New York Times Magazine

One day in the summer of 1961 I drove in the monsoon some 40 miles to the north of Calcutta to inspect an unpromising agricultural college which the United
States was assisting and to look at the beginning of a new experiment in dairy husbandry. For generations the most congested bustees of Calcutta had harbored a considerable number of dairy stables, each of which added marginally to the filth, stench and flies of the city and some of the world's most polluted milk to its sustenance. Now the cows and buffaloes were to be relocated to solid, concrete-floored stables in the marvelously lush green countryside—palms, paddy, patches of tall hemp, ponds covered by wastes of water hyacinth—of West Bengal.
Ten years later—just after Labor Day this year—I visited the Haringhata Dairy Farm again. The stables had been considerably expanded. There were still cows and water buffalo about. From one complex of six stables they had, however, been extruded. Their place had been taken by 72,000—seventy-two thousand—women, children and men from East Bengal. Each stall—perhaps 5 by 7 feet—now housed a family—usually of five or six. The box stalls, favored locations offering more privacy, had more. The Haringhata camp is one of 10 grouped closely around the town of Kalyani in West Bengal. It is one of 615 camps in West Bengal, a notably crowded state where land that is reliably above the level of the surrounding and intruding water is very scarce. And it is one of some 938 camps in all India. One camp housing 164,000 is halfway across India in Raipur in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
Every figure associated with the population movement from East Bengal—the word refugees is no longer descriptive—numbs the mind. Since March of this year, more than nine million people have made their way across the border—approximately twice the number that moved west at the time of partition in what was then considered one of the greatest population movements of all time. About two and a half million of the migrants have found shelter with relatives or friends or are surviving without it on the Calcutta streets in the company of those who are still there from the earlier migrations. The rest—by now about six and a half million—are in the camps. In September, after some slowing down in the summer, movement again averaged 33,000 a day. In India, the resources for caring for these people at the lowest level of maintenance is blood squeezed from a very dry stone.
It has been, in fact, a compassionate and organizational achievement of the first magnitude. The Indians have a reputation, not wholly unearned, for being articulate but rather feckless managers. I used to think when I was Ambassador—and I am now fully persuaded—that they were also nearly unique in their capacity to contrive something out of almost nothing. The camps affirm this talent and notably its presence in the agency in charge, the Ministry of Rehabilitation. It is a talent born partly out of a long-standing necessity to make do with very little; partly it is the achievement of a bureaucracy which, going back to the tradition of British India, combines a great deal of authority and responsibility in the man in charge.
The most vivid manifestation of this contrivance is the Salt Lake Camp on the outer edge of Calcutta not far from Dum Dum airport. Until last March it was a vast unoccupied acreage, built up by sand dredged from the Hooghly, a monument to a still unrealized dream of a new garden suburb. (Such dreams, invariably unrealized, are endemic in Calcutta.) Now Salt Lake is a city of more than 160,000 souls holding the all-time record for urban growth. Roughly 2 by 1 1/2 kilometers in area, in contains 1,200 basic structures, each with 12 cubicles, each of the latter sheltering a family. (There are numerous other individual and communal shelters.) Walls are of coconut matting, roofs are of polyethylene sheet. The structures—they can barely be called buildings—are neatly aligned in streets. There are warehouses for the food ration, very elementary hospitals, the beginning of schools. Wells, called water points, have been drilled and equipped with power pumps from West Germany. Latrines are being built and the stench from the earlier absence of all sanitary facilities has been suppressed by a liberal spreading of chloride of lime.
In all the camps, including the cow stable, those who were in business in East Bengal have again set up shop, for wherever more than two people congregate in India, one opens a store. Often the total stock in trade is a few cents' worth of sticks for cooking fuel or a handful of greens. A couple of crude tables and some chairs make a tea shop. Presiding, not without authority, over each of these vast and sudden communities is the camp commandant, like many others concerned with the refugee effort usually a former Indian Army officer. Many people owe the r survival to the availability of these men, who are occupationally experienced in camp sanitation, administration and discipline and accustomed to exercising authority.
There is something else which adds an aspect of cheer to the camps and that is the curious composition of the camp population. It consists of grandparents, women and a vast number of children. There are almost no young or middle-aged men. No one makes a secret of the reason: "They are away training with the Bangladesh Liberation Army." The absence of the young men is "the only thing that makes my task tolerable," a young official responsible for the survival of several hundred thousand people told me cheerfully.
In the camp hospitals and special feeding areas are youngsters, mostly under 5 or 6, who are suffering horribly from malnutrition. Some, the doctors fear, have suffered permanent damage. For the rest, one's impression is of exuberant juveniles for whom the present misfortune is an unprecedented adventure and the appearance of an oversized visitor an occasion for unadulterated enjoyment. Perhaps something must be attributed to the Bengali temperament; they are accustomed to getting much amusement from very little. Mostly, no doubt, it is the indomitable spirits of the very young.
To the north of Calcutta and nearer the border, the camps, the kids notwithstanding, are a good deal more grim. Tarpaulins, slung over ridge poles and pinned to the earth at the edges, make a low, crude and uncomfortable tent. Every tarpaulin extant in eastern India was acquired for this purpose and the supply gave out long ago. In numerous of the smaller camps, wretched hovels have been contrived out of straw and palm thatch. Yet farther north are the camps that one could not reach. They were cut off by floods and, in some cases, under water. People were existing on railroad embankments and roads.
But in all the camps, the margin between survival and death from hunger, exposure and disease is still perilously thin. Less than three rupees' worth of food is available for each refugee per day—not quite 40 cents a head.
In September, distribution to outlying camps was being made excruciatingly difficult by floods—some were depending on air-dropped supplies. And still refugees streamed in. "I could handle the people I have," one official observed. "But how do you plan when you've no idea how many will arrive tomorrow?"
There is at least a chance that a new and larger wave is in the making. It would, in a sense, be the third. The first followed the deployment of the Pakistan Army, the shooting and the arrest of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, and consisted, among others, of people who felt politically threatened. This, naturally, included many Moslems. Then for many months most of the migrants were Hindus. In this part of the world whenever there is trouble it is the religious minority that feels threatened; its departure is regularly encouraged by a little terror from those who will then get the property. And of course there have been many suggestions that the Pakistan Government hoped to pacify East Bengal, at least in part, by diverting antipathy from itself to the Hindus. Now the danger is of a new movement motivated by fear of food shortages and starvation in East Bengal. This would affect Moslems and Hindus alike and send both communities across the border. In the increased migration of early September some officials were counting an increased proportion of Moslems.
One ghastly danger, much feared by responsible Indians earlier this year, has not developed. That was communal resentment, both in the camps and in India generally, over the fact that so many of the migrants were Hindus and leading, in turn, to action against the Moslems. The Indians have been calm, and communal friction in the camps seems to be totally lacking. An American visitor for his education on the policy of the Nixon Administration is greeted by deafening shouts for Sheik Mujibur from the predominantly Hindu population.
Not all of the problems caused by the migration are to be found in the camps. There are serious ones outside and worse ones just over the horizon. The most obvious of these concerns the relations of the camp population to the political and social life of West Bengal—and the other states bordering on East Bengal. (One of these states, Tripura, has had its population almost precisely doubled by the influx.) Given a few months, grave tension will arise between the camp population, which is sustained at a minimum level of life by the Government, and the surrounding masses who must scrounge an equally slender existence on their own. Already there have been complaints that men and women in the camps, desperate for a few extra rupees, have been taking work outside at rates at which the local workers cannot survive.
More disagreeable is the political prospect. Bengal, or rather Calcutta and the outlying towns, live now on the edge of violence. There are several political murders, many involving rather imaginative dismemberment, each week. The area is saved from revolution only by the extreme mistrust and hatred with which the several revolutionary parties, including the outlawed Naxalites, regard each other and the considerable certainty that, given population, resources and the nature of the revolutionaries, there is no conceivable form of revolution that would not make everything worse.
Finally, there is the further and ever greater certainty that unless there is a settlement, there will be brutal fighting in the border areas of East Bengal, with the further chance that this will develop into a major clash between the regular armies of India and Pakistan.
In recent weeks the mood on both sides has become increasingly tense and ugly. There are numerous Indians who would readily sacrifice the sympathy that India is winning on this issue to the seemingly simple course of a military solution. (Nothing would do more to support Pakistan's claim of Indian complicity in an effort to destroy her.) And, without doubt, there are Pakistanis with a suicide complex. But even if both Governments keep their heads—or are persuaded to do so—continued guerrilla conflict in East Bengal, with recruits and support from India, has infinite possibilities for escalation.
This prospect is inherent in the absence of the young men from the camps. Without the slightest doubt, they are away preparing for guerrilla operations—it would be incredible, given the popular support for autonomy, self-determination or independence in East Bengal, had they simply settled down in the camps to accept their fate. And it would have been equally against nature had the Indian Government tried to enforce such passiveness. As the country dries out in the next weeks, they will be going back over the border. There will be more shooting, more suffering (and also much, much more migration), unless something can be done. What can be done?
The needed effort comes in two parts. There is first the terribly urgent but unglamorous task of helping the Indians to take care of the people in the camps and helping do for them what the Indians cannot afford.
In accepting the refugees and the responsibility for their survival, the Indian Government (by World Bank estimates) committed itself to an expenditure of some $750-million by next March and no one knows how much thereafter. The cost would be great for any country; for India, it amounts to between one-sixth and one-seventh of all the funds available to the central Government for development. The promised help from other countries, for what should by any reasoning be an international rescue effort, has so far been only about $140-million to $150-million, of which about half has been committed by the United States. We must do a great deal more—Senator Kennedy has a proposal before the Senate to provide $400-million—and the other rich countries must be urged (or shamed) into becoming serious. Germany, Japan and France have each promised less than $5-million.
This is merely to provide food and minimal shelter. Much more is needed to make life tolerable and, for some, possible—to provide protein for rehabilitation diets for the children, clothing as the colder weather approaches for a juvenile population that is virtually naked, blankets, a greater variety of medicine, soap, tooth powder and, hopefully, some school books. For this part of the effort, it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the work (and needs) of the volunteer agencies. I was especially impressed by the effectiveness of two British-sponsored agencies—The Save the Children Fund and Oxfam, the latter having an American collection arm—and Caritas, the local arm of the Catholic Relief Agency. All struck me as operating with a minimum of administrative overhead and lethargy.
But if immediate sustenance is important, so is the more durable solution. That is for the people to go home. Under the best of circumstances, that will be difficult. As 1 have noted, the great majority of the migrants are Hindus—something over half of the Hindu population of East Bengal has now moved out. Movement of this population into Calcutta and West Bengal has been going on for a long time; there will have to be an exeptional feeling of security before it can be persuaded to return and, as a practical matter, many will remain in India under any circumstances.
The requisite feeling of security will not be achieved—I cannot think there is any knowledgeable and candid person who disagrees—until East Bengal is allowed to govern itself. That it wished to do so was made wholly clear in the elections a year ago. That it has been made more amenable to government from Islamabad (and by the less populous West Wing) after the events of this year no one can imagine. Americans who have a past association with India are suspected, perhaps rightly, of an Indian bias. John Sherman Cooper, on returning to the Senate from being Ambassador, told friends, at least half-seriously, that he did not intend to work more than half-time for India. But in these last months it is the Americans who have been the closest to Pakistan—who have lived and worked there—who have been the most ardent exponents of some effective form of self-government for East Bengal. They have led the lobbying effort in Washington on behalf of Bangla Desh (the Bengal nation) and more than any other group helped persuade the House of Representatives to vote the suspension of aid to the Yahya Khan government, pending some form of self-government for East Bengal.
I have spoken of self-government. A visitor to India, even one with the exiguous credentials of an ex-Ambassador, is pressed hard to say that there can be no solution short of total independence. He is also pressed to say that the United States should take some fairly sanguinary action to bring it about, the pressure being strongest from those who have complained most eloquently about American imperialism in the past. Those of us who have urged a less ambitious policy in Indochina are in a poor position to ask for American remedial action elsewhere in Asia. And my instinct is to avoid being categorical about independence—an ambiguity that is pleasing neither to the Bangla Desh mission in India nor the Indian press. Perhaps there are foumulas short of independence which will mean the same in self-government and in a sense of security for East Bengal.
Although we have no remedy, we can end the wrong kind of intervention, which is to say we can end the tacit support that the Administration has been giving to West Pakistan. It is a politically disastrous policy for the Administration itself. Although the military aid to the Pakistan Army is not very significant and no economic aid can be sufficient to offset the costs of suppressing the sullen and mutinous majority in East Bengal, our support can be enough to cause the military government in Islamabad to continue with the effort.
It means, in consequence, that the Administration acquires a contingent responsibility for a new civil war just as (hopefully) it is detaching from another one, 2,000 miles to the east. That, surely, makes no sense. Nor does it make sense to share in the international opprobrium the effort at suppression invites.
Without our support there is at least a chance that West Pakistan will concede effective self-government to East Bengal as the most practical solution for all concerned. It would, no doubt, he inordinately optimistic to expect this to happen immediately. Although in the fiscal year ending last June per capita income in Pakistan dropped for the first time in several years—and the annual increase in industrial production fell from 11 to 2.4 per cent—most of this is to be attributed to the near collapse of the East Bengal economy. West Pakistan is still prosperous. But over time the costs of putting down resistance and maintaining an unpopular government in Bengal will mount. Taxes will rise; funds for investment will dwindle. Funds from abroad will run out. There are many practical-minded people in West Pakistan to whom this prospect will not appeal.
From people knowledgeable on Pakistan affairs (which I am not) one hears that there is already a considerable group of businessmen and civilian politicians who question the wisdom of a long-continued effort at suppression in the East Wing—who hold that effective self-government in East Bengal is the only solution. Some have recently suggested that Zulfikar All Bhutto, the most powerful civilian politician in West Pakistan, and a man who operates with both ears to the ground, has had such thoughts. Somewhat more certain is the weariness in Pakistan with military rule. And it is impossible to imagine that any civilian government replacing that of Yahya Khan could avoid coming to terms with the Bengalis—who, we cannot remind ourselves too often, are in the majority. No civilian government could sustain itself in Islamabad and Dacca while using the army to keep down insurrection in the Bengali countryside.
So, plainly, military and economic support to the Yahya Khan government postpones the only possible solution. And symbolic support, which allows that government to believe that suppression in Bengal has our approval, is almost as damaging as support that is in substantial amount.
Let me add one final word about arms. There is only one long-term hope for peace on the Asian subcontinent and that is what might be called the North American formula. There, as on this continent, the dissolution of European colonial power left one very large country and a coterie of surrounding smaller ones. In North America this has been a tolerable solution for one major reason: No one (at east since Napoleon III) has imagined that either Canada or Mexico could be a serious military competitor with the United States, and the nightmare that Cuba as an arm of the U.S.S.R. might become so has receded while, in the tension it briefly caused, admirably proving the point I am making. In consequence, the United States is able to regard its neighbors with a combination of tolerance and indifference. They, on their part, have been able to concentrate on the difficult but not impossible problem of living in our vicinity. The result is by no means perfect, especially for our neighbors. But the solution works, and it is both peaceful and wholly stable.
On the Asian subcontinent the same development was arrested by the effort, inspired by John Foster Dulles, to build up Pakistan as a military power. It is doubtful if, as a nation, we have ever taken any action that was more categorically mischievous and wicked. The notion that the arms so supplied had relevance only against Russia was a hopeless fantasy. All countries arm against their major enemy; for the Pakistanis that, as a matter of course, was India. (That Pakistan seriously altered the balance of power against the U.S.S.R. was also a fantasy and a terrible libel on the Red Army.) Meanwhile the development of Pakistan as a possible military rival encouraged all of the wrong attitudes in India. Instead of developing the benignity that a large country should have for a smaller neighbor, numerous Indians made a political career out of hating Pakistan. Compromise on border questions in Kashmir or Kutch became impossible or difficult. Resources were wasted on arms. And, in 1966, the policy led to actual conflict. It also led Lyndon Johnson, in one of the most sensible actions of his Presidency, to cut off military support to both countries. It was incredible that it was ever resumed.
Now with the break between the two wings of Pakistan there is no alternative to the North American solution. West Pakistan, although economically more progressive than most of India, is a very small country in comparison. With a sullen and costly East Bengal in subjection it is even weaker than by itself. So no one can any longer suppose that it is a serious military rival of India any more than it is a serious bastion against the Soviet Union. We cannot bring about a North American type solution—in particular we cannot do much to induce its prime requisite, which is development of the tolerant and large-minded attitude in India that is appropriate to a large country with small neighbors. But we can at least move on from the errors of Dulles and bring totally to an end the arms policy that is the surviving symbol of the old policy. We can remove this barrier to the only possible arrangement by which India and her smaller neighbors (the two parts of Pakistan either in independence or as some federation of self-governing states) can live in harmony.