![]() ![]() This is not just a case of “to the victors go the spoils” even when it comes to the production of knowledge. Unfortunately, the false narrative is the one that has carried the day. Madhusree Mukerjee’s brilliant and searing account of Churchill’s active and racist connivance in the Bengal Famine – Churchill’s Secret War– is a salutary corrective to the canonical and ahistorical narrative of Winston-as-savior. In perhaps the most shameful episode of imperialism-as-genocide, Churchill let 3-4 million Bengalis starve in the early-mid Forties while India contributed massively to the European War. ![]() ![]() When it comes to India and Indians, Churchill’s virulence, racist, and thirst for blood was at its worst. One would indeed get this impression from the typical romantic (and racist) hagiographies that pass as “history.” To read such pabulum is to be at play in the fields of elision. The 45 th President of the United States, Donald Trump, delivered a perfect one recently by installing a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office. Writers are every now and again given a gift from the “news,” a nugget that serves to be an easy opening gambit. ![]()
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