The Bengal Famine in Indian Letters
In 1943 letters reporting starvation and death in Bengal began to reach Indian soldiers serving the British overseas. Despite colonial censorship, their testimonies revealed the devastating reality of famine.
From my personal experience I can tell you that the food we get here is much better than that we soldiers get in India. But whenever I sit for my meals, a dreadful picture of the appalling Indian food problem passes through my mind leaving a cloudy sediment on the walls of my heart which makes me nauseous and often I leave my meals untouched.
These lines were written in July 1943 by an anonymous havildar, or junior officer, who was serving in a Sappers and Miners Unit in the Indian Army during the Second World War. Stationed in Egypt, this soldier was one of the two-and-a-half million men from undivided India who served Britain in what was widely believed to be the largest ‘volunteer’ army in the world at the time.
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