Churchill's legacy still painful for Indians - BBC News

Over the past month a number of statues of past leaders have been defaced around the world, during protests that were part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
They’ve triggered debate over the UK’s colonial history.
In the latest in our series of reports on the legacy of the British Empire, Yogita Limaye reports from India, one of the UK’s former colonies about how former British prime minister Winston Churchill is viewed by people there, particularly in relation to a deadly famine that occurred in the country during the second world war.

[komalsharma]

They forced farmers to produce cash crops instead of food, and when there was no food they shipped whatever was left to England, as reserves !!

[JajaborMusic]

Wow, never expected these things from BBC.
What happened, sun rose from west that day ?

[AmitRoy-zije]

Churchill and Hitler were Same. The difference is Churchill won ww2 and Hitler lost that war.

[ieatmauriceforbreakfast]

"The sun never set on the British Empire because even God couldn't trust the English in the dark"
-Kwame Nkrumah

[afsanakhan]

2.5 million Indians fought for British in WW2
And in return, we got communal divide, civil war, famine and partition.
Yes it is true, British has left their heritage of divide and rule on us.

[yac]

Not just Indians, Bangladeshis too, Bengal forms part of modern day India and Bangladesh, get it right BBC..

[ngalahansel]

Wow, to see those two elderly men who lived through the starvation really touched me as someone from Cameroon 🇨🇲, a former British colony where British rule is also often whitewashed

[samy]

I dont know why some cowards are still arguing in the comment section that this is not true

[maartenderooij]

This is the side of British History they do not teach in British schools, they only talk about things they did well or where they lost a lot of lives. So much is left out of History lessons because it seems too dark, unfortunately, that is the truth of the world, it was a dark and horrible place and we sugarcoat it because people are scared to accept the truth.

[wejie]

Sanitized history is what our text books teach.

[Siddharth-zjoz]

The truth is many indians do not know about him or know that he is behind such a genocide

[shambajitneogi]

My Grandfather used to tell me stories of that time...He said that there used to be horn for some plane and at that time they have to leave whatever they are doing and go inside the house....He also said that whatever crops he grew..
Most of them were taken and he used to exchange some of it for my father, uncles and also said we must never judge the future based on past but must always remember it not to do the same mistakes

[VINAYKUMAR-zrnd]

Ideals are peaceful but history is violent -fury

[magnificentvillain]

I can’t believe the professor from Oxford used the word “unpleasant” to describe the famine situation in Bengal.

[ilmarahman]

BBC should mention the name of the artist. Zainul Abedin is a renown artist in Bangladesh. Widely recognized for capturing the Bengal Famine through his art. Because he was born in Mymensingh, Bangladesh his paintings are housed in a museum there.

And let’s be honest, the infamous legacy of Churchill does not end at the famine, but also his contribution to the partition.

[Prinny]

They starved the irish too they were horrible

[ahmedafb]

For millions in his homeland, a Hero.
For billion people, he caused Indian Holocaust.

[foundingtitan]

I remember Shashi Tharoor's quoted lines in Oxford about this incident where Churchill answered his subordinates' requests about doing something by writing in the margins of the letters, "Why hasn't Gandhi died yet"! PATHETIC.

[hithere]

Till the tenth standard I learnt History just to pass exams.
It's now that I have realized after watching various documentaries, interviews, podcasts, etc etc that it's clearly something else.

[olieahern]

So churchill was no better than hitler