Murder, shelling, and fear have driven four or five million refugees from East Pakistan to India. There they are an extreme burden on health, shelter and food, and they threaten India’s precarious economy and political democracy. The world is beginning to give generously in emergency medical supplies-with Britain a strong contributor-but the hazard to life, health, and peace is huge. The Naxalites, with destructive intent, will find ready recruits in the refugee camps and in the aggravated crowding of Calcutta. In addition, left behind in East Pakistan at the mercy of Yahya’s bayonets, there are further millions of whom at least many thousands must be in letter. misery, and near starvating. The event is a human outrage that, by any reckoning, is as monstrous as the whole war in Vietnam: and it is happening in an area of chronic poverty. sickness, and natural disaster. Must the world mutely accept what Yahya’s Government is doing? Is India to be left in desperate difficulty? Is there no further remedy and redress?
To save the refugees from cholera, famine, and destitution is the first priority. To save those still in East Pakistan is no less urgent. To help relieve the tensions and scarcities around Calcutta, though no new demand, is hardly less important. These are physical problems. interwoven with politics. The relief supplies for India are going after a painfully slow start. The Indian bureaucracy itself is, one hopes, gradually being overcome. The rules binding British and other charities-which for a time prevented cyclone relief money being diverted to the man-made disaster-are also being circulated. Relief to East Pakistan remains more difficult, since Yahya’s men insist that it must all be channeled through them. Long term, the experience reinforces yet again the need for a United Nations disaster organization, ready to cope quickly U Thant is thinking and talking on these lines. Perhaps-who knows after all previous disappointments something will emerge.
But is the UN utterly unable to act politically? If ever it is to live up to the great expectations at its foundation, this is the kind of crisis which it ought to handle. The Bengal events are a threat to peace. a cruel injustice, and an outrage to humanity. Without the restraint of Mrs Gandhi’s Government, war could easily have come; and even the Pakistan Government, in overturning the verdict of the last elections, is a usurper. Is the UN, then, to prove impotent because of traditional indifference and Great Power rivalry? For once the Great Powers have a common interest. The Soviet Union, it is true. is wary of China, and China is friendly to the Karachi Government; the Russians also want to keep in with the Arabs. But Moslem brotherhood has not committed the Arabs deeply to Pakistan. and China’s attitude is ambivalent. The Russians for once might take the risk of acting jointly with the other Great Powers And the Security Council, this time, could be positive. Some will say that it is a white man’s club and therefore suspect; but the Indians may take a longer view.
Yahya must be persuaded to stop his army’s butchery, to release Sheikh Mujib and the imprisoned Bangla 1,eaders, and to create conditions in which the refugees can return. These are the minimum demands. The chief weapon in the international community’s hands is economic-not the discredited threat of sanctions, but rather the threat that credit will be withheld and Pakistan’s means of exchange dry up. Its economy is in a bad shape anyway, and the Bengal events are making it worse. Yahya, who is not so much an evil man as one caught in a situation that he wholly misjudged, might be persuaded to change course. But swallowing pride will be hard, and the refugees can never be persuaded to go back unless under UN supervision and protection. The task is massive; the chances of success are small. But the cost of political inactivity or failure will be borne by a whole generation to come-and not only in the Indian subcontinent.
The hope that Bengal’s tragedy will joit the Great Powers and the UN membership generally into action must be thin. The precedents for indifference and inactivity are too many. But on existing evidence this is an international calamity more grave than any since the UN was founded- in spite of Korea, Vietnam. Palestine, and Biafra. Is it even conceivable that Chinese cooperation could be sought, that this could be one of the keys that unlocks UN doors for China? Is it beyond all thought that good could come from evil by re-creating confederal unity in the subcontinent, instead of Bangla’s degenerating into separatism? These are remote and distant aspirations: so are peace in Vietnam and a settlement in the Middle East, but both are nearer than seemed possible a few years ago.
Reference: The Times, Monday June 14. 1971