Talk:Bengal famine of 1943/Archive 11

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False claim in text

Our text says:

Historians usually characterise the famine as anthropogenic(man-made), asserting that wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis

The citations are to Amartya Sen and Cormac Ó Gráda. First of all, these guys are economists not historians, hence my change from "historians" to "scholars". Second, while these guys do tend to characterize ALL famines as anthropogenic (not just this one), almost in a tautological sense they do NOT claim that "colonial policies" created it. Third, the text generalizes from just two scholars to a generic "historians" (sic) which creates a potentially false impression of total consensus.

Then the citation for "wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis" is actually a BBC article. This one. It doesn't say anything like this. In fact, in regard specifically to Churchill this source states: "We can't blame him for creating the famine in any way," says Ms. Khan. "What we can say is that he didn't alleviate it when he had the ability to do so. In other words, "wartime colonial policies" did NOT create the famine although they didn't help to alleviate it, which is what I just changed the wording to.

Finally, for the claim that A minority view holds that the famine was the result of natural causes. the citations are just two papers which critque Sen's work. These sources afaict do NOT say that only a "minority" hold such a view. They're just examples of a different view. This means that putting "minority" in here is just pure original research by whatever Wikipedia editor wrote this.

As User:Worldbruce says above, source-text integrity matters (WP:INTEGRITY) and we just cannot have text which falsely mistepresents sources. Volunteer Marek 19:58, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler, Lingzhi.Random, and Mr rnddude: Fyi. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:42, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
Responding to a ping from @TrangaBellam:.
First and foremost: Lingzhi is both the resident expert and the main author, so I will defer to whatever they choose to say.
Speaking more generally, the famine had many causes: (which off the top of my head were): there was a crop failure (or two) leading to it; the Japanese had bombed Burma (at least its big cities); see the pictures in Bombing of Rangoon in World War II; Burma as the default, or fall back, option for importing rice was no longer feasible; Bengal had been supplying rice to other provinces and these arrangements continued to be honored well into the famine period.
Various people dropped the ball: the provincial government in Bengal of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy despite him being a good guy overall (see here); the government of the Raj headed by Linlithgow dropped the ball, though its pieces were picked up by Wavell with admirable dispatch and resolve; the government of the United Kingdom, headed by Churchill dropped the ball, (as was common in all the previous famines not a single Briton died in the Bengal famine of 1943 (for that matter not a single middle-class Indian did)); the grain merchants of Calcutta dropped by ball by hoarding grain and then selling it at exorbitant prices; and finally Indian men (mostly Hindu men) dropped the ball by favoring the patriline (Hinduism's traditional resort in times of crisis) and abandoning their wives and children in the villages to seek their fortunes in Bengals towns and cities; eventually some women and children caught on and made that trek themselves, but it was too late by then (see: here or here). Hundreds of thousands died in their homes, as Bayly and Harper have eloquently written, too tired and too defeated to ask for help in the face of their families, their religion, their provincial government, and their empire abandoning them. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:09, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
I forgot to answer one of the implied questions: Who is to blame? To the extent that the buck stops with someone (as Truman reminded himself and others by the sign on his desk), it stopped with Churchill. No matter the circumstances of the anti-Fascist struggle Britain and the empire were engaged in—their resources, for example, were spread thin—two million human beings died in the famine. The Raj's own Famine codes had been in place for 60 years, but they weren't implemented by the various governments in India in 1943. (There were no speeches by Churchill, "We'll fight in the swamps of Bengal ... and fight on unconquerable until the curse of famine is lifted from the brows of mankind.") I believe the horrific conditions witnessed in Bengal by American officers and troops, and their descriptions transmitted back to Washington DC was a big reason for Roosevelt's and the American insistence for Britain to decolonize in India after the war (which Labour party leaders, headed by Attlee, had been wanting to do from the early 1930s, some even from their days in the 1920s as backbenchers inspired by the last Liberal David Lloyd George)
It is one of the reasons that India's post-colonial planners, despite all the latterly-fashionable-mood-for-discovering flaws in their planning, were determined to make deaths from famine (whether from starvation or attendant diseases) a thing of the past for its citizens. See the lead of Timeline of major famines in India during British rule Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:19, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
Lingzhi is long gone and won't return.[1] That said, instead of personalizing the content dispute you need to think outside your editor drama and tell why you disagree with the edit and why it is not necessary to highlight Japanese culpability on lead. Capitals00 (talk) 04:10, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
It is rare, but I am entirely in agreement with F&F. To alter the lede that radically is going to need exceptional justification, which a couple sources won't suffice to do. I'd additionally say that [w]hile it is generally agreed that Japanese invasion of Burma was the initiating cause, some scholars characterise the famine as anthropogenic (man-made), asserting that wartime colonial policies exacerbated the crisis is an unintentional misrepresentation of Stephen J. Valone's [w]hile the Japanese conquest of Burma was the initiating cause, natural disasters along with British wartime policies conspired to produce the Bengal famine from the cited source erroneously attributed to Sandler (an editor, not the author). Valone does say that the invasion of Burma initiated it, but in the same sentence counts himself among the 'some scholars' that identify anthropogenic and among the 'some scholars' that identify natural causes as responsible for the famine. In other words, he presents a more complex view of the causes of the famine than is represented in the reduction added to the lede. Valone also specifies Greenough and Sen as further reading sources at the end of the entry on pg. 169. Mr rnddude (talk) 04:30, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
My concern is with what initiated the proper famine. "While it is generally agreed that Japanese invasion of Burma was the initiating cause," is what I added. The source considers Japanese invasion of Burma to have initiated famine.
Do you see the possibility to restore it on lead? If yes, what am I supposed to do next? Capitals00 (talk) 04:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Read my posts of December 9, 2022. Then read Sen, O Grada, The Indian Famine Commission report of 1880, Mahalanobis's article of 1945, Greenough's book and summarize them on this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Also Ghose's article in Oxford Economic Papers. You can't just walk into a high level article and start editing the lead. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I read your message but that does not really answer why Japanese culpability should not be mentioned in this paragraph.
"Ghose"? I don't see a person with this name anywhere on this article. Can you link to the proper document? Capitals00 (talk) 05:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Look it up yourself on Google search. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
See WP:SAYWHERE. Capitals00 (talk) 14:34, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Please read the references in my article Timeline of major famines in India during British rule, including Ghose. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:20, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Some reliable sources confirming the Japanese invasion of Burma to be the biggest factor that caused the Bengal famine:-

  • Jeremy Black (2019). Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World. Encounter Books. p. 172. ISBN 978-1-64177-039-2. Burma became the largest rice exporter in the world, in large part in order to help feed India, especially highly populous Bengal. This helps explain the problems caused in World War II, when Japan conquered Burma in 1942. The terrible Bengal famine of 1943 now used as a major basis for criticism of imperial rule by Britain is best approached in its context, although there is insufficient sign of a willingness to do so.
  • Hugh Tinker (1990). South Asia: A Short History. University of Hawaii Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8248-1287-4. Then in 1943 came the unthinkable: a famine in Bengal which killed 1.5 million people. The cause was the Japanese invasion of Burma, and the stoppage of the export of the 1942 rice harvest.
  • Akshay Ramanlal Desai (1979). Peasant Struggles in India. Collection of articles. Oxford University Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-19-560803-8. Retrieved 2023-03-09. Probably thanks to improved transportation, there was no very large famine between 1908 and 1943, when the stoppage of rice imports from Burma by the Japanese invasion, coupled with hoarding and speculation, produced the Bengal famine in which 3.5 million people died.
  • Charlwood, David (2020). Churchill and Eden: Partners Through War and Peace. Pen & Sword Books Limited. p. 119. ISBN 978-1-5267-4492-0. The primary cause of the famine was the war itself: the Japanese invasion of Burma cut off the country from its main reserve supplier of rice imports, leaving it more vulnerable to falls in domestic production.
  • Bowbrick, Peter. "Falsehoods and myths in famine research: The Bengal famine and Daoud". Journal of International Development. Wiley. doi:10.1002/jid.3635. ISSN 0954-1748. Bengal had been a net food importer for 30 years. The urban population was largely fed by imports from Burma, but the Japanese cut these off from March 1942.
  • Newman, Sarah (1991). Britain in the Twentieth-century World: 1918-1990. Reading historical documents. Blackwell. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-631-17618-3. The Bengal Famine, caused in large part by the Japanese occupation of Burma, was one of the worst during the period of British India.
  • Eric Markusen, David Kopf (1995). The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century. Avalon Publishing. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-8133-7532-8. The true disaster brought on by the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia- the Bengal famine - was , surprisingly enough, never anticipated by the British, whose actions helped to create it.
  • M. E. Chamberlain (2014). Longman Companion to European Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century. Longman Companions To History. Routledge. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-317-89744-6. The Japanese conquest of Burma caused a great famine in Bengal
  • Broomfield, J.H.; Broomfield, N. (1968). Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-century Bengal. University of California Press. p. 305. ISBN 978-0-520-00179-4. Its basic cause was the loss of the normal rice imports from Burma because of the Japanese occupation, combined with a devastating cyclone in West Bengal and poor harvests in many parts of India in 1942.
  • Bulliet, R.; Crossley, P.; Headrick, D.; Hirsch, S.; Johnson, L. (2012). The Earth and Its Peoples, Brief Edition, Volume II. Cengage Learning. p. 698. ISBN 978-1-285-22500-5. The Bengal famine of 1943 was also warrelated. In 1942 the Japanese army had conquered Burma, a rich rice-producing colony. Food supplies in Bengal, which imported rice from Burma dropped
  • Dianda, Bas (2019). Political Routes to Starvation: Why Does Famine Kill?. Series in Politics. Vernon Press. p. 177. The Imperial Japanese Army's invasion of Burma, which was the largest supplier of rice to the neighboring areas, paved the way for food shortage. The provision of food supplies came suddenly to a halt
  • Robert Lyman (2021). A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain: 1941–45. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 150–250. ISBN 978-1-4728-4713-3. including the Bengal famine – died as the direct or indirect result of Japanese warmongering. [..] The 1942 rice crop was poor, dangerously exacerbated by the loss of Burma, which had provided substantial proportion of pre-war domestic rice consumption
  • Jeremy Black (2016). The British Empire: A History and a Debate. Routledge. p. 162. ISBN 978-1-317-03987-7. Myanmar became the largest rice exporter in the world, in large part in order to help feed India, especially Bengal. This helps explain the problems caused in World War Two when Japan conquered Myanmar in 1942, problems accentuated by the need to support the large army confronting the Japanese and by difficulties in supply from within India. The terrible Bengal famine of 1943, now used as a major basis for criticism of imperial rule, notably in India, should, at least in part, be understood in its wartime context.
  • Andrus, J. R. (1946). "The Agrarian Problem in Burma". Pacific Affairs. 19 (3). University of British Columbia: 260–271. ISSN 0030-851X. JSTOR 2752284. As the sudden cessation of Burman rice exports after the Japanese invasion of 1942 was a main factor in causing the 1943 Bengal famine in India.
These sources prove that this dominant view has been held for over 7 decades now. While "that wartime colonial policies" are getting credit for famine, I don't see a reason to omit Japanese invasion of Burma because it is said to be the major cause or at least among them. Capitals00 (talk) 14:34, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Which of those authors are famine experts such as
Amartya Sen, W. R. Aykroyd and Cormac O Grada, statisticians such as Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, historical demographers such as Tim Dyson or Arup Maharatna, historian of famines such as David Fieldhouse, imperial military historians such as Christopher Bayly or Tim Harper. You are wildly misjudging the consensus by exacting your own interpretation from a set of poor sources.
There was a widespread spot disease or blight in the rice crop in 1942 and there was a cyclone both of which added to a crop failure. Why then is the non-availability of supplemental Burma rice the proximate cause of the famine? What is an "initiating cause" (a seldom used term in famines, which are commonly multi-causal). Please read the background and pre-famine shocks sections. What is your argument against the sources summarized there? Why is Japan more culpable than the vast numbers of Hindu men who abandoned their wives and children and caused their deaths by the hundreds of thousands if not the millions (the largest in the demographic)? What is your disagreement with the Historiography section? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
PS Please read about entitlement failure in Sen (Poverty and Famines, the book that won him the Nobel prize), Ghose, and the Indian Famine Commission Report 1880, which had hinted at it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:45, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Please read the longish article on the Bengal famine in Encyclopaedia Britannica, which states:

While many famines are the result of inadequate food supply, the Bengal famine did not coincide with any significant shortfall in food production. According to the Indian economist Amartya Sen, who himself witnessed the famine as a nine-year-old boy, the famine was the result of an entitlement failure. In other words, the distribution of the food supply throughout Bengali society was hindered primarily by economic factors that affected the ability of certain groups of people to purchase food. Events in 1942 had a relatively minor impact on the supply of food. After Burma (Myanmar) and Singapore fell to Japan in 1942 in the midst of World War II, rice exports from those countries were halted. A cyclone in October 1942 also damaged the autumn rice crop and put pressure on the following year’s crop because, to survive, many subsistence farmers had to consume grain meant for planting. Still, the 1942 halt in rice imports to India did not cause the famine, and the 1943 crop yield was actually sufficient to feed the people of Bengal. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Facilely quoting WP rules goes only so far in that it does not create reliable content. I have written a large part of the section Bengal_famine_of_1943#Japanese_invasion_of_Burma, maybe not with the same expertise as Lingzhi, but with all the care I could muster. I have painstakingly drawn the map of the exodus of Indians and the British from Burma in the days and months after the bombing of Rangoon. The map is based on Hugh Tinker's article, as is a large part of the text in the section. I have added quite a few original pictures to the article, that according to Lingzhi, won notice from Paul Greenough himself. I have added a different set of original pictures to Bombing of Rangoon in World War II. I have interviewed survivors of the bombing, Burmese, Anglo-Burmese, British, and Indian. I am not bragging; it is just the reality that my supportive edits (to Lingzhi's) in this article bespeak. Had there been the least possibility of laying the famine at the doorstep of the Japanese invasion, I would have noticed it. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
None of those sources deny Japanese invasion of Burma as one of the major factor. It makes no sense for you to compare these sources with those I provided.
Amartya Sen "attributes the high prices from mid-1942 onward first of all to the economic boom that took place in the towns in this period that developed as a result of the government’s efforts to prepare for a Japanese invasion after their occupation of Burma in March 1942".[2]
Garda said "Crucially, the famine was a war-famine. Rangoon had fallen to Japanese forces in March 1942. In the following months they sank a destroyer and several merchantmen in the Bay of Bengal, and engaged in the sporadic bombing of Bengali cities; an air raid on Calcutta in December 1942 caused considerable panic and the displacement to the countryside of thousands of civilians."[3]
Tim Dyson writes "the disaster that struck Bengal in 1943-44 must be seen against the backcloth of World War II - as, indeed, applies to famines elsewhere in the world at this time. In the early 1940s the province of Bengal suddenly found itself adjacent to a theatre of war. The Japanese army occupied Burma early in 1942, and later that same year their aircraft bombed Calcutta. Refugees from Burma streamed into Bengal, as did soldiers engaged in countering the Japanese. [...] Imports of rice from Burma ceased. The wartime conditions produced inflation in Bengal's economy."[4]
Are you seriously asking "why is Japan more culpable than the vast numbers of Hindu men who abandoned their wives and children"? Show a reliable source to confirm your contention otherwise you must refrain from this insensitive blame-gaming.
Bengal_famine_of_1943#Pre-famine_shocks and distress has large details about Japanese invasion of Burma and the lead is supposed to mention it. This too legitmizes my concern that there is no reason to omit Japanese invasion of Burma as a cause when British policies are being held responsible. Capitals00 (talk) 17:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Please read the Britannica article, and the paragraph above, again and again. It is a summary of the best sources. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
especially: "the 1942 halt in rice imports to India did not cause the famine, and the 1943 crop yield was actually sufficient to feed the people of Bengal." Please also tell me in one paragraph what you understand by entitlements? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:43, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
As for, "Are you seriously asking "why is Japan more culpable than the vast numbers of Hindu men who abandoned their wives and children"?
Please read Arjun Appadurai's review of Paul Greenough's book. Says Appadurai:

Given the very large number of persons who went through some or all of these stages in 1943-1944, we should not be surprised that many Bengalis felt that the moral fabric of their society was being damaged beyond repair. Greenough is especially effective when he lets Bengalis tell horrifying stories of the famine in their own words, through their own recollections and reports. Starvation and death were ugly, but worse still was the loss of dignity, the confusion of caste rank in relief kitchens, the abandonment and sale of children, women turning to prostitution, the suspension of crucial group and cosmos-maintaining ceremonies-in short, the degradation of social and collective identities. Yet Greenough does not leave the reader simply with a harrowing human account of a large-scale tragedy; he makes his boldest interpretive stroke in accounting for the patterns of victimization during the famine. What he suggests, to summarize his rich argument briefly, is that those in charge of making key subsistence decisions—rulers, landlords, husbands, and family heads-when faced with real or threatened shortages of the "food of well-being"-rice—consciously and knowingly chose to abandon those who depended on them-subjects, clients, wives, and children. This abandonment, the moral opposite of Bengali ideals of reciprocity and nurture, was both the symptom and the result of the breakdown of morality precipitated by the famine. Abandonment of dependent children and spouses by adult male household heads is the pattern that Greenough places at the center of the moral drama of the famine. And he reads in this pattern a deliberate set of choices by the decision makers: choices that paralleled similar decisions by the government (which favored urban-based priority classes over the rural needy) and by land-controllers who deliberately abandoned their commitments to rural clients (although "fixed" and "casual" rural clients were abandoned later than those whose relations to the landlord were solely regulated by the market). In the fragmentation of families, especially among those who were most destitute, and in the deliberate decision to favor the chances of survival of adult males, Greenough reads a morality of distress (apad-dharma), which places the continuity of the patriline above the interests of females and children, and which differs dramatically from the Euro-American belief in "Birkenhead's rule" (women and children first), and in which there is no contradiction between male self-interest and the preservation of moral order.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
And here are Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper in their magnum opus of the second world war in Asia (South- and Southeast). In case you are planning to ignore Bayly's heft in this topic, the Guardian obituary on him began with: "Sir Christopher Bayly, who has died suddenly aged 69, was the pre-eminent historian of India and the British empire and a pioneer of the field of global history." (here)
In their book, Forgotten Armies (Harvard University Press, 2005, they introduce the famine with:

The failure at Arakan, like the Indian army’s great failures in the 1915-16 Mesopotamian campaign, did ultimately lead to dramatic changes in personnel and attitudes but before this deathbed reformation of the Indian empire came about its administrators were to face one great final humiliation. It was seen by many as the ultimate demonstration of the hollowness of the British claim to be running a competent government amidst the inefficiency of the Orient. This was the great Bengal famine of 1943-4 which killed an estimated 3 million people.

The next paragraph begins with:

The Great Starvation: For many poor Bengalis the nightmare began in October 1942 when a cyclone devastated the coastal parts of east Bengal, especially the district of Midnapur. Abani, a fisherman, later recounted his story. On the night of the cyclone, 16 October, his married sister had come to visit: "The storm blew up because God (Bhagaban) wanted to kill all humans. Everything — trees, people, houses - was blown away; people were thrown about on top of walls and into trees. My father and sister died in the flood. My father was crushed under a collapsed wall. My sister could not swim and was swept away, but we found her corpse the following day."

And then:

A year after the cyclone struck, famine and disease peaked across the Bengal countryside. Arangamohan Das, a relief worker, reported of one of the worst affected areas: "In the morning of October 24, I with a small party of my colleagues reached the Terapekhia bazaar, situated on the river Haldi. There I saw nearly 500 destitutes of both sexes, almost naked and reduced to bare skeleton.

This is roughly the sequence described in Lingzhi's article. The war was the general context, but it was not the proximate cause. Finally, here are Bayly and Harper, essentially paraphrasing Greenough:

The famine hit the most vulnerable hardest. It was people who were dependent on food or wages from others in the villages who starved first. Those who died were ‘the village washerman, cobbler, black-smith, tailor, mason, labourer and his wife and his dependants and children’. These people were predominantly of low caste, of course. Inequalities within the family as well as between social groups were brutally exaggerated. Many starving families tried to preserve young males, sacrificing their daughters and grandmothers. Hundreds of thousands died in their own homes, too proud to embarrass others with their fate. People lay down in the street and died, rather than resisting or looting the grain stores in the way the radicals wanted. This was not because they were ‘fatalistic’, as the British and high castes asserted. It was because they were good subjects, good parents, good children. Their rulers, elders and betters, husbands and fathers had cut them adrift.

The women and children, who were the most vulnerable, perished by hundreds of thousands in each affected district. The main architects of their fate were not the Japanese, but their menfolk, the upper castes, and their government—the local, the regional, the national, and the imperial. Please do not reduce a complex reality to single cause and single effect. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:04, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
We are not talking about who were the most vulnerable victims and this is commonly seen anywhere in the world whenever a tragedy occurs. It is also seen in the Middle Eastern refugee crisis; those seeking refugee in Europe are mostly males.[5] It needs no discussion.
The discussion here is about Japanese culpability. If there was no Japanese invasion of Burma then there would be no famine. It is evident from the fact that no major famine took place "between 1908 and 1943, when the stoppage of rice imports from Burma by the Japanese invasion, coupled with hoarding and speculation, produced the Bengal famine in which 3.5 million people died."[6]
The next paragraph of Britannica article (after the one you posted) does talk about "It was ultimately special wartime factors that caused this difficult situation to become a disastrous famine. Fearing Japanese invasion, British authorities stockpiled food to feed defending troops, and they exported considerable quantities to British forces in the Middle East." This is deemed to be a "justified concern by colonial authorities that a Japanese invasion of eastern India was likely and imminent".[7]
Arthur L. Herman with this source has been also cited on the wikipedia article. Herman is noted for saying "The idea that Churchill was in any way ‘responsible’ or ‘caused’ the Bengal famine is of course absurd. The real cause was the fall of Burma to the Japanese, which cut off India’s main supply of rice imports when domestic sources fell short, which they did in Eastern Bengal after a devastating cyclone in mid-October 1942. It is true that Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports from other theaters to India to cover the shortfall: this was wartime."[8]
Nobody is trying to "reduce a complex reality to single cause and single effect". Why the Japanese invasion should be ignored in the same paragraph which includes the words: "wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis"? Capitals00 (talk) 01:57, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
>>>If there was no Japanese invasion of Burma then there would be no famine.
  • The Indian Famine Code had been in place for nearly 50 years, but it was not implemented by the provincial government of Suhrawardy. Why would it have been implemented in the absence of a Japanese invasion?
  • Why would the extra Burmese rice not have been commandeered for the war effort, as no famine was diagnosed by the provincial government until it was too late.
  • The West Bengali absent landlords of East Bengal farms did not lift a finger to help the Muslim tenant farmers or landless workers. Why would they have acted differently without the fall of Burma?
  • The grain merchants of Calcutta engaged in unheard of hoarding and speculation, emptying the available stocks, even after the famished rural migrants had begun to die by the hundreds every day on the streets of Calcutta. Why would they have acted differently without the Japanese?
  • The Hindu men abandoned their wives and children to save the patriline, Hinduism's last resort under stress. Why would they have acted differently without the Japanese?
The cyclone and the blight would have created the crop failure anyway. You have no argument. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:26, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
Please tell me what you understand by an entitlement failure, as a lack of its understanding seems to be the root of your arguments. You think it was a real shortage of food only that caused the famine. So please tell me what entitlements are. Please tell me how they were anticipated in the Indian famine codes and the Famine Commission report of 1880. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:32, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
"special wartime factors" involves as much British and Indian culpability as Japanese. That is what this article states as well. The second world war was the general background even without the Japanese. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
The same paragraph in question makes no mention of Japanese invasion though. It should. Capitals00 (talk) 02:48, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
See WP:NOTFORUM. Your own analysis cannot be used for disputing reliable sources.
You should strike the part "Hindu men abandoned their wives and children to save the patriline, Hinduism's last resort under stress" because you are crossing the line of bigotry here. Capitals00 (talk) 02:36, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
You don't know anything about the famine. I have the sources to back up the statement. Major scholars mention it as I've already stated. Hinduism did not have a Birkenhead drill. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:39, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
This personal remark and bragging of your said knowledge is irrelevant. I provided reliable source for my statements. It is evident that no major famine took place from 1908 - 1943. None of your sources held religion or religious identity to be responsible but your continued attempts to target "Hindu" identity and "Hinduism" religion can be only described as bigotry. Capitals00 (talk) 02:48, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
The bottom line is that there is no consensus for your edit thus far. The WP:ONUS for garnering that consensus is yours. It is WP policy. Goodbye. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
How many edits did you have to any Indian famine related articles before you appeared on this page to directly edit the lead?
I have created and written most Indian famine articles, including Chalisa famine, Doji bara famine, Agra famine of 1837–38, Upper Doab famine of 1860–61, Orissa famine of 1866, Rajputana famine of 1869, Bihar famine of 1873–74, Great Famine of 1876–78, Indian famine of 1896–97, Indian famine of 1899–1900, William Robert Cornish, Timeline of major famines in India during British rule (1765 to 1947). I have written the lead of Great Bengal famine of 1770 and contributed a large number of photographs and maps from my personal collection. Do you seriously think that Wikilawyering alone will get you anywhere? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
Not that it was important for you to mention this. There is no question regarding my actions that I am following WP:BRD. Capitals00 (talk) 02:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
The bold edit was yours. The WP:ONUS for garnering the consensus is yours. It is WP policy. Good luck. Thus far you seem to be in a minority. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:54, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
Again, I am aware of it. Capitals00 (talk) 03:12, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
It was a nicely framed addition into the article, I saw nothing wrong in your edit. During a famine, the survival mechanism kicks in strong and Flower&flower I assume is lamenting on why more women/children died than men. When the reptilian brain starts churning, selfishness overrides everything and all civilisational moral codes including the Euro-centric Birkenhead drill vanish. Fayninja (talk) 14:49, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
It did not in Birkenhead, nor in the evacuation of the World Trade Center in September 2001. I was at the Boston Marathon when I saw people run toward the site of the bomb explosion within seconds of the explosion. Looking out for the patriline is the preserve of Hinduism. It goes with dowry and female infanticide and other forms of suppression of women in Hinduism, for both remove the threat of females inheriting property. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:09, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
"Preserving the patriline" is not sanctioned by Hinduism, neither is "dowry" or "female infanticide". Better go and learn about Hinduism first before talking garbage here. Capitals00 (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
"In the fragmentation of families, especially among those who were most destitute, and in the deliberate decision to favor the chances of survival of adult males, Greenough reads a morality of distress (apad-dharma), which places the continuity of the patriline above the interests of females and children, and which differs dramatically from the Euro-American belief in "Birkenhead's rule" (women and children first), and in which there is no contradiction between male self-interest and the preservation of moral order."
That is Arjun Appadurai in his joint review of the magnum opera of Amartya Sen and Paul Greenough on the Bengal famine of 1943.
Apad dharma is duty in the time of crisis in the Mahabharata, composed ca. 300 BCE to 250 CE, i.e. long before there were any Muslims or British in India to scapegoat. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:15, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
"Apad dharma" simply means ethics during emergency. It has to do nothing with preserving "patriline". Capitals00 (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
What is a "nicely framed addition" and why? What is the faming that is not already there in an article that was praised to be the best currently available on the web in a letter by Paul Greenough himself to Laser Brain, a coordinator at WP:FAC? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:24, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
You don't seriously think I will not stake my WP reputation to defend an article from edits that do not show a transparent understanding of entitlement failure, a key feature of famines, when the authors of the Indian Famine Commission report of 1880 could do so both eloquently and lucidly? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:30, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
From something I had written earlier: The evidence from 19th-century data suggests that local crop failures led to famines not because they created aggregate food shortages but because they drastically reduced the demand for the services of certain segments of the population, consequently deprived them of the means to acquire food. According to (Ghose 1982, p. 380), famines were not natural phenomena but rather a result of the breakdown, in the wake of local crop failures, of social and economic networks in these regions. The Famine Commission of 1880, appointed by the Government of British India, described the situation with clarity and poignancy:"

"The first effect of a drought is to diminish greatly, and at last to stop, all field labour, and to throw out of employment the great mass of people who live on the wages of labour. A similar effect is produced next upon the artisans, the small shop-keepers, and traders, first in villages and country towns, and later on in the larger towns also, by depriving them of their profits, which are mainly dependent on dealings with the least wealthy classes; and, lastly, all classes become less able to give charitable help to public beggars, and to support their dependents. Such of the agricultural classes as possess a proprietary interest in the land, or a valuable right of occupancy in it, do not require as a rule to be protected against starvation in time of famine unless the calamity is unusually severe and prolonged, as they generally are provided with stocks of food or money, or have credit with money-lenders. But those who, owning only a small plot of land, eke out by its profits their wages as labourers, and rack-rented tenants-at-will living almost from hand-to-mouth, are only a little way removed from the class of field-labourers; they possess no credit, and on them pressure soon begins."[1]

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:08, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
But why no major famine took place for decades before this one? I haven't seen any logic in ignoring Japanese culpability. Capitals00 (talk) 19:35, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

This is because a new famine commission was appointed after the Indian famine of 1899–1900 and the existing famine code (the how-to manual given to district-level administrators to identify early signs of famine and to sound the early warning etc) was revised. See the "mortality" section of that WP article. The implementation of this famine code protected India from major famines between 1900 and 1943, and the implementation of the Indian Famine Code by the United Nations worldwide protected quite a few famine-prone areas of the world for much of the second half of the 20th century. See Tim Dyson's A population history of India, Oxford University Press, 2019. A famine was not declared in 1943 by the Bengal government, therefore the famine code was not implemented. You could blame the general wartime situation of stress and confusion (the Americans had begun to arrive in Bengal; agricultural land had begun to be requisitioned for armament factories, although this was not significant, ... but highlight the fall of Burma and to look for Japanese culpability is to simplify a complex situation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:31, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

But Tim Dyson has also provided a fair description on p.183 where he highlights Japanese Empire with the words "Japanese army occupied Burma early in 1942" and "imports of rice from Burma ceased".[9]
This one notes that the "famine was caused by a failure of the grain market, precipitated by the disruptive impact of a cyclone the previous year, the psychological effects of the war in Burma, the cut-off of grain imports, and widespread distrust of the government."
The first paragraph of Wikipedia article almost covers it all, but nothing about the "war in Burma" and "cut-off of grain imports". Capitals00 (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
If you've taken a look at Dyson's book, then you must know that he says much more:

In the early 1940s the province of Bengal suddenly found itself adjacent to a theatre of war. The Japanese army occupied Burma early in 1942, and later that same year their aircraft bombed Calcutta. Refugees from Burma streamed into Bengal, as did soldiers engaged in countering the Japanese. To impede an invasion, the colonial government removed boats from Bengal’s rivers so that they could not be used by enemy forces. Imports of rice from Burma ceased. The wartime conditions produced inflation in Bengal’s economy. Following military defeats in Asia—especially the fall of Singapore—there was fear and confusion among British officials.

Dyson then goes on to examine Sen and the FAD hypothesis, taking a mid-way position between all-is-entitlement (a la Sen) and all-is-food-supply (a la Padmanabhan and Goswami who attribute a huge reduction in food supply from the Brown Spot disease (completely independent of Japan), and Mark Tauger who supports them.
Dyson then concludes,

All the same, it is hard to differ from Cormac Ó Gráda’s general assessment that the famine was ‘largely due to the failure of the British authorities, for war-strategic reasons, to make good a genuine food deficit’.

In other words, if it is entitlements, then we are looking at the main causes in the administrative mismanagement, the hoarding and speculation by the merchants, and the abandonment of the weak and vulnerable, the females and the children, by the men folk, mostly Hindus; of the landless peasants of East Bengal by the absentee Hindu landlords of West Bengal..
If it is FAD, we are looking at a 60% reduction in the aus harvest (planted in the summer and harvested in the fall) and a 90% reduction in the aman harvest (planted in the fall and harvested in the winter of 1942, together creating a deficit of 70% to 80% reduction in food availability per Tauger, Padmanabhan and Goswami. We quote Padmanaban:, "Though administrative failures were immediately responsible for this human suffering, the principal cause of the short crop production of 1942 was the [plant] epidemic ... nothing as devastating ... has been recorded in plant pathological literature".
Clearly the traditional supplementation of the Bengal deficit by a 15% import of Burma rice would have done nothing to prevent a famine.
The Japanese began to bomb southeast Asia a day after Pearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941) The crops did not fail disastrously until very late in 1942 or the beginning of 1943. The authorities knew there'd be no Japanese rice at least nine months earlier. So, the absence of Burma rice is one factor, but one subsumed in our lead paragraph sentence fragment

"due to a combination of factors, including government policies, war-time disruption of food distribution, and an unusually high cyclone and flood."

Similarly, "brown spot disease"is subsumed under "unusually high cyclone and flood," as the spores of the disease were spread far and wide, making is much more lethal.
Dyson, Tim. A Population History of India (p. 185). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:36, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Hmm...Fowler&fowler I think it was you who in our previous discussion enlightened me that history is more of an art then science where the historian paints with his own baggage of being (biases/perspectives), so it would only be fair to include the views of other historians to give our readers a complete picture. I would suggest Capitals00 to rephrase the edit to a neutral tone that doesn't give spotlight to any one of the many perceived causes. If you can find two or three references pointing to "Japanese culpability", you are then free to smack that in. Fayninja (talk) 03:41, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
I don't remember this conversation, but I could not have meant it in the sense in which you have described it.
Of course, no one is free to smack anything in, not in an article that has seen such a high level of critical attention, even that of Paul Greenough, one of the giants of famine studies, and not least of BFo43.
It is important for editors to explain their argument in heuristic terms, supplemented with quotes, as I have done, not simply cite X, Y, or Z. I have reapeatedly asked Capital* to explain what they have understood by the various terms. Not a peep have I heard. I don't believe they have a mature understanding of the famine, and therefore able to contribute productively.
They seem hung up on adding a four-word phrase in the lead of an article in a field in which they have never made any contribution on Wikipedia. And I am supposed to go one countering their undigested understanding with polite edification.
Obviously, they don't have a snowball's chance in hell. They apparently also don't have any humility or honest assessment of their vast lack of knowledge in the field. To each their own. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:57, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Yeah sometimes I think that the detailed arguments you produce interposed with references is enough to deter anybody from quarrelling with you lol. How do you set aside time to be so active on Wikipedia? Are you like supported by some passive income? Alright Capitals00, this is your wake-up call to take the fight back to her with some hard-hitting sources. Fayninja (talk) 04:29, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
@Fayninja: I did. See my comment at 14:34, 9 March 2023. Capitals00 (talk) 04:47, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
They ask me why there were no famines in the decades before BFo43, I describe the role played by the Indian famine codes and their implementation in famine prevention in the four decades after the Indian famine of 1899–1900, though this did not entirely prevent food insecurity, or even the occasional lesser famine, not to mention the role played by the Indian famine codes in the prevention of famine worldwide in the second half of the 20th century, and I mention Dyson citing lower mortality in India in the early decades of the 20th century. Instead of responding to that, thanking me for answering their question, they jump to the chapter on the Bengal famine of 1943 in Dyson and and present a Gotcha word or two that will help them to wedge in their incomplete information. War-time situations can cause famine. Duh, what else is new. Many such occurred in the two world wars. They occurred in Biafra much later. But wartime situations are complex. Capital* seems to be hung up on one contributing factor. They would be much better off learning a thing or two about famines before they waste their and other people's time on talk pages. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Why you still haven't read WP:FOC? It is not necessary for you to turn talk page into a WP:BATTLEGROUND just because you are not able to carry on the talk page discussion.
I am also not interested in making this talk page more irrelevant and distracting as I already mentioned once.
"Many such occurred in the two world wars" is wrong. No major famine occured in India during WW1.
Have you discovered any reliable sources that are disproving Japanese culpability? Not to forget that you changed goalposts by initially claiming that 1 source isn't enough and when I presented more reliable sources you started comparing them with your favorite sources despite your sources are not exactly ignoring Japanese role at all. Capitals00 (talk) 04:47, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
I must preface this to note that I am very ill at present, sleeping for at most a couple of hours per day. I haven't been able to follow this all unfold. That said, I've considered the sample list of sources confirming the Japanese invasion of Burma to be the biggest factor that caused the Bengal famine.
The most immediate thing that I notice is that the first high-quality reliable source authored by a subject matter expert in the list, that of Peter Bowbrick, does not confirm the statement. The section from which the quote originates is titled No food from India. That ought to be a clue as to the primary factor, which as Bowbrick writes is ... that other provinces with a surplus refused to sell their surpluses under the Basic Plan, and so Bengal starved .... Note the choice of words. Almost immediately after the quoted statement, Bowbrick re-affirms the pivotal role that the rest of India should have played in alleviating the stress with [s]ince the December 1942 crop was short, it was clear, from all crop forecasts, that India would have to feed Calcutta, at least, and probably significant rural areas as well. Bowbrick does not pin the famine on the invasion of Burma.
The second famine focussed source, that of Bas Dianda, equally does not support the statement. The tragedy that unfolded in 1943 was not generated by the FPD. It occurred in spite of normal food availability and rather, the famine resulted from a blatant imbalance between demand and supply, have the form reached dizzy heights. He then goes on to the list the internal errors that could have prevented starvation.
The third source that I looked at, that provided detailed commentary on the famine, from Robert Lyman, summarises very early into the work that the famine could have been avoided with better preparation and civil administration, in accordance with the existing Famine Codes that had helped reduce the cost of famine in previous decades. How many times in the preceding comments has F&F drawn attention to those codes?
Lastly, I am concerned about the citing of tertiary sources, like Chamberlain, who provide a one-sentence comment on the entire famine that manages to contain a basic factual error like misidentifying the year the famine occurred in, and I do find it a touch conspicuous that the only two words omitted from the quote when presented were: in 1944. Mr rnddude (talk) 06:40, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
@Mr rnddude: Yes I am aware that in general nobody rejects that British colonial wartime policies didn't help to alleviate it, including those who hold Japanese invasion to have caused famine. However, at the same time nobody ignores Japanese culpability in famine, including those who blame something else.
I already confirmed my position above that Japanese invasion of Burma should be at least mentioned as one of the cause, if not major, in the same paragraph which mentions "wartime colonial policies" and "natural causes". Do you agree with that? Capitals00 (talk) 07:45, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough, your edit is completely justified if supported by these sources below provided that you speak with neutrality.
Lance Brennan (2011) is of the idea that "The underlying macroeconomic situation in 1936 assisted a relief system based on increasing the money supply in areas impoverished by the depression and affected by drought, thereby providing a market for cheap grain from other areas of India and from Burma." He further continues on the same page (542) in a seperate paragraph that "To some extent it (alluding to the 1943 famine response) failed because three of the conditions on which the 1936 response had been based no longer held: the Japanese controlled Burma, and other provinces were reluctant to export grain to Bengal; the "denial" policy had crippled boat traffic near the coast while the roads and railways were clogged with military traffic; and the traders were either unable or unwilling to supply all the food needs of the province."
https://doi.org/10.2307/2056974
Omkar Goswami (1990, p447) also agrees to this by observing that "Certain events in 1942 augured poorly for 1943. In March 1943, the Japanese Army captured Rangoon and cut off the export of coarse Burmese rice to Bengal-a staple item for poorer rural households."
https://doi.org/10.1177/001946469002700403 Fayninja (talk) 08:26, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Fayninja, the requisite for inclusion of content in the lead of an article is that the content occurs prominently in its bodily sections. At issue here is the incontrovertible causative circumstance of the fall of Rangoon, which scholars expatiate on in the context of the Bengal famine. Our article earmarks a whole section for discourse on it. To then deny this foregoing aspect its due prominence in lead would be discordant with the very purpose thereof, and I, for one, wouldn't acquiesce to it. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 09:47, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Wait so do you support or disagree with including the Japanese invasion among the many causative agents already mentioned in the lead. Fayninja (talk) 10:16, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
No kidding Sherlock. Who do you think wrote the sections in "Our article" on the fall of Rangoon, or donated the pictures in Bombing of Rangoon in World War II. Pretentious turgid prose is not the answer. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:11, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
In other words, MBlaze and Capital, where were you when I was writing those sections
Or are you just talk page mavens that appear out of the blue to hound me on the talk pages of prominent India-related pages? Still holding on to your view (much considered no doubt) in Talk:Mahatma_Gandhi#Misinformation_on_lead, after I buried that page in an avalanche of sources? Pretty silly don't you think, and immature? Faynanja is at least attempting to have a conversation.
I know you are not required to tell, but have you written perhaps one small paragraph in a famine-related article? Please enlighten. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
We here highly respect and honour your vast contributions to this library of humanities but that is no reason to reject changes and contributions by other editors. If you had not birthed and worked extensively on "your articles", then the wikipedia community would have done the job. Nothing can stop the churn of change and I would like to reiterate, "Thank you for your priceless time to the project and may we continue to work in harmony with our fellow editors." The guiding light, the non-negotiable WP:NPOV
Consensus count so far: 3-1 @MBlaze Lightning@Capitals00 Fayninja (talk) 13:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Faynanja: Bengal depended for 15% of its shortfall in a normal year on Burmese rice. The aus (autumn) rice crop in 1942 was reduced by 60% and the aman (winter) rice crop in 1942–43 by 90% as a result of the blight (Brown spot disease) which was carried far and wide by the cyclone. In other words, when the famine came on by spring of 1943, 15% would not have saved Bengal. We are looking at a multi-causal famine in which the role played by the war is best summed up in the manner we do in the lead sentence (and not made interminably long by listing every twist and turn).
Consensus on WP is not that determined by
  • a count of editors who vote one way
  • but are not able to advance heuristic arguments in support,
  • only resorting to cherry picked Google searches
  • who moreover have no history of ever contributing anyhtign to any famine-related article on WP
Consensus requires time, a month at the very least for wording in a lead, that has been in place for more than five years. See WP:ONUS See also WP:CONSENSUS which proceeds by (I) allowing time for all stakeholders to weigh in (II) for the conflicts to be identified. (III) for various proposal for various compromises. The process here is barely in Stage I
When it comes to vote counts, how is it 3 to 1? Mr rnddude has already opposed, and they have a long history in the article. See the article stats Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:11, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
It's your own opinion but it matters less here. You are talking as if I am asking to remove all other factors that caused this famine but only keep Japanese invasion of Burma but that's not really the case here. Mr rnnndude is yet to comment on whether he is fine with inclusion or not. Your definition of "consensus" simply reads like "until I say you have consensus that means you have consensus". You are only exhibiting Wikipedia:OWNBEHAVIOR. Capitals00 (talk) 15:28, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
How have the previous years' import percentages from Burma any relevance to the famine. We need Burmese surplus data from 1943, the year of the famine. You are arguing without the backing of any sources which explicitly concludes that "Burmese rice would not have saved Bengal". There is no space for original research, not to mention the possibility of Burmese surplus production and reserve stocks rescuing Bengal from hyperinflation and how the 5-month long Japanese campaign would have affected rice production in Burma and its supply to Bengal. It was a multifaceted famine and their is no doubt the Japanese invasion of Burma was one of them as observed by the weight of several scholars. Mr. rnddude has not given a clear position on the matter and we shall wait for other editors to have their say. Fayninja (talk) 15:54, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
As for you Capital00,
>>> "Many such occurred in the two world wars" is wrong. No major famine occured in India during WW1.
What was my long lecture to you about the absence of major famines between the Indian famine of 1899–1900 and BFo43 and its relation to the revised Indian famine codes all about? Didn't bother to read in your quest to cherry-pick your desired goal?
What is the the lead I wrote in Timeline of major famines in India during British rule and where I also mention this all about? I obviously meant the world over.
  • See: "Other famines occurred in China, East Africa, Greece, Indonesia, Russia, and Vietnam."during World War II (Dyson, Tim. A Population History of India (p. 215). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.)
  • See, for example, Kaushik Basu's article on Famine in Encyclopedia Britannica, which states: "The most common human cause of famine is warfare. In addition to destroying crops and food supplies, warfare disrupts the distribution of food through the strategic use of siege and blockade tactics and through the incidental destruction of transportation routes and vehicles."
  • See for example: The European Famines of World Wars I and II, by Stephen Wheatcroft and Cormac Ó Gráda.
  • See for example, Great Famine of Mount Lebanon or Persian famine of 1917–1919. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
  • No filibustering. Don't distract from the topic by talking about things irrelevant to this subject. Topic here is Bengal famine which happened after more than 3 decades of no noticeable famines not only because of reasons noted in the article but also because of Japanese invasion of Burma. Capitals00 (talk) 12:35, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
  • The Japanese invasion of Burma accelerated the inevitable to some extent; to say that it initiated it does not sit right with me. Consider me in opposition to the proposed edit. And please avoid Backwards editing, appropriately defined by Levivich as "Here is what the article should say, now let's find sources to support each fact..." TrangaBellam (talk) 15:31, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
@TrangaBellam: What is the proposed edit? I said Japanese invasion of Burma can be added along with the existing "wartime colonial policies" and "natural causes" in the first paragraph as one of the cause if not the major cause. Capitals00 (talk) 15:44, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
You added a semantically unsustainable sentence fragment to the lead paragraph in this edit(boldfaced here)

The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India (present-day Bangladesh, West Bengal, Odisha and eastern India) during World War II. An estimated 800,000 to 3.8 million Bengalis perished, out of a population of 60.3 million, from starvation, malaria and other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions and lack of health care due to a combination of factors, including government policies, war-time disruption of food distribution, and an unusually high cyclone and flood. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and catastrophically disrupted the social fabric. Eventually, families disintegrated; men sold their small farms and left home to look for work or to join the British Indian Army, and women and children became homeless migrants, often travelling to Calcutta or other large cities in search of organised relief. While it is generally agreed that Japanese invasion of Burma was the initiating cause, some scholars characterise(d) the famine as anthropogenic (man-made), asserting that wartime colonial policies exacerbated the crisis. Others argue that the famine was the result of natural causes.

  • Why is the Japanese invasion of Burma not man-made in order for you to set up a contrast with "while" (in the meaning of "whereas")?
  • You quoted from a source (about Churchill and Anthony Eden): "The primary cause of the famine was the war itself: the Japanese invasion of Burma cut off the country from its main reserve supplier of rice imports, leaving it more vulnerable to falls in domestic production."
  • Why would the unavailability of reserve rice have made Bengal more vulnerable to falls in domestic production? It certainly would not have caused the cyclone or the blight. Is there evidence that it made the farmers of Bengal so enfeebled that they produced less rice as a result in the aus and aman harvests of 1942?
  • You changed the tense: "some scholars characterise" to "some scholars characterised" Are you suggesting they no longer characterise so?
  • You quote a second source, an encyclopedia on the Second World War, "While the Japanese conquest of Burma was the initiating cause, natural disasters along with British wartime policies conspired to produce the Bengal famine." You have added "generally agreed." According to whom?
There are too many issues. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:52, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Mostly though your addition does not jibe with due weight (see below), nor are your sources of the kind that can serve as benchmarks of WP:DUE Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
I had provided a number of sources on the same day to support the basis of these edits i.e. Japanese invasion being major cause for famine. But you are still stuck over that particular edit contrary to my several messages above. This time I am holding so read carefully: if we cannot mention Japanese invasion of Burma to have initiated the famine om the first paragraph, then we should still mention it as one of the cause. Capitals00 (talk) 18:24, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Due weight

We have an issue of determining due weight, i.e. in arriving at the importance of, or weight assigned to, the various causative factors of the famine.

  • WP:TERTIARY lays down the policy:

    Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize, and often quote, primary and secondary sources. ... Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources. Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. ... Wikipedia articles may not be used as tertiary sources in other Wikipedia articles

Here are some of the best available tertiary sources for the Bengal famine (two encyclopedic articles; four reviews, overviews or surveys of the literature, and five textbooks):

F&f's tertiary sources

  • A1. Encyclopedia: The Britannica article on the famine, Bengal famine of 1943 mentions the fall of Singapore and Burma to Japan, and the halting of imports of rice from Burma, but only to judge that they did not play a significant role:

    Paragraph 1: famine that affected Bengal in British India in 1943. It resulted in the deaths of some three million people due to malnutrition or disease
    Paragraph 2: While many famines are the result of inadequate food supply, the Bengal famine did not coincide with any significant shortfall in food production. According to the Indian economist Amartya Sen, who himself witnessed the famine as a nine-year-old boy, the famine was the result of an entitlement failure. In other words, the distribution of the food supply throughout Bengali society was hindered primarily by economic factors that affected the ability of certain groups of people to purchase food.
    Paragraph 3:Events in 1942 had a relatively minor impact on the supply of food. After Burma (Myanmar) and Singapore fell to Japan in 1942 in the midst of World War II, rice exports from those countries were halted. A cyclone in October 1942 also damaged the autumn rice crop and put pressure on the following year’s crop because, to survive, many subsistence farmers had to consume grain meant for planting. Still, the 1942 halt in rice imports to India did not cause the famine, and the 1943 crop yield was actually sufficient to feed the people of Bengal.
    Paragraph 4: It was ultimately special wartime factors that caused this difficult situation to become a disastrous famine. Fearing Japanese invasion, British authorities stockpiled food to feed defending troops, and they exported considerable quantities to British forces in the Middle East. They also confiscated boats, carts, and elephants in Chittagong, where the invasion was expected. This deprived fishermen and their customers of the ability to operate and generally inhibited the sort of low-level commerce upon which many Bengalis relied for survival.
    Paragraph 5:In the wake of these actions by the British, anxiety about shortages caused hoarding, speculation, and consequent price inflation that put even a basic subsistence diet beyond the means of many of Bengal’s workers. The government’s failure to halt rice exports or seek relief supplies from elsewhere resulted in a disaster that killed millions of people.

Indian famine codes: The British government wrote the first modern codification of responses to famine during its occupation of India. The highly detailed Indian Famine Code of 1883 classified situations of food scarcity according to a scale of intensity, and it laid out a series of steps that governments were obligated to take in the event of a famine. The code continues to influence contemporary policies, such as food-for-work programs and what the code called “gratuitous relief” for those unable to work.
Famine not declared in Bengal Famine 1943: Despite the development of many detailed antifamine programs, famines have persisted. One reason for this is that until the 1980s the underlying causes of most famines were poorly understood. Despite some awareness to the contrary through the ages, there has been an overwhelming tendency to think that famines are primarily caused by a decline in food production. The result has been that famines that are not accompanied by such shortages are usually not recognized as famines until well after they have occurred. The Bengal famine of 1943, for example, was greatly worsened by the government’s failure to declare a famine and thereby secure the official responses that would have been dictated by the Indian Famine Code.
1943 famine as entitlement failureA good example of an entitlement-based famine without a commensurate shortfall in food production is the Bengal famine of 1943, which happens to be one of the most intensively studied famines. Although food production did fall slightly in 1943 compared with previous years, it was still 13 percent higher than in 1941, when there was no famine. One phenomenon that did distinguish the year 1943 was inflation, a common consequence of war. Yet, amid rising commodity prices, the wages paid to agricultural labourers stagnated. Between 1939 and 1943, food grain prices rose by more than 300 percent, slightly outstripping the rate of inflation, whereas the wages of agricultural labourers rose by only 30 percent. Agricultural labourers, as a class, were badly hit, which resulted in many deaths. Yet, even as rural Bengal was being ravaged by famine, the West Bengal capital city, Calcutta (now Kolkata), was hardly affected. Research has shown that famine-related deaths in Calcutta occurred primarily among migrants who had come from the villages in search of food and alms.

(Fear of Japanese invasion rather than unavailability of Burmese rice p. 17, In Bengal, fears of a Japanese invasion in 1942-43 determined the priorities of those in authority, and the so-called ‘Denial Policy’, which removed stored holdings of rice, cargo boats, and even bicycles from coastal regions lest they fall into the hands of the invaders, undoubtedly compounded the crisis. Most fundamentally, military considerations left the poor of Bengal unprovided for.

Shift in famine prevention ideology caused fewer famines in the first four decades of the 20th century p. 77, Colonialism did not prevent massive famines in nineteenth-century Ireland and India, but those famines were less the product of empire per se than the failure of the authorities of the day to act appropriately. The colonial regime which presided over several major famines in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India also helped to keep the sub-continent free of famine between the 1900s and the Bengal famine of 1943-44. The change was partly due to improved communications, notably through the railway, but the shift in ideology away from hard-line Malthusianism towards a focus on saving lives also mattered. Colonial exactions during World War I produced famine in several parts of Africa, but famines were almost certainly much fewer between the 1920s and the end of the colonial era than they had been before the ‘scramble for Africa

The context of war "Concerns about war morale also explain why the Bengali authorities were so reluctant to operate the Famine Codes, even though classic famine symptoms were present, and why the full extent of the crisis remained largely hidden from the outside world for so long. By the same token, the war accounts for the muted, kid-glove tone of the Report on Bengal and its refusal to criticize the authorities in London for leaving Bengal short. It would be naïve to think that the wartime context did not influence the composition of the Commission and its final report. The ‘denial policy’ and the ensuing disruption of internal markets, the cutting off of Burmese imports, the support for incompetent local politicians who would not ask awkward questions, and the inevitable impact of the war on expectations about future supplies, were also the products of war.

  • B2 Review book Alex de Waal, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, Pluto Press, 2017. (Google Scholar Citation index 151)

    Though not the largest of the Second World War famines, the Bengal famine of 1943 warrants a special mention in this story. As mentioned earlier, this calamity shaped the thinking of a young Amartya Sen, contributing to rejection of the food shortage theory of famine. It is also now well established that the colonial government in London bears the greater responsibility for causing the famine by requisitioning food reserves and stopping all waterborne means of transport, including fishing boats, for fear that these might be useful to the Japanese army which was advancing through Burma, and for failing to enact standard relief measures when the famine was underway. Prime Minister Churchill insisted that food supplies to Britain itself should in no way be jeopardized by providing famine relief to a British imperial possession. Churchill's offensive views of the Indian people undoubtedly played a role in this, the most lethal of British crimes during the war. Noting that the pressures of the war were certain to bring food crisis to some part of the British empire, Lizzie Collingham writes, ‘[i]t is difficult to reach any conclusion other than that racism was the guiding principle which determined where hunger struck.’ At least 2.1 million Bengalis perished.

  • B3 Overview book Fagan, Brian, (Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara), Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations, New York: Basic Books, 2009, pages 14–15. (Google Scholar Citation index 499)

    Slowly evolving prevention of famine: The British Raj left rural India well alone, except when rapidly expanding commercial agriculture ventures aimed at overseas markets needed cheap labor. The colonial authorities were content to collect taxes and exercise administrative control while investing little in village development. Over many decades, late-nineteenth-century administrators favored a cautious policy of preventing famine rather than mitigating it. To this end, they diverted considerable resources to the building of railroads (which also helped boost India’s food exports) and to the improvement of irrigation works, on the grounds that onetime capital expenditures would pay long-term dividends and could also produce revenue from tickets, freight charges, and taxes, as well as stimulate exports. In 1869, eight thousand kilometers of railroad linked Indian cities. By the end of the century, there were forty thousand kilometers of track, some of it heavily subsidized for strategic—and sometimes famine relief—purposes. For example, the government guaranteed a return on investment to a private company that built the Southern Maratha Railway in the 1880s specifically to carry grain into famine-prone areas. The strategy paid off when the collection and transport of food were better organized after 1900, for the government was able to move grain surpluses from unaffected areas into famine zones with considerable efficiency, a task that authorities called “working” a famine. Thanks to carefully orchestrated relief policies and a slowly expanding economy, famines became a bureaucratic euphemism: “food crises.”
    Bengal famine of 1943: one sentence summary: Since the early twentieth century, there has been only one famine with major loss of life—that of 1943–1944, which resulted directly from the wartime disruption of the transportation infrastructure and of the economic opportunities and government relief that usually turned famine into food crisis.

  • B4 Overview book McMichael, Anthony J., (Late Professor of Epidemiology and Director, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH), The Australian National University) with Alistair Woodward & Cameron Muir, Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations, Oxford University Press, 2017. (Google Scholar Citation index 148)

    Entitlement precluded by poverty, caste, and deficient hunger alleviation: In the Indian subcontinent, the extremity of the 1943 Bengal Famine was largely due to social and political circumstances, argues economics Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. The famine caused two million deaths in a regional population of 60 million, many of them in Calcutta. Cooler weather and a devastating tsunami on India’s east coast in October 1942 had reduced cereal grain yields, and much of the saleable harvest in 1943 was simply not available to the poor. Their food “entitlement” under social contract principles was precluded, says Sen, by poverty, caste barriers, and deficient hunger alleviation policies. Further, the authorities were more concerned with protecting the free-market economy and with the military threat foreshadowed by the Japanese bombing of Calcutta in December 1942. Grain merchants hoarded much of the grain against both the possibility of war with Japan and the rumored possibility of a fungal blight affecting the next rice harvest.

  • B5. Overview book Siegel, Benjamin Robert, (Associate Professor of History, Boston University), Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, 2018. page 26–29. (Google Scholar Citation index 88)

    Fall of Burma and ensuing panic: Burma , by the 1930s the world’s largest rice-exporting territory, had long provided a buffer stock for India and Ceylon. Its wartime fall to the Japanese in the winter of 1941– 1942 deprived Bengal of only around 15 percent of its imports, but the panic that ensued was more damning. Landlords and traders who had once loaned grain and cash to poor peasants shuttered their godowns, panicked by the specter of war; those peasants, no less agitated, looted paddy to plant and eat. These problems were compounded by the abuse of infrastructure: Bengal’s tracks shuddered under the weight of trains ferrying rice to soldiers and industrial workers, and fearful of a Japanese invasion, British officials confiscated boats and bicycles along the coast in a maladroit “denial policy ,” oblivious to their role in moving grain.
    Cyclone and blight The spindly casuarina trees fringing the Bengal coast did little to impede the ferocious cyclone that made landfall near the village of Contai in October 1942. Tens of thousands of residents of Midnapore district died in a region already wracked by political disorder: many of the district’s police stations had been burnt down, and thousands of jailed activists watched the storm from their prison cells. The enterprising civil servant B.R. Sen , later Director- General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, watched the storm from his verandah in Calcutta. Days later, he was surveying the remains of villages which had been washed away in preparation for relief efforts, in defiance of a District Officer who gloated that the unruly province had received what it deserved. Sen courted the support of groupslike the Friends’ Society of Britain and the Ramkrishna Mission to clear corpses and repair embankments. But no relief team could replant the aman [winter] rice crop, washed away by torrential rain; nor could anyone scrape the green paddy of the devastating fungus which grew in the cyclone’s wake. Midnapore, once verdant with rice, was a waterlogged graveyard. Its blight portended miserably for the troubled province.
    Administrative chaos: In January, Calcutta’smunicipal government wondered if rationing the city would help staunch the arrival of hunger marchers. In Delhi, the central government issued lame promises to check prices and facilitate transportation of grains, while reminding provincial governments that food was, ultimately, their concern. And in London, the War Cabinet belatedly took note of India’s “serious food shortage,” establishing a Department of Food after two centuries of rule. Yet this shuffling did little to calm matters at home, where, the New Statesman and Nation noted, the British government was facing “an enemy more formidable than Congress – famine.”

C1. Textbook Dyson, Tim, (Professor Emeritus of Population Studies, London School of Economics), A Population History of India, Oxford University Press, 2019. (Google Scholar Citation Index 46)

  • Conclusion p. 183–185, On the issue of causation, Amartya Sen used official estimates of the size of harvests during 1938–43 to argue that there was no particular food availability decline (FAD) in Bengal in 1943.56 Indeed, Sen maintains that more food was available to the population than in 1941 (when there was no famine). He contends that, rather than being because of a shortage of food, the famine was caused chiefly by shifts in ‘exchange entitlements’—essentially changes in the capacity of different sections of society to maintain their access to food (including through purchases). ...Mark Tauger reckons that the aman harvest of 1942 was probably 70–80 per cent lower than the same harvest in 1941. And, because the aman crop normally provided three-quarters of Bengal’s rice production, supportive of Padmanabhan (and Goswami) he concludes that ‘food availability clearly was an extremely important cause of the famine’. All the same, it is hard to differ from Cormac Ó Gráda’s general assessment that the famine was ‘largely due to the failure of the British authorities, for war-strategic reasons, to make good a genuine food deficit’

  • C2 Textbook Tomlinson, B. R. (Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Univerity of London), The Economy of Modern India: From 1860 to the Twenty-First-Century, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2013. (Google Scholar Citation Index 349)

    Distributional crisis in agriculture: p. 76. After 1939 the depression of demand and activity in the rural economy was replaced by a sharp expansion fuelled by considerable monetary inflation, which lasted throughout the Second World War and the period of economic reconstruction and political crisis from 1945 to 1950. However, these inflationary demand conditions, coupled to the continued disruptions to employment and vertical networks that had resulted from the depression, further exacerbated the distributional crisis in agriculture, and brought about a severe food crisis in some parts of the country, notably Bengal. The causes of the great Bengal Famine of 1943, in which over a million people died, with a further two million succumbing to delayed mortality effects over the next three years, are still the subject of some debate.
    Differential access to food caused by decline of real wages: While it is likely that the war situation, and adverse weather conditions in 1942, diminished foodgrain availability somewhat, this alone does not explain the severity or widespread nature of the dearth. Differential access to supplies of grain caused by the decline of real wage-rates and other consequences of the wartime inflation skewed distribution networks considerably; equally important was the inability of the government or the market to compel surplus producers to supply rice to the rural poor or the urban areas in conditions of extreme uncertainty. As a result the land-controllers and others in authority inside households, villages, markets and patron–client relationships protected themselves at the expense of their erstwhile clients and dependants.

  • C3 Textbook Fisher, Michael, (Danforth Professor of History Emeritus, Oberlin College, Ohio) An Environmental History of India: From the Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge University Press, 2018, page 169 (Google Scholar Citation index 30):

    The Raj was especially overwhelmed in vital Bengal province. A severe cyclone (October 1942) devastated rice-producing southwest Bengal, followed by massive flooding in the Damodar valley, compounding administrative chaos that had focused on rice extraction for the British war effort while destroying all boats to “deny” food and transportation to the expected Japanese invasion. The resulting massive famine with its attendant diseases, mainly in the Bengal countryside, killed 3–5 million people (reminiscent of the Bihar-Bengal famine that killed about 10 million in 1769–71, just after British rule there began). The massive human dislocation and cultural, economic, and environmental disruption continued through the Partition of Bengal between India and Pakistan in 1947.

  • C4, Text-book, Roy, Tirthankar (Professor of Economic History, London School of Economics), The Economic History of India, 1857–2010, Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2020, p. 210. (Google Scholar Citation index 534)

    The Bengal Famine of 1943 was an exception to the monsoon-induced famines described above. Food price rose in 1943 in Bengal because of War and government purchase of rice on a large scale. This one example has led to a surprisingly high degree of theoretical dispute about why famines occurred, mainly because Amartya Sen has used it to make a bigger point about famines. Sen says that famines could happen without a crop shortfall. The price of food could rise because the government bought up food to feed soldiers engaged in a war, encouraging speculation by grain traders.' This argument has little relevance for the nineteenth-century famines in the Deccan. But does it explain the Bengal famine? Historians disagree on whether it does or not. Scholars who have reexamined the evidence believe that there was a harvest failure before the famine and that the role of speculation was exaggerated. Because of political rivalries within the elected legislature in Bengal province, there was a lot of misinformation and lack of information about just how bad the situation was, which reduced the effectiveness of the response.

  • C5. Text-book Burton Stein and David Arnold, A History of India, 2nd edition, John-Wiley and Sons, 2012, p. 355 (Google Scholar Citation Index 543):

    During the war, an inflated currency chased limited commodities, including foodstuffs, and flourishing black markets easily evaded the feeble food rationing schemes. Shortages turned into dearth in many places and into a terrible famine in Bengal in 1943, where, during the summer and autumn, the coastal zones were without food because the boats had been removed to thwart the possible Japanese invasion in 1942. Starving refugees from the coastal areas thronged the roads to Calcutta, and three million people are reckoned to have perished. While disaster haunted the poor in places like Bengal, great wealth was accumulated by others. Some windfall profits were taken partly from Bengal’s misfortune, but far more from the wartime economy.

  • F&f's summary: The statement that a mix of entitlement failure and genuine food shortage created the famine has due weight in the literature. In this view, it was not so much the Japanese invasion of Burma, and the cutting off of supplemental Burmese rice, per se, as the fear of a Japanese attack on India, and panicked British and Indian actions and policies implemented in its wake that created some of the conditions for the famine. The cyclone and the spot blight together reduced the rice availability in Bengal in late 1942 and early 1943 by 70% to 80%. Cormac O Grada's summary, seconded by Tim Dyson above has appropriate weight.
PS The wartime conditions and threats would have essentially remained had the Japanese stopped at the Bridge on the River Kwai. (i.e. the real one on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, which still exists, along with the Allied war cemeteries for the Death railway, which I have visited four times (and very spookily not once did the camera film came out right.) not the one reconstructed in Sri Lanka and blown up by Alec Guinness in the movie. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:30, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

F&f's new secondary sources

  • Das Gupta, Amlan (former Professor of English, Jadavpur University, India) "The economy of hunger: representing the Bengal famine of 1943" in A Cultural History of Famine: Food Security and the Environment in India and Britain (ed. Ayesha Mukherjee), Routledge, 2019.
Excerpts from Das Gupta, Amlan, 2019

(p. 168)The famine of 1942–43 (known as “Ponchasher Monnontor”), and succeeding famine-related diseases, resulted in some 3 million deaths. The famine was principally a rural phenomenon, spread over the length and breadth of undivided Bengal. Nearly every district suffered (Sen, 1981b: 441, citing the Census of 1951), and those who survived suffered enormous economic hardship and loss of social status, having had to sell land, livestock, utensils, tools, and agricultural implements and ornaments. The rise particularly in urban destitution, with large armies of rural poor moving into cities like Kolkata and Dhaka, was very marked.
(p. 169) One fact that needs to be noted is that famine conditions seem to have been limited to Bengal and its environs, not the whole of India. Yet the surplus stocks from major producing regions like the Punjab did not reach Bengal, reportedly because of the complicity of traders, politicians, and government officials.(p. 171) Greenough’s analysis of the rupture of the “moral economy” of rural Bengal has received much praise, and its main contentions have been accepted by many scholars (for instance, reviews by Appadurai and Chaudhuri, both 1984). Greenough takes issue with James Scott’s study of the “moral economy” of the Asian peasant on several counts, but the question of passivity is an important one. Scott argues that starving peasants, when not restrained by force or law, will rise violently against their social superiors. This was clearly not the case in Bengal:

If state-supplied relief subsequently fails, there is then a collapse of the social bonds uniting landlords with tenants, parents with children, and husbands with wives. Thus, in an advanced state of unrelieved famine, landlords and heads of households coolly abandon their clients and dependents, imposing suffering and starvation on the very persons who are ordinarily their wards. Yet these resource-controlling and decision-making males do so without fear of resistance or retribution; in fact they appear to obtain their victims’ acquiescence even as they pursue their own self-interest. Far from eliciting rage and violence, famine abandonment in Bengal is accompanied by widespread “passivity” and “fatalism”, a fact that has always dismayed non-Bengali witnesses. (Greenough, 1983: 832–3, citing James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Asian Peasant, 1976)

(p. 172) In Bengal, states Greenough, peasants are unfamiliar with the simple ideas of scarcity and subsistence, preferring to refer to the notion of Laksmi, standing for prosperity or well-being, which is realized when there is abundance, and consequently the networks of mutual obligation that tie together members of families – and families with the larger community – are intact. Prosperity, he goes on to say, is expressed by the presence of three related qualities “indulgence” (prasraya), “abundance” (raj-laksmi), and “good health” (sri). The Bengal famine, that paradigmatic moment of absence of well-being sees not violent peasant upsurges, but rather a widespread breakdown in the ethic of care that normatively should be present:

"Caught in these pincers of high prices and unemployment, a larger and larger proportion of the rural population was driven to sell its possessions, to foraging, and to beggary and theft. In a second, even more terrible phase of abandonment, individual households began to collapse, the male heads either driving off their dependents or leaving them behind. Sales of children and the abuse of women and children also occurred. (Greenough, 1980: 234)"

Given the widespread acceptance for Greenough’s arguments – by Indian (including Bengali) and western scholars – a private sense of unease may be wholly irrelevant.

Discussion

That is how you are interpreting the entire subject. See WP:NPOV which tells us to present all sides and avoid presenting only a particular side.
Christopher Catherwood writes: "Churchill did not favour the Indians, and that is an uncomfortable fact. But because the famine had natural causes - the October 1942 cyclone - and severe man-made problems, namely the occupation of Burma by Japanese, Arthur Herman is surely right to tell the ICS, "The idea that Churchill was in any way 'responsible' or 'caused' the Bengal famine is of course absurd... It is true that Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports from other threatres to India to cover the shortfall: this was wartime." But on the other hand, "Churchill was concerned about the humanitarian catastrophe taking place there, and he pushed for whatever famine relief efforts India itself could provide; they simply weren't adequate."[10]
What Arthur L. Herman (already cited on this wikipedia article) said has been already noted above. He said: "The idea that Churchill was in any way ‘responsible’ or ‘caused’ the Bengal famine is of course absurd. The real cause was the fall of Burma to the Japanese, which cut off India’s main supply of rice imports when domestic sources fell short, which they did in Eastern Bengal after a devastating cyclone in mid-October 1942. It is true that Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports from other theaters to India to cover the shortfall: this was wartime."[11]
Christopher Bayly, a specialist in history of the British Empire, writes: "The loss of Burma rice to the Japanese was a major cause of the famine. But ill-considered policies of destroying civilian transport to ‘deny’ it to the enemy drove the hunger deeper. As starving women and children gathered outside the gates of military camps in eastern India, Indian and British soldiers began to share their food with the destitute."[12]
Madhusree Mukerjee has been cited on this Wikipedia article a number of times and she writes: "The second factor behind the famine was the Japanese occupation of Burma in March 1942, which cut off an essential supply of rice for India‟s poor. In most years, India imported between one and two million tons of rice a year from Burma and Thailand, and this source was gone."[13]
The first paragraph of the lead with words "including government policies" and "wartime colonial policies" and this way it blames the British Empire two times on the lead. Why there should be no mention of the Japanese Empire here despite a huge number of reliable sources providing details about the culpability of the Japanese Empire? Capitals00 (talk) 18:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
None of them are WP:TERTIARY sources per WP policy, only secondary ones. See also Kaushik Basu's article on famine in Britannica I will soon add. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:05, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
That makes zero sense when it comes to the article itself. Christopher Bayly, Arthur L. Herman and Madhusree Mukerjee have been already cited on the article enough times thus their statements cannot be ignored. Capitals00 (talk) 19:25, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
The do not constitute WP:TERTIARY sources per WP policy for due weight. Widely used text books, encyclopedia articles or review articles are vetted for due weight. Secondary sources are not. Chris Bayly's magnum opera for example, Rulers Tradesman and Bazaars, Indian Society in the Making of the British Empire, and Empire of Information, which I love for their brilliance, have not been vetted for due weight. What you get there is his own unique perspective, not a balanced summary of the state of the art. I will add some more textbooks such as Tomlinson's Economy of Modern India, Tirthankar Roy's Economics of India 1857 to 2015 or somesuch, and Michael Fisher's Environmental History of India (if I can find something on the Bengal famine in them). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:05, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
This article has never followed such a rule and there is no need to create such a rule for this article. Read this:-
  • Clifton D. Bryant, Dennis L. Peck (2009). Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience. Gale virtual reference library. SAGE Publications. p. 448. ISBN 978-1-4522-6616-9. The Bengal famine of 1943 resulted in the deaths of about 4 million people. This phenomenon was caused, in part, by high inflation in a war economy and also by rising public spending on military and civil construction. There had been a poor harvest in 1942 following a cyclone, torrential rain, and fungal disease. Japan occupied neighboring Burma and cut off rice exports to Bengal. These factors led to famine conditions followed by high incidences of malaria, cholera and smallpox.
  • Chamber's Encyclopaedia. Chambers's Encyclopaedia. George Newnes Ltd. 1963. p. 589. The Japanese occupation of Burma, which cut off normal rice exports, precipitated the Bengal famine of 1943
  • Academic American Encyclopedia. Academic American Encyclopedia. Grolier. 1998. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-7172-2068-7. The Bengal famine of 1943 had several causes: the conquest of Burma by the Japanese, depriving India of a traditional source of surpluses; the removal of rice stocks from rural Bengal to deny them to a potential invader; a series of hurricanes that did heavy damage to the main 1942 harvest: and unprecedented war - induced prosperity in Calcutta.
  • Stanley Sandler, Stephen J. Valone (2003). World War II in the Pacific: An Encyclopedia. Military History of the United States. Routledge. p. 168. ISBN 978-1-135-58199-2. During 1943-1944 as many as 3.8 million people died in Bengal province in northeast Bengal, India, as a result of food shortages caused by a combination of tragic circumstances. While the Japanese conquest of Burma was the initiating cause, natural disasters along with British wartime policies conspired to produce the Bengal famine. The quick advance of Japanese forces in the months after the 1941 attack at Pearl Harbor set the stage for the Bengal famine; the fall of Burma in May 1942 was critical.
These all sources meet WP:TERTIARY. They verify Japanese invasion of Burma as either the leading or one of the major cause. Capitals00 (talk) 02:32, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
None of them are Tertiary Sources in relation to famines in India.
You are welcome to take your sources to Reliable sources noticeboard and ask them for a comparison of your "tertiary" sources with mine in relation to the Bengal famine of 1943. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:12, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Clearly demonstrated, there are plenty of both secondary and tertiary sources that attest the causation of the Bengal famine to the Japanese invasion of Burma which undeniably deserves a place in the lead. There are also the two research papers from the Cambridge University Press and SAGE, two highly respectable publishers.
Lance Brennan (2011) is of the idea that "The underlying macroeconomic situation in 1936 assisted a relief system based on increasing the money supply in areas impoverished by the depression and affected by drought, thereby providing a market for cheap grain from other areas of India and from Burma." He further continues on the same page (542) in a seperate paragraph that "To some extent it (alluding to the 1943 famine response) failed because three of the conditions on which the 1936 response had been based no longer held: the Japanese controlled Burma, and other provinces were reluctant to export grain to Bengal; the "denial" policy had crippled boat traffic near the coast while the roads and railways were clogged with military traffic; and the traders were either unable or unwilling to supply all the food needs of the province."
Omkar Goswami (1990, p447) also agrees to this by observing that "Certain events in 1942 augured poorly for 1943. In March 1943, the Japanese Army captured Rangoon and cut off the export of coarse Burmese rice to Bengal-a staple item for poorer rural households." Fayninja (talk) 03:23, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
None are WP:TERTIARY sources which per Wikipedia policy are useful in evaluating due weight. You too are welcome take you concern to WP:RS/N as I've indicated above. It will help if you give the full citation. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:49, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
None of your sources have passed the noticeboard check either, we shall leave this matter up to the House of Consensus. Fayninja (talk) 03:57, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
I will bring all the sources for a discussion at RS/N tomorrow. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Fowler you are just shifting the goalposts now. You asked for reliable tertiary sources even though your demand was entirely unwarranted you are now saying they have to be focused on Indian subjects. This excuse is not going to fly. There is no question of WP:RSN because there is no concern over reliability of these sources. Capitals00 (talk) 04:04, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Obviously context and scope of the tertiary source is important. You can't use the Encyclopedia of Mammals in South Asia as a tertiary source for the Bengal famine in 1943, just as you cannot use World War II in the Pacific for it (Bengal is not in the Pacific).
I am happy to bring it up on WP:RS/N. Both due weight and tertiary sources are routinely discussed on RS/N. I have done so myself. If you do not by tomorrow morning US time, I will bring it up there. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:28, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
That reads like "a source is WP:RS only if I support it at the time". No one used "Encyclopedia of Mammals". No you don't have to bring to WP:RSN because there is no dispute about reliability of these sources. Capitals00 (talk) 04:45, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Sure! Fayninja (talk) 04:33, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Yeah she is just Wikilawyering and trying to boss her way around Wikipedia, even though she is well aware that WP:NPOV is "non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus." @Capitals00 has provided several credible encyclopaedias (WP:TERTIARY) for the community to assess the significance of the Japanese invasion which is heavily addressed in the body and needs a reference in the lead which was so eloquently put by @MBlaze Lightning, "the requisite for inclusion of content in the lead of an article is that the content occurs prominently in its bodily sections." Fayninja (talk) 04:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
You may repeat all this at RS/N Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:30, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
There is no question of RSN here. Only question here is now your own WP:JDL attitude toward heavily reliably sourced information. Capitals00 (talk) 04:45, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
I will take the sources both mine and yours to RS/N for evaluation as benchmarks for determining due weight as dictated by WP policy in WP:TERTIARY. If you persist on being disruptive here, I will ask for administrative intervention. I am sounding out some administrators now as a precaution. I request that they keep an eye on this page if they have the time: @Abecedare, RegentsPark, SpacemanSpiff, El C, BusterD, Vanamonde93, MelanieN, Valereee, and DrKay: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:04, 13 March 2023 (UTC) PS My sources are listed at the top of the Due Weight subsection above (and are numbered A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Once again, there is no question about the reliability of the sources. Why you will take "sources both mine and yours to RS/N" when nobody is even disputing the reliability? Anyone will agree that Christopher Bayly, Arthur L. Herman, Madhusree Mukerjee, and others who are already used enough times in this Wikipedia article are indeed reliable. The only problem here is with these attempts of yours to keep Japanese culpability out of the first paragraph of the lead just anyhow despite more than enough scholarly sources asserting the Japanese invasion of Burma to be a significant factor in the famine as confirmed by a huge number of sources provided above. Capitals00 (talk) 05:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
WP:TERTIARY states that tertiary sources, encyclopedias, reviews or surveys of the literature, or text-books, which sum up multiple secondary sources, are useful for evaluating due weight. We are trying to determine that our sources qualify. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:30, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
This article has thus far relied on reliable scholarly sources and it makes no sense to create a new rule overnight. See my comment at 02:32 13 March where you can find enough reliable WP:TERTIARY sources and there is no question of reliability of these sources. Capitals00 (talk) 05:37, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
This is going to be complicated unless we spam the noticeboard by opening discussions for the many individual sources. What is your say, Admins? Is a noticeboard assessment for this many sources warranted or not? Fayninja (talk) 05:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm not going to read the wall of text above but, while it is obvious that the war is the context in which the famine took place, to call it the "initiating factor" is a stretch. We could just as well lay the blame on Germany's invasion of Poland, or the burning of the Reichstag, or the treaty of Versailles, or the stale croissants served to the Germans at Compiègne. Famines are largely management issues and, while the arc of history is long, the buck stops where the manager happens to be. --RegentsPark (comment) 05:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
@RegentsPark: Nice to see you here. Japanese invasion of Burma has been said to be either the most significant cause or one of the most significant causes of this famine as per the sources I provided in this sub-section alone. See my comments at 18:07, 12 March 2023 and 02:32, 13 March 2023. I also said the first paragraph of the lead with the words "including government policies" and "wartime colonial policies" blames the British Empire two times on the lead. Shouldn't it mention Japanese invasion of Burma at least once? That's what this dispute is all about. Capitals00 (talk) 05:27, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
@Capitals00: My objection is to the use of "initiating factor". The famine does not necessarily follow from the Japanese occupation of Burma. Of course, the war is an important factor because it provides the context for the famine and that does appear to be covered in the lead. --RegentsPark (comment) 04:09, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
That's not quite it, RegentsPark. Yes, the lead makes a solitary mention of the Japanese annexation of Burma but it serves to only contextualize the British mismanagement of the famine and attendant curroption. But that is a blatantly partial view and does not adumbrate the far-reaching implications of the Japanese annexation in its totality. The article itself critiques it in detail. However, while the lead juxtaposes the two contrasting perspectives, natural and man-made, on famine (despite the former lacking any traction in contemporary scholarship) it does not even consider, inter alia, the Japanese embargo on export of coarse Burmese rice which was a staple food item in poorer households in the Bengal countryside, and which has been well documented in academic research as having compounded the food crisis. Its omission is jarring because what finds significant due weight in the body ought to find some representation in the lead in miniature. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 11:53, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
The major tertiary sources I have listed suggest that it was not the Japanese invasion of Burma, nor indeed the shortfall in the supplementary rice from Burma, but the threat of a Japanese invasion of India that created both food shortages, wartime inflation, and administrative chaos and put the incipient famine on the back burner. All this is summarized in the lead paragraph

The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India (present-day Bangladesh, West Bengal, Odisha and eastern India) during World War II. An estimated 800,000 to 3.8 million Bengalis perished,[A] out of a population of 60.3 million, from starvation, malaria and other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions and lack of health care due to a combination of factors, including government policies, war-time disruption of food distribution, and an unusually high cyclone and flood.

In the third paragraph, we say,

During the Japanese occupation of Burma, many rice imports were lost as the region's market supplies and transport systems were disrupted by British "denial policies" for rice and boats (a "scorched earth" response to the occupation).

There is no need for anything more.
This article was not only nursed by user:Lingzi for many years, it was also vetted by two of Wikipedia's finest, the late user:SlimVirgin and user:Brianboulton. It was praised in an email to FAC coordinator user:Laser brain by one of the giants of famine scholarship, Paul Greenough. It is important that it not be changed lightly. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:53, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Hitherto 2017, the article's lead, at the very outset, set forth, and justifiably so, the famine to have flowed in consequence from the Japanese invasion of Burma.[14] At present, what we have is a body that expatiates on the foregoing causative element in penetrating depth, but a discrepant and discordant lead that, though earmarks a good many sentences for enumerating a congeries of subservient factors, does not in the least caters for the Japanese aspect. It also merits observing that your newfangled love for WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:TERTIARY has not slipped anyone's attention, Fowler&fowler, for indeed, a significant chunk of your sources (not least here or at Mahatma Gandhi) would be consigned to the scrap-heap if you were to evaluate them on the touchstone of WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. The very principle underpinning WP:DUE requisitions that Wikipedia adumbrates all significant views occuring in reliable scholarship "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources". Your refuge, then, in WP:TERTIARY to give a short-shrift to the legion of reliable citations to scholary tomes and journal articles (vetted through peer-review) that others duly provided in the thread constituted a travesty of both TERTIARY and the overriding content policy of WP:NPOV. Those, like I observed earlier, illustrate the magnitude to which the Japanese manoeuvres in Burma weighed on the precarious food supply in Bengal. Some found the foregoing monumental enough to regard as the proximate causative factor (case in point [15], an encyclopedia in fact, catering to your newfound love of them), in what only exemplifies the currency it has enjoyed in scholarship. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 06:45, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for the long read, but that edit has been junked and a new edit has been proposed which neutrally lists the Japanese invasion of Burma among the other causes in the lead. Many secondary and tertiary sources reckon the Japanese invasion as a cause of significance if not the principal cause. There is a whole section on the Japanese invasion in this article and the issue right now is why not give it the same weight in the lead. WP:NPOV Fayninja (talk) 05:31, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
I am sorry but none of you three (Fayninja, Capital00, and MBlazeLightning) have ever made any contribution to any famine-related article. You are attempting to directly edit the lead by cherry-picking for "Japan" "war" and "rice". Your sources are abysmal. Your persistence in wanting to have your say, but with no experience or knowledge in the field, constitute profound disrespect for people such as the late Brian Boulton and Sarah who spent years fine honing hundreds of WP articles, including this one. Pinging some more admins and requesting that they keep an eye on this page @Titodutta, Dwaipayanc, and Ragib: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Wrong. Who told you that one needs to be an "expert" to edit something here? Everyone here is a WP:VOLUNTEER and the page ownership does not belong to anybody. If anything, it is your own message that "constitute profound disrespect" for Wikipedia policies. Capitals00 (talk) 06:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
These are some fairly new policies, just released I assume. There is no disrespect unless one fails to abide by the guiding Wikipedia policies. Fayninja (talk) 06:28, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Rhetorics won't asperse sources that measure up on the touchstone of policy. It is unfortunate indeed that you would feel the need to haughtily look down on others ad nauseam because they have sought to fix an anomaly and did not, and could not, hew to your unreasonable stand in the discourse. Perhaps, better sense will penetrate when you begun to appreciate that Wikipedia is a collaborative project where all, in good faith, strive to suffice its mission of disseminating sound and in the round knowledge to the people at large. Your repeated snarking and imperious remarks are, if anything, a regrettable fall from grace for you. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 07:42, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
@MBlaze Lightning:
  • Rhetorics? In your sense, it is a non-count noun. In the plural, it means something else. (See my History of English grammars, for the comparison.)
  • "Hitherto" as an adverb does not mean "before," but "up to this time, until now, as yet." (OED)
1769 W. Robertson Hist. Charles V III. vii. 46 The veil under which he had hitherto concealed his real sentiments.
1861 M. Pattison in Westm. Rev. Apr. 414 Objects hitherto unknown to Europe.
  • "In consequence from?" See
  • the Oxford English Dictionary again: in consequence. (The phrase now current.) in consequence of: as a result of.
1683 J. Dryden Dram. Wks. (1808) XVII. 100 In consequence of this, to make an exact description of the principal actions.
1879 J. N. Lockyer Elem. Lessons Astron. (new ed.) i. 26 Our Sun at setting..seems sometimes blood red, in consequence of the absorption of our atmosphere.
I recommend that you write in simple English, as your in your attempt to sound affected, you are sounding like Mrs Malaprop—actually much worse, for she to her credit, did not make grammatical errors. Your posts therefore are not helpful, not to mention, violate talk page guidelines. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Sorry to burst your bubble, Fowler&fowler, but I doubt if any of us are here to pander to your perverted understanding of the language or its grammar. Why don't you save yourself the trouble and direct your energies to where it really matters? All this posturing and snarking at others ain't helping your cause in the least and it won't be long at this pace before your ad hominem digression gets called out for what it is: stonewalling. Regards, MBlaze Lightning (talk) 11:55, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler and MBlaze Lightning: I came here intending to tell off MBL for his post above, where he is obviously mocking F&F's language. And then I found F&F's post above picking apart MBL's grammar. F&F, MBL's meaning was plain; why did his grammar need to be critiqued? MBL, if the consequences of mocking other editors on talk pages aren't readily apparent to you, I suggest you read up on WP:TPG. If this discussion continues I'd be unsurprised if you both end up sanctioned. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:46, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
My apologies if my remarks sounded like a sneer. I did not intend them as such; but I acknowledge, in hindsight, I said more than I had intended in the heat of the moment. I've struck through the dispensable chunks from my comment. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93: That post was not the main object of my reply but the post before that in which MBlaze Lightning had adopted a faux overblown, stilted, over-Latinate style with no information content, at least none that I could discern:

Hitherto 2017, the article's lead, at the very outset, set forth, and justifiably so, the famine to have flowed in consequence from the Japanese invasion of Burma.[14] At present, what we have is a body that expatiates on the foregoing causative element in penetrating depth, but a discrepant and discordant lead that, though earmarks a good many sentences for enumerating a congeries of subservient factors, does not in the least caters for the Japanese aspect. It also merits observing that your newfangled love for WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:TERTIARY has not slipped anyone's attention, Fowler&fowler, for indeed, a significant chunk of your sources (not least here or at Mahatma Gandhi) would be consigned to the scrap-heap if you were to evaluate them on the touchstone of WP:CONTEXTMATTERS.

Contrast that with his style in replying to RegentsPark earlier in the thread. As no one else noticed it, no admin rapped him on the knuckles, my post was my way of telling him that if he proposes to play that game with me, he should have the prose skills (both syntactical and lexical) to match the daring.
I mean serious editors shouldn't have to have to counter this level of immaturity. Wikipedia is not Twitter. See MBlaze and Capital's comments on the Talk:Mahatma Gandhi page. Is this what Wikipedia should be about? Eventually, I took matters into my own hands on that page and buried them under an avalanche of serious academic sources.
See MBlaze's comments on my user talk page. For the life of me I can't make sense of what is insulting about Capital* (I couldn't remember what came at the end ..., that was it) People refer to me as Fowler, F&f, F&F, Fowler&fowler, Fowler&Fowler, ... it's all the same to me.
I feel bad and I apologize to you as I asked for your help. I should not have made it harder for you to offer it. I won't do it again. You will see in a few minutes from my forthcoming proposal that I have moved on. Again, many apologies. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:24, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Fowler&fowler, but none of what I actually wrote was rhetoric or dressed up, least of all destitute of significance. I spoke in context of your harping on your woolly allusions to old article versions as nursed by user:Lingzi for many years. I punctuated my sentence fragments neatly, and, as a matter of fact, linked to a version from 2017 to establish the proposition that the line on Japanese annexation had occured prominently in the lead. Notwithstanding this, had you asked me to elucidate the thrust of my contention, I would have gladly communicated my points better. As for your deconstructions of my words, I have no idea which Oxford dictionary you advert to, but if you look up what "Hitherto" connotes to in the online version thereof, you will find it admits of until the point in time under discussion to boot, and that Hitherto <reference year> is a standard English phrase in formal writing. The same with other expressions you flagged, but I don't wish to belabour this, except to observe that I really don't appreciate your condescending innuendos. I also never accused you of insulting Capitals00; you know it. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 19:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I'm not going to read all that, but skimming the source excerpts above I don't see a strong reason to alter this version. As best as I can tell there's a debate about which sources to focus on, and F&F is correct in saying we should give greater weight to scholarly sources focused on this topic (ie British colonial administration in India), over sources touching on it in passing. I would also remind all of you to avoid commenting on anything besides the content (please don't reply to this saying "he started it!" because I really don't care). Vanamonde (Talk) 16:24, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93: I already highlighted with details that Christopher Bayly, Arthur L. Herman, Madhusree Mukerjee, Hugh Tinker and others who have been already cited enough times in this article have concluded that Japanese invasion played a significant role in causing famine. While three of those who I named refer it to as initiating cause, Mukerjee calls it "second factor". The first paragraph of the lead with the words "including government policies" and "wartime colonial policies" mentioned British Empire two times on the lead. The Japanese invasion of Burma should be mentioned at least once as one of the causes of the famine. What do you think? Capitals00 (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
The Japanese invasion is mentioned in the lead. The wording makes it obvious it was a substantial factor. Not everything needs to be spoonfed to the reader. Also, in a topic as well-studied as this one, to alter the narrative you need to not just show that your preferred version is verifiable, but that it is the dominant narrative among high-quality sources. I'm not seeing evidence of that thus far. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:59, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
this is my view also. Ceoil (talk) 17:50, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Japanese invasion was mentioned in the first sentence of the lead until 2017 as highlighted above. Now it is mentioned in third paragraph, but not the first and that is the dispute is all about per Wikipedia:BALANCE. Christopher Bayly, Arthur L. Herman, Madhusree Mukerjee, Hugh Tinker, are high quality sources that's why they have been already used on this article. I had provided more references in this section as well as above. Capitals00 (talk) 17:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
The long standing consensus is that the third para is where it belongs. Ceoil (talk) 18:35, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
Such a "consensus" doesnnot exist. You can show the discussion where it was decided. Capitals00 (talk) 00:02, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Also, as a small point, 2017 was around when Lingzi started work on the article. Ceoil (talk) 18:41, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
No. That is factually incorrect.[16] Capitals00 (talk) 00:02, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
  • This discussion has descended into WP:BLUDGEON territory. If you wish to change the lead to a pre-2017 version, the onus of obtaining consensus is on favoring the change. There is plainly an absence of consensus in this discussion. So either drop it, or start an RfC. Vanamonde (Talk) 15:47, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
    The argument for the 2017 version of the lede isn't relevant here. The invasion of Burma is mentioned in that article version's first sentence, but it's done so to place the famine in context, that it happened ... during World War II following the Japanese invasion of Burma. The article even at that time did not claim that the invasion caused the famine, but that a general decline in food availability was responsible. This is one of two major accounts for the famine: FAD. This is substantively different to the manner in which the invasion was introduced into the leading paragraph in the recent edit which placed the invasion as the instigating cause of the famine, and that this is a generally agreed upon fact. The latter is certainly untrue, as amply demonstrated by the sources presented in the course of this discussion alone, and the former is debatable. In any case, the statement in the lede in 2017 does not carry the same meaning as the statement introduced into the article here. Mr rnddude (talk) 16:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Famine Commission 1880, p. 49

FAC for mid-June and TFA for August 22, 2023? Picture for FP?

Some of you may know that on August 22, 1943, Ian Stephens, the editor of The Statesman, Calcutta, published pictures of death and misery on the city's streets as a result of which the world came to know of the Bengal famine of 1943.

One of those pictures, File:Dead or dying children on a Calcutta street (the Statesman 22 August 1943).jpg, is the picture in the lead of our WP article.

This article owes it prevailing state of excellence to user:Lingzhi2 (also user:Lingzhi). The article should have become an FA in its last FAC appearance, but for reasons I won't go into, it did not. I don't know that Lingzhi has really bowed out but he doesn't seem to be active.

I would love for him to return.

In any case, I have a

  • Proposal Why not
  • (a) update the article both in reliable detail and due weight (see: Talk:Bengal_famine_of_1943#F&f's_tertiary_sources for due weight) and go for another FAC run in mid June
  • (b) request a TFA spot for August 22, the 80th anniversary of the historic picture of the terrible famine
  • (c) propose the lead picture for FP (criterion:historical worth)?

If August 22 does not pan out for TFA, we could go for November 3, 2023, which is Amartya Sen's 90th birthday.

The spur for this post is Paul Greenough's masterful Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-1944, which I picked up to read again after a very long time. This year is more or less its 40th anniversary.

If this is acceptable, then I am happy to do the initial grunt work of incorporating the recent literature. We can then collectively work on improving the sources and the prose.

I'm pinging editors who have either worked on the article, are active on the talk page or on Bengal-related topics, or on the FPC page: @Lingzhi and Lingzhi2: @Worldbruce and Mr rnddude:@Ceoil, RegentsPark, and Vanamonde93: @TrangaBellam and MBlaze Lightning:@Capitals00, Fayninja, Dwaipayanc, Tito Dutta, and UnpetitproleX:

I hope I haven't forgotten anyone. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:07, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

If you have agreed with mentioning Japanese culpability on the first paragraph of the lead then I have no issue. You should cnsider confirming your current position over this issue. Capitals00 (talk) 18:52, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
I have no interest in that sentence fragment. The final lead will depend on how the article evolves. There is a large amount of literature that has appeared in the last three years. I have just looked at a dozen journal articles and there are more. All the best Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:08, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
That means I have no interest in editing the lead, any part of it. There is too much new literature to incorporate into the article. Only then can a new lead be written. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:10, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
  • I am back, and the Japanese ain't culpable for the famine. At least not directly.  § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 06:30, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
@Lingzhi.Renascence: Scholars like Christopher Bayly, Arthur L. Herman, Madhusree Mukerjee, Hugh Tinker and others who have been already cited enough times in this article have concluded that Japanese invasion played a significant role in causing famine. While three of those who I named describe Japanse invasion as initiating cause, Mukerjee calls it "second factor". The first paragraph of the lead with the words "including government policies" and "wartime colonial policies" mentioned British Empire two times on the lead. The Japanese invasion of Burma should be mentioned at least once as one of the causes of the famine. What do you think? Capitals00 (talk) 13:31, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
It was the British response to the threat Japanese invasion of India that triggered the famine... and the latter never even made it to India, if I recall correctly. § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 14:37, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
@Lingzhi.Renascence: Japanese invasion of Burma resulted in influx of migrantions and rice imports were lost. There was also disruption in transportation. Japanese Empire had conquered Manipur state which is in India. It was later liberated with battles such as Battle of Imphal. Capitals00 (talk) 16:14, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
The goal here is to accurately reflect what other reliable sources have said. Did reliable sources directly list the Japanese as a cause? It's possible, but I don't recall it. [Having said that, I haven't read this article in maybe 2 years. Plus I think I've deleted all my sources.] If your goal is to put Japan on the list of guilty parties (which is not a goal I support, just offhand), then your objective should be to find a reliable quote that very explicitly does so. [It's not enough to say the invasion preceded the famine... there must be a causal link stated in the source.] § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 00:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
@Lingzhi.Renascence: Kindly read this edit where I have quoted scholars like Christopher Bayly, Arthur L. Herman, Madhusree Mukerjee. They note Japanese invasion caused the famine. Mukerjee treats it as "second" most significant "factor". These scholars have been already cited many times on this article. Hugh Tinker (also used in this article) wrote here that "Then in 1943 came the unthinkable: a famine in Bengal which killed 1.5 million people. The cause was the Japanese invasion of Burma, and the stoppage of the export of the 1942 rice harvest." I hope you will agree with inclusion. Thanks Capitals00 (talk) 03:47, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

(←) Thanks for your response. You seem quite keen to make this point. In order to further the overall discussion, do you have any other points you wish to make? ... And as I have said, I haven't read anything in years, and alas I believe I have deleted all my HUGE stock of relevant files. I will need to read the sources you gave from top to bottom, most especially any "Conclusions" sections or similar… Sometimes people make stray observations in the course of a text that they do not later offer any full support for. And I am busy with many things. Reading these may take several days. BTW, Catherwood seems perhaps pro-Churchill POV, but others are just as clearly anti-Churchill, so I'll take that into consideration too. § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 03:55, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

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