Calcutta, April 5
Events in Bangla Desh have produced strong feelings in West Bengal, but the notion that a wave of Bengali nationalism could generate a popular movement for reunification of the two Bengals to form one independent state appears fanciful to observers directly acquainted with the realities.

Public sentiment in West Bengal is not basically different from that in the rest of India. There is genuine deep sympathy for the people of East Bengal because they have been victims of exploitation and now military repression by an arrogant West Pakistani minority and this is more important, because they are not anti-Indian.

There is much sentimental outpouring about social and cultural ties between the two Bengals, but few people in West Bengal and not many more in East Bengal are seriously interested in these ties becoming sufficiently strong to promote political union.

The plain fact is that the Hindus of West Bengal do not want to be swamped by a Muslim majority and the Muslims of East Bengal have no reason to favour a future in which they might again be dominated and exploited by an elite Hindu minority.

As one brought up in East Bengal before the partition of the Indian subcontinent and living on this side of the border since then, I have no doubt that these fundamental realities are unchanged.

But the present phase in East Bengal's struggle for freedom has such emotional potential that no Bengali here can afford to be insensitive to it.

There has always existed a division between West and East Bengalis irrespective of religion. The average West Bengali abhors the prospect of having anything to do with the 75 million East Bengalis whom he has always considered unsophisticated and far too impulsive.

West Bengal today has many people whose homes were once in the eastern part, including those who have migrated since partition. The immigrants, new or old, have a nostalgia for the land they left but they also have many unhappy memories of those who are now trying to create an independent Bangla Desh. If these settlers want to see East Bengal free, it is largely because they want to regain what they left behind when they crossed into West Bengal.

As for the political parties, they are competing with one another in issuing statements and organizing demonstrations in support of East Bengal. But parties whose strength lies no more in West Bengal than in the rest of India can have no interest in a united independent Bengal.

Certain groups whose strength is largely regional have been in contact with emissaries of the Awami League and Maulana Bhasani's National Awami Party during the past week.

Of these groups with an entirely or largely local following, all but one are inconsequential. The exception is the Marxist Communist Party which has acquired a regional character.

In the newly elected national Parliament the Marxist Communists with 25 seats are the largest party in opposition. They won 20 of these seats in West Bengal and two in the neighbouring state of Tripura.

The Marxist campaign in West Bengal has been based on confrontation with the Central Government which is accused of conspiring with local vested interests to suppress "the democratic aspirations of the people". The Marxists have continually harped on the theme of Delhi's indifference to West Bengal's problems and have even described the federal police this state as an "occupation force" trying to put down popular protest in a "colony ".

All this may be recalled in support of the notion that the West Bengal Marxists may attempt what Shaikh Mujib's men are trying to achieve, on the other side of the border and that the two movements may coalesce in a struggle for an independent united Bengal. But privately the Marxists are most unhappy at this suggestion.

However, the Marxists are shrewd enough to extract the maximum political advantage for themselves.

Unless Peking breaks its silence in favour of Bangla Desh, the Naxalites, as the Maoist extremists are known here, must disapprove of the independence movement. But they cannot be wholly unresponsive to an armed struggle in East Bengal, when they have been dreaming of organizing one in India.