HUNGRY HUNGRY HUNGRY
HUNGRY BENGAL BENGAL BENGAL BENGAL : WAR, FAMINE AND THE END : WAR, FAMINE AND THE END : WAR, FAMINE AND THE END : WAR, FAMINE AND THE END OF EMPIRE
OF EMPIRE OF EMPIRE
OF EMPIRE 1939 1939 1939 1939 ---- 1946 1946 1946 1946
BY
Dr. Janam Mukherjee, University of Michigan, USA
Abstract
In the twilight years of British colonial rule in India, Bengal stood at the crossroads of complex and contentious forces that served to define an era of political uncertainty, social turmoil, and cumulative violence. The period between 1939 and 1946 in Bengal, can be defined, above all, by three interrelated events: World War II, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Calcutta riots of 1946. Mobilization for war began in 1939, but Britain's sense of urgency was difficult to impress upon a skeptical Indian population already chaffing under the injustices of colonial rule and grave economic hardship.
When Japan bombed Calcutta in 1942, the injustices and hardships only multiplied. As conflict between Allied forces and Japan in Southeast Asia intensified, Calcutta emerged as a primary supply-front in the war-effort, leading to the economic destabilization of the entire region, which, in turn, precipitated catastrophic famine throughout the province. With starvation decimating the countryside by early 1943, residents of Bengal poured into Calcutta seeking relief. Subsequently Calcutta's already fragile infrastructure buckled under the immense pressure of famine refugees, becoming a grim landscape of starvation and disease. While colonial officials sidelined the elected provincial government and communitarian-defined parties jockeyed for popular support in anticipation of the end of colonial rule, at least three million residents of Bengal died. As famine became increasingly entangled in rancorous political debate, social stratification also intensified, and communal identities congealed. As such, Calcutta was still deeply enmeshed in the socio- political fall-out of famine when it was plunged into still deeper turmoil by the communal riots that rocked the city in August of 1946. The work that I will present will centralize hunger as the key hermeneutic in understanding this period of suffering and strife.
