103 – The 1943 Bengal Famine: Lived Experience and Legacies

The 1943 Bengal Famine was one of the 20th century’s most calamitous man-made events, resulting from hoarding, resource extraction and unchecked inflation during the Second World War. Rice harvests that had sustained the population were in part appropriated by the British during the Second World War, leaving no provision for local needs. Rice stocks and local boats - crucial for transporting food from one part of rural Bengal to the other - were destroyed. Bengal’s economy could not withstand the immense pressures placed upon it and collapsed. The famine then echoed an image of a region unable to provide for, or care for itself, when in fact this was the product of disastrous colonial mismanagement. This panel brings together scholars working on the famine from a cultural and labour history lens. Diya Gupta’s research on photographs and wartime censored letters on the famine from the colonial archive speaks productively to Urvi Khaitan’s examination of the lives of rural women affected by famine, which made them turn to hazardous working conditions in coal mines by day and sex work by night. Artist and activist Sujatro Ghosh and curator Sona Datta consider the process of transforming academic research into creative remembrance through artwork and soundscapes, while BBC presenter Kavita Puri reflects on her latest Orwell-Prize nominated Radio 4 podcast series ‘Three Million’ to understand the legacies of the famine today in the UK. The panel, then, brings together a diverse range of perspectives on the famine, both from South Asia itself and from researchers and practitioners based in the UK, and examines how each can engage in fruitful dialogue with the other to generate fresh layers of meaning, and shed new light on private and collective memory.

Convenor

Gupta, Diya -