We failed over Churchill race claim says BBC
THE BBC has admitted it fell short of its impartiality guidelines by failing to challenge a claim that Winston Churchill was motivated by racism over an Indian famine.
Historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee told BBC News at Ten in July last year that Churchill was ‘seen as the precipitator of mass killing’ for his policies during the 1943 Bengal famine.
Another contributor, Yasmin Khan of Oxford University, claimed Churchill was ‘prioritising white lives over Asian lives’ by not sending aid to India.
The broadcast was part of a series of reports which examined Britain’s colonial legacy.
A viewer complained that the report ‘did not take proper account of the fact that Britain was engaged in a world war at the time’ and criticised the accusations of racism directed at Churchill. The BBC executive complaints unit (ECU) upheld part of the complaint and said the broadcast should have offered alternative views of Churchill.
A spokesman said: ‘More exploration of alternative views of Churchill’s actions and motives in relation to the Bengal famine was required to meet the standard of impartiality appropriate to a report in a news bulletin of this kind.’ Historians argue more lives could have been saved if India had received more relief, but they are divided over claims Churchill was partly to blame.
Yogita Limaye, the BBC News India correspondent who led the report, said many Indians blamed him for ‘making the situation worse’. But some have argued there were more significant factors than Churchill.
Tirthankar Roy, an economic history professor at the LSE, argues India’s vulnerability to famine was due to its unequal distribution of food. He also blamed a lack of investment in agriculture and failings by the local government. ‘Winston Churchill was not a relevant factor behind the 1943 Bengal famine,’ he has said.
‘The agency with the most responsibility for causing the famine and not doing enough was the government of Bengal.’
The ECU judgment stated: ‘It is hardly controversial to say Churchill on occasion expressed attitudes which many would now regard as evidence of racism, and the ECU thought it editorially justifiable to refer to the issue of racism in the context of a report focusing on Indian attitudes which run counter to the received view of Churchill.’
‘Justifiable to refer to the issue’