On June 22 London’s National Portrait Gallery removed an artwork which blamed former Prime Minister Winston Churchill for the “willful starvation of the Indian population” in 1943. The removal was instigated by an escalating, week-long campaign from a group of 50 members of the British House of Lords, including Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames.
Churchill’s role in the 1943 Bengal Famine is extensively documented in the 2010 book, “Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravishing of India during World War II,” by Madhusree Mukerjee. Apologists for Churchill try to blame the famine on the lack of rainfall, but a 2019 study details that 1943 saw above average rainfall in the region. The reality is that on November 14, 1941 Churchill called to implement a “scorched Earth” policy to remove all food and transportation equipment from the Bengal province of the then Indian colony to prevent its capture by Japanese forces during the war. The British “Rice Denial” policy had soldiers destroying thousands of tons of rice, usually by dumping the rice into rivers or the ocean in east Bengal. The “Boat Denial” policy saw the confiscation of 46,000 boats which destroyed the fishing industry. Mukerjee writes that Churchill’s problem goes beyond simple racism, but is more of a Darwinian view of humanity which would allow famine in India, but could not tolerate bread rationing in England. Mukerjee also details the role of Churchill’s science advisor, Lord Cherwell, who was a Malthusian who promoted eugenics and the sterilization of the mentally incompetent. Cherwell believed that the world should be ruled by a small group of aristocratic elite where society is “led by supermen and served by helots.”
