elections were won by such a big majority that this was raised; “that this means far too much autonomy than we are prepared to give”. And negotiations began. We thought, and the people of East Bengal thought, that this was a genuine attempt to come to an understanding; but the time was used for bringing across more troops from West Pakistan by sea, and when they thought that there were sufficient troops to deal with the population, on the 24th March, I am told by a leader of East Pakistan, who says he was, if not in the same room, at least in the same house where talks were being held-that they thought that things were going on well and that they were approaching a solution and an agreement. The very next day, a reign of terror, of massacre, and all that goes with it, was unleashed, and this resulted in millions of refugees-the number is now over 9 million-it is the population of Belgium or Austriawho are now sitting on Indian soil in the greatest of discomfort, in the greatest of misery, in very inadequate camps.
Now, even it in a rich country 9 million people were to come suddenly, not a few at a time, but very suddenly in a few weeks, they would not be able to manage the situation. So you can imagine that India being one of the poorest countries, with very limited resources, and in this situation we have 9 million people. You can imagine the pressure on supplies, on the administration, on the resources, on money, on every possible thing. Most of the refugees have come into four States of India in the Eastern region, and in one of them, Tripura, there is hardly room to put a person now. They are occupying the schools and the colleges and parks, every possible public building. In the beginning, the people were very sympathetic. Now the parents say; `well, we are sympathetic but what about our children? When will the schools open? Are they going to miss years of their education? So, all administrative work in some of these States is at a standstill. Every official is busy looking after the camps.
The economic burden is tremendous, the administrative problems are there. but even more so are the social and political problems which have arisen. We have organized trade unions. There is a recognized rate. Now, the refugees can’t-we are trying to keep them in the camps, but because the number is so large and many of them don’t come to camps at all they offer their services at much lower rate. Now, immediately there is trouble, because the labor unions say ‘well, this is our rate and you cannot employ’. But we have people who was to take advantage of such a situation, and so we have great social tensions. I am just giving one example to show the type of problems that can arise but more serious than all of this is the threat to India’s stability; because amongst the refugees there are many who may not be genuine refugees. We have no way of booking them. And we are having acts of sabotage, trains are being blown up, lambs are found in places, and a lot of propaganda is being done in order to their tension between the different religions.
Pakistan has raised a question about the number of refugees; we say they are over 9 million. They have given the figure of 2½ to 3 million. Now, there is some logic in their argument, because 2½ to 3 million is the figure of the Muslim refugees, but we have not only Muslim refugees, we have Hindus, we have Christians, we have Buddhists. In three of the States, Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam, everybody is fully accounted for, for there every individual has a ration card. It is true, in West Bengal things are not so well organized because the larger numbers are there. But after this question arose, we are
