In the crowded railway compartment on my way to Midnapur, the daily scenes on Calcutta’s pavements kept on coming back to my mind — the procession of famished, helpless living skeletons that once formed Bengal’s village society — fishermen, boatmen, potters, wea-vers, peasants, whole families of them; the five corpses that I counted one morning in the short stretch of road between Amherst Street and Sealdah station; and all the other gruesome sights which had become a part of everyday life in the city. It also came to my mind that of all this throng of the dead and the dying eighty per cent probably were from Midnapur.
* * *
I was able to get the full story of a small destitute family. They were from Chandhra village nine miles from Midnapur town. They had left home in June — the man and wife with their three children. But somehow or other, there seemed to be some flaw in the story as they gave it. At last after long hesitation, when convinced that I was no Government man, the wife came out with the true story: “To speak the truth, babu, with what hopes can we go back to our village? Last year’s harvest was not poor, yet we couldn’t get food in our own village. Two days after harvesting the paddy disappeared. When we say we will go back to our village, it is because we are afraid of the military. No one knows where they will send us or where they will send the children if they catch us. What use is it to us if they send us back to our village?” “Do you then mean to spend your life in town on charity? Do you want to see yourselves reduced to the status of beggars ultimately?” I asked. “Certainly not,” came the firm reply, “why should we allow ourselves to become beggars? We are not living on charity now. We both work for our living: we break stones for the military, load railway wagons with wood, work in the tank being excavated in the garden of the zemindar babus over there. Each of us earns 6 to 8 annas a day. In town at any rate we are able to get rice, but in the village no amount of money will get us any. All this rich crop in the fields, do you think we will be able to have even so much as a look at it after harvesting is over?”
* * *
It was hat day in Contai. Of shops and buyers there was no dearth, but not a trace of rice anywhere. Bajri and kalai (dal) shops were crowded, but more crowded were the goldsmith’s and brassware shops. I was not able to count the number of gold smith’s shops: of brassware shops there were eleven. They were housed in booths improvised of bamboo and mats, and the mahajan had taken his seat on the ground with cash-box and account books. Ten to fifteen persons, peasant householders mostly, were waiting at each shop to sell off their utensils. Not only were there the thalis, lotas and batis of every-day household use, there were also the brass lamps, bells, pradips and copper kosakusi needed in religious ceremony, — and in one place, even a brass idol of Srikrishna made at Benares! It fetched two rupees and twelve annas.
The gods were deserting their poor votaries and going to the abode of the faithful — the fat-bellied Hindu merchant.
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* * *
“Not a grain of paddy to the Government,” that was the resolve of the people of Midnapur in the August days. So, in Contai, three golas containing thousands of maunds of paddy belonging to a jotedar burned for seven days continuously, Later, in the bus, a co-passenger told me that he had himself destroyed 500 maunds of paddy by burying it underground. Another said, “I spent Rs. 800 as bribe so that Government might not know how much stock I had.” In another place, several thousand maunds of paddy were sent to the bottom of the river by excited villagers while on the way to market.
Inspired by only one feeling, hatred of foreign domination, the people of Midnapur of course did not realise then that in their anger they were not doing Government any harm, but merely preparing the way for their own starvation. To deprive Government of rice, they put it in the hands of the hoarder: to fight Government, they strengthened the hands of the enemy at home. Patriotism provided a convenient mask for the hoarders at that time to bring off their shady deals, but the self-same “patriots” did not hesitate later to set the police on hungry peasants when they cried for a morsel of food.
* * *
A little boy, about six years old, was sitting quietly in the dark amidst the ripening corn. The gathering darkness almost hid him from view, only his timid little eyes stood out. It was a sight that defies all description. At our call he came to us, a little black doll made of bones.
Slowly our questions unfolded his little story. His father died of fever, mother of cholera. The eldest brother disappeared without leaving any trace. Another brother, 10 years of age, was a servant in [sic] a Brahmin family in a village lying south of the “deserted village.” The two brothers shared what food they were given. But, for the last couple of days, he was not given any food; when he cried for it, he was beaten — his left arm was still aching. Finally they drove him out. He had no one to go to, no place where he could find refuge. Tired by the warm noon-day sun, he sat in the shadow of the paddy-field [sic] in which we found him in the evening.
“Will you go back to your brother?” asked Tarapada. Shaking his head in violent disagreement, the child replied: “No.” “What is the use of taking him back there?” said Sripati. “They will only drive him out again!”
Just then we remembered that the Congressman we were visiting had opened an orphanage in his village. We explained the orphanage to the child as “Khichuri, clothes and shelter.” He immediately agreed to go there.
His name was Ananta. His father was called Bharat.
Excerpted with permission from Delhi Art Gallery. A Chittaprosad retrospective opens at the gallery in New Delhi on July 11 and Kolkata on August 30
HUNGRY BENGAL
Author: Chittaprosad
Publisher: Delhi Art Gallery
Pages: 60
Price: Rs 600
| A self-taught artist, Chittaprosad was inducted into the Communist Party of India by P C Joshi and assigned, with photographer Sunil Janah, to cover the Bengal Famine in 1943. The famine was caused in part by the government’s shipping of vast quantities of food grain to the East in support of the war against the Japanese. It was largely unreported in the Indian mainstream or the international media at the time. Chittaprosad’s drawings and reportage of its victims appeared in People’s War, the Party’s weekly journal. His excoriating observations and illustrations of his travels in Midnapur district were published as a book in 1943 by People’s Publishing House, Bombay. |
Hungry Bengal is possibly the only personal record of its kind of the famine. The young Chittaprosad was diligent to a fault in noting down the names of the people he drew, what they had eaten (or not), what they were dying of (apart from hunger), how many members of their families had survived (or already died), and gave dignity even to the bodies of the dead being eaten by stray dogs by giving them their names.
All copies were seized by the British and burned on publication, and all material at the press destroyed. Only one copy survived with Chittaprosad, and was kept by his family in a bank vault in Kolkata. It was made available for publication as a facsimile edition to Delhi Art Gallery as part of its retrospective on the artist — the first time it has been seen in print since 1943. An excerpt, with illustrations from the book.