Holocaust of the Countryside Bengal Famine 1943

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This book brings into focus the aftermath of the typhonic hurricane that ripped through the districts of Midnapur and 24-Paraganas (16-17 October, 1942) killing at least a lakh of the male population in the first few hours of its fury. Mostly old people, children and females rushed to Calcutta for succour like a headless chicken, alas, to perish in abject hunger in the city's streets in their thousands. The World War II was raging. The peak of the catastrophe came when the Howrah Bridge was completed in 1943 for troops transport to meet the Japanese menace from Burma. This was the year of scourge in Bengal. The author has placed side by side the observations of Western and Indian writers to let the reader form his/her own opinion. He has rendered into English what has been narrated in Bengali wherever the occasions demand. The political, economic and social scenario of the day are vividly pictured so that it might leave a lay reader wiser than before. Should we place the entire blame at the door of the criminally insouciant British Viceroy Linlithgow, the Secretary of the State Amery or the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal Herbert, not excluding the British Premier Churchill for this man-made catastrophe? The Indian hoarder sharks like Ispahani and Ranadaprasad Saha and politicians alike, both Hindu and Muslim should be equally held responsible on balance. This work encapsulates the 1943 tragedy of Bengal appreciatively well and is stocked with 17 photos and is tailed by a bibliography.

Sujit Narayan Sen (b. 1944) had a thorough Bengali medium schooling and is a graduate from Calcutta's St.Xavier's College (now University) in arts. He is a double Masters' in History from The Jadavpur and The Calcutta University and a Ph.D in ancient Indian mural paintings from the former University in 1993. He served The Indian Museum, Calcutta (1968-2004) and retired as the head of its Art Section. While working in the Museum he was selected the Director cum Secretary of The Gurusaday Museum of Folk Arts in 1985 and was appointed by the Central Government board the second officer of The Victoria Memorial Hall in the same year on lien for a stint. Sen, too, was a guest lecturer in the Museology Department of the Calcutta University for three years (2001-3)). As a freelance book reviewer he has reviewed four books in The Statesman (1997-99). He has written thirteen books in English and Bengali (the list appended here) some of which were acclaimed in The Statesman and The Hindu and in the UK and the USA. He was in Singapore in 1993 for two months conducting the Buddha Exhibition and delivered lectures with applause at its National University and The National Heritage Museum. He visited the USA for five months in 2006-7 and interacted with the members of the faculty of History and Arts of The University of Austin, Texas. He won the first prize in The Humanities and Communication in the 14th UGC-CEC educational video competition in Kolkata in 2001. Apart from English and Bengali Sen studies Sanskrit and has completed a four-year diploma course in Urdu and Persian from The Ramakrishna Mission, Gol Park, Kolkata where he delivers yearly lectures in the Arts Appreciation Course. Sen is a member of Kolkata's Asiatic Society Library for long. He still is an avid writer.

1943 was the year of a great scourge for Bengal. The land was visited by a man-made famine that finished off to a large extent its countryside that was just preceded by a titanic cyclone bringing in its trail extraordinary devastations in the districts of Midnapur and 24 Paraganas. You may ask why I have chosen to write about it because my doctoral thesis treads a different track altogether Here is my answer. Perhaps 1943 could be the real year of my birth and not 1944 as officially declared. I have simply been overpowered by the urge welling up from within my subconscious in writing down the essay and thus disburden myself of a perennial birth pang. In the Mahabharata's Adiparva the strange career of a sage called Dighatamaa rishi is narrated who was born blind by the curse of a demigod. In spite of that unfortunate handicap the rishi managed to learn the Vedas while he was gestating in his mother's womb. The modern day psychologists also echo the veracity of this myth by stating that a person's basic character is formed in the prenatal stage and concretizes in the earliest childhood. If that be the truth then it is understandable why I have been feeling the urge of disburdening myself of an inexplicable trauma that filled the atmosphere in the dawn of my existence. I have written this essay not with any pretension of researching scholarship but with a sense of compulsion. While writing it I was learning more and more of it what came to me in the initial nebulous stage. Throughout my life and even till today I am haunted by an inexplicable and uncanny sense of terrible devastation. Frankly I wish to share my knowledge with you if you are not knowledgeable of it already

**Contents and Sample Pages**