Three Million

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The Bengal Famine of 1943 in British India: the forgotten story of World War II.

The forgotten story of World War II: the Bengal famine in British India, where at least three million people died, told for the first time by the eyewitnesses to it.

"The best history podcast I've heard in years." - The Sunday Times
 
"Three million is great radio... and needs to be heard." - The Observer.
 
During the Second World War, at least three million Indian people, who were British subjects, died in the Bengal Famine. It was one of the largest losses of civilian life on the Allied side. But there is no memorial to them anywhere in the world - not even a plaque. Can three million people disappear from public memory?
 
From the award-winning creator and presenter of Partition Voices and Three Pounds in My Pocket, this is the story of the 1943 Bengal Famine in British India - the forgotten story of World War Two. For the first time it is told by those who were there - farmers and fishermen, artists and writers, colonial British and everyday citizens. Nearly all of the testimony in the series has never been broadcast before.
 
Eighty years on, those who lived through it are a vanishing generation. Time is running out to record their memories.

Three Million: 3. The F-Word

3. The F-Word

BBC Radio 4 - Three Million, 3. The F-Word

Famine grips Bengal but publicly, no-one is calling it a famine.

Famine grips Bengal but publicly, no-one is calling it a famine. A British journalist decides to take on the censor; what he publishes shocks the world.

Colonial authorities wanted to censor the famine. They were worried that Britain’s wartime enemies - the Germans and the Japanese - would use it as propaganda against them.

But as more and more starving people arrive in cities across Bengal, it becomes harder to suppress. Indian writers, photographers and artists document the humanitarian catastrophe, but it was risky as the censor forbade mention of the word famine. A British journalist and editor of the English language Statesman newspaper, in Calcutta, decides to challenge the censor and begins publishing photographs and then scathing editorials about what is really going on in Bengal. It shocks the world. In London, the BBC reports on “famine conditions” and, as we uncover, the British government tries to pressurize the broadcaster to tone down its coverage.

Presenter Kavita Puri
Series Producer: Ant Adeane
Editor: Emma Rippon
Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore
Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck
Original music: Felix Taylor

With thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee, Professor Joya Chatterji and Dr Diya Gupta.

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