Introduction
Imperial famines include instances where colonial governance leads to the sacrifice of lives at the peripheries for the supposed greater good of the empire. Technically, famine is when insufficient food is available for many people, causing illness and death. What is not always straightforward is what triggers the famine since concurrent factors often overlap.
The policies and treatment of civilians under military occupation during times of war are pronounced examples of such occurrences. In India, especially the Bengali Famine of 1943, such calamities have been linked with colonial rule and policies. This article reviews the perception of Bose (1990) and Sen (1982) on the origins of the Bengali famine.
Causes of the Bengali Famine
Contemporary non-official observers reported from the start that this was an artificial disaster. According to these views, the famine was caused by the colonial government’s incompetence and gross negligence. Official observers took a different view, formalized in the Famine Inquiry Commission (FIC) report, that rice crops were impacted by a cyclone in October 1942, followed by torrential rain and fungal disease (Mallik, 2022). The timing of these events was unfortunate, as they affected the winter rice crop, which is usually the most abundant of the three annual rice harvests. In a normal situation, the rice shortage could have been offset by importing grains from Burma, but this was during World War II, and Burma was occupied by the Japanese in March of 1942 (Bose, 1990).
The explanation provided by the FIC is in line with the standard approach called Food Availability Decline (FAD) (Bose, 1990). The FAD is the most widely accepted as the start of famine and is supported by economists such as Thomas Malthus and agronomist Norman Borlaug (Sen, 1982; Klid, 2021). In fact, the FIC summarizes the famine’s origins as a severe shortage of rice available for consumption in Bengal relative to total supply (Simonow, 2019).
Amartya Sen’ Perspective
However, economist Sen (1982) disagrees with this explanation in his work “Poverty and Famine.” He pointed out that the quantity of rice in 1943 was only 5% below the average of the five preceding years. Furthermore, Bengalis did not rely solely on rice; they also relied heavily on wheat. In Sen’s (1982) view, the region is not a wheat producer, but wheat imports certainly did not decline over the 1941 to 1942 period. Overall, the government recorded 9.068 million tons of rice and wheat in 1943, 10.9 million tons in 1942, and only 8.3 million tons in 1941, yet there was no famine that year (Sen, 1982).
Sen’s explanation of the famine is based on his concept of “entitlement” (1982). Entitlement can be defined as the goods and services that can be acquired by converting one’s assets, resources, and labor power. Regarding food, entitlements can be divided into production-based, trade-based, and labor-based. In production-based agriculture, an individual grows their food; labor entitlement involves working in exchange for food, while trade entails buying food. Individuals face starvation when their complete entitlements fail to provide adequate food for subsistence. On a broader scale, related groups face famine if they experience a catastrophic decline in entitlements.
Applying the entitlement theory to the Bengal case offers insight into how imperial practices, policies, and plans cause famine. The famine struck the agricultural regions, where most victims were farming laborers and their families. In his analysis, Sen (1982) shows how the price of rice skyrocketed in the first month of 1943.
Over the same period, labor’s daily wages did not keep pace with inflation, remaining largely stable at a few rupees per day. Rice was the primary source of calories in the countryside, so many people could not afford to eat. In other words, their trade-based food entitlements had declined catastrophically during the famine. Sen notes that 1942 and 1943 experienced inflation across all sectors due to high war expenditure and preparation for the Japanese invasion (1982). The colonial authorities financed the expenses by printing money, which was never a good idea, and as a result, the absolute level of all prices increased.
Therefore, the famine is primarily attributed to artificial factors despite some natural factors. These days, the term “man-made” generally refers to a political measure that transfers resources from one group to another, which conveys a sense of state failure. Many people have mainly blamed the government because of its critical role in ensuring that famine relief is not priced or withheld from anyone.
During the 1943 famine, the regime failed to provide sufficient supplies, since tasperialists adhered to ideologies that advocated relief while the political system allowed them to escape it. For example, the Bengal Governor’s assertion that the administration merely lacked the food to provide the prescribed ration should be considered in the context of the colonial state’s misplaced priorities (Bose, 1990).
Sugata Bose’s Perspective
In his paper, “Starving Amidst Plenty”, Bose largely blamed the government for inept and inadequate strategies to deal with the famine (1990). Generally speaking, the political aspect is prevalent under autocratic regimes, during wars, and during temporary state breakdowns. However, the events leading to such actions may involve an actual or suspected crop failure.
It is occasionally proposed in contemporary research that famines in the late 20th century were artificially caused by political factors. Given that food is being exchanged in greater quantities at a lower cost than a century ago, assigning responsibility to the political element seems tenable. Therefore, unless there are intentional barriers to the distribution and supply of food, situations of absolute scarcity cannot potentially persist. Bose (1990) claims that the barriers indeed existed, asserting that the Indian government consciously suppressed the notion of ships transporting rice to Bengal and failed to convince London of the urgent need for outside supplies. The government’s lack of action, or its deliberate decision not to acknowledge or implement measures to mitigate the famine, clearly shows that imperial practices contributed to the famine.
The years when the British East India Company and the British Crown controlled more than half of the country saw the beginning of systematic documentation of the Indian famine. However, the history of drought in India is far older, suggesting that accounts of European colonization in the area have directly or indirectly shaped political perspectives on the subject. In his publications, Amartya Sen alleges the Bengal famine was brought on by the imperial government’s indifference and inaction combined with market failure (1982).
Some elements of Sen’s views are also reflected in Bose’s (1990) work, which apportions the blame to the British Imperial government. Sen’s work makes it possible to consider the role of politics in humanitarian crises and the duty of the ruling regime to provide famine assistance as a social contract with its citizens. Therefore, current scholars or generations can ask whether colonial governments respected social obligations. Amartya Sen and Sugata Bose respond that colonialism did not feel obligated to fulfill this duty in their form of governance.
According to the conclusions derived from Amartya Sen and Sugata Bose’s two readings, hunger is more often caused by humans than by natural causes. Sen (1982) investigated famines and found that while grain supply did not decline significantly, the ability to control food production through purchasing power, based on the community’s income and wealth, did cause a famine. Sen, therefore, holds that while famine cannot be prevented, its effects can be averted. Famine is also a form of starvation; however, its effects are not felt equally across all segments of society—the impoverished are disproportionately affected, particularly those with fewer entitlements to food.
Conclusion
Individuals in the famine-affected areas lost their means of subsistence, employment, and purchasing power. Their ability to trade thus decreased, suggesting that these areas could not draw food grains from other regions of the nation. Sen (1982) claims that the right to exchange is more critical than the food supply during a famine. However, the entitlement approach proposed by Sen has had its critics. For example, Indian economist Omkar Goswami reevaluated harvests from previous years, leading to the worst famine, showing that Sen had underestimated it.
Perhaps the FIC was right, because American historian Mark Tauger upheld Goswami’s view as natural causes. Nevertheless, the articles reviewed so far reinforce the notion that colonial administration policies drove inflation, a leading cause of the famine. Additionally, the colonial government’s failure to acknowledge the impending famine and provide relief despite acute food shortages implicates it as the cause of the famine.
Reference List
Bose, S. (1990). Starvation amidst plenty: The making of famine in Bengal, Honan and Tonkin, 1942–45. Modern Asian Studies, 24(4), pp.699–727.
Klid, B. (2021). Empire-building, imperial policies, and famine in occupied territories and colonies. East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 8(1), pp.11–32.
Mallik, S. (2022). Colonial biopolitics and the great Bengal famine of 1943. GeoJournal, 88(3), pp.3205–3221.
Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simonow, J. (2019). The great Bengal famine in Britain: Metropolitan campaigning for food Relief and the end of empire, 1943–44. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 48(1), pp.168–197.