THE MOST SERIOUS BLOT upon the wartime Raj, and arguably upon Britain’s entire war effort, was the 1943–44 Bengal famine. The loss of Burma deprived India of 15 percent of its food supplies. When a series of floods and cyclones—natural catastrophes to which low-lying East Bengal is chronically vulnerable—struck the region, wrecking its 1942 harvest, the population fell prey to desperate hunger. Much transport was destroyed, further impeding movement of food supplies.
