As in China, grain was taken away from Bengal even while people were starving, because it was needed to feed troops overseas. The British War Cabinet refused to divert wartime shipping to send supplies to the starving. Leading politicians, including Churchill and the secretary of state for India, Leo Amery, displayed attitudes toward the Indian population ranging from detachment to outright hostility, the latter a product in part of the Quit India movement (which Chiang had tried to persuade Gandhi and Nehru against), but also of the prime minister’s long-standing dislike of Indians.28 But
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