page_title: Bengal famine of 1943
section_title: Famine, disease, and the death toll
hierarchical_section_title: Bengal famine of 1943 / Famine, disease, and the death toll
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of Bengal in 1943, including its districts
context_page_description: The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India during World War II. An estimated 2.1–3 million, out of a population of 60.3 million, died of starvation, malaria, or other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions and lack of health care. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and catastrophically disrupted the social fabric. Eventually, families disintegrated; men sold their small farms and left home to look for work or to join the British Indian Army, and women and children became homeless migrants, often travelling to Calcutta or other large cities in search of organised relief. Historians usually characterise the famine as anthropogenic, asserting that wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis. A minority view exists, however, that holds that the famine was the result of natural causes.
  Bengal's economy had been predominantly agrarian, with between half and three-quarters of the rural poor subsisting in a "semi-starved condition".
context_section_description: An estimated 2.1–3 million Bengalis died, out of a population of 60.3 million. However, contemporary mortality statistics were to some degree under-recorded, particularly for the rural areas, where data collecting and reporting was rudimentary even in normal times. Thus, many of those who died or migrated were unreported. The principal causes of death also changed as the famine progressed in two waves.
  Early on, conditions drifted towards famine at different rates in different Bengal districts. The Government of India dated the beginning of the Bengal food crisis from the air raids on Calcutta in December 1942, blaming the acceleration to full-scale famine by May 1943 on the effects of price decontrol. However, in some districts the food crisis had begun as early as mid-1942. The earliest indications were somewhat obscured, since rural poor were able to draw upon various survival strategies for a few months. After December 1942 reports from various commissioners and district officers began to cite a "sudden and alarming" inflation, nearly doubling the price of rice; this was followed in January by reports of distress caused by serious food supply problems. In May 1943, six districts – Rangpur, Mymensingh, Bakarganj, Chittagong, Noakhali and Tipperah – were the first to report deaths by starvation. Chittagong and Noakhali, both "boat denial" districts in the Ganges Delta (or Sundarbans Delta) area, were the hardest hit. In this first wave – from May to October 1943 – starvation was the principal cause of excess mortality (that is, those attributable to the famine, over and above the normal death rates), filling the emergency hospitals in Calcutta and accounting for the majority of deaths in some districts. According to the Famine Inquiry Commission report, many victims on the streets and in the hospitals were so emaciated that they resembled "living skeletons". While some districts of Bengal were relatively less affected throughout the crisis, no demographic or geographic group was completely immune to increased mortality rates caused by disease – but deaths from starvation were confined to the rural poor.
  Deaths by starvation had peaked by November 1943. Disease began its sharp upward turn around October 1943 and overtook starvation as the most common cause of death around December. Disease-related mortality then continued to take its toll through early-to-mid 1944. Among diseases, malaria was the biggest killer. From July 1943 to June 1944, the monthly death toll from malaria averaged 125% above rates from the previous five years, reaching 203% above average in December 1943. Malaria parasites were found in nearly 52% of blood samples examined at Calcutta hospitals during the peak period, November–December 1944. Statistics for malaria deaths are almost certainly inaccurate, since the symptoms often resemble those of other fatal fevers, but there is little doubt that it was the main killer. Other famine-related deaths resulted from dysentery and diarrhoea, typically through consumption of poor-quality food or deterioration of the digestive system caused by malnutrition. Cholera is a waterborne disease associated with social disruption, poor sanitation, contaminated water, crowded living conditions (as in refugee camps), and a wandering population – problems brought on after the October cyclone and flooding and then continuing through the crisis. The epidemic of smallpox largely resulted from a result of lack of vaccinations and the inability to quarantine patients, caused by general social disruption. According to social demographer Arup Maharatna, statistics for smallpox and cholera are probably more reliable than those for malaria, since their symptoms are more easily recognisable.
  The mortality statistics present a confused picture of the distribution of deaths among age and gender groups. Although very young children and the elderly are usually more susceptible to the effects of starvation and disease, overall in Bengal it was adults and older children who suffered the highest proportional mortality rises. However, t
caption: Map of Bengal districts 1943
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