liberties since partition. All of the Awami Leaguers who formed the provisional government of Bangladesh in exile last April are old colleagues of Mujib's and have grown accustomed to handling responsibilities since he went lo prison. Bui running a volatile war-weakened new nation is considerably more difficult than managing a political party. The trouble is that none of them have the tremendous charisma that attracted million-strong throngs to hear Mujib. The top leaders, all of whom won seats in the aborted National Assembly last December by overwhelming margins, are:Syed Nazrul Islam, 40, acting President in the absence of Mujib, a lawyer who frequently served as the Sheikh's deputy in the past. He was active in the struggle against former President Ayub Khan, and when Mujib was thrown in jail, he led the party through the crisis. - Tajuddin Ahmed, 46, Prime Minister, a lawyer who has been a chief organizer in the Awami League since its founding in 1949. He is an expert in economics and is considered one of the party's leading intellectuals.Khandakar Moshtaque Ahmed 53. Foreign Minister, a lawyer who was active in the Indian independence movement and helped found the Awami League,
The most immediate problem is to prevent a bloodbath in Bangladesh against non-Bengalis accused of collaborating with the Pakistani military. Toward this end, East Bengal government officials who chose to remain in Bangladesh through the fighting are being inducted into the new administration and caking over as soon as areas are liberated Actually, India's recognition came earlier than planned. One reason was to circumvent a charge reportedly budding in the U.N. that India had joined the battle to annex the province to India. Another was to enable the Bangladesh government to assume charge as soon as large chunks of territory were liberated by the army. Since New Delhi does not want to be accused of having exchanged West Pakistani colonialism for Indian colonialism, ii is expected to lean over backward to let the Bangladesh government to think its way.
The Walk Back
Is there any chance that the Pakistanis may yet engineer a startling turn of the tide, rout the Indians from the East and destroy the new nation in its infancy? Virtually none, as Correspondent Clark cabled: “Touts who are betting on the outcome between India and Pakistan might ponder the fact that two of the TIME correspondents who were visiting Pakistan this week (Clark in the West, Stewart deep in the East) were there with Indian forces".
And so at week's end the streams of refugees who walked so long and so far to get to India began making the long journey back home to pick up the threads of their lives. For some, there were happy reunions with relatives and friends, for others tears and the bitter sense of loss for those who will never return. But there were new homes to be raised, new shrines to be built, and a new nation to be formed. The land was there too, lush and green.
"Man's history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man,” Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prizewinning Bengali poet once wrote. Triumph he had, but at a terrible price. With the subcontinent at war, and the new-born land still wracked by bone-shattering poverty, the joy in Bangladesh was necessarily tempered by sorrow.
