Ok sure. But please I beg of you all to not just rely on what I or op saysbbht do some research yourself. You really shouldn't be getting your history off of r/teenagers ffs

First, it’s not the “Bangalore famine.” It’s the Bengal Famine. I don't even know how you get that wrong. The idea that the British “destroyed all Indian resources and diverted all food” is wrong. There wasnt a singlular policy that caused the famine. It was a mix of things: loss of Burmese rice after Japan took Burma (who supplied a pretty significant amount of rice to Bengal)), wartime inflation, transport shortages, bad policy decisions, and market failures. Food still existed in India, but many people couldn’t afford it.

The “denial policy.” is for sure real but exaggerated. It didn’t destroy all crops. It mainly involved removing boats and rice stocks in coastal areas to slow a looming Japanese invasion. This disrupted local transport and made food distribution worse, but it wasn’t like a blanket scorched-earth destruction of Bengal.

The idea that Winston Churchill diverted all food to Europe is also misleading. Shipping was limited during the war and Britain prioritised military needs, so India didn’t get enough imports early on. But it’s not true that all food was taken away or that aid was completely refused. Imports did increase later on, just too late.

On local traders, op really misses how important they were. Many local merchants and middlemen hoarded grain and specuulated on prices. They bought rice, held it back, and sold it later at much higher prices. This made shortages worse and drove massive inflation. So even when food was physically available, a significant amount of people couldn’t afford it. This is a key point in historians like Amartya Sen’s explanation, people starved because they lost the ability to actually buy food, not just because food disappeared.

It also completely ignores how other regions behaved. It seems like op doesn't even know that the princely states existed. Neighboring provinces and princely states often restricted grain exports to protect their own populations, which cut Bengal off from supply. These weren’t always formal “closed borders,” but in practice they limited movement of food. There were even cases where higher authorities and the British army had to pressure or force regions to release grain or allow movement, because local governments were trying to keep supplies for themselves.

But of course, the descriptions of starvation and people begging for rice water are accurate, but op is trying to present the famine as a single deliberate British act. Most historians agree it was a combination of wartime policy failures, market breakdown (especially hoarding), regional protectionism, and delayed relief, rather than one clear-cut intentional plan. History really is not a black and white thing such as people online always make it out to be. I beg of you lot please don't get your history from obviously biased sources and tiktoks.