DACCA.—Pakistan's 29 reception centers for returning refugees are clean, stocked with adequate food and medicine and well-staffed. "The only thing they lack is refugees," one official remarked.
So few refugees are returning to East Pakistan, many observers here believe, that returnees are still far outnumbered by Bengalis fleeing to India even though army units on the border have orders to stop escapes and sometimes shoot them.
Concern for these miserably poor displaced persons, whom neither India nor Pakistan really wants, is submerged now by political considerations which New Delhi and Islamabad find more compelling.
India insists that there are 10 million refugees in its camps and that they must return to their homes. However, Delhi has refused United Nations help in arranging a reversal of the refugee flow and does not encourage refugees to venture hack across the border.
A few returning refugees tell of having been ordered to stay in India, well-informed sources say, but most did not encounter direct Indian opposition when they sought to leave. Almost all, however, tell interviewers that the refugees in Indian camps are constantly being warned that East Pakistan is still not safe and that they will be killed if they go back.
Although the refugees are an enormous economic burden, India is apparently willing to bear it until it achieves its major political goal of helping weaken—or totally destroy—West Pakistan's control over East Pakistan. The ref ogees are tangible evidence of Bengali fear and hatred of the West Pakistan, army, and thus justify India's support for the rebel movement. They also supply the manpower pool from which India is training guerrillas for the civil war in East Pakistan.
Neutral observers here believe that millions of the refugees, including all the Moslems, could now return to their homes with relative safety. One source who has been in refugee camps in India believes that a man has far less chance of dying from a bullet here than of dying from malnutrition or disease in India.
However, the most reliable sources here say, fewer than 1,000 refugees a day are returning to Pakistan, while India claims that it receives almost 30,000 new refugees daily—and Pakistan is also using the refugee question for political ends.
Pakistan says there are only 2.2 million refugees in India—a figure most observers believe is arrived at by counting only Moslems and ignoring Hindus.
The Pakistani arithmetic raises the possibility that not all refugees will be welcomed back. Seven months of civil war have inflamed the subcontinent's centuries-old Hindu-Moslem hatred. Many Pakistani officials ascribe all their present problems to India and Indian agents, a popular term here for all Hindus.
In many areas of East Pakistan, attacks against Hindus continue unabated.
A small group of Hindu villagers north of Dacca recently described a massacre in which nine Hindus were lined up and shot, and their bodies left on the village path to be eaten by dogs since the executioners threatened to shoot anyone who tried to move or bury them.
Very few Hindus remain in East Pakistan towns. Those that have not fled to India are for the most part living with Moslem friends in villages which the army has not yet attacked.
A number have converted to Islam in an attempt to save themselves, but conversion is not always a guarantee of safety. Of the nine killed north of Dacca, two had become Moslems, villagers say.
Other Hindus have sought to become Christians. A sad postcard received by one church in Dacca last week said: "We believe Jesus Christ is great prophet and also believe law and order of Holy Bible are the way of getting free. Now being inspired, if we want to follow this religion, what have we to do?"
But even if the anti-Hindu terror in East Pakistan ends, many Hindus will be reluctant to return because they know that their property has been destroyed or distributed to Moslem army collaborators. The government says property will be returned, except that of men who actively joined the rebellion.
The government makes that definition, and even though United Nations observers plan to check on the restoration of property to its original owners, a Hindu corning back to claim land that has been given to an armed razakar (government volunteer) will not be in a strong position.
United Nations observers are already traveling East Pakistan watching the reception camps and the refugees who do return. They hope that the government will soon allow them to station men at the borders with U.N. offices flying the U.N. flag. They think such a physical U.N. presence would reassure refugees that it is safe to come back.
"There's no reason that the Moslem refugees shouldn't return now, but they just aren't coming," one source says.
Whether they stay or return, the millions of Bengali refugees and more than 100 million Bengalis in East Pakistan and India's West Bengal inspire observers to despair for their future because of numbers.
Overpopulation is Bengal's overriding, insoluble problem, and no political formula can relieve the misery it now causes nor avert even greater suffering as Bengali numbers inexorably double over the next 23 years.