As the Pakistani armies continue their efforts to crush the independence movement of the people of East Bengal, it becomes clear that the Yahya military clique failed to secure the quick victory it sought. Despite the brutalities and mass killings, it has been unable to terrorize the Bengali people into submission.
Incensed by wholesale slaughter of unarmed people, the Bengali masses are certain to continue their resistance against the colonial regime ruling their country. But the whole question of revolutionary leadership and revolutionary strategy is posed with the utmost sharpness. The Bengali people are united as never in the past. However, their current leadership is completely inadequate. Far from preparing the workers and peasants for a decisive, prolonged struggle for independence, Sheik Mujibur did all in his power to arrive at a compromise with Yahya Khan. The Awami League opposed independence and set its sights instead on autonomy. Mujibur engaged in discussions with Yahya Khan while the dictator placed his military forces in position. The Mujibur leadership now flounders and hopes for help from the United Nations and the international bourgeoisie, starting with the Indian capitalists. Its real line was clearly expressed by Sheik Mujibur's declaration to Agence France-Presse:
"Is the West Pakistan government not aware that I am the only one able to save East Pakistan from Communism? If they take the decision to fight, I shall be pushed out of power and the Naxalites will intervene in my name. If I make too many concessions, I shall lose my authority. I am in a very difficult situation." (Le Monde, March 31, 1971.)
The Fourth International, while declaring its complete solidarity with the struggle of the Bengali masses against national oppression, reaffirms its view that the development of a revolutionary leadership is essential to win the struggle. This victory will only be achieved by the Bengali workers, peasants, and students, organized and led by a revolutionary proletarian leadership.
The revolutionary party will have the task of continuing the revolutionary struggle by all means necessary and thus begin the task of smashing the old structures of the Bengali countryside and cities and laying the basis to establish a workers' and peasants' government which will start building a socialist society. This task can only be impeded by any intervention of the Indian bourgeoisie, which is only interested in preserving the status quo and preventing the struggle in Bangla Desh from overflowing into West Bengal.
The Fourth International is opposed to intervention by the Indian bourgeoisie, which would be designed to hinder the development of the Bengali struggle rather than to help it. Once more the counterrevolutionary nature of Indira Gandhi's policies and of the bourgeois state of India has been confirmed by her government's aid, side by side with the Yahya Khan clique, to the Ceylon army's repression of the revolutionary forces in that country.
The Fourth International condemns the treachery of the Maoist government in publicly supporting the Yahya dictatorship, and thus helping it to maintain its ruthless exploitation and repression of the Bengali people. Under excuse of combating Indira Gandhi's interference, this Mao regime stands as a direct accomplice in the massacres.
Chou En-lai's message to Yahya Khan on April 12 is a brazen attempt to cover up Peking's approval of the massacre of the Bengalis: "We believe that through consultations and the efforts of your excellency and leaders of various quarters in Pakistan, Pakistan will certainly be restored to normal. In our opinion, unification of Pakistan and unity of the peoples of East and West Pakistan are basic guarantees for Pakistan to attain prosperity and strength." Mao's subsequent message to Khan repeats the same idea even in stronger words.
The "unity" of Pakistan is the "unity" of a monstrosity sponsored by British and world imperialism against the unity of the workers and peasants of the Indian subcontinent. It is a "unity" that enables a tiny group of semifeudal landlords, compradore capitalists, and generals to rule over millions of superexploited and starving peasants, agricultural and industrial workers. It is a "unity" that showed callousness to the most elementary needs of the Bengali people by failing to take precautionary measures in advance of the last year's tornado and by doing nothing for the victims afterwards.
It is a fundamental revision of the elementary principles of Marxism-Leninism to speak about the Pakistan "state" and the Pakistan army without clearly specifying its class character: a state defending the interests of a coalition of semifeudal landlords, rapacious compradore and monopoly capitalists (twenty-two families of robber barons control two-thirds of the industrial assets of the country). The army is a reactionary bourgeois army, formed and trained by imperialism, and ready to join with similar armies in Iran and Afghanistan in forming an anticommunist cordon sanitaire in Central Asia, in the direct service of world imperialism. These are the forces approved by Mao to preserve "unity"!
The support given to Yahya by the Chinese bureaucracy represents an open betrayal of the class interests of the Bengali workers and poor peasants who have died in the struggle for national self-determination and those who are struggling today against the Pakistan army and who will continue the struggle for a socialist Bengal. It is obvious that the Maoist leaders, far from learning the lessons of the Indonesian defeat or the lessons of their unprincipled support for Yahya's predecessor Ayub Khan, continue on the same opportunist road. Their course weakens the socialist forces in Bangla Desh and strengthens right-wing forces that utilize Peking's support for Yahya to discredit "Communism." Mao's support of Yahya Khan harms and weakens the defense of the Chinese revolution. The only substantial bulwark against the threat of imperialist aggression from the Indian peninsula against the People's Republic of China is a strong and powerful revolutionary mass movement in that peninsula, moving toward the overthrow of the reactionary states of India and Pakistan, towards a victorious workers' and peasants' revolution in the whole subcontinent. If the mass uprising in East Bengal is smashed, this will strengthen reaction in the whole peninsula. And the very same reactionary army that Chou and Mao flatter today would be ready tomorrow to support aggression against the Chinese revolution.
Those communists on a world scale who have chosen to support the Chinese leadership in the Sino-Soviet dispute on the grounds that it acts in a more revolutionary and militant way against imperialism must say today where they stand on this issue. Silence would amount to complicity.
The various Western imperialist powers have, while deploring the mass slaughter, supported, in various ways, the status quo. The United States, in particular, has manipulated the distribution of its stocks of food to favor Yahya, knowing full well that starvation is a key weapon in his armory. Moreover, most of the arms used by Yahya were supplied by the Pentagon and will be replaced from the same source as they are used up in putting down the population.
The Fourth International appeals to the international workers' movement to render all possible assistance to the freedom fighters of Bangla Desh, to carry out solidarity actions with the Bengali masses, and to demonstrate unconditional support to the Bengal struggle for national self-determination.
The Fourth International calls upon all socialists to oppose any interference by capitalist and imperialist forces, designed to maintain neocolonialism's grip on the whole Indian subcontinent. In particular, military aid, and especially assistance to Yahya Khan's forces in transit, must be opposed by all means necessary. Revolutionaries should put the maximum pressure on the Maoist leadership to end its shameful support to Yahya Khan's dictatorship. It is also a vital task to expose the Soviet military aid which helped build up the West Pakistani counterrevolutionary army. The left should be on its guard against the possibility of a massive intervention sponsored by U.S. imperialism to block any spread of the revolutionary struggle in Asia.
The Fourth International calls upon the workers, peasants, students, and revolutionary intellectuals of West Pakistan, to break with all chauvinistic anti-Bengali sentiments, to understand that the murderous generals, now trying to smother the uprising of the Bengali people in a bloodbath, are their own oppressors. To struggle against the colonial war unleashed by Yahya Khan in East Bengal is not only their internationalist duty, it is also in their own class interest. To defeat the West Pakistani army in Bengal will speed the liberation of the West Pakistani masses from the yoke of their exploiters.
The Fourth International is confident that, despite temporary setbacks, the Bengali masses will finally triumph over the armed might of West Pakistani capital and thus pave the way for a Socialist United Bengal, which in turn will give powerful impetus to the liberation of the entire subcontinent from the yoke of the capitalists and landlords.
Victory to Bangla Desh!
For a socialist Bangla Desh!
For a United Socialist Bengal!
Forward, towards the socialist revolution in the whole Indian subcontinent!