ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড standpoint of her own stability. Therefore, even with all the difficulties, our aim should be to try to heal the wounds and keep Pakistan all together, if possible, rather than face a fail accompli that the damage is already irrevocable. My only other remark in this context is that I deplore the suggestion, which I find wholly illogical, that we should suspend all aid to Pakistan. That would be the converse of what Hon. Members are trying to achieve, because facts are facts and the only effective way at present to get aid to East Pakistan is with the concurrence of the West Pakistan authorities. They are in charge in Dacca, Chittagong and the other ports and the airfields. Therefore, if we were to use a form of indirect sanctions by cutting down aid to Pakistan as a whole, and West Pakistan had to tighten its belt even further, there would be even less aid available for East Pakistan. Rather should we be bending our efforts-this was why I listened with respect to my Right Hon. Friend to increase the aid from international and other sources to West Pakistan by doing our level best to ensure that a right and fair proportion goes for the benefit of East Pakistan. That is the way to tackle the situation rather than to threaten to withdraw aid, which would certainly not have the effects that some would wish. This is as tragic an occasion for me as it is for anyone else, because no one in the House has closer personal ties than I have with Pakistan, dating back over more than one generation as regards the Muslim community in the subcontinent, which I remember from childhood from my father, who was a great personal friend of Jinnah. I do not think that we do a service by twisting the history of Pakistan and forgetting two factors. The first is that this country, and all parties in it, bears a great responsibility for the creation of Pakistan. To talk now about its absurdity is to forget that, to a large extent. Britain was responsible for creating his State. Having said that, however, it should be added that it was also in accord with the wishes of the people. One must go back for further in history to understand what might seem to be a ridiculous thought geographically that the two main Islam communities on the Indian subcontinent wanted to come together, as they did. To do that—and I have no wish to raise the temperature about Indian history-one must go back scores, sometimes hundreds, of years to appreciate the tensions between Hindu and Muslim. These are facts of history. In what is now East Pakistan, there was a great feeling that the people wanted to become part of an Islam Muslim community and escape the previous economic domination of the Hindus. This is a historic fact which led to the demand for Pakistan to be equally strong from the east as it was from the west at the time of its creation. The fact that since then there have been undoubted faults and mistakes—which, I must admit, I have always found West Pakistanis ready to admit-in which the greater amount of concentration of economic progress has come to the West, is undeniable. To say that, however, is no excuse for saying that because of that we should not try to reach a reasonable solution, in which obviously West Pakistan will have learned its lesson in this respect as well as anyone else. As the Right Hon. Member for Stepney gave a little of his interpretation of recent constitutional history, I have decided that it is fair to put on record exactly what happened
