FAMINE IN INDIA-BRITAIN'S GIFT TO JAPAN
Singh, Sirdar J. J.
Famine In India—Britain's Gift To Japan By SIRDAR J. J. SINGH Extent AN ACUTE FOOD SHORTAGE has been developing in India since April 1942. Today the shortage has become a famine spreading over...
...There is one man in India who can counteract the combined propaganda of Tojo of Japan, Ba Maw of "Free Burma," and Bose of "Free India," and that man is the popular leader of India, the great democrat and crusader against fascism—Jawaharlal Nehru...
...This shortage led to hoarding which in its turn led to rise in prices...
...Premier Ba Maw of the so-called Free Burma government, has broadcast that a million tons of surplus rice are lying in Burma...
...Though it is foodstuffs that are primarily needed, yet in terms of long range help, money will also be needed...
...Every day by radio they are asking the people of India to revolt against the government that is so callous, inhuman, and inefficient...
...Any effort on the part of public spirited Americans to help Indians in this crisis, will assure the forlorn and frustrated masses of India that Americans think of Indians as sons and daughters of the same Divine Father, and are doing all they can to help their fellow human beings...
...Cholera, malaria, typhoid, and dysentery are reaching epidemic stages...
...What Can Be Done Little or no immediate relief can come from India itself, because the 'aus' crop (November-December) is the smaller crop of the two 'winter crops, and is usually barely enough for the producers themselves...
...The government should have shown foresight and realized as far back as May 1, 1942, that the people of India had been deprived of more than a million and a half tons of rice which is the stable diet of practically the whole of India, excepting the Frontier Province and the Province of Punjab...
...In the Province of Bengal (population 60 million— population of India 390 million), approximately 100,-000 persons are dying of starvation each week, according to K. Santhanam, former member of Central Legislative Assembly, as reported by the Associated Press from New Delhi, Oct...
...But where is Nehru...
...British Responsibility The central government in New Delhi has tried to blame this catastrophe on the provincial governments...
...The growing shortage of food was made up by importing a million and a half to two million tons of rice from Burma, Indo-China, and Thailand...
...It was only when some British newspapers printed the pathetic stories about hundreds of men, women, and children falling dead in the streets of Calcutta, the second largest city in the British Empire, that the American correspondents in India were allowed to send stories to this country...
...Cause The famine in India is not the result of any natural causes such as drought, cyclone, floods, locusts, etc., but is the result of lack of foresight, lethargy, inaction, and inefficiency on the part of the British government in India...
...The government is accused of shifting the blame while insisting on control...
...When Congress had to be repressed, the entire coercive machine, civil and military, central and provincial, acted with impressive uniformity in obedience to a single will...
...I also suggest that a relief fund should be started in this country...
...The most important war industries of India are located in Bengal and Bihar...
...The central government says that the provinces have provincial autonomy...
...It is the Viceroy who has the power to issue decrees and it is the Viceroy's decrees that are today ruling the whole of India...
...Emergency legislation has placed unlimited powers in the hands of the Viceroy and the provincial governors, who are themselves subject to his orders...
...Instead of healthy people around our military bases, anxious and able to cooperate in the war effort, we now have thousands of corpses of men, women and children, victims of hunger...
...The picture on the eve of war was this—increase of population 14.5 per cent—total area under food grain stationary, the rice yield decreased by 6 percent—wheat barely sufficient for the normal requirements of the people...
...If the British and American people and their governments, were to realize the full significance of what is happening in India and the ramifications it is likely to have all over the East and how these conditions are going to greatly reduce our war effort against Japan, then shipping can and will be found to rush food to India and stem the rising tide of famine...
...7, 1943, made the following comment on this point, "Arguments presented in Parliament here to the effect that the provincial administrations were responsible for feeding the people did not go down well with the British public...
...Today the shortage has become a famine spreading over all of India...
...Japanese tell the Indians that even though hundreds of Indians are lying dead in the streets of Calcutta, the British are having their regular sumptuous eight course meals and "Chota-Pegs" (scotch and soda) and dancing to jazz, while their Indian subjects are falling dead of starvation within the sound of their gaiety and laughter...
...25 has the following to say on that point: "These are not to our thinking impressive excuses...
...Japanese Propaganda Japan is making full use of the famine situation in India...
...It is from there that our armies are going to march towards Burma to fight against the Japanese, and it is there—around our most important operational bases —around the American boys' camps—that death stalks in every corner, with corpses of little children lying in the streets, in the fields, in the little thatched roof cottages and in the Bazaars...
...Money would help in securing nutritious food such as milk for millions of babies and growing children whose parents are unable to buy milk anymore...
...Can anyone gainsay that, with the lack of food and starvation all around, the workers and laborers could not possibly get enough food to sustain necessary vitality for heavy war work...
...Japanese propagandists make open allegations that the famine in India was allowed to reach the present proportions to teach a lesson to the people of India...
...He is rotting in a British jail while the Japanese are slowly and gradually succeeding in injecting this poisonous propaganda in India...
...Though the worst is happening in Bengal, the famine is also spreading in the adjacent provinces of Assam and Bihar, and in the south in the whole of Madras Province, Travancore, parts of Malabar coast, and Deccan...
...The winter crop known as 'aman' will not be harvested till February-March 1944...
...The invasion of these territories ending with the conquest of Burma by the Japanese in April 1942, stopped the import of almost two million tons of rice into India...
...Death is widespread in Assam and Bengal—the two provinces where our vital military bases are situated...
...David Anderson in the New York Times from London, Oct...
...It is in these provinces that most United Nations military bases are located (Incidentally, a majority of American soldiers in India are stationed in these very provinces...
...Though, technically, according to the Constitution of 1935, provinces are autonomous, in such matters as food, yet in the final analysis, it is the Viceroy who rules supreme all over India...
...On the basis of information from all sources, I would estimate that the total loss of life may reach two million...
...Because of censorship and the difficulty of obtaining information from rural districts in India, no single figure for daily deaths from starvation for all India is obtainable...
...It is under these conditions that the United Nations are preparing to launch an attack upon Burma...
...These diseases, accentuated by famine, are disrupting our transportation system, and our whole war effort...
...It is the duty, I should say the bounden duty, of all members of the United Nations immediately to do all they can to relieve this horrible situation...
...What are the United Nations doing against this challenge and this threat...
...The Congress provinces, more than half of British India, are under unqualified bureaucratic rule...
...British authorities cannot escape the responsibility...
...Though conditions started deteriorating rapidly in March and April 1943, the government of India placed a strict censorship and the world at large did not know what was happening in India...
...The New Statesman and Nation of London dated Sept...
...Where there is a will, there is a way...
...The great Tata steel and Iron Works are there...
...Bengal, Assam, and Bihar (total population approximately 100 million) are the eastern-most provinces of- India...
...However, the following facts are significant...
...This situation is further complicated by the fact that peasants themselves are dying of hunger and therefore a manpower shortage is likely to develop for harvesting...
...and those who are still alive, are sullen, resentful, and desperate...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 46
