Question: By their full rights you mean autonomy within Pakistan or Independence.
The Prime Minister: At this moment there is lot of bitterness and hatred on both sides, but more on the side of the East Bengalis because they are the people who have been killed. They cannot forget what happened on the night of 25th March when there was this entirely unprovoked attack on the university where students and faculty members were killed in large numbers. And even now, although everybody is being killed, the concentration is on the intellectuals, on the young people and on the minorities.
Question: I think there has been universal admiration for the way that India has coped with the problem of looking after the refugees. But I think some people are confused as to why India will not accept a large United Nations presence in the refugee camps as Pakistan has suggested. Why won’t India accept this?
The Prime Minister: If I may deal with the admiration part first. It is a little bit of an irritant because, it is nice to be admired, but if people think you say a few flattering words and that is enough, well it is not because we are getting the verbal admiration and it seems to us the others are getting the more material help. So far as the U.N. observers are concerned we already have ten people. Ours is an open society, no censorship on newspapers, no limitation or restriction on who will visit the camps and everybody does, not only from other countries, but even people from our own country, whom we would rather wish they did not go, but anyway they go there and to the border and so on. What would be the purpose of more U.N. observers? There are ten of them now. It is only a device, I think, of Pakistan to show that India and Pakistan are on the same level. This is what we resent. It does not matter if a hundred U.N. people come. But quite frankly they will be able to do nothing. Apart from that, what we resent is the two countries being put on par.
Question: The guerillas in East Pakistan are clearly one of the reasons why there is unrest there still and yet India is widely reported to shelter them and give them some assistance. Don’t you feel that if you were to withdraw this shelter and assistance then the situation might calm down a little bit East Pakistan?
The Prime Minister: Certainly not. On the contrary I think it would be very much worse. So far as giving shelter and help is concerned, you know our border is such that we cannot stop people coming or going. Even British teams have gone back and forth without our knowing where they left India and where they came back. And so far as help is concerned, you know there are vast numbers of East Bengalis living in England, in the U.S. and various other countries, who are supporting this movement. Furthermore the guerillas are functioning all over East Bengal, not near the Indian border necessarily. And also the bases of them are the paramilitary forces which existed before-the East Pakistan Rifles, the East Bengal Rifles-and they already had quite a fair amount of weapons.
Question: You were elected Prime Minister, on a platform to, as you describe it, “Garibi Hatao” -to cradicate poverty. Now clearly the burden of the refugees must have set the Indian economy back. What exactly is the state of the Indian economy now?
