But the two peoples never became one people in anything but religion. The Punjabis have always been the conquerors, the Bengalis the conquered.
Last March that status of conqueror and conquered was put to the test. The Bengalis won at the polls the right to take over the Government of Pakistan. They had the majority of the votes. But when it came to working out the constitutional consequences the Punjabis turned loose their Army in the middle of the night and being one of the great slaughters of history. It was an effort to reassert the conquest of 800 years ago.
Today, four months later, the Pakistan Army controls the main cities of Bengal, but not the countryside. Resistance is increasing. The guerrillas have been able twice to knock out the power stations serving Dacca, the capital. They frequently cut the rail lines from Dacca to other cities. The occupying Punjabi (West Pakistan) Army faces precisely the same prospect in Bengal that the Thieu regime in South Vietnam faced back before massive American intervention-the prospect of a pacification program stretching endlessly into the future.
This tragic and dreadful condition leaves everyone concerned with two problems. There is the immediate problem of how to put an end to the horror and misery in Bengal. The Punjabis must give up a military repression policy which is atavistic, self-defeating, and is bringing into being the very thing it was designed to prevent; the existence of a separate Bengal.
But it very much seems that this can happen only if some progress might be made toward the solution of the larger problem; the problem of the relations of the great powers to Pakistan.
There is no effective pressure on the official government of Pakistan as Islamabad to abate the terror in Bengal because China and the United Stales have chosen not to risk intervention whereas Russia is becoming the main outside friend of India. Washington refuses to do anything which might alienate Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan who was involved in the breakthrough in Sino-U.S. relations. The Chinese, naturally, cling to their advantage in Pakistan. And everyone is aware of how dangerous an apple of discord in independent Bengal would be. It could trigger a war between Russia and China.
The theoretical solution is easy. All it requires would be an agreement between Russia, China, the United States, and India that Bengal should be free and untroubled by either China or Russia.
That's “all” it would take, but getting it appears to be presently impossible, China must be greatly tempted at the possibility of acquiring control of the Ganges basin with an outlet on the Indian Ocean, Russia certainly would go to great lengths to prevent any such thing.
Meanwhile war could break out again between India and Pakistan at any moment. It is almost more than India can bear to have so many of its Hindu kinfolk being killed by Punjabi Muslims just over the border.
