# The Bengal famine
**बंगाल का अकाल**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bengal-famine-1943/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1943 CE – 1944 CE
- Where: Calcutta (22.5726, 88.3639)
- Tags: colonial, war

## Summary

Wartime Bengal starves in 1943; the 1945 inquiry counts about 1.5 million dead, later estimates run to 3 million, and the causes are still argued.

1943 में युद्धकालीन बंगाल भूख से तड़प उठा; 1945 की जाँच ने लगभग 15 लाख मौतें गिनीं, बाद के अनुमान 30 लाख तक हैं, और कारणों पर बहस आज भी जारी है।

## Account

Japan's conquest of Burma in 1942 cut off Bengal's rice imports. Fearing invasion, the government carried out a denial policy, removing boats and surplus rice from the coastal districts, and on 16 October 1942 a cyclone destroyed much of the winter crop in Midnapore. War spending drove prices up, other provinces blocked grain from leaving, and the government gave priority to feeding Calcutta's war industries. By the summer of 1943 the destitute were dying in Calcutta's streets, and in August the Statesman printed photographs of them while officials still avoided the word famine.

The new Viceroy, Wavell, visited Calcutta at the end of October, and in November he brought in the army to move food and run relief. Most of the deaths, in 1943 and 1944, were from cholera, malaria and smallpox among the starving, and most were in the countryside; the pin marks Calcutta, where the famine was seen and recorded.

The Famine Inquiry Commission estimated about 1.5 million deaths above normal in 1943 and the first half of 1944; later estimates run from about 2.1 to 3 million. Amartya Sen argued that there was enough rice and that wartime prices took it out of reach of labourers and fishermen, and others have since argued that the harvest shortfall was larger than he allowed. How much blame falls on the War Cabinet's limits on grain imports, on the provincial government, and on traders is argued still.

## Sources

- Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal (1945) — https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.26318
- Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981)

## Image

Bengal famine 1943. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABengal_famine_1943.png

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