Sam Dalrymple was a 20 year old undergraduate studying Persian and Sanskrit when he published this rather than silly little piece on Churchill in 'Cherwell'.
Since he wasn't a historian, his ignorance is excusable.
The shameful truth about ChurchillSam Dalrymple
23rd December 2017
The British people love Winston Churchill.
He wrote well. Working class folk- more particular those of the dusky sort, like myself- learnt the little history we know from cheap paperback editions of his History of the English Speaking people. Moreover, we understand his prejudices because we share them or respect others of our own sort who held similar beliefs.
To most of us, Churchill represents triumph in the face of all odds; of plucky little Britain’s ability to defeat Nazism and, in many ways, to save the world. He has been heroically depicted in everything from Doctor Who to Young Indiana Jones and with two major biopics about Winston Churchill released within the last six months, it comes as no surprise that a BBC poll found him to be ‘The Greatest Briton of All Time’.
Second only to Boris Johnson. There was a time when we thought BoJo would go out and do trade deals for us so as to use Brexit to turn us into a Singapore-on-Thames.
Yes. We really were that stupid.
However, despite the noble and heroic character popularised in European and American media, Churchill’s role as leader of the British Empire, which was directly responsible for four million Indian deaths, is woefully ignored in Britain.
The Japanese were responsible for almost all the deaths in East and South Asia. Indian soldiers did die in the MENA and Europe but they were volunteers and knew what they were signing up for.
For a fifth of the world’s population however, it is the single action for which Churchill is most infamous.
Nonsense! If Nehru didn't blame Churchill for the Bengal famine, it can't be the case that he was at fault. Don't forget, the Indian bureaucrats and politicians in charge of food in 1943 ( Srivastav & B.R Sen) were close to Nehru. If there was dirt on Churchill, they would have ditched it because Atlee & Nehru were pals and it was they who were now in charge.
Madhusree Mukherjee’s recent book, ‘Churchill’s secret war’ reveals the true extent of both his racism and his involvement in the Bengal famine of 1943.
She doesn't understand that famines are an opportunity for politicians and their cronies to get very fucking rich. Since Bengal's elected rulers supported the war effort, Churchill could not rock the boat. Indeed, he had no power to do so under the 1935 act to which he had so strenuously objected.
Only two hundred years previously, Bengal – the fertile region in Eastern India and Bangladesh – had been the economic heart of the great Mughal empire.
It generated a large surplus. Sadly, that is what made it attractive to predators. The Brits gave its parasitic landlord class a 'permanent settlement' which did create a cultured 'bhadralok' gentry but involuted agriculture is bound to have Malthusian results.
Known as The Paradise of Nations, the region accounted for 12% of the world economy and boasted better wages and living standards than anywhere in Europe.
Merchants could get rich there- if they had a knack for sharp dealing and a high tolerance for dysentry.
However, as the East India Company, and later the British crown, began to exert power over the region, it’s wealth was sent off to Britain, leading the region into a period of slow relative decline.
Sam, like Madhushree, isn't an economist. He doesn't get that, when it comes to investment, the only thing which matters is the rate of return which in turn depends on productivity. Even if all the profits are exported, more investment will come in so as to get that higher rate of return. The fallacy in Sam's thinking is that of 'mercantilism' (i.e. having lots of gold makes a country rich regardless of factor productivity) .
In 1943 a famine hit. The Second World War was in full flow and Bengal, now predominantly agrarian
It was never urban. On the other hand, Dacca had declined as rivers shifted course and a disease killed off a particular strain of cotton from which its muslin was spun.
– a result of two centuries of forced colonial deindustrialisation
Why the fuck would the East India Company want to reduce its own revenue? If you grab territory and enslave its people, you make them work under the lash in factories and coal mines and plantations unless you are smart enough to see that you make even more money just by paying the going wage.
– was hit with a major shortage of food. It was in the midst of this famine that the British government, fearing a Japanese attack, enacted a scorched earth policy across Bengal,
The Japs had taken a lot of equipment and supplies from the retreating Brits in Malaya, Singapore & Burma. It wasn't a good idea to store lots of rice for them when they crossed the border because they would then conquer and enslave a goodly portion of India.
burning boats and fields of crops en masse, to ensure that the Japanese would not be able to hold the land. But, the Japanese never arrived.
They got as far as Imphal. It must be said, it was American air-power which enabled the Brits to prevail. Indeed, they went around the Japs- being themselves resupplied by air- and left them to starve. Food really is a weapon. Britain had shown no compunction in starving Germany by its naval blockade during the Great war.
No doubt, Sam feels Churchill was very evil because he did not ensure that the Royal Navy supplied Hitler and Tojo with plentiful hampers from Fortnum & Mason.
Hoarding began and soon starvation gave way to cholera, dysentery, malaria and smallpox.
Churchill, very cruelly, sent white Britishers into malarial Burma to liberate the place.
The British government held large reserves of wheat, and this would have been an obvious time to use them,
by giving them to Hitler & Tojo
yet despite it being a direct result of colonial policies in the region, no help was given to the victims of the famine.
But the political masters of Bengal (and their cronies- like the Ipsahanis) made a huge profit by diverting food procured for the public distribution system to the black market. The same thing happened in Bangladesh in 1974.
Indeed, Churchill, the British prime minister at the time, ordered that the Indian food reserves be diverted to buffer reserve stocks in countries such as Greece instead.
Fuck off! Greece was only liberated in October 1944. The Bengal famine was long over by then.
Historians Professor Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper write in their 2005 book “The prime minister believed that Indians were the next worst people in the world after the Germans.
Indians liked the Germans. It was only other Indians that they really hated. If Churchy truly hated Hindus he virtually qualifies as one of us. Come to think of it, he did greatly appreciate Niradh Chaudhuri's Autobiography.
Their treachery had been plain in the Quit India movement.
No. Their useleness had been plain. You'd have expected the resignation of Congress Ministries to hinder the war effort. Nothing of the sort happened. There was no point making nice with useless folk. Let them sulk in jail.
The Germans he was prepared to bomb into the ground. The Indians he would starve to death as a result of their own folly and viciousness.”
Sadly, it was Bengalis who got rich by that method. Poor old Churchy didn't get a penny.
Mukherjee explains how Churchill refused to send aid to Bengal, or indeed let others help, ‘in spite of repeated appeals from two successive Viceroys,
Did Churchy know money was being made in the black market? Yes. He wasn't an utter fool. There were spivs in plenty in London itself. Sadly, the Ministry of Food had brought in Tegart- the guy who crushed the Bengali Jugantar revolutionaries and, in Palestine, the Arab revolt- to crack down on those who evaded the rationing regime.
Churchill’s own Secretary of State for India and even the President of the United States’. In response to a telegram from Delhi regarding the millions dying of starvation due to the famine, Churchill simply asked “Why isn’t Gandhi dead yet”.
A fair question. The point about saying 'do or die' and then fasting to death is that you have to actually die. Sadly Gandhi didn't quite see things that way. Still, he wasn't as bad as Mossadegh or Master Tara Singh both of whom put on weight during their fasts.
“I hate Indians,” he proclaimed to Leopold Amery, the Indian Secretary of State. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
Change 'Indian' to 'Hindu' and this was a sentiment which would have warmed the cockles of Jinnah's heart. Don't forget, the Muslims and the Commies were aiding the war effort.
The famine was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”.
This was the creed Malthus taught at Haileybury- the East India Company's College.
By the time the famine ended, an estimated 4 million people had died,
but Suhrawardy became premier. Why? His party was rolling in cash. Could Suhrawardy kill Hindus with impunity so as to create a Greater Pakistan? No. It turned out Churchy was wrong. Hindus were just as good at killing as anybody else.
three times more than during the Rwandan Genocide.
Which, sadly, did not feature cannibalism. I was deeply shocked by this. After all, we'd been told about the large number of people eaten by Idi Amin & Emperor Bokassa. I rather felt the Hutu were letting the side down.
That autumn, food stockpiles in the United Kingdom swelled to 18.5 million tonnes.
Because an invasion of the Continent was planned. The Germans could do 'scorced earth' just as well as the Rooskis.
Despite the mass of films about Winston Churchill’s youth, his physical health and his relationships with his family, there is yet to be a single film revolving around his relationship to empire and the Indian Subcontinent.
In his wilderness years, he had attacked the Tory policy on India which led to provincial autonomy. He wasn't quite sane on India but, it turned out, India didn't matter greatly. Just jail Congress & get on with your work.
His reputation as saviour and embodiment of British values has yet to take into account his role as leader of the largest empire the world has ever seen.
He was FDR's junior partner. The age of Empires was over. Only productivity mattered. That's where the US stood out.
With post-Brexit Britain relying so heavily on its relationships with the Commonwealth,
BoJo will sell poppadoms to Modi. That will save the British economy.
it is more important than ever for us to address our shared colonial past.
It really isn't. That's why Rishi Sunak refused to turn Number 10 into a takeaway Tandoori.
To many in the Indian subcontinent, Churchill’s reputation is parallel to that of Hitler in Europe.
Shashi Tharoor may have jumped on that bandwagon. But it is foolish. If Churchy was a shit, Nehru should have denounced him as such. He did no such thing.
Indeed, prominent Indian politician Shashi Tharoor has proclaimed, “This is the man who the British insist on hailing as some apostle of freedom and democracy, when to my mind he is really one of the more evil rulers of the 20th century, only fit to stand in the company of the likes of Hitler, Mao and Stalin”.
Tharoor is a politician. If his lips are moving, he is lying. To be fair, he was originally against the Dynasty he now so ignobly serves. The problem is, if Churchy was Hitler, Nehru had no business making nice with him after becoming India's Prime Minister.
The Bengal Famine is not the only smear on Churchill’s reputation. Further cited ‘war crimes’ include the bombing of Dresden,
not a war crime at all. Incidentally, Britain's current offensive doctrine involves nuking big cities.
the handing over of the whole Eastern block to the USSR
he had no choice
and the awarding of £26,000 (over a millions pounds today) to Brigadier Dyer, the mastermind behind the brutal Amritsar massacre.
He didn't give him a penny. There was a public subscription for Dyer who, like many other officers, was put on the retired list despite his success in the Third Afghan War. Would he have been retained if there had been no Jallianwallah? No. Geddes axe. You had to be pretty fucking blue blooded to escape it.
And yet, in September 2016, only eight months after the Oxford Union voted in favour of tearing down the statue of Cecil Rhodes from the walls of Oriel college, Winston Churchill’s face crept onto every five pound note in the country. This new move attracted no controversy.
Not among sane people- at any rate.
A year and a half on and two popular biopics later, Churchill is still widely regarded as ‘The Greatest Briton of All Time’. Once again it is time for the British to look in the mirror and begin questioning its Imperial past.
Some British people may wish to look in the mirror. Not me. I'm as ugly as fuck. But that has nothing to do with my Imperial past as that Mikado who got into trouble with some Japanese school-girls. My memory of that period are indistinct because I used to drink quite heavily back then, but- so far as I recall- no octopuses inserted their tentacles into relevant orifices. In some obscure way, I feel cheated.
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