The Artist as Witness:
Zainul Abedin and the Bengal Famine of 1943
James Lewis
December 2008
www.livingwithflooding.eu
The Bengal Famine of 1943 is said to have caused the deaths of possibly 4 million people.
At that time, Bengal continued to be ruled by the British colonial government of India, being
divided in 1971 by the Partition and the creation of Bangladesh. In 1943, during World War
Two, Japan had occupied most south-east Asian countries, including Burma, it being
anticipated that Bengal would be next to fall. In preparation for possible enemy occupation,
the government removed Bengal rice stocks, destroyed country boats - the most common
means of transport in rural Bengal - and a large number of steamers and trains were
removed further west to further paralyse river communications. All of these actions seriously
hampered food supply but also, inflation, rising prices and hoarding of necessary
commodities conspired to bring about famine1.
Inured as we are to the statistics of disaster, what do these notes from history mean as we
read them now, and how do we comprehend the scale and impact of human suffering then
and of imminent recurrence? Sixty-five years after the Bengal Famine, Bangladesh is
reported as being one of 7 countries in which 65% of their total population is unable to
access a daily minimum of food.2
What is it like to die of hunger, or to drown or to be crushed to death, or to lose a child or
one’s family? Where is the emotion in what we read and see in our media; where is the
emotion in analyses of events of which we have the data but remain detached from
experience of them - without which our understanding is remote? We may tell ourselves that
emotion is a subjective matter where we are constrained to objective “evidence” for
academic conclusion and achievement; but can it be justifiable for reason to be separated
from emotion, suggested, as it has been, as being essential to rational thinking and crucial to
human intelligence and humanity.3
It may not be often that the artists’ work is used as evidence but it has its place, especially
where information of other kinds is difficult to find, or to which access is obstructed or difficult
to achieve or to reach. Henry Moore’s 1941 drawings of people sheltering in the London
Underground during the blitz are one example, a Bahamian artist’s drawings of young
chickens impaled on wire fences conveyed better than many other sources the power of
hurricane wind, and an analysis of sea flooding at Chiswell, Dorset used an artist’s work as
partial evidence of coastal activity in history.4 The work of artists transcends detachment and
is more readily comprehensible as a human response to the suffering of fellow humans. And
without a camera to be behind, an artist transiently participates with his/her subject for
longer, usually, than does a news photographer and can convey more than the picture.
Pablo Picasso’s painting “Guernica” was made after the April 1937 bombing of the town of
that name at the start of the Spanish Civil War: “As the painting developed, it was possible to
watch the balance that Picasso kept between the misery caused by war, seen in the anguish
of the women, the pain of the wounded horse or the pitiful remains of the dead warrior; and
the defiant hope of an ultimate victory.” His series of preliminary pencil studies, however and
one in particular simply numbered “(5)” and dated “1er Mai 1937”5, convey passion and anger
even more than does the finished painting. There is no record of Picasso having visited
Guernica, either before or after the bombing, his anger at the event being the driving force
for his work.6
In contrast, Zainul Abedin did visit Calcutta in 1943 for his series of drawings of street people
suffering the effects of the Bengal Famine. Made in Calcutta where “humanity was at its
most ignominious condition competing with dogs in their hunt for a meal out of the garbage
tins on the pavements...a case of terrible human exploitation and degradation”, Abedin’s
drawings, for which he was dubbed “an artist of the downtrodden”, have become a unique
archive of an event for which records of other kinds may not have been as publicly
accessible. Made in black ink with a brush on wrapping paper or cardboard “he recorded
tragic scenes with a documentary objectivity and an artistic power (in which) there is a
spontaneity, sincerity and an uncompromising realism...”.7
More than media images, more than written description, more than oral account, more than
art as a therapeutic medium for survivors, and more than pictorial representation of an
experience long passed, the contribution of artists in the event has the power to outclass and
to outlast many other sources of record.
To despatch artists to scenes of disaster could powerfully assist understanding of
vulnerability as a cause of famine, recurrent and by the same causes year by year and
generation by generation without change, in spite of our analysis and polemic, as landless
families and those headed by women now are again identified as the most vulnerable to
inadequate food consumption and possible famine again.
If artists can be commissioned in war, why not in disasters of all kinds?
Illustrations are taken from Islam Muhammad Sirajul (Ed 1977), see note 7 below.
.
NOTES
1
Islam, Sirajul (Ed) 1992 History of Bangladesh 1704-1971 Political History Dhaka The Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
2
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2008) Food crisis could worsen, warns FAO IRIN
Humanitarian news and analysis 9 December http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81892 and Borger,
Julian (2008) Nearly a billion people worldwide are starving UN agency warns The Guardian 10 December
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/10/hunger-population-un-food-environment
3
Damasio, Antonio (2006) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain Vintage.
4
Lewis, James (1979 ) Vulnerability to a natural hazard: Geomorphic, technological and social change at Chiswell,
Dorset Natural Hazards Research Working Papers 37. University of Colorado and Case Study V pp109-123 in Lewis,
James (1999) Development in Disaster-prone Places: Studies of Vulnerability IT Publications (Practical Action).
London.
Lithographic print in the author’s possession.
5
6
7
Penrose, Roland (1981) Picasso: His Life and Work Granada. pp295-324. Quotation p303. For Guernica see
http://records.viu.ca/~lanes/english/hemngway/picasso/guernica.htm
Islam, Muhammad Sirajul (Ed 1977) Zainul Abedin Art of Bangladesh Series 1. Dhaka. The Bangladesh Shilpakala
Academy. The publication contains 23 images made in Calcutta of the Bengal Famine; these and other work by
Zainul Abedin are exhibited at the Bangladesh National Art Gallery and at the Shilpakala Academy in Dhaka.