This translation was first published in the:

ISPaD Partition  Center Journal  2020
(ISSN 2377-7567)
Published by:
Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project (ISPaD)
New York
Jamaica, Queens, New York City

At a press conference in Paris on 18 September 1971, the seventy-year old Andre Malrauz had expressed his desire to join the fight for the independence of Bangladesh, as part of an ‘International Brigade’. He had served as France’s Minister of Culture, under President de Gaulle, from 1958 to 1969. Shortly after Pakistan had surrendered, Malraux wrote an Open Letter to President Nixon, which appeared in the newspaper Le Figaro. It is translated below.

Open letter to President Nixon^[1]
André Malraux
(Le Figaro, Paris, 18^th/19^th December 1971)

Translated by Dileep Karanth

So, Mister President, at a time when millions of refugees from Bengal are probably going to return home, you end your letter to India, so your agencies say, calling to mind the fact that an alliance binds Pakistan to the greatest power in the world; the same agencies announce that American warships are heading towards the Bay of Bengal.

If you are so closely bound to the Marshal Yahya Khan, why had you not given him any advice earlier? I know a little of your country. America does not like it when winners of elections are sent to prison, nor for that matter, when losers of elections are.  America absolutely does not like the fact that its allies have driven ten million refugees to a poor, neighbouring country. The charity makes no difference. What is the use of giving alms to corpses?

Even if your aircraft carriers threaten Calcutta, the United States could not possibly accept the prospect of fighting against these crowds of suffering people, could it? When the most powerful army in the world – your own – could not overcome the barefoot people of Vietnam, do you believe that Islamabad’s army (which, by the way, no longer exists) could retake a country that is fired with the cause of independence, and which is fighting 1,800 kilometers away?

It is a great pity that the news agencies speak of these things as if it were a matter of pushing both sets of these combatants back. What lay at the back of the fighters of Bengal was death. All one has to do is wait, and soon no one will understand the causes of war.

You probably know that before India entered the war – and may I remind you in passing that India entered the war after her airports were bombed – some of us had planned to deliver India’s military aid to Free Bengal. A hundred and fifty high-ranking officers – that would not have been bad: by the Cantonese method, it would have been a thousand in one year. We were supposed to leave on the 15^th, but we received no news. Now I think we are no longer needed. We understand of course that there is no comparison between a foreign Legion and an army of a million men. However, when Pakistan had not yet forced India into the war, the aid we could have brought to Free Bengal would have mattered. For, other than us, who else was ready to bring her any help?

My comrades-at-arms did not think that the unending streams of refugees from (what cannot be called Free) Bengal were in the same boat as their executioners. Since you talk of your alliance with Pakistan, let us talk about it, while there is still time. Let us discuss, in plain language, what happened before China and the Soviet Union, and even your country, jumped into the fray.

Elections had been held in Bengal. Pakistan hoped for a victory. It was defeated: its opponents captured 167 seats out of 169. Thereupon, Pakistan incarcerated the chief of the opposition, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who, for his part, waited patiently at home for the Pakistanis to come and give him a lesson in democracy.

Would you not agree that this state of affairs is as if a candidate for the American Presidency were to have his victorious rival imprisoned?  During this period, which is still very recent, what have you done with your alliance? Your alliance has remained a mute witness to this imprisonment, and if I am not mistaken, still continues to remain so. It has been a very patient alliance indeed.

Patient, even when ten million refugees racked by hunger and ravaged by despair have fled to India.

So, the Pakistanis slit the throats of the leaders of their opposition. From this stems the terror, the desperate emigration from Bengal of the crowds of Hindus, and even a certain number of Muslims. “It is war”, people are beginning to say. However, the fact remains that it is still not war. The fact remains that India has just received ten million refugees driven out of Pakistan, whereas Pakistan has received not a single Muslim driven out of India, not even from Kashmir.
Mr. President, I wish that every American would ask you: “What are we fighting for?”
If all was well in Pakistani Bengal, what is this horror that has driven a population greater than that of Belgium into India? We are told that Mrs. Gandhi does not have a good reason to complain. At least, her camps are filled with genuine martyrs. And it is not in her prisons that you can find Sheikh Mujibur Rahman? And would you consider advising your ally to release him?

You may remember our conversation in the presence of General de Gaulle. You had just come to power, and you had done me the honour of talking to me about American politics. I had observed: “The United States is the first country that has become the most powerful in world without trying to do so. Alexander wanted to be Alexander, and Caesar wanted to be Caesar. You have not wanted to be masters of the world. But you do not have the luxury of being masters absent-mindedly.”

To send aircraft carriers to the Bay of Bengal at a time when the fate of the world hangs in the balance is not politics; it is a foreign policy relic. You are going to try to establish a dialogue with China that the United States has postponed for twenty years. That will be a dialogue between the richest country in the world and the poorest. As for Free Bengal, you can always wait twenty years before remembering that it is not appropriate for the country that announced the Declaration of Independence to crush a desperate people fighting for their own independence. I do not believe that your illustrious figure can watch the sight of shell-shocked crowds passing on your television screens, remembering what was once called liberty, with contentment. For it should not have been me saying what I say today; it should have been you.

Mr. President, please accept my best regards.

André Malraux

Translator’s Note:

I have not been able to find out what exactly Andre Malraux meant by “the Cantonese method”. Perhaps it referred to a military tactic which he had become familiar with, during his long years of residence in Asia.

Translator’s Acknowledgments:

I thank M. Claude Pillet, web manager of the site and also the editor of Présence d’André Malraux sur la Toile, its academic and literary electronic journal, for permission to translate this letter, and for his encouragement. These thanks are in addition to what was already owed to the site for making the writings of André Malraux available to a worldwide readership. I am also grateful to the publisher, Edition Gallimard, who graciously permitted me to publish the translation in the ISPAD Journal.

Dr. Koenraad Elst, Michel Danino, and Dr. Chitra Krishnan kindly helped me reword some infelicitous translations. Of course, I am responsible for any errors that remain.

 

 

 

[1] Available at: https://malraux.org/a1971-12-18-andre-malraux-lettre-ouverte-a-m-nixon-figaro-paris-18-19-decembre-1971/