বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
governments, the most powerful ones acting together, can do that. They must take ruthless and skilful political action to force Yahya Khan and his Pakistan Government to admit that their present policy is criminal and stupid and must stop. Then they must force him or his successors to remove virtually all his troops from East Pakistan and guarantee the safety of those refugees who want to return there. Then they must persuade Indira Gandhi and her Indian Government to accept and support those refugees who do not want to return. Then they must payout money, hundreds of millions of pounds of it, to save people from death by starvation, disease and exposure.
If all these things are done quickly there might not be a catastrophe. East Pakistan, in fact Bengal in general, would still be a disaster area. But that is by contrast a happy prospect.
I am writing down these apocalyptic thoughts about a week after going to see Some of the refugee camps that have been set up around Calcutta. I am lying on a soft mattress beside the large swimming-pool of the Grand Hotel in the centre of the city, drinking many bottles of cold beer, munching peanuts and occasionally breaking off to read a grubbily printed paper called “I love you" comic about a boy and girl skiing down a hill, while the girl says, “I love Steve, but what will he do when he learns my secret? Can he forget my past 2"
I swim a lot, eat strange bitter curries and try not to be irritated with Bengali liftboys who fuss over me like some parading Maharajah, in the hope of a large tip,
I do all this because it is taking a long time to get unjittery again after seeing what is happening to the refugees. My newspaper colleagues seem the same. I mention this because in all other situations they have always been able to watch the most appalling events and experience unbearable human misery and remain unaffected in themselves.
I have seen them in Vietnam, back from Biafra, or in the Bengal cyclone. They were concerned, not without compassion, but able to cope with their emotions. This time they cannot cope.
One colleague who has had an operation for throat cancer is already back on seventy cigarettes a day. The gathered newspapermen arm themselves with a specially virulent form of cynical self-protection.
Looking at a picture of an emaciated little Bengali girl admiring herself in a fragment of mirror, someone says: “Preparing to be an Oxfam poster,” and everyone giggles.
"I got a wonderful picture today,” says one photographer. “Two babies dying together in the mud."
"I did better than that,” says another, “I got them to hold hands."
Everyone else in Calcutta is equally emotional. A local diplomat, who looks as if he would remain perfectly urban throughout the second coming, is talking passionately about war. He thinks there will be one between India and Pakistan, this November, or if not this November next November. India, he argues, will simply not be able to bear the economic burden of the nine million starving, non-productive new inhabitants.
