Word: bengals
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...East Pakistan's drive for Bangla Desh (an independent Bengali State). Immediately after fighting broke out between the fierce Pathans and Punjabis of the Pakistani army and the Bengali liberation forces, 1,500,000 terrified East Pakistanis-Moslems and Hindus alike -crossed into the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Bihar. Now the escapees are mostly Hindu, and they bring tales of torture, rape and massacre. According to the new arrivals, the Pakistani government is blaming the 10 million Hindus of East Pakistan (population 78 million) for being the principal supporters of the now-outlawed Awami...
...refugee camp at Patrapole on the West Bengal-East Pakistan border, a 16-year-old Bengali girl recalled how she and her parents were in bed "when we heard the tread of feet outside. The door burst open and several soldiers entered. They pointed their bayonets at the three of us and before my eyes killed my mother and father-battering them to death with the butts of their rifles. They flung me on the floor, and three of them raped me." Another teen-age girl in a Tripura camp told how she was raped by 13 West Pakistani soldiers...
Token Cremation. The polluted drinking water, the lack of sanitation and the officials' inability to inoculate the millions of refugees have contributed to the spread of cholera, particularly in West Bengal. A bacterial disease common to India and Pakistan, cholera causes severe vomiting and diarrhea, which bring dehydration and death. Those afflicted can usually be saved by replenishing the bodily fluids through intravenous injections or drinking large doses of a solution of salts, baking soda and glucose. But the flood of refugees is just too great to be handled by beleaguered medical teams...
...West Bengal's overflowing health centers, a 45-year-old rice farmer watched his infant son continue to suckle after his mother had died of cholera. "My wife is dead," the man said numbly. "Three of my children are dead. What else can happen?" With the refugees spreading through the Indian states, carrying the disease with them, the epidemic could rapidly afflict hundreds of thousands of Indians. For this reason, Indian authorities are trying to prevent the East Pakistanis from entering Calcutta, where uncounted millions already live on the streets in squalid conditions that guarantee an annual cholera epidemic...
...India and Pakistan. In northern India there was a fairly balanced exchange, with 6,000,000 Moslems fleeing to Pakistan and 6,500,000 Hindus and Sikhs entering India. But since partition, 4,300,000 Hindus from East Pakistan have fled to India, for the most part into West Bengal. There has been no comparable flight of Moslems. This imbalance has created the social, political and economic problems that have plagued the state and turned its capital, Calcutta, into a sinkhole of human misery...