with edema and malnutrition, limp in the arms of their mothers, You see babies going blind for lack of vitamins, or covered with sores that will not heal. You see in the eyes of their parents the despair of ever having their children well again. And most difficult of all, you see the corpse of the child who died just the night before.
The story is the same in camp after camp. And it is complicated by the continually growing number of civilian casualties overburdening an already limited hospital system. Most of these casualties have been brought across the border by their fellow refugees. Yet there also are large numbers of Indians whose border villages have been subjected to shelling from Pakistani troops. In addition, there are the untold numbers of victims who remain uncounted and unattended in the rural areas of East Bengal.
The government of India, as it first saw this tide of human misery begin to flow across its borders, could have cordoned off its land and refused entry. But, to its everlasting credit, India chose the way of compassion. The Indian Government has made Herculean efforts to assist and accommodate the refugees., efforts which history will record and remember.
But even this noble work is being defeated by the sheer numbers involved in this calamity. At peak periods two months ago, refugees were arriving in India at the rate of 150,000 a day. Today they still arrive at the rate of 25,000 a day.
And while the magnitude of the problem staggers the imagination, the individual accounts of the people who have fled East Bengal tear at your heart.
A 55 year old railway employee... he was a Muslim civil servant with 35 years of service... told me of an unexplained noontime attack by the Pakistani army on his railroad station. “I do not know why they shot me.” he said. “I don't belong to any political party. I was just a railway clerk.” Now he sits idly in an Indian refugee camp, financially crippled, and with no prospect of returning to receive his long-earned government pension that was to begin next month.
Even more tragic are the experiences of the innocent and uneducated villagers. You can piece together the mosaic of misery from dozens of interviews among new refugees on the Boyra-Bongaon Road north of Calcutta.
On the day we travelled this 20-mile road, at least 7,000 new refugees were streaming along the banks of the border river crossing near Boyra. Nearly all were peasant farmers. Most were Hindus, from the Khulna and Barisal district south of Dacca ... on the fringe of the area affected by last fall's cyclone.
The very young and the very old were exhausted from many days and nights in flight., usually on foot. Many were in a visible state of shock, sitting listless by the roadside or wandering aimlessly toward an unknown fate. They told stories of atrocities, of slaughter, of looting, and burning of harassment and abuse by West Pakistani soldiers and collaborators. Many children were dying along the way, their parents pleading and begging for help. Monsoon rains were drenching the countryside, adding to the depression and despair on their faces. To those of us who went out that day, the rains meant no
