New Statesman

We left Rawalpindi with a personal assurance from President Yahya Khan that we could go where we liked and see what we liked in East Pakistan. It soon became clear just how much and just how little this meant. Certainly we went to the places we had chosen, visiting widely separated districts and flying low over the countryside in between our stops. Nowhere was refused to us, with the exception of a village which we had been informed had recently been sacked by the army (this was not actually refused, but we were delayed until we had to drop the proposal). But wherever we went, we were on a conducted tour, in the hands of the regime, meeting the local ‘peace committees’, listening to the official point of view. Our attempts to ask simple questions were met by confusion and even by panic. Nobody would admit publicly that the army had committed excesses. A school teacher in Barisal was painfully embarrassed when he had to admit that no Hindu children had been back to school since the fighting. A police officer in Dacca tried desperately to avoid admitting that the last batch of new police recruits were all non-Bengalis. Everywhere we saw symptoms of a country in the grip of fear.

The basis of this fear became apparent as each member of our party in turn received confidences from people who spoke to one of us quietly, snatching a few words in a corner and giving us a picture of the real situation. Between us we received a significant number of these confidential statements from a wide variety of people. They all added up to the same conclusion: not only had the army committed widespread killing and violence in the March/April period, but it still continued. Murder, torture, rape and the burning of homes were still going on. It was a story that would be powerfully reinforced by the accounts given us by the refugees in India a few days later.

Plying over the country in a helicopter, or in a light aircraft, we saw villages and small towns where houses were destroyed. The incidents varied and often we went for miles where there appeared, at least from the air, to be no damage. Then we would see appalling devastation in a group of neighbouring villages. The worst example we saw was near the Comilla-Chittagong railway line, where two bridges had been blown up. Just south of the large one, the Feni bridge, between 30 and 50 villages had been completely destroyed, apparently a reprisal by the army.

There was a great deal of propaganda about the country returning to normality but the facts belie this. Even in areas, where the army has been in firm control since the end of March, the economic and social life of the country is at a very low ebb. Apart from the exodus to India, workers have fled the towns to stay in their villages and most of them are not yet going back. There are fewer people in the streets, many shops are closed, factories which used to work three shifts are now only working one, and that is usually below strength. At the Ispahani jute mill in Chittagong I was told that 800 men were at work, out of a normal complement of 7,000. The docks are undermanned, transport is disrupted, classes in schools are under strength and the opening of the new university year has been delayed. Most serious of all, there is likely to be a big shortfall in the rice harvest.

What were we told about the millions of refugees who fled into India? Originally the regime denied that there were any. During our visit they admitted that there were some, but claimed the maximum figure to be 1.2 million. The refugees were said to be people who had been frightened by firing in their vicinity when the army was carrying out its brief ‘law and order’ mission, plus some others who had been misled by the propaganda of Radio India. Anyway, the refugees would all like to return home, but were being forcibly prevented by the Indians. We asked to see one of the reception centres designed for returning refugees and we were taken to one at Chuadanga, near the western border with India. This was planned to receive 500 a day, but even their own records only 226 returned refugees in the 10 days since it opened. We met a group of 20, all women and children, who had returned that morning. Through interpreters we were told that the men with them had been turned back by ‘Hindus’. They were very reticent and it was never clear where this had happened and who these Hindus were. We were left in serious doubt as to whether this was a stage performance, but our hosts claimed that this was further evidence that India was forcibly preventing refugees from returning.

Four days later we saw the refugee situation on the Indian side. Any temptation to accept the smallest part of the Pakistan version would have been swept away by the awful reality of what is happening. As we drove up the road towards the frontier at Boyra, about 70 miles north-east of Calcutta, we drove past thousands of new refugees crowding the road on either side. They just kept coming, for mile after mile, people of all ages, carrying their cooking pots and little bundles of possessions. Young children were carrying babies a few weeks old. Some people were lying helplessly in the ditches. Some had died in the ditches. The numbers were so vast that our convoy had difficulty in making its way up the road. And so it goes on, sometimes as many as 100,000 new refugees a day reaching India.

For two days we visited refugees in their camps, in the hospitals and along the roads. Some are packed together in camps - the luckier ones with tents or tarpaulins to keep out the monsoon rains, others with make-shift thatched roofing and a sea of mud for their floor. Some are staying with friends or relatives, some are living in schools or office buildings. Some are camped in large drain pipes, some are in the open. Everywhere we went we questioned refugees at random; everywhere we were told similar stories. The army had come to their village, or a nearby village. People were shot or mutilated, houses and farms burned. Women were raped, the soldiers had looted, or encouraged the non-Bengalis to loot the Bengalis (and especially the Hindus). This was still happening. That was why they had left. They wanted to return, but only when it was safe, that is when Mujib said it was safe, or when the army left.

After a day traveling within driving distance of Calcutta, we spent another day flying to refugee camps further afield, so as to see the situation in the more remote areas away from West Bengal. At Agartala in Tripura State, the local hospital normally has beds for 240 patients, but wounded and sick refugees have now swelled the number to 640. Patients are lying in the corridors, between the beds and in every available space. They include 150 with bullet or bayonet wounds, all recently inflicted - 80 of these were children. The doctors are working round the clock, reinforced by some doctors from among the refugees. We were told that about 2,000 refugee doctors at work.

Out of a total of nearly 7 million refuges (a fortnight ago) about 5 million are in West Bengal, whose 45 million original inhabitants are among the poorest and most overcrowded in the world. In Tripura 1.1 million refugees have been added to the original population of 1.5 million. Tripura does not suffer from the overcrowding of West Bengal, but its remoteness imposes supply problems of fantastic difficulty. The nearest railhead is 120 miles away, the road bad.

In both these states the local officials, the doctors and the nurses are achieving the near impossible by keeping most of the refugees alive. But they face problems that got worse every day. The numbers keep going up. The responses of Delhi and the outside world have been on a tremendous scale, but inevitably too little and too late, because nobody has ever had to cope with a disaster of this magnitude before. The Indian government has given the world its estimate for the cost of the operation for a six month’s period. The total aid so far committed by the outside world is less than half his total. But meanwhile the number of refugees continues to go up. And for how many times six months will aid be needed?

Whatever the cost of keeping the refugees alive, the real cost to India will be much greater. The immediate cost includes land taken up for camps, officials being taken away from other duties, local development projects postponed and schools closed to their pupils. All this is serious enough in an area as poor as West Bengal, but what of the future? What will happen to millions of people living in enforced idleness month after month? What will the local workers’ attitude be, working a full week for two rupees a day, and feeding his family no better than the refugees, who get their food free? But how can the refugees ever be allowed out of the camps to work, when they would inevitably under-cut that two rupees a day, and when there is heavy local unemployment? So far the local population has shown kindness and goodwill, but how long before serious tensions develop? Could these tensions deteriorate into communal disturbances? What will be the effect on the turbulent politics of West Bengal, now once again under direct rule from Delhi after the fall of yet another state government?

I came away feeling that the appalling events of the last few months might well be leading to an ever deepening tragedy for both countries. This can be averted by a political settlement acceptable to the people of East Bengal. Time is not on anybody’s side.