Three Million: 4. The tapes

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kavita Puri discovers a set of cassette tapes containing rare interviews with Indian civil servants who were on the ground across Bengal during the famine, shedding new light on colonial responsibility.

And as the need for relief in Bengal becomes ever greater, more pressure is put on the British government from India’s new Viceroy. He asks for more food imports. Could the War Cabinet and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have done more to help alleviate the famine in the middle of the war?

Presenter: Kavita Puri Series producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix Taylor

With thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee and Professor Joya Chatterji

Interviews conducted by Lance Brennan courtesy of University of Cambridge

Interviews with GS Khosla courtesy of University of Cambridge

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Kavita Puri with 3 million.
0:07.0	The story of the 3 million people who died in the devastating famine in Bengal in British India during World War II.
0:15.0	Something rather strange happened while I was doing some research for the
0:21.4	podcast at Cambridge University.
0:23.4	And let me get my notes.
0:26.4	Just before leaving I wanted to double check something with a head archivist.
0:30.7	I knocked on his office door and asked him if it showed me everything he had on the Bengal
0:36.3	famine.
0:37.9	He tapped his fingers on his desk, then reached across the piles of books and papers.
0:45.0	He's just given me this tiny box containing 10 microcets
0:51.0	and these are all interviews that were conducted in the 80s by Dr. L Brennan
1:01.2	Hove South Australia. Along the spine of each cassette, a name's written in tiny letters.
1:10.0	God knows how long they've been sitting on a desk for decades by the look of it.
1:14.4	I've been given a dikto phone and I think we may even be the first people to be listening to them.
1:21.0	I hope the tape doesn't get you now.
1:27.0	Yeah the Riot Relief Work under AA Carnesquire I see as...
1:35.0	The tapes are a treasure trove.
1:40.0	There's about 15 hours worth of material on them, recorded by historian Lance Brennan.
1:45.4	Well, I was born in Perth in Western Australia, but I teach now in Adelaide.
1:51.4	He spent a few weeks in India and Bangladesh interviewing Indian civil servants,
1:56.4	part of the colonial administration during the famine. What's extraordinary
2:01.3	is that these men worked on the ground right across Bengal,
	...

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