I went to the room, and the bombing began

Lord Linlithgow, viceroy of India, announced that India was at war with Germany. Thus England swept India into the war-without consulting any Indians. Although independence-minded India certainly resented such a show of foreign control, there were mixed feelings about the war. India wanted independence, yet she sympathized with the allied cause against fascism in the West and feared an invasion by imperial Japan in the East. "Since you dislike the British so violently," one author asked a typical New Delhi student of the day, "would you want Japan to invade and conquer India?" Student: "No, but we Indians pray that God may give the British enough strength to stand up under the blows they deserve." Although at the outbreak of the war India had only 175,000 men in her armed forces, the British managed to increase the number of Indian soldiers to two million. There was no draft, but the British sent recruiting agents all over India, especially in the Punjab, where military service seemed an attractive offer to the local poor. The Punjabis proved good fighters, whereas Bengalis enlisted as officers, doctors, contractors, and clerks. Indian soldiers were dispatched to battlefields in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Persia, Malaya, Burma, and Assam. While the British were attempting to mobilize Indians for the war, the Indian nationalist movement, which had continued off and on for more than twenty years, became very active. Members of the Congress Party refused to cooperate with the war effort and demanded guaranteed independence for India. Some thought that since England had her hands full with Germany, the time was ripe to revolt and gain independence by force. Gandhi's position had been one of unconditional pacifism, and he had opposed the idea of Indians taking up arms, even to defend India. But by 1942 he had become more inimical and had reduced his policy towards the British to a simple, unequivocal "Quit India!" Thousands of Indians responded by chanting slogans in the street and even by tearing up the railway lines. Abhay's militant former schoolmate Subhas Chandra Bose fought against the British in his own way. He had approached Hitler in Germany and gotten him to agree that when the Germans captured Indian soldiers, Germany would return them to Bose, who would maintain them in his nationalist army. With this army Bose planned to return to India and drive the British from Indian soil. But dissatisfied with his progress in Germany, Bose made a similar agreement with Tojo in Japan, and soon thousands of Gurkhas and Sikhs (the best fighters in the Indian army) had defected from the British army to join Bose's freedom fighters in Singapore. Bose began to prepare his army to invade India from the north. Then in 1943 the British found that the Japanese, who had already taken Burma, were at the doors of India, approaching Bengal. By their tactic known as the "denial policy," the British sank many Indian boats carrying food and destroyed large rice crops, fearing that they would fall into the hands of the enemy. This left local Indians starving and without the boats they needed for trade. The famine that ensued was the worst that had hit Bengal in 150 years. The government removed all control of food costs, and those who could not afford to buy at the skyrocketing prices died in the streets of Calcutta. Srila Prabhupada: I have got experience-the government created artificial famine. The war was going on, so Mr. Churchill's policy was to keep the people in scarcity so they will volunteer to become soldiers. So this policy was executed. Big men, they collected the rice. Rice was selling at six rupees per mound. All of a sudden it came to fifty rupees per mound. I was in the grocer shop purchasing, and all of a sudden the grocer said, "No, no. I am not going to sell any more!" At that moment the price was six rupees per mound. So suddenly he was not going to sell. A few hours later, I went back to purchase, and the rice had gone up to fifty rupees per mound. The government-appointed agents began to purchase the rice and other commodities which are daily necessities. They can offer any price, because the currency is in their hands. They can print so-called papers, a hundred dollars, and pay. A man becomes satisfied, thinking, "Oh, I have a hundred dollars." But it is a piece of paper... That was the policy. "You have no money, no rice? So another avenue is open-yes, you become a soldier. You get so much money." People, out of poverty, would go there. I have seen it. No rice was available in the market. And people were hungry. They were dying. Abhay managed to purchase just enough for his own family to survive. But he saw the beggar population increase by the hundreds. Month after month he saw the footpaths and open spaces congested with beggars, cooking their food on improvised stoves and sleeping in the open or beneath the trees. He saw starving children rummaging in the dustbins for a morsel of food. From there it was but a step to fighting with the dogs for a share of the garbage, and this also became a familiar sight in the Calcutta streets. The British had little time to spare from their war efforts, and they worked only to save those lives essential for the fight. For the common people the empire's prescription was uniform and simple-starvation. Srila Prabhupada: One American gentleman was present at that time. He remarked, "People are starving in this way. In our country there would have been revolution." Yes, but the people of India are so trained that in spite of artificial famine they did not commit theft, stealing others' property. People were dying. Still they thought, "All right. God has given." That was the basic principle of Vedic civilization. Abhay knew that under the laws of nature there was no scarcity; by God's arrangement the earth could produce enough food. The trouble was man's greed. "There is no scarcity in the world," Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati had said. "The only scarcity is of Krishna consciousness." And this was how Abhay saw the 1943 famine. Now more than ever, this spiritual vision was relevant-Krishna consciousness was the prime necessity. How else could man be checked from his evil propensities to become greedy, hoard, make war, and thus create misery for millions? He had seen the heinous activities of the British in India-their cutting off the thumbs of the weavers so that Indian-made cotton goods could not compete with the foreign-made cloth, their shooting down of unarmed, innocent citizens, their creating artificial famine, their propagating the myth that Indian civilization was primitive-still, he did not believe that an independent Indian government would necessarily be an improvement. Unless the leadership was Krishna conscious-and neither Gandhi nor Subhas Chandra Bose was-then the government would be able to provide no real solutions, only stopgap measures. Without obedience to the laws of God, as expressed by the scriptures and sages, governments would only increase human suffering. Then Calcutta was bombed, day after day. The bombing was concentrated in specific areas, such as the Kittapur port facility and Syama Bazaar in north Calcutta, very near Abhay's home at Sita Kanta Banerjee Lane. American planes had been leaving from airfields near Calcutta for targets in China and Japan, so the air raids on Calcutta seemed an inevitable retaliation. It was the Japanese striking back. Or was it? Some said it was the forces of Subhas Chandra Bose, since the bombs fell mostly in the European quarter. But for the people of Calcutta it made little difference who was attacking. After the first bombing, people evacuated the city. Blackouts were imposed, and at night the entire city was dark. Srila Prabhupada: The whole Calcutta became vacant. Perhaps only myself and a few others remained. I sent my sons to Navadvipa-of course, my daughter was married. My wife refused to go out of Calcutta. She said, "I'll be bombed, but I will not go." So I had to remain in Calcutta. I have seen bombing in Calcutta all night. I was just eating when there was the siren. So, the arrangement was that... in your house would be the shelter room. I was hungry, so I first finished eating. Then I went to the room, and the bombing began. Chee-Kyam! I was thinking that this was also Krishna in another form. But that form was not very lovable.