Hunger’s Cry: Bijon Bhattacharya’s “Nabanna” and the Bengal Famine of 1943

Winston Churchill once infamously iterated that unlike many other great populace of the world, Indians were so effectively shielded from perils of the World War (Mukherjee xiii) This blatant disregard of actual history can be found aplenty when one reads brutish British prime-minister Winston Churchill’s version of history of Second World War. Churchill’s messianic role as the chief antagonist to the global evil called Adolf Hitler earned him accolades worldwide as well as a Noble Prize in Literature! But the role he played as the chief architect of the slow genocide of millions of Bengalis through the worst engineered famine in history was never put to trial as perpetrator of heinous war crimes.