There have been a number of significant famines in the history of Bengal (now independent Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal) including:
- Bengal famine of 1770
- Bengal famine of 1943
- Bangladesh famine of 1974
- Bengal Famine (film), a movie by Bimal Roy
Famous quotes containing the words bengal and/or famine:
“Warmest climes but nurse the cruelest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)