A forgotten famine of '43? Travancore's muffled 'cry of distress

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3606985
AutoresAkhila Balasubramanian (0000-0001-5800-3210, Australian National University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen57
Número5
Páginas1495-1529
Fecha de publicación2023-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x21000706
OpenAlexW4380482454
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas39

Mass disease and starvation in the princely state of Travancore during the Second World War claimed some 90,000 lives. However, this episode has never received much prominence, especially when compared to the simultaneous crisis in Bengal. It is, in many ways, forgotten. Instead, Travancore's wartime food management apparatus appears in some accounts as a success story. How did this happen? Integration into the world economy, the reordering of a rigid social structure, and popular political pressures on an autocratic princely regime created a unique set of conditions that left Travancore vulnerable to food scarcity and conflict during the Second World War. A particularly draconian princely regime that suppressed civil liberties prevented the gravity of the situation from being understood. This culminated in vastly unequal suffering and disease-related deaths. But the story is not merely one of despair. The Indian communists took advantage of war conditions to bring together agricultural and factory labourers and contribute to improving the food situation in this 'People's War', while mainstream nationalists sought to obstruct the war effort and have the British 'quit' India. Wartime activities would shape the unique post-colonial politics of what became the state of Kerala in 1956. Intervening at the intersection of the historiographies of food and the princely states, this article adds a regional perspective to the nation-centric social history of the Second World War in South Asia. Hunger was a constitutive experience of this period across various parts of India, but the post-colonial political legacies of war could be regionally distinct

Autocracy · Colonialism · Democracy · Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Famine · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science · History · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Social and Economic Development in India · South Asian Studies and Conflicts