Cautious aid to BanglaDesh
Martin Woollacott in Calcutta analyses
India’s attitude to East Pakistan Calcutta, April 20 Indian involvement with the BanglaDesh Government and the somewhat tattered Bangla Liberation Army is becoming more public every day. Indeed India support has increased as the fortunes of BanglaDesh, at least in conventional military terms, have waned.
It is clear that the defection at the weekend of the Pakistani Deputy High Commissioner here came as no surprise to the Indian authorities. Legally India should at one evict the Bangla mission and hold the building in trust as Pakistani Government property.
The Awami League leaders who have set themselves up as the BanglaDesh Government were, on their arrival in Calcutta, immediately accomodated in the State guest house that they are all “somewhere in BanglaDesh” is kept up. The Indians helped, too, with the stage managing last Saturday of a proclamation of independence at a village just inside East Bengal, providing chairs and other furniture plus Indian troops to police the ceremony.
There is evidence that the Indians are fairly openly sheltering the groups of armed men, East Pakistan Rifle militia, and irregulars -who have come over the border in recent days. At one border crossing point I saw armed riflemen in a tented camp around the Indian border security force’s position.
A further straw in the wind is that in its Notes to the Pakistan Government, India has taken to referring to East Pakistan as East Bengal, Whether the Indian Government will go on from this to recognise BanglaDesh is not known, Most people believe it will not do so. But a number of factors beyond India’s natural desire to harass Pakistan and its natural sympathy for the East Bengalis will probably impel it to give considerable aid and comfort to the liberation movement.
The immediate problem will be the humanitarian one of sheltering and feeding a very large number of refugees Merely by doing that India will create appropriate conditions for the growth of a guerrilla force of the hit-and-run variety which will expect and probably be allowed to cross and recross the border.
India’s main worry is the long-term one that, as one Western diplomat put it in 10 years, the Chinese model may seem the only one that makes sense in this whole region.” Probodh Dasgupta, secretary-general of the CPI (M), the biggest single party in West Bengal, asked how long the present bourgeois leadership of the East Bengal “liberation movement would last, told me, “That depends on how they conduct the struggle. The time may come when because of the nature of the battle and the increasing participation of the masses, the movement will pass out of the hands of the bureaucracy and military officers and into the hands of the people.”
Dasupta said quite frankly that at the moment there are no strong communist groups in East Bengal and no leader of stature except the aged Maulana Bhashanl. But he implied that during the course of what he forecast would be a long fight, Communist groups would come to the fore. Dasgupta is going today to Agartala in Tripura on a trip which he admitted was “not unconnected” with CPI (M) contacts with BanglaDesh.
It is thus in India’s interest to try to ensure that the leadership of the developing liberation movement remains non-Communist and she can only do this by using sid a selective way, favoring leadership groups she prefers. Interest as well as sentiment thus both point to continuing Indian help for BanglaDesh.
This need not be on a massive scale and could be confined to controlling transit of arms BanglaDesh had purchased outside India, and looking the other way as guerrilla groups cross the border. India can always say truthfully that the border is an impossible one to police.
The only circumstances in which actual Indian military intervention can be conceived are the collapse of central authority in West Pakistan itself or, perhaps, an imminent Communist takeover in East Bengal. If things came to that pass, which assumes that the Indian policy outlined above would have failed, India might risk military intervention to install a non-Communist Government.
When it seemed possible that the BanglaDesh Government might refrain some territory in East Bengal, India may have considered the idea of recognising this Government. But recognition has ceased to be a key issue with the success of the Pakistan Army. Indians believe that China is secretly pleased at what has happened in East Bengal but while India is far better prepared than in 1962 they believe it would be foolish to risk trouble.
Many influential Indians think that the Pakistani military has already demonstrated its total lack of judgment and although it would be military madness to attack India while the bulk of the army is tied down in East Bengal, Pakistan might just do so, hoping or expecting to draw the Chinese in as well. In those circumstances it would seem foolish to provoke trouble by recognizing BanglaDesh.
The triumph of the Awami League in the Pakistan elections was welcomed in India not only because it was a defeat for the army regime and promised a general relaxation of Indo-Pakistani tension but because it was hoped it would help the entire Bengal region.
Now India will have to work and take some risks -to try to achieve what a couple of months ago seemed about to fall into its lap. The signs are that it will make the effort although not without the gloomiest of forebodings about the outcome.
Pakistan asked India today to out the rebel Bengali diplomats from its mission in Calcutta. It said failure to do so would be interpreted as an “Unfriendly act.”
Reference: The Guardian, Wednesday April 21, 1971