Matt Elton Your new radio series explores the 1943 Bengal famine, which is a subject that's both unfamiliar to a lot of people and the source of ongoing controversy. Can you give us a sense of the famine's scope and significance?
Kavita Puri The numbers are just huge. In 1943, as the Second World War was raging, a famine occurred in Bengal [a region now split between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal]. Low estimates are about 1.5 million deaths, with that figure going as high as 6 or 7 million. Although there's long been debate about its full extent, there is a consensus among academics that the death toll was at least 3 million. To put that in context, it's one of the largest losses of civilian life suffered on the Allied side - and yet this is a subject that's largely unknown in Britain. Even in India and Bangladesh, remembrance is complicated.
There is a lot of academic literature on the causes, and the most important contributors to the famine are widely debated, as well as questions of culpability. My purpose was very different. I wanted to understand why this subject has become largely overlooked, and its memory fraught, and to try to shift the lens to look at the humanitarian catastrophe in a different way by focusing on individuals who survived and lived through the famine. More than 80 years on, that generation - like the war generation - will soon no longer be with us. This is really the last chance to capture their voices. So I set out to do that, and to explore archives around the world for first-hand testimonies.
What do we need to understand about Britain and India and their relationship to make sense of what happened?
Bu hikaye BBC History UK dergisinin March 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye BBC History UK dergisinin March 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
"It had been a tiny triumph, but it had been a British triumph"
MAX HASTINGS talks to Rob Attar about a daring airborne raid that provided a much-needed boost to Britain's morale in the darkest days of the Second World War
Dancing with the Devil
ROGER MOORHOUSE is impressed by a book that traces the fortunes of the diplomats charged with managing the west's wartime alliance with Josef Stalin
Victorian cucumber ice cream
ELEANOR BARNETT samples the delights of an unusual and refreshing version of one of the world's favourite summer treats
Anne Boleyn, ‘princess' of France
JOANNE PAUL is impressed by an account of how the Tudor queen's continental connections shaped her meteoric rise and dramatic fall
FIVE THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT...Roman Britain
Rob Collins, who is teaching our new HistoryExtra Academy course, shares five surprising facts about life in Britain during the Roman occupation
War and pieces
Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business
Gulbadan Begum The Mughal Jane Austen
Gulbadan Begum was meant to live a quiet life in the confines of a Mughal harem. Instead she made her mark on history twice: first, embarking on a pioneering pilgrimage to Islam’s holy cities; second, writing a remarkable history of her dynasty. RUBY LAL tells her story
Succession 1603
The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, writes Susan Doran, it wasn't long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects
Horror in France
On the morning of 10 June 1944, the residents of Oradour-sur-Glane were going about their lives as normally as was possible in occupied France: cooking, washing, shopping, playing. Little did they know that they were about to become the victims of one of the most infamous massacres of the Second World War.
"IT'S TIME TO WRITE WOMEN BACK INTO THESE WORLD-CHANGING ANCIENT EVENTS"
Daisy Dunn tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the deeds of the extraordinary female figures who shaped them