Peace News

Calcutta, September 2. Imagine, for a moment, two-or-three thousand young Bengalis, building tools, seeds and utensils in their hands, marching across the Indian border into Bangladesh.

Divided into groups of thirty to fifty, they fan out across the landscape; some take to the footpaths, still sodden from the monsoons, others to roads which lead into the towns. An hour, a day, a week later, they arrive in villages bereft of people, in homes battered and charred, to schoolrooms which have been deathly silent for half a year, to streets where men and women have been cut down or “disappeared” in broadest daylight. For six months, they sleep in homes which have seen no menfolk since the March invasion; they clear the wrecked houses, they build them up, they bring back life into the fields. They open up the schools, they take the shutters from the shops, they begin to exchange rudimentary goods. At night small unarmed bands of them stand watch for razakars and Pakistani troops. During the day, as they go about their reconstruction, they are themselves watched by their country’s invaders. Now and again a patrol enters their village and begins questioning: a man is taken away and does not return; on night a few houses mysteriously catch fire; another night a bomb explodes beneath their leader’s hut. Perhaps half a dozen of the group go missing or are killed. But they have returned to their own country; they have liberated part of their own soil.

Manifestly unarmed, and refusing to hide either motives or their deeds, they have done precisely what their enemies dared them and never believed they would have the courage to do. They have suffered injury and death. But, whereas the martyrdom of their brother liberators - who have taken to the Mukti Bahini - has gone largely unsung and often misconstrued, their deaths arouse horror throughout the world and the perfidy of their persecutors is revealed, like Cinderella’s poverty at the “witching hour of midnight.”

Notes pass between governments and the various Pakistan High Commissions; questions are asked in parliaments throughout the world; moves are made to arraign the Pakistan regime before the International Court of The Hague and the sluggish coils of the United Nations unwind to embrace a reality that can no longer be held in doubt: Pakistan is not simply concerned to prevent secession, is not simply engaged on an active anti-guerrilla struggle, its forces are murdering and intimidating people because of what they are, because they have achieved the simple dignity of human beings. Pakistan is afraid of losing control but of seeing even the simplest, least aggressive exercise of human rights - the right to shelter work and food. Much more clearly than during the weeks after March 25* when the world was confused into inaction by talk of “internal sovereignty’” such repression by the Pakistan regime of such freedom marchers becomes an outrageous act.

But such outrage is not simply met with the righteous indignation of the civilised, largely impotent, world. Another thousand freedom marchers, including families with children, now march across the frontier. At certain places, the army has instructions to stop them - and does so. The marchers lie down with their sparse belongings in the road and refuse to move. At other places, realising its weakness, the army lets them through and tries to guide them to reception centres for returning “refugees”. But the marchers have shaken off this degrading status, the moment they stepped across the international boundary and they refuse to be named, numbered and cattle- trucked. Finally, after weeks in which more freedom marchers have gathered at the frontier, the Pakistan government gives way. It permits the families to return to their land and, under fear of international repercussions and the further loss of overseas development aid, it withdraws its troops from these villages. It begins a withdrawal which will eventually end in its quitting the country.

What has been the result? Effectively, the defeat of Pakistani militarism and its exploitation of Bangladesh. What has been the cost? A few dozen, perhaps several hundred, lost lives. What is the prospect? A country founded, not on the ruined communications, the enmity and suspicion, and reliance on foreign aid, which so many indigenous freedom struggles have brought in their train, but on the courage, self-reliance, honesty and self- help of its own people.

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A few weeks ago, I would have termed this scenario for nonviolent revolution in Bangladesh at best wishful thinking, at worst downright self-deception. The concept of the freedom march was born in the minds of Indian Sarvodaya workers within a month of the March 25 invasion but not favoured too highly among the upper echelons of the Gandhian movement and consequently let drop for several weeks. Whether through the impetus of Omega or for some other reason, the idea was resuscitated around July and Gandhi Peace Foundation workers from Calcutta introduced it into discussions at special camps for Bangladesh youth, held in Calcutta and near the refugee camps.

A few members of Omega were invited to the last session of one such camp and, for two hours, our convictions in nonviolence, our own experience inside Bangladesh, and our determination to get the freedom marchers adopted by concerned groups throughout the world were tested against the initial scepticism and fears of nearly 50 young Bengali refugees. At the end 0f the session, I asked which of them were prepared to join the freedom march - and nearly 30 hands were raised. An artificial assessment no doubt, especially as a photographer stood in the wings to record the scene; one which must also be set against several thousand “commitments” to join the Mukti Bahini recorded at a single session with an underground leader at the Salt Lake refugee camp recently.

Less tenuous, however, is the commitment by 50-odd young Bengalis to organize the freedom march and their pledge to recruit 50 other young fellow countrymen to accompany them. This core group was to meet in Calcutta with Gandhian leaders Charlie Walker and possibly members of Omega on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. A tentative date for the march has been set at October 2 - the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination. Quite clearly it cannot commence until well after the monsoons. The courage needed to join the freedom march is hardly less than that required to join the Mukti Bahini and this the Bengalis I talked with intuitively understood. More important, they seemed to appreciate that the liberation of one’s village and the freedom to organize one’s own community, plus the liberation of mind that inspires these, is qualitatively no less vital than political emancipation brought through violent struggle.

I personally believe that the march represents the only possibility of permanently defying and supplanting Pakistani authority over Bangladesh. Other demonstrations have been discussed among Gandhians and East Bengalis - a march to Delhi, a march to Islamabad - but they do not embrace that central truth implicit in all freedom struggles: that liberation of one’s country begins on one’s own soil. If the march does not materialise, it may not be due to the lack of determination among the youth of Bangladesh, so much as to a dissipation of energies among pacifist organizers in India and a failure to support (which in this case means to walk and remain with the marchers inside Bangladesh) on the part of believers in nonviolent direct action from elsewhere around the globe. Having recognized these dangers, I believe they can be overcome.