In 1943, millions of Indians died in the Bengal Famine under British colonial rule. The famine struck at the height of WWII, and the British government was more concerned with its war effort than feeding starving Indians it considered expendable. Winston Churchill’s government rejected repeated appeals for greater food shipments while millions starved. Imperial priorities took precedence over the lives of the very people Britain claimed the right to govern. Think about the obscenity of it: Britain ruled India without its people’s consent, extracted wealth from the colony, controlled its resources and policies, and then failed to protect millions facing mass starvation. Yet Churchill is celebrated in the West as a great defender of freedom and democracy. The Bengal Famine exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of colonialism: an empire that claimed to defend civilization while denying its colonial subjects the most basic right of all—the right to live. You cannot claim moral greatness for defending freedom abroad while presiding over mass suffering among the people you refuse to set free.