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FREEDOMWAYS                   THIRD QUARTER 1972

of the Muslims was being ignored, the Muslim League launched an all-out struggle for "Pakistan" which was perhaps unintentional but none the less supportive of the British plan to dismember India. This plan, formed by the British as early as the spring of 1946 for the division of provinces into communal groups, was nothing but a veiled form of dividing India into Pakistan and Hindustan. Blinded by class interest the Muslim leadership was instrumental to the success of the British plan to partition India. The interim government was opposed to the partition of India because it would weaken the country, shrink its markets and thus impede its economic development. The new government represented the interest of the Indian national bourgeoisie. However at this particular historical time the interest of the national bourgeoisie was serving the national interest and their struggle against the tendency toward communalism in the Muslim League and against colonialist plans to partition represented the most progressive movement in the country in 1946. In an effort to co-opt the Indian National Congress into the movement to partition India, the British provoked bloody clashes between Hindu and Muslim in March 1947 in the Punjab. Over 4,000 persons were killed. The Congress, too, essentially because of the lack of diversity in its make-up and the class character of its leadership, allowed itself to be intimidated and thus agreed to the establishment of Pakistan-a Pakistan to include only the Muslim majority districts of the Punjab and Bengal. This act of the Congress represented the coup de grâce of the struggle for a united India.
   The Pakistan that emerged with the partition of India on August 15, 1947, was not the Pakistan envisioned by the Muslim League. The principle of geographical continuity of districts was not observed. What emerged was a Pakistan made up of two regions separated from each other by a corridor of 1,000 miles. To insure further internal strife, neither economic nor national nor cultural ties were taken into account in the partitioning of the country. There were still substantial numbers of Hindus in Pakistan and of Muslims in India. A power vacuum was created in the new Pakistan economy with the partition because the major portion of the Hindu class which had been associated with commerce and small industry was eliminated. The British consciously built contradictions into the new state of Pakistan and set aside the role of arbitrator of disputes for itself. However, Britain had a rival for this key position in the United States, who in 1953 held conversations with Pakistani representatives in Washington with the view of setting up an American military con-

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BANGLADESH                         TERRELL

nection with this new Asian state. Apart from South Korea, there was no U.S. supported indigenous military establishment in the entire Asian mainland. Pakistan's geographical location qualified it for a key role in the "anti-communist" program initiated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Pakistan became a hinge between SEATO (Manila Treaty in 1954) and CENTO (Baghdad Pact in 1955) and as such was equipped largely by military aid from the U.S. This included F-104 jet fighters and ground-to-air missiles. Pakistan was also equipped with a powerful army and an advanced airforce with a budget to keep these forces operational. The American arms created an unnatural and explosive alteration of the power balance in the Indian subcontinent. U.S. commitment to Pakistan deepened in 1958-59, with the signing of a U.S.-Pakistan Bilateral Pact reaffirming American military support for Pakistan, although the U.S. assured India that the agreement could not be used against India and that it was no more than an extension of the Eisenhower Doctrine for meeting "communist aggression." The Pact signature came at a time when there were shooting incidents on the East Bengal border and on the Kashmiri cease-fire line. An American electronic intelligence gathering system was established in Northern Pakistan and ultimately air fields were built, one of which accommodated the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft shot down by the Russians in 1960. Nehru was opposed to American military aid to Pakistan for it fractured the geographic solidarity of the non-aligned grouping of Asian states and destroyed the integrity of what Nehru called the "no-war area" in Asia.
   When American Patton tanks were used by Pakistan in May, 1965, against Indian forces in the Rann of Kutch and when full scale Pakistani armored and air attacks struck India in September with the beginning of the Second Kashmiri War, the U.S. government refused to give support to India which it had promised to do at the signing of the bilateral pact with Pakistan. India was guaranteed support in case Pakistan attacked with American-equipped armed forces. The U.S. has given Pakistan over four billion dollars in assistance. It is evident from an examination of the resources of Pakistan that it would have been incapable of engaging in war not only against India over Kashmir in the 50's and 60's but also against both East Bengal and India in the 70's without such military assistance.
   The historical development of India should have served as a concrete example that religious ties alone are not strong enough to bind a nation operating under the laws of capitalism.
     
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