Question: But you believe that in order to achieve a settlement and secure the return of the refugees, that the people of Bangladesh of what was East Pakistan, are going to have to settle for something rather less than full independence? Autonomy perhaps within a union but less than full independence?
The Prime Minister: Well, it depends entirely on them. This was not our show. It is their show; it is their lives we are talking about. We are not talking about some game where you make a particular move or another move. We are talking about the lives of millions of people.
Question: In one of your recent speeches you have said that you are sitting on a volcano, may I also suggest to you that you appear to be sitting on the fence, that you are standing all of from this problem. You say it is a question to be settled between the two wings of Pakistan, between east and west, but how are they to be brought together?
The Prime Minister: We do not know how they are coming together. It is our concern insofar as it affects us. While the matter is basically between the military regime of West Pakistan and the people and their elected representatives of East Bengal, Pakistan troops are massed on our eastern borders also. So, therefore, we are in no way sitting on the fence and saying we are not concerned. We are concerned. But we cannot decide what the people of East Bengal will do. Only they can take that decision.
Question: But when you stand aside like that, can you really afford to, when India is giving sanctuary and support to those who wish to liberate East Pakistan. You are involved and you have also refused an offer off talks with the President of Pakistan. Is there not a contradiction in your position?
The Prime Minister: None at all. Do you want us to murder the people who come to India. The only way we could have stopped them was to kill them off. There was no other way out at all and nobody has been able to suggest that there was a way out.
Question: No, of course, I don’t suggest that and I don't really see that that follows, but....
The Prime Minister: It does follow.;
Question: But I wonder why you do refuse the offer of talks. Isn't it important to talk sooner rather than later?
The Prime Minister: Talk with whom-and about what? Up to now, President Yahya Khan is telling everybody and he may be telling it now for all I know, that the situation in Bangladesh is absolutely normal. Now, either he does not know what is happening or he is telling a deliberate untruth. Either way, where is the foundation for a talk?
Question: More broadly do you feel therefore in the light of what you have just said that the whole idea of two nations on the sub-continent of India set up as a result of partition has failed?
The Prime Minister: We said so very clearly before this took place and mode of the Indian people I would say were against the whole thing. But our leader and I think
