Both Sides of Disaster By Mr. Reginald Prentice, a member of the British
Parliamentary delegation which visited Pakistan and India, in New Statesman, London, dated July 16, 1971
We left Rawalpindi with a personal assurance from
President Yahya Khan that we could go where we liked
and see what we liked in East Pakistan. It soon became clear just how much and just how little this
meant. Certainly we went to the places we had chosen, visiting widely separated
districts and flying low over the countryside in between our stops. Nowhere was
refused to us, with the exception of a village which we had been informed had
recently been sacked by the army (this was not actually refused, but we were
delayed until we had to drop the proposal). But wherever we went, we were on a
conducted tour in the hands of the regime, meeting the local `peace commitees', listening to the official point of view. Our
attempts to ask simple questions were met by confusion and even by panic.
Nobody would admit publicly that the army had committed excesses. A
school-teacher in Barisal was painfully embarrassed when he had
to admit that no Hindu children had been back to school since the fighting. A
police officer in Dacca tried desperately to avoid admitting that the last batch of new police recruits were all non-Bengalis.
Everywhere we saw symptoms of a country in the grip of fear.
The basis of this fear became apparent
as each member of our party in turn received confidences from people who spoke
to one of us quietly, snatching a few words in a corner and giving us a picture
of the real situation. Between us we received a significant number of these
confidential statements from a wide variety of people. They all added up to the
same conclusion not only had the army committed widespread killing and violence
in the March/April period' but it still continued. Murder, torture, rape and
the burning of homes were still going on: It was a story that would be
powerfully reinforced by the accounts given us by the refugees in India a few days later.
Flying over the country in a
helicopter, or in a light aircraft, we saw villages and small towns where
houses were destroyed. The incidents varied and often we went for miles where
there appeared, at least from the air, to be no damage. Then we would see appalling
devastation in a group of neighbouring villages. The
worst example we saw was near the Comilla-Chittagong
railway line, where two bridges had been blown up. Just south of the larger
one, the Feni bridge,
between 30 and 50 villages had been completely destroyed, apparently a reprisal
by the army.
There is a great deal of propaganda
about the country returning to normality but the facts belie this. Even in
areas where the army has been in firm control since the end of March, the
economic and social life of the country is at a very
low ebb. Apart from the exodus to India, workers have fled the towns to stay
in their villages and most of them are not yet going back. There are fewer
people in the streets, many shops are closed, factories which used to work
three shifts are now only working one, and that is usually below strength. At
the Isphari jute mill in Chittagong I was told that 800 men were at work,
out of a normal complement of 7,000. The docks are undermanned, transport is
disrupted, classes in schools are understrength and
the opening of the new university year has been delayed. Most serious of all,
there is likely to be a big shortfall in the rice harvest.
What were we told about the millions
of refugees who fled into India? Originally the regime denied that
there were any. During our visit they admitted that there were some, but
claimed the maximum figure to be 1.2 million. The refugees were said to be
people who had been frightened by firing in their, vicinity when the army was
carrying out its brief `law and order' mission, plus some others who had been
misled by the propaganda of Radio India. Anyway, the refugees would all like
to return home, but were being forcibly prevented by the Indians. We asked to
see one of the reception centres designed for
returning refugees and we were taken to one at Chuadanga,
near the western border with India. This was planned to receive 500 a
day, but even their own records showed only 226 returned refugees in the 10
days since it opened. We met a group of 20 all women and children, who had
returned that morning. Through interpreters we were told that the men with them
had been turned back by `Hindus'. They were very reticent and it was never
clear where this had happened and who these Hindus were. We were left in
serious doubt as to whether this was a stage performance, but our hosts claimed
that this was further evidence that India was forcibly preventing refugees from
returning.
Four days later we saw the refugee
situation on the Indian side. Any temptation to accept the smallest part of
the Pakistan version would have been swept away by
the awful reality of what is happening. As we drove up the road towards the
frontier at Boyra, about 70 miles north-east of
Calcutta, we drove past thousands of new
refugees crowding the road on either side. They just kept coming, for mile
after mile, people of all ages, carrying their cooking pots and little bundles
of possessions. Young children were carrying babies a few weeks old. Some
people were lying helplessly in the ditches. Some had died in the ditches. The
numbers were so vast that our convoy had difficulty in making its way up the
road. And so it goes on-sometimes as many as 100,000 new refugees a day
reaching India.
For two days we visited refugees in
their camps, in the hospitals and along the roads. Some are packed together in
camps-the luckier ones with tents or tarpaulins to keep out the monsoon rains,
others with make shift thatched roofing and a sea of mud for their floor. Some
are staying with friends, or relatives, some are living in schools or office
buildings. Some are camped in large drain pipes. Some are in the open.
Everywhere we went we questioned refugees at random; everywhere we were told
similar stories. The army had come to their village, or a nearby village.
People were shot or mutilated, houses and farms burned. Women were raped, the
soldiers had looted, or encouraged the nonBengalis
to loot the Bengalis (and especially the Hindus). This was still happening.
That was why they had left. They wanted to return, but only when it was safe,
that is when Mujib said it was safe, or when the army
left.
After a day travelling
within driving distance of Calcutta, we spent another day flying to
refugee camps further afield, so as to see the
situation in the more remote areas away from West Bengal. At Agartala
in Tripura State, the local hospital normally has beds
for 240 patients, but wounded and sick refugees have now swelled the number to
640. Patients are lying in the corridors, between the beds and in every available
space. They include 150 with bullet or bayonet wounds, all recently
inflicted-80 of these were children. The doctors are working round the clock,
reinforced by some doctors from among the refugees. We were told that about
2,000 refugee doctors are at work.
Out of a total of nearly 7 million
refugees (a fortnight ago) about 5 million are in West Bengal, whose 45 million orginal
inhabitants are among the poorest and most overcrowded in the world. In Tripura 1.1 million refugees have been added to the
original population of 1.5 million. Tripura does not
suffer from the overcrowding of West Bengal, but its remoteness imposes supply problems of fantastic
difficulty. The nearest railhead is 120 miles away, the road bad.
In both these states the local officials,
the doctors and the nurses are achieving the near impossible by keeping most
of the refugees alive. But they face problems that get worse every day. The
numbers keep going up. The responses of Delhi and the outside world have been on a
tremendous scale, but inevitably too little and too late, because nobody has
ever had to cope with a disaster of this magnitude before. The Indian
government has given the world its estimate for the cost of the operation for a
six months period. The total aid so far committed by the outside world is less
than half this total. But meanwhile the number of refugees continues to go up.
And for how many times six months will aid be needed?
Whatever the cost of keeping the
refugees alive, the real cost to India will be much greater. The immediate
cost includes land taken up for camps, officials being taken away from other
duties, local development projects postponed and schools closed to their
pupils. All this is serious enough in an area as poor as West Bengal, but what of the future? What will
happen to millions of people living in enforced idleness month after month?
What will the local workers attitude be, working a full week for two rupees a
day, and feeding his family no better than the refugees, who get their food free?
But how can the refugees ever be allowed out of the camps to work, when they
would inevitably undercut that two rupees a day, and
when there is heavy local unemployment? So far the local population
has shown kindness and goodwill, but how long before serious tensions develop?
Could these tensions deteriorate into communal disturbances'? What will be the
effect on the turbulent politics of West Bengal, now once again under direct rule from
Delhi after the fall of yet another State
government?
I came away feeling that the appalling
events of the last few months might well be leading to an ever deepening
tragedy for both countries. This can only be averted by a political settlement
acceptable to the people of East Bengal. Time is not on anybody's side.
by Mr. Reginald Prentice, a member of
the British Parliamentary delegation which visited Pakistan and India, in New Statesman,
London, dated July 16, 1971
Source: Bangladesh Documents, Vol – 1, Page no – 569 - 571