Pride goeth before a fall

 

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I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits

~Winston Churchill

 

Having a keen interest in history and politics, I like to read up on all the key historic events of the world. And Indian freedom struggle is a personal favourite topic of mine. I feel strangely invigorated when I read about the heroic deeds of our freedom fighters. For the last few days, I have been watching the Netflix political drama The Crown. As I was watching the character of Winston Churchill unfold on the screen, I couldn’t but juxtapose this character of his, with the person himself who is responsible for murdering more than 3 million Indians during the Bengal Famine of 1943.

Sadly this evil mass murderer has always been glorified as a hero, has been considered an embodiment of ‘freedom and democracy’ when he himself was responsible for deeds that are nothing short of war crimes.

Late 1942, Bengal, mostly dependent on rice and grains, were struck by a violent cyclone that destroyed a large section of it’s crop yield. The crops that survived were subsequently attacked by a deadly fungus that destroyed the remaining crops too. Consequently by 1943 hordes of starving people were flooding into Calcutta, most  dying on the streets. Subhas Chandra Bose, who was then fighting on the side of the Axis  forces, offered to send rice from Myanmar, but the British censors did  not even allow his offer to be reported.

Churchill was totally remorseless in diverting food to the British  troops and Greek civilians. To him, “the starvation of anyhow underfed  Bengalis (was) less serious than sturdy Greeks”

When asked  to release food stocks for India, Churchill responded  with a telegram asking why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.

Churchill’s hostility toward Indians has long been documented. At a  War Cabinet meeting, he blamed the Indians themselves for the famine,  saying they “breed like rabbits”. His attitude toward Indians may be  summed up in his words : “I hate Indians. They are a beastly  people with a beastly religion.” On another occasion, he insisted they  were “the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans”.

The Great Bengal famine of 1943 killed in which over 2,000,000 [and possibly 4 million people] died in what is now Bangladesh and eastern India, and the streets and highways were littered with their bodies. And all this could have been prevented if Churchill hadn’t sent back Australian aid of wheat and refused aids from America and Canada. Even India’s own reserves were not allowed to be used and were shipped off to Europe for future use.

Churchill had as much blood on his hands as did Hitler and Stalin. He single-handedly engineered one of the worst genocides of human history. The British have this astounding delusion that the rest of the world are savage and primitive and backwards and only theirs is the superior race and by default have the right to govern all. As I was watching The Crown, I was pained at the cavalier and callous way they were talking about India as if they are talking about a pet of theirs that has gone rogue. And not just this show. The Darkest Hour, Dunkirk are some of the recent movies that glorified the British cause while conveniently ignoring the enormous role our Indian soldiers played in helping them win.

Words fail me whenever I think of the inhuman atrocities the British committed against us. I can’t even adequetly express the intense hatred I hold for Churchill and all the Britishers. But the wheels of time never stops spinning. What goes around, comes around. They came to India to exploit our resources for their own benefit, to boost their own economy. Hah! Not so easy. Britain has suffered a series of recession for the last 200 years. 1812, 1857, 1867, 1873, 1919, 1930…And the most recent 2008. Today India is much higher in it’s real GDP growth rate than Britain. Countries like America and Canada  and Israel are India’s strongest allies. And the colonies they worked so hard to hold on to, have all become independent one by one. The few islands they still own are only there because those islands felt pity on them and besides, most of them are self governing lands. So, guess what, today you are just a sad, pathetic excuse of what you once were.

P.S. Parts of this blog have been taken from reliable sources and the photos have been downloaded from Google.