6
The Great Bengal Famine, 1942–43
A branch of Hindu mythology has it that the temporal world is ruled by a series of fourteen kings called Manu, sons of Brahma, each of whom reigns for 43,20,000 years; and at the time of change of Manu, there is always some terrible disaster—flood, drought, pestilence, tsunami or whatever. A change of Manu is known as a Manvantar and in Bengali, the term has come exclusively to mean ‘famine’. The Great Bengal Famine of 1943 is popularly known in Bengal as the Ponchasher Manvantar (the Famine of Fifty), because it took place in the year 1350 according to the Bengali calendar. In those days, ordinary Bengali Hindus used to consult the Bengali calendar (a solar calendar) for most purposes and the Christian calendar only for official work.
The famine, in which an estimated 3 million people died, was man-made. It was a direct result of the war, coupled with some horrible misdeeds committed by a few Britishers in the course of their panicky reaction to the war. A combination of a cyclone and tidal wave, presumably a tsunami, at Contai in the Midnapore district had the effect of triggering the famine, but it would have happened anyway. It was not the result of hoarding of foodgrains by Indian traders or rich farmers, as the British had cunningly canvassed and the Muslim League had endorsed, and as is believed by many. Dr Mookerjee, while not exactly predicting the famine, had observed that certain measures taken by the British administration were sure to cause a complete breakdown of the social and economic life in the province. He also played a cardinal role in organizing relief for the famine-affected, and thereafter in exposing the misdeeds mentioned. It is therefore necessary to recount in brief, for purposes of this biography, the situation in which India was placed in 1942–43 vis-à-vis the war, especially the one in the Eastern theatre being fought between the Allies on the one hand and the Japanese on the other.
The beginning of 1942 had seen Dr Mookerjee, belonging to the Hindu Mahasabha, comfortably ensconced as the finance minister in the Progressive Democratic coalition cabinet of Bengal, headed by A.K. Fazlul Haq. He was so involved that the cabinet had come to be called the Syama–Haq cabinet. There was just one big problem. At this point of time the British viceroy in New Delhi was Lord Linlithgow, and his boss at India House, London––the secretary of state for India––was the Rt Hon. Leopold Amery—neither of whom had any reason to be happy with the fact that Hindus and Muslims were happily cooperating in Bengal. And their man in Calcutta, Sir John Arthur Herbert, the Governor of Bengal, was ten times worse, if not more. Dr Mookerjee would later describe him as a ‘cheaply clever, third-rate Governor’, a person ‘not competent to become a Head Clerk in Clive Street’.1
Herbert personally and the British generally hated the cabinet and wished it to fall. And fall it did, largely through the machinations of Herbert and the weaknesses of Haq, coupled with other circumstances. But why did they wish it ill? The reasons were stated with absolute clarity in Dr Mookerjee’s statement of resignation on 16 November 1942:
[E]ven the combination that we had formed under the leadership of Mr A.K. Fazlul Haq proved something too bitter to be swallowed by a section of permanent officials in this province and by no less a person than the head of the provincial administration himself [meaning Herbert]. British rule thrives . . . on constant strife between Hindus and Muslims. And even a partial unity on the part of the members belonging to these two great communities served as a nightmare to those bureaucrats who held in their hands the real powers of administration.
Meanwhile, the Second World War raged on. Soon after Britain declared the war in 1939, Lord Linlithgow, the viceroy, unilaterally declared India a belligerent state on the side of the Allies without consulting Indian political leaders or the elected provincial representatives. Dr Mookerjee had observed, much later, in his diary:
[I]t [the Congress] could not make up its mind whether it would support or oppose the government. Its declared attitude against Fascism and its pro-China policy made it say things vehemently opposed to Germany. Indeed Gandhiji went to Linlithgow and expressed his profound grief at the prospect of Westminster Abbey being bombed . . . [but] Linlithgow’s efforts to get the support of the political parties did not succeed. His Majesty’s government was not prepared to offer anything substantial.
In the long letter that Dr Mookerjee sent Herbert from New Delhi, dated 26 July 1942, he directly accused him of wantonly harbouring ill feeling towards the ministry and trying to upset it. Apart from these charges against Herbert and the bureaucracy, the letter also focused on the need for the British to look at Indians in a different way. Dr Mookerjee, unlike Subhas Chandra Bose, was no admirer of the Japanese, and did not unreservedly believe in the dictum, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. When he was writing this letter, the Congress Working Committee had already finalized the Quit India phase, and Dr Mookerjee, in all probability, could foresee that this would bring about terrible reprisals from the British, and was trying to soften the blow that was coming. He tried to convince Herbert that while the Indians did want the British to go, it could wait till the end of the war, and they most certainly did not want the Japanese to take their place. We shall presently see how things turned out in practice.
Dr Mookerjee met the viceroy in Delhi towards the end of July 1942. He could gather that the latter knew Herbert’s limitations very well but could not, or would not, go beyond the Constitution, no matter how many thousands died. He also discovered that he was fully prepared to meet the political situation with as much sternness as the British bayonets would allow him to. Meanwhile, on 8 August 1942, the Congress was meeting in Bombay to give its ultimatum its final shape. Then the ‘Quit India’ call was given, and the Congress leaders were promptly put behind bars. This prompted Dr Mookerjee to write the historical letter of 12 August 1942, dealt with at length in the previous chapter. He received the viceroy’s reply to this letter towards the end of September, and after that his resignation was just a matter of time. What finally brought it about was the natural disaster in the district of Midnapore, and Herbert’s concealment of the same from him while he was still minister.
Following the declaration of the Quit India movement, the people of the district of Midnapore rose in complete revolt which was by no means non-violent. Dr Mookerjee, at least on record, did not approve of the violence, or of the declaration of independence. In his statement2 following his resignation on 16 November 1942, he used strong words against the freedom fighters, saying, ‘I do not for a moment ignore that the political disturbances in some parts of this district [Midnapore] were of a serious character. One can well understand any legitimate steps taken to combat lawlessness and open defiance of authority . . . ’ Earlier, in a letter3 to Governor Herbert dated 26 July 1942 he had said in unequivocal terms, ‘Anybody, who during the war, plans to stir up mass feelings resulting in internal disturbances or insecurity must be resisted by the government that may function for the time being.’
So what accounts for Dr Mookerjee’s disapproval of these fearless acts of freedom fighters? Was it Dr Mookerjee the constitutional politician talking? Or was it Dr Mookerjee the humanist, who knew that the iron hand of British imperial power will in no time descend with all its terrible might on these foolhardy young men, and so was he trying to soften the blow by prevailing upon Herbert to act reasonably, sensibly, with a little mercy? Probably it was a mixture of both, and an exhibition of his political sagacity. That he was politically in sympathy with the movement is amply proved by his correspondence as discussed in the previous chapter. But he also knew that the freedom fighters of Tamluk would only be able to hold out for some time and, after that, British repression of the worst kind would hit them (it did, repression beyond all imagination). He probably had also factored in the presence of two Muslim ICS officers, District Magistrate Niaz Mohammed Khan and Subdivisional Officer Wazir Ali Shaikh, who, in the communally charged atmosphere of the times, were viewed by the Hindus as being eager to suppress what they saw as essentially a Hindu revolt.
As apprehended by Dr Mookerjee, the British retaliated brutally, most certainly not confining themselves to ‘legitimate steps’ as suggested by him. They deployed both the police and the military who took the law completely into their own hands. They made few arrests. Instead they killed, burnt, tortured, maimed and raped, all with a carte blanche issued by Governor Herbert. To give but one small example, on 29 September 1942, the Royal Indian Air Force bombed parts of the area under Sutahata police station (near the present Haldia Port). At this point of time, the district magistrate of Midnapore was Niaz Mohammed Khan of the Indian Civil Service, a Punjabi Muslim, who later opted for Pakistan and became a very important civil servant there.
At this juncture, a terrible cyclone hit the Midnapore coast in the very same Tamluk and Contai subdivisions. This was on 16 October 1942, on the Ashtami day of Durga Puja, the biggest festival of Bengali Hindus, and the streets were full of people in Contai town. In no time, the town went under 5 feet of water. This was a time of year when no cyclone is normally expected, and the population was taken totally unawares. Some 30,000 people were said to have lost their lives in the first fifteen minutes.
It is not quite clear what exactly had happened. A cyclone alone, however severe, cannot cause this kind of sudden flooding and wholesale and instantaneous disaster so far inland (Contai town is separated by about 14 kilometres of dead-flat country from the sea). There were reports of a few river embankments being ruptured, but there were no dams in the vicinity whose bursting could cause this kind of flooding. Upon questioning an eyewitness, who spoke only Bengali, one got the answer, ‘Shagor bhenge porechhilo (The sea broke down upon us)’. The nature of the disaster, coupled with this description, suggests a tsunami caused by a seaquake which happened simultaneously with the cyclone. Tsunamis had not been studied in detail then, which accounts for the misdiagnosis.
Something else had happened in the meantime. On 27 January 1941, Subhas Chandra Bose, who was supposedly lying ill at his residence in Elgin Road, Calcutta, and was under close watch by the police, managed to slip away and eventually escape to Germany, and thence to Japan. The tsunami-cyclone of Contai, or whatever it was, combined with the turn the war had taken in the Eastern theatre and the disappearance of Bose had the effect of totally disorienting Herbert. On 19 January 1942, the Japanese had invaded the British colony of Burma. A few bombs were dropped in Bengal, especially in the Calcutta docks, and the Feni area of the Noakhali district near the Burma border. India was apparently the next stop, and Bengal the threshold.
All this made Herbert lose all sense of proportion. He, on his own, without even consulting the provincial government (at this time, A.K. Fazlul Haq’s Progressive Democratic coalition cabinet, of which Dr Mookerjee was a minister) decided to launch a scorched earth policy of the type followed by the Russians in the wake of the Nazi invasion of Ukraine and Russia. Herbert called it the policy of ‘denial and evacuation’. But there was a difference. In Ukraine and Russia, the Germans were a reality, not a threat; also, the Russians and Ukrainians were not fond of the Germans, to say the least. The scorched earth policy therefore had an element of spontaneity. As opposed to this, in Bengal, the Japanese were a mere distant threat. In fact, they never came to India. In all probability, they had no intention of coming to India—their occupation of Burma was probably directed towards cutting off the land route to China. Also, the people of Midnapore had no more hatred of the Japanese than they had of the British. Therefore, they had no intention to burn their own produce and run away from their own land. It appears that the extent of the revolt in Midnapore in August 1942 was prompted largely by these excesses of Herbert.
Herbert, in his fear-crazed state, had no time or inclination to consider these fine points. Also, later in the year, to his fear of the Japanese was probably added a desire to wreak vengeance on the natives of Midnapore for what they did during the Quit India phase. He carried out the twin policies of denial and evacuation in Midnapore under a veil of total secrecy and in a draconian manner, and in this he was assisted to no small degree by his like-minded lieutenant, District Magistrate N.M. Khan. Such was the secrecy that there was neither any reporting in the press nor did anything get recorded in the archives. As a result, it will never be known when exactly the policy was first put into implementation in Midnapore and when it was withdrawn. Most of this information is gleaned from the autobiography of Ashok Mitra4 who, as an ICS officer himself, was privy to a lot of information never recorded or released to the media.
The denial policy had been adopted by the Government of India, but the facts that Bengal was a frontier province in the war and that it had a panicky and vindictive Governor such as Herbert had the effect of the policy being applied in a draconian manner in Bengal as nowhere else. Dr Mookerjee dubbed the policy as ‘shocking proof of the nervous breakdown of the British administration in India’. The secret instructions as to what officials, civil and military, were to do in the event of invasion and failure of the military practically indicated that the government had given up Bengal for lost. Dr Mookerjee pleaded earnestly that boats, cycles and other means of communication should not be destroyed or removed in the so-called danger area but they should be allowed to work according to a rigorous timetable. In case of defeat or invasion by the enemy, they could be destroyed at the last moment by the government’s own staff. In case the enemy never came (as they did not) the policy of destruction contemplated and imposed by the government would lead to a complete breakdown of the social and economic life of a large part of the province.
The government, of course, did not listen to Dr Mookerjee, and the apprehended breakdown of the social and economic life did indeed take place. The name of that breakdown was the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. This denial policy was the real reason behind the famine, not hoarding of foodgrain by Indian traders as has been cleverly canvassed by the British. This is corroborated by Ashok Mitra5 of the ICS, who at that time was the subdivisional officer of Munshigunge in the district of Dacca in East Bengal. Ashok Mitra, together with his colleague Madan Mohan Lal Hooja of the Imperial Police, did a surprise raid on one of the biggest rice warehouses in his area––and found practically nothing.
There is more. Not only did the government not listen to Dr Mookerjee regarding the destruction of the means of transport, he was also quietly told that but for the fact that he was himself a minister, his attitude would have been misinterpreted as indicative of sympathy with the enemy—a barely concealed threat to throw him into prison like Sarat Bose.
The ‘denial and evacuation’ policy, according to Ashok Mitra, roughly worked this way. First, government agents, together with the police, would raid all locations where major stocks of foodstuff could be expected. They would then throw away the rice or forcibly take it away, to be stocked in government warehouses. Anyone who resisted was not only beaten up severely, but was also not paid a farthing. How much rice or paddy was thrown away in this manner will never be known. What was stocked in warehouses began to be released from June 1944, when rationing was first introduced. Because of the total lack of any hygiene or care in these warehouses, the rice became putrid and foul-smelling and mixed with muck and tiny pieces of stone called kankar—inedible for all practical purposes.
The other aspect of Herbert’s denial policy was the mass destruction of all indigenous means of transportation of foodstuff. This meant the sinking of thousands of country boats (some of them, such as the balam nouka of East Bengal, being as big as barges), and the breaking of tens of thousands of bullock carts everywhere. Even bicycles were not spared. This stopped movement of rice from and to the interior. Movement by rail, steamer or road was not stopped, but rail wagons manufactured in India were exported in large numbers, causing a serious shortage all over the Indian Railway system. As for roads, it must be remembered that at that time movement by road was insignificant because of the rudimentary state of the network. Even to reach Midnapore by road from Calcutta, a trans-shipment or ferrying was necessary at Kolaghat. Dr Mookerjee estimated that more than 10,000 bicycles and thousands of boats had been seized and destroyed in Midnapore alone.
In Midnapore, side by side with the excesses of the denial policy, the retributions continued. Dr Mookerjee came to know of the excesses committed by the police, military and government functionaries and confronted Governor Herbert. He asked him point-blank whether there were secret instructions to the police and the military about burning houses of ordinary people as a retaliatory measure. Herbert went on the defensive and replied that ‘none in the headquarters knew of such instructions’. On 15 October, there was a conference at the Writers’ Buildings, Calcutta, in which Dr Mookerjee, the chief secretary, the inspector-general of police (then the head of the provincial police force) and the deputy inspector-general in charge of the criminal investigation department were present. In this meeting, Dr Mookerjee was given to understand that immediate information would be sent to the officers concerned, telling them that it was against the policy of the government to take any retaliatory steps, such as burning and looting, and if such steps had been taken in the past, they must not be followed again. After this, on 16 October, he left for the hill resort town of Darjeeling for a week of rest with his family.
And on the very same day, Contai was struck by the tsunami-cyclone.
Dr Mookerjee received no news of the disaster for the first three days, such was the muzzling of the media and means of communication. He was in touch daily with the Governor, who also happened to be in Darjeeling at that time. It could not have been that the Governor was not told of the disaster and yet Dr Mookerjee came to know of it only on the fifth day when some people from Midnapore came to see him in Calcutta, and the news was passed on to him in Darjeeling. This can only mean that the Governor, unfazed by the loss of some 30,000 lives, had deliberately withheld the information from his own finance minister, and sat enjoying the cool climes of beautiful Darjeeling! Emperor Nero could hardly have done better. He did not even issue a message of sympathy to the people affected by the disaster, which subsequently even the viceroy did. Later, Dr Mookerjee came to know that the home department had stopped all publicity of the disaster lest the same should reach the enemy and be taken advantage of by them. It was a preposterous argument, bordering on the idiotic—the Japanese radio had broadcast news of the disaster only one day after it happened.
Dr Mookerjee hurried back to Calcutta and took stock of the situation based on available reports, which turned out to be meagre. He could reach Midnapore, with two other ministers of the government, as late as twelve days after the event. He stated in his subsequent speech of resignation that ‘the sufferings of the people that we witnessed were beyond description. Relief was . . . in a hopeless state of confusion and people were denied the barest facilities for movement and work.’ When Dr Mookerjee came back to Calcutta to take up the matter of adequate and orderly relief with the government, he met with an indifference that could only be the result of the policy followed by Herbert. He said in his statement of resignation afterwards, ‘[For] two days we discussed the situation with the High Command of the happy coterie at the Secretariat and I felt disgusted at the obstructive and unrealistic attitude of these so-called public servants.’ He further expressed in characteristic strong language his extreme disapproval of the attitude of the government functionaries, especially the police, in the area, which ranged from apathy and indifference to cruelty and bestiality. While doing so, he made it clear that although some of the officers concerned were Muslims while the victims were mainly Hindus, he was not singling the Muslims out—indeed the number of Hindu officers against whom such allegations had been made were far greater in number.
While visiting Midnapore he found the attitude of N.M. Khan, the district magistrate, correct, but distinctly obstructive. Dr Mookerjee had visited political leaders then incarcerated in prison under the Defence of India regulations and planned to mobilize their support for relief operations. For this, they needed to be released. However, this was neither agreed to by the home department nor by Herbert. To top it, Khan also sent a confidential report to the home department about the meeting between the prisoners and Dr Mookerjee.
However, what Dr Mookerjee found to be most disgusting, depraved and revolting was the apathy, callousness, indifference, heartlessness and utter cruelty and bestiality that government functionaries exhibited towards the victims of the catastrophe. These functionaries were Indians, mostly Bengalis, most of them Hindus, many of them from Midnapore. The way they behaved with the victims upon the instigation of their British masters would put the Spanish conquistadores of South America to shame and make one want to throw up! It is hard to imagine today that an instruction had to be issued from Calcutta, at the instance and insistence of Dr Mookerjee, that it was not the policy of the government to burn and loot the houses of ordinary citizens in retaliation for their rebellious activities! And even after this, and even after the tsunami-cyclone had struck Contai, the government functionaries continued with their nefarious activities, especially at night! Dr Mookerjee himself recorded that in the presence of the district magistrate, complaints were received that boats were deliberately not made available on the fateful evening, or even later, to save the lives of people who were perilously resting for a brief while on the roofs of their kutcha houses which ultimately collapsed. One gentleman gave a harrowing description of how he and others had begged the officers to allow a boat, found by them, to ply for a couple of hours to rescue some men, women and children lying marooned in a nearby place. The request was not only summarily rejected, but the people who were using the boat were threatened with dire consequences. The people who were marooned and not rescued were ultimately washed away, never to be found again. Even after the catastrophe, curfew orders were not lifted even though the local people pleaded with the officials and offered every cooperation. Cows were requisitioned under the Defence of India regulations! The floods and the storm had destroyed an estimated 75–85 per cent of the livestock. Of the few that remained, many, including milch cows, were snatched away by the police and military ostensibly for feeding the troops. Bona fide private relief workers from Calcutta, even after they produced their credentials, were thrown into jails.
Moreover, the government imposed collective fines on the populace. But not on the entire population—only on Hindus! Dr Mookerjee, in his letter to Herbert following his resignation, likened it to the imposition of jizya, the poll tax imposed by the Muslim rulers of Delhi upon non-Muslims, abolished by Emperor Akbar, but reimposed by Aurangzeb.
Directly resulting from this, Dr Mookerjee resigned from the cabinet on 16 November 1942. He sent his resignation to the Chief Minister, requesting him to forward it to the Governor. Of course, the Midnapore affair in the aftermath of the tragedy at Contai was not the only reason for his resignation. It was just the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Together with his formal resignation sent through the Chief Minister to the Governor, he also wrote a separate letter to Herbert on the same day. In this letter and in his resignation speech made before the assembly, he recorded in detail the circumstances which led to his resignation. Among the other reasons he stated, the principal ones were the total disinclination of Herbert and his coterie of British civil servants to let the ministry do its work; the constant fomenting of Hindu–Muslim strife and differences, in which the Muslim League eagerly cooperated; the misapplication of the Defence of India regulations; the refusal to free political prisoners to do relief work in Midnapore; the imposition of collective fines on Hindus alone; and the defeatist policy of denial and evacuation.
The concluding paragraphs of Dr Mookerjee’s resignation speech are as memorable in their directness and clarity as in revealing the intense patriotism and political insight of the man. He said:
When we come here as members of the legislature we seek to reach the goal of our national freedom through the path of constitutional struggle. The history of the countries which still form part of the British Empire [he was referring to Canada and Australia] but which had to wring from unwilling hands the charter of their liberty afford glorious examples of constitutional struggle and victory . . . We have as much right to throw off the yoke of British domination as England is anxious to save herself from Hitler’s profane hands . . . Today in the crisis that threatens us, not as Hindus or Muslims as such, but as Bengalis and Indians, let us demand the inauguration of an administration which will recognize our just and political rights. A Hindu and a Muslim may differ on many things but do they not equally detest slavery—and it is for ending the state of intolerable slavery that I am asking for your support and cooperation.
Dr Mookerjee’s resignation was accepted by the Governor on 20 November 1942. The previous day, he had an interview with Governor Herbert who wanted an assurance from him that the letters he had written to the Governor should not be made public. Dr Mookerjee flatly refused to give any such assurance unless machinery was provided to sack an incompetent Governor such as Herbert ‘who was unfit to shoulder the great responsibility of his office during a grave emergency’. Thereafter, Dr Mookerjee has remarked, presumably tongue in cheek, ‘He was greatly annoyed at this remark and our interview came to an abrupt end.’
Calcutta was bombed by the Japanese in December 1942, though compared to other theatres of the war it was a very tame affair. At that time, Dr Mookerjee was living in Madhupur. From there he proceeded to Cawnpore (now Kanpur) to attend the All-India Hindu Sabha session. This was his first appearance after his resignation and there was considerable enthusiasm about him. In the meeting, the leaders called upon the British government to pay heed to their proposals in this hour of crisis. Some people were in favour of direct action, but this was not implemented owing to the opposition of Savarkar and Dr Moonje.
Meanwhile, in Calcutta, things were going from bad to worse for the Progressive Democratic coalition ministry led by Fazlul Haq. The Muslim League and the European group had ganged up against them, and Muslim and scheduled-caste members were defecting. The Hindu Sabha was out of the ministry with Dr Mookerjee’s exit, but continued to support them, as did the Congress. After Dr Mookerjee’s resignation, Fazlul Haq had taken over the finance portfolio, but it was apprehended that he would not be able to get the budget passed easily. At this stage, Herbert sent for him and asked him to put in his resignation, unless he agreed to repudiate whatever Dr Mookerjee had said about the British administration. Haq was not prepared to do this and Herbert kept on pressuring him to sign the letter of resignation that he had already typed. Haq eventually capitulated and signed it. He told his colleagues, including Dr Mookerjee, of his resignation only the next morning, by which time the resignation had already been accepted. The budget had not been passed, so after some more pressurizing, which Dr Mookerjee successfully resisted, the Governor on 31 March 1943 declared Bengal to be a province under Section 93 of the Government of India Act, and a ‘Governor’s Budget’ was passed.
There was a great uproar against this, and a huge demonstration was organized, which was addressed by Haq and Dr Mookerjee and attended by Hindus and Muslims alike. The theme of the demonstration was that the Governor had found the cabinet too independent for his tastes and had, by his machinations, got a perfectly legitimate government dismissed. But Herbert was not a person to be shamed by public uproar against him. He sent for Nazimuddin and got him to form a ministry in which three caste Hindu ministers and three of the scheduled castes were persuaded to join. Then there was a demonstration organized by the Muslim League welcoming the ministry, and the Hindu ministers joined the Leaguers in defending their action. Incidentally, at this stage, Suhrawardy (of whom much will be said later in this book) tried very hard for the premiership, but was passed over for the top post and given the portfolio of civil supplies.
It ought to be mentioned that Viceroy Linlithgow had a rather poor opinion of Herbert and was extremely critical of him regarding actions as have just been described. In a letter addressed to Amery, dated 2 April 1943, the secretary of state for India, Linlithgow, wrote:
I am very disturbed about this business of Herbert and his ministry . . . I cannot imagine greater folly than to present someone of the type of Haq with a draft letter of resignation, head him off from consulting his colleagues . . . Other aspects that concern me very much are the suggestions that Haq at this time had a majority, and that Nazimuddin certainly had not, and has not. I am sure it is most dangerous for Governors to play politics, even if they are of outstanding capacity, and I fear that poor Herbert can hardly claim to be of the latter category.
However, on the grounds of administrative consistency, Linlithgow always backed Herbert.
Meanwhile the price of foodstuff, principally rice, kept on rising steeply and inexorably. Bengalis, like most Indians, are principally cereal-eaters, and the price of cereals (rice in their case) affects them more than that of any other commodity. The price of rice per maund (about 36 kilograms or 80 pounds) in February 1942 was about four rupees. It jumped to sixteen rupees per maund in December 1942, and to 100 rupees in September 1943. The little rice that was in the market therefore moved away to where the purchasing power was, namely to Calcutta. The countryside first tried to survive on inedible stuff, such as assorted roots, leaves and snails. Some died as a result, the rest just starved, and came over to Calcutta in search of any food that could be got by begging.
The bulk of these people were from nearby districts, chiefly Midnapore, where the tsunami-cyclone of October 1942 had killed off an astounding number of people, mostly men who were out of doors when the tsunami or cyclone surprised them. The womenfolk were then left to fend for themselves, and finding nothing at all to eat, they travelled to Calcutta. The people from faraway districts such as those in East Bengal found this difficult, and stayed on where they were, to die there.
In the meantime, the wedding of Dr Mookerjee’s elder daughter Sabita was arranged to Nishith Banerjee, an engineer. But Dr Mookerjee at the time was so busy with famine relief that (according to Sabita herself) he could not be present during the wedding ceremony.
According to official estimates, 15,00,000 people died in the famine. Unofficial figures are much higher, and at the very least, double of the official estimate, that is to say not less than 30,00,000—some have even put it in the neighbourhood of 50,00,000. Whatever the figure is, the enormity of the tragedy is imaginable even from the official estimate. It is like all the people of a fair-sized town dying from starvation, no less.
The famine was an important landmark in the life of Dr Mookerjee for three reasons. First, he had shown remarkable foresight in trying to dissuade the Governor from impoverishing the countryside in the name of collection of foodstuff for military personnel, and had resigned when he found that the Governor would not listen to him. Secondly, when the famine became a reality, he had organized a massive relief effort, which saved innumerable lives—a task which should have been undertaken by the government, but was not done, or done properly. And thirdly, he had ruthlessly exposed the crimes of omission and commission by the British administration and the Muslim League ministry, the horrible acts which would have never come to light without Dr Mookerjee’s initiative, mostly thorough speeches in the Legislative Assembly.
According to Dr Mookerjee, in Midnapore, a starving man fell unconscious from sheer excitement at the sight of a thali of rice in a langarkhana before he could put any in his mouth. He died shortly afterwards. Another man, found dead on the bank of a river, was found to have his stomach full of sand. Driven by hunger, he had swallowed sand.
Central to the genesis and mismanagement of this famine were four people. Among them Leopold Amery, the secretary of state for India, Viceroy Linlithgow and Governor Herbert have already been introduced to the reader. The fourth person was Herbert’s minister in charge of civil supplies in Nazimuddin’s cabinet, a sinister and at the same time flamboyant and colourful character called Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, of whom more will be heard in this book. Scion of an aristocratic Muslim family from Midnapore, Suhrawardy used to drive his own Packard and frequent a nightclub of Calcutta called the Golden Slipper. He has been described by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, in their bestseller Freedom at Midnight, as ‘setting himself the prodigious task of bedding every cabaret dancer and high-class whore in Calcutta’. Ashok Mitra, who saw both at close range, contrasted them by saying that while Nazimuddin was a quiet and affable gentleman, Suhrawardy was nothing less than a ‘rough, tough bully’.
It may be mentioned in passing that Madhusree Mukerjee, in her Churchill’s Secret War, has put the principal blame for the famine on Churchill. In fairness, this is not so. Churchill had a World War on his hands. He couldn’t be less bothered about the Bengal Famine—to that extent he is certainly culpable. But the principal villains of the piece were certainly Herbert, Suhrawardy, Linlithgow and Amery, in that order.
By the time Nazimuddin’s cabinet had taken over in April 1943, with Suhrawardy in charge of civil supplies, the famine was already a reality, with the worst yet to come. As in Mao’s China and Kim’s North Korea, the first task of the new administration, ably assisted by the British bureaucracy under Herbert, appeared to be to pretend that that there was no famine, nor was there to be one. And in their eagerness to please Herbert who had so lovingly installed them in office, they made totally asinine statements, like Suhrawardy saying that there was no deficiency, rather a sufficiency of foodgrains, and he would, if necessary, himself look under the taktaposhes6 of people to apprehend and recover hoarded foodgrains. This and similar statements were lambasted by Dr Mookerjee on the floor of the house, as described later, though unfortunately there was little else he could do.
It was therefore but natural that Herbert would address Viceroy Linlithgow in a secret report7 saying, ‘Since his resignation, Dr Mookerjee has devoted himself to exploiting the situation in Midnapore in a manner calculated to discredit His Excellency [Linlithgow], the Governor and Government officials.’ Herbert’s scheme was that this terrible tragedy or combination of tragedies should remain unknown to the rest of the world; and because Dr Mookerjee wanted the same to receive due publicity so that relief would be forthcoming, Herbert took it as Dr Mookerjee throwing a spanner in the works. One of Dr Mookerjee’s statements was banned under the Defence of India Rules, and this was justified by the Government of India in the council of states. His statements were dubbed as ‘over-dramatization of facts’.
After resigning, Dr Mookerjee plunged into relief work, initially for the cyclone-tsunami victims of Midnapore, and later for the famine victims as the famine became more and more of a reality. He set up the ‘Bengal Relief Committee’ for comprehensive famine relief throughout the province, and set about the task of collecting donations. He travelled to Bombay in July to give publicity to the famine so as to get funds from likely donors. The naming of the committee clearly indicated that he intended this committee to be a purely non-partisan affair. However, because of pressure from within his party, he had to yield to some extent and start a parallel organization called Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha Relief Committee. He became the president of the latter while remaining a vice president of the former under the presidency of Sir Badridas Goenka. Meanwhile, under his stewardship, both the Bengal Relief Committee and the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha Relief Committee applied themselves to relief work among Hindus and Muslims alike—in fact, in eastern Bengal, the bulk of famine victims were poor Muslim cultivators, and Dr Mookerjee and his committees worked for their relief with as much verve and energy as they did for that of the Hindus of Midnapore. He also made an appeal to the Bengal Legislative Assembly members for donating a part of their daily allowance to famine relief, saying,8 ‘We now get Rs 40 per day. I do not know what it will be hereafter. Let us agree to a voluntary cut of Rs 10 and let us keep apart this sum for the purpose of opening homes where these women and children may be housed and fed.’ Sadly enough, very few of the legislators responded to his call.
The famine gave rise to the politicking that is the inevitable result of the ugly trait of some Indian politicians to take advantage of calamities to further their own ends. A Muslim communal party called Khaksar Party started relief camps outside Bengal, and taking advantage of the situation, tried to convert Hindu destitute children to Islam in return for relief. Dr Mookerjee immediately contacted the leaders of the Khaksar Party in Calcutta. He demanded that such Hindu children be handed over to the Hindu Mahasabha and that the transporting of children outside the province be stopped forthwith. Eventually, he managed to put enough pressure on the government to stop this transportation altogether. Some rich Muslims from South Africa sent donations to the famine relief effort despite Jinnah’s forbidding them to do so.
The setting up of the Bengal Relief Committee and the Hindu Mahasabha Relief Committee by Dr Mookerjee served as a catalyst and a beacon for other prominent people to come forward and either join his organization or found other organizations for famine relief. Among the organizations which were set up and the people who headed them were the following: Marwari Relief Society (Mangturam Jaipuria), Ramakrishna Mission (Swami Madhavananda), Arya Samaj Relief Society (Deepchandji Poddar), Stock Exchange Relief Committee (Govindlal Bangur), Gujarat Seva Samiti (Pranjivan Jaitha), Punjab Relief Committee (Lala Karamchand Thapar), Calcutta Relief Committee (Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy), Howrah Relief Society (Chiranjilal Bajoria), All-India Women’s Conference Relief Committee (Vijaylakshmi Pandit), Bengal Women’s Food Committee (Lady Ranu Mookerjee), All-Bengal Flood and Famine Relief Committee (G.L. Mehta), Daridra Bandhab Bhandar (Dr Radha Binode Pal). The premier business houses of Birla Brothers and Soorajmal Nagurmal also sponsored their own relief work, as did quite a few zamindars in their respective areas. Some of these committees had affiliated organizations in the districts through whom they organized the distribution of relief. Dr Mookerjee also organized a Relief Coordination Committee of which he was one of the vice presidents, the other being Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, the legendary physician and later Chief Minister of West Bengal. The Relief Coordination Committee was presided over by Sir Badridas Goenka.
The relief organizations carried out the following activities:
- Free kitchens and free grain distribution centres for the totally destitute and starving
- Cheap canteens and grain shops for those who could still pay something
- Minimal housing for the destitute
- Hospitals earmarked and equipped to treat the famine-affected
- Supply of free clothing to the needy
- Supply of free milk for destitute children and infants
The donations collected by the relief committees from all over India aggregated to about fifty lakhs or 5 million rupees, of which more than one-third was collected by the Bengal Relief Committee alone. With this money, all these organizations operated relief centres in Calcutta and all over rural Bengal, from Dantan in Midnapore to Jalpaiguri to Chittagong. The stamp of Dr Mookerjee’s indefatigable energy was apparent behind each one of these efforts.
All that Dr Mookerjee, out of power, could do about the famine was to organize relief and chastise the government through whose panic, combined with unbelievable cynicism, the famine had been caused—and he did both in good measure. There was no forum to publicly criticize the principal villain Herbert, but Suhrawardy, his minister in charge of civil supplies, had made matters worse both for himself and the famine victims through his personal misdeeds, and he had to face the assembly. Dr Mookerjee proceeded to lambast and expose him in the assembly in the most parliamentary and civilized manner possible, and practically tanned his hide as far as possible with words. The assembly, at this time, had been based on the Communal Award of 1932 and the Government of India Act of 1935, and had separately elected Hindu members, scheduled-caste members, Muslim members, Indian Christian members and a disproportionately large number of ‘European’ (meaning British) members. The ruling coalition was largely of the Muslim League with a few Hindus, and they held power with the help and support of this European group.
Dr Mookerjee delivered two extremely hard-hitting speeches in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, one on 14 July 1943, and the other on 17 September 1943. In these, he condemned the Muslim League ministry and the British bureaucracy, and singled out Suhrawardy, the minister in charge of civil supplies at the time. Suhrawardy was condemned not only for the bungling of the famine relief arrangements, but also for the blatant partiality and disregard for norms of spending public money that he showed in respect of a known Muslim League benefactor called Ispahani. The speeches are memorable as much for their pungency and eloquence as for the recording of facts for posterity.
In his speech9 in a debate on the food situation in Bengal, Dr Mookerjee said:
Now, Sir, in one of the statements issued by Mr Suhrawardy it was said that the worst feature of the last ministry’s food policy [meaning Fazlul Haq’s ministry] was its insistence on shortage. That was on 17th May [1943]. Then again, he said ‘There is, in fact a sufficiency of foodgrains for the people of Bengal.’ I ask specially the members who are sitting opposite, anxious to give their support to the ministry, to demand an explanation from Mr Suhrawardy. What were the data before him which justified him to make that remark that there was in fact a sufficiency of foodgrains for the people of Bengal? Not satisfied with this bare statement, he proceeded to remark, ‘Full statistical details, which will clearly demonstrate that there is a sufficiency, will soon be published.’ Where are those statistics? Have they been collected, or are they being manufactured?
Dr Mookerjee went on to say:
Mr Amery declared [in the House of Commons]––‘Yes, there is some trouble in India and in Bengal, but there is no shortage of foodstuff in the country; there is only hoarding and maldistribution . . . Now Sir, what happened next? Mr Suhrawardy declared that there was plenty of foodstuffs in Bengal. All that had to be done was to find out the foodstuff even from under the taktaposhes. After a tiring and busy day he seriously made a speech declaring that, if necessary, he would himself go under the taktaposhes of every householder and bring out the rice. I know that many householders got nervous. If Mr Suhrawardy really starts entering into the households and going under the taktaposh at night or even during daytime, heaven protect those householders from the after-effects of those ministerial attacks! Could there have been, I ask, a sillier approach to a problem vitally affecting the lives of millions of people?
It is true that that the famine was not Suhrawardy’s or the Muslim League’s creation—that credit must go to the Amery–Linlithgow–Herbert trio. His positive contribution to famine relief efforts—if it could be called that—was the appointment of M.M. Ispahani Ltd, known benefactors of the Muslim League, as sole purchasing agents of the government of Bengal for the purchase of foodgrains from neighbouring provinces. In his speech before the Bengal assembly, Dr Mookerjee attacked Suhrawardy on this question as well. He said:
What did Mr Suhrawardy do with regard to Orissa and Bihar? Why did he not negotiate with the governments of these provinces? . . . I have nothing personal against Mr Ispahani . . . it is a question of principle. It was nothing short of a scandal that the ministry should have appointed a particular firm as its sole agent, and what is more, advanced about two crores of rupees to that firm without a single scrap of document. Can Mr Suhrawardy produce a single contract entered upon between the Ispahanis and the Government of Bengal? It is a mockery.
Right through this speech, the flamboyant Suhrawardy and his Muslim League and European cronies mostly sat silently, because they had nothing to say in their defence.
Yet, the record reveals amusing sidelights at the few points when they tried to interject, because then they laid themselves bare to the barbs of Dr Mookerjee’s acerbic wit. At one point, the record reveals, ‘Mr Suhrawardy utters something.’ And he promptly gets it back, ‘It is no use coming here and speaking in a tone which befits the residents of the Zoological Gardens.’ At another point Suhrawardy quipped, ‘Nonsense.’ Came the answer, ‘Nonsense is an epithet which applies to the Civil Supplies Minister, because he is today totally devoid of sense, and if that means nonsense, he is nonsense personified.’
Dr Mookerjee began his speech on 17 September 1943, a time when the famine had reached its worst phase, by moving a resolution, the draft of which read as follows:
This Assembly is of the opinion that the statement of the Civil Supplies ministry on the food situation is utterly disappointing and unsatisfactory . . . Its latest action in promulgating the price control of rice without making suitable provisions for supply has intensely aggravated the misery of the people. The ministry has failed to discharge the elementary responsibility of any civilized government by its failure to save human lives and to procure for the people essential commodities for their bare existence.
In graphic language, Dr Mookerjee described the indescribable misery of people in the Bengal countryside, while members on the government benches, purporting to represent such countryside, sat and listened silently:
Let me however emphasize that the death roll mainly due to starvation, and diseases following such starvation, is rapidly increasing. Reports of suicides, desertion of families and children, of dead bodies lying uncared for are pouring in from different parts of Bengal . . . Only last week I was in Midnapore. In my presence there was the case of a person who came to have his food at a free kitchen and the very sight of food resulted in such a state of excitement that before the food could reach his mouth he lay there unconscious and never woke again . . . Now, Sir, in Contai jackals and dogs have been freely feeding themselves on dead bodies.
Dr Mookerjee rounded off his speech by saying towards the end:
It is indeed amazing that the government has bungled throughout. I am at a loss to understand what the policy of the government is. Does Mr Amery still hold that the people of Bengal are suffering because of overfeeding or deliberate hoarding, especially by greedy agriculturists? Why are foodgrains not being rushed to Bengal from Australia and other parts of the world outside India?
Memorable speeches, all of them. But something more ought to be said about Dr Mookerjee’s actions when viewed in the context of the present-day politics of West Bengal. Dr Mookerjee did not once dream of holding a rally (janasabha), calling a Bangla bandh (total immobilization of Bengal), blocking highways (abarodh) or smashing up furniture, ostensibly to draw the attention of the world to one of the worst tragedies ever to befall Bengal. Some or all of these surely would have been done today as a knee-jerk reaction in current-day West Bengal politics, if a tragedy a tenth of the size had hit the state. If somebody proposed calling a bandh to Dr Mookerjee, he would surely have looked at him in incredulity and said, ‘But that is going to make matters worse for the people! That is going to make movement of foodgrains even more difficult!’ No, Dr Mookerjee did not do any of these things, for he was not a Leftist. Instead, he went about organizing relief, visiting the districts, talking to people, keeping the government (many times more powerful and authoritarian than at present) literally on its toes.
The present idiom of political movement among Indian Bengalis, which begins with obstructing public arteries and otherwise disrupting public life, probably began with the burning of thirteen tramcars by the communists in 1953, to protest a one-pice hike in tram fares—more on this in Chapter 15. Dr Mookerjee would have loathed and detested this idiom, something that has made West Bengal today notorious for shooting itself in the foot. But that is another story.
A caveat should be added. It has been said earlier that hoarding was not the cause of the famine. However, some hoarding took place as an effect of the famine.
Meanwhile, His Excellency the Governor John Arthur Herbert, principal author of the tragedy, already sick in mind and body, eventually fell so ill while the famine was raging that Sir Thomas Rutherford, the Governor of Bihar had to be asked to take additional charge of the Governorship of Bengal from 6 September 1943. Herbert died shortly thereafter, unlamented, on 11 December. Meanwhile, in October 1943, Lord Wavell replaced Herbert’s patron, Lord Linlithgow, as viceroy. Things immediately began to take a turn for the better.
The famine gradually abated, and is today a speck in the history of a troubled province in especially troubled times. Presumably because of the apparent appeasement policies of the governments of West Bengal, one might like to believe that the historians did not dare to write anything critical about a particular community (in this case Suhrawardy). The famine gets just a one-line cursory reference in history books, and the present generation who have not seen it know almost nothing of it.
In retrospect, Dr Mookerjee, in a diary entry dictated to his stenographer Baridbaran at Madhupur on 5 January 1946, appreciated the part played by the ordinarily pro-British daily the Statesman in exposing the maladministration. It showed great courage of conviction, he said, and by its pictures and articles it staggered public opinion through the civilized world. The ministry was openly accused of helping profiteers and sharing ill-gotten gains. Dr Mookerjee further recounts:
While millions died for want of food, an equal number followed to the grave on account of illness and malnutrition. Then came want of cloth, and people died in thousands during winter for want of shelter and protection. The whole atmosphere was nauseating. A Government that claimed itself to be civilized was carrying on its administration smoothly, and was even running a war, and allowed millions of its subjects to wither away for want of food, medicine and raiment. If it had been in other countries, such a Government would have been blown to pieces in no time. There would have been food riots and rebellion in the land. But our men being what they were and our country being what it was, everything was attributed to fate and people quietly died without raising even a murmur. I was specially charged with having made political use of a situation that was so serious. My whole energy and attention were employed for organizing relief, irrespective of party and communal considerations, and I often wished that instead of making a hopeless attempt to save lives against tremendous odds and difficulties, we should have organized resistance so that the machinery of the Government might have been uprooted.
Today’s generation may know nothing of the famine, but it is too deeply etched in the minds of the still-surviving few, like the lady who wrote to this biographer describing how she had to traipse her way among emaciated, twisted corpses on the streets of Calcutta, just to reach a tram stop en route to her college. Or those, who had heard the lonesome wail of the starving voices, sometimes breaking, sometimes croaking, ‘Ektu phan dao go, ma (O mother, please give me some phan10)’, fading away into the gas-lit Calcutta night. No way these people will forget the famine, as long as they live. Or, for that matter, forget Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee.