A fresh dispute over Winston Churchill’s legacy has erupted in Britain after a video installation at London’s National Portrait Gallery accused the wartime Prime Minister of the “wilful starvation” of Indians during the Bengal famine of 1943.
The row has drawn in historians, members of the House of Lords and Churchill’s own family, reopening one of the most contentious chapters of Britain’s imperial history.
The controversy centres around “Persistence”, a film by Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Cammock that is currently on display at the gallery as part of its ‘Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture’ programme.
In the film, Cammock compares Churchill’s role during the Bengal famine to Oliver Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland, stating: “He starved people, en masse, a little like the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill.” The narration describes starvation as “a very old weapon”.
The Bengal famine of 1943 killed an estimated three million people through hunger and disease when India was still under British rule. Historians continue to debate the extent to which British wartime policies contributed to the catastrophe.
The controversy surrounding Churchill’s role has long extended beyond questions of wartime logistics and food supplies. Critics point to remarks attributed to him in the wartime diary of Leo Amery, then Secretary of State for India. In a September 1942 entry, Amery recorded Churchill as saying: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
The remark was not an isolated one. Churchill was also a longstanding critic of Indian self-government and famously dismissed Mahatma Gandhi as a “seditious Middle Temple lawyer” and a “half-naked fakir” after Gandhi attended talks with British leaders in London.
Supporters of Churchill argue that while such remarks are offensive, they do not establish deliberate responsibility for the famine. They maintain that the disaster resulted from a combination of wartime disruption, the loss of rice imports from Japanese-occupied Burma, inflation, crop damage and administrative failures.
The National Portrait Gallery has defended the installation as an artistic work reflecting the views of its creator rather than those of the institution.
A gallery spokesperson said the film “includes her personal reflections on historical and current events” and that the gallery supports “freedom of artistic expression” while not necessarily endorsing the opinions expressed by any of the artists shown at the gallery.
However, the work has provoked a backlash.
According to reports in the British media, historian Lord Roberts of Belgravia has led a group of more than 50 members of the House of Lords and public figures in demanding an explanation from the gallery. They argue that the installation presents a disputed interpretation of the famine as established fact.
In a letter to the gallery’s board, the signatories wrote: “The accusation that it was deliberately visited upon Bengalis by Churchill is foul and vile. It is also historically ludicrous.”
Lord Roberts has argued that Churchill ordered officials to make “every effort” to relieve shortages despite severe wartime shipping constraints and sought grain supplies from allies, including Australia, Canada and the US.
The debate touches on a broader reassessment of Britain’s imperial past that has intensified in recent years. Some scholars have argued that Churchill’s government failed to respond adequately to the famine and that wartime priorities worsened food shortages. Others contend that the disaster resulted from a combination of factors, including the Japanese occupation of Burma, wartime disruption, inflation, crop failures and natural disasters.
The installation forms part of a wider National Portrait Gallery programme in which contemporary artists were invited to respond to the institution’s collection and to explore questions of power, representation and historical memory.
For many Indians, the dispute will resonate because the Bengal famine remains one of the darkest episodes of British rule. More than eight decades after the tragedy, however, arguments over Churchill’s responsibility continue to divide historians in both Britain and India.
The exhibition is scheduled to remain on display at the National Portrait Gallery until August.
