1971-06-13
By Joseph Lelyveld
Page: 5
Gandhian Touring capitals In Support of Bengalis
The one Indian leader with a record of having spoken out over the years for conciliation and compromise with Pakistan is now touring world capitals to ask that the Government of President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan be cut off from all forms of foreign assistance.
He is Jayaprakash Narayan, now the leading spokesman for the Gandhian viewpoint in India and, before he turned his back on party politics in 1957, his country's most prominent Socialist.
Before and after India's war with Pakistan in 1965 over Kashmir, Mr. Narayan labored for a settlement between the two countries on the basis of autonomy and self- determination for Kashmir-a stand that, he says, "earned me intense unpopularity in my own country."
Now Mr. Narayan, who is 70 years old, has been trying to generate international outrage over the denial of self-determination to the Bengalis of East Pakistan by the Pakistan Army, which since March has been seeking to crush the province's separatist movement.
"I have been very deeply hurt by what the Government of Pakistan has done," he said in an interview at the Indian Consulate here. "It is something like what Hitler did. I'm emotionally involved, I admit, but not as an Indian, as a democrat, as one who believes in peace."
The first stop of his unofficial mission was Cairo, where he failed in his attempt to meet any important figures in President Anwar el-Sadat's Government. He thinks that his failure was caused by the political crisis then taking place in Egypt but is not sure. Other Indians wondered whether it was because leaders in Cairo were reluctant to seem to be criticizing another Moslem government.