Letter from East Pakistan
OWEN, JOHN E.
THE DISMAL PROVINCE Letter from East Pakistan By John E. Owen Dacca East Pakistan today is a region where almost every aspect of life conspires to produce a situation devoid of hope. An...
...East Pakistan's population density, over 1,000 persons per square mile, ranks as one of the highest in the world...
...An impecunious Province carved in 1947 out of undivided Bengal, it lies beneath the Himalayas in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta between Assam and West Bengal, a low-lying riverine country beset by periodic floods, monsoons and poor soil...
...The real impact of foreign aid is difficult to evaluate, but it would be hard to defend the thesis that East Pakistan's economy or living standards have been appreciably improved by the millions invested thus far...
...There is rising discontent that would probably erupt into violence, were it not for the apathy induced by malnutrition and Muslim fatalism...
...The Water and Power Development Authority, a multi-million dollar project, is only one of several instances where U.S...
...Milk supplied by CARE and thousands of woollen blankets donated by the U.S...
...officials...
...Indeed many Bengalis still find the concept of aid difficult to comprehend and question the motives behind the U.S...
...engineering firms on contract to build dams, bridges and factories...
...Pakistan was not ready for nationhood in 1947, and it is still not ready...
...a system of baksheesh, bribery and kickbacks is firmly entrenched...
...program...
...The authorities are afraid to act against the students, who represent one of the few literate segments of the population and thus have the potential for wielding influence in their home villages...
...A great gulf exists between the Western-educated intellectual and the peasant, underlining the lack of agreement as to what the true function of Islam should be...
...and India among many Bengalis...
...But Western arms aid to India has aroused bad feeling against both the U.S...
...untold others were not recorded...
...Since the end of martial law in 1962, conditions in the Province have worsened progressively...
...Bengal's upper classes are complacently indifferent to the loss of life and farmlands among the peasants...
...Over 80 per cent of Bengalis are illiterate...
...Dacca's streets present weird contrasts: bullock carts and Chevrolets, rickshaws and jeeps, a new atomic research center and weatherbeaten mosques, an impressive hospital run by American Catholics and roadside lockups where homeopathic "doctors" sell their nostrums...
...Attempts to introduce cooperatives into East Pakistan have met with indifferent results, mainly because the spirit of cooperation has never taken root here...
...Its stress is on the outer observance, the five daily prayers, the Ramadan fasting period, and occasional almsgiving...
...Nevertheless, the disposition of aid funds has not been adequately supervised by U.S...
...He believes children are a sign of the blessings of Allah, and large families bestow prestige upon a father...
...Floods and cyclones destroy property every year, but no effective steps have been taken to control their damage...
...The last university commencement ceremony had to be cancelled for fear of student demonstrations or riots against the government, and during the academic year 1962-63 classes were in session for only 62 days...
...When asked what the future of East Pakistan is likely to be, they shake their heads and answer, "God knows...
...On the contrary, the life of the Bengali farmer is harder than it was 10 years ago, and there is firm evidence that some of the aid funds have been misused...
...The social changes resulting from superimposing technology and industry upon an essentially feudal society have been sufficient to disorganize the life of the Province...
...Dacca, the urban capital, presents a bizarre spectacle of Western modernity combining uneasily with the rural East...
...The sudden injection of millions of dollars in various aid and development projects has disrupted the social structure and economy, producing a new elite of foreign experts who enjoy a level of luxury living they could never afford back home...
...An undefined segment of Bengalis would prefer to be re-united with India...
...And the region's 50 million Bengalis have increased in number by almost 25 per cent in the last decade, with no sign of any surcease...
...it looks to Calcutta as its Mecca, a political fact that is disturbing to the authorities in Rawalpindi...
...In the new residential districts, Pakistani landlords are fast growing rich from exorbitant rents charged to Americans employed by the Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation and U.S...
...An epidemic of smallpox earlier this year resulted in 900 known deaths in one month...
...Their small-holdings of rice and jute are uneconomic, rice production has not risen sufficiently to provide adequate sustenance for the peasants and their families, and inflation has brought added hardship...
...Not a few U.S...
...With more than 12,000 persons per square mile, the area resembles London of 300 years ago before the Great Fire...
...Many of the 500 Americans in Dacca are unhappily aware that their efforts to develop the economy are yielding no tangible results and that the Pakistani authorities, with their practiced skill at grasping every chance to enrich their own pockets, have stolen American money...
...Birth control programs have made little headway, especially since the Bengali Muslim has a fatalistic attitude...
...President Ayub Khan is the one leader who shows any statemanship, but he is like a man in search of a country...
...Many Bengalis privately admit that partition was a profound mistake from which they have gained nothing...
...An atmosphere of lawnessness exists that the police are powerless to cope with...
...The outlook for East Pakistan is dark and grim...
...While the epidemic was raging, the first session of Pakistan's National Assembly five miles away was engaged in endless speech-making, but almost the only legislation passed was a bill to raise the stipends of delegates...
...Islam as practiced in Pakistan enjoins no ethical code that might affect daily dealings between Pakistanis...
...The poverty of the peasants has to be seen to be believed...
...for flood victims can be bought openly on the black market...
...In a very real sense the East Pakistanis today, like their counterparts in West Pakistan, are not a nation but an ill-assorted group of divergent elements divided against themselves, disunited except for a negative attitude to India...
...Quite apart from the Chinese danger only 300 miles to the north, there is no prospect that conditions for the Bengalis will get any better...
...Refugees from India and an influx of Bengalis from the agricultural districts have swelled the population to over half a million...
...Outside the family circle, East Bengalis live by a jungle code, pitting their wits against each other rather than against nature...
...aid workers have returned home from East Pakistan in recent months with deep misgivings about the wisdom of giving millions of dollars to a people whose defiant ignorance, fatalism, and extreme backwardness render them painfully ill-equipped to help themselves or face the realities of the 20th century...
...Only two things unite East Pakistan today: a sense of hopelessness concerning the national future, and resentment of India...
...He is resented by many Bengalis because he is from West Pakistan, and the animosity shown to the West wing in Bengal rivals the resentment against India...
...Apart from the apathetic fatalism it engenders, Islam is not a cohesive force in Pakistan...
...Flood relief funds are frequently diverted from their rightful beneficiaries...
...The two wings are not in any sense united...
...Nor is there the slightest evidence of appreciation for the millions that have been given...
...The authorities deny that East Pakistan has a food shrtage, but in many villages the situation is so desperate that peasants are eating grass and roots...
...In 15 years it has been transformed from a sleepy hinterland town to the administrative and commercial center of East Bengal...
...Since 1947, a new class of rich industrialists from outside the Province has built up the jute trade lost to India when the subcontinent was partitioned...
...This factor alone is likely to nullify the benefits of foreign economic aid...
...funds have not produced the expected results, partly because of large-scale misappropriations...
...Many Bengalis have told me that conditions in general were immeasurably better under the British regime, and that personally they are far worse off now than before partition...
...John E. Owen spent the past four years in East Pakistan as a visiting professor at Dacca University...
...Living conditions in Old Dacca are overcrowded and disease is rampant...
...Harsh economic conditions preclude the idea of mutual self-help, and Islam has not fostered attitudes of cooperative endeavor...
...We have to hate India," a Bengali intellectual told me, "for without that we would have no reason to exist as a nation...
...A severe taxation policy specifies that even the villager who owns a chicken has to pay a tax on it...
...Corruption in East Pakistan is openly acknowledged and cynically accepted as a governmental way of life...
Vol. 46 • November 1963 • No. 23
