পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (দ্বাদশ খণ্ড).pdf/১৭৬

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বাংরাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ দ্বাদশ খণ্ড
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kinds of people, and we are grateful for the help. But the major problem is not a financial one. We are poor, we cannot afford these millions of people. But because we are poor, because we have know how to live without food, without necessities, we can put up with any difficulty. We can look after any number of people, of course with great discomfort to them and to us, and may be some people with die also. Nevertheless, we can survive this problem. What is difficult to survive are the political consequence s, the social tensions, the difficulty of the administration, and last but most important the real threat to our independence, to our stability, to our integrity. Because with the refugees are coming people who are not genuine refugees. We are having sabotage. Our trains have been blown up, and all kinds of other things have happened.

 So, India today is facing a real threat. We had reached a point in economic growth, in social stability, this was not an easy task; it was achieved against very great adds. We had help from many countries, including the United States, but it has been a very small part of the major endeavor. The major brunt of the problems-whether it is of the refugees today or whether it is the problem of our own people, has been bome by the Indian people themselves. If there is progress, it is because the Indian people have put in the effort, put in the sacrifice that was needed to go ahead.

 So, just when we come to stage where we think we can go ahead much more easily, much faster, we suddenly have the problems of another country. They are not our problems. This other country has pushed across the border people who did not vote for their Government, but voted for the regime they wanted. There is no other crime which these people have committed because the cry for independence arose after Sheikh Mujib was arrested, and not before. He himself, so far as I know, has not asked for independence, even now. But after he was arrested, after there was this tremendous massacre, it was understandable that the rest of the people should say: “After this, how can we live together? We have to be separate”.

 This is the situation. We have no animosity towards Pakistan even though they have campaigns of “Crush India”, “Conquer India”. They observed a Day or a Week and they has these stricken on their cars. We never had anything like this, and we never shall. We have not had anything against even China. China has attacked us, Pakistan has attacked us. On our side, we have always side we want friendship. On our side, we have always taken unilateral steps which we thought would lead to a normalization of relations. But there has been no response forthcoming.

 We do not mind if there is no response. But we do think that the limit of our endurance has been reached when they think they can just put their troubles on to us. Here was a problem they were facing-that their people had voted against the Government. So what do you do? You send them across the frontier. At one stroke, you get rid of your enemies, you get rid of population, and you weaken India, which you want to weaken. This is something which India just cannot tolerate. May be. I could tolerate. But with all my majority in Parliament, it is not a dictatorship. I have to carry not only my party, I have to carry, in a serious situation, all the other parties of India. And we feel that it is not just the question of India, because we believe that if peace is threatened in India, if stability is threatened in India, there cannot be peace and stability in my part of Pakistan. They can have all the armies of the world, whether they have from China or the