Bengal Famine: Susannah’s grandfather ruled Bengal when millions died in famine

“I feel enormous shame about what happened,” Susannah Herbert tells me.

Her grandfather was Governor of Bengal in British India during the period before and at the height of the famine in 1943, which killed at least three million people.

She is only just learning about his significant role in the disaster and must come to terms with her family’s complex legacy.

When I first meet her, she is holding a photograph from 1940. It is Christmas at the Governor’s Residence in Bengal. The atmosphere is formal, with people sitting in rows, dressed in their finest, staring straight into the camera.

At the front stand the dignitaries – Viceroy Linlithgow, one of India’s most important colonial figures, and her grandfather Sir John Herbert, the Governor of Bengal.

At her feet lies a little boy in a white shirt and shorts, knee socks and shiny shoes. It is Susannah’s father.

He had told her a few stories from his childhood in India, such as the day Santa Claus came riding on an elephant, but not much more.

However, little was said about her grandfather, who died at the end of 1943.

The causes of the famine are varied and complex. Although John Herbert was the most important colonial figure in Bengal, he was part of a larger colonial structure. He reported to his superiors in Delhi, who in turn reported to their superiors in London.

Dr Janam Mukherjee, historian and author of Hungry Bengal, tells me that Herbert was “the colonial official most directly associated with the famine because he was the head of the Bengal government at the time.”

One of his policies during World War II was the so-called “denial policy”. In thousands of villages, boats and rice – the staple food – were confiscated or destroyed. The policy was pursued out of fear of a Japanese invasion and aimed at denying the enemy local resources for its advance into India.

However, colonial policies had a devastating impact on the already fragile local economy. Fishermen could not go out to sea, farmers could not travel upriver to their fields, and artisans could not take their goods to market. Crucially, rice could not be transported.

Inflation was already high as the colonial government in Delhi printed money to finance the enormous war effort on the Asian front. The hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers in Calcutta – then still known as Kolkata – were overwhelmed with food supplies.

Rice imports from Burma to Bengal had come to a halt after the country fell into Japanese hands. Rice was hoarded, often for profit. And then came a devastating cyclone that destroyed much of Bengal’s rice crop.

Repeated requests – in the middle of the war – to the War Cabinet and Prime Minister Winston Churchill for food imports were rejected or only partially heeded.

The death toll is staggering. I wondered why Susannah, the granddaughter of the Governor of Bengal, still felt shame so many decades later.

She tries to explain: “When I was young, there was something almost glamorous about being connected to the British Empire.”

She says she borrowed a lot of her grandfather’s old clothes. “There were silk scarves with a name tag that said ‘Made in British India’.”

“And now when I see them at the back of the closet, I shudder and ask myself why I even want to wear these things. Because the words ‘British India’ on the label seem inappropriate to me.”

Susannah is determined to learn more about her grandfather’s life in British India and to make sense of things.

She reads everything she can find about the Bengal famine and pores over stacks of her grandparents’ papers in the Herbert Archives at the family home in Wales. They are kept in an air-conditioned room, and an archivist visits once a month.

She begins to understand more about her grandfather. “There is absolutely no doubt that the measures he implemented and initiated contributed enormously to the scale and impact of the famine.”

“He had ability, he had honour. And he should not have been appointed to the post that determines the lives of 60 million people in a remote corner of the British Empire. He simply should not have been appointed.”

In the family archives she found a letter from Lady Mary, her grandmother, written to her husband in 1939 when she heard he had been offered the position of governor. It is a letter full of pros and cons. She clearly had no interest in them leaving, but wrote that she would accept whatever decision he made.

“You read them (the letters) in retrospect, you read them and you know what the writer and the reader did not know. If you could look back in time, you would say: Don’t do it. Don’t go, don’t go to India. You will not do a good job.”

In the months that I followed Susannah Herbert’s journey into the past, she had many detailed questions about her grandfather.

She was keen to meet historian Janam Mukherjee to ask him directly. They are meeting in June.

Janam admits that he never thought he would ever sit across from John Herbert’s granddaughter.

Susannah wants to know why her grandfather, a provincial MP and government whip, was appointed at all when he had virtually no experience in Indian politics apart from a brief stint in Delhi as a young officer.

“It is an integral part of colonialism and stems from an idea of ​​superiority,” explains Janam.

“A member of parliament who has no colonial experience, who has no language skills, who has never worked in a political system outside Britain, can simply walk into the Governor’s House in Calcutta and make decisions about an entire population he knows nothing about.”

While Herbert was not popular with the elected Indian politicians in Bengal, even his superiors in Delhi, including Viceroy Linlithgow, seemed to have doubted his competence.

“Linlithgow called him the weakest governor in India. They were actually interested in removing him but were worried about how that would be received,” says Janam.

“That’s hard to listen to,” Susannah replies.

I am impressed that there is a personal connection between the two. Janam and Susannah had fathers in Calcutta who were little boys at the same time but led completely different lives. They have both died since then. Susannah at least has photos.

Janam had no pictures of his father as a child. “So I knew about his nightmares and the few stories he told me about his childhood experiences in a colonized war zone.”

“I’m trying to reflect on my father’s very disturbed life and understand the impact it has on me as his descendant.”

And then he says something I wasn’t expecting.

“My grandfather also worked for the colonial police. So my grandfather himself was in many ways entangled in the colonial system. So there are these interesting similarities in our motivations for understanding.”

At least three million people died in the Bengal famine, and there is no memorial to them anywhere in the world, not even a plaque.

Susannah can at least point to a memorial for her grandfather.

“There is a plaque in his honour in the church where we worship.” She explains that there is no grave. She is not sure where his remains are, perhaps in Calcutta.

“Honor” is a word Susannah used to describe her grandfather, even as she acknowledged his mistakes.

“Although I find it relatively easy to accept that the story is much more complicated than we were originally told, I still find it difficult to imagine that John Herbert (…) could have acted dishonorably in any way.”

Janam sees it differently. “In many ways, these questions of intent have never interested me. I am more interested in the historical course of events because I believe that intent can always obscure what is happening.”

Eighty years later, it’s still complicated and painful. I wonder if Susannah, after months of research, still feels “shame” is the right word to describe how she feels?

She tells me she has changed her view. “I think the word shame focuses too much on my feelings. It’s not just about me and what I think.”

“It’s part of a bigger project, I suppose, about understanding and communicating how we got to where we are. We? I mean Britain, I mean this country.”

Janam agrees: “As a descendant of a colonial official, I don’t think there is any particular shame that accumulates over generations. I think it is the shame of Britain.”

“I mean, people starved in Bengal. So I think there is cause for historical reflection on both an individual and a collective level.”

Susannah reflects on her legacy. She wants to share her learnings with her family, but isn’t sure how they will react.

She hopes her children will help her work through the mountains of papers in the family archives in Wales.

They too are grappling with a complex personal legacy as Britain attempts to come to terms with this difficult part of its wartime and colonial past.