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Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943

An estimated 3 million people died due to the Bengal famine of 1943. The purpose of this article is to theorize the Bengal famine through the lens of colonial biopolitics. The colonial strategies and utilitarian principles by the British authorities exacerbated the Bengal famine. Utilizing Foucault’...

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Autor principal: Mallik, Senjuti
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9735018/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36531534
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10803-4
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author Mallik, Senjuti
author_facet Mallik, Senjuti
author_sort Mallik, Senjuti
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description An estimated 3 million people died due to the Bengal famine of 1943. The purpose of this article is to theorize the Bengal famine through the lens of colonial biopolitics. The colonial strategies and utilitarian principles by the British authorities exacerbated the Bengal famine. Utilizing Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, I point out how the British viewed Indian bodies discursively. To reaffirm their sense of superiority, they reduced their Indian subjects to animal-like beings’ incapable of controlling their own reproduction. In order to fulfil British goals, Indian people were forced to participate in the war effort. This paper situates the local and global politics of the famine as they were wrapped up in the geopolitics of World War II, during which the British colonial authorities were far more concerned about a Japanese invasion of South Asia than they were with the lives of people dying of hunger. The article highlights how the implementation of racist policies worsened the famine since it was a product of wartime priorities and calculations. I argue that the Bengal famine of 1943 is a historic tragedy of the colonial past, which was transformed into a socially constructed catastrophe by the British colonizers.Geographers have never studied the Bengal famine of 1943, and one of the principal purposes of this paper is to fill this void.
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spelling pubmed-97350182022-12-12 Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 Mallik, Senjuti GeoJournal Article An estimated 3 million people died due to the Bengal famine of 1943. The purpose of this article is to theorize the Bengal famine through the lens of colonial biopolitics. The colonial strategies and utilitarian principles by the British authorities exacerbated the Bengal famine. Utilizing Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, I point out how the British viewed Indian bodies discursively. To reaffirm their sense of superiority, they reduced their Indian subjects to animal-like beings’ incapable of controlling their own reproduction. In order to fulfil British goals, Indian people were forced to participate in the war effort. This paper situates the local and global politics of the famine as they were wrapped up in the geopolitics of World War II, during which the British colonial authorities were far more concerned about a Japanese invasion of South Asia than they were with the lives of people dying of hunger. The article highlights how the implementation of racist policies worsened the famine since it was a product of wartime priorities and calculations. I argue that the Bengal famine of 1943 is a historic tragedy of the colonial past, which was transformed into a socially constructed catastrophe by the British colonizers.Geographers have never studied the Bengal famine of 1943, and one of the principal purposes of this paper is to fill this void. Springer Netherlands 2022-12-06 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9735018/ /pubmed/36531534 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10803-4 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Mallik, Senjuti
Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
title Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
title_full Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
title_fullStr Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
title_full_unstemmed Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
title_short Colonial Biopolitics and the Great Bengal Famine of 1943
title_sort colonial biopolitics and the great bengal famine of 1943
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9735018/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36531534
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10803-4
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