Friend 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.
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.