60 Lakh Died But We Don't Read About It In History Books: Ajit Doval On 1943 Bengal Famine
Despite the staggering death toll, estimated at around 3-6 million, the Bengal Famine remains largely absent from history textbooks and public discourse
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has raised a sharp question about one of the deadliest yet often ignored chapters of history – the Bengal Famine of 1943. Speaking at the convocation of IIT Madras on Friday, July 11, Doval pointed to the staggering scale of the disaster and asked why it finds so little space in the country's collective memory.
'In 1947, our GDP was just $20 million. Millions died of starvation during the Bengal famine. If five lakh people were to die of hunger today, the entination would rise," he said, asking why we don't talk about the Bengal incident. 'The road ahead is just as demanding. You must dedicate yourself to these next 22 years," he further said.
Doval's remarks dragged into the light a tragedy that saw people reduced to eating grass, mud, and animal waste just to stay alive. In some cases, they sold their children for a handful of rice. Within months, lakhs were dead. It wasn't a natural disaster, it was man-made.
The year was 1943. India was still under British rule, and World War II was raging. Japan had just invaded Burma, and the British feared that Bengal would be next. What followed was a series of policy decisions that turned fear into famine.
The British colonial administration seized thousands of boats in the coastal districts of Bengal to prevent their use by the Japanese military. They also emptied grain warehouses in the villages and destroyed standing crops, effectively choking off food supply lines to vast rural populations. Prices skyrocketed. Food disappeared. The people starved.
Despite the staggering death toll, estimated at around 3-6 million, the Bengal Famine remains largely absent from history textbooks and public discourse. There are no national memorials. No annual remembrance. No reckoning.
Doval underscored this erasure. 'History should not be just the story of those who won," he said, adding that it must also remember those who suffered and had no voice. For him, the famine is not just a historical footnote but a cautionary tale about the deadly consequences of political apathy and policy failure.
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July 15, 2025, 13:03 IST
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