পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (পঞ্চম খণ্ড).pdf/৪৮৫

461 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ পঞ্চম খন্ড bureaucrats and army officers who, in general, had played anti-independence, antipeople role during the entire freedom movement firmly placed in the seats of power, Almost overnight these anti-people products of British Raj, who served the Raj so well, transformed themselves into defenders of the new state, defenders of its integrity and religion-integrity and religion as they interpreted them. Needless to say, their interpretations were tailored to help the preservation of their stranglehold on the new State's economy, and polity. They had no intention of striving for that cherished foundation of the artificial union. I call the union artificial because a mere common religion can never be the basis of international unity. Because, then there would have been no need for so many Arab states or the need of such a high boundary wall between Pakistan and Afghanistan both of whom have Islam as their state religion. An equitable distribution of economic resources and political power in Pakistan would have meant the emergence of a truly democratic state something that this capitalistbureaucratic-military entente dreaded most. Thus began the sordid story of one of the most brutal colonial exploitations in history. The large geographical distance between the two regions came to the advantage of the clique. On top the general apathy of the people of West Pakistan toward politics proved an added advantage. Fascist repression helped to perpetuate the shameless exploitation of East Bengal until a time came when the Bengalees cried out-enough. The clique, under the leadership of a fascist military junta, knew from the beginning that their exploitation of the people of East Bengal could not go on unchallenged forever and ever. Keeping this in view they kept strict surveillance on the armed forces so that the percentage of Bengalees in the forces never exceeded 10 per cent or so. And this way they thought they had ruled out any possibility of an armed rebellion. But history has surprised them. The rest of the story is too familiar to repeat here. It has gone into the blackest phase of human history. Pakistan was born divided and the clique that captured power and still holding on to it never made an attempt to find a basis of unity with the Bengali nation in the east. It is only the natural patience of this nation that helped to linger the doomed union for 23 long years. That the people of Bangladesh are racially, culturally and linguistically different from other nationalities of West Pakistan has been amply proved by the genocidal war that has been unleashed by the Pakistani junta. They have massacred innocent men, women and children. Indiscriminate rape of Bengali women and other indignities inflicted on them are so barbaric and inhuman in nature that only Hitler's racists madness could be compared with this. Such atrocities could never be inflicted on a nation by the members of the same nation or race whatever the degree of madness or megalomania. Secession or separatism is essentially intra-national in nature. A section of one nation rises to secede from the rest seeking to safeguard its regional interests. But when a nation seeks to break out of an artificial union—a union that in essence is comparable to a