Lying by omission 1. BBC TV’s “The Story of India” ignores Indian Holocaust & British atrocities in India

Those aware of the tragic colonial history of India and other former Western colonies will quickly discover that Western historians in the English-speaking world simply IGNORE Western atrocities perpetrated against their non-European subjects i.e. they lie by omission.

However history ignored yields history repeated and today First World greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution threatens the Developing World with a 10 billion victim Climate Genocide that will dwarf British and other Western colonial atrocities of the past (see “Save 2 billion Indians from US and West Climate Genocide by 3 fold Badge, Credo & Accountability protocol” : http://gideon.sulekha.com/blog/post... ; " Letter to the World re Oz, US War Crimes, worsening Climate Genocide & 3 billion victim Muslim Holocaust": http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?ar... ).

This series of articles will help save the Developing World from Western Climate Genocide by telling the truth about past and continuing Western atrocities that are IGNORED by Western media, politicians and academics.

The BBC’s “The Story of India” (TV production and book; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_St... ) somehow managed to IGNORE the 1943-1945 World War 2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by Indian-hating mass murderer Winston Churchill); the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million dead); the quantitative extent of British reprisals after the Indian uprising in 1857, the so-called “Indian Mutiny” of 1857 (10 million murdered by the British); the 25 million Indians who died from British-spread cholera in the 19th century; and the 1757-1947 Indian Holocaust in general (1.8 billion Indian excess deaths or avoidable deaths from violence and deprivation in 2 centuries of highly abusive British rule).

British historians have outrageously sanitized the appalling 2 centuries of British rule over India - and the BBC’s "The Story of India" Chapter 6, "Freedom and liberation" is no exception to what must be described as continuing, entrenched British holocaust-denial. (for other criticisms of this lavish BBC TV production see: http://movie-tv-episode-database.co... )

I am a scientist with a 4 decade research career in plant biochemistry, protein chemistry and biochemical pharmacology - but in the last 15 years my interests have widened to include thanatology (the science of the causes of death).

My book "Body Count, Global avoidable mortality since 1950" (2007) provides an avoidable death-linked history of every country in the world, including succinct history of India (Chapter 3, pp113-118) (see: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com... ) .

This succinct, 6-page history by me of the countries of the former British Raj (Chapter 6, pp113-118, "Body Count, Global avoidable mortality since 1950") - unlike the BBC’s "The Story of India" (TV or book form) - mentions the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million victims), the 1943-1947 WW2 Bengal Famine (4 million dead in Bengal, 6-7 million dead in Bengal and adjacent provinces) and horrendous, recurrent famines in the intervening years that killed scores of millions.

Also mentioned in my book "Body Count, Global avoidable mortality since 1950" are the Indian excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) that totalled 1.5 billion under the genocidal, racist British (1.8 billion if you include the so-called Native States of the British Raj).

How this Indian Holocaust happened - and how centuries of lying, racist British historians, academics, journalists and politicians have white-washed them out of British history - is set out in the 1998 and 2008 editions of my book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability" (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/2... ).

Even my huge, comprehensive pharmacological treatise "The biochemical targets of plant bioactive compounds" found space to refer, en passant, to the appalling man-made Bengal Famines under the British (see pp 204, 530, 569: http://books.google.com.au/books?id... ).

Yet the word "famine" didn’t even arise per se in the last episode of the TV version of "The Story of India" - except for an IMAGE of a file labelled "famine" in the Indian National Library in Delhi and a reference to “famine-stricken refugees” in the context of British military conquest of South India.

In the book version of "The Story of India", famine under the British in the latter half of the 19th century IS mentioned in Chapter 6 “Freedom and liberation”; it is blamed on a "the failure of the El Nino world climate system" with a prior statement in the preceding paragraph that "In the almost thirty years since the Mutiny they [educated Indians] had seen for themselves the failure of the British Government in many key areas, but especially in the basic one of providing food and security for the population" ; and the 1866 Orissa famine (3 million dead) is mentioned (but with no mention of the impact on Bengal).

However the BBC ’s "The Story of India" makes NO mention of the horrendous, recurrent Bengal Famines between 1769 and 1945 and makes NO mention of the 1.8 billion Indian excess deaths due to the British policy of keeping most Indians on the edge of starvation (with the exception, of course, of their Indian collaborators - soldiers, public servants etc).

Unlike the BBC in its "The Story of India", even Winston Churchill (who hated India and Indians) mentioned the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 in his "A history of the English-speaking peoples" (albeit in only several words) - although in his "History of the Second World War" he fails to mention his deliberate starving to death of 6-7 million Indians in the 1943-1945 Bengali Holocaust.

Indeed in 1935 this hater and mass murderer of Indians, Churchill, made the following frank confession the House of Commons": "“In the standard of life they have nothing to spare. The slightest fall from the present standard of life in India means slow starvation, and the actual squeezing out of life, not only of millions but of scores of millions of people, who have come into the world at your invitation and under the shield and protection of British power.”

The BBC’s "The Story of India" is grossly deficient in this awful holocaust-ignoring. (Indeed it is worth noting that the word "holocaust" was first applied to a WW2 atrocity by Jog in his 1944 book "Churchill’s blind-spot: India" in referring to the Bengal Famine, the Bengali Holocaust that killed 6-7 million Indians.

Just imagine a history of Germany, "The Story of Germany", that omitted any mention of the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) - indeed David Irving was sentenced to 3 years in prison in Austria for conceding only 1 million violent Jewish deaths and asserting that Jewish concentration camp deaths were due to deprivation and disease (for an interview with David Irving see: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/00/05/S... ) .

David Irving’s minimizing of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust atrocity (according to Irving, 1 million killed plus people dying from deprivation in concentration camps; see interview with David Irving: http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/00/05/S... ) stands in marked contrast to authoritative estimates of 5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation; see: Gilbert, M. (1969) (with Banks, A., cartographer), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London) and Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London)).

“Holocaust ignoring” is far, far worse than outright “holocaust denial” or “holocaust minimizing” – thus David Irving’s “minimizing” or “under-estimation” about the Jewish Holocaust part of the WW2 Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Gypsy dead) at least allows for scholarly debate whereas the Western “ignoring” of British atrocities simply removes any mention of holocaust atrocities and hence blocks both public perception and public discussion.

The BBC’s "The Story of India" does not even mention the 1757-1947 Indian Holocaust (1.8 billion excess deaths), the 1769-1779 Great Bengal Famine (10 million deaths), the 25 million Indians who died from British-spread cholera in the 19th century, or the WW2 Bengal Holocaust (6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British).

Indeed there is a MUCH more to object to in the holocaust-ignoring BBC "The Story Of India" e.g. no mention in the book or the TV series of the 10 million Indians estimated by Amaresh Misra to have been butchered by the British after 1857 in reprisals for the killing of 2,000 British invaders (see "War of Civilisations: India AD 1857" by Amaresh Misra: http://warofcivilisations.blogspot.... ) .

Just as Germany, Austria, France, Belgium and other European countries have made denial or minimization of the Jewish Holocaust a criminal offence, so the various South Asian countries should similarly criminalize denial of the Indian Holocaust and the various repeated Bengali Holocausts.

My personal view is that in the interests of freedom of speech (an hence of unimpeded scholarship) those found guilty of holocaust denial in a proper judicial process should not be fined or sent to prison but should simply be punished by the ignominy of having been found guilty in a public judicial process of the heinous and repugnant crime of holocaust denial (see “Genocide denial – no-penalty criminalization required now “: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/124... ).

Decent, anti-racist, humanitarian people around the world should simply avoid any avoidable dealings with persons, corporations, institutions and countries involved in lying by omission about holocaust and genocide atrocities against Indians or indeed against any other people. Please tell everyone you can.