Lindemann’s Role in Bengal Famine of 1943

The physicist Frederick Alexander Lindemann, a longtime friend of Winston Churchill’s, was brought in to oversee the care and nourishment of the British people. Lindeman, the man in charge of the government’s scientific judgments, was known as the Prof to admirers (for his academic qualifications and intellect). In addition, he was the head of the Statistics Division, or S branch, which he used to monitor the regular ministries’ performance and set priorities for the military’s logistical apparatus. At least one message was conveyed to the prime minister every day by Lindemann, who attended sessions of the War Cabinet and accompanied him on foreign trips. For the length of the conflict, he was the most trusted civilian advisor to Churchill. 

Even when their views did not align, Lindemann fought tirelessly to persuade Churchill to alter his viewpoint. He applied sotto voce, but with perfect self-confidence, as if explaining things that must be evident to any kid, said Roy Harrod, a S branch employee who went on to become one of Britain’s top economists. Any person who did not agree with Lindemann was considered an absolute fool by him. At first, MacDougall, Lindemann’s assistant, said, this final form of shortening of our work frightened me—and my colleagues. The S branch personnel soon recognized, however, that the professor was only anticipating the intentions of the prime minister. We had a responsibility to counter-brief the Prime Minister on the lines of his own thinking, according to Harrod, after the typical government machinery churned out certain recommendations. According to the Prof, the S branch’s job was to establish rationales for each course of action the prime minister chose. 

First, other department heads were infuriated since they could not defend themselves against the Prof’s criticisms because Lindmann has complete access to the S branch’s computations and data of all departments and so they couldn’t counter his arguments. Churchill’s steadfast commitment to the Lindmann would not be swayed by one hair’s breadth notwithstanding their rejected aspersions, insinuations, or attempts at exposure, said Harrod, it didn’t take long for the sceptics to come to this realization. He would make judgments on the optimum use of space on ships, how much British supplies were needed, how much mustard gas was needed, how many German residences needed to be bombed, and how much famine aid should be sent to Bengal at the time. 

At the end of 1942, Lindemann had been promoted to paymaster-general and given the honorary title of Lord Cherwell. It was in the realm of plants, animals, and minerals that Lord Cherwell most clearly shown his affinity for his friend’s support and rewarded it. Meat was one of Prime Minister Churchill’s most important priorities.  The prime minister even inquired about the possibility of getting some meat from Argentina on a ship returning from the Middle East. Lindmann was a vegetarian, but when it came to feeding the British people, he turned a flesh-eater “an anti-vegetarian to the extreme. No one worked harder than Lindmann in the effort to keep the British people nourished during the war, MacDougall claimed. 

Food imports as well as raw material imports were not coming quickly enough for Lord Cherwell’s most trusted aide, Donald MacDougall, at the S branch. A more experienced economist had already gone (Roy Harrod) at that point.  MacDougall feared that stocks could quite potentially fall to dangerously low levels before very long if the United Kingdom didn’t receive additional shipping for civilian requirements.  The stock may, however, be properly safeguarded by reducing the number of ships servicing the Indian Ocean region to 60% and bringing the balance to service the import programme on the Atlantic side. 

As a result, one of Churchill’s most consequential judgments was conceived. Lindmann delivered a report to the prime minister on 2nd January of the year 1943, according to which the reduction of 90 monthly sailings to 50 for the months of January, February, and March would boost UK imports by one million tones, and the reduction to 40 would increase imports by 1.25 million tones. In addition, the benefit would be raised to 312 million if the reduction were continued through to the end of June, Cherwell said. There were no mentions in the document of any negative repercussions of the reduction, even if the first option seemed sufficient to fulfil the requirements of the United Kingdom. Thus, Churchill drew a circle around the most extreme alternative. MacDougall’s recommendation to reduce Indian Ocean shipping to 60% ended up as a steeper reduction, to 44%—and for a duration that was double the time recommended in the other option. 

In the aftermath of the gradual disappearance of ships from the Indian Ocean, the economy of the countries bordering it began to falter. Colonial offices were inundated with desperate pleas. In that year, hunger struck many British Overseas Territories bordering the Indian Ocean, including Kenya, Tanganyika, and British Somaliland. Drought and wartime inflation are both blamed as well as Indian merchants’ stockpiling of food for their own use. A shipping halt in 1943 may have been one factor in causing all of the famines, including Bengal’s. 

The shipping committee met of the War Cabinet met on July 30, 1943, in London, to discuss a grain request from Lord Linlithgow who was then the Viceroy of India.  This nation may not be suitable as a base until the food crisis is resolved, according to an India Office envoy who said “famine conditions” had appeared in Bengal and areas of the south of the country. According to a document written for prime minister the day before War Cabinet took up the issue by the Lord Cherwell, the import of grains should or may play an important role. He said that the urgency had disappeared despite India’s pressing needs during the previous winter. (A famine had broken out, according to the India Office, but Cherwell saw no connection to the earlier crisis.) Added to this, the Indian harvest was massive as well. Cherwell claimed that imports were seen as a way to get stock from hoarders. 

A report by Field Marshal Wavell, who was appointed as the replacement of Linlithgow, was used by Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery on November 10, 1943, to arrange a third War Cabinet meeting on relief. Amery predicted that Bengal’s winter rice crop would not be ready until January 1944. In order for the Indian government to have a “fighting chance” of obtaining all of the grain it needs from anxious farmers, an additional 50,000 tons of wheat must be delivered by the end of December, along with a commitment to provide the same volume each month afterwards. In December, January, and February, Amery focused on collecting at least 50,000 tones from Leathers, who had earlier said they couldn’t provide such volumes. 

Lord Cherwell had written to the Prime Minister the day before the cabinet meeting was to take place. In comparison to India’s entire use of more than 4 million tons a month, the amounts indicated are relatively little, he started as usual. This argument must be based on a sham (given Wilson’s September memo). Imports like these may deter hoarders, but the work had already been done in that direction. Using the shipments, we’ve already agreed to send, we can create persuasive propaganda to deter people from stockpiling. He went on to say that if the population of a nation continues to grow at an unsustainable rate, then food scarcity will be an ongoing problem. Small local shortages or crop failures must create significant anguish in these conditions. As long as the conflict is going on, India’s high birth rate might put a lot of strain on this nation, which is not used to dealing with the pressure of a rising population on a limited supply of food. 

Malthus and Darwin’s intertwined worldview offered Victorian aristocrats an explanation for not just species evolution but also social order. It was during Churchill’s time in India in the late 1890s that he developed the romantic hero Savrola, who reflected on his time in India and his belief that the country with the greatest values would prevail. Excessive empathy might prolong the crippling traits of defeated peoples, putting the greater good in danger. Poorest Indians were found to be the most vulnerable to famine in an 1881 Government of India assessment, and relief efforts would only serve to keep them alive, leaving the surviving even more impoverished. Death may even be a blessing in disguise for individuals who have been rejected by nature. 

Lord Cherwell argued that the Bengal famine was caused by a combination of crop failure and a high birthrate in his note to Churchill. However, he failed to mention that the disaster was also caused by India’s efforts as a supplier to the war effort that was Allied, that it was not allowed to use its sterling reserves or to use its own ships to import sufficient food. Truly by his Malthusian logic Britain should have been the first to starve—but was sustained by food imports that were six times larger than the 1.5 million tones that the Government of India had has asked for to sustain its people. The report did highlight the possibility that aid to over-fecund Indians may cause damage to long-suffering Britons. Cherwell felt that the world should be ruled by a limited group of clever and aristocratic people. He argued, those who succeed in achieving what everyone desires must be the most able.  Cherwell thought the general public was “very stupid,” that Australians were inferior to Britons, that homosexuals should be treated harshly, and that criminals deserved being treated with cruelty. 

Cherwell also mentioned eugenic principles in a speech he gave many times, most likely in the early 1930s. He had outlined a scientific answer to a problem that preoccupied many a thinker at the time: sustaining the superior classes’ dominion for all time. In a draught of this address, the scientist said that any effort to impose onto Nature an equality she has never acknowledge will always result in bloodshed. Instead of adhering to what he termed “the fetish of equality,” he advocated for the acceptance and even enhancement of individual variations via research. He said that waiting for the accidental process of natural selection to guarantee that the sluggish and ponderous intellect gravitates to the lowest kind of work was no longer essential. Surgery, mind control, and medication and hormone manipulations are just some of the new technologies that will one day enable individuals to be fine-tuned for particular activities. 

The is how Lindmann, later known as Lord Cherwell, was such a big character in and played his hand in the Bengal Famine of 1943.