CALCUTTA—It is difficult to tell who is starting what in each incident, but some kind of war is heating up on the border between India and East Pakistan.

Angered by the military repression of the Bengali insurgents within East Pakistan and feeling that the flood of refugees from the fighting is a threat to India's economic and political stability, the Indians for months have been helping the insurgents with arms, training and sanctuary.

Border clashes between Indian and Pakistani Army units have become larger and more frequent. A few of the battles have been battalion‐sized. The Indian strategy has been to harass, hurt and pin down large numbers of the 70,000 Pakistani troops in East Pakistan, thereby giving the Bengali insurgents, the Mukti Bahini, a freer hand to roam the interior.

In the past several weeks, as the Pakistan Government moved armored divisions up to the West Pakistan border 1,000 miles from East Pakistan, and as the number of refugees passed the nine‐million mark, the Indians apparently decided that their military measures were not enough. The level of military action has been escalated. Indian officials are now talking privately about a solution in two or three months. The goal is to cause the Pakistani authorities so much pain that they will decide that their military occupation of East Pakistan has become too costly and should be abandoned.

This is a calculated risk. A humiliating withdrawal from the Eastern province could weaken the Pakistani military regime's hold over West Pakistan. Foreseeing that danger, the regime could possibly decide on a major attack in the West to grab a piece of Indian territory—say, in Kashmir—in retribution for the loss of East Pakistan.

There are some hawks in the Indian Cabinet and the military who would like a dramatic military victory or who view the refugee burden as intolerable, but, as a foreign diplomat here put it the other day, “There's only one person who really knows what India is going, to do, and that's Mrs. Gandhi.”

That Prime Minster Indira Gandhi is the commanding general is the only completely clear thing about the deepening military conflict on the Indian subcontinent. And Mrs. Gandhi keeps her own counsel and makes her own decisions.