Three Million

Kavita Puri's new series charts key moments in Britain's war against Japan in WWII. Listen now to The History Podcast on BBC Sounds.

Kavita Puri goes to India to meet some of the last survivors of the 1943 Bengal famine. She looks for traces of how war and famine impacted Kolkata and then travels from the city along the road to where the story of famine begins. Kavita goes deep into the countryside and the jungle in West Bengal to find people who lived through that devastating time more than 80 years ago. These are voices that are almost never recorded and have never been broadcast before. For the past year and a half Kavita has been asking why there is no memorial to the three million people who died. But then in the Bengal jungle she finally finds it – it’s not what she expected. Presenter : Kavita Puri Series Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown With thanks to Manoshi Barua for her translation work and to her, Bhasker Patel, Moazzem Hossain and Jesmin Ahmed for voicing up the Bengali-language interviews.

80 years ago at least 3 million Indians, who were British subjects, died in the Bengal famine. But today different generations in Britain are coming to terms with this difficult past. Kavita meets the granddaughter of a senior colonial figure, who is only just learning about her grandfather's role in the famine. Initially she feels shame, but discoveries in her family archive change her perspective. What will she do with this new understanding of her family's history? A 97 year-old British man makes a surprising revelation about his role in the Bengal famine. And three generations on, British Bengalis mark the famine in Britain, in an unexpected way.

The Bengal Famine, particularly the experiences of people in the rural areas who suffered the most, is not well remembered today. There is no memorial, museum, or plaque to the victims or survivors anywhere in the world. One man has made it his life’s work to record their testimonies with paper and pen. Kavita hears from him - and tries to understand more about why the three million people who perished aren’t better remembered or memorialised in India, Bangladesh and Britain. Presenter Kavita Puri Series Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix Taylor With thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee, Professor Joya Chatterji and Dr Diya Gupta.

Kavita discovers a set of cassette tapes containing rare interviews with Indian civil servants who were on the ground across Bengal during the famine, shedding new light on colonial responsibility. And as the need for relief in Bengal becomes ever greater, more pressure is put on the British government from India’s new Viceroy. He asks for more food imports. Could the War Cabinet and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have done more to help alleviate the famine in the middle of the war? Presenter Kavita Puri Series Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele and Sabine Schereck Original music: Felix Taylor With thanks to Dr Janam Mukherjee and Professor Joya Chatterji Interviews conducted by Lance Brennan courtesy of University of Cambridge Interviews with GS Khosla courtesy of University of Cambridge