Churchill, More Villain Than Hero?

For a few years now, Indian Parliamentarian and former U.N. Under Secretary General, Shashi Tharoor - author of “Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India” - has been doing a systematic and very effective takedown of Britain’s sense of self with regard to its colonial legacy in India - and especially its nostalgia for Empire!

Tharoor has done this in the media and on university panels with devastating exposés of everything the Brits were proudest of: the railways, the civil service, education, the courts, industry, and so on. He claims that, far from doing any good, Britain destroyed India’s agriculture, as well as its textile, shipbuilding and nascent steel industries, and left it much worse off and with a drastically lowered GDP after 200 years of what he refers to as “rapacious and pitiless taxation” and misrule. 

Tharoor’s latest target is Winston Churchill who, as Britain’s prime minister, was nothing short of a war criminal when he diverted much needed grain supplies away from starving Indians in 1943 - to Allied forces in Europe - thereby causing the deaths of more than three million people during the Bengal famine.

1943 Bengal Famine

Nobel economist Amartya Sen was among the first who wrote about Churchill’s role in the 1943 Bengal famine; so has journalist Madhusree Mukherjee. It is a horrifying account of imperial brutality that tarnishes Churchill’s image with a litany of unheroic deeds!  British soldiers were ordered to throw thousands of tons of rice into the sea to ensure it did not benefit Japanese invaders.  This “scorched earth” policy (i.e., destroying all food and water in an area of conflict while civilians starved), has been directly attributed to Churchill.

In a recent opinion piece in Bloomberg  (see link below), Tharoor refers to the flap in the British media when Labour Party politician John McDonnell called Churchill a “villain” for his repressive role in curbing the 1910 Wesh miner’s strike.  As Tharoor points out, a single miner died as a result of Churchill’s policies in Wales, whereas upwards of 3 million died in the Bengal famine directly attributed to Churchill‘s skewered policies in India. 

Ultimate White Supremacist?

Churchill was the ultimate “White Supremacist” whose views were anachronistic, even Malthusian: democracy and freedom were not meant for inferior or darker races, he wrote; Britons were “a stronger race, a higher-grade race" compared to the people who they conquered. 

Besides the Bengal famine and brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya, in my view Churchill is not solely to blame for other evils laid at his door. Much of it was British government policy. He was a product of his times and a product of Empire - very much in the mould of that other infamous jingoist and fellow Nobel laureate, Rudyard Kipling. Churchill may not have been evil personified but (in the estimation of many) evil enough!

Battle of Gallipoli (1915-16)

There is another item to add to the misdeeds and fiascos for which Churchill is at least partially responsible: the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli (1915-16). This was during World War I and, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill fancied himself a military strategist who pushed to open an eastern front. 

More than half a million soldiers (Allied and Ottoman) perished as a result of the harebrained notion to open a passage to Russia through the Straits of the Dardanelles. Churchill and other Allied commanders underestimated the Ottomans. He infamously (and rather fatuously, it turns out!) said in 1915: “A good army of 50,000 men and sea power: that is the end of the Turkish menace.” (See photo below). 

Indian Deaths Unacknowledged

About 4,700 young Indian soldiers also died fighting under the British flag at Gallipoli, but (as in other battlefields in Europe, Singapore, Malaya, etc.) local tour guides forget to mention Indian military deaths until specifically (and rather forcefully) reminded to do so by yours truly! C’est la vie!  

Pioneer Newspaper

As a footnote, let me add that both Kipling and Churchill wrote for the Pioneer newspaper in Lucknow.  (Both were reportedly also fired but I couldn’t swear to that!). When the newspaper was resurrected by the Thapar Group in the mid-1990s, I was appointed the Washington D.C. correspondent for a few years... I remember getting a kick out of that knowledge!  One can imagine the reaction in the context of Empire (colonisation, even race!) but, at this point, that seems - somehow - both incongruous and fitting!  

Ludi Joseph

Feb. 18, 2019

Enclosures:

Gallipoli map, photos 

Bloomberg Opinion piece 

The Rest of Us Always Knew Churchill Was a Villain