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What about the Indian holocaust?

What about the 40 million of Indian people the British empire killed??

10 million in the Great Famine of Bengal 1770.

The famine occurred due to the British policies in Bengal which sought to maximise profits and taxation at the expense of the population. The forced the farmers (at gunpoint) to grow opium and indigo for export and not to grow or reserve food crops. The British therefore oversaw an organised famine, which culminated in a holocaust of 10 million, by starving the very same people who grew the crops in the first place.

Similarly in the Great Famine of 1876–1878, the British caused the death of another 6 million in the name of free market capitalism.

Otherwise the British routinely killed Indians in their 1000s in events such as the Amritsar massacre (1000 people), the Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre (1000 people), Malabar Rebellion (25,000 people) and so on.

Finally the British killed between 5 and 10 million people following the decade after the year of the Indian Mutiny (1857) as they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. The exact figures have never been revealed by the British government.:mad:

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Original post by MrAngel
What about the 40 million of Indian people the British empire killed??

10 million in the Great Famine of Bengal 1770.

The famine occurred due to the British policies in Bengal which sought to maximise profits and taxation at the expense of the population. The forced the farmers (at gunpoint) to grow opium and indigo for export and not to grow or reserve food crops. The British therefore oversaw an organised famine, which culminated in a holocaust of 10 million, by starving the very same people who grew the crops in the first place.

Similarly in the Great Famine of 1876–1878, the British caused the death of another 6 million in the name of free market capitalism.

Otherwise the British routinely killed Indians in their 1000s in events such as the Amritsar massacre (1000 people), the Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre (1000 people), Malabar Rebellion (25,000 people) and so on.

Finally the British killed between 5 and 10 million people following the decade after the year of the Indian Mutiny (1857) as they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. The exact figures have never been revealed by the British government.:mad:


Genocide; "the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group."

The actions of the British in India were appalling, and shameful. But the famines don't constitute genocide. They were made worse by British policy, certainly, but it wasn't deliberate.

I'm no fan of the empire. I'm part Irish, and, as you likely know, the Irish were hardly well treated by the British. But, there needs to be a point where you acknowledge natural causes of things like famine, such as drought, diseases in crops, etc, rather than just mindlessly throwing the term "genocide" about without actually knowing what it means.


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Reply 2
Original post by MrAngel
Finally the British killed between 5 and 10 million people following the decade after the year of the Indian Mutiny (1857) as they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. The exact figures have never been revealed by the British government.:mad:


This is something you've definitely made up.

In the direct aftermath of battles of the Mutiny, sure hundreds if not thousands of male residents of rebel cities were killed - but wiping out millions of people is some kind of twisted delusion.

The Mutiny was one of those really terrible wars of atrocity. The rebels had definite policy of committing the worst possible excesses on European civilians, possibly as a means to prevent people from deserting their cause or surrendering.
Reply 3
The millions killed in India due to British ineptitude and apathy, as well as racism on the part of some British officials are, unfortunately, much forgotten victims of imperialism, whereby colonies are exploited without any real concern for their inhabitants. Just to take one example, Amartya Sen, the Nobel-Prize winning economist, found that the 1942-43 famine in India was completely unnecessary, and occurred in spite of a good harvest in Bengal. Nonetheless, the British insisted on exporting the crops.

I also find it interesting that some people trumpet the fact that policies in some socialist states led to famine, but forget completely or try to play down the foolish and inept policies of the British in their colonies.

It has been argued that even the Mughals were better at dealing with famines in India than the British, and, surprise surprise, since Indian independence, there have been no major famines.
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by viddy9
The millions killed in India due to British ineptitude and apathy, as well as racism on the part of some British officials are, unfortunately, much forgotten victims of imperialism, whereby colonies are exploited without any real concern for their inhabitants. Just to take one example, Amartya Sen, the Nobel-Prize winning economist, found that the 1942-43 famine in India was completely unnecessary, and occurred in spite of a good harvest in Bengal. Nonetheless, the British insisted on exporting the crops.

I also find it interesting that some people trumpet the fact that policies in some socialist states led to famine, but forget completely or try to play down the foolish and inept policies of the British in their colonies.

It has been argued that even the Mughals were better at dealing with famines in India than the British, and, surprise surprise, since Indian independence, there have been no major famines.



I Agree with you during the colonial era over 40 millions Indians lost their lives..... As many as during WW2

India had almost a third or more of the People who supplied the armies that the British used to win wars globally. I'd say that the Indian soldiers won the WW I for the British in Europe. Again in WW II they were used in Europe, Africa, all parts of Asia. Even now British army has Gurkha troops from Nepal, that is an ethnic sub-region of the general area of India.It is because the British could never win Nepal for their Empire; making a treaty with them instead.
Original post by EscapeArtistsNeverDie
Genocide; "the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group."

The actions of the British in India were appalling, and shameful. But the famines don't constitute genocide. They were made worse by British policy, certainly, but it wasn't deliberate.

I'm no fan of the empire. I'm part Irish, and, as you likely know, the Irish were hardly well treated by the British. But, there needs to be a point where you acknowledge natural causes of things like famine, such as drought, diseases in crops, etc, rather than just mindlessly throwing the term "genocide" about without actually knowing what it means.


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Thank you for talking sense.

A lot of people blame mao for genocide during the famine in China. Finally someone speak logic now.
Severe famines were happening in India long before the British arrived.

The only holocaust to happen in India was the Hindu holocaust, and that had nothing to do with Britain either.
Original post by MrAngel
What about the 40 million of Indian people the British empire killed??

10 million in the Great Famine of Bengal 1770.

The famine occurred due to the British policies in Bengal which sought to maximise profits and taxation at the expense of the population. The forced the farmers (at gunpoint) to grow opium and indigo for export and not to grow or reserve food crops. The British therefore oversaw an organised famine, which culminated in a holocaust of 10 million, by starving the very same people who grew the crops in the first place.

Similarly in the Great Famine of 1876–1878, the British caused the death of another 6 million in the name of free market capitalism.

Otherwise the British routinely killed Indians in their 1000s in events such as the Amritsar massacre (1000 people), the Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre (1000 people), Malabar Rebellion (25,000 people) and so on.

Finally the British killed between 5 and 10 million people following the decade after the year of the Indian Mutiny (1857) as they thought the only way to win was to destroy entire populations in towns and villages. The exact figures have never been revealed by the British government.:mad:


Are Bengalis still regularly throwing widows into funeral pyres now?
Original post by TokyoGhoul
I Agree with you during the colonial era over 40 millions Indians lost their lives..... As many as during WW2

India had almost a third or more of the People who supplied the armies that the British used to win wars globally. I'd say that the Indian soldiers won the WW I for the British in Europe. Again in WW II they were used in Europe, Africa, all parts of Asia. Even now British army has Gurkha troops from Nepal, that is an ethnic sub-region of the general area of India.It is because the British could never win Nepal for their Empire; making a treaty with them instead.


The Indian army also has Ghurkas. After 1947 the Gurkha regiments were split between the British and Indian army's.

Ghandi supported the British empire in WW1 and 2.
Original post by MatureStudent36
The Indian army also has Ghurkas. After 1947 the Gurkha regiments were split between the British and Indian army's.

Ghandi supported the British empire in WW1 and 2.


Not in WW2 he didn't. Check out the Quit India Movement.
Reply 11
Because the western world on a whole doesn't care about white people killing non whites.
Oh wow I'm learning something new here. Why don't they teach us those things in school?

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Reply 13
Yes, It was a Genocide which have been even forgotten by India, Due to bad policies and Racial attitudes of British and specially Churchill, they treated famines in India as Indians were born to die in famine which was created by loot of Indian resources by British.

Only the 1943 Bengal Famine claimed somewhere between 2-4 Million lives.

Let me quote from a article.
Remembering India’s forgotten holocaust | Rakesh Krishnan Simha | Tehelka.com
The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 must rank as the greatest disaster in the subcontinent in the 20th century. Nearly 4 million Indians died because of an artificial famine created by the British government.

It took Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cohorts 12 years to round up and murder 6 million Jews, but their Teutonic cousins, the British, managed to kill almost 4 million Indians in just over a year, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill cheering from the sidelines.

Churchill was totally remorseless in diverting food to the British troops and Greek civilians. To him, “the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis (was) less serious than sturdy Greeks”, a sentiment with which Secretary of State for India and Burma, Leopold Amery, concurred.

another article which estimates the death toll to be around 3 Million
Bengal Famine Of 1943 - A Man-Made Holocaust
when he (Churchill) first received a telegram from the British colonial authorities in New Delhi about the rising toll of famine deaths in Bengal, his reaction was simply that he regretted that nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi was not one of the victims.Later at a War Cabinet meeting, Churchill blamed the Indians themselves for the famine, saying that they “breed like rabbits.”His attitude toward Indians was made crystal clear when he told Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
Original post by Brakco
Yes, It was a Genocide which have been even forgotten by India, Due to bad policies and Racial attitudes of British and specially Churchill, they treated famines in India as Indians were born to die in famine which was created by loot of Indian resources by British.

Only the 1943 Bengal Famine claimed somewhere between 2-4 Million lives.

Let me quote from a article.
Remembering India’s forgotten holocaust | Rakesh Krishnan Simha | Tehelka.com
The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 must rank as the greatest disaster in the subcontinent in the 20th century. Nearly 4 million Indians died because of an artificial famine created by the British government.

It took Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cohorts 12 years to round up and murder 6 million Jews, but their Teutonic cousins, the British, managed to kill almost 4 million Indians in just over a year, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill cheering from the sidelines.

Churchill was totally remorseless in diverting food to the British troops and Greek civilians. To him, “the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis (was) less serious than sturdy Greeks”, a sentiment with which Secretary of State for India and Burma, Leopold Amery, concurred.

another article which estimates the death toll to be around 3 Million
Bengal Famine Of 1943 - A Man-Made Holocaust
when he (Churchill) first received a telegram from the British colonial authorities in New Delhi about the rising toll of famine deaths in Bengal, his reaction was simply that he regretted that nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi was not one of the victims.Later at a War Cabinet meeting, Churchill blamed the Indians themselves for the famine, saying that they “breed like rabbits.”His attitude toward Indians was made crystal clear when he told Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."


Was that the Indian famine that Indian provincial governments staffed entirely by Indians messed up?

When you were talking about genocide, I thought you were talking about the 1 million who died in 1947 walking from one part of the Indian sub continent to another.

I'm assuming your an Indian nationalist living in the UK expressing yourself.
Original post by viddy9
Just to take one example, Amartya Sen, the Nobel-Prize winning economist, found that the 1942-43 famine in India was completely unnecessary, and occurred in spite of a good harvest in Bengal. Nonetheless, the British insisted on exporting the crops.

The wikipedia description suggests that the proximal cause of the famine was localised in Bengal, and that native elected governments in other states then turned it into a disaster by essentially embargoing Bengal out of self-interest.

Sen's argument seems to be tangential to British involvement and basically accuses rich Indians of eating everyone else's food, enabled by wartime changes in monetary policy.

How do you differ from wiki, or my interpretation of it, to have come to so different a conclusion?

I also find it interesting that some people trumpet the fact that policies in some socialist states led to famine, but forget completely or try to play down the foolish and inept policies of the British in their colonies.

I think this is a much better analogy. The colonial empires, like socialism, caused large numbers of deaths that could have been prevented. They did this by enacting poor economic policies. I think there is still a key difference, which is that socialists generally used brutal violence to impose these bad economic policies on countries, while the colonial empires usually upheld the pre-colonial institutions because this was the cheapest and easiest way to keep control. While it doesn't exonerate the colonial governments completely, it's unlikely that they could have reformed countries like India to have free market economies without tremendous bloodshed.
I don't know much about this topic, but Western historiography is very European-centric and tends to focus on history that transpired in the Western world. So, it is unfortunate that these events are not covered in your average history textbooks more, but that's the way historiography tends to work in the Western world. It is worth trying to change this.
Reply 17
Original post by Observatory
The wikipedia description suggests that the proximal cause of the famine was localised in Bengal, and that native elected governments in other states then turned it into a disaster by essentially embargoing Bengal out of self-interest.

Sen's argument seems to be tangential to British involvement and basically accuses rich Indians of eating everyone else's food, enabled by wartime changes in monetary policy.

How do you differ from wiki, or my interpretation of it, to have come to so different a conclusion?


I think this is a much better analogy. The colonial empires, like socialism, caused large numbers of deaths that could have been prevented. They did this by enacting poor economic policies. I think there is still a key difference, which is that socialists generally used brutal violence to impose these bad economic policies on countries, while the colonial empires usually upheld the pre-colonial institutions because this was the cheapest and easiest way to keep control. While it doesn't exonerate the colonial governments completely, it's unlikely that they could have reformed countries like India to have free market economies without tremendous bloodshed.


I'm a bit busy at the moment, I'll try to get in a full reply later, but there's no doubt that colonial governments would have used brutal violence to impose their own bad economic policies on other countries and oppress them. And, indeed, they did so on many occasions.

The important thing is that, since India gained independence, there have been no major famines. In fact, no major famine has ever taken place in a democracy.
Original post by viddy9
I'm a bit busy at the moment, I'll try to get in a full reply later, but there's no doubt that colonial governments would have used brutal violence to impose their own bad economic policies on other countries and oppress them. And, indeed, they did so on many occasions.

The important thing is that, since India gained independence, there have been no major famines. In fact, no major famine has ever taken place in a democracy.


Yet colonial governments developed those local economies.

Since India had gained indeoendnace they lost Bangladesh and Pakistan. They've had famines and floods. But your right that India hasn't had famine, but it's come damn close several times.

India had mass murder during partition and continues today.
Reply 19
lol.

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