CALCUTTA — When the Bengalis of East Pakistan began crossing the border into India six months ago in flight from civil war, they were greeted by the Bengalis of India with sympathy and tolerance despite the disruptions created by the refugee flood. But life is a survival affair in this corner of the world and magnanimity a luxury that few can afford for long.

Last week, with the refugee population swollen to 9 million, West Bengal, the Indian state on the East Pakistani border, was in an explosive condition. Across the border, the Pakistani Army was still killing and burning in an effort to crush the East Bengal independence movement — and still sending refugees pouring into India at a rate of 30,000 a day or 1 million a month. In West Bengal, tensions were festering both inside and outside the refugee camps. And the temptation to get rid of the crushing refugee burden by intervening in the fighting across the border —even if that meant another war with Pakistan — was growing for Indians all the way up to the Government in New Delhi.

In the beginning, when there were only 1 or 2‐million refugees, the Government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, although Strained by the relief effort, exhibited no sense of crisis. In fact, the refugees were a political asset that India could use in denouncing Pakistan's military repression and expressing New Delhi's sympathy for the independence of Bangla Desh, or Bengal Nation, the name the Bengali separatists have given to East Pakistan.

But now the relief program is cracking at the seams. The refugees are complaining that they are not getting their full rations; some have accused camp officials of black‐marketing relief supplies. Angry local people are protesting that the refugees are getting more food free than they can afford to buy on their meager wages as field hands and construction laborers. Refugee pressures have pushed local food prices up, and surplus refugee labor has driven local wage rates down. Firewood for cooking is scarce, and refugees have been caught stripping wood off fruit trees in local orchards.

Several clashes, and even some near‐riots, have erupted; some refugees have been killed either by the police or, local people. Marxist and Maoist political groups are trying to exploit these tensions to foment even wider trouble. Indian officials have hired several thousand young men to, try to curb extremist agitation in and around the camps.

What the Indians fear most is that the tension might take on a communal color — most of the East Pakistani refugees are Hindus terrorized by the Moslem. West Pakistani Army—and touch off a nationwide chain reaction in which India's majority Hindus would take revenge on the country's 60‐million Moslems.

The pressures are building in India to take some bold action that would stop the flood of refugees, a major threat to the country's already‐fragile social and economic fabric. Bangla Desh officials are pushing hard on New Delhi to give them the support needed for a major offensive. They are asking for sufficient heavy weapons and air cover, although not Indian troops.

In the United Nations General Assembly last week, the Pakistani delegate charged that India has in fact been carrying on, a clandestine war against Pakistan for the last few months. The charge bears some truth, for India has been giving sanctuary and arms to and training the Mukti Bahini (liberation forces) of Bangla Desh and has occasionally provided covering artillery and mortar fire for the Bengali guerrillas. With their hit‐and-run raids, the guerrillas have been able to keep East Pakistan in chaos and the Pakistani Army off balance. They have been severing roads and bridges, knocking out power installations and killing a significant number of Pakistani troops.

The Most dramatic of the guerrilla successes has been the damaging and sinking of ships in East Pakistan's two major harbors. The latest casualty was a Greek tanker, which Bengali frogmen damaged in Chittagong harbor about a week ago. Some shipping lines are thinking of halting all their traffic into East Pakistan. That would be a severe blow to the ability of the Pakistani Government to support its military occupation there.

Up to now, the Indians—themselves restrained from any rash move by their closest ally, the Soviet Union — have refused to help the guerrillas mount a major offensive that could seize a sizable chunk of East Pakistan territory and set up the Bangla Desh Government. But more and more people, including key Indian military officials, are shaking their heads gloomily and saying that unless the civil strife across the border is ended very soon by a political settlement, there may be no alternative to some kind of military action against East Pakistan.

Even if the Indians do not immediately sanction a fullscale thrust to seize major territory, where at least some of the refugees could go back to live, reports here indicate that New Delhi is increasing its arms supply to the guerrillas and that there will be a sharp increase in guerrilla activity within a few weeks — “a big punch,” as one Bangla Desh official described it.

How far India is prepared to go eventually to support the guerrillas is not clear, Most observers here feel that India's ability and willingness to absorb the refugee pressure is not limitless — that there is a breaking point and that it could come soon.

No decision on that is likely to be made until Mrs. Gandhi returns from her major tour of Western capitals, including London and Washington, on which she embarks later this month. The Prime Minister will be pressing for stronger Western support for India's position—that Pakistan's military regime must negotiate a settlement in East Pakistan with the Awami League, the autonomy‐minded party that won 160 of East Pakistan's 169 National Assembly seats (a national majority) in last December's elections and was outlawed when the Pakistan Army struck in March. Mrs. Gandhi will also presumably be probing, subtly—particularly with the. Nixon Administration—to find out what the Western reaction would be to major Indian military action.

If Mrs. Gandhi gets nothing but more urgings, of caution and restraint and comes home feeling that India is being abandoned or isolated, then caution and restraint may be the next casualties on this disturbed subcontinent.