hit, since its subvention from the central government was never correspondingly increased. Over the last two decades, for instance, 70 per cent of Pakistan's investible funds went to the West and only 30 per cent to the East. Seventy-five per cent of revenue was spent in the West and only 25 per cent in the East. Foreign aid is based on population: yet East Pakistan, with two thirds of the country's people, received only 20 per cent of the cash. East Pakistani economists estimate that since independence, the real transfer of resources from East to West Pakistan has been to the tune of some £3,00m. By this argument, Bangladesh would certainly be more economically viable on its own. Another qualification for statehood fulfilled.
The question of aid leads to that of great power politics. East Bengal does not fit neatly into the cold war pattern, and the positions adopted towards it are particularly complicated. The British are allied with the West Pakistan government in Cento and Seato-mere planning organizations, to be sure, but through which weapons can be channeled. Yahya Khan's links with China, though, are closer and more significant. There are rumors that Peking will create diversionary activity on the Indo-Chinese border if India (backed by the Russians) intervenes in Bengal. China has cynically betrayed the West Bengali communists, who would have liked nothing better than to help their brothers across the border, but could not go it alone. (Perhaps this is final proof that the Chinese have achieved great power status.) As for Britain what our government has to say is regarded, since Singapore, with cynical contempt on all sides.
There are still, however, ritual motions to be gone through and lessons to be learned. The ritual concerns the IJN. The 75 million East Pakistanis feel they have at least as much national' call on the General Assembly as the 45 million Westerners, and are demanding what people always demand in such circumstances: that arms deliveries be stopped, aid cutoff, sanctions imposed and so forth. None of this will happen. As Conor Cruise 'O' Brien put it, the United Nations is like the Delphic Oracle, and always gives the answer; the strongest party to a dispute wants to hear. And there, for the time being, it rests.
But not for ever. Pakistan is only the most recent of the post-imperial, federations to be torn apart. When he drew the lines across the Indian sub-continent, Mountbatten listened too sympathetically to those who took religion more seriously than geography. It was, of course, a plain case of failure to learn from our own parochial experience as the whole unhappy history of Ireland has made only too clear. Since the original foundation of Pakistan, the West Indian, Malaysian, Rhodesian and Arabian federations have all collapsed. Significantly, each of them like Pakistan, was a 'state' created from above for reasons of political expediency. So the lesson is a simple, if a hard, one that such artificial structures cannot survive. How much human misery must be endured before that fact is accepted?
