New Delhi: Scholar Madhusree Mukerjee has written an open letter to the BBC, in protest against what she alleges is the extensive and unacknowledged use of research detailed in her book in the outlet’s famed podcast series on the Bengal famine.
Mukherjee’s book Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II came out in 2010 and is largely credited with reviving conversation around former United Kingdom prime minister Winston Churchill’s role in creating and sustaining the Bengal famine of 1943, which killed an estimated three million people.
Mukherjee has alleged that the BBC’s acclaimed podcast Three Million at once rips off her book and also erases the central role played by Churchill. Mukherjee says that this is a deliberate erasure, meant to alter the narrative around the famine.
Mukherjee’s open letter carries a denial by BBC. The Wire wrote to the BBC on the allegations and received a response on October 31. A BBC spokesperson said: “As we have made clear to Dr Mukherjee in our earlier correspondence with her, we reject the claims she is making.”
The BBC said that its research was conducted over a year across the world and that Churchill was covered in the podcast.
“BBC documentary series Three Million explores the devastating impact of the Bengal famine of 1943, which saw at least three million lives lost in British India during the Second World War. The aim of the series was to focus on the lived experiences of the people directly affected by the famine and those who were eyewitnesses. The team spent over a year researching the story, drawing on a wide range of academic books, primary sources and conducting their own archival research across the world, as well as working with historical consultants and interviewing a broad range of academics.”
“We cannot talk about this historical event without mentioning Churchill – and we do cover his role throughout the series as well as the criticisms levelled against him.”
The seven-episode podcast aired from March to August this year.
Mukherjee’s original letter notes that despite BBC’s claim that its team conducted its own extensive research, their research included reviewing some sources which she discovered as relevant to the famine.
In a detailed episode-wise argument presented after her open letter, Mukherjee also highlights how some claims made by the BBC – some to do with offering hitherto un-presented information in the podcast – are false because of prior Bengali reporting by the BBC itself.
Several noteworthy scholars and journalists have noted that they are in solidarity with Mukherjee, including journalists P. Sainath and Sukumar Muralidharan, author and activist Silvia Federici, MP and author Shashi Tharoor, Cambridge professor Priyamvada Gopal, filmmakers Nilita Vachani, Diego D’Innocenzo and Partho Bhattacharya, physicists Vandana Singh and Rahul Mahajan, ecologist Debal Deb, Ghosh Literary founder Anna Ghosh, author John Horgan, former BBC World Service head Nazes Afroz, author Romi Mahajan, researcher Raghav Kaushik, professors Sipra Mukherjee and Anirban Bandopadhyay, mathematician Seema Nanda, anthropologist Felix Padel and lawyer Sarmila Bose.
The Wire is producing the whole letter and Mukherjee’s detailed comments below. Her original emphases have been retained.
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An Open Letter to the BBC
I am writing to protest the extensive and unacknowledged use of the research and findings detailed in my book, Churchill’s Secret War (2010), in your acclaimed podcast series, Three Million.
In this book, which I will henceforth call CSW, I charged Prime Minister Winston Churchill with significant responsibility for the death toll of at least 3 million people in the Bengal famine of 1943. Expecting to be attacked by his defenders, I painstakingly documented my findings so that they could be easily verified. What I did not expect was that my meticulousness would enable my findings to be selectively reproduced and discussed while eliminating me and CSW from the discourse—and that too by the BBC.
When I sent an official complaint to BBC about the unacknowledged use of my work in Three Million, I received a denial: “We disagree that we relied heavily on your book. The team spent months researching the story, drawing on a wide range of academic books, primary sources and conducting their own archival research around the world.” This research included reviewing some of the sources I discovered as relevant to the famine, such as the diaries of Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery.
Author Yasmin Nair describes as “extractivist plagiarism” the “plundering of another’s work by going so far as to chase down their very same sources and presenting a provocative thesis as one’s own.” In this case, I charge, BBC has chased down a few of my sources, but altered my thesis to one more amenable to the powers the broadcaster answers to.
“We can’t talk about this historical event without mentioning Churchill,” the BBC also wrote back to me, inadvertently acknowledging the central importance of CSW to discussions about the Bengal famine. Why then refuse to mention the book that established the connection between Churchill and the famine?
I submit that this erasure is systematic and deliberate. By reproducing only those of my findings that have made it into the popular press, and dealing with them in a cursory way, the BBC seeks to change the narrative around the Bengal famine.
Since CSW was published, I have been repeatedly approached by BBC producers who wanted to feature my work in a standalone documentary or a series. They invariably wrote back weeks or months later, saying that more senior officials or producers had decided against including my book or my voice. This happened as recently as April 2023, when a producer wrote back: “I can no longer go further with exploring this with yourself. I hope you understand. It is a decision that is out of my hands.” These communications, as well as the elimination from your podcast of any mention of CSW, suggest that the book has been blacklisted by sections of the BBC.
In effect, the Three Million podcast series focuses negative attention away from Churchill onto lesser actors like Bengal Governor John Herbert, the topic of Episode 6. (The episode blames Herbert for the “denial policy” and fails to mention that the original scorched-earth order, for which denial policy is a euphemism, came from Churchill and was relayed to India by Amery. See CSW pages 63-64.) Further, by refusing to name CSW even while selectively reproducing its findings, BBC ensures that listeners don’t get the opportunity to read and understand the full, detailed and devastating case against Churchill and, more broadly, against British imperialism in India.
“Are we ready to touch those bits of our history that are too painful to acknowledge?” presenter Kavitha Puri asks in Episode 4 of Three Million. The linguistic gymnastics required to avoid mentioning CSW (see below) even while using so much material from the book makes it clear that the BBC may be able to “touch” some painful aspects of British imperialism, but it is still unready to empower its audience to explore the full story of Churchill’s and the Empire’s culpability.
I list below the statements in the first four episodes of Three Million that draw upon my original research and findings, as well as the statements that are partial and misleading. The page numbers below refer to the US paperback edition, published in 2011. Statements made in the podcast are in blue, with particularly significant sections noted in boldface. My comments are in black.
Sincerely,
Madhusree Mukerjee
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Introduction
“It’s been called one of the darkest chapters in modern British history and the debate quickly veers in on the wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, blaming or defending him.”
CSW is the original source of this debate.
“There is no voice of the three million people. This is the story of the Bengal famine told for the first time by those who were there.”
This is false. I found and interviewed several famine survivors and witnesses, whose stories were recounted in CSW. I wasn’t the first, either. I was inspired to look for survivors by the 1997 documentary The Forgotten Famine, directed by Mark Halliley, which had remarkable filmed testimonies from famine survivors. These testimonies were collected by Nazes Afroz, whose own 8-part series on the Bengal famine was broadcast on BBC Bangla in August-September 1997. The BBC Bangla series contained eyewitness accounts of the scorched-earth policy and interviews with civil servants. Michael Portillo’s episode on Bengal Famine, as part of his BBC 4 series, Things We Forgot to Remember, was broadcast in January 2008, using Afroz’s recordings. There were also survivor and witness testimonies in the 2018 documentary Bengal Shadows. Among others, this film featured an interview with Chitto Samonto, a famine survivor and freedom fighter who is a key protagonist in CSW.
Episode 1
The sequence of events listed in the podcast as leading up to the famine follows the narrative laid out in CSW. All the factors noted in the podcast as contributing to the famine were described in CSW in detail, some of them for the first time ever.
India reluctantly pulled into the war
Indian political leaders were furious at being dragged into the conflict
See CSW pages 7-8
Japanese getting closer to Bengal
War transformed the city… soldiers on the streets
Bengal exporting rice in record amounts
Export of rice from Bengal was something CSW noted for the first time. See page 129.
“By the second world war, the British Raj was in its twilight years. Calls for Indian independence were louder than ever. Bengal had long been a crucible of anticolonial activity, but now its streets were full of soldiers in a war no one had asked to be part of. Allied troops had started arriving in large numbers once Singapore and major military strongholds were taken by the Japanese in 1942.”
CSW was the first to connect the famine with repression of “anticolonial activity,” a.k.a., the Indian freedom movement. See pages 22-30, among others.
The rice supply from Burma… came to an abrupt stop.
The colonial government was printing money to pay for all the resources, issuing sterling IOUs to be paid after the war.
The fall of Burma meant that the Japanese were on the border of India. Colonial authorities ordered the seizure of surplus food and transport from villages across the delta. It was known as the denial policy and the aim was to ensure that if Japan invaded it couldn’t access food.
CSW described all these factors in detail. It also showed that the scorched-earth orders, for which “denial policy” is an imperial euphemism, originated with Churchill and were conveyed by Amery to the Viceroy of India, Linlithgow. See page 63-64.
“Without these tens of thousands of vessels, fishermen couldn’t go to sea, farmers weren’t able to go upstream to their plots, and artisans weren’t able to get their goods to the market.”
Note the similarity of this text to “Boats took traders to the market, fishers to the sea, potters to their clay pits, and farmers to their plots.” CSW Page 65.
Soldiers and wartime workers putting pressure on food resources.
The war was already driving up the price of rice. After denial it spiraled even higher.
“There were as many colonial soldiers policing the restive Indian population as were fighting the Japanese.
CSW was the first to link the famine with British repression of India’s freedom struggle during WWII.
“For the British, keeping a tight grip on India, its food, its transport, and its people was vital for controlling its empire and winning the war.”
This was a key theme in CSW. See page 102, for example.
Cyclone, rice destroyed, crop disease.
See CSW pages 89-90.
“Viceroy Linlithgow sounded the alarm with London and asked for urgent grain imports. Britain’s War Cabinet was busy with the Allied invasion of North Africa. Some food was sent to other parts of India, but not to Bengal. In fact, it was asked to export even more rice for the war effort.”
CSW was the first to discuss these requests for food. See page 103.
It was Churchill who refused to authorize the shipping ministry to send grain to India. It was also Churchill who insisted on Bengal continuing to export rice even as it faced severe shortages, as Three Million does not note.
Episode 2
This section continues to follow the narrative first described in CSW.
Hundreds of thousands of troops had to be fed… fixed prices removed.
CSW showed that the fixed prices for rice were lifted when colonial authorities panicked over their inability to feed soldiers. The reason was that Churchill had removed most of the shipping from the Indian Ocean, so that the imports of wheat that India needed to feed the army could not be sent. The lifting of price controls precipitated famine. See CSW 94-97, 110-112.
“By early 1943, the Viceroy, the most important colonial figure in British India, was worried. He wrote to London, saying, a rice crisis was coming and asked for imports to stave it off. The request was rejected. Ships, they said, were needed for the war effort to keep up Britain’s food reserves. Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote in a memo a few days later, “Indians must learn to look after themselves as we have done. The grave situation of the UK import program imperils the whole war effort and we cannot afford to send ships merely as a gesture of goodwill.’”
This entire section, including the quote, was originally described in CSW page 103.
“India was producing the majority of goods and weapons for the Asian front… but for now sending more food to Indians who were British subjects was far from a priority.”
This section is to be found in CSW pages 45-46.
“In Delhi, Viceroy Linlithgow was increasingly concerned. He once again asked London for imports of half a million tons of grain, noting that famine conditions had begun to appear in Bengal and it could threaten the war effort. In early August, the war cabinet, who were about to engage in a major offensive in Italy, said it may be able to deliver 150,000 tons. The Viceroy was dismayed, writing, ‘I cannot be responsible for the stability of India now.’ And that stability was coming under greater threat. The immense suffering in Bengal was fueling the independence movement, the last thing the British wanted in the middle of the war.”
This section summarizes pages 138-142 of CSW. I discovered the War Cabinet’s discussions on the Bengal famine and detailed the one on August 4, 1943, as well as two others.
“Winston Churchill had vowed never to seek the disintegration of the Empire but the famine was now hastening the end of British rule.”
Again, this is a key message of CSW. See, for example, pages 129-130.
Episode 4
“Everything was subordinated to the necessities of the war… . Fighting the war and keeping the Japanese out, he said, took priority over feeding the hungry masses. “
See CSW page 192.
“While relief efforts struggled in Bengal, the quest for more help from London were still not being fully heeded. By autumn 1943, the world knew about the extent of famine in Bengal, but the war cabinet, chaired by Winston Churchill, had promised only fractions of the aid asked for, saying, there was not enough of shipping space because of the war. The Secretary of State of India, Leo Amery, recorded in his diary in September, ‘Churchill was prepared to admit that something should be done, but very strong on the point that Indians were not the only people starving in the war.’ Amery goes on: Churchill thought that ‘starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks.’ ”
This entire section, including the quotes from the Amery diaries, draws from my original and exhaustive research. See CSW page 196.
[Voice of historian Max Hastings]: “‘Even a historian such as me is sometimes shocked by some of the phrases that Churchill used in those days.’ This question matters. It’s at the heart of accusations leveled against Churchill that his attitudes to Indians affected his response to the famine. Time and time again there were requests for food imports, which were either denied or only met by promises of a fraction of the total amount. “
The podcast brings up these “accusations” without a hint of where they came from and where the full, devastating indictment can be found.
“A few days later, the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, asked for more food imports. Noting in his diary, he said Churchill broke into ‘a preliminary flourish on Indians breeding like rabbits.’ His requests for immediate imports were denied.”
Again, this is a summary of a longer account in CSW, along with the quotes I found and published for the first time. See CSW page 205.
The rice harvest came at the end of 1943. This time it was plentiful. Even so, Wavell was concerned about second famine. He demanded over a million tons of food grains.
See CSW page 220
Only in April 1944 did Churchill ask for help from America. Churchill wrote to US president Roosevelt, asking for assistance. But they declined: they needed their ships for the D-Day landing.
See CSW page 230
In Churchill’s six-volume autobiography of his wartime premiership, the Bengal famine, which occupied many war cabinet discussions, is absent.
See CSW page 265.
Note: This article was updated with the BBC’s response on November 1, 2024.
