Bengal Was Starving. London Was Told 11 Times in One Year. The War Cabinet's First Answer Was a 'Token' Shipment — Sent to Colombo, Not India

A room in Downing Street, 4 August 1943

Six o'clock in the evening, 10 Downing Street. Winston Churchill in the chair. Around the table: Attlee, Eden, Lyttelton, Morrison; and for this item, the Chancellor, the Minister of War Transport, the Minister of Food, Lord Cherwell, and Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for India — the Cabinet minister responsible for the country.

On the table are two papers. One is from the Government of India, sent from New Delhi on 13 July. It says the food position has "taken a decided turn for the worse", that India faces "a situation of utmost gravity", that the country is short 1.29 million tons of grain, and that it needs 500,000 tons of wheat shipped in from September. It lists what will happen otherwise: "internal disorder", price rises, a fall in munitions output, and — item (e) — the effect on "general morale". The other is Amery's own memorandum of 31 July, which says the Indian economy "is being strained almost to breaking point".

The minute records what the Cabinet thought: "the shortage of grain in India was not the result of physical deficiency but of hoarding". It agreed that "good propaganda in India" should be used "to induce hoarders to release grain". The Minister of War Transport, Lord Leathers, proposed "not more than 50,000 tons as a token shipment" — and even that "should not be earmarked for India but should be ordered to Colombo to await instructions there". Amery "asked the War Cabinet not to take a firm decision to limit the help". The Cabinet's "general view was that no further action should be decided upon at the present time."

Amery wrote to the Viceroy the next day. "I brought the matter up in Cabinet yesterday and with not too good results … the tendency was to treat your demand as in the main an anti-hoarder bluff."

Three weeks later, on 22 August, The Statesman of Calcutta printed photographs of the dead and dying on the city's pavements. By the Government of Bengal's own count, 1,304,323 people died in the province between July and December 1943 — more than double the normal figure.

At a glance

• The Government of India asked London for 500,000 tons of wheat on 13 July 1943, warning of "a situation of utmost gravity". (Transfer of Power, vol. IV, No. 38)
• On 4 August 1943 the War Cabinet authorised a "token shipment" of 50,000 tons — sent to Colombo, not India — and 100,000 tons of Iraqi barley. It judged the shortage to be "not the result of physical deficiency but of hoarding". (War Cabinet WM(43)111, Minute 1; TP IV No. 71)
• On 24 September 1943 it capped shipments at 200,000 tons for the year and told India that "anything like 1,000,000 tons" a year "would be out of the question". (WM(43)131; TP IV No. 139)
• On 14 February 1944 it refused the new Viceroy's request outright. Churchill to Wavell the next day: "we simply cannot find the shipping. Everything is involved in the Operation." (WM(44)19; TP IV Nos. 378–379)
• The Famine Inquiry Commission (1945) put the dead at "between one and two million", its own working figure "perhaps one and a half million", against 688,846 recorded excess deaths in 1943 and 422,371 more in the first half of 1944. (Report on Bengal, Part I ch. I para 1, ch. X para 34; Part II ch. I paras 1–2)
• Wavell, one year into office, 20 October 1944: "I have found H.M.G.'s attitude to India negligent, hostile and contemptuous to a degree I had not anticipated." (The Viceroy's Journal, p. 93)

First, the words a beginner needs

The War Cabinet. Britain's small wartime inner government, chaired by the Prime Minister, which took the big decisions. Its minutes — called "Conclusions" — were typed up after each meeting and are now in the UK National Archives in the series CAB 65. Its papers ("W.P.") are in CAB 66.

The Secretary of State for India. The British Cabinet minister in charge of India. In 1943–45 this was Leopold Amery. He sat in London and argued India's case to his colleagues.

The Viceroy. The King's representative who ran India from Delhi. Lord Linlithgow until October 1943; then Field Marshal Lord Wavell, who kept a private journal, published in 1973.

Shipping. In 1943 grain could reach India only by sea, in cargo ships that were also needed to feed Britain, supply the armies in Italy and the Middle East, and prepare the invasion of France. Who got the ships was decided by the Minister of War Transport, Lord Leathers, and the War Cabinet.

The Famine Inquiry Commission. Appointed by the Government of India in 1944 under Sir John Woodhead to find out what happened. Its Report on Bengal (1945) — usually called the Woodhead Report — is the official Indian account of the famine.

500,000 tons. About 1 per cent of India's annual grain production, as Amery told the Cabinet — but "considerably less than half the total production came into the market", and the shortage fell on the people who had to buy.

The claim we are testing

The popular version: "Churchill starved Bengal. Three million died. He was told and he refused. The records prove it." Layer by layer:

1. The War Cabinet was warned, repeatedly and in writing, that people were dying and would die, and it chose, repeatedly, to send far less than was asked. True, and the minutes are quoted below.
2. "Three million died." Unsupported by the primary record. The official inquiry said "between one and two million", working with "perhaps one and a half million"; it rejected a 3.5 million estimate as statistically unsound while accepting that the official figures under-counted. Later demographers have argued for figures up to three million. This piece uses the Commission's number.
3. "Churchill personally starved Bengal." More than the documents prove, and less. The minutes record a Cabinet deciding, with the shipping minister and the Prime Minister leading, and with a genuine shipping crisis in front of them. They also record that Churchill personally sent the appeal to Roosevelt in April 1944 and approved the June 1944 release of military ships. What the documents show is not a single villain but a government that, for nine months, ranked the risk to India below every other risk on its table — and said so in writing.

Document one: the request, and the answer (July–August 1943)

The chain begins with the Government of India's telegram No. 5718 of 13 July 1943 (TP IV, No. 38). It says London "will have gathered from our recent weekly food reports [the] increasing gravity of [the] food position"; that Delhi has "postponed coming back to H.M.G. until the last possible moment"; that the shortage is 1.29 million tons; and that "only answer is substantial import of food grains from outside with the help of H.M.G. to start not later than September." Its argument is about confidence as much as calories: "Public knowledge of early and substantial import with H.M.G. behind it is in our judgement alone likely to threaten the level of prices and so to draw out accumulated stores".

Amery's memorandum to the Cabinet, WP(43)349 of 31 July (No. 67), backed it: "in the immediate future … a very critical situation will prevail, and, in my view, it is essential to tide over this period by giving the Government of India the assistance which they have requested".

The Cabinet's reply is the meeting of 4 August described above (No. 71). Its Conclusions were three: approve the token 50,000 tons to Colombo and the Iraqi barley; telegraph India "urging the need for further action … to combat inflation and to induce producers to part with grain"; and appoint a committee on Indian finance.

The Viceroy answered on 13 August (No. 78) in the most formal language a Viceroy can use: "after consultation and in full agreement with Commander-in-Chief, Finance Member and Food Member, I am bound in terms to warn the Cabinet that the Government of India and I cannot be responsible for the continuing stability of India now, or for her capacity to serve as a base against Japan next year unless we have appropriate help in prospect … If they are not prepared to modify their decision we here can take no responsibility for the consequences."

Read the actual document

From the War Cabinet minute of 4 August 1943 (WM(43)111, Minute 1), as printed in The Transfer of Power, vol. IV, pp. 156–157:

"In the view of the War Cabinet, the shortage of grain in India was not the result of physical deficiency but of hoarding, due to inflationary conditions. There was general agreement that the situation could not be dealt with simply by the importation of grain … (a) Adequate steps must be taken, by good propaganda in India, and by effective advertising of whatever supplies we could manage to send, to induce hoarders to release grain … (c) The Minister of War Transport … thought that arrangements should now be made to import not more than 50,000 tons as a token shipment. This should, however, not be earmarked for India but should be ordered to Colombo to await instructions there … The general view of the War Cabinet was that no further action should be decided upon at the present time."

And Amery's private letter to the Viceroy the next day, 5 August (No. 72): "the tendency was to treat your demand as in the main an anti-hoarder bluff and to concentrate on India's slowness in taking measures against inflation … In the end all they would commit themselves to at present was 100,000 tons of barley from Iraq and 50,000 tons of wheat to go to Colombo to be used for Ceylon or India as the situation demanded." In the margin of that letter, the Viceroy wrote by hand: "They could not have been more cross about it! Reasons (1) It was too true. (2) I did not mention Gandhi or the Congress!"

Document two: the cap (September–November 1943)

By September the word "famine" was in the Cabinet's own papers. Amery's WP(43)411 of 22 September, summarised in the minute of 24 September (No. 139), "said that famine conditions were developing in the industrial areas in India, particularly in Bengal", and "urged the War Cabinet to review their earlier decision and to give a firm assurance that 500,000 tons of cereals would be shipped to India before March 1944." The Chiefs of Staff endorsed the Commander-in-Chief India's view that aid was "of the highest importance, from the strategical point of view". Wavell, the Viceroy-designate, told the Cabinet that the Indian Army's rations had already been cut and that "the position appeared to be even worse at the present time".

Lord Leathers said he could reach 210,000 tons by the end of the year only by taking barley and wheat from the stocks "being built up in the Middle East with a view to supplying the irregular forces operating against the enemy in the Balkans". The minute records the Cabinet's weighing: "attention was drawn to the disadvantages of diminishing the stocks which were being accumulated for possible use in the Balkans … It was felt, however, that not more than a maximum of 50,000 tons should be withdrawn from these stocks."

The Conclusions of 24 September: aim at 200,000 tons by the end of 1943; review at the end of the year "in the light of the Indian harvests"; and — Conclusion (4) — "The S/S for India should inform the Government of India that it would be out of the question for us to arrange for the import of anything like 1,000,000 tons of food grains annually into India. Every effort must therefore be made to remedy the long-term situation by internal measures in India."

By the Commission's later account, deaths in rural Bengal "rose rapidly" from July "and the peak was reached in December, 1943".

Document three: the new Viceroy and the refusal (January–February 1944)

Wavell landed in October 1943 and went to Bengal within six days. His journal, 29 October: "widespread distress and suffering, not as gruesome as the Congress papers would make out, but grim enough to make official complacency surprising". On 3 November he found the head of the Indian Medical Service planning to go to Simla for a sanatorium committee before Calcutta, and told him "in very clear terms that sanatoriums at Simla could wait but the Bengal famine would not".

On 12 January 1944 he wrote to Amery: "throughout 1944 I shall have a hard struggle to hold prices and to stave off shortages and actual famine. I may not be able to prove this to the satisfaction of the War Cabinet, but the facts are quite evident here. Please tell your colleagues that they have been warned" (No. 321). He asked for 1.5 million tons in 1944.

The War Cabinet met on it on 7 February, appointed a committee under R.A. Butler to examine "the statistical basis" of India's case, and met again on 14 February (No. 378). Churchill "informed the War Cabinet that … there had been a further communication from the Viceroy urging in the strongest terms the seriousness of the situation". Butler "feared that the decision would cause consternation in India". Leathers said it "would be out of the question for him to find shipping to maintain the import of wheat into India at a monthly rate of 50,000 tons for an additional two months"; even 25,000 tons a month later in the year "would be at the expense of cutting the United Kingdom import programme in 1944 below 24 million tons". The Cabinet approved the refusal, with a paragraph to be added "that shipping to carry any additional cargoes could only be provided by the United States".

Churchill's own telegram to Wavell, 15 February (No. 379): "We have given a great deal of thought to your difficulties but we simply cannot find the shipping. Everything is involved in the Operation and our own imports cut to the barest minimum." "The Operation" was the invasion of France, four months away.

Wavell's journal for 16 February: "a telegram telling me the Cabinet had turned down flat my demand for food imports in 1944. I concocted a somewhat spirited riposte warning H.M.G. of the consequences". The riposte, printed by the journal's editor, said: "Bengal famine was one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule and damage to our reputation here both among Indians and foreigners in India is incalculable … I warn His Majesty's Government with all seriousness that if they refuse our demands they are risking a catastrophe of far greater dimensions than Bengal famine. They must either trust the opinion of the man they have appointed to advise them on Indian affairs or replace him."

Amery's private telegram the same day (No. 380): "You are being left once again as in Middle East in 1940 with forces inadequate to meet the enemy surrounding your own."

Document four: what shifted, and why (March–June 1944)

Two things moved the Cabinet in the spring: the Army, and the arithmetic of ships.

On 20 March 1944 (No. 434) the Cabinet took 25 ships from military maintenance programmes to carry 200,000 tons of wheat in the second and third quarters. Amery "urged very strongly" the full 434,000 tons, telling the Cabinet that "nearly three-quarters of a million lives had been lost through famine and its sequels" and that "the War Cabinet would incur a grave responsibility if this took place in face of the reiterated warnings of the Viceroy". The Conclusions told the Viceroy "there was no prospect of wheat additional to the 200,000 tons becoming available in the remaining quarters of 1944".

On 24 April (No. 476), after a ship exploded in Bombay docks with 45,000 tons of grain aboard, Churchill "said that it was clear that His Majesty's Government could only provide further relief for the Indian situation at the cost of incurring grave difficulties in other directions … At the same time his sympathy was great for the sufferings of the people of India." The Cabinet agreed that he should ask Roosevelt for ships. His telegram of 29 April (No. 486) is worth reading in full for what it concedes: "Last year we had a grievous famine in Bengal through which at least 700,000 people died … Wavell is exceedingly anxious about our position and has given me the gravest warnings … I have resisted for some time the Viceroy's request that I should ask you for your help, but I believe that … I am no longer justified in not asking for your help."

Roosevelt's reply, received 3 June (No. 524): the American Joint Chiefs "are unable on military grounds to consent to the diversion of shipping … I regret exceedingly the necessity of giving you this unfavourable reply."

What finally moved the ships was the Chiefs of Staff. On 22 June 1944 they reported that "the provision of wheat for India is a military requirement of great strategical importance", that "a second disastrous famine in India would be most serious in its effect on the morale of the Indian Army", and recommended cancelling 25 military sailings for 200,000 more tons. Churchill approved (Amery's WP of 27 June, No. 551). Wavell's reply: "although the decision is not entirely satisfactory from his point of view he will do his best."

His journal, 5 July 1944, records the other side of that summer's correspondence: "Winston sent me a peevish telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn't died yet! He has never answered my telegram about food."

Document five: what the Commission found, and what it could not look at

The Famine Inquiry Commission reported in 1945. On the dead it wrote, in its first paragraph: "Between one and two million people died as a result of the famine and the outbreaks of epidemic disease associated with it." Its mortality chapter gives the arithmetic: 1,873,749 recorded deaths in Bengal in 1943 against a five-year average of 1,184,903 — "688,846 in excess"; 422,371 more excess deaths in the first half of 1944; "nearly all the famine mortality occurred in the second half of the year". It rejected Professor K.P. Chattopadhyaya's estimate of 3.5 million as "unjustifiable", but added: "the Commission … is nevertheless of the opinion that the official figures under-estimate the total number of deaths". Its own working figure, in the chapter "Looking Back", was "the death of perhaps one and a half million people".

On causes it was hard on Indians. It blamed the loss of Burma's rice, the Bengal Government's failure "to acquire control of supplies and distribution", the delay in a national procurement plan, profiteering — "unprecedented profiteering and the enrichment of those on the right side of the fence" — and the Punjab's reluctance to release wheat. One member, M. Afzal Husain, wrote separately: "It has not been possible to ascertain whether His Majesty's Government had, at any stage, suggested a similar study of the food problem of India in case of war."

What the Commission did not examine was the War Cabinet. Its chapter on "External assistance" means help from other Indian provinces. The shipping decisions in London are not in its terms of reference, its evidence or its conclusions. The only place they are written down is in the minutes quoted above — which were secret until the 1970s.

The strongest case for the other side

The shipping argument is real, and the minutes make it honestly.

In August 1943 the Atlantic battle had only just turned; the Minister of War Transport said that after Ceylon and the Middle East "it would be extremely difficult to find further ships which could be sent to Australia to fetch grain". In February 1944 the same minister said any diversion "would be at the expense of cutting the United Kingdom import programme in 1944 below 24 million tons" — Britain's own food — and Churchill said "Everything is involved in the Operation": Overlord. In June the American Joint Chiefs, who had no imperial interest in India, refused for the same reason. When the ships were finally found, they were taken from the armies' own supply lines, which is where they had to come from all along.

The Cabinet's other argument — that the shortage was "hoarding, due to inflationary conditions" — was not invented in London. The Government of India's own telegram of 13 July says the cultivator "continues to hold" grain, and asks for imports mainly to break that psychology. The Woodhead Commission agreed that prices and distribution, not an absolute lack of rice, killed people, and blamed the Bengal and Punjab governments and the traders before anyone in Whitehall. The editor of Wavell's journal wrote that "the overall shortage was relatively so small that it should have been possible to avoid actual starvation in any area" through Indian administrative action — as every other deficit province managed.

There is also a question of timing, and it cuts both ways. Ships authorised in August could not have landed grain before October; but the Commission found that deaths peaked in December and stayed high through 1944, and that what relieved the famine was the December rice harvest "and the arrival and distribution of supplies from outside the province". Whether 500,000 tons announced in August would have broken the price panic in September, as Delhi argued, is a counterfactual no document settles.

Finally, the record shows movement. Churchill did write to Roosevelt; he did approve the June release; and the 1944 famine that Wavell feared did not come.

What we could not prove

• How many died. The Commission's "between one and two million" is the primary figure; its working estimate is 1.5 million; later demographic work has ranged from about 2 to 3 million. We do not have a document that settles it and do not pretend to.
• What Churchill said in the room. The minutes are summaries, not transcripts, and attribute views to "the War Cabinet" or to ministers by office. The most-quoted personal remarks — about Indians "breeding like rabbits" — come from Leo Amery's published diaries, which we could not fetch and therefore do not quote.
• Whether earlier shipments would have saved the dead of the autumn of 1943. See above.
• The CAB 65 originals. We read the minutes as printed in the official Transfer of Power series, which reproduces them from the India Office and Cabinet files with archive references (e.g. R/30/1/4). The National Archives' own digitised copies (CAB 65/35/41, CAB 65/41/19 etc.) require a registered download, which we did not do; the catalogue entries and agendas were checked.
• The Bengal ministry's share. The Commission's criticisms of the provincial government are severe and this piece does not re-examine them.

Why it still matters today

The Famine Inquiry Commission's report is on the Internet Archive, free; so is The Transfer of Power volume IV, and so is Wavell's journal. Anyone can now read, in the same afternoon, the telegram that said "hundreds are dying of starvation" and the minute that answered "token shipment".

Bengal's Public Health Department counted its dead through village chowkidars, some of whom, the Commission notes, "were not immune from starvation and disease and some of them died" — which is why the count is low, and why the number in this title is a floor, not a total.

And the argument the Cabinet made in 1943 — that the problem was hoarding, and the answer was "propaganda" — is the argument every government makes when it does not want to spend. It is worth knowing what it looked like the first time, from the inside.

Verdict

The documents do not show a Prime Minister deciding, alone, to let Bengal starve. They show something the popular story misses and the apologists' story cannot survive: a Cabinet told in July 1943 that India faced "a situation of utmost gravity", told in August by its own Viceroy that he "cannot be responsible for the consequences", told in September that "famine conditions were developing", told in January 1944 "that they have been warned", and told in February that it risked "a catastrophe of far greater dimensions" — which answered with a token shipment sent to another country, a cap of 200,000 tons, the word "propaganda", and, in February 1944, a flat refusal.

Every one of those sentences is in the government's own minutes and telegrams. The shipping was genuinely short. The Cabinet weighed that shortage against Balkan stockpiles, the British import programme and the invasion of France, and it wrote down, each time, that India came last. When the ships were finally found, in June 1944, they came from the military programmes the Viceroy had been told could not be touched.

At least one and a half million people died. The Commission that counted them was not allowed to look at London. This Investigation has.