Description:
<jats:p>Bengal is a vast cremation ground, a meeting place for ghosts and evil spirits, a land so overrun by dogs, jackals and vultures that it makes one wonder whether the Bengalis are really alive or have become ghosts from some distant epoch. And yet in the imaginative words of the poet, golden Bengal was once ‘well-watered, fruitful, abundant with crops.’ A garden of culture and civilization for over a thousand years … (<jats:italic>Biplabi</jats:italic>, 7 November, 1943, cited in Paul Greenough, <jats:italic>Prosperity and Misery in Medern Bengal: the Famine of 1943–44</jats:italic>, New York, 1982).</jats:p>