Eighty years on, it's time that these 3 million lives are remembered

KAVITA PURI on the first event commemorating the 1943 Bengal Famine.

- KAVITA PURI

IN A MUSEUM IN MANCHESTER, ON AN AUTUMN evening just a few weeks ago, history was made. I joined a group of people who had gathered to pay their respects to casualties of a long-overlooked episode of the Second World War. Curators, students, interested locals and descendants of those involved milled around, drinking chai, looking at pictures in a temporary exhibition.

Organisers believe this was the first event to commemorate the estimated 3 million victims of the 1943 Bengal Famine. Those who died were Indians, but they were also British subjects. It's one of the largest losses of civilian life among the Allies - yet there isn't a memorial, a museum or even a plaque to them anywhere in the world. So that night - organised by the University of Manchester, Manchester Museum and the Imperial War Museum North, and inspired by my BBC podcast Three Million - marked a very special moment.

The exhibition featured portraits of some of the survivors I had interviewed in the Bengal countryside.