Spectator

There is no reason now to refrain from declaring on evidence which is brave and strong that the Government and the Army of Pakistan which is to say the establishment of West Pakistan, is and has been, for some weeks, engaged upon the most extensive and barbarous exercise of genocide that the world has known since the end of the Second World War.. American atrocities in Vietnam and Vietnamese atrocities in Vietnam, are on an altogether slighter scale. White Rhodesian repression of black Rhodesians, Boer oppression of black South Africans, Russians tyranny over Russians and over Jews, Israeli violence against Arabs and the Israeli- Arab creation of million Arab refugees, Chinese fratricide of Chinese in the name of communist and subsequently of Maoist and cultural revolution, Haiti’s dictatorship and all the bloody corruptions of South America ; each of these, and all of them put together, may well in the upshot rank as less than the evil that the West Pakistani establishment of the Commonwealth of Pakistan has been, and is, visiting upon the Hindus of East Pakistan. It is almost impossible to imagine the terror and the bloodshed capable of creating what seem to be something like five or so million terrified, penniless and diseased refugees in the course of five or six weeks.

The imaginative effort should be made. It is the fact that yellow refugees and the tyranny of yellow against yellow, arouse far less horror in the civilised world of West European Culture than do Jewish refugees and the tyranny of German against Jew, or the tyranny of white against black or indeed the tyranny of black against black. When Asians slaughter each other and turn their compatriots by the million into refugees, the usual cultured and civilised West European response is a shrug and a joke. If what is happening now in East Pakistan were happening anywhere in the world outside Asia not only the demonstrations but the governments of the rest of the world would, literally, be up in arms to prevent it. We, in this country, like to think that among the reasons why we fought the Germans in the last war was to rid the world of the evil of Hitler and his gang and their genocidal, ‘final solution.’ It is easier to imagine Germany’s gas chambers than Pakistani’s choleraic slaughter in the Bengal Plain, but it remains the case and it ought to be declared that the Pakistani crime now matches the Hitlerian in dimension and horror and threatens monstrously to exceed it. Difficult and unpleasant though it may be, each one of us ought to endeavour to the best of his ability to imagine the enormity of the Pakistani crime.

It is not likely that a general declaration of war upon West Pakistan would lessen the bloodshed, otherwise such might be the proper course to advocate. It is, or should be quite clear, however, that every course short of war ought now to be taken against the Commonwealth Republic of Pakistan in order not to bring it to its senses (for it, like Hitler’s Germany, has lost all human sense) but, to bring it to its knees. Charity, although helpful, is far from being enough. Pakistan under its present rule is not fit to be a member of the Commonwealth. It is not even fit to be a member of the United Nations. It is not fit to receive aid of any kind whatever. It is not a fit state with which to exchange Embassies or High Commissions. West Pakistan is not fit to rule East Pakistan. The eventual independence of East Pakistan ought clearly to be recognised by the World at large, preferably at the instance of this country, unless very swiftly indeed the present militaristic and oppressive and genocidal regime is utterly removed from power. Because this country, among others, found reason to be loth to damn the Germany of Hitler, six million Jews met their final solution in the gas chambers. While we twiddle our thumbs, the Hindus of East Pakistan now meet their equally terrible and final solution.