CALCUTTA, India, Nov. 25—There were few clear elements today in the murky situation surrounding the crisis on the Indian subcontinent, where a major Indian‐supported offensive by Bengali insurgents against the Pakistani Army has been under way in East Pakistan since last weekend.

Foreign newsmen are barred by India from the border areas where fighting has been going on and it is virtually impossible to assess the expectations of Indian sources who feel that the Pakistani troops are being hurt so badly that President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan will have to react soon with a declaration of war.

‘Something Big’ Expected

Partly because of President Yahya's declaration of national emergency two days ago, these sources do not now think his reaction will be a meek withdrawal from East Pakistan, where his occupation army of West Pakistani troops has been trying unsuccessfully since last March to crush the Bengali independence movement.

Millions of East Pakistani refugees have fled to India, engendering political and economic pressures that have threatened the stability of the country.

Despite the lack of solid reports from the battlefronts in East Pakistan — or perhaps because of it — some foreign diplomats seem to share the Indian sources’ view that Pakistan may opt for full‐scale war as the only face‐saving way out of an apparently desperate situation.

“A lot of people on both sides — Pakistan and India —think something big is going to happen in the next five or six days,” a Western diplomat said.

Some observers think that India may be trying to provoke Pakistan into declaring war as a way to solve the Indian predicament. A successful war instead of the military activity short of war that India has been conducting until now could achieve more quickly and legitimately the Indian objective: a friendly, independent East Pakistan to which most of the refugees would return.

India's Defense Minister, Jagjivan Ram, addressing a huge public rally in Hariana State in northern India, said today that the battle on Sunday, in which Indian forces crossed into East Pakistan to repulse what they said was a Pakistani tank attack, was a “sufficient warning” to the Pakistanis that if war comes, “the battles will be fought only on their territory and not on Indian soil—in their towns, streets and houses.”

The Defense Minister said that anybody who attacked India “would be taught a lesson they will remember till doomsday,” and that the Indian armed forces were waiting for a chance to teach that lesson.

“I have always told the Jawans [soldiers] and the pilots that Yahya Khan would provide them the opportunity,” he said.

Most Indian officials think that if Pakistan does declare war, the major attack will come from West Pakistan, possibly in an attempt to seize part of Kashmir—over which the two countries have fought twice before—in retribution for the loss of East Pakistan.

Although reports on the fighting remained sketchy today, information from reliable sources indicated that battles were going on in many sectors of East Pakistan and that the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Forces, or the Bengali insurgents fighting for independence) were steadily seizing new territory.

These sources said that the Mukti Bahini were doing most on the front‐line combat, with the Indians providing artillery and other support.

Indian officials in Calcutta today seemed to be playing up a border incident early this morning in which, they say, the Pakistanis shelled the town of Balurghat in the northern part of West Bengal State.

The officials called it “a premeditated, unprovoked attack on a sleeping town where there is no military target” and said it was “a very, very serious provocation.”

Some observers thought that the extreme Indian reaction to this incident, which was no more serious than dozens like it in recent weeks, might be a move to lay the groundwork for a heavy retaliatory attack somewhere against the Pakistanis.