Orwellian Rectification: Popular Churchill Biographies and the 1943 Bengal Famine

Abstract

What Churchill's biographers have written about his life matter because he continues to be deployed by ideological conservatives in the Anglo-Saxon countries as the ideal leader exemplifying decisiveness and moral courage. This content analysis of seventeen popular biographies of Britain's emblematic prime minister show that they consistently ignore material about a decision taken by his government during the Second World War that had disastrous consequences for the Indians. While nearly all of the biographies treat the controversial area bombing of Germany by the Royal Air Force, which resulted in approximately 900,000 deaths of non-combatants, none treat the failure to respond to the 1943 Bengal Famine, which resulted in more deaths than the number of non-combatant deaths. This discrepancy may be explained by unconscious or conscious racist Eurocentrism that places greater value on the lives of Europeans than those of Asians. That was certainly true of their subject, and their choice of subject may reflect shared identity of values. © 2008, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.