Authored by Varun Pathak, Partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and Co, New Delhi and Divyansh Morolia, Fifth-year student at the National Law Institute University, Bhopal
Introduction
There is an old saying: one person’s hero is another person’s villain. And only a few figures in modern history embody this contradiction more starkly than Sir Winston Churchill. For the British, Churchill is immortalised as a hero, the man who stood up to Hitler during the Second World War, whose speeches carried the hopes of a battered nation. But for us Indians, Churchill is not remembered for any of these supposed virtues. He is remembered for something far darker. For us, he is the Butcher of Bengal.
This article critically re-examines Winston Churchill’s legacy by arguing that his wartime policies directly caused the 1943 Bengal Famine, a man-made catastrophe that killed millions. It challenges the heroic narrative surrounding Churchill by highlighting documented evidence of colonial indifference, racial contempt, and deliberate policy choices that exacerbated starvation. Framing these actions through the lens of modern international law, the article explores whether symbolic legal accountability can and should be imposed for historical injustices.
The Bengal Famine: A Man-Made Catastrophe
Churchill’s policies led to the 1943 Bengal Famine, which killed over two million people. It was not a natural calamity but a man-made crime. Children wandered through markets searching for rice that no longer existed for them, mothers sold their last possessions before succumbing on railway platforms, and bodies lay uncollected on the streets of Calcutta.
Recent scientific evidence reinforces what survivors always knew: Bengal did not starve because the monsoon failed. A 2019 study published by the American Geophysical Union used soil moisture data from historic Indian famines and found that, unlike six earlier drought-driven catastrophes, Bengal in 1943 had above-average rainfall and normal moisture levels. The agricultural system had not collapsed; the government had. This aligns with archival records showing that starvation surged because the British wartime administrators refused to act.
Winston Churchill hated Indians. His own words, preserved in contemporaneous communications, show a deep and visceral contempt. He did not view us as humans; to him, we were merely colonial subjects to be exploited for the glory of the British Empire. During War Cabinet meetings, he remarked that “the starvation of anyhow underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks,” and dismissed Indian suffering by saying Indians were “breeding like rabbits.” When told of mass deaths, he reportedly demanded to know why then was Gandhi still alive. These were not slips of the tongue; they were expressions of policy.
India, one of the oldest and richest civilizations in the world, was reduced to economic ruin by the time they left. We fought Britain’s wars. We carried their burden. We did their grunt work. And in return, we were rewarded with systematic neglect.
Churchill’s Role: Policy Choices and Colonial Indifference
The Bengal Famine was not an act of God; it was an act of government. Under Churchill’s leadership, India continued exporting rice while famine ravaged the countryside. His cabinet blocked every urgent request for grain, including the Viceroy’s plea for over a million tonnes of wheat. Ships remained available, but Churchill diverted them to imperial forces. India’s own sterling reserves could not be used to import food. Amartya Sen later showed that Bengal’s famine was not caused by a shortage of food, but by catastrophic failures in allocation and entitlement. The British “denial policy”, which confiscated thousands of boats containing rice in order to deny these supplies to the invading Japanese army, further crippled distribution networks. London received unmistakable warnings about mass death, but Churchill simply chose not to act. This was not mere mismanagement. It was a moral failure of the highest order.
Starvation as a Crime Under Contemporary International Law
By contemporary international law standards, these actions would constitute grave violations. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights guarantee a universal right to food. Modern jurisprudence recognises ‘enforced starvation’ as a crime against humanity, as affirmed in the case of Kaing Guek Eav alias Duch and The Prosecutor v. Clément Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana. Domestic courts, too, have held leaders liable for famine-creating conduct, such as in the case of Ethiopia’s conviction of Mengistu.
Some people ask: What is the point of holding Churchill accountable now? The answer is simple: perhaps not much materially, but symbolically everything. History is full of precedents, the Nuremberg Trials, among others, where the world has collectively declared that certain acts will not go unanswered. It established that legality cannot shield injustice when rights are violated, and it supports the argument that accountability mechanisms may be invoked even long after the original actors have died. Some wounds in history never heal; they continue to fester through generations. And when we look at today’s world, where powerful leaders still destroy innocent lives with impunity, it becomes even more important to start setting historical standards of accountability.
So, can the International Criminal Court prosecute Churchill? Probably not, because its jurisdiction is prospective, after July 1, 2002 (Article 11 of the Rome Statute), and it is a permanent institution with stable procedures, and ordinarily does not permit trials in absentia. (Article 63 of the Rome Statute)
The appropriate mechanism to do so would, therefore, be a UNSC-established ad hoc special tribunal, created under Article 41 of the UN Charter, similar to the Tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Lebanon. Unlike the ICC, special tribunals can be tailored to specific contexts and can explicitly authorise trials in absentia, just as Article 22 of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon did.
Conclusion
Churchill should not solely be remembered as the jolly, cigar-smoking, whisky-drinking British statesman who stood up to Hitler. As Shashi Tharoor observed, Britain hails Churchill as an “apostle of freedom,” yet his policies in Bengal caused more civilian deaths than many acts later condemned as war crimes. He should also be remembered and condemned for what he did to the people of Bengal. Such a tribunal would not rewrite history; it would complete it. It would recognise the millions who died without acknowledgement and confront the colonial violence that still shapes global memory. A symbolic tribunal would finally place responsibility on record, restore dignity to the victims, and signal that imperial powers cannot indefinitely escape moral scrutiny. It would set a precedent for future accountability. Much like France’s recent confrontations with its colonial past, this would be an overdue act of accountability.
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