I have read and watched videos which claimed that British policies during WW2 was partly or fully responsible for the famine in India, one of many examples was the scorched earth policy in case an invasion from the Japanese. The reporting of the famine was also censored in Britain during the war. How responsible were the British in causing the famine and why would Churchill do such a thing?
The British policies of pushing for cash crops over food crops to maximize their revenue caused a monumental shift in how India produced and consumed food.
The direct taxation regimes introduced in Raj territory as opposed to the princely states also exacerbated the issue. You then had other factors like the Great Hedge of India (1) that taxed salt and prevented a free flow of not just salt but indeed trade and commerce all added to the end result.
A series of famines of which the Bengal famine was but the last. Over 120 years, India saw 5 major famines that resulted in conservatively, 20-30 million deaths (2).
The Bengal famine cannot be looked at in isolation but as a part of the series of famines under British India.
Bengal in particular according to a study by Mahalanobis and Ghosh (3) had gone from a self sustained food production area with substantial food exports under the Mughals to a net importer of food by 1930. This happened because of multiple reasons, an increase in pop, declining fertility of farms (on account of the breaking of traditional patterns of farming and the increased thrust on cash crop farming round the year) leading to poor yields. To supplement this Bengalis increasingly took to consuming fish (they were and still are avid fish consumers). During the famine the rice yield of the monsoon crop failed and the British seized all boats thereby depriving the ability of Bengalis to both eat rice or supplement it with fish.
The British also changed the traditional Indian pattern followed under the Mughals and later the Marathas wherein 1/4th of the produce was taxed (literally called chauth) and 1/4th had to be surrendered to the village commons who created a sort of a strategic village level stockpile used in lean periods. (4)
What this meant was without the cushion of the common stockpile supporting farmers in the lean periods they had to increasingly resort to usurious moneylenders to sustain themselves during lean periods. Over time this also changed crop farming patterns as landholdings became excessively parceled (money lenders would grab any land that fell behind in their payments), the moneylenders would then allot the farmers their own land but only this time as peasants with no rights to either the land or the produce. Which meant that the farmers who previously maintained personal stocks were now helpless.
If you look at it a fiscal level also, the British had to fund their war in Europe and to that aid demanded that producers (in the secondary sector) sell directly to the Raj military and at capped / low prices that barely even covered the production costs. This meant that those working in the secondary sector had very little buying power and this was exacerbated during the famine. (5)
The UK then insisted that the Raj pay an increased share to meet wartime expenses but then essentially wrote IOU's to cover it and didn't pay currency to meet these increased expenditures (it basically said that the UK will pay these expenses once the war was over-slight digression, it paid back not even 1/4th the total sum it borrowed). As the Raj economy had to cope it started printing paper money to cover these expenses resulting in very high inflation. (6)
These events then converged as a perfect storm.
Low yield > low or no stockpiling > no support from the community (as the traditional practice of stockpiling in villages was ended) > stressed secondary sector > high inflation
When the famine hit, the seizure of boats by the British added to the issue and caused mass starvation deaths.
As to Churchill, he didn't create these policies, he inherited them. His role though is in his absolute refusal of food aid, be it from within India (other provinces were exporting food) or Australia and his insistence that the Med theatre get all these grains as a strategic stockpile. He is on record as saying,
the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks.
Showing his intent very clearly.
Sources,
*1 The great Hedge of India by Roy Moxham. You could also read this snippet (cited) online for a start. https://inews.co.uk/opinion/britain-built-wall-great-hedge-india/
*2 Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts. (Goes into painstaking detail on how British policies engineered famines in India). You could also consider the below as a source on just the Bengal famine,
*2a Hungry Bengal: War, Famine And The End Of Empire by Janam Mukherjee.
*3 Famine and Rehabilitation in Bengal by Mahalanobis Ghose and Mukherjea
4 Advanced study in the history of modern India (1707-1813) by J L Mehta.
You could look at a wider look at how ancient (as opposed to later eras) India taxed it's people in K D Mehtas work, Taxation in Ancient India: From the Earliest Times Up to the Guptas.
Or People, taxation and trade in Mughal India by Shireen Mosvi. The British mostly adopted the tax systems created by the Mughals (who themselves used the system put in place by the Delhi Sultanate).
5 & 6 An economic history of India by Rothemund as well as Starvation amidst Plenty: The Making of Famine in Bengal, Honan and Tonkin, 1942-45 by Sugata Bose.
You could also consider Churchill's Secret war by Madhushree Mukherjee. She is not a professional historian per se but her book(s) are well researched and cited, she writes extensively on the famine in Bengal.
Not to discourage further responses but this question was addressed previously,
What exactly caused the Bengal famine of 1943 and how much is Churchill to blame for it ? by u/vonadler
Was Churchill and the United Kingdom more generally complicit in the Bengal Famine? by u/gnikivar2
This is a relevant AskHistorians question that came up recently and quite often that covers it, in particular /u/Abrytan's top comment...
The post by RajaRajaC places the blame for the famine solely on Britain’s shoulders. They then choose to assign ultimate blame to Churchill himself for failing to send shipments of food aid to India. They claim categorically that “His role though is in his absolute refusal of food aid, be it from within India (other provinces were exporting food) or Australia and his insistence that the Med theatre get all these grains as a strategic stockpile.” I would question this understanding of the evidence.
The majority of the below is from my reading of the Famine Inquiry Commission’s report, who investigated the famine directly afterwards and interviewed many witnesses. The report can be read here
The famine was initially caused by several poor years of harvest. The majority of the year’s yield was the winter aman crop which supplied 74% of the food for the year. The crop of 1940 was exceptionally poor and so stored stocks were heavily drawn upon in 1941. The crop of 1941 was adequate but not enough to replenish the stocks. The fall of Burma early in 1942 led to the loss of its exports to Bengal and others. And the initial result was that exports from Bengal increased, as they sought to provide assistance to other areas. Imports to Bengal were too low to meet their needs, even before the Cyclone hit in October which destroyed some areas, and caused severe damage to the aman crop of 1942.
The Indian Central Government had delegated powers to the provinces to control exports and it was these provinces, in their anxiety to conserve their own resources, that refused to export surplus food to Bengal. The solution to this short-sighted selfishness would have been to centralise control, and to force those provinces with a surplus to export rice to Bengal. However in March 1943, the Bengal Government demanded of the Indian Government that all barriers to trade be removed, and so a policy of de-control was actually instituted from May. This was an abject failure, the firm of Calcutta rice merchants that the Bengal Government tasked with buying rice for the Government made a good profit, but the stock it purchased was insufficient, and prices remained staggeringly high in Bengal. It was only in June 1943 that this policy was reversed and only at the end of August that alternative measures started to be taken.
The Bengal Government was criticised by the Famine Inquiry Commission for several reasons:
Firstly, they did not officially declare a famine early enough. This was the first stage in the Famine Code, a set procedure designed to help with famine relief. The failure was because they were trying to allay fears and create confidence, and the measures of the standard Code were felt to be inapplicable, as the situation in Bengal differed from those the Code was designed for. While this was correct, in that the Code would have had to be modified, a declaration would have triggered the appointment of a Famine Commissioner who would have had far-reaching powers and responsibilities to deal with the famine more effectively. This only took place at the end of 1943, when it should have happened many months earlier.
Secondly, there was a delay in starting relief measures entirely. From the first months of 1943 local Officers were reporting growing distress in many districts. However it was only in June 1943 that the Bengal Government called for detailed information. Orders for relief efforts were not issued until August and the Famine Commissioner was not appointed until 26th September, it was September again when any large scale distribution of food was begun.
Thirdly, the Bengal Government failed to properly manage the stockpile and storage of supplies. From August to November when the Army took charge of movement, the Bengal Government showed a failure to organise the arrival of large shipments of food into Calcutta, and despatch them to the districts. Stocks arriving in Calcutta were not properly identified on arrival, poor records were made, and appropriate staff were not appointed. The Government of India offered help in providing personnel, but the Bengal Government said this wasn’t needed. Storage was inadequate, and large stockpiles were stored in the open in the Royal Botanical Gardens, which caused sharp public opprobrium and some spoilage.
Fourthly, while adequate stocks arrived in Calcutta, little of it reached the rural areas that were most at risk. Out of 206,000 tons that the Bengal government received, 141,000 tons were retained in Calcutta, while only 65,000 tons were sent out to the countryside. The Commission criticised the Bengal Government for allowing the business interests of Calcutta to outweigh the interests of saving the lives of the rural population.
While the Commission saved most of their criticism for the Bengal Government they also criticised the Indian Government for failing to recognise that the Bengal Government was failing to adequately control the famine, and for not stepping in sooner. The Indian Government began to send large supply shipments in August, but it wasn’t until October that the new Viceroy, Lord Wavell visited Bengal and the central Government stepped in to take more direct control of the administration of the famine relief.
With all of this in mind the question must be made therefore, as to how far Britain, and its Prime Minister, can be blamed for the failure to adequately deal with the famine in 1943. The Report does not mention anything that Britain should have done to alleviate the situation, and the measures introduced from October 1943 seem to have begun to transform the situation. There appears to have been adequate food available elsewhere in India without the need for international relief shipments, and in the view of the Commission it was the failure of the Indian and Bengal Governments to enact these measures earlier and more effectively that was the cause of the catastrophic loss of life.
Throughout those crucial early months from December 1942 to July 1943, Suhrawardy, the minister responsible for food administration in the Bengal Government, was insisting to Delhi and London that the problem was one of hoarding, that there were no food shortages in Bengal overall. This official position was disseminated to the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow in Delhi, and to the Secretary of State for India Leo Amery in London. The Bengal policies were primarily that of cracking down on hoarders and speculators.
It was in early July when Suhrawardy claimed a ‘very great famine’. It was in mid-July that Lord Linlithgow changed his mind and started making demands for food imports as a matter of extreme urgency. And finally Amery in London first claimed in a War Cabinet meeting in London on 31st July that there were food shortages unrelated to hoarding. This was the first that Churchill would have heard of this argument, and it would have run counter to everything that Delhi and London would have been told for more than half a year.
The War Cabinet was cautious but still the War Minister promised 50,000 tons of wheat from Australia, and 100,000 tons of Iraqi barley. But in early September the War Minister first advised Amery that he did not have enough ships for the transport of these grains. Therefore it was in a War Cabinet meeting on 24th September, with the December aman crop almost at harvest that it was questioned whether other war-critical shipping should be diverted to relieve India. It was decided that it would not be possible to divert ships to deliver grain to India before this next harvest became available. The arguments being made by Amery were purely from a war standpoint, arguing that famine relief in Bengal was critical to the war effort. It was from this meeting that Amery infamously wrote in his diary that “Winston [Churchill] may be right in saying that the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks, at any rate from the war point of view, but he makes no sufficient allowance for the sense of Empire responsibility in this country”.
Churchill’s crude language aside, and remembering the fact that he wasn’t a dictator, so the decision of the War Cabinet was not his alone but a decision of the whole, was this decision of the War Cabinet on September 24th actually responsible for exacerbating the famine? From 24th September to the harvest in December of the largest rice crop ever seen in Bengal, the Indian Government was starting to deal with the famine more effectively on their own. Food shipments from the Punjab and other areas were already arriving in Calcutta from the Indian Government from August. Would additional international grain shipments in those two months of October/November have made any difference, when the situation was already being turned around? The measures that are usually credited for alleviating the famine were those introduced by the new Viceroy Wavell when he arrived in October. He brought in 15,000 soldiers and considerable army and RAF transport and staff to aid distribution which transformed the situation considerably.
The Famine Inquiry Commission’s 1945 report can be read here
Other sources are: 'Sufficiency and sufficiency and sufficiency': revisiting the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, C O Grada, available here;
Entitlement, shortage and the 1943 Bengal famine: Another look, Tauger, available here
The causes of famine-A refutation of Professor Sen's theory Peter Bowbrick available here