Mridula Mukherjee on Nehru & the Bengal Famine

Last year, Mridula Mukherjee published the following in the National Herald-  

This week we bring this passage from 'The Discovery of India' (by Jawaharlal Nehru, published in November of 1946) on the Bengal famine of 1943. It is for the reader to judge whether or not there are uncanny resemblances between the scenario so scathingly sketched in it and the present predicament.

God alone knows what Mridula means. Perhaps she thinks her readers believe that India is still ruled by the British. Or perhaps what she is hinting at that Nehru was as stupid as his great-grandson Rahul while Mamta is as bad as Suhrawardy.  

“India was very sick, both in mind and body. While some people had prospered during the war,

e.g. the guys who financed the Congress Party and the Muslim League 

the burden on others had reached breaking point,

Nehru & Co preferred to sulk in jail while others took on the burden of fighting the Japanese. Many died in battle or in Tojo's prison camps. They had been tested to breaking point. Congress leaders took a break from politics while waiting in jail for the Japanese to be defeated so as to pose as the victors in some supposed 'freedom struggle'.  

and as an awful reminder of this came famine, a famine of vast dimensions affecting Bengal and east and south India.

Nehru should have formed a coalition with Fazl ul Haq. Congress ministries should not have resigned. They had a duty to protect the voters who had put them in power. Instead they made childish demands, which the League would not countenance, and then meekly queued up to go to jail. This turned out to be a good idea because they probably were just as useless and corrupt as people from other parties.  

“It was the biggest and most devastating famine in India during the past 170 years of British dominion, comparable to those terrible famines which occurred from 1766 to 1770 in Bengal and Bihar as an early result of the establishment of British rule.

Transferring power over food to an elected government in Bengal in 1937 turned out to be a bad idea. The politicians preferred to let their cronies get rich. 

It must be said, the 1935 Act had also permitted the setting up of a Federal Government at the  Center. But Congress would not compromise with the other parties to enable this to happen. Thus the transfer of power to 'representative' government in India had not resulted in Indians taking responsibility for feeding or defending themselves. 

As Nehru's pal, Stafford Cripps, told the Americans in a radio broadcast in 1942, Mahatma Gandhi wanted the Brits to leave so anarchy might prevail. The Japanese might take over- true- but Gandhi said that, with a bit of luck, they might move on to somewhere nicer.  

Epidemics followed, especially cholera and malaria, and spread to other provinces, and even today they are taking their toll of scores of thousands of lives.

Gandhi thought mud-packs and enemas might help. But small pox vaccination was evil. It was tantamount to the forcible consumption of beef! BTW, Gandhi's pal, medical Doctor Pranjivan Mehta also opposed vaccinations and quarantines in Burma. Naturally, the fool wanted to make a present of the place to the Burmese who would chase Indians out.

Millions have died of famine and disease and yet that spectre hovers over India and claims its victims.

An agricultural nation can't feed itself. Why? There can be only one answer. It has horrible leadership. The administration may be good but administration is not leadership. In 1951, Nehru asked for and got 2 million tons of food from America. Between 1955 and 1971, America sent over 50 million tons. This was bad for the Indian farmer. It represented a failure of leadership. 

“This famine unveiled the picture of India as it was below the thin veneer of the prosperity of a small number of people at the top — a picture of poverty and ugliness of British rule.

There was a British administration at the Federal level. But the Provinces had control over food and health and education. Thus the situation Nehru is complaining of was the product of Indian misrule or the horrible type of leadership politicians like himself were providing the Indian people. 

That was the culmination and fulfilment of British rule in India.

But there could have been no British rule in India if the culmination and fulfilment of Indian self-rule hadn't been so fucking disastrous that a handful of foreigners from a distant isle could take over the place. 

In 1962, India had to appeal to America for military aid. It seems, under Nehru's leadership, it could neither feed nor defend itself.  

It was no calamity of nature or play of the elements that brought this famine, nor was it caused by actual war operations and enemy blockade.

In which case, the blame falls entirely on the elected Government of the Province in question.  

Every competent observer is agreed that it was a man-made famine which could have been foreseen and avoided.

By those elected to do so but who chose not to. The Ipsahanis made a lot of money out of the famine. Nehru must have known this. But he prefers to blame the Brits though they had an alibi. Power over food had been transferred to elected Indians five years previously.  

“Everyone is agreed that there was amazing indifference, incompetence, and complacency shown by all the authorities concerned.

But those with authority were brown, not white. The Governor had to do what the Premier said- so long as he enjoyed the confidence of the Legislative Assembly. The Viceroy had to go by what the Governor reported. The Secretary of State, back in London, had to abide by the terms of the 1935 Act. So did the Prime Minister.  

Right up to the last moment, when thousands were dying daily in the public streets, famine was denied

by elected Ministers 

and references to it in the Press were suppressed by the censors.

who reported to the elected Ministry.  

“When the Statesman, newspaper of Calcutta, published gruesome and ghastly pictures of starving and dying women and children in the streets of Calcutta, a spokesman of the Government of India,

this was the politician in charge of Food whose very Anglo Saxon name was Jwala Prasad Srivastava 

speaking officially in the central assembly,

whose president had the typically Welsh name of Sir Abdur Rahim. He was a strong supporter of the Pakistan demand and, though Bengali, moved to Karachi in 1947. 

protested against the ‘dramatization’ of the situation; to him apparently it was a normal occurrence for thousands to die daily from starvation in India.

Nehru's pleas for food aid were based on exactly this presumption.  

“Mr. Amery, of the India Office in London, distinguished himself especially by his denials and statements.

Which reflected the constitutional position whereby it was up to the elected Ministry in Bengal to declare, or not declare, a famine.  

And then, when it became impossible to deny or cloak the existence of widespread famine, each group in authority blamed some other group for it.

Why? The Premier and his Cabinet bore responsibility because they and they alone had the constitutional authority to declare, or not declare, a famine. 

Nehru's argument amounts to this- the British are responsible for the famine because they foolishly transferred power over food, finance, and civil supply to elected Indian politicians.  But Nehru was also demanding that the Brits hand over military and diplomatic power! The plain fact is, the Brits won the war militarily and diplomatically. Had a Federal Government been formed- as was envisaged by the 1935 Act- Indians might have had charge of both those departments. It is more than likely that they would have invited the Japanese in. 

Nehru's own diplomatic and military leadership led to a humiliating defeat by China in 1962 despite the fact that Nehru had championed China's cause. 

The Government of India said it was the fault of the provincial government, which itself was merely a puppet government functioning under the Governor and through the civil service.

It was not a puppet government. That's why it was able to enrich its supporters very greatly while making the lives of Hindus intolerable.  

“They were all to blame, but most of all, inevitably, that authoritarian government which the Viceroy represented in his person and which could do what it chose anywhere in India.

This may have been true where the elected administration chose to resign and go sulk in jail. But it wasn't true in the worst famine affected Province.  

In any democratic or semi- democratic country such a calamity would have swept away all the governments concerned with it.

Suhrawardy became Premier after the 1946 election. Had Mujib not been assassinated he'd have been re-elected after the 1974 famine- had he bothered to hold elections. 

Not so in India where everything continued as before….

for Hindus- because Congress continued to be useless.  Muslims however made great progress towards securing Pakistan. 

“The famine was a direct result of war conditions and the carelessness and complete lack of foresight of those in authority.

who were elected Indians.  But Nehru, by 1943, was fuming at Gandhi's complete lack of foresight. Yet, with respect to China, he was to show even less foresight. As he himself said, he and his ilk had lived in a make-believe world. 

The indifference of the authorities to the problem of the country’s food passes comprehension when every intelligent man who gave thought to the matter knew that some such crises was approaching.

Which is why they knew that there was a heck of a lot of money to be made by those with political connections.  

The famine could have been avoided, given proper handling of the food situation in the earlier years of the war. In every other country affected by the war full attention was paid to this vital aspect of war economy even before the war started. In India the Government of India started a food department three and a quarter years after the war began in Europe and over a year after the Japanese war started.

Because, the Indians had not been able to agree to the creation of a Federal Government. Thus the power that had been devolved to the Provinces could not be pooled in a representative Assembly. Indeed, it was only because Congress was sulking in jail that there could be a food department at the Center.  

“And yet it was common knowledge that the Japanese occupation of Burma vitally affected Bengal’s food supply.

But Nehru's pal, Bose- also a former President of Congress- allied himself with Hitler and Tojo though, it was 'common knowledge' that Japanese aggression would bring famine to Bose's own Bengal.  

The Government of India had no policy at all in regard to food till the middle of 1943 when famine was already beginning its disastrous career.

Once Nehru became Premier, India's policy was to beg for food- not try to grow it.  

It is most extraordinary how inefficient the Government always is in every matter other than the suppression of those who challenge its administration.

No great efficiency is involved in jailing people who meekly queue up for that purpose.  

Or perhaps it is more correct to say that, constituted as it is, its mind is completely occupied in its primary task of ensuring its own continuance.

Whereas Nehru's mind did not have to be occupied by anything at all because his jailors were responsible for feeding him and seeing to his medical needs.  

Only an actual crisis forces it to think of other matters.

China forced Nehru to think of 'other matters'- e.g. how to eject their invading troops. But what did Nehru's thinking lead to? He cried like a baby for Whitey to come and protect his people and feed them and wipe their collective bums. Then the Chinese unilaterally ceased hostilities and withdrew to the border they had decided on.  

That crisis again is accentuated by the ever-present crisis of want of confidence in the Government’s ability and bona fides.

Nehru had zero confidence in India's ability. It was bona fide shit, not just pretending to be shit.  

“Though the famine was undoubtedly due to war conditions and could have been prevented, it is equally true that its deeper causes lay in the basic policy which was impoverishing India and under which millions live on the verge of starvation.

That 'basic policy' involved not actually enslaving Indians and shooting seditious barristers and expropriating their property.  

In 1933 Major General Sir John Megaw, the Director-General of the Indian Medical Service, wrote in the course of a report on public health in India: ‘Taking India as a whole the dispensary doctors regard 39 per cent of the people as being well nourished, 41 per cent as poorly nourished, and 20 per cent as very badly nourished. The most depressing picture is painted by the doctors of Bengal who regard only 22 per cent of the people of the province as being well nourished while 31 per cent are considered to be very badly nourished.

By the end of Nehru's reign, Indian Statisticians believed that about a quarter of the population was under-nourished. Those below the starvation level might be about half a percentage with the overall figure around ten percent. There had been no improvement after fifteen years of Independence or twenty five years of Provincial autonomy with respect to food. 

The plain fact is, Congress did not have a Food policy unless begging can be considered a policy.  Why? Policies cost money to implement. Nehru & Co didn't want to spend money on feeding poor people. They could always blame the Brits for everything. Why didn't they simply enslave the natives and send English Dukes and Earls to run the place? 

“The tragedy of Bengal and the famines of Orissa, Malabar, and other places, are the final judgment on British rule in India.

No. The Brits had eliminated famine by the start of the Twentieth Century. They conquered Burma and gave it an incentive to supply the food deficit areas of India. During the Thirties, Burma was responsible for half of all rice exports. India suffered famine when the Japs took Burma from the Brits- at least partly because Indians and some others were too stupid to see that Jap rule would have been infinitely worse than British rule- but the Britain got it back with American help. They did rebuild Burmese exports to benefit their own Food Ministry but India got a much smaller allocation through the International Emergency Food Board. Burmese independence meant that the Burmese government could get a profit by being a monopsonist of rice. Predictably, this meant lower returns for rice and thus a deterioration in quality and quantity.  Also there was a shift away from it to other crops. After the 1962 coup, there was more intensive expulsion of Indians and a further deterioration in exports. 

India, unlike the Brits, never considered how to meet food availability deficit by looking to its own neighbourhood. Thus, it preferred to beg for wheat from America or the USSR even when Pakistan had a surplus. But then, India retained controls on inter-state food transfers after the war. 

The British will certainly leave India and their Indian Empire will become a memory, but what will they leave when they have to go, what human degradation and accumulated sorrow?

The Nehru dynasty will certainly leave Indian politics and their Party will become a memory, but what will they leave when they have to go? Nobody cares. We have better leadership now. India's human degradation and accumulated sorrow during the first half of the Twentieth Century had a lot to do with Indian politicians being utterly shit.  

Tagore saw this picture as he lay dying three years ago: ‘But what kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries’ administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth they will leave behind them!’”

Tagore's grandfather had spent good money lobbying the British parliament to lift restrictions on European settlement in India. Why? Whites would protect Hindus from Muslims. He knew that there would be little Hindu 'mud and filth' left behind in Muslim majority East Bengal where his family owned big estates. That's why he wasn't keen for the Brits to leave. 

When the Brits left did the administration, the army, and the judicial system deteriorate greatly? No- unless there was political interference. Thus Indians could have supplied 'the stream' (i.e. IAS etc) if only their political leaders hadn't been as stupid as shit. Nehru- like Gandhi- genuinely believed Indians were shit. Other politicians were less sure this was the case. Sill, they eagerly adopted Nehruvian or Gandhian or Communist ideologies so as to ensure India would remain shit. Sadly, some Indians didn't get the message. They are not properly Secular and Scientific. Indeed, they are nothing but Fascists! Not the sort Bose who went to cuddle with Hitler but the Franco sort who rebuilt their country and helped it transition to affluence and a type of Democracy which is not founded wholly upon demagoguery against a vanished Colonial power.