Bengal Famine of 1943.
West of London,
I have never sought to set myself up as an authority on anything on this Thread, and this subject is no exception. I merely saw the consequences at first hand. However some general points can be made. All authority in India resided in the Viceroy, but Provincial Governments had been elected in the thirties, these were in most cases Congress led. These enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy, and cannot be absolved of their share in the disaster.
It is true that HMG (in the person of Churchill) could direct the Viceroy in matters of local policy, but he had many other problems on his plate (there was the direction of the War to attend to). The suggestions that the famine deaths were in some way due to "his personal hatred of Indians", or the result of imperial policy, are to my mind ridiculous. What advantage would lie in that ?
I quote from the Independent writer: "a famine.....caused, as the Nobel Prize -winning economist Amartya Sen has proved - by the imperial policies of the British......." Wiki has an extensive article on the "Bengal Famine of 1943" , and an even more extensive "Talk" section on the subject, which are both well worth reading, although you may well despairingly conclude: "Tot homines, quot sententiae".
My Old India Hand merely stated the facts of the matter as he saw it, in the same way as Malthus had theorised a century or so earlier. (I now think we are so far off Thread, that we had better leave it before the Moderator wields the axe).
Danny42C