THE GREAT INDIAN FAMINE 1943-44

 Spain, in what is often erroneously known as the 'Spanish Civil War, he joined the International Brigade. In one of his early battles he was captured and spent eight months in a Franco concentration camp. When he returned from Spain in 1938 he spent the period until his call-up to the British army in 1941 painting and doing political work in Battersea. Here, he unknowingly affected my political development, by working in the Communist Bookshop on Lavender Hill which I frequented. This I have subsequently learned from his widow, Noreen, who I have worked with ever since in the Communist Party History Group, now the Socialist History Society.

Branson arrived in India in May 1942. His first mention of famine in Calcutta was on August 3rd 1943, although he had been reporting food shortages in Bombay and most other parts of India almost since his arrival in India. Branson quoted newspaper reports that in June 174 people had been arrested for hoarding and profiteering and in July, 622. But what use is this, asks The Statesman (a white establishment newspaper), if punishments are so small that profiteers do not worry? People picked up in Calcutta in a state of collapse due to starvation numbered 445 in four days. In ten days 155 bodies had been picked up in the streets of Calcutta. Voluntary, non-official Food Committees were being set up; many of them organised by the Communist Party. Here were most of the elements of the famine. There was no overall grain shortage. The famine was man-made. Wheat was still being exported from India, and if rice had been rationed there would have been no shortage of that. Government officials themselves were joined with hoarders and profiteers. The Muslim League Ministry in Bengal, for instance, consisted of some of the largest hoarders in the country.