In the various capitals I have visited on this tour, I have been asked what solution India would like. The question is not what we would like or what one or other of the big powers would like, but what the people of East Bengal will accept and what solution would be a lasting one.
I should like to plead with the world not to press me for a solution which leaves out the people of East Bengal. It is an illusion to think that the fate of a country can be decided without reference to its people. Once again, we see the old habit of underestimating the power of nationalism in Asia and of the demand of the people of Asia to make their own choice. Those who subscribe to the belief that democratically reached decisions are the most viable should recognize that the process of democracy admits no geographical disqualification. If democracy is good for you, it is good for us in India, and it is good for the people of East Bengal.
The suppression of democracy is the original cause of all the trouble in Pakistan. The nations of the world should make up their minds who is more important to them, one man and his machine or a whole nation.
I am asked what initiatives India will take. We have taken the biggest possible initiative in remaining so self-restrained and in keeping in check the anger within our country. We have endeavor strenuously to see that this does not become an IndoPakistan issue. Any direct talks between the two countries would immediately be converted into such a dispute and make the solution more difficult. Pakistan has been trying to create conditions in which the world would think that Pakistan in threatened by a more powerful neighbor. As I have said, the threat to Pakistan has come from its own rules, not from us. When the regime there found out that its calculations will not succeed, it moved its troops to our western frontier, knowing full well that we would be forced to follow suit.
Pakistan’s pleas for observers from the United Nations, for bilateral talks with India, and for mutual withdrawal of troops, seemed very plausible at first sight. But these are only methods to divert the attention of the world from the root of the problem to what are merely by products. We cannot be side tracked. We cannot have a dialogue with Pakistan on the future of East Bengal, because we have no right to speak for the people of East Bengal. Only Sheikh Mujib or the elected and accepted representatives of East Bengal have that right.
I have merely touched on certain points and on what I thought would interest you the most. I should like to leave the time now for questions. But I want to add only one thin g, because the President of your Club said that I had come here to ask for aid, I have not asked for any aid, neither in this country nor in any of the other countries which I have visited. I believe that it is not the task of anyone country to say to another what they should do even if it is a question of helping. It is my duty to put the situation in my country and its neighborhood, to give my assessment of the situation to the leaders of the countries I visit. It is for them, then, with their own assessment and what they hear from me, to make up their mind what they think about this and what they should do about it.
