পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (প্রথম খণ্ড).pdf/৪৭

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ প্রথম খণ্ড
২২
শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ
স্বাধীন সার্বভৌম বাংলাদেশের পক্ষে হোসেন শহীদ সোহরাওয়ার্দীর প্রেস বিজ্ঞপ্তি
মর্নিং নিউজ, ২৮শে এপ্রিল ১৯৪৭। সূত্র: শীলা সেন, মুসলিম পলিটিক্স ইন বেঙ্গল
পৃষ্ঠা-২৮১
২৭ এপ্রিল, ১৯৪৭

A. Extracts from the Press Statement of H. S. Suhrawardy, Chief Minister, in New Delhi, 27 April 1947

 It must be a matter of greatest regret to all those who were eagerly looking forward to the welfare and prosperity of Bengal to find that an agitation for its partition is being vigorously pursued in some quarters. This cry would never have been raised had it not been due to a sense of frustration and impatience on the part of some Hindus inasmuch as the members of their community have not an adequate share in the Bengal Ministry in spite of their numbers in the province, their wealth, influence, education, participation in the administration of the province, their propaganda and their inherent strength.

 This frustration is largely the result of a failure to realize that the present conditions in Bengal are not applicable to an independent sovereign state as I hope Bengal will be. Today we are in the midst of a struggle in India between contending factions of all-India importance each intent on enforcing its views on the other and neither willing to give way except at a price which the other is not prepared to pay.

 Their disputes profoundly affect the politics of all the provinces and the problems are being treated as a whole. An entirely different state of circumstances will arise when each province will have to look after itself and when each province is sure to get practical, if not total, independence, and the people of Bengal will have to rely upon each other.

 It is unbelievable that under such a set of circumstances there can exist a Ministry in Bengal which will not be composed of all the important elements of its society or which can be a communal party Ministry or where the various sections will not be better represented than they are now. I do not think that the fact that the Muslims will have a slight preponderance in the Ministry by virtue of their slender majority will be grudged by the Hindus as indeed this has hitherto been accepted by all as inherent in the nature of things in Bengal.

 I have read the most fervid fulminations against the government of Bengal on its alleged treatment of the Hindu population. These denunciations have been built on the most slender and imaginary foundations. I by no means admit that the demand for the partition of Bengal is the demand of the majority of the Hindus even of West Bengal, let alone of the majority of the Hindus of Bengal.

 The ties and culture of the Hindus of every part of Bengal are so much the same that it is not even to the advantage of the Hindus of one part of Bengal to sever those ties in the hope of grasping power.

 Indeed by the same analogy the wishes of all the people of Bengal-Muslims, Hindus and Scheduled Castes and others ought to be ascertained on the question of partition of