CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—I have been reluctant in these last months to speak of the political problems of East Bengal. All of us who have served in India are thought to be partisans of that country as doubtless on occasions we have been.

Like others I have wondered if political discussion might divert attention from the terribly urgent problem of helping to provide sustenance for the refugees. But such is the component of disaster in our present policy that I feel compelled to stress a few of the fundamentals in this ghastly situation.

In any considerations of the Bengal tragedy, four factors are controlling. I list them:

The immediate aspects of the refugee problem are urgent and grave and every effort at alleviation must be made. But there can be no tolerable solution which does not allow these people to return to their home villages and land. That this vast number of people—approaching in total the number displaced by World War II—should remain indefinitely in camps or in the crowded adjacent provinces of India is so cruel as to be unthinkable.

The refugees will return only to a peaceful and secure country. Both the overwhelming vote for autonomy earlier this year and the events since make it certain that East Pakistan cum East Bengal will only be peaceful if full autonomy and self-government are accorded to it. Continued administration from Islamabad will be under conditions of open or suppressed revolt and the refugees will not return.

Autonomy and self-government are also wanted as the vote showed by the people who have not fled and, a most important point, autonomy and self-government of East Pakistan are essential for West Pakistan as well. By itself West Pakistan is a highly viable community with a higher potential for economic growth than India. As military rulers of the more numerous Bengalis and with the associated expenditure it will be ruined. What is worse, the armed forces of West Pakistan and the Punjabis, Pathans and the other communities that comprise them will continue to be featured in the world press as cruel and oppressive men. They are anything but that, but this is the reputation that any pacifying army, not excluding our own in Vietnam, invariably acquires.

A military solution by India would further embitter relations between the two nations of the subcontinent. And it would be greatly disenchanting to all who, as friends of India, cherish the Gandhian dislike of such measures.

The conclusion for American policy follows:

It is to hope that the two great Islamic communities of the subcontinent can still find some relationship such as that between two parts of a commonwealth which will allow them to live in independent companionship. But there must be full autonomy and self-government for East Bengal. Accordingly no action of ours should encourage or seem to encourage military domination of the East by the West.

NO ARMS FOR WEST

This means no military assistance of any kind to West Pakistan. And it means that even small or symbolic assistance which seems to suggest support can be as damaging as substantial help. The foregoing factors also forbid any economic assistance so long as it could serve either directly or indirectly to pay for suppression of Bengali autonomy or independence.

And no arcane strategy involving the Chinese can be a justification for a different policy. These considerations of course mean a continuation of an embargo on arms for India and a clearly expressed disapproval of any possible Indian military initiative.

With all else, we must be completely generous in helping alleviate the suffering of the refugees.

One of the clear lessons of these last years is that our power in the third world is limited. It is not within our competence to “solve” the problem of East Bengal. But it is within our competence to be compassionate, to urge (as evidently have the Soviets) against the use of force, and above all to stop doing the wrong thing.