Bongaon: Perhaps no place is better suited than this Indian border town 57 kilometres north of Calcutta to witness how the tide has turned in the struggle for "Bangla Desh" East Pakistan).

Barely two months ago, while Pakistani forces were still confined to their cantonments and the Mukti Fauj (Liberation Forces) held undisturbed sway over the rest of the countryside, Bongaon had a festive air.

The green-red-and-gold flags of Bangla Desh fluttered everywhere on the road leading to the border with East Pakistan. Tiny paper flags adorned rickshaws doing a roaring business carrying enthusiastic Bengalis to the border for a glimpse of the newly-emerged nation. Student organisations and other social welfare agencies were sending loads of food and medicines for the Mukti Fauj via Awami League volunteers across the border.

Today the flow is reversed. Refugees are streaming out of East Pakistan. In Bongaon the flags have disappeared. Lusty cries of "Jai Bangla" ring out no more. Discussion in the town now centres on the problem of refugees and often ends with bitter accusations against the Indian government for having missed its big chance. "Had New Delhi recognised the Bangla Desh government immediately and sent in military assistance while the Pakistani army was bottled up in its cantonments there would have been by this time a friendly state on our border," said a local doctor. "And now in return for the few packets of loaves and medicine our boys gave to Bangla Desh we are receiving millions of refugees. What a bargain."

The influx of refugees started as a trickle in early April but soon swelled into a cascade as the Pakistani army tightened its grip. Bongaon which, according to a recent census, had a population of 50,000, in the last two months has received more than 300,000 refugees who, simply by their presence, are threatening to suffocate the town.

The local administration is on the verge of collapse; food is scarce and prices have soared; some roads are almost choked with refugees who have put up pitiful shelters of palm leaves, grass and cardboard. (During the monsoon the road is the only vacant space on which it is possible to camp.) On top of all this has come cholera. One resident noted bitterly: "This is Yahya Khan's way of wreaking vengeance on us for the moral support we gave to Bangla Desh."

Although an oversimplification, the statement may not be totally absurd. There is ample evidence to prove that the exodus is largely at the instigation of Islamabad. The refugees who came in April were mostly fleeing from army slaughter and included a fair proportion of Moslems. In that phase, the army did not discriminate between Awami League supporters-Hindus or Moslems.

But by mid-May, with the re-establishment of military control over the province, refugee numbers suddenly increased and there was a change in their make-up. Overwhelmingly, the refugees who have crossed into India since are from the eight million-strong Hindu community in East Pakistan. They have been forced to leave their homes after having their properties systematically looted by local "peace committee" members. (The "peace committees" were set up by members of the Moslem League and Jamat-i-lslami under direction of the army.)

General Yahya Khan might be hoping to kill two birds with one stone by "generating" refugees. By getting rid of the "secessionists"-Awami Leaguers and Hindus who voted massively for Sheik Mujibur Rahman-he probably is aiming to consolidate Pakistan as an Islamic state. At the same time Yahya might be hoping to ruin the social and economic fabric of eastern India, already in pretty bad shape, by inflicting staggering numbers of refugees upon Indian Premier Indira Gandhi initially hoped that within six months conditions in East Pakistan would be favourable enough for the refugees to return. Hence she preferred to call them "evacuees" on a purely "temporary basis". But already two months have passed and prospects of the refugees returning remain as bleak as ever. Last week 10,000 East Pakistanis who had fled to the north- eastern Indian state of Meghalaya could stand the hunger, disease and inhospitable climate no longer. So they chose to risk the dangers of returning to East Pakistan. But in West Bengal it seems the refugees would rather die of cholera or starvation than go back to their homes.

Mohadev Mondal, a 50-year-old Hindu farmer from Bansberia, in East Pakistan's Khulna district, whom I met in a tattered tent at the end of Calcutta airport, said: "Come what may, we'll not go back. Who can trust the Moslems again? They asked us to vote for the Awami League and we did. But when the war started the same fellows turned Moslem League supporters and looted our house."

The elected Awami League candidates from his constituency - one Hindu and one Moslem-were, he said, "good men". But they fled with their families immediately after the war broke out. "When the Khans (West Pakistanis) became victorious, the local Moslem League chaps and erstwhile Awami Leaguers turned on us- the Hindus. They said 'India is your place, go there'."

Once an owner of 25 acres of land and six buffaloes, Mohadev is now a pauper, surviving on the Indian government hand-out of 400 grams of rice and 200 grams of potato per head per day.

Not only are the people unwilling to return to Pakistan. They are reluctant too to leave West Bengal for other Indian states. Here, despite all the problems, the climate is familiar and the local people speak their language. Other Indian states too are reluctant to take in the destitute refugees, particularly as they are Bengalis who have a reputation for being politically active. With great difficulty, the central government has persuaded Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa to temporarily accommodate some refugees at central expense. But even now the government finds that special trains carrying refugees from Calcutta to Madhya Pradesh have only 20~o of their original loading when they reach their destinations the rest having dropped off along the line through West Bengal.

Central and state officials are worried about the political role the refugees will play if they settle in West Bengal. They are quite aware that homeless, jobless refugees in West Bengal have turned to left extremism. Most of the educated and unemployed today in the state are from rootless refugee families and they have provided the hardcore cadres for leftist parties like the Communist Party Marxist and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

Already 186 industrial units in the state have been closed, leaving more than 50,000 jobless. Thousands of graduates churned out by the universities every year are joining the army of unemployed. If the worst fears materialise and the millions do not return to East Pakistan, the result could be an explosion enveloping the whole of "Bangla Desh" - and that means both "east" and West Bengal.