Prime Minister: It is a very good question; thank you for asking it. I should have actually dealt with it in my speech. Well, the first answer is that there is no feeling in West Bengal to separate from the rest of India. Secondly, it is not only a question whether what West Bengal would like to do, but whether the people who live in East Bengal would like West Bengal to join them. Obviously, nothing is impossible in the world and it is a remote possibility. I personally do not think that such a thing can happen, because West Bengal is far more developed, whether industrially, educationally or in any other way, than the East is. We know from own experience of what has happened in Vietnam, that they would not like to have a bigger brother attached to them who should dominate them.
Question: You mentioned something about the six-point programme of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. But I think you should inform the audience that the division of the country was not in his six-points. And it would be the same thing as if Candidate Strauss would win the election for Chancellorship and he would like 10 separate Bavaria from Germany. I don't think that the people of Germany would accept that.
Prime Minister: I think I made it very clear that the six-points were announced before the elections. They were accepted, presumably, because otherwise why should the elections have been held on that programme? That was the basic programme put to the people of East Bengal and it is not only the people of East Bengal but also some of West Pakistan who voted for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Party.
Question: The six-points did not give him the mandate to divide the country.
Prime Minister: We are talking about whatever the six-points did. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did not ask for any 7th point at all. Whatever the programme was, as I said, if anybody disapproved of it, the time to raise that point of disapproval was before the elections and not afterwards.....
Question: Relating to Indo-Soviet Treaty and detente in Europe.
Prime Minister: Well, our Indo-Soviet Treaty is unconnected with this matter. We welcome the détente here and we wish that there would be détente in all such disputes anywhere. So far as the Indo-Soviet Treaty is concerned, well, it is just what it says, its name says, the “Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation”.
A lot of people who have never supported non-alignment are now trying to say that this Treaty is going against the interest of non-alignment, India is no more nonaligned, and so on. We are naturally not at all impressed by this argument because we know what our policy has been and we are determined that it is going to remain the same.
Question: Hon’ble Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi, my question is almost identical with the former question, but I just want to elaborate one point. It is a fact that our Treaty with the Soviet Union is not intended to affect our policy of nonalignment; but I think the influence of Russia is getting more and more in our part of the world. As far as I am
