পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৯১২

884. ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড fantastic to suppose that the conflict was due to East Pakistan's demand for autonomy being suppressed. Are the people of East Pakistan less than independent in a united Pakistan where they are in a majority, and can dominate the Central Government? A majority has, or can acquire, the power to right wrongs and to correct imbalances. It is unthinkable for a majority to want to secede. By definition, a demand for secession is a minority's demand. Since, I repeat, the people of East Pakistan are not a minority or a small ethnic group within Pakistan, it follows that the secessionists among them do not represent the people at large. Being secessionists, they are a self-confessed minority. Their own position proclaims their isolation from the people. Such isolation can be due either to a total failure of statesmanship, or to a collusion with a foreign power which wishes the disintegration of the State. In the case of the secessionists in East Pakistan, it was due to both. The relationship between the upheaval in East Pakistan and India's actions is immediate. For months. Indian war material had been steadily passing into East Pakistan from across a border which, traversing rivers, hills, forests and swamps, could not be fully guarded by the limited number of Pakistani troops. When the crisis approached, India sundered the air communications between East and West Pakistan by banning the over flights of Pakistani aircraft across Indian territory. It did so in reprisal against the hijacking of an Indian plane to Pakistan. But, as has been judicially established, this hijacking was engineered by Indian intelligence itself, wanting to create a pretext for India to ban the over flights. The ban is illegal and contrary to India's international obligations. Yet, even now, despite international efforts at conciliation, India refuses to lift it. When the crisis mounted, and Pakistan was passing through its severest test, India massed its troops along our borders, both in East and West Pakistan. Faced with this threat from outside, combined with an insurgence in the country, the Government of Pakistan had no choice but to use all means to save the country from anarchy dismemberment and inevitable Indian domination. I ask the distinguished Representatives assembled in this hall, faced with similar circumstances, what would any other legal Government do? Conflicts of the kind which we have suffered in East Pakistan are a supreme tragedy. But world opinion is not yet fully aware of how it has been caused and intensified by foreign interference. Had India's concern with the plight of the displaced persons been purely humanitarian, it would have followed a different line of policy. It would have done its utmost to convey the appeal of the Government of Pakistan to the displaced persons to return to their homes. It would have co-operated with us and with the United Nations in a common effort to accomplish this objective. It would have entered into a neighborly dialogue with Pakistan. Here was a situation where, if no power politics was involved, the interest of both India and Pakistan demanded that the displaced person be enabled to return to their homes. It therefore causes us the profoundest regret that, both by its incessant propaganda and its action, India is inhibiting the return of the refugees. By engineering border conflicts, mortar-fire and shelling, India makes it impossible for our nationals to cross the