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The Bengal Famine
How Indians died to feed the British greed
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” — Winston Churchill
When the British East Company found their way to the Indian Subcontinent in 1608, little did the Indians know that the traders would colonize their lands in the following centuries. They first came as traders to the Indian land and gradually extended their power into their Indian administrative and military forces.
What started as a company slowly became an empire: British Raj or British India are synonymous with the supreme power the colonizers held on the Indian land.
The economic power
When it came to making profits, the British Raj had a ruthless approach: they never empathized with the natives who fed their colonizer’s greed and underwent several famines.
The worst famines of all were the ones in Bengal. The chain of famines started in 1770 and extended up to 1944. One thing to note is that famines were not uncommon before the British arrival in India. Although the famines had hit severely even before, the local rulers always averted the monstrous consequences — the most critically affected areas were given the maximum attention.
