Ian Stephens came to India as a civil servant dealing with P.R in Delhi. He was then taken on by the Statesman- owned by a big British firm- and became its editor in Calcutta. He broke the story of the Bengal Famine with dramatic pictures of starving people. Did this help the starving? No. Nobody gave a shit about them.
Amartya Sen believes differently. Why? The answer is that he met Ian Stephens- then a Fellow at his College- as a young undergrad.
Stephens was very willing to talk with me about the famine. There were several things I learned. One is that press freedom has something to do with restraining famine.
This was not the case. Stephens' account of the period- 'Monsoon Mornings'- make it clear that the Bengal Government- run by elected Bengalis- could shut down any paper it didn't like. But the Bengal Government didn't care about Stephens' articles because he was pursuing his own vendetta against Delhi. He represented the civilian Europeans who wanted him to poke and prod at 'Authority' as a way of retaliation for wartime privations. Stephens himself fought a losing battle against the requisition of his air-conditioners- what pissed him off was that they went to a VD hospital for soldiers- but was able to use the American fear of negative publicity to prevent the loss of his own apartment to the Yanks.
Stephens was upper class and well connected. Thus, as a matter of instinct, he was skillful in using his position as editor of a leading European paper owned by a big Business House, to protect his own interests and to burnish his fame. Unlike his predecessor, a hot headed Irishman who believed that London should have cut a deal with Congress, he was pro-League. Indeed, he later had to leave India because he supported the Pakistani position on Kashmir. This made him popular with Bengalis because they too had a reason to hate Nehru- whose ancestors were from Kashmir- because Nehru, as President of Congress, had refused to support the popular Fazl ul Haq as Premier of Bengal thus forcing him into the arms, first of the League, and then the Hindu Mahasabha. However, by mid '43, the League could cobble together a Government, displace Haq, and blame him and the Hindus for the Famine while profiting from it.
It was in this context that Stephens could move against 'Authority' more particularly because the Viceroy was leaving and the new one would have to make nice with him if he played a strong hand now. Moreover, he knew he had a 'scoop' on his hands- Bengal was starving- and he would would gain personally by exposing the truth and by publishing a pamphlet on 'Maladministration'. He needn't fear sedition or other charges because he was posing no threat to the new Bengali Premier. Indeed, Calcutta had been delighted when Stephens attacked the Food Member at the Center, Srivastava, an industrialist from Kanpur. The man to be wary of was Suhrawardy who was said to control half the gangsters in the slums. Stephens was careful not to point the finger at his corrupt dealings.
Only Suhrawardy's predecessors mattered because only they had responsibility for food. The Viceroy had none and Amery in London was bound to supply Parliament only with information given to him by the Bengali Cabinet.
Food Prices had more than tripled. It was obvious that some would starve if nothing was done.
The Brits in Delhi had a water-tight alibi- as Stephens himself explains in his book. No Indian State was genuinely willing to help Bengal and the Bengali government too had no burning desire to feed useless people. Thus 'Authority' in Delhi did not give a shit about looking like the villains of the piece. Their backs were already covered. Indeed, they needed the excuse of Famine to fight for more resources from the Allied High Command. Moreover, there was a fall guy ready to hand- Fazl ul Haq whom they didn't like anyway. The guy had foolishly allied with the Bose brothers. Since Netaji had gone over to the Axis, Bengalis dying of hunger was payback for Bengali treachery. Sikhs and Gorkhas and Punjabi Muslims mattered. The cowardly Hindu Bengali (who was wrongly believed to be the main victim) didn't matter at all. In any case, a few million starving Indians might get Gandhi to see that hunger strikes had little efficacy. Indeed, his calling off his fast was a victory for Linlithgow- the Viceroy.
People in Calcutta knew there was a famine because they had eyes. But they simply didn't care. Stephens was saying that this could hamper the war effort because epidemics might spread but, since only the Army could do anything- the Bengali Government being corrupt and useless- that would have to wait till till the counter-offensive was ready. Meanwhile the Japanese had become overstretched and essentially defeated themselves.
Viceroy Linlithgow probably knew all about the famine threat in mid-1942 itself. That's why he never once visited Bengal. Stephens, preoccupied with power games with 'Authority', didn't get that Famine was imminent till March 1943. Wordsworth, his deputy, had been in the Education Service and understood the debates in the Legislative Assembly. He knew it was common knowledge that there was a famine building up but obfuscated the matter in his reportage. Stephens says reading Wordsworth article- which let slip that the official statistics were utterly useless- was what first opened his eyes.
Sen says
I learned also—which I knew as a child—that you could have a famine with a lot of food around.
No you can't. Food spoils quickly. If there's a lot of food around, guys eat a lot and then throw the rest away. It wasn't like everybody had big freezers back then. Lots of food causes food prices to crash. Too little food causes food prices to double or triple or quadruple. Why? Both demand and supply are inelastic.
And how the country is governed made a difference.
No. Who is governing matters. If it is a crook like Shurawardy people starve when they are not being hacked to death. Shurawardy did well out of both the Famine and the Partition bloodletting. Democracy- in Bengal- produces shitty outcomes because Bengali politicians can be really shitty.
The British did not want rebellion in Calcutta.
Who would have rebelled? Congress was in Jail. Muslims would have killed any Hindus who tried to rebel. They were the majority in the Province and would get assistance from the Army and Police.
I believe no one of Calcutta died in the famine.
Lots of people left Calcutta because of the Jap threat. Those who came in were indeed at the end of their tether. Why? There was a food availability deficit. Some bunch of good people needed to bring in food and distribute it to those who had none. The alternative was to wait for a good harvest while the weakest went to the wall. Ultimately the Army took action and there was a good crop. The crisis passed. Politics continued as normal. Muslims gave their votes to the Muslim League. But the Hindus fought back on Direct Action Day and prevailed in Calcutta. Partition became inevitable.
People died in Calcutta, but they were not of Calcutta.
Later people of Calcutta died in Calcutta because Suhraward's goons slit their throats. Then the Hindus fought back and thus preserved the City for India.
They came from elsewhere, because what little charity there was came from Indian businessmen based in Calcutta.
The same guys who financed the Congress Party- which was in jail.
The starving people kept coming into Calcutta in search of free food, but there was really not much of that. The Calcutta people were entirely protected by the Raj
But the Government was in Bengali hands. People protected their own. The Army protected itself and prepared to take the war to the Japs. Some of the poor died because they were wholly useless to anybody who mattered.
to prevent discontent of established people during the war.
The discontented were in jail.
Three million people in Calcutta had ration cards, which entailed that at least six million people were being fed at a very subsidized price of food. What the government did was to buy rice at whatever price necessary to purchase it in the rural areas, making the rural prices shoot up.
Because there was a food availability deficit. Why did the rural folk sell their rice at high prices? It was because they liked money.
The price of rationed food in Calcutta for established residents was very low and highly subsidized,
There would have been a black market. There are leakages from rationed stock. The question is who made the money from it. The answer has to do with who was financing the ruling party- the Muslim League.
though the market price in Calcutta—outside the rationing network—rose with the rural price increase
The Raj had feared uprisings of Calcutta people during the war,
No. They feared the Japs because the Japs were good at fighting and had guns and planes. Nobody except Calcuttans feared the people of the City. Why? There was a big army presence. Mobs are easy for soldiers to kill.
but the ration card–holding people of that big city had no cause for personal grievance, which suited the Empire. It was a “divide and rule” of a different type—distinct from the Hindu-Muslim divisions also cultivated in the Raj.
Who cultivated them after the British left? Why did the proportion of Hindus in East Bengal keep falling decade after decade? The British united the country. The Muslim League partitioned it. Why did Bangladesh have a big famine after transitioning to Democracy in the Seventies? Whose 'divide and rule' was it?
The “haves” were docile and the “have-nots” starved and often died. There were a lot of things I learned from talking with Ian.
Talking to Stephens was all very well. But Sen needed to talk to ICS officers serving in Bengal to get the full picture. This would have meant talking to Binoy Ranjan Sen- later head of F.A.O- who was distantly related to Amartya. Why did the one Sen not talk to the other Sen? The answer is that one was an academic while the other lived in the real world. What possible intercourse could there be between them?
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