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#Infrastructure in British #India:
"Natural drainage of Bengal was disturbed due to construction of a network of #railway embankments resulting in formation of poorly drained “compartments” in different areas of Bengal. This led to excessive silting, damaged crop production, increased chance of flooding and created stagnant water pockets that were apt for water-borne diseases like cholera and malaria."
Excerpt from: https://learn.culturalindia.net/bengal-famine-1943.html
#famine #starvation #agriculture #rice #Bangladesh #Churchill #wwii #transport #railways #railTransport #crops #colonialism #BritishEmpire #BritishRule
“For nearly a thousand years, communities on the Indian subcontinent had coexisted in a cultural melting where religious identity was less salient than ethnic or linguistic identity. “A hybrid Indo-Islamic civilization emerged,” according to the historian of India William Dalrymple. “In the nineteenth century, India was still a place where traditions, languages, and cultures cut across religious groupings, and where people did not define themselves primarily through their religious faith.” Much as communities had negotiated means of coexistence in pre-Mandate Palestine only to see them unravel during British rule, the subcontinent’s communal arrangements corroded when the full weight of Britain’s colonial state bore down on them. The Raj’s divide and rule policies produced a chemical-like reaction, shattering long-standing traditions of coexistence and interacting with local personalities who had their own ambitions, passions, and allegiances. It was another liberal experiment in empire gone horribly wrong, and on a scale so epic that once history’s chain of contingent events combusted, no one could contain it.”
Excerpt from Caroline Elkins' #book, "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire"
@bookstodon hat-tip @markvonwahlde
“In her magisterial book The Great Partition, Yasmin Khan offers a sobering conclusion: The Partition of 1947 is also a loud reminder, should we care to listen, of the dangers of colonial interventions and the profound difficulties that dog regime change. It stands testament to the follies of empire, which ruptures community evolution, distorts historical trajectories and forces violent state formation from societies that would otherwise have taken different—and unknowable—paths. Partition is a lasting lesson of both the dangers of imperial hubris and the reactions of extreme nationalism. For better or worse, two nations continue to live alongside each other in South Asia and continue to live with these legacies.”
―Caroline Elkins, "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire"