India's forgotten holocaust
tehelka.com
India's forgotten holocaust
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#2Friend of mine just posted this to Facebook. It's sensationalist garbage with anti-British bigotry thrown in. Draws a false equivalence between Hitler (who deliberately exterminated millions) and Churchill (whose "policies" were supposedly unintentionally "responsible" for the famine). That's outrageous even if the history were true. In fact, it isn't. The article claims that "Churchill could easily have prevented the famine." This imbues Churchill with super-powers, and completely ignores the facts of the day: Bengal was a net importer of food and most of its food came from Burma, which had just been conquered by the Japanese. Shipping food from Australia or other places might have been a solution, but Allied merchant shipping was under attack all over the world from the Japanese and German navies. How would it have gotten there in time? And why would that have been the default solution, when neighboring provinces in India had food surpluses and should have been the natural place to expect aid from. The tehelka article also mendaciously suggests that "Myanmar" (a country which didn't exist until the 1990s) offered to help feed Bengal, but the offer was kept secret by cruel British "censors".
Any "help" from "Myanmar" would have come in the form of a conquering Japanese army. Would they have brought some truckloads of rice with them from Burma? Sure. Would they have shared it with the Indians? Probably not. And despite the "censors", I think the Japanese were pretty open about their willingness to conquer and enslave (er, "help") the suffering Indians. I would invite our Indian friends to ask the Chinese if that would have been a good deal.
The Wikipedia article on the 1943 famine is a much more serious read.
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#3On a semi-related note, yesterday I watched a BBC documentary about Stalin and couldn't help but notice the similarities with Hitler's actions. And the guy comes out of WWII as a hero. Not unexpected at all from megalomaniac people but why the world cared about Hitler and not Stalin? As usual, nothing to do with helping other human beings but securing power/resources.
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#4Friend of mine just posted this to Facebook. It's sensationalist garbage with anti-British bigotry thrown in. Draws a false equivalence between Hitler (who deliberately exterminated millions) and Churchill (whose "policies" were supposedly unintentionally "responsible" for the famine). That's outrageous even if the history were true. In fact, it isn't. The article claims that "Churchill could easily have prevented th…
The Japanese army in Burma had its own supply problems, and a lot of the soldiers starved during their retreat.
But if the neighboring provinces had food surpluses, why didn't the authorities manage a transfer?
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#5Friend of mine just posted this to Facebook. It's sensationalist garbage with anti-British bigotry thrown in. Draws a false equivalence between Hitler (who deliberately exterminated millions) and Churchill (whose "policies" were supposedly unintentionally "responsible" for the famine). That's outrageous even if the history were true. In fact, it isn't. The article claims that "Churchill could easily have prevented th…
To be clear, there are extremely few Indians who hold any kind of grudge about the British. On the contrary, the English language is more popular than ever, 60 years after the British left.
History is full of injustices. I don't see why the present generation of Indians should hold onto what happened to their grandparents generation. We don't need to suffer history now, we get to live in the present - that is the attitude I see in most people in India. That is why India is as peaceful as it is (we have to normalize whatever good or bad is happening to the population - "India" is not an aggregate in the same sense that, say, "Sweden" is an aggregate - so whatever happens in Sweden once a year would happen almost once a day in India, simply based on the relative population sizes).
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#6On a semi-related note, yesterday I watched a BBC documentary about Stalin and couldn't help but notice the similarities with Hitler's actions. And the guy comes out of WWII as a hero. Not unexpected at all from megalomaniac people but why the world cared about Hitler and not Stalin? As usual, nothing to do with helping other human beings but securing power/resources.
I would say that it depends very much what you mean by "the world". Plenty cared.
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#7On a semi-related note, yesterday I watched a BBC documentary about Stalin and couldn't help but notice the similarities with Hitler's actions. And the guy comes out of WWII as a hero. Not unexpected at all from megalomaniac people but why the world cared about Hitler and not Stalin? As usual, nothing to do with helping other human beings but securing power/resources.
I would say that it depends very much what you mean by "the world". Plenty cared.
Not enough to take decisive action I would say.
EDIT: I mean "major governments like the ones involved in WWII".
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#8On a semi-related note, yesterday I watched a BBC documentary about Stalin and couldn't help but notice the similarities with Hitler's actions. And the guy comes out of WWII as a hero. Not unexpected at all from megalomaniac people but why the world cared about Hitler and not Stalin? As usual, nothing to do with helping other human beings but securing power/resources.
I don't think much people outside the former USSR, apart from the usual weirdos, saw Stalin as a hero or a Good Guy™. And inside the USSR being a dissident wasn't a healthy option.
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#9Friend of mine just posted this to Facebook. It's sensationalist garbage with anti-British bigotry thrown in. Draws a false equivalence between Hitler (who deliberately exterminated millions) and Churchill (whose "policies" were supposedly unintentionally "responsible" for the famine). That's outrageous even if the history were true. In fact, it isn't. The article claims that "Churchill could easily have prevented th…
FTFY: Churchill's 'policies' were supposedly intentionally "responsible" for the famine.
Link to actual wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Governme... (the article has NPOV problems for more than a year now).
For the British apologists, here is the quote to give you some acquaintance with the subject of Britain induced famines:
"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone—the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress—5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted,—a region twice the size of Wales,—one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77."
"Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over 6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles."
- From an article printed back in 1908 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1908/10/the-new-...). The actual article is much more detailed and better written. And it has less reason to view history from distorted mirrors than we have 110 years later.
The reason Churchill was different from Hitler was because Hitler had an effect in Europe, while Churchill was conservatively continuing the thats-how-people-used-to-think-then policy towards his 'lesser subjects'.
Re: India's forgotten holocaust
#10On a semi-related note, yesterday I watched a BBC documentary about Stalin and couldn't help but notice the similarities with Hitler's actions. And the guy comes out of WWII as a hero. Not unexpected at all from megalomaniac people but why the world cared about Hitler and not Stalin? As usual, nothing to do with helping other human beings but securing power/resources.
I don't think much people outside the former USSR, apart from the usual weirdos, saw Stalin as a hero or a Good Guy™. And inside the USSR being a dissident wasn't a healthy option.
I don't think people specifically thought Stalin personally was a hero, but prior to the cold war, Western Europeans had a much more positive view of the USSR's role in WW2.
For example, here are the answers of French people to the survey question "Which was, in your view, the nation that most contributed to the defeat of Germany in WW2?":
1945: USSR 57%, USA 20%, UK 12%
1994: USSR 25%, USA 49%, UK 16%
2004: USSR 20%, USA 58%, UK 16%
