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Fed by Famine: The Hindu Mahasabha's politics of religion, caste, and relief in response to the Great Bengal Famine, 1943–1944

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2020

ABHIJIT SARKAR
ABHIJIT SARKAR*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article demonstrates how the Great Bengal Famine of 1943–1944 and relief activism during it fed the politics of the Hindu right, a development that has not previously received much scholarly attention. Using hitherto unused primary sources, the article introduces a novel site to the study of communal politics, namely, the propagation of Hindu communalism through food distribution during a humanitarian crisis. It examines the caste and class bias in private relief and provides the first in-depth study of the multifaceted process whereby the Hindu Mahasabha used the famine for political purposes. The party portrayed Muslim food officials as ‘saboteurs’ in the food administration, alleged that the Muslim League government was ‘creating’ a new group of Muslim grain traders undermining the established Hindu traders, and publicized the government's failure to avert the famine to prove the economic ‘unviability’ of creating Pakistan. This article also explores counter-narratives, for example, that Hindu political leaders were deliberately impeding the food supply in the hope that starvation would compel Bengali Muslims to surrender their demand for Pakistan. The politics of religious conversion played out blatantly in famine-relief when the Mahasabha accused Muslim volunteers of converting starving Hindus to Islam in exchange for food, and demanded that Hindu and Muslim famine orphans should remain in Hindu and Muslim orphanages respectively. Finally, by dwelling on beef consumption by the army at the time of an acute shortage of dairy milk during the famine, the Mahasabha fanned communal tensions surrounding the orthodox Hindu taboo on cow slaughter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 6 , November 2020 , pp. 2022 - 2086
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Professors Rosalind O'Hanlon, Yasmin Khan, John Marriott, and John Darwin of the University of Oxford for their feedback at different stages in the development of this article. Professors David Washbrook and Tim Harper of the University of Cambridge provided important critiques of earlier versions. My sister Srabani Sarkar and brother Palash Sarkar have offered detailed feedback. Parts of this article were presented at conferences at Stanford University, Columbia University, and the universities of Chicago, Vienna, Warsaw, St Andrews, Oxford, and Cambridge. The Clarendon Fund of the University of Oxford provided the majority of funding for the research. In addition, many other United Kingdom bodies, namely, the Past and Present Society, the Institute of Historical Research, the Economic History Society, and the Royal Historical Society awarded me generous grants. Finally, I thank the anonymous reviewers of Modern Asian Studies for their rigorous critiques of the manuscript.

References

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6 L. G. Pinnell, in his capacity as the additional commissioner of all the coastal divisions of Bengal, supervised the execution of the ‘Denial Policy’. The destruction of boats had a devastating impact on the grain trade in eastern Bengal as the region has numerous rivers, canals, tidal estuaries, bayous, and backwaters, and therefore country boats were often the only means of transporting grain in the region. For Pinnell's version of the implementation of the ‘Denial Policy’, see Pinnell, With the Sanction of Government, pp. 89–93. His son M. C. Pinnell wrote in his preface to the chapter ‘The Bengal Famine, 1942–43’: ‘I have written this preface in 1990, because to my clear knowledge, the accusations made in 1943 and 1944 laid a burden on my father's mind for the rest of his life: when dictating the following text 35 years later, he was still asking himself whether there was anything more that he could have done to avert the tragedy.’ Ibid., p. 94. For a vivid personal account of the execution of the policy by an on-the-ground Indian civil servant, see Mitra, Asok, Towards Independence, 1940–1947: Memoirs of an Indian Civil Servant, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1991, pp. 104–107Google Scholar. See also Asok Mitra, ‘Famine of 1943 in Vikrampur Dacca’, Economic and Political Weekly, 4 February 1989, Special Article, pp. 253–255. For contemporary criticisms of the ‘Denial Policy’, see Ghosh, Kali Charan, Famines in Bengal, 1770–1943, Calcutta: Indian Associated Publishing Co. Ld., 1944, pp. 52–55Google Scholar. See also Santhanam, K., The Cry of Distress: A First-Hand Description and an Objective Study of the Indian Famine of 1943, New Delhi: Hindustan Times Press, December 1943, 1st edition, Chapter XIII ‘Denial Policy in Midnapore’, pp. 52–54Google Scholar. For recent scholarly studies of the implementation of the policy, see Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal, Chapter 2 ‘Denial’, pp. 55–83, and Mukerjee, Churchill's Secret War, Chapter 3 ‘Scorched’, particularly pp. 63–67. The method of creating obstructions for the enemy by self-induced devastation in the form of destroying boats in Bengal had its equivalent in the deliberate inundation of the Yellow River by the Kuomintang (Nationalist) government in Henan in China to pre-empt Japanese invasion. For the deliberate flooding of the Yellow River by the Chinese Nationalists, see Garnaut, ‘A Quantitative Description of the Henan Famine’, p. 2009. See also Mitter, Rana, China's War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival, London: Penguin Books, 2014, p. 264Google Scholar.

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8 Nehru, speech at Bahraich, 8 February 1946, ‘based on reports from National Herald, 10 February and Hindustan Standard, 11 February 1946’, Selected Works, Vol. 14, p. 238.

9 Nehru, speech at Varanasi, 14 February 1946, from National Herald, 16 February 1946, Selected Works, Vol. 14, p. 247.

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13 I have borrowed the expression ‘the public life of history’ from Dipesh Chakrabarty. For a sophisticated exploration of the concept of ‘the public life of history’ (albeit in different contexts), see Chakrabarty, D., ‘The Public Life of History: An Argument out of India’, Postcolonial Studies, 11, 2, September 2008, pp. 169–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chakrabarty's article was published earlier in Lomnitz, Claudio, Chakrabarty, Dipesh and Attwood, Bain (guest eds), Public Culture, 20, 1, February 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar, special issue: ‘The Public Life of History’. See also Nair, Janaki, ‘Textbook Controversies and the Demand for a Past: Public Lives of Indian History’, History Workshop Journal, 82, 1, October 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Undoubtedly the most influential study exploring Churchill's personal culpability in causing the famine has been Mukerjee, Churchill's Secret War. Nowadays, there is hardly any polemical work on the Bengal famine that does not cite extensively from Mukerjee's book.

15 For a few examples of this rapidly growing corpus of popular pieces, see Joseph Lazzaro, ‘Bengal Famine of 1943—A Man-Made Holocaust’, International Business Times, 22 February 2013, https://www.ibtimes.com/bengal-famine-1943-man-made-holocaust-1100525, [accessed 27 November 2019]. Rakesh Krishnan Simha, ‘Remembering India's Forgotten Holocaust’, Tahelka, 13 June 2014, http://old.tehelka.com/remembering-indias-forgotten-holocaust/, [accessed 27 November 2019]. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, ‘Past Continuous: The Deep Impact of the Bengal Famine on the Indian Psyche’, The Wire, 17 April 2018, https://thewire.in/history/past-continuous-the-bengal-famine, [accessed 27 November 2019]. Martand Jha, ‘75 Years On: Remembering Bengal Famine’, DNA, 23 September, 2018, https://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-75-years-on-remembering-bengal-famine-2666536, [accessed 27 November 2019]. Rakhi Chakrabarty, ‘The Bengal Famine: How the British Engineered the Worst Genocide in Human History for Profit’, Your Story, 15 August 2014, https://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide, [accessed 23 December 2019]. For documentaries on the Bengal famine, see Bengal Shadows, dir. Joy Banerjee and Partho Bhattacharya, produced by Petite-Terre, 2018, film. Bengal Famine: Remembering WW2's Forgotten Disaster, dir. not mentioned, produced by Farhana Haider of BBC's Witness series, 2015, film.

16 Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance’, pp. 216–217. I have discussed elsewhere how the conflict between the interests of the farmers and grain traders in a food-surplus province like Punjab, on the one hand, and the interests of the starving consumers in the food-deficit provinces, on the other, as well as the actions of the elected government of Punjab headed by the Unionist Party, worsened the wartime food situation in India. See Abhijit Sarkar, ‘Beyond Famines: Wartime State, Society, and Politicization of Food in Colonial India, 1939–1945’, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2017, sub-chapter ‘The Punjab Predicament’, particularly pp. 81–92.

17 For a history of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, see Graham, Bruce, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For analyses of the BJP's rise in Indian politics, see Hansen, Thomas Blom and Jaffrelot, Christophe (eds), The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India, Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001, 2nd revised editionGoogle Scholar. Hansen, Thomas Blom, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jaffrelot, Christophe, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-Building, Implantation and Mobilisation, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1999Google Scholar.

18 Garnaut, ‘A Quantitative Description of the Henan Famine’, pp. 2007–2008.

19 As presented in Mitter, China's War with Japan, p. 275.

20 Bose, Sugata, ‘Starvation amidst Plenty: The Making of Famine in Bengal, Honan and Tonkin, 1942–45’, Modern Asian Studies, 24, 4, October 1990, p. 726CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For a succinct expression of this development, see Liu Zhenyun, ‘Memory, Loss’, The New York Times, 30 November 2012.

22 Stephen Morgan, ‘The Henan Famine, 1942–43: Dearth and Death in North-Central China during the World War Two’, paper presented at the World Economic History Congress, Utrecht, 2009, as cited in Garnaut, ‘A Quantitative Description of the Henan Famine’, pp. 2007, 2041.

23 Bose, ‘Starvation amidst Plenty’, pp. 719–720.

24 Garnaut, ‘A Quantitative Description of the Henan Famine’, p. 2044.

25 Maharatna, Arup, The Demography of Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 209Google Scholar.

26 Bose, ‘Starvation amidst Plenty’, p. 720. Through an extensive study of a large number of communications between Delhi and London between late 1942 and mid-1944, I have examined elsewhere how the issue of food imports to India led to serious contentions between the Government of India, the India Office in London, and the British War Cabinet. See Sarkar, ‘Beyond Famines’, pp. 213–237. The issue of the lack of state-relief in the Chinese famine resurfaced again during the Great Famine of 1958–1961 in communist China in which approximately 30 million people perished. In this case too, citing reports from The New York Times in February 1961, Cormac Ó Gráda argues that the Chinese leadership ‘denied the very existence of famine, ruling out the option of foreign aid’. See Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘The Ripple that Drowns? Twentieth-Century Famines in China and India as Economic History’, The Economic History Review, new series, 61, S1, August 2008, p. 9.

27 Mitter, China's War with Japan, p. 274.

28 Ibid.

29 Bose, ‘Starvation amidst Plenty’, p. 720.

30 Ghosh was referring to Khwaja Shahabuddin (1898–1977), the younger brother of Bengal's premier Khawaja Nazimuddin, who served as the minister of commerce, labour and industry in Nazimuddin's government from 1943 to 1945.

31 Ghosh, Tusharkanti, The Bengal Tragedy, Lahore: Hero Publications, 1944, p. 49Google Scholar.

32 See the note titled ‘Non-Official Relief’, in Ghosh, Famines in Bengal, p. 204.

33 Nehru, prison diary, Selected Works, Vol. 13, p. 241, note 333 therein.

34 ‘Extracts from a statement of Mrs. Vijayluxmi Pandit on the conditions in the flood and famine affected area in the Midnapore District, dated October 26, 1943’, as presented in Ghosh, Famines in Bengal, Appendix E, p. 178.

35 As cited in Dutt, T. K., Hungry Bengal, Lahore: Indian Printing Works, 1944, p. 128Google Scholar.

36 As cited in Mitra, ‘Famine of 1943’, p. 259.

37 Lance Brennan, ‘Government Famine Relief in Bengal, 1943’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 47, 3, August 1988. De, ‘Imperial Governance and the Challenges of War’, particularly the section ‘Relief and Rehabilitation’, pp. 21–29.

38 For a detailed discussion on the collapse of the Rājā-prajā-sambandha (patron-client ties), see Greenough, Prosperity and Misery, pp. 207–215.

39 Garnaut, ‘A Quantitative Description of the Henan Famine’, p. 2029.

40 Fuller, Pierre, ‘North China Famine Revisited: Unsung Native Relief in the Warlord Era, 1920–1921’, Modern Asian Studies, 47, 3, May 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Though Fuller's study stresses the hitherto-overlooked contribution to relief by the Buddhist Relief Society operating along monastic networks (in addition to the much more publicized relief activities by the Christian missionaries) during the famine in North China in 1920–21, it does not delve into either the politics of religious relief or the accompanying tensions. Ibid.

42 Greenough, Prosperity and Misery, pp. 127–138. Greenough has also identified the recipients of private relief from the Bengal Relief Committee by caste, community, sex, age, marital status, household size, place of residence, and has described the main cause of their food problem and their dissatisfaction with the relief arrangements. Ibid., pp. 183–196, 229–236.

43 Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal, pp. 176–177.

44 As presented in ibid., p. 177.

45 Ibid.

46 The European member was referring to Hideki Tojo (1884–1948), the prime minister of Japan during much of the Second World War (from 17 October 1941 until 22 July 1944).

47 Leopold Amery was the British secretary of state for India and Burma from 13 May 1940 until 26 July 1945.

48 ‘Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Speech during the Debate on the Food Situation in Bengal at the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 14th July, 1943’, Calcutta, published by Prof. H. C. Ghosh, undated, pp. 21–22, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, ‘Speeches/Writings by Him’, S. No. 20, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (hereafter NMML).

49 ‘The Marquess of Linlithgow to Mr Amery (Extract)’, marked ‘PRIVATE’ and ‘SECRET’, 6 September 1943, MSS. EUR. F. 125/12, compiled in Mansergh, Nicholas (ed.), The Transfer of Power: Constitutional Relations between Britain and India, 1942–7, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1973, Vol. IV, document no. 100, p. 212Google Scholar.

50 For discussions on the ‘Shyama-Huq’ ministry, as it came to be called, see Aiyar, Sana, ‘Fazlul Huq, Region and Religion in Bengal: The Forgotten Alternative of 1940–43’, Modern Asian Studies, 42, 6, November 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chatterji, Joya, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Talbot, Ian, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement: The Growth of the Muslim League in North-West and North-East India, 1937–47, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1988Google Scholar. Bikramjit De, ‘British Policy in Bengal, 1939–1945’, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2002.

51 For an estimation of the loss of life caused by the cyclone and accompanying deadly flood, see Famine Inquiry Commission (hereafter FIC), Report on Bengal, Delhi: Government of India Press, 1945, p. 32. See also Brown, Michael, India Need Not Starve!, with a foreword by Sir Thakurdas, Purshotamdas, Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1944, p. 81Google Scholar. Ian Stephens (1903–1984), the British editor of the British-owned newspaper The Statesman published from Calcutta and Delhi (which caused quite a stir during the Bengal famine by publishing a series of distressing photographs of moribund and deformed famine victims) later briefly described the cyclone catastrophe in his memoir. Stephens, Ian, Monsoon Morning, London: Ernest Benn, 1966, pp. 70–71Google Scholar. For a vivid personal account of the insensitive response of the Bengal government's administration to the havoc wreaked by the cyclone, see again the memoir of civil servant Mitra, Towards Independence, pp. 110–113. See also Mitra, ‘Famine of 1943’, p. 256.

52 Telegram from the Governor of Bengal, repeated by the Viceroy Marquess of Linlithgow to Mr Amery, 20 September 1943, MSS. EUR. F. 125/25, in Mansergh (ed.), The Transfer of Power, Vol. IV, document no. 125, p. 285.

53 For in-depth discussions of the number of famine-related deaths in Bengal, see Sen, Poverty and Famines, Appendix D ‘Famine Mortality: A Case Study’, pp. 195–216. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery, Appendix C ‘Famine Mortality, 1943–46’, pp. 299–315. Dyson, Tim, ‘On the Demography of South Asian Famines’, Part I, Population Studies, 45, 1, March 1991Google ScholarPubMed. Dyson, Tim, ‘On the Demography of South Asian Famines’, Part II, Population Studies, 45, 2, July 1991Google ScholarPubMed. Dyson, Tim and Maharatna, Arup, ‘Excess Mortality during the Bengal Famine: A Re-evaluation’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 28, 3, September 1991CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a further, nuanced debate on excess mortality during the famine, see Maharatna, The Demography of Famines, particularly Chapter 4 ‘The Demography of the Bengal Famine of 1943–1944’, pp. 128–177, and Chapter 5 ‘Regional Variation in the Demographic Impact of the Bengal Famine and Famine Effects Elsewhere’, pp. 178–237, and appendices B, C, and E to the book.

54 For literature on politics in Bengal during the ten years preceding India's partition in 1947, see Talbot, Provincial Politics and the Pakistan Movement. Das, Suranjan, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905–1947, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991Google Scholar. Chatterji, Bengal Divided. Basu, Rita, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookherjee and an Alternative Politics in Bengal, Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 2002Google Scholar. De, ‘British Policy in Bengal’.

55 Chatterji, Joya, ‘The Making of a Borderline: The Radcliffe Award for Bengal’, in Talbot, Ian and Singh, Gurharpal (eds), Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 180Google Scholar.

56 Talukdar, Mohammad H. R. (ed.), Memoirs of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy with a Brief Account of His Life and Work, foreword by Hossain, Kamal, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009, 2nd editionGoogle Scholar; first published in 1987, p. 1. For a description of Suhrawardy's influential family background, see ibid., pp. 1–7. See also Begum Ikramullah, Shaista Suhrawardy, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy: A Biography, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1991; paperback edition 2006, pp. 3–10Google Scholar.

57 Talukdar (ed.), Memoirs of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, pp. 18–20.

58 Kali Charan Ghosh, ‘Indian Famine Relief Measures: Old and New’, Modern Review, November 1943, reproduced in Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, p. 122. See also the published speech by H. S. Suhrawardy in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, ‘Statement on Food Situation in Bengal by the Hon'ble Mr. H. S. Suhrawardy, Minister in charge of Civil Supplies’, pp. 2–3, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 111, NMML.

59 Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, p. 122. FIC, Report on Bengal, p. 91. Suhrawardy, ‘Statement on Food Situation’, p. 3.

60 As quoted in FIC, Report on Bengal, p. 91.

61 Ibid., p. 56. See also Suhrawardy, ‘Statement on Food Situation’, p. 3.

62 FIC, Report on Bengal, p. 56.

63 Ibid. See also Suhrawardy, ‘Statement on Food Situation’, pp. 3–4.

64 Ó Gráda, ‘The Ripple that Drowns?’, p. 25.

65 ‘Bengal Hindu Mahasabha's Notice regarding the Food Drive by the Bengal Government: Number 2’, 12 June 1943, issued by Manindranath Mitra, General Secretary of the provincial Mahasabha, p. 3, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 111, NMML. Translation mine.

66 ‘Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Speech during the Debate on the Food Situation’, p. 16.

67 Mitra, ‘Famine of 1943’, p. 255.

68 ‘Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Speech during the Debate on the Food Situation’, p. 16.

69 ‘Our Duty during the Food Crisis (2)’, Provincial Letter, Calcutta, 3 October 1943, Bengal Provincial Committee, Communist Party of India, in Das, Suranjan and Bandyopadhyay, Premansu Kumar (eds), Food Movement of 1959: Documenting a Turning Point in the History of West Bengal, Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi and Co., 2004, p. 11Google Scholar. Original in Bengali, translation mine.

70 ‘Dr. S. P. Mookerjee's speech at the press conference in Delhi’, 10 July 1944, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 119, NMML.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 The expression ‘Bengal vortex’ was used by Major General E. Wood, the additional secretary to the Food Department of the central Government of India. See the copy of letter no. D.O. 400/Addl. S (Confidential), New Delhi, 23 April 1943, from Major General E. Wood to L. G. Pinnell, Director of Civil Supplies, Government of Bengal, Calcutta, annexed as Appendix H, pp. 69–70, to H. B. L. Braund, Memorandum of the Hon'ble Mr. Justice H. B. L. Braund on Events from March 1943 to the end of 1943 in relation to the Food Situation in Bengal, Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1944, in Sir Manilal B. Nanavati papers, Private Papers Section, National Archives of India, New Delhi (hereafter NAI). (Nanavati was the deputy governor of the Indian Reserve Bank who later became one of the Indian members of the official Famine Inquiry Commission.)

75 Undated and unsigned note ‘Some Comments on the So-Called Stand Still Arrangement Said to Agreed upon by the 2 Ministries’, pp. 92–93, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments VIII–IX, sub. file no. 4, NMML.

76 Ibid., p. 93.

77 Ibid., p. 94.

78 Ibid., p. 95.

79 Gayer, Laurent and Jaffrelot, Christophe (eds), Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, London: Hurst and Company, 2012Google Scholar. For a full-scale study of Muslim ghettos in India, see Seabrook, Jeremy and Siddiqui, Imran Ahmed, People without History: India's Muslim Ghettos, London and New York: Pluto Press, 2011Google Scholar.

80 FIC, Report on Bengal, p. 96.

81 Symonds, Richard, In the Margins of Independence: A Relief Worker in India and Pakistan, 1942–1949, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001Google Scholar, Appendix ‘The Friends Ambulance Unit in the Bengal Famine of 1943’, pp. 143–144.

82 ‘Food Wastage’, The Eastern Economist, 6 June 1947, p. 996.

83 Undated and unsigned note ‘Some Points regarding Assessment of Assets and Liabilities in the Rationing Department under the Civil Supplies’, p. 91, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments VIII–IX, sub. file no. 4, NMML.

84 Dr. S. P. Mookerjee's speech at the Town Hall meeting on 6 June 1943, p.1, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub-file no. 119, NMML.

85 N. C. Chatterjee, All-India Hindu Students’ Conference, second session, Amritsar, 28th December, 1943: Presidential Address, Calcutta: published by Monoranjan Chaudhury, 1943, as cited in Dutt, Hungry Bengal, p. 3.

86 Dr. S. P. Mookerjee's speech at the Town Hall meeting on 6 June 1943, p. 2. The Union Boards had geographical jurisdiction over the unions; the Boards were local administrative units representing a group of five to 20 contiguous villages. The unions were replaced in independent India by gram panchayats (village assemblies). See Ashokvardhan, C. and Vachhani, Ashish (eds), Socio-Economic Profile of Rural India, series-II, Vol. 4 (Eastern India), New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company Pvt. Ltd., 2011, p. 306Google Scholar.

87 ‘Hindu Mahasabha's Notice regarding the House-to-House Search by the Ministers to Stop Illegal Food Hoarding’, 4 June 1943, Calcutta: Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, 1943, p. 3, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments VIII–IX, sub. file no. 4, NMML. Translation mine.

88 ‘Bengal Hindu Mahasabha's Notice regarding the Food Drive by the Bengal Government: Number 2’, p. 3.

89 Suhrawardy, ‘Statement on Food Situation’, p. 4.

90 ‘Bengal Hindu Mahasabha's Notice regarding the Food Drive by the Bengal Government: Number 2’, p. 3.

91 For election results in Bihar, see Return Showing the Results of Elections in India, 1937, Presented by the Secretary of State for India to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, November, 1937, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1937, pp. 82–91. For election results in Orissa, see ibid., pp. 110–113.

92 ‘Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Speech during the Debate on the Food Situation’, p. 11.

93 Ibid.

94 Shyma Prasad Mookerjee's account of his tour in parts of the Burdwan and Nadia districts, 24 August 1943, p. 2, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 119, NMML.

95 ‘Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Speech at the University Institute on the 15th October, 1943’, p. 1, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 119, NMML.

96 Ahmad, Abul Mansur, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhar (Fifty Years of Politics Seen by Me), Dacca: Khoshroz Kitab Mahal, 1995, 6th editionGoogle Scholar; reprint 2013, p. 183. Translation mine.

97 Ibid.

98 Ikramullah, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, p. 44. In May 1943, the Civil Supplies Department of the Bengal Government appointed Messrs. Ispahani and Co., a private trading firm, to the lucrative post of sole grain purchasing agent of the government. The owner of the firm was Hassan Ispahani (1902–1981), who was one of the wealthiest Muslim merchants in Bengal and also a Muslim League member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, the treasurer of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League (from 1936 until 1947), a close confidante of the party's supreme national leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and a major funder of the party. For a discussion of the corruption of Ispahani's firm in its capacity as the sole grain purchasing agent of the Bengal government, see FIC, ‘Statement Summarising Evidence Related to Messrs. Ispahani Ltd.’, in Sir Manilal B. Nanavati papers, NAI. For Syama Prasad Mookerjee's attacks on the corruption of Ispahani's firm and on the nexus between the firm and the Muslim League, see ‘Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's Speech during the Debate on the Food Situation’, p. 11–15.

99 Ikramullah, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, p. 44.

100 Ibid.

101 Talukdar (ed.), Memoirs of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, p. 20. Analogous to the political hindrances in the grain supply to Bengal from neighbouring Indian provinces like Bihar, in China too the inter-provincial movement of grain to Henan from neighbouring Shensi and Hupeh during the famine was impeded due to the war and political calculations. Bose, ‘Starvation amidst Plenty’, p. 720.

102 The Statesman, 23 September 1943, as reproduced in Ghosh, Famines in Bengal, Appendix H, p. 188.

103 Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1993, Appendix II ‘Letter to His Excellency Sir John Herbert, Governor of Bengal’, 26 July 1942, p. 187.

104 Ghosh, The Bengal Tragedy, pp. 37–38.

105 ‘Prof. Meghnad Saha's Appeal: Public Co-Operation for Relief Work’, as produced in Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, Appendix II, pp. 144–146.

106 Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 31.

107 ‘Bengal Famine’, Lincolnshire Echo, Monday 4 October 1943, p. 1.

108 ‘Indian Leader's Plan to End Famine’, The Evening Telegraph, Monday 4 October 1943, p. 4.

109 Communist Party of India, ‘Our Duty during the Food Crisis (2)’, in Das and Bandyopadhyay (eds), Food Movement of 1959, pp. 12–13.

110 Ibid., p. 13.

111 Ibid., p. 9.

112 Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha (hereafter BPHM), How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, Calcutta: BPHM, 1943, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments V–VII, Printed Material category, S. No. 9, NMML. BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine: Report of Relief Work by Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, with a Foreword by Dr. Syamaprasad Mookerjee, Calcutta: BPHM, 1944, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments V–VII, Printed Material category, S. No. 12, NMML.

113 ‘Bhadralok’ loosely means an educated Bengali gentleman belonging to a ‘high’ caste. For debates on the definition, composition, and characteristics of the bhadralok, see Broomfield, J. H., Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-Century Bengal, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968, pp. 5–13Google Scholar. Johnson, Gordon, ‘Partition, Agitation and Congress: Bengal 1904 to 1908’, Modern Asian Studies, 7, 3, May 1973, pp. 534–535CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 3–17.

114 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 8.

115 Ibid. See also BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 2.

116 Bengal Relief Committee, A Brief Report upto 31st May, 1944, Calcutta: Bengal Relief Committee Publication, 1944, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments VIII–IX, sub. file no. 4, NMML.

117 Das, Tarakchandra, Bengal Famine (1943): As Revealed in a Survey of the Destitutes in Calcutta, Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1949, p. 10Google Scholar.

118 Ibid., p. 10, footnote 11 therein.

119 Nehru, prison diary, entry on 21 Sept. 1943, Selected Works, Vol. 13, p. 242.

120 J. R. Symonds, ‘Non-Official Relief: Mr Symonds on Obstacles Surmounted’, in Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, Appendix IV, p. 179.

121 Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, Chapter XIV ‘The Press and Government: Work of Non-Official Relief Organizations’, pp. 55–56. Narayan, T. G., Famine Over Bengal, with a foreword by Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, Calcutta: The Book Company Ltd., 1944, p. 121Google Scholar. Mitra, Towards Independence, pp. 129–130.

122 See the tables of monetary donations from various relief funds in Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, pp. 183–186.

123 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 10.

124 As cited in Dutt, Hungry Bengal, p. 133.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid.

127 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4. For a list of local relief organizations that received help from the Mahasabha, see ibid., p. 12, and BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, Appendix IV, pp. 27–28.

128 Statement by Sj Chittaranjan Das, Secretary, Chittagong Central Relief Committee, 17 June 1944, p. 83, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments VIII–IX, sub. file no. 4, NMML.

129 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4.

130 Letter from Braja Kanta to Mookerjee, 23 August 1943, p. 3, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 111, NMML.

131 Ibid., p. 4.

132 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 233.

133 Ibid., pp. 233–236.

134 One maund is equal to 37.5 kilograms.

135 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, pp. 10–11.

136 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, pp. 3–4.

137 Chattopadhyaya, K. P. and Mukherjea, Ramkrishna, Famine and Rehabilitation in Bengal, Part II ‘A Plan for Rehabilitation’, Calcutta: Statistical Publishing Society, 1946, p. 6Google Scholar.

138 Ibid.

139 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 3.

140 Ibid.

141 P. C. Mahalanobis, Ramkrishna Mukherjea and Ambika Ghosh, ‘A Sample Survey of After-Effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943’, advance reprint from Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, 7, 4, 1946, Calcutta: Statistical Publishing Society, 1946, Chapter 6 ‘Loss of Plough Cattle’, pp. 40–46. For the organization of the survey itself, see Chapter 1 ‘History of the Survey’, pp. 1–4.

142 Richard Schneer, ‘Famine in Bengal: 1943’, Science and Society, 11, 2, Spring 1947, p. 175.

143 Chattopadhyaya and Mukherjea, ‘A Plan for Rehabilitation’, Appendix ‘The Milk Problem’, p. 67.

144 Gajendra Singh's recent research shows that between 1 January 1941 and 1 February 1942, the number of Mussalman (Muslim) combatants (excluding non-combatant defence employees) in the Indian army increased from 1,55,237 to 2,39,000. See ‘Class Composition of the Army in India’, Asia and Africa Collections, L/WS/1/456, British Library, and ‘Indian Army Morale and Possible Reduction, 1943–1945’, Asia and Africa Collections, L/WS/1/707, British Library, as presented in Singh, Gajendra, The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars: Between Self and Sepoy, London: Bloomsbury, 2014Google Scholar, Appendix II ‘Recruitment into the Indian Army during World War II’, p. 256.

145 Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, Appendix IV ‘Letter to His Excellency Sir John Herbert, Governor of Bengal’, 16 November 1942, p. 209.

146 ‘Appeal Issued by the Bengal Relief Committee’, place of publication not mentioned: Bengal Relief Committee, 1 August 1943, p. 1, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 114, NMML.

147 Mahalanobis et al., ‘A Sample Survey of After-Effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943’, p. 42.

148 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 11, and Appendix III, p. 26.

149 Iftekhar Iqbal, ‘Return of the Bhadralok: Ecology and Agrarian Relations in Eastern Bengal, c. 1905–1947’, Modern Asian Studies, 43, 6, November 2009, p. 1349.

150 Letter from Syama Prasad Mookerjee to Sir Thomas Rutherford, undated, p. 2, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 119, NMML.

151 Ghosh, The Bengal Tragedy, Appendix I ‘Catastraphe (sic) of Unprecedented Nature’, observations of Pt. Hriday Nath Kunzru, p. 87.

152 Excerpt from Pt. Kunzru's speech in Calcutta in October 1943, quoted under the heading ‘Some Thoughts on Bengal Famine’, in BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 38.

153 Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, pp. 40–41.

154 Government of Bengal, Instructions for the Organisation and Distribution of Relief, 1943, pp. 4–5, in Leonard George Pinnell papers, Mss Eur. D911/4, India Office Records and Private Papers, British Library, London.

155 Aykroyd, The Conquest of Famine, p. 58.

156 Relief Co-Ordination Committee, Relief Organisations Fight Bengal Famine, Calcutta: Relief Co-Ordination Committee, 1943, p. 4Google Scholar, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments V–VII, Printed Materials category, S. No. 10, NMML. See also BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4.

157 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4. See also Sinha, Bimal Chandra and Ghosh, Haricharan, Food Problem in Bengal with a Foreword by Dr. Syamaprosad Mookerjee, Calcutta: published privately by Professor H. C. Ghosh, 1943, p. 10Google Scholar. See further Relief Co-Ordination Committee, Relief Organisations Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4.

158 S. Bhattacharyya, ‘World War II and the Consumption Pattern of the Calcutta Middleclass’, Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, 8, 2, March 1947, pp. 199–200.

159 Ibid., p. 200.

160 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4. See also Relief Co-Ordination Committee, Relief Organisations Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4.

161 Letter from Aparna Sengupta to Mookerjee, pp. 75–76, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 111, NMML. Translation mine.

162 Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, p. 42. Bigha was a traditional unit of measurement of land, equal to approximately 1,333 square metres.

163 A unit of currency, 16 to the rupee.

164 Brown, India Need Not Starve!, p. 2.

165 Mitra, Towards Independence, p. 119.

166 Chittaprosad, Hungry Bengal: A Tour through Midnapur District, by Chittaprosad, in November 1943, Bombay: New Age, 1944, p. 4Google Scholar. (Note: the book contains no pagination; the pages have been numbered by me.)

167 Letter from Srijiba Nyayatirtha, principal of the Bhatpara Sanskrit College, 24 Pargannas district, to the Civil Supplies Minister, Bengal, undated, pp. 1–2, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments VIII–IX, sub. file no. 4, NMML.

168 Ibid., p. 1.

169 Government of Bengal, Revenue Department, Famine Manual, Alipore: Bengal Government Press, 1941, pp. 56–57.

170 Santhanam, The Cry of Distress, p. 42.

171 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4.

172 Letter from Mr Nath to Mookerjee, 10 October 1943, p. 141, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 111, NMML. Translation mine.

173 Pandits were Brahman priests-cum-teachers in the tols, which were also called pāthasālā.

174 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fight Bengal Famine, p. 4.

175 Schneer, ‘Famine in Bengal’, p. 175.

176 Greenough, Prosperity and Misery, p. 133.

177 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 13.

178 Narayan, Famine Over Bengal, p. 215.

179 ‘Testimony of the Bengal Provincial Mahasabha’, p. 261, in Sir Manilal. B. Nanavati papers, NAI.

180 Narayan, Famine Over Bengal, pp. 215–216.

181 Das, Bengal Famine, p. 9.

182 Ibid., p. 88.

183 Ibid., pp. 88–89.

184 Ibid.

185 Ibid., p. 89.

186 ‘More Starvation Deaths in Districts’, Hindustan Standard, Calcutta, 9 October 1943, in Syama Prasad Mookerjee papers, installments II–IV, sub. file no. 113, NMML.

187 Freda Bedi, Bengal Lamenting, Lahore: The Lion Press, c. 1944, p. 89.

188 Ibid.

189 Shan Muhammad, Khaksar Movement in India, Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1973, p. v.

190 Malik, Muhammad Aslam, Allama Inayatullah Mashraqi: A Political Biography, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 41Google Scholar.

191 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 16.

192 Symonds, ‘Non-Official Relief’, p. 182.

193 Kooiman, Dick, ‘Mass Movement, Famine and Epidemic: A Study in Interrelationship’, Modern Asian Studies, 25, 2, 1991, p. 283CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

194 Hardiman, David, Missionaries and their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2008, p. 73Google Scholar.

195 Ibid., p. 86.

196 As argued in ibid., p. 88.

197 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, pp. 17–18.

198 Ibid.

199 Ibid., p. 18.

200 Cobblers.

201 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 18.

202 Ibid., p. 14. For a discussion on the socio-economic profile of the Namasudras, see Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872–1947, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, 2nd editionGoogle Scholar with a new postscript, pp. 11–29.

203 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 18.

204 Ibid., p. 16.

205 Ibid., p. 17.

206 Jawaharlal Nehru mentioned the attack on Jinnah in his prison diary on 27 July 1943 and observed: ‘it indicates a background of bitterness against Jinnah among certain groups of Muslims’. Selected Works, Vol. 13, pp. 195–196.

207 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 17.

208 Ibid.

209 Ibid., Appendix VIII, p. 31.

210 Ibid.

211 Ibid., p. 20.

212 Ibid.

213 Nehru, prison diary, entry on 21 September 1943, Selected Works, Vol. 13, p. 244.

214 Ashim Kumar Datta, ‘Introduction’, in Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, , p. vii. See also Basu, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookherjee, pp. 16, 18.

215 Narayan, Famine Over Bengal, p. 172.

216 Chittaprosad, Hungry Bengal: A Tour through Midnapur District, by Chittaprosad, in November 1943, Bombay: New Age, 1944Google Scholar; reprint New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery, 2011. The Delhi Art Gallery published the reprint in conjunction with the exhibition titled ‘Chittaprosad: A Retrospective, 1915–1978’ organized in 2011. A two-volume catalogue was also published in conjunction with the exhibition. In this catalogue, the family copy has been referred to as possibly the only surviving copy. The Delhi Art Gallery and Chittaprosad's family were unaware of the copy kept at the British Library in London where I consulted the original 1944 publication.

217 Ibid., p. 4.

218 Ibid. ‘Nari Samiti’ in Bengali means Women's Society.

219 Bedi, Bengal Lamenting, p. 96.

220 BPHM, Annual Report for the Year 1943–44, p. 137, in All India Hindu Mahasabha papers, file. C-59, NMML.

221 Chittaprosad, Hungry Bengal, pp. 14–15.

222 Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 92.

223 Ibid.

224 Chittaprosad, Hungry Bengal, p. 4.

225 Ibid.

226 Ibid., p. 5.

227 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

228 Ibid., p. 7.

229 Ibid., p. 15.

230 Ibid., p. 7.

231 Brown, India Need Not Starve!, p. 67.

232 Ibid., p. 68.

233 As cited in Dutt, Hungry Bengal, p. 105.

234 For The Tribune’s defence of the Congress, see ibid., pp. 105–108.

235 Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhar, p. 182. Translation mine.

236 ‘Detailed Statement Showing the Result of Elections to the Bengal Legislative Assembly’, in Return Showing the Results of Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures in 1945–46, Delhi: Government of India Press, 1948, pp. 110–136Google Scholar.

237 Ibid., p. 136.

238 ‘Number of Votes Polled by Various Political Parties in the Bengal Legislative Assembly’, in Return Showing the Results of Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures in 1945–46, p. 71.

239 Ibid. For a discussion on the ‘Communal Award’ in Bengal, see Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 18–54.

240 ‘Number of Votes Polled by Various Political Parties in the Bengal Legislative Assembly’, p. 71.

241 Ibid.

242 ‘Detailed Statement Showing the Result of Elections to the Bengal Legislative Assembly’, p. 110.

243 Ibid.

244 Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance’, p. 218.

245 Bose, ‘Starvation amidst Plenty’, p. 725. See also Bose, Agrarian Bengal, pp. 219–220.

246 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 250.

247 Ibid.

248 Ibid., pp. 229–230.

249 Ibid., p. 228.

250 Ibid.

251 Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, p. 167.

252 ‘Field Marshall Viscount Wavell to Mr Amery’, marked ‘PRIVATE AND SECRET’, 1 July 1945, L/PO/10/22, in Mansergh (ed.), The Transfer of Power, Vol. V, document no. 555, p. 1182.

253 Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 125.

254 Ibid., p. 127.

255 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, pp. 249–250.

256 Ibid., p. 237.

257 Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, pp. 185–186.

258 Khan, Yasmin, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 65–66Google Scholar.

259 Mahalanobis et al., ‘A Sample Survey of After-Effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943’, p. 6.

260 BPHM, How Hindu Mahasabha Fought Bengal Famine, p. 20. Emphasis mine.

261 Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 39.

262 Maharatna, The Demography of Famines, p. 195. Due to net inflow of Hindus from eastern Bengal as a result of heightened tensions between them and the Muslims there, the population of Hindus in western Bengal rose by 15 per cent between 1941 and 1951. However, there was also a corresponding decline of 10 per cent in the Muslim population of western Bengal. Ibid. These changes in the demographic composition further helped the Mahasabha in western Bengal as the party was traditionally stronger in that part of the province.

263 ‘List of Mahasabha Branches’, in All India Hindu Mahasabha papers, file no. P–32, pp. 139–155, and file no. P–14, pp. 138–139.