case is therefore, clearly one of a minority, equipped with gifts of money and arms from abroad, trying to undo, through the use of brute force, the verdict of popular vote.
One of the results of this reign of terror unleashed by the army is that 6 million people have fled their homes in East Bengal and have sought refugees in India. There is no end yet in sight to this mass exodus. Each day some 100,000 East Bengalis are driven by the Pakistan Army across the border of East Bengal into our country. The dimensions of this exodus will, perhaps, be better understood if I say that we are receiving one refugee every second.
We offer these refugees such scccour and relief as we can afford. In our states bordering on East Bengal, the schools of our children have had to be closed down to provide shelter for the refugees. Our health services are stretched thin, and there are shortages of transport and tent age, food and medicine and other resources needed to cope with this grim tragedy. In the Indian State of Tripura today, there is one refugee from East Bengal to every tow local inhabitants. West Bengal, already heavily populated, is groaning under the weight of this endless influx.
Clearly, the humanitarian task of providing food, shelter and medicines must have high priority. The cost of relief will run into hundreds of millions of dollars. We and made a token provision of 80 million dollars in our budget for the current year, but even this token provision represents 30 per cent of the additional tax burden which our people will have to bear this year.
While we are doing the best we can within our resources, the financial burden of looking after the refugees is beyond our resources. We have welcomed such assistance as has been forthcoming form foreign governments, from voluntary organizations and agencies and from private citizens. Even though these contributions may not be very large, our Government and people appreciate the sentiment behind them.
Nevertheless, the task is a very large one and we in India have our own pressing problems of poverty and unemployment to attend to. We, therefore, hope that the United States, a prosperous county of generous humanitarian instincts and, indeed, other countries of the world, may, before long, address themselves more adequately to the problems and needs of relief.
Military Action Must Stop at Once
But necessary as relief is, it is a palliative and not a solution to the problem which lies at the root of the situation. It is immediately necessary to stop further influx of refugees from Pakistan, and that will come about only if the military action in East Bengal is ended forthwith. The international community must persuade and pressurize the Government of Pakistan to that end.
Equally, conditions must be created for the return to East Bengal of those who were forced out of their homes and had to take shelter in India. The Government of Pakistan must be made to accept its proper responsibility for the rehabilitation of these refugees in
