Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's interview to Sydney H. Schanberg

The New York Times of October 19, 1971, published an interview given by the Prime Minister to its correspondent, Sydney H. Schanberg. The following is the text of the despatch:

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has declared that the military situation on the borders between India and Pakistan is " quite grave ".

In an hour long interview, the Prime Minister added, " we certainly will do nothing to provoke an attack or to start any hostilities, but we have to be alive to our interests and safeguard our security".

" Unfortunately ", she added, " Pakistan's record has been one of hatred and desperation. The military regime has let loose a war on its own people, and there is no knowing what it will do next ".

The Prime Minister, who was interviewed in her office at the Government secretariat, seemed irritated when asked about military assistance India has been giving the Bengali insurgents in East Pakistan.

But she did not categorically deny that India was helping them. She said instead, " perhaps you know, they have many helpers, mostly their own people, all over the world. Also, many avenues are open to them". She did not elaborate.

Later in the interview, Mrs. Gandhi said, " whether they have arms or not, nobody can suppress the struggle".

Mrs. Gandhi cited " threatening statements from Pakistan which, we feel, cannot be entirely ignored". She mentioned, in particular, the speech last week of President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan in which he accused India of " feverish military preparations " and called on his people to meet the threat as a nation of one hundred and twenty million mujahids or preachers of Islam "whose hearts are pulsating with love of the Holy Prophet ".

The fifty-three-year-old Prime Minister firmly ruled out any peace talks at this time between India and Pakistan contending that Pakistan would first have to resolve the East Pakistan crisis by negotiating a settlement with the elected representatives.

For nearly seven months, the Pakistani army, composed almost entirely of West Pakistanis, has been trying to crush a Bengali secession movement in East Pakistan which is led by the Awami League. This party, which won a national majority in last December's general elections, was outlawed by the military regime when the army struck on March 25.

The military repression has sent millions of East Pakistani refugees :].:Lag into India.

Mrs. Gandhi was asked if she felt there was a breaking point to the economic and social pressures placed on India by the refugees, a point beyond which India might feel compelled to take military action against Pakistan to halt the influx.

" Well, actually, I would say, we have already reached it ", she replied. " But this does not mean that we are going to crack under it".

"We certainly want a quick solution, but we do not want to do anything which creates greater problems ", she went on. " As you know, we have been extremely restrained. I cannot, even by giving deep thought to the matter, think of a single country who would have shown such restraint and patience in the face of such grave provocation".

During the last few weeks, both countries have reinforced their troops on their long eastern and western borders, and the Press on both sides has carried reports raising the spectre of another war between India and Pakistan. They last fought in 1965 over Kashmir.

Still, though Mrs. Gandhi called the situation grave, she indicated no change as yet in her plans to leave on a three-week foreign tour starting next Sunday, during which she is scheduled to visit six Western capitals including London and Washington.

The Prime Minister was critical of United States' policy on the East Pakistan crisis, saying that the Americans " do not take a very long-range view ".

" Propping up the Pakistani military regime in Bangla Desh ", she said, " is not necessarily strengthening Pakistan in any way".

Mrs. Gandhi was referring to the Nixon Administration's continuation of some arms shipments to Pakistan, and its unwillingness to criticise the Pakistani Government publicly.

" We have the greatest friendship for America and the American people", she said, " but one of the reasons (for deteriorating relations) so far as the Indian public is concerned, is this idea that the United States has of always balancing India and Pakistan".

On American arms for Pakistan, she said, " I do not know what the quantum is now, but in the past they have been supplied to Pakistan in large quantities. They have been used only against India, not at all against communism or any other of the things that had been said to us and which we had pointed out then were most unlikely".

" In this matter ", she continued, " we certainly have had a far more understanding approach from the Soviet Union than we have from the United States".

Mrs. Gandhi talked at some length about differences between American and Russian relations with India.

" You see", she said, "the United States seems to have a thing about the Soviet Union which seems very strange to us. We do not support the Soviet Union any more than we support America-or we support both equally, whichever way you like to look at it, negatively or positively.

" The point is that the Soviet Union supports us in basic things for which we have stood and for which we have fought earlier on. And it is on these issues that we have been with them at the United Nations. Now, earlier on, you said something about American help. We are very grateful to the United States and they have helped us enormously in a number of ways. But at a time when we wanted to develop the state sector, they did not help the state sector, but the Soviet Union did".

"We certainly get on far better with Americans as individuals", she added later, "than, say, we would with Russians or anybody else. Language is partly the cause. But I personally greatly admire the American quest for technological and scientific advance".

Source: Bangladesh Documents, vol – II, p.248-250