Kavita Puri and Sathnam Sanghera on War, Empire and the Untold Story of the Bengal Famine (Part Two)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. For this episode, we're rejoining for part two of our conversation with Kavita Puri and Satnam Sanghera. Kavita and Satnam joined us recently at the Kiln Theatre to discuss war, empire, and the untold stories of the Bengal famine. If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode and get up to speed. Now it's time to rejoin the conversation with our host, Satnam Sanghera.

It's really interesting listening to the podcast that actually India, you said this earlier, India, you know, doesn't remember it either. What are the reasons behind Indian amnesia on this? In a way, we can understand why Britain. Of course we can understand why we don't remember. Because we're a long way away. We're weird about empire.

you know, red trousers, et cetera. But what about the Indians? Why don't they commemorate it or talk about it? But I was really surprised that they didn't. And I think the 40s was such a kind of tumultuous decade. You know, you have the famine. You have in Bengal, you have the 1946 Great Calcutta killings, which are the kind of the beginning of this kind of horrible thing

genocidal pre-partition, then what become partition cleansing, ethnic cleansing. Muslims and Hindus being killed in their thousands. And then you have partition, which is so kind of traumatic. And then you have these two new independent countries and you can't, you just can't look back. You have to look forward. And they did learn from the famine in the sense that freedom from the British meant freedom from hunger.

And, you know, there hasn't been a famine since independent India. And so you could argue they remember it in that way. But the famine is a really complicated event for Indians because, as I said, onlookers, people I spoke to who had fine lives, they were middle class Indians, they were elite Indians in Calcutta, they didn't suffer. They never wanted for rice.

And there is a guilt in that. But there were also people who profited, who made a lot of money, who some people say are still quite powerful in India. And then people did things that are really kind of unforgivable. They sold their daughters to pimps for a bag of rice. They left their husbands behind.

People did terrible things. And I have testimony of people who say they took other people's land, they put it in their names, they had a bit of money in the countryside, they could see these people were really hungry, so they said, we'll give you a little bit of rice, but we want your land. People did terrible things, and these are hard things to remember. But I also think...

famine, not just the Indian famine, but famines are hard things to remember for all those reasons. It took the Irish 150 years before they could memorialize their famine. That's a really long time. Yeah, and incredible. It's only relatively recently that the population of Ireland recovered. Is that right? I didn't think they had recovered still. Yeah, it's only literally in the last decade or so. What has been the response from the relatives of some of the colonizers?

that you had on your show. I know you had one of them. You had the granddaughter of John Herbert, who didn't respond in the defensive way that I expected. So what's been the response from the Britishers, who can sometimes be very defensive? You mean colonialists? Colonialists. So I spoke to the granddaughter of Governor John Herbert. I really randomly met her at a

And she was like, oh, I listened to your podcast. And I was like, oh, that's nice. She said, it was really good. And I said, oh, okay, thanks. And then she was like, oh, my grandfather was John Herbert. And I was like, what, the John Herbert? And she was like, yeah. And I was like, wow. And she said she didn't know about what her grandfather had done.

that day she'd just been back to her family house in Wales and she just happened to have a picture of him in her bag and it was like one of those photos that you get at school and there's her grandmother she just happened to have a picture of John Herbert in her bag in her bag he's like a grandfather at this dinner party yeah because she'd just driven down from Wales oh okay alright

That's exactly what I imagine the descendants of John Herbert are doing. And he's kind of wearing, he's wearing, well, I mean, and he's wearing spats, right? It's what you imagine him to be wearing. And his wife is wearing this kind of glamorous fur and her dad is on the floor. He's just a little boy. It really, you know, provokes something in her. And in their big Welsh house, they have a...

that's in a climate control room. And she went through the archive and was trying to dig things out. And she's really looking into her past, into what her grandfather did. And it's really painful because it's not a great story. And, you know, I've thought... Hold on. She's got an archive, a climate-controlled archive for her family. That's not a normal thing. No, no, but it's not a normal thing. Why is that? Is that what posh people do? Apparently. Apparently.

No, but they have a big family house that her grandfather, I think he grew up in. And so the family archive that goes back a long, long time is in that room. And they have an archivist who's going through it all. Okay.

But I mean, a lot of families have archivists. I was familiar with that story of Lord Curzon, famous viceroy, right? Who had his room in Eton reconstructed in his stately home because it was the happiest days of his life. Did you not do that with your school in Wolverhampton? Yeah. LAUGHTER

I've lost track now. What was I talking about? She wasn't as defensive. She was very thoughtful about it. Yeah, she's really thoughtful and she's looking into her past. But it's been, I think it's been difficult with her family and probably her siblings. And it's made me think that, you know, Alex Renton has been looking into, he's a descendant of a Scottish aristocratic family and they've been looking into their culture.

links with slavery and There are descendants who have profited from the slave trade who are looking into their into their past very difficult for him I mean it's very large parts of his family don't talk to me exactly but that hasn't happened with Colonial families now obviously they didn't profit or some did but they didn't profit in the same way But it but it made me think maybe it's the beginning of something but I think seeing how how

hard it's been for her. I don't know. I think maybe it's not ready yet. But I would say broadly, people have been really interested in the famine, in empire, as you know. And I think particularly the younger generations, they're not so hung up on things. They're not so hung up on empire. And they do want to know their past. And I find that

really hopeful but they are pretty gobsmacked i mean it's hard not to be gobsmacked isn't it we should talk about what actually happened so oh how did the famine resolve how did he end so there was a really there was a good viceroy and wavel field marshal wavel who had run the army in india was appointed by churchill and he was sent out in in october

We should probably... Just before that, the word famine was banned. You couldn't say famine. And it's... This is under the censorship. Under the emergency rules. And...

It's very easy to say, oh, colonialists are one thing. But there were people, British people, who made different choices and they went against what... They put their jobs on the line. And Ian Stevens, who was the editor of the Statesman newspaper, he did that. So it was the most widely read English language newspaper, incredibly well respected. And he was...

was looking out into his city, Calcutta. He'd been in India for 20 years. And he grappled with whether he should break the censorship rules to tell the world about what was happening on the streets of Calcutta because they were full of dead bodies. They were full, as Pamela was saying, of vultures eating them. It was just, it was like a horror movie.

And he got around the censorship rules by publishing photographs of what was happening on the streets of Calcutta. And to cut a long story short, these images went viral and they went to London and the government was embarrassed and

And they had to do something. And so Wavell comes in at this point when Parliament is discussing the famine. In the end, you know, people talk about famine, although famine was never, ever officially declared, ever official.

in India for Bengal. And it's really important that that didn't happen because it meant that when famine was declared in India, there was a responsibility on the colonial authorities to then help. And they never did that because of the war. But once famine is out there and once people know and once effectively the censorship breaks down, people in Britain are really shocked. It's being reported on in the papers, parliament's discussing it.

They can't pretend that this isn't happening in Calcutta in the second city of empire. And so Wavell goes out in October and he does what the previous viceroy hasn't done, which is he visits Calcutta. I mean...

It's incredible to think that Linlithgow didn't do that. But he visits Calcutta and is really shocked by what he sees and immediately takes a few measures which are really important. He makes sure that Calcutta is now no longer fed from the countryside of Bengal, but is fed from outside the province, which is really important.

He diverts the military who were considering going back into Burma, and he diverts them to help distribute relief to the countryside.

He sets up grill kitchens. He sets up soup kitchens. He really makes a difference. And he doesn't do this to help the war effort. He does this out of humanitarian purposes. And so things then begin to change. There is a better harvest. But with famine, it's often not starvation that kills you. It's malnutrition. It's other diseases. And so he is worried that

the famine could carry on. And so he says to Churchill, we need a million tons of food grain, which Churchill says, I can't do, that's too much. And they have this back and forth throughout 1944. And it's really interesting reading this because he puts his job on the line. And Churchill says, you know, we've got D-Day, we can't release ships, it's really difficult. And he says, what is happening in Bengal is a stain on

not only on the British Empire, but on Britain. We are doing incalculable damage. And he understood what was happening in Bengal was bigger than Bengal. It was even bigger than India. And to his credit, Churchill's fear has had enough of him. He doesn't fire him. He does get a million tons of aid by the end of 1944. However, it's not enough because by that point, millions of people have died.

But it's interesting because it's something you talk about a lot, which is, you know, there are people who do good things within a system and there are people who don't. And it's, you know, there are layers to this. It's complex. Indeed. All right. We'll take questions. OK, should we go down here first? Thank you so much. Is it true that Churchill said if people are starving, why is Gandhi still alive in relation to the Bengal family? That's one question. OK, at the top.

Sorry, speaking. How did you feel listening to some of the stories that people were talking to you about? OK, first of all, that Churchill quote, what was it again? Is it true? I think he said that in the context of him, Gandhi. He was on a hunger strike. And I think it was in that context rather than the context of the famine.

If that makes sense. Yeah. So another time in history. It was a different point. No, it was still in 19, it was in 1942. It wasn't in the epicenter of the famine. Yeah. Okay. And the other question was, how did you feel listening to the testimonies? I mean, I guess there's... It's pretty full on. I mean, I try and be professional, but sometimes I get really emotional and I, you know, they cry and I will cry. It's quite a lot. I mean, I talk about this in my last book and...

I interviewed some historians of calamity and massacres and so on. There are historians who've committed suicide. There's that famous incident, isn't it? Iris Chang, yeah. Because if you spend all your time reading about nothing but this, it can have a really... It's also not a particularly happy time for the world. I can't, I'm noticing. And so, you know, how do you keep your head...

I think, I don't know, because it's important work and that helps. And you just have to be silly other times in your life and just flippant. And, you know, you can't be serious all the time. But it's a lot. It is a lot. But, you know, and as I say, I do worry about asking them to recount these things because it really affects them a lot.

but they really want to tell you and they want to put it on record. And there is, I do think there is a dignity in telling your story, but there's also a dignity in being heard. And I think that especially the survivors, nobody ever asked them. Nobody went out into the countryside and asked them their story.

There's that moment in one of your podcasts where one of the, I think one of the... It says the largest... It says, what took you so long? Yeah, and it's like, there's a memory collector that's going around recording their stories with pen and paper, and they say, why did you come so late? And it's just kind of, you know, it is late. It's probably too late for so many of them. But, you know...

I think that there is some catharsis in knowing that your story will be heard and that it meant something and it was valued because...

They were sitting there all along in the countryside for decades and decades, and nobody went to ask them. Nobody thought of taking down their testimonies about a way of life that was completely lost. All those people that died. Nobody in India did that, and they could have done that. It's the largest living archive in the world. They were just there and no one did it. And so, I think they realized the importance. They couldn't believe

leave that the BBC were in this middle of the jungle talking to them about the Bengal famine. It blew their head. But what's really interesting is that not one of those survivors mentions Churchill. They don't even know who Churchill is. They don't talk about the governments. They don't have a sense of state. It's always about that my neighbor did this or that person helped me. We ask those questions and we're right to ask those questions. They're really important questions.

But that's not how they remember things. Svetlana Alexievich, who has done really seminal work on collecting testimonies in Chernobyl, says that it's often middle-class people, say the people who were the onlookers in Calcutta, who mediate their stories because they read books or newspapers.

But these people I was interviewing hadn't read books. They hadn't read literature on the Bengal famine. They hadn't watched the films. They hadn't seen documentaries. They were really telling you the things that they saw and the things that they felt.

Yeah, sure thing.

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Let's have some more questions. I'm going to break up my chaotic system of upstairs, downstairs. Let's go downstairs first. The microphone here. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. So I come from Bengal.

I was in Bangladesh and I heard from my parents and grandparents, not only was there a shortage of food, but there was also the huge distribution problem where actually for the Indian

the British army facing the Burma campaign, where the Japs were there, that food was kept in silos and was not distributed when people were dying on the streets of Dhaka, Calcutta, Chittagong, and Assam. So the other thing is not a question. But that, as a reaction of the Bengal family, I heard from my grandfather and my father, the Bengal started the...

where Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose declared armed struggle to get independence, apart from the Muslim League and the Congress was doing with Gandhi in '47. So Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose said we need to get out of this colonial movement.

I'll add a question to that. I mean, how was the famine weaponized if it was by nationalists? It's hugely weaponized. I mean, how could it not be? If the British can't feed you, what on earth are they doing there? So it massively fueled the independence movement. And in Quit India, just before the Quit India resolution in August,

The precursor to that was there was a denial resolution because Congress had seen how it completely destroyed the local economy of so many people living in the Bengal Delta. And so, no, it hugely fueled calls for independence and the moral authority of the British people being there. I mean, what can you say?

Okay, let's take two questions from upstairs. I think Lin Lithgow said that Herbert was the worst of the Indian governors. He did say that. He was the weakest. If that was the case, why wasn't he removed? I think they were considering... Sorry. You're breaking up my chaotic system. Second question, if we can remember that, okay? We'll remember. Hello, thank you for this important work.

I just wondered if there was to be a memorial, what kind of memorial do you think there should be and where and who do you think should pay for it? Two brilliant questions.

Okay, first one was about Lin Lithgow. He was called the weakest governor. And they were thinking, they did, Amory and Lin Lithgow did talk about getting rid of him. He became very, very sick very quickly. And so during the epicenter of the famine, he was in hospital and then he died. With regard to a memorial...

So Alex Duvall, who studies famine, had this brilliant idea that where the Clive of India statue is outside the foreign office and Clive, for

Everyone's favourite statue, that. It was there when there was a huge famine in 1772. Yeah, and actually one of the reasons Clive was so unpopular in his actual lifetime is because of the old Bengal famine. Exactly. And that's a famine that a lot of Bengalis, of course, remember. And he said, why don't we put that statue there, which I thought was a really brilliant idea. So five million people died, possibly? Yeah. Yeah.

around 5 million. But I think that would be good, wouldn't it? Yeah. What would it look like? I don't know. But I hope there will be one. And there are calls now in India for there to be a memorial. And actually something quite exciting is going to happen later on this year with perhaps a kind of memorial thing. But so things are changing. Like that's why, you know, once people know about these things, it galvanizes people to ask questions, to read about it. But

But also, you know, I think one day, one day we will be talking about empire, hopefully with kind of that it's not so kind of angst ridden. And I do believe that one day there will be a memorial to these three million people because there should be.

It depends what Nigel Farage thinks, I guess. OK, two more questions from Dan. How did you go about identifying the population of testimonies that you were going to do, given sparse historical records? OK. Winston Churchill was awful in the Boer War. He cocked up with Gallipoli in the First World War. He did this in the Second World War. Are you amazed that Britain and the Allies won the war? LAUGHTER

So testimonies, how did I end? I mean, to be honest with the testimonies, I didn't have a lot of choice. I, what I wanted to do was have a wide, as wide kind of variety as possible. So of course I wanted survivors who lived through it. You know, they felt the hunger pangs and all their stories are different, but I also wanted to hear from onlookers and know what that was like too. But I also wanted to hear from colonial British. That's always really important in my work.

And then I go into the archives and I had testimonies of relief workers. I had people who were civil servants on the ground who were looking to assess the famine. I try in as much as I can to do a 360 because this is a hugely complex event. But I wanted to reflect that in as much as I could through first person testimony. Are you a history student? Because that is a history student question.

Oh, okay. We all used to be. And the second question was that, are you surprised that we won the war? No, I'm not. Because I think as Satnam said, you can be two things at once, can't you? And he was. And I just think if we, are we grown up enough as a nation, if we can recognize the absolutely heroic things he did,

And he did do those things. Can't we recognize the other side as well? But I would say he didn't. You said he's not responsible for the Bengal famine. The question with him is, could he have done more to alleviate it when he knew? And did his racist attitudes affect that? He didn't cause it. But he was the prime minister. He could have done something sooner.

But I think two things can be true. Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk, mega brain. Also, total bellend. Exactly. Opposite things can be true at the same time. Questions are up there. Okay, someone has a microphone. Great. Hi, thank you, Kavita and Satnam for such a wonderful conversation today. And Kavita, you used the phrase redemptive histories at one point. And

I think that showed me the kind of power that we can give to the experiences and the stories that people who went through, who survived and looked on in such awful situations have and the power that their perspectives have today when we learn about these things.

I just wanted to find out your take on how we can give power to these local stories in our schools today, especially in Britain, where I think so much history is taught as kind of high history or through high politics and through facts and figures.

And local stories maybe aren't given the kind of significance that they deserve, especially as those generations are passing away and we're just left with the memory of what they went through. How can we continue to give them power today? Good question. I'll have one more from upstairs. Well, thank you for the talk today. You mentioned that the word famine was not allowed to be used. I think back to last year where we couldn't use the word genocide on TV anymore.

Your story is particularly, not story, this whole, well, I suppose story, is particularly interesting to hear that the viceroy, even though there was this decision that you can't use the word famine, he continued arguing his case and getting the food that he needed in Bangladesh or in the Bengal region.

So these stories are important examples for others to kind of think you can fight back against current thinking, government. I think that's why these stories are more important because it tells people what to do now, really, I suppose, to learn from examples. Two very good questions there. I mean, I was going to ask you that as my last question. You know, what are the lessons today? Because you've got famine in Gaza, you've got famine in Sudan,

Are there lessons from this history for now? And then we'll go on to the first question. I mean, it's interesting that Amartya Sen, who I interview, who was a witness to the famine, it affected him so profoundly that he ended up studying famines his whole life.

Anyway, he won a Nobel Prize. He won a Nobel Prize for it. He said that famines often don't largely happen in democracies. And I think that, you know, if we're looking around now, I was very conscious that when I was making this podcast that I was living through, I was seeing mass starvation in places like Gaza and Ethiopia and Sudan. And so, of course, I

you know, learning, understanding about famine is really important. But what I realize is we often, you know, we memorialize war. We don't memorialize famine so much. Many, many people die in war. Many, many people die in famine. And we know the kind of generational consequences for war. We don't really talk about it with famine. And what I learned from speaking to people is that

that happen during famine are so horrific that the norms that bind society are totally subverted because you have to survive. It takes generations to overcome that. It's partly why, you know, as I said, the Irish famine took 150 years to memorialize. It's such a traumatic event. And so what I think of when I see these famines and their famines and war is that

The consequences of that are going to be felt for so many, so many generations. So yeah, it's kind of quite apart from all the kind of genetic consequences of it. So yeah, it's pretty... I guess also the specific question was about...

fear of using certain words like famine. Yeah. You know, with Donald Trump, there's a fear of using the word fascism. There's a fear of using the word genocide. Just to also add that what is interesting though is not the case, obviously, when the Bengal famine took place, although I don't think it would have come under this, is starvation as a weapon of war is now a war crime. It became a war crime 25 years ago, although nobody has ever been sentenced for it.

we weirdly seem to be okay with famine. I don't think Alex Duvall does. Yeah, he does. As long as you don't... Yeah, he says it. As long as people don't have to see it. Yeah, they don't have to see it. People are weirdly okay with famine. He also makes a really interesting point, which is after the Second World War, we had memorials. We said never again.

But because we don't memorialize famine, there isn't that impetus to stop famines. And famines kill millions. I mean, he argues that more people died in the Second World War through famine and hunger than for other reasons. And we don't seem to kind of take it as seriously. But yeah, and I think that the other thing that Amartya says is that

In a democratic country and with a democratic press, it's harder then to hide famine. And the British during the war did try and hide the famine. They tried to hide it within India, but they didn't want the enemies...

to know about it and for them to use it as propaganda, which by the way, the Japanese did use it as propaganda. They also didn't really want, and that's why it became a problem for them, they didn't want the Americans to see it on the streets because the Americans were pressurizing them to leave India. And so I think in democracy, again, it's harder to...

To kind of... To hide these things. The first question was about schools. Now, how do you... Yeah. I mean, to make it more specific, how do you... Can you talk about this with kids or is it too... The famine. Yeah, I mean, is it too problematic? Because I'm writing my second kids' book on empire and there's loads of things you can't actually talk about with kids because it's too dark. I think you can say it generically. I think you can. And I think schools have a lot of expertise with...

Dealing with the Holocaust and I think what you know, what is age appropriate and children should learn about that So I think there there is a way of doing it I think schools and I have to say and I really hope this evening hasn't been too depressing because I think what is good is that we are living through a time where and I feel lucky to be living through this time where we can talk about our history and we can appraise our history and we write books on Empire and

And people engage with that. And history teachers are trying to do different things. And I think that we're looking at history in a different way, not through just high politics, as you say, but not just on empire, but female history and working class history. And I think that

Think that is changing and I think that that's I think history and the way the next generation writes about history will be quite Different and I think and I think that's a good thing. Okay. We'll have the final two questions from down here Someone has put their hand up very enthusiastically there. So you and three years enthusiasm has won it. Good evening I'm Nona. I'm from Armenia. I

First of all, I'm so thankful to the Indian nation for the amicable attitude that you have towards Armenians and also the political support. My question is not specifically about the book, but your personal insights. And it's so astonishing how similar are the fates of Armenians and Indians. You mentioned about Holocaust. We also had the Armenian genocide and in 1915, the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

massacre, 1.5 million Armenians. And also probably you have heard about the 2023 mass displacement and exodus of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, about 120,000 ethnic Armenians. So in terms of partition of India, I can assume that it led to religious and ethnic tensions,

It also led to mass displacement of people and also territorial disputes. The similar things that we have, the Armenians experience. So from your experience, what is the most important lessons learned from this partition that we Armenians can learn from you? Because we currently experience that and we feel it currently.

I'll let you answer that. I mean, everything I learned about the Armenian genocide, I learned through the Empire podcast, which had a series on. I mean, I didn't realize. I think a lot of stuff you've learned from the Empire podcast. Yeah, definitely. Well, my biggest takeaway from interviewing people who live through partition was something I hadn't expected at all. I expected stories of horror.

And I did hear those. But every single person also wanted to tell me about their neighbor or their friend of the other religion who transcended hate. And they may have... Or maybe it was a stranger of the other religion who helped them. And I thought that was really interesting. They wanted to tell me that. But they also...

had this feeling of belonging to a place even if they had left that place, even if they'd never gone back to that place. They felt that that was their home. And to them, they didn't have a partition in their heads or in their memories because they remembered what it was like. They remembered a time where people lived together largely without any problems, except when a border was drawn.

And everyone went crazy. And I think that that is really hopeful to me, that people remember that time and that the politics that was imposed upon them hasn't changed that. What worries me is

is that the other generations don't feel that. They don't understand that complexity and that national narratives today don't talk about that. They talk about their own victimhood during partition, whereas everybody suffered in partition. Every country suffered.

And everyone was a perpetrator. And you can't deny that. And I think until there is a collective understanding between India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, that they all suffered and they are all grieving for what they lost. And that terrible things happened on all sides. Until they do that, then they cannot heal. Okay, final question. No pressure.

As the kind of, I guess, evidence around what's happened during this point in history kind of emerges and you've kind of put all this really important work into finding it, do you think that also increases the enthusiasm to understand history?

the impact on health generations later of descendants of people that have survived famine and have survived actually quite a long period of relative lack of food and nutrition during British colonial rule. This is the famous epigenetics question. I think that's really...

I think epigenetics was firstly studied for descendants of the Holocaust. And I think people are now doing it for the famine as well and other famines. And I think it's quite a controversial... I actually think it was first established for famine. Oh, was it? Yeah. Was it? That's where it was first proven. Is that right? Which famine?

I think it might be more of the Indian ones, actually. Oh, really? The idea is basically, the idea has been proved, well, it's controversial, but the idea is that multiple generations in a family can be affected by a trauma two or three generations later. But I think there's a growing body of research that's looking into that now. It's really interesting.

Is that it? That's the final question. There's a great book on this by Siddhartha Mukherjee called The Gene. Ah, is that right? Anyway, I should say a few thank yous. Thank you to the organisers for arranging this stage with a slice of the Bengal jungle. It's fake, you'd never know.

Thank you to my future in-laws who've come. I'm not going to get to say hello. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Matt. Good to see you, mate. But mainly, thank you, Kavita. Honestly, the work you're doing is so important. It's much more important than anything the rest of us do. He's normally really mean to me, so this is nice. It's such an important book. And the book you're writing on the Bengal family is going to be just...

Amazing. Please do look out for it. Thank you everyone for coming and thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Mia Sorrenti, and it was edited by Mark Roberts. Oh yeah, this is the sound of my husband loving me enough to get a CPAP for his sleep apnea so we can sleep together.

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