matter of Bengal, Churchill told Wavell that more food for India could not be provided without taking it from Egypt and the Middle East, where a reserve was being accumulated for other areas of battle and for the ultimate liberation of Greece and the Balkans. Wavell wrote in his journal, ‘Apparently it is more important to save the Greeks and the liberated countries from starvation than the Indians.’ He knew there were special arrangements for feeding workers in essential industries, but he pointed out that practically the whole of India outside the rural districts was somehow engaged in the war effort, and that it was impossible to sort one particular individual from another ‘and feed only those actually fighting or making munitions or working in particular railways, as PM has suggested’.
In the week ending 9 October 1943, just under 2000 deaths were recorded in Calcutta, and 1600 the week before. The removal of corpses from the street became a municipal preoccupation. K. Santhanam, a former member of the Legislative Assembly and a journalist, believed 100,000 were dying of starvation in Bengal each week. By contrast, Leopold Amery in London said that between 15 August and 16 October a total of about 8000 had died in Calcutta from causes directly or indirectly connected to malnutrition.
Within a week of taking office in New Delhi on 20 October 1943, Wavell rushed to Calcutta and saw the dying inthe streets outside the gates of houses and the glass fronts of restaurants and bakeries. He intended to galvanise the entire government apparatus to tackle what he significantly called the ‘man-made’ crisis. Then he toured the mofussil itself, in particular the nearer western regions, Midnapore and Parganas. What he saw there – corpses scythed down at the height of their hunger by cholera or smallpox, and lying in the roads and ditches – disturbed him profoundly. It was a sight Linlithgow had never deigned nor dared to see. Wavell decided to use the army to aid the civil administration and introduced rationing in all areas in Bengal, including Calcutta. Air-raid wardens throughout the towns of Bengal were now put to the task of carrying bodies from houses and the streets, and burning them in pyres or burying them in mass graves.
Wavell’s most powerful and highly unpopular cable after this journey was addressed to Leopold Amery and Churchill. ‘Bengal famine is one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule and is dangerous to our reputation here both among Indians and foreigners in India.’ His urgency was motivated in part by the desire to save Britain from the world’s censure, and to ensure no collapse of morale in the British Indian army. Indeed one of the chief terms of his appointment was that he should solve the crisis in Bengal, since it was beginning to get in the way of the war. And in that spirit he also cabled, ‘There is now a military as well as a charity problem, since army must have a stable base.’ But humanity and compassion were also at play, and he whipped up the inefficient government of Bengal to recognise and react to the scale of the event.
To the new viceroy, one of the minor villains of the faminemay have been Bengal’s chief minister, Khawaja Nazimuddin, whom the viceroy thought ‘straight but incapable’, and exactly the sort of man of whom the corrupt take advantage. And one of the corrupt in question, Wavell believed, was Nazimuddin’s minister for civil supplies, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, a former Oxford graduate, one of the founders of the Muslim League and a future prime minister of Pakistan. Suhrawardy, it was claimed, siphoned money from every project that was undertaken to ease the famine, and awarded to his associates contracts for warehousing, the sale of grain to governments, and transportation.
With some justice, Suhrawardy himself blamed the black marketeers and hoarders for the tragedy, and claimed that he had worked around
In the week ending 9 October 1943, just under 2000 deaths were recorded in Calcutta, and 1600 the week before. The removal of corpses from the street became a municipal preoccupation. K. Santhanam, a former member of the Legislative Assembly and a journalist, believed 100,000 were dying of starvation in Bengal each week. By contrast, Leopold Amery in London said that between 15 August and 16 October a total of about 8000 had died in Calcutta from causes directly or indirectly connected to malnutrition.
Within a week of taking office in New Delhi on 20 October 1943, Wavell rushed to Calcutta and saw the dying inthe streets outside the gates of houses and the glass fronts of restaurants and bakeries. He intended to galvanise the entire government apparatus to tackle what he significantly called the ‘man-made’ crisis. Then he toured the mofussil itself, in particular the nearer western regions, Midnapore and Parganas. What he saw there – corpses scythed down at the height of their hunger by cholera or smallpox, and lying in the roads and ditches – disturbed him profoundly. It was a sight Linlithgow had never deigned nor dared to see. Wavell decided to use the army to aid the civil administration and introduced rationing in all areas in Bengal, including Calcutta. Air-raid wardens throughout the towns of Bengal were now put to the task of carrying bodies from houses and the streets, and burning them in pyres or burying them in mass graves.
Wavell’s most powerful and highly unpopular cable after this journey was addressed to Leopold Amery and Churchill. ‘Bengal famine is one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule and is dangerous to our reputation here both among Indians and foreigners in India.’ His urgency was motivated in part by the desire to save Britain from the world’s censure, and to ensure no collapse of morale in the British Indian army. Indeed one of the chief terms of his appointment was that he should solve the crisis in Bengal, since it was beginning to get in the way of the war. And in that spirit he also cabled, ‘There is now a military as well as a charity problem, since army must have a stable base.’ But humanity and compassion were also at play, and he whipped up the inefficient government of Bengal to recognise and react to the scale of the event.
To the new viceroy, one of the minor villains of the faminemay have been Bengal’s chief minister, Khawaja Nazimuddin, whom the viceroy thought ‘straight but incapable’, and exactly the sort of man of whom the corrupt take advantage. And one of the corrupt in question, Wavell believed, was Nazimuddin’s minister for civil supplies, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, a former Oxford graduate, one of the founders of the Muslim League and a future prime minister of Pakistan. Suhrawardy, it was claimed, siphoned money from every project that was undertaken to ease the famine, and awarded to his associates contracts for warehousing, the sale of grain to governments, and transportation.
With some justice, Suhrawardy himself blamed the black marketeers and hoarders for the tragedy, and claimed that he had worked around
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