428 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড This has been true in Latin America, African countries like the Congo, and in West Pakistan. We have preached to the poor nations, which have problems of survival we cannot comprehend, that they must first erect a parliamentary democracy on the Westminster or Washington models, before they can receive our blessing, which, at best, will be aid with political strings attached, Refugee camp Somehow, Bangladesh has called our bluff. Somehow last December 98 percent of the East Bengali people voted for a parliamentary democracy, and for a moderate man as Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They did not vote for independence from the government of West Pakistan, a thousand miles away: they asked only for democratic autonomy within the state of Pakistan. For this, they were crushed last March by the army of Yahya Khan. Since then, no people, not even the Jews, have suffered as much as the Bengalis. The 'People who stayed in their country died by violence or by starvation. Those who fled to India walked along corridors of agony to the refugee camps, for they ceased, it seemed, to be human. Even before Yahya's army struck a cyclone last November killed a quarter of a million. Bengal and the Ganges delta have always been a geographical coffin. And long before that, Clive of India stripped Golden Bengal of what he described as hidden "inexhaustible riches" and there followed according to an historian of the time, a period when enormous fortunes were made in Calcutta while 30,000.000 human beings were reduced to an extremity of wretchedness. Finally, in 1947, Britain divided Bengal into two parts and assured her poverty, Some say, for a century or more. Bengal's and India's greatest poet, Tagore, wrote of his people: "Man's body is so small: his strength in Suffering so immense." But this afternoon as my taxi approached the Bangladesh mission in Circus avenue, Calcutta, history's gloom had gone. Arms linked From a block away I could hear the humming and singing of several hundred Bengalis (in politics and in song they are like the Welsh) and when I arrived people were standing together, arms linked: and many were crying (in their emotions they are like the Jews). A transistor radio was still blipping the news that, after centuries, Bengal was officially a nation. The only equivalent of this I can think of is the recognition of the State of Israel. In the garden of the mission exiled parliamentarians, in suits and white shirts, stood with young bearded men of the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladesh freedom fighters. The nationalism they expressed was, like them, gentle. They sang this anthem:
