21. A Great Man’s Petty Side
With traditional rice imports from Burma cut off, and home grown surpluses destroyed by the British, famine roared through Bengal. Relief efforts were hampered by Churchill’s decision to divert food shipments intended for the starving Bengalis to already well-supplied British soldiers in the Mediterranean. The result was one of the more dark moments in a war full of darkness. In order to add to the stockpiles of food in Britain, ships loaded with wheat sailed past Indian cities whose streets were littered with the corpses of those who starved to death.
Offers of Canadian and American food aid to the starving Indians were turned down by Churchill’s government, even as it prohibited India from using its own sterling reserves or its own ships to import food. Indeed, India was made to export over 70,000 tons of rice in the first half of 1943, while millions of Indians were starving to death. When the government in Delhi sent the Prime Minister a telegram informing him of the devastation and that millions of Indians were dying, Churchill replied churlishly: “Then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”