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resurgence Journal of the Fourth World Editorial address: 24 Abercorn Place, London, N.W.8 Vol. 3 No. 7 July/Aug. 1971 EDITORIAL GROUP General Editor: John Papworth. Guest-editor for this issue: David Kuhrt. A ssociate Editors: Ernest Bader, Danilo Daiei, Roger Franklin, Paul Goodman, Ray Gosling, Prof. Leopold Kohr, Jayaprakash Narayan, Dr. E . F. Schumacher. Typography: David Kuhrt. Business and subscriptions: Michael North. Editorial Assistants: Sue Coppard, Allyn Moss, Marcelle Papworth. CONTENTS Page 3 6 10 13 16 18 19 20 22 25 26 28 30 32 Editorial Bangladesh/Raising the School Leaving Age/Work and Community/Neighbourhood Voices Frances Horovitz Poem: Buzzard Fareed S. Ja fri The Birth and Death of Pakistan Two Interviews Fareed S. Jafri Zakariah Choudhury E. F. Schumacher Christian Responsibility in the Present Economic and Inflationary Crisis Stepney Words Hans and Rosemary Gebert About Steiner Education Rudolph Steiner from "Spiritual Life, Civil Rights and Industrial Economy David Kuhrt W. H. Wilken's "The Liberation of Work" Letters Kropotkin Neighbourhood Voices: Michael Young The Case for Neighbourhood Councils Community News Maureen Cain from "Images of Deviance" SEPT./OCT. ISSUE The Family: Roger Barnard and David Kuhrt, editors. Tim Cornell: Human Perspectives in Aristotle's City State . Ramesh Mishrah: The Family and State Welfare. Richard Sennett's "The Uses of Disorder". Morton Schatzman: Schizophrenia, A Case-study, Patient's and Institution's Viewpoints. David Kuhrt : Reich's Personal Energy Field, the Role of the Family in Shaping It; Cooper's Energy, No Family, No Shape . Family and World: Act Ill of a Play by Jim Herrick. Family and Commune in Modern China. A specially translated chapter from "The Un-economy of Our Cities" by Alexander Mitscherlich, director of the Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine at Heidelberg University. Kids' Poems and Their Families: Chris Searle. Neighbourhood Voices . SUBSCRIBERS PLEASE NOTE that in order to catch up with our dates the May/June issue has been eliminated. This issue for July/ Aug., with its 'hot' Bang/a Desh feature, will thus appear on time, publication date being July /st. The Sept./Oct. issue will be published on September /st. It will be double-size to account for the elimination of the May/ June issue. Due to lack of space, notes on Contributors for this issue will appear in the Sept./Oct. edition. DONATIONS: It wilt also include acknowledgement of donations received in response to our appeal.
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EDITORIAL Bangladesh QN December 7th last year a very large majority of people in East Pakistan voted for a policy of economic but not political freedom. In order that Sheikh Mujib, the elected representative of that (Awami League) majority could form a government the National Assembly was to meet on March 3rd this year to decide on a constitution within the framework laid down by Yahya Khan's mil~tary regime. Mujib was prepared to accept the two main conditions of that framework, the national integrity of Pakistan and its Islamic basis; he insisted only on the full autonomy envisaged in the original Pakistan Resolution of 1940. Nevertheless he was pressed by Yahya Khan, now leader of the military junta which took provisional control during constitution-making, and Bhutto, leader of the People's Party, to accept a strong centre of a kind which would have made that autonomy voted for by the East Pakistan majority an imposs1ibility. Bhutto refused to meet on March 3rd if Mujib did not compromise; the latter felt bound by his mandate. Yahya Khan threatened Mujib with military force, whereupon Mujib declared non-violent civil disobedience. Without warning Yahya Kahn's army descended on the demonstrators and 2,000 were reported killed. Mujib now took over the administration of East Pakistan; he called for and received the support of the Bengali Police, the East Pakistan Rifles, government offices, the judiciary and the economic administration, and re-named East Pakistan "Bangladesh". Yahya Khan was obliged to set March 25th for a further meeting of the National Assembly and to consult with Mujib in Dacca during the intervening three weeks. On the evening of March 25 Yahya Khan left for West Pakistan. That evening the army struck. Mujib was arrested. On May 7th, Nazrul Islam and Tajuddin Afunad, both members of the Provisional Government formed by the Awami League members who had escaped capture (and some who had escaped from captivity), formally declared the independent state of Bangladesh. At the time of writing-June 16th-The Times continues to report more thoroughly than any other newspaper* the situation in not Bangladesh but in "East Pakistan". The people whose suffering is being reported are those who elected Sheikh Mujib as the representative of their will to achieve proper autonomy. If Sheikh Mujib is recognised as having, on December 7th last year, received a mandate from the people of East Pakistan (as it was then called), then it follows that the provisional government formed as a direct resuJt of his frustrated attempts to obtain not political but economic autonomy is, in the context of the illegal opposition from Yahya Khan, entitled to recognition; the opposition being "illegal" because the Pakistan Resolution, having never yet been implemented, must be considered more binding than any other legal agreement since made about the relations between the two regions. It was on the foundation of that Resolution that, in 1947, Pakistan eventually came into being. So *I refer to Peter Hazlehurst's reporting. Editorially speaking The Times is equivocal. Anthony Mascarenhas' reports in the Sunday Times for June 13th and June 20th are of considerable importance in evaluating the situation. then it must be repeated that if Sheikh Mujib's December 7th mandate entitled him to press for the terms of that Resolution, then if in doing so he incurs the wrath of a military dictatorship whose intention is to resist the course of that justice on which Pakistan was founded, he is legally entitled to go beyond the terms of that Resolution which he cannot find honoured to the original ground on which it was founded-i.e. the circumstances of Britain's withdrawal from the sub-continent of India. And no one returning to that ground would maintain that the binding together of two territories as historically incompatible and as geographically far apart as West Pakistan and Bangladesh could suit anything but the irrational exigencies of that era of British withdrawal. Thus there are two realities to be taken account of: (i) At no time since 1947 have the people of East Bengal (Bangladesh) enjoyed that autonomy in expectation of which their original union with West Pakistan was negotiated. (ii) The objective facts of the relationship between West Pakistan and East Bengal-geographical, ethnic-cultural and so on--can no longer, by virtue of every betrayal of East Bengali interests from Jinnah to Yahya Khan, be meaningfully accommodated to the status of Pakistan integrity. The continued refusal by The Times and other institutions of journalism and government both here and abroad to recognise Bangladesh is firstly a diplomatic impertinence to a people who have waited 24 years to enjoy constitutional rights; and secondly, MALCOMB LIVINGSTONE 3'

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EDITORIAL

Bangladesh QN December 7th last year a very large majority of people in East Pakistan voted for a policy of economic but not political freedom. In order that Sheikh Mujib, the elected representative of that (Awami League) majority could form a government the National Assembly was to meet on March 3rd this year to decide on a constitution within the framework laid down by Yahya Khan's mil~tary regime. Mujib was prepared to accept the two main conditions of that framework, the national integrity of Pakistan and its Islamic basis; he insisted only on the full autonomy envisaged in the original Pakistan Resolution of 1940. Nevertheless he was pressed by Yahya Khan, now leader of the military junta which took provisional control during constitution-making, and Bhutto, leader of the People's Party, to accept a strong centre of a kind which would have made that autonomy voted for by the East Pakistan majority an imposs1ibility. Bhutto refused to meet on March 3rd if Mujib did not compromise; the latter felt bound by his mandate. Yahya Khan threatened Mujib with military force, whereupon Mujib declared non-violent civil disobedience. Without warning Yahya Kahn's army descended on the demonstrators and 2,000 were reported killed. Mujib now took over the administration of East Pakistan; he called for and received the support of the Bengali Police, the East Pakistan Rifles, government offices, the judiciary and the economic administration, and re-named East Pakistan "Bangladesh". Yahya Khan was obliged to set March 25th for a further meeting of the National Assembly and to consult with Mujib in Dacca during the intervening three weeks. On the evening of March 25 Yahya Khan left for West Pakistan. That evening the army struck. Mujib was arrested.

On May 7th, Nazrul Islam and Tajuddin Afunad, both members of the Provisional Government formed by the Awami League members who had escaped capture (and some who had escaped from captivity), formally declared the independent state of Bangladesh.

At the time of writing-June 16th-The Times continues to report more thoroughly than any other newspaper* the situation in not Bangladesh but in "East Pakistan". The people whose suffering is being reported are those who elected Sheikh Mujib as the representative of their will to achieve proper autonomy. If Sheikh Mujib is recognised as having, on December 7th last year, received a mandate from the people of East Pakistan (as it was then called), then it follows that the provisional government formed as a direct resuJt of his frustrated attempts to obtain not political but economic autonomy is, in the context of the illegal opposition from Yahya Khan, entitled to recognition; the opposition being "illegal" because the Pakistan Resolution, having never yet been implemented, must be considered more binding than any other legal agreement since made about the relations between the two regions.

It was on the foundation of that Resolution that, in 1947, Pakistan eventually came into being. So

*I refer to Peter Hazlehurst's reporting. Editorially speaking The Times is equivocal. Anthony Mascarenhas' reports in the Sunday Times for June 13th and June 20th are of considerable importance in evaluating the situation.

then it must be repeated that if Sheikh Mujib's December 7th mandate entitled him to press for the terms of that Resolution, then if in doing so he incurs the wrath of a military dictatorship whose intention is to resist the course of that justice on which Pakistan was founded, he is legally entitled to go beyond the terms of that Resolution which he cannot find honoured to the original ground on which it was founded-i.e. the circumstances of Britain's withdrawal from the sub-continent of India. And no one returning to that ground would maintain that the binding together of two territories as historically incompatible and as geographically far apart as West Pakistan and Bangladesh could suit anything but the irrational exigencies of that era of British withdrawal. Thus there are two realities to be taken account of:

(i) At no time since 1947 have the people of East Bengal (Bangladesh) enjoyed that autonomy in expectation of which their original union with West Pakistan was negotiated.

(ii) The objective facts of the relationship between West Pakistan and East Bengal-geographical, ethnic-cultural and so on--can no longer, by virtue of every betrayal of East Bengali interests from Jinnah to Yahya Khan, be meaningfully accommodated to the status of Pakistan integrity.

The continued refusal by The Times and other institutions of journalism and government both here and abroad to recognise Bangladesh is firstly a diplomatic impertinence to a people who have waited 24 years to enjoy constitutional rights; and secondly,

MALCOMB LIVINGSTONE

3'

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