The clever marauder is the crow. From his set of famine paintings, this picture shows Abedin painting a mother at her weakest.
1943 famine of Bengal is a widespread story amongst Bengalis and a few knowledgable people beyond that geographical hemisphere. Some felt callous about it, after all it was only the poor who mostly suffered! To give a brief account of the impact of 1943 Bengal famine, around 1.5-3 million people died.
There are several hypothesis as to what might have caused the famine. Some say rumours of war-time demands caused the famine; while it was also said, the famine could also have arisen due to natural calamities (i.e. flood) - leaving the peasants to feed on their limited cultivation.
In an article (sometime ago), the writer describes Bengal as, 'a poor man's Las Vegas.' ...minus the brightly-lit casinos!
4 comments:
Apart from the war-time demand, the greed of the businessmen of Bengal was also responsible for the famine. They were stocking a lot of grains with a view to push the price up and then selling them.
Thought this information would be useful for your readers.
Started to like your blog..interesting stuff!
Precisely!! Thank you for highlighting this point; you may have watched 'Ashani Sanket' (Distant Thunder)- The film portrays power politics during the famine.
i'm wondering what the long term losses to our people were. as a proportion of the population its huge. All those amazing people whos descendants we won't see, imagine all of the lineages that died out as a result. after the basic body count what must it have done the the hopes and spirit of the people?
Primarily it was the brits fault for being there and their govt system, they are primarily culpable for that gross crime and should prepare to the mother of all tribunals.
A wise person labelled the famine of Bengal as 'The great holocaust'... rightly so, at the time the British govt was also responsible; rather, irresponsible and apathetic.
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