With the statue gone, maybe it is time to review history again, to smash rose-tinted glasses and view world leaders as what they really were. At, least that's what social media seems to think:. Our ancestors fought for freedoms they did not have. The BengalFamine was not natural. It was created by the British empire, largely due to Churchill , because he was a racist. If you are tweeting about BlackLivesMatter n forget about this guy, then I doubt your intention.
Churchill, in India, is remembered as the man who caused the devastating Bengal Famine. Here are some pictures from BengalFamine. India was is British rule. He was no less than Hitler. However, the famine in Bengal , which killed up to 3 million people, was different, according to the researchers. Though the eastern Indian region was affected by drought for much of the s, conditions were worst in , years before the most extreme stage of the famine, when newspapers began to publish images of the dying on the streets of Kolkata, then named Calcutta, against the wishes of the colonial British administration.
In late , thought to be the peak of the famine, rain levels were above average, said the study published in February in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Food supplies to Bengal were reduced in the years preceding by natural disasters, outbreaks of infections in crops and the fall of Burma — now Myanmar — which was a major source of rice imports, into Japanese hands. In Churchill's view, white protestant Christians were at the top, above white Catholics, while Indians were higher than Africans, he adds.
Soames thinks it is ludicrous to attack Churchill. And Churchill's views on race were incomparable to Hitler's murderous interpretation of racial hierarchy, Toye says.
Churchill has been criticised for advocating the use of chemical weapons - primarily against Kurds and Afghans. These quotes have been used by critics such as Noam Chomsky to attack Churchill. But the controversy is misplaced, says Warren Dockter, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and the author of Winston Churchill and the Islamic World. Churchill's memo continued: "The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.
It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effect on most of those affected. In another memo about using gas against Afghans, Dockter says, Churchill questioned why a British soldier could be killed lying wounded on the ground while it was supposedly unfair "to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze - it really is too silly".
But some still criticise the British air attacks used to quell rebellious tribes in the region. And it's important to note that he was in favour of using mustard gas against Ottoman troops in WW1, says Dockter, although this was at a time when other nations were using it.
In , India, then still a British possession, experienced a disastrous famine in the north-eastern region of Bengal - sparked by the Japanese occupation of Burma the year before. At least three million people are believed to have died - and Churchill's actions, or lack thereof, have been the subject of criticism. Madhusree Mukerjee, author of Churchill's Secret War, has said that despite refusing to meet India's need for wheat, he continued to insist that it exported rice to fuel the war effort.
So , tons of Australian wheat bypassed starving India - destined not for consumption but for storage," she said upon release of the book in Churchill even appeared to blame the Indians for the famine , claiming they "breed like rabbits". Preoccupied with battling Germany in Europe, Churchill didn't want to be bothered by it when people raised the issue. It was a horrendous event but it needs to be seen within the context of global war, says Packwood.
Once he was fully aware of the famine's extent, "Churchill and his cabinet sought every way to alleviate the suffering without undermining the war effort", Herman wrote. It was a failure of prioritisation, says Toye. It's true that Britain's resources were stretched, he says, but that's no excuse given the relatively small effort it would have taken to alleviate the problem.
Churchill had strong views on the man now widely respected for his work in advocating self-determination for India. It's unfashionable today to question Gandhi's non-violent political tactics. He is venerated in much the same way as Churchill is in the UK. But for years he was a threat to Churchill's vision for the British Empire.
He was vociferous in his opposition to Gandhi, says Toye, and didn't want India to make any moves towards self-government to the extent of opposing his own party's leaders and being generally quite hostile to Hinduism.
Churchill's stance was very much that of a late Victorian imperialist, Charmley adds. Younger Tories like Anthony Eden regarded Churchill with great mistrust during the s because of his association with hard-line right-wingers in the party, he says. In there were objections to a proposed Churchill Centre in Jerusalem on the basis that he was "no stranger to the latent anti-Semitism of his generation and class".
Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, countered that "he was familiar with the Zionist ideal and supported the idea of a Jewish state". But being anti-Semitic and a Zionist are not incompatible, says Charmley. In March, he argued the former PM who led Britain to victory in World War Two should be remembered alongside the most prominent dictators of the twentieth century. Particularly the decisions that he personally signed off during the Bengal Famine when 4. Dr Tharoor first rose to prominence after his heartfelt speech at Oxford Union, discussing the economic toll British rule took on India, in July went viral.
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