Mapping Famine in Colonial India: Re-identifying the Great Bengal Famine (A Case Study)

Abstract

As a boat moved across the Brahmaputra River from Bahadurabad, in 1943 October morning, a scientist who was assigned by the government of Bengal noticed heaps of dead bodies all along the river bed, from what seemed to have been an aftermath of a war. However, these dead bodies were not a result of any form of plunder but rather an aftereffect of a disastrous famine that hit Bengal in the summer of 1943, and ultimately caused the death of three million populations due to diseases and starvation. A relook at the Great Bengal famine allows one to trace one of the worst mismanaged famines in 20th century South Asia and how an environmental crisis was grossly linked to the economic and political crisis in Bengal. While, tracing the background of the Bengal Famine of 1943 most pertinently points out to the environmental crisis at its crux but a deeper analysis allows one to understand the a host of other components in consideration, albeit, the high prices of commodities, the role of land market, subsistence crisis, poor agrarian economy, negligent British policy and a host of other reason which this paper tends to study.

Keywords

• great bengal famine
• south asian history
• colonial policy
• churchill
• amartya sen