LL Pakistan will grieve and our enemies will derive comfort and cheer from the tragic happenings at Dacca.

First and foremost we offer homage to those who have paid the forfeit of their lives in the conflict between their convictions on the one hand, and the principle that law and order shall be maintained, on the other hand. There is no doubt that they have sacrifised their young lives for a cause they passionately believed in, whatever course of action that belief might have led them to.

Their memory deserves respect and will endure. We also grieve that so many others should have received physical hurt, and extend our sympathy to them.

This tragedy becomes doubly so because while there is no doubt that the vast majority of the students and others who staged the demonstrations were actuated by sincere convictions and acted in their own light as true Pakistanis, there must have been elements mingled with them and no doubt adding fuel to their honest fervour, who were agents of our enemies.

Such elements have infiltrated into many walks of Pakistani life and chosen East Pakistan as the first target because they believe that if they can disrupt that part of Pakistan first, then half their nefarious battle will be won.

In their understandable zeal for a language they cherish and in their larger love for Pakistan as a whole, many an honest East Pakistan enthusiast repeatedly misses this fact and is unable to guard against this danger. This is the deeper tragedy that underlies the tragedy of the present Dacca incidents.

But every dark cloud has a silver lining and out of these grievous happenings has emerged the final knowledge of how deeply our people and our kith and kin in East Pakistan feel on the language issue. This knowledge had been growing for quite some time and now the Chief Minister of East Pakistan himself got the Provincial Legislature to pass a resolution that Bengali share with Urdu the honour of being adopted as one of our common motherland`s state languages. The issue is thus settled and the Constituent Assembly, we are confident, will accept this position and act accordingly when the appropriate time comes. We can assure the people of East Pakistan that the people of West Pakistan will not grudge them the equality with Urdu which Bengali has at last won.

Let by common consent the curtain be rung down on this sad and tragic episode except that the promised enquiry should be held to determine whether firing was necessary.

No Government can permit lawlessness accompanied by violence to subvert the tranquillity of the State, specially when enemy agents are ever on the alert to turn such disorders to their own nefarious purposes. In Bharat, too, ugly incidents necessitating recourse touse offorce against citizens and students have happened many times. But the question of questions is would damage to life and property have been caused had not the police opened fire? This question must be answered by competent and reliable authorities.•