There was a screening of Bengal Shadows by Joy Banerjee and Partho Bhattacharya in East London a few weeks ago which is very much worth crying and writing about. It concerned the 1943 British-Engineered Bengal Famine which costs the lives of so many millions, devastated the society and exposed villainous institutions that continue to stalk humanity with impunity. It is important to mark and connect with, for descendants of survivors and perpetrator classes and a wider circle of basic elemental justice.
I am not one of the descendants of survivors of this famine who celebrate Indian colonial subject participation in Britain's war effort, no World War Poppyganda for me. The Bengal Famine is one of the reasons I don't buy the anti-Nazi propaganda of the White World War 2 Winners. There really is little choice in the matter if you honour yourself with (more than white) humanity and heritage. More people should know why.
Here's the deal, having spent the first 7 months of 1943 exporting food grains out of India to Britain and its war theatres, Churchill's war cabinet ordered a scorched earth Denial Policy, to destroy boats and food in Bengal citing fears of Japanese landing. Churchill and company were functionally eugenicist and as we are well aware, and as endless quotations and his own voluminous writings show, he was personally a racist of corpulent proportions. The right to food, life and safety of the Indians of British Occupied Bengal were negative in his racial hierarchy which required active hatred and power to constantly maintain and reconfigure, not simply passive disregard.
A Tenure track into the Zone of NonBeing
Man made disasters like this one do not occur in a vacuum and it can never be said enough, that the parasitic British Indian land tenure system and its beneficiary groups were engines of impoverishment and exploitation upon those beneath them and had been weakening the social economic conditions of the smallholders, sharecroppers and labourers for generations.
Although the roles of more local political rivalries, private companies like the Isphahanis and bog standard hoarders are familiar factor to consider, Bengal Shadows doesn't get bogged down and presents an alarmingly detailed and clear disasterscape in under an hour, wrapping testimonies of some of the remaining survivors of those times with more contemporaneous scholarly contributions.
We hear from Soumitra Chatterjee, the male lead from Satyajit Ray's 1973 Distant Thunder remembering how important this role was to him. Both Bengal's struggle with survivor bias to reach beyond bhodrolok representation and politics,[its the Brahminisms Stupid]. Though I look forward to learning more about dance pioneer Bulbul's 'Lest We Forget" and the impact that may or may not have had on audiences in the colonial core.
Bengal Shadows is as good a building point as any, even with its inevitable West Bengal centrism which comes with the territory at the moment. There's an unforgettable scene with a surviving granny figure Jhorna Bhattacharya, recollecting how she witnessed a mother pumping her breast for milk, only to realise that her child was dead, giving the milk to another child so they could live.
Now think of every time and everywhere right now where this category and worse situation must be playing out.The film is available to all with an internet connection on the YouTube link below, do watch, if you can in a social context.
After the screening there was an impromptu Q&A which deserved to have been better prepared for. It was a middling to sparse crowd of largely deshi people in London. There is low awareness of this more than 80 years on, and post Covid I think fewer people show up on these occasions. Brick Lane Circles ran a number of events on the subject some years ago, check their video archive here.
Comments from the audience are always a measure of something. We learned that one young former Cambridge undergrad struggled unsuccessfully with her supervisor about researching this famine. Presumably this was in a History department. The community needs to be our academy, I would not recommend depending on the academy for community.
Holey Social Memory
Another audience member, quite worldy wise shared how often family chains of narration that you would expect to inform you of such vital near history often don't work regarding a traumatising and humiliating matter like this. I concur but its uneven. There's one side of my family where I hear of an aunt walking past live then dead victims on her way to and from University. I hear of rice being sent from Dhaka by an uncle to his mother in the village in a suitcase with clothes for camouflage. I hear of Ispahani company officials dumping rice in the river. On the other side, I grew up with the story of the Brothers and the Grain of Rice.
"The colonialist sees themselves through Israel's eyes, while the colonised see themselves through the Palestinians." A Rahman
Consider this; that the material Impunity of Britain regarding the Bengal Famine of 1943 and its previously engineered famines, in Bengal and Ireland gives subsequent Famine Engineering villains, like Israel & the Zionist Movement - Britain's bastard offspring - impunity for their own Mutation of this, Sadistic, Racially Supremacist Starvation Weapon.
Eugenic Connections
Some years ago, Madhusree Mukerjee wrote a book on the Famine focusing on Churchill and gave a talk to a larger East London Audience. At the end of her Q&A, she elaborated on the influence of the aristo-eugenicist and physicist Frederick Alexander Frederick Lindemann aka 'Lord' Cherwell on Churchill. Smells of lavender. You can watch the whole thing below. Evil people in high places indeed
I will leave a link to Ray's Distant Thunder here too, who knows how much longer it will stay up for.
Its crucial to demonstrate electoral consequences for genocide.
Today, somebody wise sent me an interview of Prof Bilal Rudolph "Butch" Ware on the Ansari Podcast. He is the Green Party's Vice Presidential Candidate for the forthcoming US Presidential Elections. To me his words and method are a vital alignment of thought, political spirituality and organising backbone that I find compelling. funny how in the UK, his nonsecular meter would be outlawed for some colonial 'spiritual influence' lawfare.
The video is embedded below, Nur Nuggets include:
Democrat Party as Party of the Elephant.
Republican Party as the Party of the Braying Ass.
The political aesthetic of a green hoopoe.
The importance of being ready.
The Democrats theft and gutting of the Green New Deal policy.
The recent youth led movement in Bangladesh as a teaching lesson of our times.
The things that can be done in the case of the team winning presidential office and no friends in Congress or Senate. Anti Trust suites and arms embargo on Israel.
A poll based argument on why the Party of the Elephant have lost already.
Plenty of policy reasons for voting for them.
Good humour about the struggles ahead in any eventuality.
Their independence from AIPAC and arms industry.
Anecdote of convincing Republican voters to organise a rally for his party.
The measures that the Two Party duopoly, Dems especially, have taken to prevent them accessing the voterhood.
Podcast host's inevitable endorsement for black seed oil, apple cider vinegar, honey gummies from a Palestinian woman. [fractal of the whole thing]
Prof Ware's doctoral research was on the anti slavery resistance of West African Islamic scholars and he has more recently been organising with students and teachers against the Israeli-US genocide in Gaza and beyond. He is based at the History Department of the University of California Santa Barbara.
People in most states of that country have an option to vote against the Zionist's slaughter, with a decolonial ecopolitical horizon. That is a commitment of environmental and social justice that centres coloniality as the systemic foe. Prof Ware has brilliant moves, at least in the domain of discourse. Political proof will be in the struggles and relationships. I really hope they do well, that their supporters and workers do well and make the most of this, for the sake of the Palestinians, wider West Asia, themselves and all of us. Decolonial Duas for them and us all.
If Ware's political content and method resonate with you, he's been on Breakfast Club , Bad Faith, Democracy Now! and will be speaking to reach Trump voters ( ?!?) over the coming weeks.
There is a lot at stake in this election, this devastating year has exposed a lot of people's true colours and functions. So what will it be? Green Hoopoe or Green Card?
