পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (দ্বিতীয় খণ্ড).pdf/৫৭৯

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ দ্বিতীয় খণ্ড
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শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ
পূর্ব পাকিস্তানের দাবীর সমর্থনে
সম্পাদকীয়
সাপ্তাহিক ‘ফোরাম’ ১৯ সেপ্টেম্বর, ১৯৭০

INTEGRATING PAKISTAN

 West Pakistanis reading forum must feel that we are too obsessed with East Pakistan's sense of alienation from power and justice. Living here it would be difficult not to be. Two decades is a long time for an entire people to be denied a patrimony for which they waged ceaseless political battle for half a century. But this sense of commitment should not give the impression that we are oblivious of the myriad and deep rooted grievances of our brothers in West Pakistan. Tyranny which has deprived East Pakistan of its rights sits as heavily on the 'Shorbohara' of West Pakistan.

 The struggle for the rights of East Pakistan must always be seen as part of the wider struggle against the power elite which has ruled this country for two decades. This elite, as a result of historical circumstance, lives in West Pakistan but its basic commitment lics to its own narrow class interests rather than the people of West Pakistan.

 Throughout this struggle it has become apparent that the real obstacle to diverting development resources to East Pakistan has not been the common people of West Pakistan but the big business and zamindar interests. Their lackeys in the Central Bureaucracy, who also have their homes in West Pakistan, have made sure that their burden of taxation is never strained by the need to direct resources for the development of the East Wing. Whilst they enjoy their tax free loot the privileged elite are guaranteed command over low-cost foreign aid, cheap money, protected markets and cut price labor through the deliberate policies of their bureaucratic blood brothers. It is no coincidence that the rise of the 22 families coincided with the widening of disparities.

 This unity of interests between the peoples of Last and West Pakistan does not however mean that the struggle will or even ought to run in identical channels. Whilst the privileged elite bestrides the two wings of Pakistan like a colossus its power is not equally secure in either region.

 In East Pakistan they constitute an alien graft whose survival is largely equated with the domination of the West wing power elite over East Pakistan. The local compradors who act as their front men are themselves so feeble that they can promise no continuity once the protective umbrella of a strong centre is withdrawn. Once their financial ballast is removed the East wing capitalists will be fair game for the aroused social consciousness of the people. This miscrable clutch of petty larcenists and time servers is not the stuff from which Robber Barons are made. It will take more than two decades of spoon feeding to raise them to baronial status. Who can wait that long? Let them be swept away with the same broom which wins East Pakistan its economic emancipation from Mc-Leod Road and let our industrial and commercial wealth become the property of the people.