It was in part a narrative, in part reflections on his own life and his
‘discovery of India’ as one who had approached India, with his British
educational background, almost as an alien himself; in part an attempt to
think through some of the problems of constructing a coherent national
identity. Based in part on discussions had with fellow prisoners, who he
thanked in the text for their contributions, it reflected on the nature of
the positive content of Indian nationalism: the negative content of anti-
British or anti-imperialist sentiment would be inadequate cement for
holding together a diverse conglomeration of peoples. And of course it had
centrally to tackle questions of a unifying national identity in the light
of what he felt to be the unnecessary sectarian call for a ‘Pakistan’. But
by the time Nehru emerged from prison, events had for the most part
overtaken him.
The highlight, if one can call it that, of Nehru’s time in jail was the
great Bengal Famine, which ran its course from 1943 to 1944. This is
now the textbooks’ central example of a man-made famine. The fall of
Burma, a rice-supplying area for Bengal, nevertheless left 90–95% of the
normal rice supply. But hoarding in anticipation of shortages, leading to
price rises, and further hoarding exacerbated by profiteering traders began
to create artificial shortages. The Bengal Provincial Government under the
Muslim League was unable and at times unwilling to organise supplies.
Shortages were partly the outcome of British attempts at organising
an anti-Japanese ‘scorched earth’ policy. The policy involved ‘denial’ of
resources to the advancing Japanese by removing supplies that might
feed an advancing army and included the sinking of boats – absolutely
crucial to all transport of men and materials in eastern Bengal, where
communication was mostly through the intricate network of waterways
that criss-crossed the region. ‘Boat denial’ therefore also had the effect of
denying grain to the population of eastern Bengal. It was clear to many
that ‘scorched earth’ would be bitterly opposed by the population of
eastern Bengal who were supposed to make sacrifices not for a clearly
understood patriotic cause but for the cause, apparently, of a hated
regime whose officials were to arrive in the region to enforce the policy.
The necessary corollary to such a policy, the movement of people away
from the region, could never have been seriously contemplated: the
possibility of Eastern Bengalis retreating westwards from a densely-
populated region into equally densely-populated areas could never have
been realistic.
THE END OF THE RAJ 119