has been raising the alarm. But now in August, he says to the war cabinet that famine conditions have begun to appear in Bengal. And crucially, it could threaten the war effort. And so he goes to the war cabinet and he asks for around half a million tons of grain, which

to alleviate the famine, what he calls conditions. And the war cabinet, this is early August, they're about to engage in a really kind of big offensive in Italy, says it could perhaps be able to deliver 150,000 tons, but not more. And the viceroy is incredibly despondent at that point and says, I cannot...

be responsible for the stability of India now. That's quite severe from a man who was the ultimate establishment figure, who did not criticise the government, did not march out of line, and was always a yes man, was given the job because he was such a yes man. It's hugely, but also remember, when he talks about the stability of India, he's not just talking about famine conditions in Bengal. He is afraid that the Japanese could invade

Bengal and perhaps advance further into India. But also, the population is incredibly restive. They don't want the British there. And so, a lot of the British colonial forces were not only dealing with the Japanese, they were also dealing with the Indian population as well. Do the Japanese get wind of what's going on? And do they use it for propaganda? Because if you are the enemy and you can point to the British and you say, look,

these people cannot even look after their own colonies. I mean, do they do that? Do they reproduce things like that? Do they point out that Britain is not a good steward of India so that Indians may rise up and like Subhash Chandra Bose, cross sides and go and fight with them? So it's really interesting you say that because they were pamphleting India at the time. And if you look at those pamphlets, and one of them is in the Imperial War Museum, the one that they have

is, and they write these in Hindi and in Bengali, it shows Winston Churchill sitting with his wife Clementine at a Sunday dinner, a Sunday roast, lunch probably, with a massive turkey and underneath the dinner table is a dead Bengali. And so they were using this famine as propaganda to say, come join us. It's important, I think, for the

the British and American audiences listening to this to understand also how much over the great swathes of Asia, the Japanese who we regard as almost the equivalent of the Nazis, how in Asia during the period of the war, they were regarded as liberators. And there are still places you can go in, for example, Java, Jakarta in Indonesia, and you will see tableaus of the Japanese liberation.

of Indonesia from the Dutch. And that's still there today. And very much in Bengal, particularly in left-leaning Bengali intellectual circles, the Japanese are seen as potential liberators. And a lot of people, like the Bo's, hopes that they can be the means for the rebirth of Asia. The background to this is a lot of, in the 1930s, pan-Asian reaching out. They're all brothers. They've all come from the same cultural roots, Buddhism and so on. And it's time for Asia to rise up and throw out the imperialists.

Yeah, but I mean, it is slightly based on bullshit. I mean, because if you look at the conduct of the Japanese forces towards Indians in, say, Kohima, it is absolutely bar back. They are massacred and left dead by the side of the road. Of course, but this is something, though, which is very current in the conversation. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, we have the Indian National Army that does heed the call and does decide that that's actually the right side to fight on. And you have this bizarre situation sometimes where you have Indians fighting

with the Indian National Army that are supported by the Japanese fighting Indians in the British Indian Army, which makes your head spin. It's happening, not just sometimes, that is a major issue across the Eastern Front, all over Imphal and the Burma. Absolutely. And part of that pamphleting was it wasn't just a hearts and minds operation. They were trying to persuade people in the British Indian Army to come and fight with them. But it's quite important to say at this time that...

Officially, in India, there was no famine, even though there were communiques to London saying that famine conditions were appearing because famine, there

The word famine was banned from publication in India. And that was partly because they were worried that the enemy would use it as propaganda. So banned by what the censorship office, you know, Defence of India Act kind of stuff. Is it under that? Emergency rules passed by the colonial government in India. And the censorship of letters going out of Bengal that the word famine is actually excised and passages removed. Yes. I mean, that is a kind of whole other thing. I mean, there's always a censoring war.

But the censor in Britain was particularly vigilant for Indian soldiers who were in the Middle East receiving letters. From their own families. From their own families talking about famine. And, you know, it's quite interesting talking to academics who've researched this because they say the colonial censor was so moved by this avalanche of despair that was coming through the letters of famine that he couldn't excise them.

I'm sorry to press you on this point that I've asked you before in the last episode. But again, let's focus on Churchill himself, because a lot of the Indian allegations, as you've said, are

are put specifically at the door of Churchill, who in this country is still regarded as our greatest war hero. What was Churchill's attitude in 1943? And particularly, what did Leo Amory, the Indian secretary, record of Churchill's attitude towards Bengal and the starving Bengalis? So it's really interesting reading Leo Amory's diaries, who was, it's worth saying, the Secretary of State for India at the time.

He records in one passage that by autumn of 1943, where it was pretty clear what was going on, Leo Emery records in his diary in September that Churchill was prepared to admit that something should be done, but very strong on the point that Indians are not the only people starving in the war. And he goes on to say, and this is a direct quote, the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than

than sturdy Greeks. That's horrible. Yeah. I mean, the point about Churchill was when he knew, and this is the heart of it really, did he do enough to alleviate it in the middle of a war? There was a war that was going on in lots of different fronts and it all revolves around shipping because shipping was absolutely crucial for the war effort to take people and weapons and food away.

And so there was a finite number of ships that they had and they would have had to release them in order to kind of send food grain. And so the question is, did he do enough once he knew? Could he have done more? And then the kind of really difficult question which you're alluding to, William, is did

Did his clearly derogatory attitudes to Indians. And it's important to say that people at the time, including Amory, including Wavell, including other people... Were very shocked by his language. Were shocked by his language. So it's not just us today saying it's racist. At the time, it was regarded as shocking. It was. It was. So did his attitude...

derogatory attitude towards Indians. Did that affect his response to the famine? And that's something we don't know, but is very kind of heartily debated. Yeah. I mean, while all of this is going on, let's just remind people of the human toll that is being taken. Because by the August of 1943, the authorities are removing a thousand bodies a day from the streets of Calcutta. A thousand people a day are being cleared like

refuse on the streets. Ian Stevens, I want to know about him because he fascinates me. So you've got all these censorship laws in place to stop people from even using the word famine. Tell us a bit about Ian Stevens. Ian Stevens was the editor of the Statesman newspaper, which was based in Calcutta. And it was a hugely respected British-owned newspaper.

newspaper known for its editorial integrity. And by this point, by the summer of 1943, Stevens had been in India for probably about 20 years. And he was quite unconventional. He loved yoga. He had Indian friends. Now, that sounds kind of such a remarkable thing to say. But mixing between the kind of colonial class and Indians didn't really happen at

And he did this kind of crazy thing where he refused a chauffeur and he cycled to work along the Charingi Road with no top on because he liked to feel the kind of fresh air on his body. So I heard that he cycled naked, but it's just topless, you're saying? Yeah, it's topless. I mean, of course it's not going to be naked. Right. I thought I wondered about that. Yeah, that's a bit much. But he was the editor of the Statesman newspaper. And he, by July 1943, faced a dilemma.

and it was probably the biggest dilemma of his life because it was absolutely clear that something had gone horribly wrong. There were starving people all across Calcutta on the very street that he cycled on from his apartment to the Statesman newspaper. He was getting communiques from the countryside, from his correspondents saying the countryside is totally decimated and yet he saw no relief action, certainly not in Calcutta,

And he couldn't report on it. And that was his job. And so was his job to adhere to the colonial authorities rules or was it actually to do his job as a journalist and report what was actually happening on Calcutta streets and defy the censor?

What does he do? So what he does is he looks at these rules and he goes, no one says anything about photographs. So he sends his photographer out onto the streets of Calcutta and it's not difficult. The photographer quickly comes back and the debate they have is, these photos are so awful. If we publish them, we're going to put people off. They choose them quite carefully and he published them on a Sunday next to the crossword. It's not on the front page. And

These photographs. With captions? I think there's a kind of the captions, but the captions don't say very much because the pictures are so powerful. One of them is a woman with two children and it's not clear if they're alive or not. And in another, a man is about to die. And these again, as I described before, these people who are scantily clad.

There is nothing to them and they're very disturbing. This is read in Delhi, all the papers sell, people are trading these papers for higher prices. Very quickly, these pictures get

get seen in London and the chief press officer in Delhi is like on the phone to Stevens, what the hell are you doing? But there's nothing they can do about it. He hasn't strictly broken the law. But actually, could it be argued that the British themselves are breaking the law because they have something called the famine code, which means that a certain number of stipulations have to be met and

for a situation to be described as a famine emergency and therefore then aid kicks in. And those conditions have totally been met, but the famine code is not being adhered to. So, I mean, Stevens is cleverly not breaking the law. Are the British breaking their own law by not moving?

I think the famine code wasn't a law. It was a code, a kind of code of practice that was established in the late 19th century after one of the many horrible famines that happened during Britain's presence. And it set out conditions, indicators that if they were fulfilled...

Imperial aid would have to go to the people who were suffering. I found this extraordinary stash of tiny cassette tapes from Indian civil servants, which talked about all of the conditions, all of the indicators had been met. They were telling their officers, British district managers,

who were telling Governor Herbert, but famine was never called. It was never called by the colonial authorities, was never called by the Indian provincial government, because if it had been called, aid would have had to go into the countryside to feed the people. And actually, food needed to go to those who were fighting in the war effort. So, the soldiers and people making armaments and so forth in the factories. And so, it was never officially called. But

But despite all this sort of denial that this is happening, Stevens has managed to get images out there. And when those images reach Britain, I mean, surely that moves the dial, doesn't it? Because people can see with their own eyes what they're not reading about in their own newspapers. So exactly that. So these images go, what we would say, viral today. It shocks the world. People

People can't believe that this is happening on the streets of Calcutta. And Stevens is emboldened now. He hasn't been slapped down. And so the following Sunday, he produces more pictures and a scathing editorial. Who does he blame in the editorial? So it's quite interesting. If you read the editorial, he blames...

the Indian provincial government and the colonial government for not doing anything. And he also blames, as the editorials go on, the merchants who are hoarding and speculating and profiting. Now, this is an important point because in some of the defences of Churchill and the British that have been made, and I'm thinking here of Zaria Masani again,

he says that it wasn't the British running this side of things in Calcutta. It was the provincial government which was under Indian politicians. Is that a defence that stands up? So the 1935 Act did give the

the Indian provincial government powers. But they did have responsibility for food, but this was in the war. So things like when we talked about the Bengal Vagrancy Act, people being moved from the streets, that was from Governor Herbert. Denial policy was carried out by Governor Herbert. Things like the lifting of price controls was a colonial authority act. So because of war, things were slightly muddied. And

When I was trying to piece together who made decisions, sometimes it was quite difficult, actually. Of course, the provincial government had some...

control. But these were not normal times. This was war. Tell us about your impressions of Governor Herbert. Is he standing efficiently and effectively for the welfare of the people he's meant to be governing or is he failing and obfuscating? So by August 1943, Governor Herbert has taken ill, so he's no longer in position.

But, you know, Fazl Haq writes to him in August of 1942. So this is a year beforehand saying famine conditions are preventable.

present. But again, he is focused on the war effort. But if you read the primary sources of the time, people didn't think much of Herbert, certainly not people in the Indian provincial government, Linlithgow as well. Even Linlithgow is against him. Yeah, they're thinking even about removing him. So he was considered quite ineffectual. But I'm still fascinated by these now

openly discussed images that are now traveling around the world. So they make their way into a newspaper called the Sunday Pictorial, which later becomes the Sunday Mirror. And the Mirror does something really interesting, I think, which says, you know, these are British citizens who are in these pictures, which must cause a huge problem.

What is the response? Because the government now knows that this is out there. People know about this and it will have an impact. So what is their response to that? Exactly. So the Sunday Pictorial calls them British subjects. And that, again, it's so interesting because...

subjects, again, denote some kind of, there is a moral impetus to protect. You're right, subjects, not citizens. So, you know, you have to look after them. There's a paternalism aspect to it. Exactly. And what's really interesting is people always say, oh, well, you know, people just look at these events from the gaze of modern day times. But if you look at the time, the way that the papers were talking about the famine, and eventually Parliament would have their first debate about the famine in November, this

This was hugely controversial at the time. I mean, Lord Pethick Lawrence, who leads the debate in November, says this absolutely brilliant thing. Just to clarify, this is November 1943 in the House of Lords? November 1943, yeah. He says if this were happening...

in Britain, would our response be the same?" And what he meant was, "Is our response different because they were Indians?" Because they're not white, yeah. Can I just say that Pethick Lawrences are amazing? They're also an enormous suffragette supporting family. They are completely kick-ass protectors of the suffragette cause. Anyway, as you were. What he actually says is, "If this terrible death rate had occurred in any one part of the British Isles, parliamentarians would have been vociferous in demanding that something should be done."

That's so powerful. And it just goes to show that there was a, it was a really, if you read that debate from the 4th of November, there were others like Pethick Lawrence were saying, we have to do something. We can't stand by. This is a disgrace. It's a stain on our nation. This, I have to say, is something I've found throughout my research on colonial India, that you often get people today defending empire saying that historians looking at it are hypocrites.

looking at it with the eyes of today, that it's completely illegitimate to do that, that at the time no one saw anything wrong with this. The complete opposite is true if, for example, you look at the reaction to Clive, that provincial newspapers in England are absolutely

absolutely outraged by what the East India Company is doing. And when the news of the 1772 Bengal famine comes, it's in every provincial paper. And Clive is booed in the streets of London. There's always a strong awareness here that the horrors of colonialism are something which people are profiting off. People are coming back rich from India, having looted, pillaged, and seized the assets of the Indians. And this is true in 1772. And it's true right at the end in

The government, though, does something interesting because in the propaganda war, they have to do something. Is it right that they lean on the BBC to have an alternative narrative? So I went into the BBC archives, which says so much about the Bengal famine research. Nobody had ever gone to the BBC and asked for anything about the Bengal famine. Interesting. Isn't it? Gosh.

And actually, I found that in quite a lot of the archives. You know this because there's no reference in the files? No, because I asked them. I said, has anyone ever asked for this? And they said, no, no one ever has. And even when you're looking in the kind of official archive, it's never labelled Bengal famine. It's labelled something else. So it's quite hard to find all these things. What's it labelled? There's things like World War II or it's, you know, something else. And so it's quite a lot of detective work, which tells you even at the time it wasn't

It wasn't valued. It wasn't considered important enough. It wasn't a subject in itself. No. Anyway, so I went to the archives and what I found was correspondence between the India office and Rushbrook Williams, who was head of the Eastern Service. And I saw bulletins where they had talked about

famine and some of the worst that was happening and people being cleared away from the streets and these had been crossed out. And with bulletins, you know, Anita, it's always time reasons or whatever, but I could see that people had underlined words they were going to emphasize and I found correspondence between the India office and the Eastern Service.

that basically said, "Do you have to give it so much prominence?" It was difficult for the BBC because they were hearing from their correspondents on the ground. Exactly the same that goes on today. Well, but the thing is, this is at a time of war when actually they operate under different rules. Completely. So they have to abide by government censorship. Am I right or wrong about that? That's absolutely right. There was always a discussion, but that was generally with the Ministry of Information. This came from the India office.

And it wasn't saying you must. It was basically saying, could you tone it down? Do you have to give it so much prominence? So editors could, in essence, have said, well, yes, we do. So it's a failure by the BBC. I hate to press you two BBC girls on this one. I'm asking. I want to know. And we'll never know. And I did ask the archivist this. We'll never know why those paragraphs are.

were crossed out. And it's worth saying in other bulletins, they did mention it. This was the only one we could find. But it was a really bad bit of kind of what was going on. And there were other paragraphs about the famine talking about relief efforts. So this was now October 1943, where relief was beginning to kind of start

which had not been crossed out, which is quite interesting. So very picky. I mean, I'm just really frustrated because something that I worked on, which was the assassination that happened after the Jallianbarg massacre. So, you know, you've got these two decades later and you've got a man who's assassinated the former lieutenant governor of Punjab. And the government at that time

leans on Reuters to say at the trial, do not report a single word that comes out of that man's mouth. Now that to me as well is a don't do it, but it's not your order to do it. You'll be breaking the law. And Reuters complies, which I found really appalling at the time. If you didn't have to do that, why did you do that? But I just wondered what the law said and what people were allowed to do and how defiant

media outlets could be. I think having looked at the other bulletins, they did report it. And I know that Rushbert Williams was really disappointed in this correspondent. Who's Rushbert Williams? He was the head of the Eastern Service and he did push back. There was also kind of correspondence with the Director General. And as I say, that was the only bulletin that I found that crossed out the worst of what had happened. But in other bulletins, they did run it. So it's just one particular bit of meddling where they're lent on and others... Well, no, on other days, they did talk about

what was going on, yeah. Oh, I mean, as somebody who works for the BBC as well, it is very rare that there is a united front about anything. Is there really? You know, you might have one programme doing one thing, but you have eight other programmes doing eight different things. So, yeah. Yeah.

Alright, let's talk then. Now that the secret is out, is there any reaction to it from government that now we have to do something? We really do have to do something. Well, they hold that debate on the 4th of November and now we're hearing the word

famine being reported, not only in the papers, but also in Parliament, which is ironic because still in India... You're not allowed to use that word. To be honest, by that point, it was kind of like the rules were still in place, but no one officially is still calling it a famine. But then a very, very significant appointment is made, which does change things. And Linlithgow

is no longer Viceroy and he's replaced by Field Marshal Wavell. Who's a much more attractive character in every way, isn't he? He's a much more sympathetic figure. He writes poetry, other men's flowers, and he's a much-loved figure, unlike Lithgow, who's a kind of cold... Well, you've already called him a clot and a rockhead. That was Neru, not me. It's a good point to take a break. Join us after the break when we see whether things improve, change in any material way with a new man as...

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Welcome back. So just before the break, we had a new viceroy being appointed, Lord Wavell. Archie. Archie Wavell. Archie to his friends. William's just given a lovely pen portrait of a man who now I imagine skips through meadows of flowers and writes poetry. That's the kind of indication that we were given. He was an interesting character because he was very military. He was an ex-general.

And yet he had this sort of rather sensitive and cultured side, which was unusual in British generals of that period. There's another story I remember. My grandmother's great friend was something called Iris Portal, who was Rab Butler's sister. She was brought up in a Cambridge college and then married this handsome polo player and was sent off aged 18 to some cantum in India. And a week after her arrival in this cantum, there's a new bride. There's a knock on the door and it's the commandant's wife.

And she says, Iris, I've heard something terrible. Please tell me it's not true. There's a rumor going around the contumant that you've been reading poetry.

True story from the horse's mouth. That's hilarious. We wouldn't like it to get around. No. We wouldn't want that to get around. Archie Wavell is not like that. So he was commander in chief in India, and it's worth saying that. And while the progress of the Japanese was being made, you know, so he knew India pretty well. I'm not sure poetry is a kind of massively important skill in dealing with famine, but

But he did a very good thing that Linlithgow never did. So he goes out to India in late October after his appointment by Churchill and he

He goes directly to the places that are hit by famine. Linlithgow never did that. So he goes to Calcutta and he goes to Midnapore. And remember, Midnapore is one of those places that we spoke about in part one. It was the place where the cyclone hit. Exactly. Cyclone hit, denial policy had hit hard. It was a kind of hotbed of resistance to the British. It had everything. And he goes there and he's shocked and he's devastated. And he immediately says,

takes action within days of arriving. So he makes sure that the military is kind of partially diverted from the front line

to help relief go into the countryside. Remember, food has been going from the countryside into the kind of city for the war effort. And now he's doing the opposite. And he makes some other important moves. He establishes gruel kitchens, relief hospitals. At last, finally, this is now two years into the famine. Finally, the authorities are actually doing what any decent Indian government throughout history would have done the minute the famine broke out, which is set up kitchens of food.

Yeah, and he also ensures via the government in Delhi that Calcutta is now no longer fed from the countryside but outside the province. That's a really important move. You know, a lot of the motivations before have been about the war effort.

But this is humanitarian. His letters I've read and they're rather amazing. And he reads to us like rather modern sensibilities. He reacts as we would, unlike Linlithgow, who doesn't. God, you really don't like Linlithgow, do you? I don't, no. No, he doesn't, does he? Did you pick that up? He tried to so well, but yeah. Just a bit. He doesn't like poetry either. But if you read his diary, he is motivated by compassion. But he also then sets himself on a collision path with...

with Churchill because what he realizes is that to stave off further famine, because what happens with famine is that people don't often die from hunger. You die from diseases. And actually, and as Amartya notes, more people died in 44 than 43. He asked for significant amounts of food in

imports from the war cabinet. And this really puts him into direct conflict with Churchill. It does. And do you know what else it does? It goes around the world really, really quickly. So just as a quick noodle while you were talking, I thought I'd look up and see what the American newspapers were writing about this. Fascinating to me. So this is from the New York Times, October the 25th, 1943. The headline screams,

in Bull, Wavell drops all to relieve famine. Bengal starvation area visit may yield new measures. Death rate soars. And their first paragraph of it, and you can see

see why perhaps in London people will be grinding their teeth down to the nub. Field Marshal Viscount Wavell's decision to visit the Bengal famine areas within a few days of his inauguration as Viceroy is striking evidence of the seriousness of the famine situation. The Viceroy has brushed aside immediate action on pressing political problems in

in favour of a personal investigation of the famine. So it is now out, it is international and anyone now, I guess, who says it's not a problem or nothing to see here,

the Americans know now. The New York Times is screaming about it in a headline. So, at a time of war when you're looking for allies in America and American newspapers are writing that this is happening under your nose, this is not a good look, is it? So, what happens in London as a result of this? So, it's a huge amount of pressure in London, not only from the Americans who remember our

you know, already very much kind of hoping that independence will come to India and leaning on the British for that. But it's also being reported in Germany and Japan. And this is the kind of last thing that the British

the British wanted. And then you've got Wavell making his demand for a million tons of food aid, which is what he says is needed to stave off a famine. Oh, the famine's here just to solve a famine. Now you haven't staved it off at all. To solve the famine. Exactly.

And there is a lot of back and forth then with the war cabinet and Wavell. And if you go through the papers, you can see it. Churchill saying we can give a little bit of this or we can't give this or we've got this kind of big operation happening. And Wavell

And Wavell almost kind of says, you know what? I'm the wrong guy. If you're not going to help, you need somebody else. And he puts his job on the line. And he writes, and this is so strong, and we must remember, he is the Viceroy of India. He was chosen by Churchill. And this is what he says, that the Bengal famine is one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule, and damage to our reputation is incalculable. He writes that in February

1944. I mean, it's basically back me or sack me. Yeah. Simple. How long has he been in the job? October, November, December, January. Four months. Well done, Em. Impressive. And so how does Churchill respond? Does Churchill finally get it? Well,

Well, they're planning for D-Day at this point. So, you know, shipping is needed. Nobody's thinking about the famine. And so what he does do is finally in April 1944, he does go to Roosevelt. He doesn't want to, but he does do it and he asks for help. But they decline at that point. It's April 1944 because, you know, they need their ships for D-Day. And eventually...

eventually, Wavell does get his around a million tons of aid, but it's at the end of 1944. So many, many people will have died since then. But what I think is so fascinating about this kind of discussion between Wavell and Churchill is it's so easy to kind of paint colonialists in one way, but actually Wavell was trying to do a good thing. I found this again throughout

all my work there's a whole shade of different opinions as today as today and I think you know we must remember that too when we talk about colonialism and there was a lot going on at that period in the war you can see how shipping was necessary and these were

all these complex calculations going on. And Wavell knew all this. He's a military man, but he doesn't stop. He doesn't stop in his demands. And you can see it throughout the papers. So, Kavita, what would you say when you come across someone in a Delhi dinner party that puts it all down to Churchill? It's Churchill's family. That's what we hear a lot.

He is culpable to it. He didn't create it, but he didn't alleviate it. I think that once famine has started, it's really difficult to alleviate. And, you know, if famine conditions were happening in kind of the middle of August 1942, by this point, it's 1944, it's kind of, it's happened.

What I always say about the famine is it's really, really, really complicated. The causes are complicated. There's no one person that is responsible for the famine. And I do think that partly, perhaps we don't remember famines very well, is because they are really complicated. And I

I just think it's a very complicated situation. And what my intention was with the podcast was to lay out all these complications and let people decide for themselves. And also you talk to people. And I'm really interested because there was somebody even at the time, because

because these were numbers, three million dead of starvation photographs of emaciated human beings who don't even look like human beings anymore. But there is a man called Chhuta Prasad Bhattacharya who does very much what the Kavita Puri school is

and talks to people. Hungry Bengal is what he publishes as early as November 1943, which talks about individual lives that have been affected by the disaster. It's a book? A pamphlet? What is it? This is an unknown book to me. I did not know about it. Do you know why? I haven't heard it either. 5,000 copies published.

all confiscated by the British authorities. All confiscated but one and we think his mum had it. But you've seen it? Is it right that you've seen it? Yes, I have seen it. Bloody hell. Okay, right. So what's in it? So... You've got it there. No, no, no. It's reaching down. Rummaging around. This is very exciting. It's my computer charger. Okay. So it's really important to say that of course Ian Stevens

did an incredible thing. And someone like Amartya Sen says he possibly saved hundreds of thousands of lives by publishing those photographs because then London had to do something. But it is very important to say that Indian journalists and photographers and writers and artists were also documenting the famine at the time. And they were largely also under these censorship rules, like Chitra Prasad Bhattacharya. And he went to Midnapore, remember that district with the cyclone and denial and...

So hugely affected by famine and many people had left. And he takes his ink pen and he sketches the people. But what he does is he gives a bio of who they are and he gives names. And when you look at those Stevens pictures, you see starving people.

emaciated people who are on the verge of death, but you have no sense of who they are and there are no names. Whose mother they were, where they lived, what they did. Absolutely right. They are just one of the many three million. Exactly. But with Chitra Prasad, when I found the name, the first name of the three million, imagine that. And the name was Kashitra Mahanayak. And it's a picture of a man who no longer looks like a man who's been eaten by a wolf and

he describes this and with other people he gives a bit more of a sense of who they are. You realise that you feel something for those people. Otherwise, three million is just a number. It's a statistic. What does it mean? And he gives them dignity and it was really moving for me to find this. So the British immediately confiscate these pamphlets, obviously, but one remains and I saw a PDF of it and it's so explosive.

But it's also quite emotional to see. But it also is the importance in history of not only looking at the decision makers and who was responsible, all these things are important, but who are these people? We've talked about how it's received in London and the BBC, in the House of Lords and so on, but how is it received elsewhere in India? How does it affect the movement for independence? Are people aware that the British have failed in their primary responsibility, which is to keep people of India alive?

So at this point, remember, all the Congress leaders are locked up. In prison. They're in prison after Quit India. And Jinnah's out. Jinnah is out. So I think that when you read the accounts of the time, and even you speak to people today, or you look at oral history that was taken in the 60s and 70s, hunger hugely fueled the independence movement. And it just accelerated the movement. It was inevitable. And what's really interesting is that

The memory of hunger, and when I say the memory of hunger, I'm not just talking about 1943. I'm also talking about all these other famines that happened during the British presence, really affected the politics of newly independent India. And one of the huge drivers was that India should never be hungry again or face a famine again because of the legacy of hunger and famine in empire. And it should be said that one of the most effective things that independent India does is

from the start in 1947 is it extends irrigation programs and anti-famine measures, and particularly in the Deccan and the South, and that from about 1950 onwards, there is never another famine in India because Indians are ruling themselves in a democratic country and can feed

feed their own people and it's made a priority. And this, if you look at the achievements of the early Nerovian governments, the extension of irrigation and the effective activities

application of anti-famine technology. And then finally, the new varieties of rice, which come in the early 1960s. Rice and dwarf wheat as well. Yeah. Just a final question, because our time together is coming to an end. But of all the people that you spoke to, Kavita, is there one in particular that stands out in your mind who has a memory of this time that particularly affected you? I've just come back from the countryside in Bengal. And, you know, no one has

Ever, really. Since your podcast came out. Since my podcast. No one has ever officially recorded the survivors of the famine, which is extraordinary. And there they were. They were living in the countryside. And that tells you so much about how famine is remembered and who tells history with regard to this. We should say that these people are now in their early 90s. They won't be there in five years or ten years' time. They won't be. They won't be. And there was such extraordinary, different but moving testimony. And I met a woman who was 91.

And she remembered having to leave her village and look for food. She went to Calcutta and she had to beg for food. And two things she remembered. She remembered on the train journey, a mother trying to breastfeed her child. And she watched. She was only what, you know, just a child herself. Seeing the child die in her mother's arms because she couldn't get breast milk. But she also remembers begging. And a little girl giving her bread. Yes.

And it was the act of kindness that she remembered, which I thought was really interesting. But I think there is something about famine, which is so traumatic. It breaks taboos. It makes people do awful things or you can't feed a child that is very, very difficult to

remember and talk about. Were there accounts of cannibalism in this famine as there had been in 1772? So somebody told me a story of a mother being so hungry and someone saying to her, if you're that hungry, why don't you eat the child on your lap, which was really shocking. I haven't heard of accounts of cannibalism. There are well-established ones of 1772. Maybe. But remember, people choose what they tell you.

And that's a very shameful thing to have to admit. And they choose what to forget. But thanks to you, Kavita, and the work you've done again, excellent work that it is. You don't let people forget. Amazing work. And really, you must pursue it. You must write this book. Yeah, yeah. I think so too. And also, again, you know, sort of,

Numbers are one thing. Numbers are often overwhelming, but to have human faces, human voices, human names to these things, it is such good work. I can't believe you're the first person to collect these testimonies. Compare it to, for example, partition. There's so much work on partition testimonies in every state. The reason is, is because all people, all...

Parts of society were affected by partition, and that's not the case for famine, and that's why. Kavita Puri, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. So till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durrumpel.

And there you have it. Dr Al Bamawe is not responsible for the death of Lord Harmsen. British Podcast Award nominee for Best New Podcast. We simply must ask ourselves who planted the idea in Lord Harmsen's head that he was stung by a bee? Who was in the hospital garden that very morning to do so? And who was sleeping with his wife? British Podcast Award nominee for Best Fiction.

British Podcast Award nominee for the Listener's Choice Award. He's been a busy little bee.

Oh, please. Okay. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What? It wasn't recording. Oh, what? Stupid, stupid mic. Everything okay? No. Why not? The adventure didn't record. We only have the end. But that was the best adventure yet. Yeah, I know that.

From Goalhanger. The breakneck series Gen Z is hooked on, says the Times. Oh, OK. Got it. Let me hold your weight. OK, I'm going to do No Carb November, so I might be a little heavier than usual. Shut up and get on with it. Very funny, mildly sweary and hugely popular, says the Guardian. OK, OK. I'm on. Excellent. All right. Not that bad. Not at all.

Sherlock & Co. The Adventure of the Red Circle begins Tuesday the 20th of August. Catch up with the show now wherever you get your podcasts.