WAR HERO OR A MASS MURDERER?

WAR HERO OR A MASS MURDERER?

It is strange that India does not raise the issue of the 1943 Bengal famine in international fora to expose the dastardly role played by Sir Winston Churchill in helping precipitate it which cost the life of 5 million Bengalis. This is the figure quoted in Satyajit ray's film 'Ashani Sanket' or 'Distant Thunder' and the figure varies elsewhere with Shashi Tharoor quoting British sources to put it at 4.3 million. The earlier figure was Amartya Sen's between 2.7 and 3 million. Whatever it may be, certainly the figure ran into millions and it is simply strange that Bengalis have allowed it to fall into obscurity. Contrarily, the Jews have never lost an opportunity to highlight the Holocaust in the international arena and have taken Hitler and his Nazis to account for it in terms of historical chronicling of the genocide with the Jewish perspective coming full scale. But Bengalis on both sides of the border have sunk into an amnesia which is hard to explain except to depict it as a terrible loss of character which may have been Bengal's lot over the past few centuries post the times of Sri Chaitanya. That Bengal has time and again capitulated before rising alien aggression is now commonly known history but it does that absolve Bengal from discharging her duties in upholding her honour and in the process exposing Britain's fabled war hero, Churchill, as an evil, genocidal, racist tyrant with scant concern for the lives of millions of British Indian subjects on whom he inflicted the worst man-made disaster of famine and then callously allowed millions to die without turning a hair even to bring relief to them.

How can Bengalis forget this episode in their historical life? How can India fail consistently to raise this issue in international fora to paint Churchill the way he ought to be known in the world? What prevents Indian self-respect from taking the right stance before the world that remains largely oblivious of this great tragedy that was made to befall Bengal?

Written by Sugata Bose