Around three million people are estimated to have died during the Bengal famine of 1943, a calamity that scarred the last years of British rule in India. A drought, war expenditures but above all poor government policy have since been blamed.
In his seminal work “Poverty and Famines” (1981) Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen showed that a root cause of the Bengal famine was the economic boom in cities. This caused food prices to soar, taking a toll on the rural population.
At the time of the famine, Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (1915-1978), a political artist and active supporter of the Communist Party of India, vividly captured the human cost of the famine. In November 1943, through his ink drawings and detailed annotations, he kept a log of his travels through famine-struck Midnapur, a district in India’s present-day state of West Bengal.
In his sketches, the political artist targeted British colonial rule and global capitalism, which he identified as the main culprits of the deadly food crisis.
His sketches were published first as illustrations in left-leaning newspapers and later in “Hungry Bengal,” his first publication. The British administration confiscated and destroyed almost all copies of Hungry Bengal. The only copy known to have survived has recently been republished. In 1944, Chittaprosad traveled to other regions in Bengal, many of which are in present-day Bangladesh, where he chronicled the lasting effects of the famine.
Chittaprosad’s work goes beyond his sharp social critique. His black-and-white ink drawings, prints and watercolors were unlike anything that was coming out of India at the time. His works remind viewers more of contemporary graphic novels than of the Soviet-style propaganda they echo. The carved faces, barren trees and lined rib cages of his illustrations tell a story of inescapable scarcity and deprivation through simple black strokes.
Many of the original sketches from the Hungry Bengal series are now on show at the artist’s retrospective in New Delhi. Other works include a wide range of propaganda posters, illustrations for children, and even linocut prints of embracing lovers. The exhibition, which started last week, runs in the city’s Delhi Art Gallery until Aug. 20.
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