What Did Indira Gandhi Say About East Pakistan Refugees?

Brut India

While the NRC attempts to document illegal immigrants entering India after the midnight of 24 March 1971, here’s a throwback to when over a million refugees crossed over from East Pakistan and overwhelmed the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. #tbt

Transcript

00:00Two months after fighting first broke out in the civil war in East Pakistan,

00:13hundreds of thousands of Bengali refugees are crossing over the border into the Indian

00:18province of West Bengal. A few weeks ago it was just a trickle, today it's become a flood,

00:24and nearly three million destitute Bengalis are now crowding and overcrowding the special

00:30refugee camps the Indian authorities have set up for them a few miles from the frontier.

00:34Many of the refugees have walked 60 or 70 miles to get to safety. The majority of them

00:44arrive exhausted, starving and penniless, often carrying no more possessions than the

00:49rags on their backs. Yet they consider themselves lucky even to be alive. Many others, they tell

00:57you, fail to make it, and nearly everyone has a harrowing tale to tell of how friends or relations

01:02collapsed and died on the road during their gruelling flight from the Pakistani army.

01:07One government official has described it as the worst refugee problem in history,

01:12and he may well be right. Nearly a hundred thousand of these people are streaming into

01:17India every day. Here at Bhangam, 50 miles northeast of Calcutta, the influx has doubled

01:23the town's normal population. Every available shelter, from public buildings to these huge

01:28communal tents, are overflowing and newcomers have to fend for themselves in the open air.

01:33Sanitary conditions are at best primitive. Children play in pools of stagnant water,

01:42the heat stifling and the stench unbearable. Conditions are bad now, but relief workers

01:53despair at what they'll be like when the monsoon rains come. We won't be able to control a cholera

01:58epidemic in conditions like these, said one official. People are going to die like flies.

02:13Feeding a multitude like this is obviously far beyond India's physical or financial resources.

02:19The government's already spent 12 million dollars on food, clothing and shelter,

02:23which is more than it doled out in aid during the disastrous Bihar famine of 1967. For the

02:30refugees in the camps, the whole day is spent waiting for food. Some queues are so long that

02:35it's five or six hours before everybody is served. Having finally obtained a bowl of rice,

02:40the refugees take it away, eat it, and then rejoin the queue for the next meal. Most of the

02:47patients here are being treated for wounds which they claim they received when Pakistani troops

02:51deliberately fired on them. They say the army sought out Hindus and Bengali Muslims as their

02:57main victims, in reprisal for the massacres of non-Bengali Muslims by the Bengalis themselves

03:02during communal riots in East Pakistan last month. For India's Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi,

03:09the refugee problem is a political nightmare. I think we're in for very great difficulty. We

03:15already have over a million refugees who've crossed the border, and it's upset the economy

03:24of the area, the political life. I mean, it's just upset things completely, and we don't want

03:30to be saddled with these people for good. I mean, it's all right, we are willing to help out to keep

03:34them while their lives and their homes are in danger, but we think they should go back after

03:39it's all over. Well, what would they go back to, though? What if Pakistan were still, if West

03:46Pakistan were still occupying or being difficult to East Pakistan? It has to be worked out somehow.

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