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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   42478 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Following up on the famine, it seems that the case against Britain is that although there were supply shortages everywhere (remember that Britain was under rationing at the time!), the British managed to supply food to most places except Bengal, which allegedly they neglected out of racism or a desire to punish.

The case for the British is that they begged the Americans to help because they couldn't spare supplies or shipping (Roosevelt apologetically said they were too busy) which doesn't sound much like the behaviour of racist oppressors, and that they were unable to commit further transport ships because they were needed for D-Day and there was too much chance of them being sunk:

Experts' disagreement over political issues can be found in differing explanations of the War Cabinet's refusal to allocate funds to import grain. Lizzie Collingham holds the massive global dislocations of supplies caused by World War II virtually guaranteed that hunger would occur somewhere in the world, yet Churchill's animosity and perhaps racism toward Indians decided the exact location where famine would fall.[230] Similarly, Madhusree Mukerjee makes a stark accusation: "The War Cabinet's shipping assignments made in August 1943, shortly after Amery had pleaded for famine relief, show Australian wheat flour travelling to Ceylon, the Middle East, and Southern Africa – everywhere in the Indian Ocean but to India. Those assignments show a will to punish."[231] In contrast, Mark Tauger strikes a more supportive stance: "In the Indian Ocean alone from January 1942 to May 1943, the Axis powers sank 230 British and Allied merchant ships totalling 873,000 tons, in other words, a substantial boat every other day. British hesitation to allocate shipping concerned not only potential diversion of shipping from other war-related needs but also the prospect of losing the shipping to attacks without actually [bringing help to] India at all."[232] Peter Bowbrick elaborates further on the British government's delay in shipping food, stating that Linlithgow's request for food shipments in December 1942 was half-hearted and that it was made on the assumption that Bengal already had a food surplus but that it was being hoarded, which is why it was ignored by the British metropolitan government. Further delays after April 1943 stemmed from the refusal to divert ships away from the preparations for Operation Overlord, whose failure would have been disastrous for the world and whose success was as a result prioritised above aid to India.[233]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Famine,_disease,_and_the_death_toll

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