Truth of Churchill Complicity in Indian Famine Reaches the Mainstream Press

[Kiev Communard]

According to a new book on the famine, Sir Winston ignored pleas for emergency food aid for millions in Bengal left to starve as their rice paddies were turned over to jute for sandbag production and supplies of rice from Burma stopped after Japanese occupation.

Between one and three million died of hunger in 1943.

The wartime leader said Britain could not spare the ships to transport emergency supplies as the streets of Calcutta filled with emaciated villagers from the surrounding countryside, but author Madhusree Mukerjee has unearthed new documents which challenge his claim.

In her book, Churchill's Secret War, she cites ministry records and personal papers which reveal ships carrying cereals from Australia were bypassed India on their way to the Mediterranean where supplies were already abundant.

"It wasn't a question of Churchill being inept: sending relief to Bengal was raised repeatedly and he and his close associates thwarted every effort," the author said.

"The United States and Australia offered to send help but couldn't because the war cabinet was not willing to release ships. And when the US offered to send grain on its own ships, that offer was not followed up by the British," she added.

The man-made famine and the contrast between the plight of starving Indians and well-fed British officers dining in the city's many colonial clubs has been described as one of the darkest chapters in British rule on the Indian subcontinent.

Miss Mukerjee blames Churchill's 'racism' for his refusal to intervene.

He derided Gandhi as a "half-naked holy man" and once said: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

He was known to favour Islam over Hinduism.

"Winston's racist hatred was due to his loving the empire in the way a jealous husband loves his trophy wife: he would rather destroy it than let it go," said Miss Mukerjee.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7991820/Winston-Churchill-blamed-for-1m-deaths-in-India-famine.html

I know this is well known fact among the Left but it is sad that British mainstream media decided to break the silence around the supposed "great leader" only now.

See this article (http://www.marxist.com/winston-churchill-modern-myth-1.htm) on more information about Churchill bigotry and overall reactionary policies.

[RadioRaheem84]

Churchill is a mass murder who committed genocide and famine!

There you have it folks capitalism doesn't work!

Connect the dots however you like as long we can make capitalism look bad by employing bad logic.

OP, this isn't against you but it shows how the media isn't portraying this as a fault against capitalism but a "lapse in judgment" on the part of an otherwise great man.

[Volcanicity]

I think its a great piece of timing to print this know.Its 70 years since the Battle of Britain,the time when all the Churchill lovers start celebrating his so called "great man" image.Its about time more people realised how evil and heartless he really was.

[Kiev Communard]

Churchill is a mass murder who committed genocide and famine!

There you have it folks capitalism doesn't work!

Connect the dots however you like as long we can make capitalism look bad by employing bad logic.

OP, this isn't against you but it shows how the media isn't portraying this as a fault against capitalism but a "lapse in judgment" on the part of an otherwise great man.

I am aware of it, certainly, but this fact can still be used in argument with the rightists saying "all mass killings in the 20th century were committed by teh evul socialists".

[pranabjyoti]

As an Indian, I know that facts well and it's well known to almost every literate Indian. But, the point is trots and anarchos rarely raised their voice against the "murderous regime of Churchill".;)

[Kléber]

As an Indian, I know that facts well and it's well known to almost every literate Indian. But, the point is trots and anarchos rarely raised their voice against the "murderous regime of Churchill".;)
Wrong, the Fourth International defended the right of India's people to rebel while the Comintern was playing footsie with the imperialists (1934-43) and advising collaboration with "progressive" imperialism. Trotskyists were the only ones "raising their voice" at a time when, according to Stalinist orthodoxy, the Indian and Vietnamese people had to serve their colonial masters while the only valid anti-imperialist struggles were in fascist-occupied countries.


Stalin and his clique, for the sake of an alliance with the imperialist governments, have completely renounced the revolutionary program for the emancipation of the colonies. This was openly avowed at the last Congress of Stalin’s party in Moscow in March of the current year by Manuilski, one of the leaders of the Comintern, who declared: “The Communists advance to the forefront the struggle for the realization of the right of self-determination of nationalities enslaved by fascist governments. They demand free self-determination for Austria ... the Sudeten regions ... Korea, Formosa, Abyssinia ... .” And what about India, Indo-China, Algeria and other colonies of England and France? The Comintern representative answers this question as follows, “The Communists demand of the imperialist governments of the so called bourgeois democratic states the immediate [sic] drastic [!] improvement in the living standards of the toiling masses in the colonies and the granting of broad democratic rights and liberties to the colonies.” (Pravda, issue No.70, March 12, 1939.) In other words, as regards the colonies of England and France the Comintern has completely gone over to Gandhi’s position and the position of the conciliationist colonial bourgeoisie in general. The Comintern has completely renounced revolutionary struggle for India’s independence. It “demands” (on its hands and knees) the “granting” of “democratic liberties” to India by British imperialism. The words “immediate drastic improvement in the living standards of the toiling masses in the colonies”, have an especially false and cynical ring. Modern capitalism – declining, gangrenous, disintegrating – is more and more compelled to worsen the position of workers in the metropolitan center itself. How then can it improve the position of the toilers in the colonies from whom it is compelled to squeeze out all the juices of life so as to maintain its own state of equilibrium? The improvement of the conditions of the toiling masses in the colonies is possible only on the road to the complete overthrow of imperialism.

But the Communist International has traveled even further on this road of betrayal. Communists, according to Manuilski, “subordinate the realization of this right of secession ... in the interests of defeating fascism.” In other words, in the event of war between England and France over colonies, the Indian people must support their present slave owners, the British imperialists. That is to say, must shed their blood not for their own emancipation, but for the preservation of the rule of “the City” over India. And these cheaply to be bought scoundrels dare to quote Marx and Lenin! As a matter of fact, their teacher and leader is none other than Stalin, the head of a new bureaucratic aristocracy, the butcher of the Bolshevik Party, the strangler of workers and peasants.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/india.htm
http://www.anti-caste.org/marxists/trotskyist_press.html

[Barry Lyndon]

Other famines caused by colonial capitalism:

Famines in India in 1876-79 & 1897-1902, caused by British economic exploitation, wiped out a total of up to 29 million people. Starving refugees from the countryside were conscripted by the British in Mumbai and Calcutta as labor in workcamps in exchange for food. Their rations were less in caloric intake then the rations of prisoners in Buchenwald.

http://www.amazon.com/Late-Victorian-Holocausts-Famines-Making/dp/1859843824

Pre-revolutionary China, governed by a corrupt alliance of fuedal lords and foreign capitalists, suffered waves of horrific famines that were exacerbated by the intervention of colonial powers. The crushing of the Taipeng rebellion, which was aided by British and American mercenaries, led to the deaths of 20-30 million people, largely from famine due to the wars destruction of agriculture. Nine million people starved to death in the famines of 1929, 1936 and 1943.

One could go with these crimes against humanity that are swept under the rug by imperialism's apologists.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Dont forget that he bombed the (red) cities of Dresden and Hamburg, killing mostly civilians.

[Red Commissar]

Churchill was an asshole to put it simply. He just gets a lot of shielding due to the lofty status in WW II people have created for him. It's all over his life, taking a look at his comments regarding British policy towards unrest in the Iraqi Mandate-


"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected."

[pranabjyoti]

Churchill was an asshole to put it simply. He just gets a lot of shielding due to the lofty status in WW II people have created for him. It's all over his life, taking a look at his comments regarding British policy towards unrest in the Iraqi Mandate-
Well, that means "personality cult" is practiced in civilized UK too. Not only in the half civilized USSR, PRC.