বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
beings. Then one comes to look beyond the horror, and appreciate the immense additional strain on the financial and administrative resources of Government of India.
Where are they to find temporary accommodation in a countryside which is usually wet and low-lying and already intensively farmed? Where are they to get even the simplest materials to make shelter? How are they to, are they to organize rudimentary standards of hygiene and keep disease at bay? How do they make available large quantities of additional food, and having got it how are they to organise its distribution along few and desperately overcrowded roads?
How do they reconcile the existing population, already crowded enough, to the presence of large extra numbers? How are they to keep the normal administrative machine running as well as coping with the abnormal?
The local administration and the additional officers made available by the Central Government of India are doing wonders, but the fact remains that an unexpected transfer of population on this scale would strain the internal resources of any state, and the world should continue to look with sympathy and generosity at any request for help which the Government of India puts forward."
Tobias Iveland, Den Norske Santalmisjon
"It is a tragedy, a very, very great tragedy and we like to do whatever we can to help to solve this problem. It is a tremendous task you have taken up God's blessing."
Dr. Christine Pickard, War On Want Volunteer.
"I expected the pain and the suffering; as a doctor used to the awful details of disease I knew how to cope with that side of things, even though it was worse than anything I had ever seen before. It is not the quality but the quantity of the problem that is so appalling. For the first time I felt swamped by the magnitude of a situation where I could see no light at all. As a result my sympathies had to be drawn by the rebels, the political agitators. For in the end the solution to the problem must be a political one.
I arrived in India as a new journalist, but, willy nilly, I was drawn into politics while living there.
Why on earth anyone was ever mad enough to expect two such different groups of people as those living in East and West Pakistan to exist happily as one nationality was suddenly beyond me: though I had accepted it without a murmur before.
In a situation the size of this, answers rather than questions are very elusive. But I became sure of one thing. We must not only send money, we must really set our minds to trying to find some long-term solution, and I mean long-term, even at the expense of short-term gain. This might involve a lot of rethinking on our own part and it could be uncomfortable but we must make the effort; after all, so much of the blame can be laid directly at our door."
