Nation

Since March 25, when the Pakistani Army was turned
loose on a defenseless East Bengal, events have
been unrolling which have been described as not
less frightful than the war in Vietnam; and the
world has glanced that way, at intervals, and
looked away again, and done little or nothing.

In any such case it is a puzzle to know where the
responsibility for this nothing lies. Ideally, in
democratic lands, news agencies report,
individuals or bodies alert the public, public
opinion is condensed by parliaments, governments
take action, or move the United Nations to act. In
this case it cannot be said that either
information or summons to action have been
lacking. Press coverage has been less than it
should have been, and intermittent because of
frequent crowding out by other events, but there
has been enough to give anyone who wanted it a
fair glimpse of what was going on. In Britain, The
Times (of London) has shown more continuous
interest than most other papers. In June the
Sunday Times had two full and horrifying reports
by two different writers. One of these was told by
several Pakistanis on the spot that East Bengal
was, going to be cleaned up for good and all, even
if 2 million people had to be killed. "This is
genocide conducted with amazing casualness," he
commented on the cleaning-up process as he watched
it. Any nation giving aid to Pakistan was guilty
of "financing genocide," wrote the New Statesman
on June 5. "It is the greatest massacre since
Hitler," wrote the popular Daily Mirror on June
17, asking for a British initiative.

Numerous individuals and groups, in or out of
political life, have tried to rouse opinion. In
April, Gunnar Myrdal and a group of Swedish
writers and scientists appealed to the governments
of the five Nordic states to bring the matter
before the U.N. In France, there have been a
number of strong condemnations of Pakistan, one in
June by the Permanent Board of the French
Episcopate, one in September by Malraux. In July,
a Canadian parliamentary delegation visited East
Bengal, and declared that the province ought to be
allowed to decide its own destiny. Various similar
protests have come from America. Senator Kennedy
has distinguished himself; he was in India in
august and made an excellent statement, which he
followed with a demand for the cutting off of
American aid to the murderers "I am distressed,"
he had been quoted little earlier as saying,
"that the Administration finds it easy to
whitewash one of the greatest nightmares of modern
times."

The American and other governments can have been
in the dark about the situation only if they were
anxious be in the dark, eagerly ignorant like the
public of West Pakistan India has made patient
efforts to enlighten them. Mrs. Gandhi appealed
for international action on May 26, and since then
has made a long series of speeches and statments;
she and her foreign minister, Swaran Singh, and
her prominent members of her government have
visited many capitals. On the other side,
Pakistani propaganda has been as crass and crude
as was to be expected from regime with the
mentality more of a feudal baronage an of modern
statesmanship. That has been so most of all in the
explanations offered to foreign observers by its
spokesman in Bengal. "The attempt by West
Pakistan's military government to sell the Western
world their side I the story sometimes makes
General Westmoreland's credibility gaps look like
hairline cracks," one journalist wrote. Yet
Western governments went on finding reasons
excuses for inaction, and the United Nations
reflected their inertia. Its pundits found a
deplorable excuse by saying that the affair
belonged to the "domestic jurisdiction" of
Pakistan. Not long ago all men claimed a right to
beat their wives as part of their domestic
jurisdiction, but it is a strange sort of domestic
business that turns 10 million people out of their
homes and leaves them to be fed by another
country.

If ever, as the Guardian wrote on June 14, it was
time for the United Nations to rise to the
responsibilities entrusted to it, the time was now
though that newspaper, like too many others, was
still talking of persuading Yahya Khan to "stop
his army's butchery," instead of forcing
him. Well might Lord Brockway tell a demonstration
of supporters of Bangla Desh, or East Bengal, in
Trafalgar Square on August 1 that he was
"appalled by the inactivity of the great powers
and the United Nations." Even charitable
assistance to India in its staggering task of
keeping 10 million refugees alive was
grudging. Mrs. Gandhi had every right to speak
with bitterness to her parliament in June of the
well-fed world's apathy over the plight of these
millions. "If 10,000 refugees go to any European
country the whole continent of Europe is afire,
with all the newspapers and governments shouting
over it." Since then she has had far more, not
less, reason for complaint.

All this time India has been on the horns of a
whole set of dilemmas. A tremendous strain was put
on its resources, just when there seemed, after
the victory of the moderate progressives led by
Mrs. Gandhi in the general election, a chance of
quicker social reform and economic growth. West
Bengal, under the weight of its social and
economic problems, and with its left-wing parties
furiously at odds with one another, has been
growing almost ungovernable; for New Delhi to find
itself with a shattered East Bengal on its hands
as well was an alarming prospect. So was a
Communist Bangla Desh under Chinese
tutelage. India wanted the refugees off its hands
and back in their homes, but they refused to go,
and could not honorably be asked to go, until they
could return to a homeland free of foreign
bayonets. Public anger against Pakistan, and
desire for action, have inevitably been
strong. But so has been the government's
reluctance to face war, which means further
crushing expense, besides worse dangers, with no
tangible reward. India's painful hesitations over
many months are the best answer to Pakistani
propaganda about all the trouble having been
deliberately brought about by Indian meddling. A
stopgap course was pursued by India of giving
limited backing to the guerrilla resistance, while
appealing with mounting urgency to the civilized
world to take the measures it so easily could
against Pakistan. The longer civilization looked
the other way, the more desperate grew India's
predicament.

Most of the West's obvious interests would seem to
range it on the side of India and of Bangla
Desh. It is in East Bengal that the two staple
export commodities of the old dual Pakistan, tea
and jute, are grown; and tea has remained a
largely British undertaking, as in the days of
British rule. It must be presumed that before
March 25 the Bengali leaders were counting on
Western opinion to prevent the army steamroller
from being set in motion; they seem to have
thought that America in particular would be well
disposed toward an autonomous regime led by the
very moderate Mujibur Rahman. Their own political
thinking was attuned to the West, and when
invasion came they were bewildered by Western
inactivity. As a commentator (P. Gill) wrote
subsequently, at the outset "the West had an
opportunity to support a movement that was both
popular and overwhelmingly bourgeois." Here was
something the West has searched Asia for in vain;
indeed, it has searched so long that it may have
abandoned belief in the possibility of such a
thing, and decided to put all its money on solid
military men instead.

Moreover, the West has skeletons in its own
cupboards that make it less inclined to think
about Bengali skeletons. Above all, war still
drags on in Southeast Asia, and the West is not
alone. China has the conquest of Tibet on its
record, and Russia the recent occupation of
Czechoslovakia. Even India can be taxed with
behavior in Nagaland for some years in the past
not altogether unlike Pakistan's in Bengal, though
on a vastly smaller scale. It was an unlucky
coincidence that Ceylon, important as the staging
post for Pakistani transport planes and troopships
rounding the tip of India, was in the grip of a
left-wing rising when the firing began in Bengal,
with resulting official panic and severe
repression.

As for Britain, the controlled Pakistani press has
had a great deal to say about the hurly-burly in
Ulster, and some apologists for Pakistan in
Britain have echoed its assertion that in Bengal,
as in Ulster, action has been taken merely against
a few lawbreakers incited by a foreign
government. It is a preposterous comparison; there
have been far too many deaths in Northern Ireland,
but East Bengal has suffered an orgy of
bloodshed. Nevertheless, Ulster puts Britain too
in the dock, since the imbroglio is the outcome of
fifty years of injustice winked at by every
British party and ministry in turn; and it has
done lamentably much to keep public attention away
from Bengal.

Yet Britain ought to feel a special responsibility
for what has happened there. To British sins of
omission and commission in India was largely due
the emergence of Pakistan as an impossible
combination of two regions 1,000 miles apart and
as different as Sweden from Sicily. Also, many of
the dominant groups in West Pakistan, that prevent
it from making progress or giving its neighbor any
peace, were created by the British to buttress
their own power: reactionary landlords, police and
army bosses, time-serving bureaucrats. British
conservatism is quite capable of taking pride in
these fruits of empire, and has always since 1947
had more liking for the police state of Pakistan
than for liberal India; and there is a very
conservative government in office now. British
military men may be supposed to relish the
spectacle of a country more or less permanently
ruled by the army they trained. Late in September
the Air Chief Marshal paid a visit to Pakistan,
for no good reason that anyone could learn.

Still, there are other points of view in Britain,
an early in May a sense of responsibility seemed
to be dawning when nearly 300 MPs of all shades
backed a motion urging ministers to work for a
cease-fire. There was also some wholesomely stiff
language in a debate on June 8 and 9. "How much
longer," The Observer had inquire just before the
debate, "can Britain and the rest of the world
continue to refuse to get the United Nations
involve in the situation along the Indo- Pakistan
frontier?" Be nothing came of it beyond a mild
statement by the Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec
Dougas-Home - a feudal lane lord by origin - that
civil rule ought to be restored in East Bengal. A
pledge was however given that there would be no
fresh aid to Pakistan until progress was shown
toward a settlement. That was enough to elicit a
formal protest from Pakistan early in July,
followed by a threat from Yahya Khan, made in an
interview in August, to leave the Commonwealth -
from which he ought to hav been expelled long
since. Meanwhile, a West Pakistan cricket team was
allowed to tour England, amid polite applause. The
English like to be admired for their tolerance and
friendliness, but at least half of this is a bland
disregard of anything but their own comforts and
amusements. To the man in the street the whole
affair has been just one more squabble between
India and Pakistan, requiring nothing more from
him than a small contribution to charity.

Britain has at least done enough to annoy Yahya
Khan, if not enough to inconvenience him; America
has not done even that. Swaran Singh was sharply
critical in a parliamentary debate on June 28 of
the callous continuance of American arms shipments
to Pakistan. They went on all the same. On August
5 Alvin Toffler wrote in The New York Times of
this "morally repulsive" aid to the aggressor,
while "a planetary catastrophe is taking place in
Asia." President Nixon took credit to America for
its contributions to refugee expenses, but it
seems lunatic logic to give guns with one hand to
a gang of brigands, and pennies with the other to
console their victims. Late in August the
President was quoted as expressing "high regard"
for Yahya Khan, and finding fault with India.

Washington is automatically less well disposed to
Labour government in Britain, however timidly
progressive, than to a Conservative, and in the
same way one may surmise that it found the result
of the last Indian general election
unpalatable. Similarly, the Pakistani elections
with their threat however remote to "stability,"
may have induced Washington to look indulgently on
anything that would keep the army in the saddle in
both West and East. Attracted by cheap labor
firmly dragooned by the police America has sunk
considerable investments and loan in West
Pakistan. These will be at risk if the economy
collapses, and hitherto it has depended on foreign
loans plus colonial tribute extracted from Eastern
Bengal. When Yahya Khan unleashed troops into East
Pakistan he had seemingly been convinced by the
military clique around him, and very likely
convinced the equally ill-informed Nixon, that it
would only be a matter of a single swift stroke
within a few days all malcontents would be in jail
or in the next world, and order and profits would
be restored.

All the powers have been taking West Pakistan, as
a force in Asia, far too seriously. It was
American patronage and arms that allowed this
backward, unstable, really insignificant country
to swell itself up like the bullfrog in the
fable. Chester Bowles, former U.S. Ambassador to
India, traced the series of blunders and
miscalculations that made America go on bolstering
up the Pakistani Army, and warned of the collision
between it and India that has now occurred. Often
of late years Russia has seemed overanxious to be
friends with everyone, too ready to be drawn into
an expensive and futile competition with America
by giving aid to all types of regimes, whether it
was likely to do any good to the cause of progress
or not. Aid to unprogressive regimes like
Pakistan's, especially in the shape of arms,
benefits only the ruling cliques. Politically
Russia itself has nothing whatever to gain or lose
by being in the good or bad books of Pakistan's
gangster government.

On August 9 a new treaty of friendship was signed
between Russia and India. America, it was
reported, had warned New Delhi formally that if it
went to war with Pakistan China would come in, and
America would stand by and do nothing. If so, that
was a startling threat, meant to scare India into
letting Bangla Desh be reconquered even if Chinese
intervention might not really be probable. In face
of any such threats the treaty could be
interpreted as a pledge of protection. "Russia
has virtually underwritten Indian defense in the
event of an attack by Pakistan," wrote an Indian
newspaperman, and this may be true as far as it
goes. Most of the twelve articles are in very
general terms, but Article 9 provides for
immediate consultation on mutual security if
either signatory is attacked or threatened with
attack. But another view of the treaty is that it
signified Russia's anxiety hold India back from
taking any irreversible steps toward war. The
anxiety is easy to comprehend. Russia is awkwardly
placed between China on the one side and America
on the other, with the quicksand of the Middle
East always on its doorstep. Yet one would have
hoped to see the treaty followed by a firm
diplomatic offensive against Pakistan. By
compelling the United Nations to do its duty,
Russia would have gained greatly in moral credit;
and by thus isolating Pakistan it would have
reduced the danger that militarists might seek to
save themselves by provoking war with
India. Mrs. Gandhi's visit to Moscow late in
September, quickly followed by President
Podgorny's to India, encouraged Indians to hope
for growing Russian agreement with their belief in
the necessity of pressure on Pakistan.

Podgorny had urged Yahya Khan's government as
early as April 3 to put an end to "repressive
measures and bloodshed in East Pakistan." Chou
En-lai, on the contrary, sent a message, which he
published-greatly to his own moral discredit-on
April 12, assuring the West Pakistanis of his good
will, and promising support if the "Indian
expansionists" interfered in what was "purely an
internal affair of Pakistan." Repression against
a black rising in South Africa could of course be
described as a purely internal affair, and
doubtless would be so described by Chou En-lai if
it happened to suit his convenience at the moment.

Since then the Pakistani military clique must have
drawn further encouragement from the extraordinary
spectacle of President Nixon getting ready to
visit Peking. For years the Chinese have made the
air ring with wild allegations of collusion
between Washington and Moscow; the word is far
more appropriate to the aid and comfort that
Washington and Peking have both been giving
Pakistan. Collusion between China and Pakistan
started a long time ago, and momentarily startled
Washington; but it soon grew apparent that it was
only a maneuver against India; that no Socialist
propaganda would be allowed into Pakistani
bookshops, and no Communists out of Pakistani
jails. All the real advantage of the connection
has gone to the reigning Pakistani reactionaries,
only the dishonor to China. The plain, simple
blockhead sometimes gets the better of the
overclever intriguer.

Forty years ago an American statesman spoke of the
Japanese Army running amok in China; now a Chinese
Government has been applauding a Punjabi army run
amok in Bengal. A diehard devotee of Maoism (there
are fewer of these on the Left today than there
were a few years ago, and in Britain the Bengali
issue has been fiercely debated between the small
Maoist and the small Trotskyite groups) might have
rationalized this by arguing that China, by
helping Pakistan to eliminate the educated middle
classes of Eastern Bengal was clearing the way for
a new movement under Socialist direction. When
this emerged, China would privately help it to cut
Pakistan's throat. After all, this devil's
advocate might have said, a free Bangla Desh under
its old half-baked bourgeoisie would be at best on
the level of an Indian province, and one has only
to look at the Indian half of Bengal to conclude
that there would be no great improvement for the
masses. But a Communist East Bengal would attract
West Bengal to it, break up the Indian Union, and
open the way for all kinds of splendid
revolutionary developments. Many of these fine
prospects have the air of pipe dreams, or of
Chinese national interests, real or imaginary,
concealed under revolutionary phraseology. A
liberated Bangla Desh, dependent on China alone
for economic aid, would be for a long time a very
poor country, whereas under a leadership able to
invite aid from all sides it might well be
materially better off, if less purely Socialist.

But the broadest objection to Maoist
Machiavellianism is that Socialists cannot afford
any longer to ignore ordinary human decency, as
they were too often persuaded to do in Stalin's
day. Doing or condoning certain evil for the sake
of uncertain good is apt to turn out bad
bookkeeping. Open endorsement by a Socialist
government of a reactionary dictatorship, engaged
in bloody suppression of a colonial revolt, cannot
be justified by any circumstances. It is a further
evil of Maoist diplomacy that it is obliged to go
on deceiving its own people, telling them the same
lies that the Pakistani people have been told; and
all this deception must retard China's own mental
and political growth. Socialist countries will
have to be far more politically democratic than
they are now, before Socialist foreign policies
become more healthy.

China apart, the world's reaction to the barbarism
in East Bengal has been curiously like its
reaction to Fascist aggression in the 1930s, the
years of appeasement. Yet today there is no
towering Third Reich to be dreaded and appeased;
only a stupid little dictator of a povertystricken
country with nothing but a supply of cheap, sturdy
cannon fodder. It is ironic to reflect that, human
affairs being ordered as they are, all this
bloodshed and misery and peril has been inflicted
on mankind for the benefit of a few hundred
men-military bosses, feudal landlords,
get-rich-quick businessmen-in a half-medieval
corner of Asia. Seldom in history have so many
owed so much evil to so few.