Winston Churchill has as much blood on his hands as the worst genocidal dictators, claims Indian politician

I am not too sympathetic to Churchill's decision making prowess and as usual general stupidity works wonderfully.  At the same time, this is one decision made in the midst of WWII supply management when everyone in the whole Empire was on rations to start with.  Prepping for an invasion in 1943 certainly works.

Then we do have the problem of India which was terribly susceptible to famines brought about by feudal agricultural inefficiencies and a general lack of transportation.

Bengal famine of 1943

1943

 

Great Famine

1845

 

Great Bengal famine of 1770

1769

 

Bihar famine of 1873–74

1873

 

Indian famine of 1899–1900

1899

Orissa famine of 1866

1866

Chalisa famine

1783

 

Doji bara famine

1791

Rajputana famine of 1869

1868

 

Agra famine of 1837–38

1837

 

Deccan famine of 1630–32

1630

 

 

In fact it was not fully rationalized until the Indian government forced through outright land reform to end all forms of peonage. Since then the Indian yeomanry has wonderfully built up the agriculture of India and it now feeds 1,300,000,000 people as against the 300,000,000 in 1950.

The other problem for India is that during British rule, the British tended to actually leave things alone and focus on providing security paid for by the effective poll tax. That hardly changed until the post British government took over.


Economic innovation is sadly a post WWII phenomena and that also applies to the USA and the developed world as well.

 

 

 


Winston Churchill has as much blood on his hands as the worst genocidal dictators, claims Indian politician

'This is a man the British would have us hail as an apostle of freedom and democracy,' says author



Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim


Friday 8 September 2017 12:30














Dr Tharoor first rose to prominence after his heartfelt speech at Oxford Union, discussing the economic toll British rule took on India, in July 2015 went viral ( Reuters ) 







An Indian politician has put Winston Churchill in the same category as some of “the worst genocidal dictators” of the 20th century because of his complicity in the Bengal Famine.


Dr Shashi Tharoor, whose new book Inglorious Empire chronicles the atrocities of the British Empire, argued the former British Prime Minister’s reputation as a great wartime leader and protector of freedom was wholly miscast given his role in the Bengal famine which saw four million Bengalis starve to death.



In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.


During an appearance at the Melbourne writers’ festival broadcast by ABC, the Indian MP noted Churchill’s orders related to Australian ships carrying wheat at Indian docks.




“This is a man the British would have us hail as an apostle of freedom and democracy, when he has as much blood on his hands as some of the worst genocidal dictators of the 20th century,” he said to applause. 




He added: “People started dying and Churchill said well it’s all their fault anyway for breeding like rabbits. He said ‘I hate the Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion’.”



Dr Tharoor, a former Under-Secretary of the UN, also gave an extensive description of British colonial exploitation and annihilation of traditional Indian industries such as textiles which reduced it to “a poster child of third world poverty” by the time the British left in 1947.








The 5 of the worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire



Show all 5


















 

He said the “excuse that apologists [of British empire] like to make is, it’s not our fault, you just missed the bus for the industrial revolution. Well, we missed the bus because you threw us under its wheels.”










This is not the first time Dr Tharoor has voiced his frustrations about the way Churchill is remembered by the history books. In March, he argued the former PM who led Britain to victory in World War Two should be remembered alongside the most prominent dictators of the twentieth century.


“This [Churchill] is the man who the British insist on hailing as some apostle of freedom and democracy," the author told UK Asian at a launch for his book. "When to my mind he is really one of the more evil rulers of the 20th century only fit to stand in the company of the likes of Hitler, Mao and Stalin".He added: “Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler does. Particularly the decisions that he personally signed off during the Bengal Famine when 4.3 million people died because of the decisions he took or endorsed."


"Not only did the British pursue its own policy of not helping the victims of this famine which was created by their policies. Churchill persisted in exporting grain to Europe, not to feed actual ‘Sturdy Tommies’, to use his phrase, but add to the buffer stocks that were being piled up in the event of a future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia”.


“Ships laden with wheat were coming in from Australia docking in Calcutta and were instructed by Churchill not to disembark their cargo but sail on to Europe,” he added. “And when conscience-stricken British officials wrote to the Prime Minister in London pointing out that his policies were causing needless loss of life all he could do was write peevishly in the margin of the report, ‘Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?'"


Dr Tharoor first rose to prominence after his heartfelt speech at Oxford Union, discussing the economic toll British rule took on India, in July 2015 went viral.