Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II - Softcover

Mukerjee, Madhusree

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465024815 ISBN 13: 9780465024810

Publisher: Basic Books, 2011

Synopsis

A dogged enemy of Hitler, resolute ally of the Americans, brilliant political strategist, and bold leader of Great Britain through WWII, Winston Churchill is venerated as one of the great political minds of the last century. But while he has been widely extolled for numerous successes, parts of Churchill s record much of which is written by Churchill himself have gone woefully unexamined. As historian Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the genocidal barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with total contempt for Hindu lives. A series of his decisions between 1939 and 1944 directly and knowingly resulted in the deaths of some four million Indians. The streets of Indian cities were lined with the emaciated bodies of the dead, yet in response to an urgent plea from the Indian secretary of state for emergency shipments of food, Churchill is reported to have only responded with a peevish telegram asking why, if food was so scarce, Gandhi hadn t died yet. Combining close research with a vivid narrative, Churchill s Secret War places thisoverlooked tragedy into the larger context of the Second World War, India s fight for freedom, and Churchill s larger legacy. Winston Churchill may have found victory in Europe, but, as Mukerjee reveals in this groundbreaking historical investigation, his decisions nevertheless ravaged India, and ultimately set the stage for the massive bloodletting that accompanied independence.

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Review

"(A) shocking, important study of Britain's treatment of India in the second world war." --Sunday Times

(A) significant and to British readers distressing... It is a ghastly story, and the book s eye-witness accounts of the consequences for the people of Bengal make harrowing reading. Most recent western histories of the war in the east mention the famine as earlier chronicles did not. But Mukerjee s book offers the fullest account I have read...I myself have argued that Churchill s disdain for the interests of black and brown peoples besmirched his awesome wartime record. If the Bengal famine arose from circumstances beyond British control, failure to relieve the starving millions or even to be seen to care much about them was in substantial degree our fault. --Max Hastings

Mukerjee has researched this forgotten holocaust with great care and forensic rigour. Mining an extensive range of sources, she not only sheds light on the imperial shenanigans around the famine, but on a host of related issues, such as the flowering of nationalism in famine-0hit districts, Churchill s fury about the sterling credit that India was piling up in London, or the dreadful situation in the villages even after the famine was technically over. Her calmly phrased but searching account of imperial brutality will shame admirers of the Greatest Briton and horrify just about everyone else. --The Independent

About the Author

Madhusree Mukerjee, a native of India, won a Guggenheim fellowship to write her previous book, The Land of Naked People. She previously served on the board of editors of Scientific American. She lives in Schmitten, Germany.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0465024815
• ISBN 13: 9780465024810
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368