The Bengal famine of 1943 is a complex and contentious period in our colonial history. Taught in Indian schools as part of the history curriculum, this event has been studied extensively through various historical and political lenses. This resource pack is curated with the aim to equip educators with primary sources such as artworks and newspapers as well as secondary sources like essays that can engage students as active learners in the classroom.
LOOKING CLOSELY
Browse through a curated collection of images and artworks from the DAG collection that visually brings to life the Bengal Famine of 1943.
SUGGESTED AUDIENCE
Learners in middle school and high school
SUGGESTED USE
Introducing the topic of the famine by helping to visualise its impact on ordinary people; exploring the effects and impact of the second world war outside Europe and in the erstwhile colonies; looking at journalism and the role of artists; delving into printmaking as an artistic medium; introducing the concept of social realism; using artworks as prompts or material for students to create projects on the topic.
Chittaprosad
Halisahar, Chittagong 1944
Ink on paper
Paritosh Sen
Untitled
Ink on paper
Chittaprosad
Untitled
Linocut on paper
Zainul Abedin
Untitled 1942
Woodcut on newsprint paper
Chittaprosad
Purna Sashi 1944
Ink on paper
Gobardhan Ash
One by One 1943
Water colour on paper
Ramkinkar Baij
Untitled 1943
Water colour and ink on paper
Chittaprosad
A Pox Ridden Young Widow and Her Son 1944
Newspaper print
Chittaprosad
Humanity dehumanised, from Hungry Bengal 1943
READ
Delve into writings about the Bengal Famine 1943 collected from DAG’s extensive list of publications.
SUITABLE FOR
Learners in high school and above
SUGGESTED USE
Delving deeper into discourses around the famine through secondary sources; introduction to using eyewitness accounts and journals/diaries as primary sources; introduction to concepts of journalism; introduction to the modes of writing about trauma and tragedy.
An excerpt from Chittaprosad’s Hungry Bengal
Artist Chittaprosad, an active member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), travelled across Bengal during the famine and documented through sketches and journal entries his eyewitness accounts of the conditions in the streets of Kolkata as well as Contai, Bikrampur, and other regions of the former Midnapore district.
Many of his writings and sketches were published in prominent communist publications of the time. A set of twenty sketches, along with some of his journal entries were published as a volume titled ‘Hungry Bengal’, which was met with suppression by the British authorities, resulting in only one copy of the book surviving. Hungry Bengal was republished by DAG, and here an excerpt from it has been reproduced.
LOOKING FURTHER
A researched round-up of primary and secondary sources from across the web on the Bengal Famine of 1943.
SUGGESTED AUDIENCE
Middle school to high school learners and above
SUGGESTED USE
Introduction to the various forms primary sources can take; delving deeper into different aspects of the larger topic; roadmap to exploring the topic beyond textbooks; providing inspiration and information for projects.
Famine In Bengal
British Pathé
Watch a video made as an appeal for help during the famine from the archives of the British Pathe. Notice the archival notes to find insights about the way these videos were often catalogued, for example the language is noted as “possibly Hindustani”.
What language do you think the voice over is actually in?
Sunil Jana Photographs
PIX
Sunil Janah, like Chittaprosad, was also a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and an artist who travelled across Bengal capturing scenes of the famine on his camera.
Discover his photographs published in People’s War newspaper and read about his work in this article.
Indian Famine Threat Persists; Outside Help Urgently Needed
The New York Times
How were Indians outside India, or members of the diasporic community, reacting to the famine? This 1946 New York Times article gives us a glimpse at the diasporic Indian community’s response
Chittaprosad
Gallery Exhibition
Chittaprosad’s works have been instrumental in creating the visual consciousness we have of the Famine today.
Explore more through DAG’s landmark exhibition about this extraordinary artist and activist.
Amrita Bazaar Patrika
Newspaper
Chittaprosad’s works were regularly published in CPI newspapers of the time such as Janayuddha and People’s War.
Leaf through how other Indian newspapers reported the famine
The figure on display, documented in Halisahar in Chittagong, was once one of the respected elders of the village, but reduced to a syphilitic patient during the famine. A note by the artist on the reverse of the painting states that the man had nine other family members who were routinely exploited by a dealer siphoning items off the family’s ration cards. When enquired about the state of affairs in the village, the artist was told that ‘at least 5% of the villagers’ exploited the rest as they had no purchasing power.
YEAR
1944
MEDIUM
Ink on paper
1 / 9
A painter, illustrator, and writer, Paritosh Sen (1918 – 2008) was part of the world of Indian art for over five decades. He grew up in Calcutta in 1930s and ‘40s belonging to a generation of artists who witnessed the suffering the city was put through during independence struggle and the Bengal famine of 1943. The figure in the drawing appears to be dazed from hunger—devoid of strength, he seems unable to even hold himself straight. Cats, crows and vultures populate the backdrop— scavenger animals which patiently await the death of the figure and others like him.
MEDIUM
Ink on paper
2 / 9
Volunteering for the Communist Party of India’s relief efforts, the prominent left-wing artist Chittaprosad extensively toured rural Bengal to document the devastation wreaked by the man-made Famine of 1943. As an extension of this documentation project, Chittaprosad travelled through parts of East Bengal in 1944—Cox’s bazaar, Munshiganj and Chittagong, and visited relief hospitals overflowing with hungry and diseased bodies. Thick, black lines crowd this lino print of starving children from Cox’s Bazaar (in present day Bangladesh). All three figures bear signs of extreme malnutrition—the boy appears to be showing early signs of elephantiasis on his lower legs, and a cut on his right calf seems to be shoddily bandaged. Their eyes would have haunted thousands of readers, who encountered narratives of the famine in cheaply printed Communist newspapers.
MEDIUM
Linocut on paper
3 / 9
Artists Chittaprosad and Zainul Abedin extensively documented the inhuman conditions of suffering in Bengal in the early 1940s, the adversity of its people gravely increased by the 1943 manmade Great Bengal Famine. In Abedin’s prints, such as the one on display, we are shown the miserable suffering of a starving people with no help, or hope, in sight. A figure—sitting hunched over with his head resting on his knees—is steeped in pathos and misery.
YEAR
1942
MEDIUM
Woodcut on newsprint paper
4 / 9
The desolation caused by the famine was not only physical sickness and death, but exhaustive psychological trauma amongst the survivors. Purna Shashi, sitting hunched over and bearing visible markers of starvation, portrays the suffering in her solemn, almost hazed expression. Dated mid-1944, this picture is from a period when the food shortage had ended, but diseases such as malaria continued to thrive in the sickly condition.
YEAR
1944
MEDIUM
Ink on paper
5 / 9
One by One paints a ghastly picture—surviving through the sufferance and death of your children—a lived reality for many survivors of the 1943 famine. Four figures of various ages are seen under a tree, while the dead body of the fifth, the youngest, lies motionless next to the mother. The title of the work hints at more deaths in the family’s future, where, one by one they succumb to hunger and sickness. Unlike the idealised shoshya shyamala (fertile green) depiction of Bengal, Ash’s famine paintings show a sickly ochre-tint.
YEAR
1943
MEDIUM
Water colour on paper
6 / 9
Ramkinkar Baij (1906-80) paints a gruesome image of human suffering in this Untitled painting. Three vultures surround the carcass of a deceased person—shrivelled with skin sunken into bones, the corpse bears the signs of famine-affected undernourishment. Painted in grey with a splattering of red, the image evokes bleakness of the human condition. Not only is death a constant of the time, the horrifying visual on display symbolises a grotesque norm where dead are left on the streets to scavengers.
YEAR
1943
MEDIUM
Water colour and ink on paper
7 / 9
Chittaprosad’s sketches of the reality of the famine frequently appeared in newspapers run by the Communist Party of India (CPI) such as Janayuddha and People’s War (like this image). Images such as these played a crucial role in making visible the continued effects of the famine which included widespread diseases like malaria and pox even after the food shortage had begun to wane.
YEAR
1944
MEDIUM
Newspaper print
8 / 9
Twenty of Chittaprosad’s eyewitness sketches of the famine on scenes across the Midnapore district as well as the streets of Kolkata, were compiled as a book ‘Hungry Bengal’. Done in the mode of social realism, these sketches capture not only the physical effects of the famine but also provide a sense of the immense psychological trauma wreaked upon the population.
