“War is wrong, an unmitigated evil,” the late Mahatma Gandhi once said. “No cause, however just, can warrant the indiscriminate slaughter that is going on....”

A few years ago one of the Mahatma's political heirs —but no kin—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told the United Nations General Assembly: “In India we have been powerfully conditioned by Mahatma Gandhi. We believe that the evolution of individuals and societies depends on the extent to which they exercise self‐restraint and abjure the use of force.”

On another occasion, commenting on the agreement at Tashkent that ended the India‐Pakistan conflict 1965; Mrs. Gandhi said: “The success of the Tashkent Declaration consists in the fact that both countries have now agreed not to have recourse to force and to settle their’ disputes through peaceful means. This has been done by a categorical reaffirmation in the Declaration of the obligations under the Charter of the United Nations to refrain from the use of force in settling international disputes.”

Despite devious denials that would have shocked and saddened India's Apostle of Truth,. it is clear that.Mrs. Gandhi has at last turned her back on the Mahatma and on India's solemn international commitments. Reports from, the Indian border, reinforced by Delhi's tardy admission that Indian soldiers have been authorized cross into East Pakistan in “self‐defense,” leave no room for doubt that India today is resorting to force in an attempt to settle the latest dispute with Its neighbor on the subcontinent.

Admittedly, India is reacting to provocations that most other nations long ago would have found intolerable. The Yahya Government's repression of a democratically endorsed autonomy movement in East Pakistan, resulting in a flood of nine million refugees into India (most them Hindus), has posed a direct threat to India's own democratic institutions and national security. The international community—and most conspicuously the United States Government— has been slaw to recognize the extreme dangers of this situation, let alone to take steps to meet them. The United Nations has studiously side‐stepped the central issue of Pakistani repression despite repeated warnings from the Secretary General, U Thant.

But the Indians share responsibility for the: U.N.'s appalling paralysis. While loudly—and justly—complaining of injuries to India from Islamabad's actions, New Delhi has strenuously resisted any United Nations intervention on the grounds that the problem was strictly domestic, confined to Pakistan. India's current moves effectively shatter that excuse for the inaction of the United Nations.

The Security Council now has to meet this issue head on. To be effective, the Council must deal not only with the breach of peace created by India's, actions but also with the prior violations of human rights in East Pakistan that precipitated the present perilous conflict.

India in turn has the responsibility of honoring its international obligations and domestic traditions. Indian parliamentarians cheering their Prime Minister's heady claims of victories would do well to recall the warnings of their other Gandhi. “We have been deceived,” the Mahatma observed, “by the temporary but brilliant results achieved by some wars.”