পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (প্রথম খণ্ড).pdf/১০৫

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ প্রথম খণ্ড
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the regular Armed Forces and as volunteers in the Pakistan National Guards. You may rest assured that the fullest provision shall be made for enabling the youth of this province to play its part in the defence of this State.

 Let me now turn to some general matters concerning this province. In doing so, let me first congratulate you, the people of this Province and your Government, over the manner in which you have conducted yourselves during these seven months of trials and tribulations. Your Government and loyal, hardworking officials deserve to be congratulated on the speed and efficiency with which it succeeded in building up an ordered administration out of the chaos and confusion which prevailed immediately after Partition. On the 15th August, the Provincial Government in Dacca was a fugitive in its own home. It was faced with the immediate problem of finding accommodation for thousands of Government personnel in what was, after all, before Partition only a small mofussil town. Hardly had Government got to grips with administrative problems thus created when some seventy thousand Railways and other personnel and their families suddenly arrived in this Province, driven out of India partly by panic owing to the disturbances immediately following the Partition. There were further, owing to the wholesale departure of Hindu personnel, great gaps left in the administrative machinery and the entire transport and communication system had been disorganized. The immediate task that faced the Government, therefore, was hurriedly to regroup its forces and reorganise its administrative machine in order to avert an imminent administrative collapse.

 This the Government did with extraordinary speed and efficiency. The administration continued to function unhampered, and the life of the community continued undisturbed. Not only was the administration speedily reorganized but the great administrative shortages were quickly made good, so that an impending famine was averted, and what is equally important, peace was maintained throughout the province. In this latter respect, much credit is due also to the people of this province, in particular to the members of the majority community, who showed exemplary calm and determination to maintain peace despite the great provocation afforded by the massacre and oppression of the Muslims in the Indian Dominion in the months immediately after Partition. Despite those horrible happenings, some forty thousand processions were taken out by the Hindu community during the last Puja in this province without a single instance of the breach of peace, and without any molestation from the Muslims of this province.

 Any impartial observer will agree with me that throughout these troubles the minorities were looked after and protected in Pakistan better than anywhere else in India. You will agree that Pakistan was able to keep peace and maintain law and order; and let me tell you that the minorities not only here in Dacca but throughout Pakistan are more secure, more safe than anywhere else. We have made it clear that the Pakistan Government will not allow peace to be disturbed; Pakistan will maintain law and order at any cost; it will not allow any kind of mob rule. It is necessary to draw attention to these facts, namely, the building up of an orderly administration, the averting of an imminent famine and the maintenance of the supply of food to some forty million people in this