How Not to Face Facts | The Economist | 29th May 1971
President Yahya needs to acknowledge realities, Mrs Gandhi needs to maintain her cool, and rest of us should be more helpful.
It is a standard practice of governments, especially these which are fighting wars, to put out self-justifying propaganda. This propaganda may fail to convince, which is troublesome. Or it may convince so well that the propagandas themselves ate taken in, which is positively dangerous. The government of Pakistan has clearly dug itself a credibility gap. The question now is whether it has also buried its head in the sand.
President Yahya Khan’s press conference on Monday—his first public appearance since he ordered his army to take over East Pakistan two months ago—did not resolve the issue either way. The president showed some statesmanship when he refused to ride to Mrs Gandhi’s hints earlier in the day that the Indians might be forced to intervene militarily in East Bengal. He showed some realism when he admitted that the state of Pakistan’s economy “is so bad that I cannot tell you.” And he showed some flexibility when he modified the total ban on the Awami League and agreed to accept back a number of refugees. But he went on to load his offers with conditions and to repeat some of his spokesman’s familiar nonsense.
It is logically consistent, if nothing else, that a government which has not acknowledged that it is fighting a civil war should not recognize refugees from that war. Accordingly Pakistan radio refers to “an imaginary influx” and labels the refugees “Hindu fifth columnist” and “Indian infiltrators.” Not until last week did the government finally concede that the fleeing millions might include any innocent victims at all. President Yahya seemed to be opening the way to a solution last Friday when he declared that “bona fide Pakistan citizens who left their homes due to disturbed conditions” whole be welcomed back to East Pakistan. But who are bona fide citizens? On Sunday Pakistan radio insisted that these are only a tiny fraction of the refugees, while the vast majority are “miscreants” and Indians. And on Monday president himself vowed not to “open the floodgates for Indian destitutes.”
The most charitable explanation for this kind of language is that the Pakistanis have got themselves hooked on a fable of Indian iniquity which they cannot abandon without intolerable loss of face. But they also appear to be using this propaganda line to justify a policy which will prevent significant numbers of East Bengalis from ever returning home. One group of refugees that are likely to be excluded altogether under this selective approach are the east Bengali Hindus. The migration of Hindus is a classic case of how propaganda can be self-fulfilling. Just after the March action, West Pakistani newspapers began accusing the Hindus in East Bengal of having illicit links with the Indians. The army then made the Hindus a special target for revenge, forcing them to flee to India in disproportionate numbers. This is now taken as proof that the Hindus were Indian saboteurs all along.
The prospect that great numbers of refugees will become permanent residents of India—either by their own choice or as a result of Pakistani exclusion—is the most terrifying aspect of the current crisis for the Indian government. When Mrs Gandhi verges on the intemperate these days it is no longer to denounce Pakistani genocide but to threaten “measures” to ensure the eventful repatriation of all the refugees. On Monday Mrs Gandhi appealed to the rest of the world and particularly to the great powers to make such measures unnecessary by putting pressure on Pakistan.
In fact the Indians have good cause for decrying “the unconscionably log time which the world is taking to react to this stark tragedy.” Two months and three and a half million refugees after the killing began in East Pakistan, foreign governments have uttered scarcely a cautionary word to the Pakistanis and have contributed nothing very impressive to the maintenance of the 335 refugee camps in India. The Indians estimate that just keeping the current total of refugees alive for six months (disregarding the 600,000 more who are streaming in everyday) may cost over £100 million.
Clearly the Indians cannot expected to bear this financial burden on top of the all but intolerable political strains which the refugee influx has imposed. Tensions are rising every day—in parliament, in the border state and along the frontier where Indian and Pakistan troops had several shoot-outs this week. Foreign relief funds—in huge quantities—would relieve certain pressures. But the danger of conflict will continue to mount so long as the refugees keep streaming over the border. And the only government that can break this vicious cycle is Pakistan’s.
President Yahya raised glimmer of hope for such a breakthrough on Monday when he promised to produce a plan for a return to civilian government within two ro three weeks. But his more important promise that day was to relax the blanket ban on political activity by members of the Awami League. Like his offer to the refugees, the value of the selective amnesty will depend on how widely he defines the “genuinely misled” as opposed to those who must be punished for their crimes. Sheikh Mujib, the imprisoned Awami leader, clearly belongs to the second category, for the president repeated the story about a Mujib secessionist plot. But unless the president actively welcomes back Mujib’s lieutenants—including at least some of those who sought refuge in India—he will find that no plan for civilian rule in the east—or indeed at the center—can get off the ground.
Unicoded by
Tushar Mondal