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{{Italic title}}
{{Infobox book
| italic title = 
| name = Churchill's Secret War
| image = Churchill's Secret War cover.jpg
| author = [[Madhusree Mukerjee]]
| cover_artist =
| country = United States
| language = English
| subject = [[Bengal famine of 1943]]
| publisher = [[Basic Books]]
| publisher2 = Tranquebar Press
| pub_date = 10 August 2010 (US)
| media_type = Print (hardback & paperback), digital
| pages = 332 (hardback)
| awards =
| isbn = 978-0465002016
| isbn_note = (first US hardback edition)
| oclc = 768097130
| dewey =
| congress =
| website =
}}

'''''Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II''''' is a book by [[Madhusree Mukerjee]] about the [[Bengal famine of 1943]] during the period of [[British Raj|British rule]] in India. It was published in August 2010 by [[Basic Books]] of New York, and later that month by Tranquebar Press of Chennai.<ref>{{cite book|title=Churchill's Secret War|isbn=978-0465002016|last1=Mukerjee|first1=Madhusree|date=10 August 2010}}; {{cite book|title=Churchill's Secret War|id={{ASIN|9380658478|country=in}}}}</ref> The book examines the role in the famine, and subsequent [[partition of India]] in 1947, of [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister]] [[Winston Churchill]].{{efn|Churchill served two terms as prime minister: 1940–1945 and 1951–1955.}}<ref name=Horton/>

Mukerjee writes that the famine killed 1.5 million people according to the official estimate and three million according to most others.{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|p=24}} The book explores how, apart from the United Kingdom itself, British India became "the largest contributor to the [[British Empire|empire]]'s war—providing goods and services worth more than £2 billion.”{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|pp=4–5}}

==Synopsis==
The book sets out to document how colonial policies and negliglence creating the condition for a famine to breakout in the [[Bengal]] region. Mukerjee claims that due to Churchill's racial and political worldview meant that the colonial government (under his supreme control) would, per [[Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell|Lord Wavell]], feed only those Indians who were “actually fighting or making munitions or working some particular railways”<ref name=Horton/> Besides Churchill, the book brings out another historical character close to Churchill who had a significant influence on him, [[Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell|Frederick Alexander Lindemann]], Lord Cherwell.{{efn|Lindemann became a baron in 1941 and a viscount in 1956.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=35217 |date=11 July 1941 |page=3991 }}; {{London Gazette |issue=40818 |date=29 June 1956 |page=3801 }}</ref>}} Known as "the Prof", Cherwell was an aging scientist with "[[Malthusianism|Malthusian]] ideas" and held [[Racism|racist]] views towards [[Indian people|Indians]], whom he would characterise as "[[helots]]”.<ref name=Horton/>

The book then goes on to examine the condition of India during the war. India produced 600,000 miles of cotton fabric for [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] interests during the war, Mukerjee writes. Because of the shortfall and inflation this caused within India, Mukerjee the poorest were reduced to covering themselves with scraps or going naked. Women would have to stay indoors all day waiting for others to return with the single piece of cloth the family possessed.{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|p=221}} In 1942, as a result of the [[Japanese conquest of Burma]] that began that year, the colonial government in India introduced a "denial policy" in Bengal, a [[scorched earth]] policy designed to deny [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] access to food and transport should it invade Bengal. Mukerjee attributes the "scorched earth" approach to Churchill, who reportedly urged it on 14 November 1941.{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|p=63}} The "rice denial" policy saw [[British Indian Army|soldiers]] confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|p=66}} The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken.{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|pp=64–67}} One [[Indian Civil Service|civil servant]] said the policy "completely broke the economy of the fishing class" in Bengal.{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|p=65}} Yet Churchill wrote after the war (a remark with which Mukerjee opens her [[prologue]]): "No great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the peoples of Hindustan [India]. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small island."<ref>{{harvnb|Mukerjee|2010|p=ix}}; {{cite book|last1=Churchill|first1=Winston|title=The Second World War, Volume 4: The Hinge of Fate|date=1985|orig-year=1950|publisher=Houghton Mifflin|location=New York|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=m4KpV6XAbZsC&pg=PA181 181]}}</ref>

"In the end," Mukerjee writes, "it was not so much racism as the imbalance of power inherent in the social Darwinian pyramid that explains why famine could be tolerated in India while bread rationing was regarded as an intolerable deprivation in wartime Britain. Cherwell, for instance, did not think much of the [[Social_class_in_the_United_Kingdom#Working_class|British working class]] either, but he was deeply engaged in feeding it and placating it. [[Economics|Economist]] [[Amartya Sen]] observes that famine has never occurred in a functioning democracy—a form of government that inverts the traditional power structure by making rulers accountable to those whom they rule."{{sfn|Mukerjee|2010|p=274}}

The book also explores how the friendship between the [[Physics|physicist]] Lindemann and Churchill had on the famine. As Mukerjee writes, Lindemann convinced Churchill to sent more than half of British merchant shipping from the [[Indian Ocean]] to the [[Atlantic Ocean]]. The [[Ministry of War Transport]] warned that such dramatic cuts to shipping capacity in [[South East Asia]] would "portend violent changes and perhaps cataclysms in the seaborne trade of large numbers of countries" but was ignored. The "menace of famine suddenly loomed up like a hydra-headed monster with a hundred clamouring mouths" according to C. B. A. Behrens in the official history of Allied merchant shipping. The book also documents Lindemann's poor decision-making elsewhere in the war.<ref name=Horton>{{cite news|last1=Horton|first1=Scott|title=Churchill's Dark Side: Six Questions for Madhusree Mukerjee|url=https://harpers.org/blog/2010/11/churchills-dark-side-six-questions-for-madhusree-mukerjee/|work=Harper's|date=8 February 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Heyden|first1=Tom|title=The 10 greatest controversies of Winston Churchill's career|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29701767|publisher=BBC News|date=26 January 2015}}</ref>

==Reception==
In ''[[Economic and Political Weekly]]'', anthropologist Felix Padel wrote that the book "makes clear the real economy of the Raj: not just blocking Indian manufacturing in cloth, etc, reducing India to mainly supplying raw cotton for British manufacturers, but also a grain drain in which Indian agricultural exports had become vital for Britain's economy."<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Padel|first1=Felix|title=Review: Structural Violence and the Bengal Famine of 1943|journal=Economic and Political Weekly|date=3 November 2012|volume=47|issue=44|pages=26–28|jstor=41720326}}{{Subscription required}}</ref> The historian [[Chandak Sengoopta]] wrote in ''[[The Independent]]'' that Mukerjee had researched the famine with "forensic rigour": "Her calmly phrased but searing account of imperial brutality will shame admirers of the Greatest Briton and horrify just about everybody else."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Sengoopta|first1=Chandak|title=Churchill's Secret War, By Madhusree Mukerjee|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/churchills-secret-war-by-madhusree-mukerjee-2068698.html|work=The Independent|date=2 September 2010}}</ref>

Reviewing the book in ''[[The Sunday Times]]'', [[Max Hastings]] wrote: "To put the matter brutally, millions of Indians were allowed to starve so that available shipping—including vessels normally based in India—could be used to further British purposes elsewhere. When Churchill's nation was engaged in a desperate struggle, perhaps this reflected strategic logic. But it made nonsense of his post-war claims about upholding the interests of the Indian people, and indeed of the whole paternalistic ethic by which the empire sought to justify itself." Hastings disagrees with Mukerjee on two points: he doubts that, as she wrote, the British were responsible for the 1945 plane crash that killed [[Subhas Chandra Bose]], the Indian nationalist leader, and he argues that Churchill cannot be blamed for the 1947 partition of India. But he concludes that "the broad thrust of Mukerjee's book is as sound as it is shocking".<ref name=Hastings>{{cite news|last1=Hastings|first1=Max|title=Churchill's Secret War by Madhusree Mukerjee|url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/churchills-secret-war-by-madhusree-mukerjee-q9ff5hws39m|work=The Sunday Times|date=8 August 2010}}</ref>

In his book ''Hungry Bengal: War, Famine, Riots and the End of Empire'' (2015), the historian Janam Mukherjee argued that ''Churchill's Secret War'' belongs to the "nationalist mode of Indian historiography", but that it "nevertheless provides moving insight into the colossal indifference, and at times sheer spite, that characterized London's attitude toward starving Bengal".<ref>{{cite book |last=Mukherjee |first=Janam |title=Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire|date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|page=168}}</ref> [[Shashi Tharoor]]'s review in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' concluded: "Churchill said that history would judge him kindly because he intended to write it himself. The self-serving but elegant volumes he authored on the war led the Nobel Committee, unable in all conscience to bestow him an award for peace, to give him, astonishingly, the Nobel Prize for Literature—an unwitting tribute to the fictional qualities inherent in Churchill's self-justifying embellishments. Mukerjee's book depicts a truth more awful than any fiction."<ref>{{cite web|last=Tharoor |first=Shashi |url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2031992,00.html |title=Books: Churchill's Shameful Role in the Bengal Famine|work=Time |date=29 November 2010}}</ref>

In December 2020, historian Zareer Masani gave the book a negative review in conservative magazine ''[[The Critic (British magazine)|The Critic]]'', describing it as "sensationalist" and a "largely conspiracist attempt to pin responsibility on distant Churchill for undoubted mistakes on the ground in Bengal"<ref>{{citation |first=Zareer |last=Masani |url=https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2020/churchill-and-the-genocide-myth/ |title=Churchill and the genocide myth |work=The Critic |date=December 2020}}</ref>

==Publication details==
*{{cite book|title=Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II|date=10 August 2010|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0465002016}}
*{{cite book|title=Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II|date=16 August 2010|publisher=Tranquebar Press|location=Chennai|isbn=978-9380658476}}
==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}
==Further reading==
*{{cite news|last1=Lelyveld|first1=Joseph|title=Did Churchill Let Them Starve?|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/12/23/did-churchill-let-them-starve/|work=The New York Review of Books|date=23 December 2010}}
**{{cite news|last1=Chatterton|first1=Brian|last2=Mukerjee|first2=Madhusree|last3=Sen|first3=Amartya|title=The Bengal Famine. In response to: ''Did Churchill Let Them Starve?''|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/02/24/bengal-famine/|work=The New York Review of Books|date=24 February 2011}}
*{{cite news|last1=Mukerjee|first1=Madhusree|title=The Most Powerful Scientist Ever: Winston Churchill's Personal Technocrat|url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-most-powerful-scientist-ever/|work=Scientific American|date=6 August 2010 |ref=none}}
*{{cite journal|last1=Mukerjee|first1=Madhusree|title=Winston Churchill's Plan for Post-war India|journal=Economic and Political Weekly|date=7–13 August 2010|volume=45|issue=32|pages=27–30|jstor=20764383|ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last=Narayanan |first=T. G. |date=1944 |title=Famine over Bengal |publisher=The Book Company|location=Calcutta|url=https://ruralindiaonline.org/resources/famine-over-bengal-1/|at=(The author was a journalist with ''[[The Hindu]]'' during the famine.)}}

==External links==
*[https://penguin.co.in/book/churchills-secret-war/ Churchill's Secret War] at [[Penguin India]]

{{Bengal famine of 1943|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:2010 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Basic Books books]]
[[Category:Books about British India]]
[[Category:Books about imperialism]]
[[Category:British Empire in World War II]]
[[Category:History books about famine]]
[[Category:History of Bengal]]
[[Category:Winston Churchill]]

Churchill's Secret War - Revision history

imported>Jr8825 at 20:39, 27 August 2021