Babli Sinha burbling about the Bengal Famine

Babli Sinha is Professor of English at Kalamazoo College, USA. She is the author of 'Cinema, Transnationalism, and Colonial India: Entertaining the Raj' (2013) and editor of 'South Asian Transnationalisms: Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century' (2012). 

Her latest book is titled-The Bengal Famine and Cultural Production: Signifying Colonial Trauma.

The big problem with her thesis is that Provincial Autonomy had been granted in 1935. By 1937, there was an elected Bengali Premier and Cabinet. Thus, the Bengal Famine was not a 'Colonial trauma'. It was a post-colonial trauma. The British had put an end to famine and large scale ethnic cleansing. Both returned to Bengal once elected Bengali politicians took power from the Colonial Civil Service. 

 

The truth is, the Bengali politicians in power were corrupt or incompetent. Thus the comparator for the 1943 Bengal famine was the 1974 famine in Bangladesh. Democracy, contra Amartya Sen, can create Famine because a food availability deficit is a great profit opportunity for cronies of the ruling party who can divert food from the public food distribution system to the black market. 

The Indian view- as opposed to the view taken by leftist academics on Western Campuses- was based on Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's book Panchasher Manwantar (“The Famine of ’43”) which accused Churchill of pronounced Muslim League bias. It portrayed the famine as genocide directed against Hindus by the Muslim politicians in power. It detailed the horrors of the famine and alleged officials’ complicity in black marketeering. The book was banned though Mookerjee was too important to himself be arrested. Other Hindus- including senior Civil Servants offered similar testimony. In particular, the Civil Supplies Minister H.S. Suhrawardy (who, later became Premier and triggered the mass bloodletting in Calcutta's 'Direct Action Day') and others in the Bengal cabinet had hoarded grain and enriched themselves while people died. Sir Arthur Dash, because he later served in East Pakistan, is considered reliable in this matter.

Mookerjee was to become the founder of the current ruling party at the Centre. Congress, too, benefited from 'cultural productions' pointing to the alliance between Churchill & the Muslim League and its deadly bias against Hindus. What few realized at that time was that the thinking of the future leaders of the Pakistani Army was affected by the horrors of the Bengal famine. The Punjabi & Pathan soldier came to see himself as racially superior. This paved the way for the genocide conducted by the Pakistani Army after an East Bengali won the first free and fair Election and stood poised to become Prime Minister of both wings of Pakistan. Notoriously, the Pakistani Commander in East Bengal endorsed mass rape as a way to change the DNA ('nasl' in Urdu) of the indigenous people! In other words, Mookerjee's narrative of an obscene alliance between right wing Racists like Churchill & Islamist military and political, which endorsed famine as a tool of genocide, gained plausibility by the events of the Bangladesh War. The only difference was that Churchill had been replaced by Nixon as the ally of the Islamist military and political elite. 

Indira Gandhi certainly gained greatly from her defeat of the Pakistan Army and for Bangladesh becoming a Socialist Democracy. Sadly, corruption remained a problem. There was another big famine and the popular, elected, leader, decided to create a one-party State. However, he was assassinated along with most of his family. There were coups and counter-coups. Currently, the daughter of that leader is once again a refugee in India after a 'student uprising'. But this is a political pendulum which has been swinging this way and that for decades. What is certain is that the way to defeat famine is by raising productivity. Agricultural output has quadrupled since the grim days of 1974. Women in ever increasing numbers have left the countryside to work in big manufacturing units. Malthusian agricultural involution has been overcome. 

'Cultural productions'- e.g. films, TV serials, novels, etc.- showcased how raising productivity increased life-chances and made people more autonomous. The current wave of 'Gen-Z' youth uprisings stretching from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Madagascar etc, has a lot to do with new 'cultural productions'- e.g. viral 'Rap' videos (the Mayor of Kathmandu, like Zohran Mamdani, is a rap artist)- which appeal to self-confident and energetic young people. It has nothing to do with 'poverty porn' or narratives of abject victimhood or generational trauma. 

Yet, Babli Sinha chooses to focus on worthless dreck of that sort produced 85 years ago by a handful of Leftists who had zero political impact.

It analyzes the various modes of representation used by Anglophone authors and artists in response to the Bengal famine of 1943.

Why bother? Authors and artists were utterly useless. In Kerala, the mishandling of the famine by a celebrated Dewan of a Princely State enabled the Communists to so entrench themselves there that they came to power in 1957.  Subsequently, whenever they lost office, they reflected on their mistakes and learnt from them. That is why they are currently in power.

By contrast, the Communists in Bengal failed to make capital out of the famine. Still, the 'tebagha' strategy did pay off much later when the Left Front focussed on registering sharecropper's rights. This kept them in power for 30 years. Their propaganda and dominance of the Arts and the Universities was no use to them whatsoever. Once the sharecroppers turned against them (believing they might transfer their land to big companies) the bitter enemy of the Communists, Mamta Bannerjee, was able to come to power. The Communists don't have a single seat in the Legislature in Bengal. Recalling 'Colonial Trauma' isn't going to change this outcome.    

Official imperial narratives

said that Imperialism was over. Bengal was ruled by Bengalis. The only question was whether the Indians could cobble together a Federal Government at the Centre or whether the country would have to be partitioned on religious lines. 

blamed the famine on natural disaster, war, exploitation by merchants, and incompetent local officials rather than members of the imperial government

who had names like Srivastava or Nazimuddin.  

and have remained dominant in the global public imaginary until recent years.

 If the members of the Imperial Government wanted famine, Bengal would have had had nothing but famine prior to 1937. But the reverse was the case. Elected politicians did not mind famine because, firstly, their supporters could make a lot of money and, secondly, they could shift the blame on someone else- Hindu merchants, in the case of the Muslim League. Civil Servants would have been obliged to answer for their actions to a Commission of Enquiry.  

The authors and artists referenced in this study appealed to elite Bengali, South Asian, and international audiences to

do what? Kick out Nazimuddin & Suhrawardy? No. Why not? Suhrawardy's goons would slit your throat. Ian Stephens of the British owned Statesman broke the story. But he was clever enough to blame the bureaucrats in New Delhi who, under the terms of the 1935 Act, had no power to intervene in any Food related matter in the Province. Thus, he got his scoop without endangering his life.  Anyway, New Delhi wanted a bigger allocation of American largesse, not to mention Australian wheat and stories of Ind's sufferings were helpful.

resist imperial narratives that minimized or erased suffering and instead encouraged relief efforts, promoted nationalist movements, maintained collective memory, innovated ethical forms of representation, and prompted systemic change.

Nothing of the sort happened. Nationalism had already triumphed. What dominated 'collective memory' was not the famine- where only the poorest died and public order was not affected- but the Partition blood-letting. Incidentally, it was the Brits who created legislatures and who arranged for elections. India and Sri Lanka chose to keep democratic institutions. Myanmar and Pakistan did not.  

They were part of an established tradition of English in the subcontinent as the language of empire and cosmopolitanism but are not accessible, widely taught, or well known.

They were accessible to Bengalis, in Bengal, at the time. Similarly, the narratives of resistance to famine or feeling a bit peckish in Kalamazoo in the 1920's was accessible to hungry people who lived there but, generally speaking, was not accessible to homosexual Chinese coal miners in the middle ages.  

The direct encounter with suffering

her Dad was a boy in Calcutta during the war and saw some starving beggars. But his own family or community was not affected. Still, it may be the sort of thing which encourages you to emigrate to America. You can tell your kids about how shitty things were back in the old country. Maybe, that way, they won't grumble about having to eat up all their vegetables.  

was and remains insufficient for prompting systemic change or even engagement,

because elected Bengali politicians are shitty. They didn't get that they needed to grow more food rather than simply enrich themselves and their cronies. 

and yet, the recognition of trauma is crucial for personal and collective well-being.

What was necessary for the Hindu minority was Partition. This was based on Hindus recognizing that Muslim politicians would slit their throats unless it was cheaper to just let them starve to death. 

The cultural production of famine writers and artists

merely enhanced their reputation with foreigners. Bengalis considered such people virtue signalling hypocrites. 

sought to integrate the suffering and agency of the destitute into narratives of Bengali and South Asian identity and of the Second World War.

No. There was some Communist propaganda on the issue which tied into the sharecropper agitation.  

It is crucial for the Humanities to recognize this body of work as a cultural counter-discourse to the biopower of empire

Churchill & Roosevelt should not have squandered blood and treasure in defending Bengal and reconquering Burma- right? The fact is starvation is a weapon of war. The Brits were able to enforce a naval embargo on Germany in the Great War. The Germans said three quarter of a million of their people died of malnutrition as a result. It must be said, German women and munition workers responded with protests and industrial action. This contributed to a new type of 'Expressionist' art in Germany which had some political effects. In Bengal, by contrast, when one tenth of the population became extremely food insecure, the other nine-tenths remained in control of the Civil administration and thus there was little by way of protest. Nobody really cared if a Malthusian solution to a Malthusian problem went ahead though, no doubt, some good people set up charitable 'langar' kitchens and so forth. 

and to engage these texts as relevant to theories of trauma.

These texts, written by people who weren't food insecure, are relevant to theories of virtue signalling or theories of mendacious propaganda. They can't be relevant to theories of trauma unless people like Babli can claim to be traumatized by what is happening in Gaza or Ukraine or the Biden White House where Mean Girls were nasty to poor, suffering, Kamala.  

The book will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian history, the history of the Bengal famine, South Asian Anglophone literature, twentieth-century art history, and trauma theory. 

This book is an example of everything which has gone wrong with the Academy over the last 30 years. It will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand why Trump rules America. Voters are sick and tired of the various vicarious traumas afflicting special little snowflakes on and off campus. 

This book is about the writers and artists during the famine and its immediate aftermath who strove to represent the trauma of those whose lives had been rendered disposable by the imperial regime.

Premier Fazlul Haq was actually a White Man named Fredrick Hamilton. Nazimuddin was an English lady named Nancy Drew.  

While the state erased evidence of the famine,

They buried the bodies? States are supposed to do that. Sadly, they ignored this responsibility in some places.  

artists and writers in Bengali, including Bijon Bhattacharya,

After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the Commies started supporting the War effort. Thus Bijon (first husband of Mahashweta Devi) and other 'People's Theatre Association' artistes were permitted to make hay while the sun shone. Sadly, they weren't able to take votes from either Congress or the League in 1946. 

Arjun Ghosh,

a contemporary Professor who translated Bijon's play. 

Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay,

who was a prominent leftist writer and member of parliament. 

Sukanta Bhattacharya, Kazi Nazrul Islam,

Sadly, Kazi Nazrul's health declined steeply in 1943 and so he could not contribute anything. Sukanta was known as 'junior Kazi' but died young.  

Bhowani Sen,

A Communist who claimed the famine was 'artificial'. He was released from prison because he was supporting the war effort. 

and many others, resisted the official accounts and sought ethical and impactful representations.

They told stupid lies. It was obvious that the Muslim League had made a lot of money out of the famine. Still, it wasn't safe to say so till after Partition. By then, nobody cared.  

Writers and artists publishing in Anglophone venues, including those discussed in this book, writers Bhabani Bhattacharya,

a diplomat and then a Professor of Literature in America. He was a Leftist.  

Ela  Sen,

 a Leftist. Her book had some good illustrations by a young Bengali artist. I hope they were both richly rewarded for their talent and entrepreneurship. Incidentally, Ela Sen's second husband was Alec Reid who became editor of the Statesman. Ian Steven's scoop, regarding the famine, must have been profitable for the proprietors. 

Freda Bedi,

at that time a Commie but later a Tibetan Buddhist nun.  

T.G. Narayan,

the correspondent for the Hindu newspaper 

T.K. Ghosh,

the grand old man of Indian journalism 

artists Zainul Abedin, Chittaprosad, Somnath Hore, and Sunil Janah,

Back then, Europe too had a lot of emaciated corpses.  

statistician P.C. Mahalanobis, and anthropologist K.P. Chattopadhyaya, also sought forms of representation capable of memorializing and communicating the suffering and death that took place around them.

The Famine Commission did that. 

They were interrogating the role of the author/artist and reader/viewer in their activist cultural productions.

No. Don't be silly. Everybody understood that Leftists would want to link the famine to issues of sharecropper rights. Sadly, the Muslim League was making good money out of it and, anyway, it could blame Hindu banias. The bigger problem is that in a Malthusian society, nobody really cares if there is a big famine. It is the related epidemics that people are wary off. 

As they navigated making suffering visible without exploitation and capturing the attention of the audience without manipulation or flattening the complexity of their subjects, they explored new forms and venues of publication and established relationships with the destitute, aid groups, political organizations, and other writers and artists.

Most didn't at all though some Communist grassroots workers remained in some districts. After Wavell became Viceroy and the Japanese were on the back-foot, the food situation improved. The big question was whether the Left could keep the vote share they got in 1937 (37 seats out of 250). The answer was no. Hindus voted for Congress. Muslims voted for the League. The Commies were wiped out (only 3 seats). 

In writing of the trauma of Partition,

some describe, with gusto, the would-be rapists or murderers that they shot or stabbed or playfully kicked to death. 

Das states that survivors often told stories that they were “frozen, numb, without life”

because they had little spirit to begin with 

in order to avoid the pain of memory or to continue surviving and living (Das, 2007, 8).

Survivors also made sure they were moving to a place where the 'peaceful community' was scarce on the ground.  

The cultural production of these writers and artists enlivened the stories of trauma

for your entertainment. I hope you are grateful. Now eat your veggies and go do your Math homework otherwise you will end up teaching shite to traumatised imbeciles

to foster change and maintain collective memory in the face of global erasure.

What this lady is doing is not 'erasure' but repeating stupid lies like the following-

A.K. Fazlul Huq, the chief minister of Bengal,

Premier, not Chief Minister.  

warned of the scarcity of food in 1942 but was removed by the governor of Bengal, John Herbert,

No. He lost his majority. Previously, he had a tiff with Jinnah who wanted to show he controlled the Muslim Premiers of India and could get them to resign from the NDC. But he couldn't keep his coalition together. Through Nazimuddin, Suharawardy prevailed.  

who continued appropriations of grain for the troops and the Calcutta population

This was done by Bengalis at the direction of Bengali Premiers or Cabinet Ministers. 

Why did the Muslim League not crush the atheistic Communists (as would later happen in Pakistan)? The answer had to do with electoral politics. Everybody thought the Left would split the vote of the other party. In the end, only religion mattered. The Left got nothing.

The government had an inconsistent approach to censorship during this time.

It was consistently shit. Bengali administrations often are.  

On the one hand, several of the books discussed in this monograph, including Chittaprosad’s Hungry Bengal and Ela Sen and Zainal Abedin’s Darkening Days, were banned during the famine period, with copies destroyed.

Because nobody gives a fuck about artists. Chittaprosad became disillusioned with the Communist Party and disassociated himself from it. 

On the other hand, newspapers including Amrita Bazar Patrika, The Hindustan Times, the Calcutta Statesman, and People’s War remained in circulation, despite featuring criticism and photographs of famine victims.

Because Bengalis didn't give a fuck about the starving. Could they blame the Brits for everything? Nope. Nazimuddin is a Muslim, not an English name. The profit on the grain contract was being made by the Ispahanis- staunch supporters of the League. Anyway, one good thing which came out of the Famine was that Hindus realised they would starve under Muslim rule. That's why on 'Direct Action Day', they retaliated so massively that Calcutta remained with India. 

The famine coincided with the advent of the IPTA (India People’s Theater Association),

a Commie front. Could it build on the CPI's success in 1937? No. Why? Actors and artists are useless. Religion mattered because folks from the 'peaceful community' might kill you.  

whose production of the play Nabanna/The Harvest

a village loses its harvest to a tidal wave. Its people go to Calcutta hoping for succour but are met with indifference. They return to their fields determined to do collectively better their destiny... or some such shit. The authorities could have no objection to this play. Apparently it raised some money for Famine Relief.  

was but one of many creative, socially engaged works during this period, including the texts featured in this book.

But it failed. Nobody gave a shit about the 1943 or the 1974 famine. Communism can only prevail by beating people. Sadly, Mamta's goons are better at beating people and thus the Commies don't have a single seat in West Bengal. 

This is very traumatic for them. Hopefully some nice artist will commemorate their emaciated and grieving forms.