The Bengal Famine and Cultural Production: Signifying Colonial Trauma analyses the various modes of representation used by Anglophone authors and artists in response to the Bengal Famine of 1943. Official imperial narratives blamed the famine on natural disaster, war, exploitation by merchants, and incompetent local officials rather than members of the imperial government and have remained dominant in the global public imaginary until recent years. The authors and artists referenced in this study appealed to elite Bengali, South Asian, and international audiences to resist imperial narratives that minimized or erased suffering and instead encouraged relief efforts, promoted nationalist movements, maintained collective memory, innovated ethical forms of representation, and prompted systemic change. They were part of an established tradition of English in the subcontinent as the language of empire and cosmopolitanism but are not accessible, widely taught, or well-known. The direct
