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The forgotten Indian Holocaust

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posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 12:06 PM
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www.tehelka.com...



The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 must rank as the greatest disaster in the subcontinent in the 20th century. Nearly 4 million Indians died because of an artificial famine created by the British government, and yet it gets little more than a passing mention in Indian history books.

Australian biochemist Dr Gideon Polya has called the Bengal Famine a “manmade holocaust” because Churchill’s policies were directly responsible for the disaster. Bengal had a bountiful harvest in 1942, but the British started diverting vast quantities of food grain from India to Britain, contributing to a massive food shortage in the areas comprising present-day West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Bangladesh.

Churchill could easily have prevented the famine. Even a few shipments of food grain would have helped, but the British prime minister adamantly turned down appeals from two successive Viceroys, his own Secretary of State for India and even the President of the US .

Churchill was totally remorseless in diverting food to the British troops and Greek civilians. To him, “the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis (was) less serious than sturdy Greeks”, a sentiment with which Secretary of State for India and Burma, Leopold Amery, concurred.


Certain Holocausts and engineered genocides have been conveniently forgotten in history by history books . This is thread made to simple point out the Genocide carried out by then British govt. against its colonies in south Asia . Nazi genocide on Jews is really nothing compared to this.
edit on 17-6-2014 by maddy21 because: (no reason given)

edit on 6/17/2014 by tothetenthpower because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 12:26 PM
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Those who rule us think nothing of killing us off if it is convenient or expedient to their plans.............
The Rulers do not have the humanity of a pit viper....
TWAS EVER THUS......
edit on 17-6-2014 by stirling because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 01:02 PM
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Holy Cow!!! (No pun intended!)
I don't think I ever heard of most of the famines listed!
I had heard about China, but only because I was a voracious reader,
& read books like Pearl Bucks, "The Good Earth"!

Of course, growing up in the US we were never taught things like this.
Why would they teach this,
when even our Native American history has been suppressed???
We didn't even learn geography,
about most of the smaller countries in the world!

How has India managed to keep their anger from festering all these years???
The sad part is...this was so huge, it couldn't be hidden...
what about all the other day to day atrocities, that aren't even documented???
I have read a few books & watched movies
about day to day life in India under British rule.
I've wondered how much was really true. Apparently even more than we knew!!!

How shameful! Is it any wonder that 'Whitey' is hated around the world?!
Unfortunately, whenever two cultures meet,
it usually has not ended well for one of them!
Thinking of Japan & China,
Rome & the invaded country of the decade, the Vikings...
It seems like no one can stay home & mind their own business,
& improve their country without oppressing others!

Just turn on the news today even...some things never change!
Stupid, arrogant humans!!!!
Maybe Karma will pay us back with an invasion of evil, lizard aliens???!!!
WOQ



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 01:22 PM
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a reply to: wasobservingquietly

Some estimates suggest deaths from around 1-2billion people in the time span of 200 years of Rule



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 01:37 PM
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The Bengal Famine was a collection of problems all thrown into the mix, not least the massive social upheaval of WW2 and the need to defend India from the Japanese. There was no purposeful attempt by the Indian Government and the British to exacerbate existing food shortages. In fact policies were designed to ensure food shortages were addressed on a province by province basis.
When the problem was exposed the (Indian) Provincial governments obstructed grain movements from their provinces to the areas where food was needed.

Four things to note before historical revisionism takes hold.

1.This was a famine and not a holocaust.
2.It was not an attempt to cause death by the Indian Government. Rather it was the elected Indian-run provinces that obstructed aid and exacerbated the situation.
3.The figure of 4 million is the upper end of the range. Usually it’s quoted as 1 to 4 million who died of starvation and/or disease.
4.The famine was caused by multiple reasons and at the time there was a war on which constrained shipping in food as the Indian Government had done in the past.

Regards



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 01:48 PM
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It was quiet clearly an engineered famine designed to cause the death of millions of people . The Cause of the famine has been clearly listed on the link and there are further observations made by eminent historians(link in OP) to suggest this was engineered famine which is pretty much an Holocaust



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 01:51 PM
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originally posted by: paraphi

1.This was a famine and not a holocaust.
2.It was not an attempt to cause death by the Indian Government. Rather it was the elected Indian-run provinces that obstructed aid and exacerbated the situation.
3.The figure of 4 million is the upper end of the range. Usually it’s quoted as 1 to 4 million who died of starvation and/or disease.
4.The famine was caused by multiple reasons and at the time there was a war on which constrained shipping in food as the Indian Government had done in the past.



Read the second paragraph of the OP , it disproves all your points . And Indian govt. did not exist back then so stop using that term



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 02:43 PM
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originally posted by: maddy21
Read the second paragraph of the OP , it disproves all your points . And Indian govt. did not exist back then so stop using that term


The OP is taking a revisionist view. Churchill had no control of the weather.

On the Indian Government: The Government of India Act 1935 created an elected assembly and a bunch of provincial assemblies (11, I think) with control over local affairs. The only thing the Indian Government did not control was defence and foreign policy.

There was an Indian Government.



posted on Jun, 17 2014 @ 07:50 PM
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originally posted by: maddy21
It was quiet clearly an engineered famine designed to cause the death of millions of people . The Cause of the famine has been clearly listed on the link and there are further observations made by eminent historians(link in OP) to suggest this was engineered famine which is pretty much an Holocaust



I don't believe it is possible to engineer weather conditions ... it is bad
weather conditions and the lack of rain which is responsible for poor harvests.
And not governments.

Those figures will be including disease and there is much disease.
Malaria is one of the largest killers in India, it is second only to TB
in its impact on world health. A large variety of internal parasitic
infections are endemic.
Although it will now be better than it was in the 1950's, access to
medical treatment was nil.

My ancestors first went to India in 1800, and were there till India
got its independence in 1947. India is vast with many states and as you will
see in the chart they all took their turns regarding famines.

Disasters happen all over the world (earth quakes, floods famines)
and other countries these days all rally round and help out but you
are blaming the British government when they were fighting a war, and
the British people themselves were suffering meagre rationing. Also at that
time there was very little air cargo travel was on ships and it was a two
week journey each way!

There were also during this time (around 1943/147) riots all over India
when the Hindu's and Muslims were fighting each other prior to partition
and the forming of Pakistan which didn't exist prior to 1947.



posted on Jun, 19 2014 @ 08:09 AM
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originally posted by: eletheia

originally posted by: maddy21
It was quiet clearly an engineered famine designed to cause the death of millions of people . The Cause of the famine has been clearly listed on the link and there are further observations made by eminent historians(link in OP) to suggest this was engineered famine which is pretty much an Holocaust



I don't believe it is possible to engineer weather conditions ... it is bad
weather conditions and the lack of rain which is responsible for poor harvests.
And not governments.

Those figures will be including disease and there is much disease.
Malaria is one of the largest killers in India, it is second only to TB
in its impact on world health. A large variety of internal parasitic
infections are endemic.
Although it will now be better than it was in the 1950's, access to
medical treatment was nil.

My ancestors first went to India in 1800, and were there till India
got its independence in 1947. India is vast with many states and as you will
see in the chart they all took their turns regarding famines.

Disasters happen all over the world (earth quakes, floods famines)
and other countries these days all rally round and help out but you
are blaming the British government when they were fighting a war, and
the British people themselves were suffering meagre rationing. Also at that
time there was very little air cargo travel was on ships and it was a two
week journey each way!

There were also during this time (around 1943/147) riots all over India
when the Hindu's and Muslims were fighting each other prior to partition
and the forming of Pakistan which didn't exist prior to 1947.


Incorrect Before the British invasion there was literally no famine and if you go through additional sources and even in the link its clearly told that the harvest during those years were good.



posted on Jun, 19 2014 @ 02:12 PM
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a reply to: eletheia
Please substantiate your views with proof. I like that the British like to deny that they did anything wrong in India. Do you even know that there was a good harvest in Bengal in 42-43 and that all the food was exported, most of it rotted away. Aid was denied multiple times.



posted on Jun, 19 2014 @ 03:29 PM
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originally posted by: maddy21
Incorrect Before the British invasion there was literally no famine and if you go through additional sources and even in the link its clearly told that the harvest during those years were good.


What does "literally no famine" actually mean? I cannot believe that in the Indian subcontinent there was no famine, what with weather and all that. Famine has occurred after independence, has it not. The only difference in the outcome was the ability to distribute food. In the Bengal Famine, the Provincial governments (run by Indians), were slow to react and help another famine-struck Province and this is recorded fact. That fact that the British could not ship food to the effected area (on account of a world war) exacerbated the situation, but there was no conspiracy not to resolve the famine when the depth became known.

The conspiracy here would be why the Provinces failed to act more quickly. The orthodox view is that they (the Provincial governments) did not believe there was a famine due to statistical estimates suggesting Bengal had plenty of food.

However, one could argue that it was one way to increase anti-British sentiment (blame the Brits) as a way to full independence was on the horizon. Another reason could have been the sectarian differences, which were so obvious when Independence resulted in Partition and the ensuing sectarian mayhem of Hindu versus Muslim. Bengal did have a reasonably high Muslim population. There's the conspiracy, that of Indian politics and British misreading of the said. That, rather than the British somehow manipulating a famine for a purpose unknown, in the middle of a war that put Japan in a position to invade India proper.

Regards



posted on Jun, 19 2014 @ 08:19 PM
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originally posted by: maddy21

Incorrect Before the British invasion there was literally no famine and if you go through additional sources and even in the link its clearly told that the harvest during those years were good.



British invasion?? What invasion??

In 1600 a group of 'merchants' formed themselves into a corporation for
trading purposes this became the East India Company .... NO INVASION
www.sscnet.ucla.edu...


The first of my ancestors went out to India around 1710. He and some of
his sons took part in the 'Survey of India' maps and records of the survey
are recorded in the Phillimore Historical records of the Survey of India
held in the British Library in London.

His grandson was assistant Surgeon in HH the Nizam's own 3rd Infantry
rising to Major. The Nizam was the richest man in the world. (Note this
was not the British army.
mianwaheed.blogspot.co.uk...

As I said before India is a vast country and very varied terrain from the
Himalaya's to Tamil Nadu.

There have always been famines in some part of India .... but famines
are caused by climate/weather and not governments. I would imagine
the tsunami which happened in 2004 had an effect on food crops ....
Are the British to blame for them too?

Epidemic diseases had devasting effects and probably killed as many
people if not more ...*plague, *leprosy, *cholera, *malaria, *dysentery ..
between 1896 and 1899 plague according to state records killed
over 2 million people, but actual figures are probably more.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...



posted on Jun, 19 2014 @ 08:36 PM
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a reply to: paraphi
Here is a post from the BBC about it.
www.bbc.co.uk...


The 1942-43 Bengal Famine occurred in spite of a good harvest in Bengal and surplus grain stocks in other parts of India. The British exported the grain, pushing up prices and leaving the peasantry to starve. A British policy of destroying boats in case the Japanese invaded stopped villagers travelling to trade for food exacerbating things. The British lied about their policies claiming that grain was not being exported and massively downsizing the death toll, pretending that there was no famine. It was only when the British owned Statesman newspaper broke the silence that they had to acknowledge it and Lord Wavell was brought in to do something. He started bringing in surplus grain from other parts of India but this was, at first just piled up in the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta and not distributed to the starving. Indian protesters piled up dead bodies of refugees outside the gardens. Later the British tried to suppress the facts about this British-inflicted holocaust in India, occurring simultaneously with the German-inflicted genocide in Europe, as shown in the 1997 Channel 4 Secret History programme The Forgotten Famine. Indeed, this was not the first British-inflicted famine holocaust in British-ruled India. In 1901, The Lancet estimated conservatively that 19 million Indians had died in Western India during the drought famine of the 1890s. The death toll was so high because of the British policy of refusal to intervene and implement famine relief (unlike the anti-profiteering measures etc. taken by the Mughals and Marathas during famines) as detailed by American historian Mike Davis in his Late Victorian Holocausts. Similarly in the 1870s some 17 million or so Indians dies in the Deccan and South India due to the "let them starve" policies encouraged by Lord Lytton and other British rulers. Indeed, whilst millions starved in 1876, the British held the biggest feast in human history in Delhi, the Delhi Durbar to celebrate Victoria becoming Empress, feeding 70,000 Britishers and Indian princelings for a week. In 1901 when people called for famine relief, the London government urged Delhi to contribute to the Boer war instead of famine relief but had no objection to the huge expense of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.

All you have posted is empty rhetoric. No proof about the said topic or otherwise. Please refute the claims.



posted on Jun, 19 2014 @ 09:08 PM
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originally posted by: paraphi

However, one could argue that it was one way to increase anti-British sentiment (blame the Brits) as a way to full independence was on the horizon. Another reason could have been the sectarian differences, which were so obvious when Independence resulted in Partition and the ensuing sectarian mayhem of Hindu versus Muslim. Bengal did have a reasonably high Muslim population. There's the conspiracy, that of Indian politics and British misreading of the said. That, rather than the British somehow manipulating a famine for a purpose unknown, in the middle of a war that put Japan in a position to invade India proper.



Independence was already on the table it was just a matter of time.

Your right the problem was between the Hindu's and Muslims .... It was a
bloodbath, My Father was involved in trying to quell some of those riots.

Funnily enough the Indians don't appear to hold any anti British sentiment.
I was last in India in 2005, and I had wondered about that however I came
across no resentment when I broached the subject, indeed twice I was
told the British in their time had done much for them and left them with
a first class rail system ( which if I remember rightly reading somewhere is
the highest employer world wide?) and a 'Civil Service' second to none ...LOL



posted on Jun, 20 2014 @ 06:12 AM
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a reply to: eletheia

Myself also when I visited India.
Not one Indian showed any resentment towards me being a Brit and welcomed me.
I have worked with many Indians here in the UK and everyone I have spoken to say the British in India was a good thing.



posted on Jun, 20 2014 @ 07:57 AM
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originally posted by: an0nThinker
a reply to: eletheia
Please substantiate your views with proof. I like that the British like to deny that they did anything wrong in India. Do you even know that there was a good harvest in Bengal in 42-43 and that all the food was exported, most of it rotted away. Aid was denied multiple times.



Yes .... and there is a word ... 'corruption' ...often by those in charge or elected.
Even today in Africa food donated for the starving rots because it is not
distributed as intended. Often being sold to those who can afford to pay.

India as I have said before is a huge country with many states. Each state
had its own ruling body equivalent to 'Royalty' and often at war with
each other (not the British)
The British for want of a better word were 'Overseers' most often
policing and keeping the peace. The rulers of Bengal were the 'Nawab's'

I fail to understand what you say?
"QUOTE"
* They had a good harvest ... OK
* And all that food was exported ... OK
* Most of that rotted away???? If it was exported, How then did it rot away???




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