After months of brave restraint and good deeds India now seems to be forsaking the paths of peace. It is a bad, sad decision. Though the exact nature and sequence of events on Bangladesh’s battered borders remain uncertain, no impartial observer thinks the ragged mukti bahini guerrillas capable of full frontal aggression against regular Pakistan troops - still less aggression using jets and tanks. Brushing aside propaganda semantics, India appears bent on serious military provocation - the kind of muddled, limited action which might make Yahya lash back and thereby bring major war without incurring direct blame on India itself. Such provocation is understandable. The momentous burden of refugees has brought India, economically, to her knees; and the world has not cared enough. Nevertheless, direct attested conflict between the two countries (with cheers in the Indian Parliament over reported dogfight figures) creates a new situation and demands a new response. We are not dealing now with threats of battle and vague, distant encounters. We face the imminent probability of massive, incalculable warfare.

So far the UN has not even considered East Bengal as a “threat to peace.” That becomes a ludicrous stance. So far Mrs. Gandhi has refused talks with Yahya and refused even to consider troop withdrawals from the border, because Bangladesh was an “internal Pakistani problem.” That remains true in essence, but no longer in all practicality. The mukti bahini are a good force to be reckoned with but they are the force that harasses Sylhet or Jessore. If Mrs. Gandhi’s pacific proclamations mean anything, she should now initiate negotiations, facilitate a UN presence between the two armies, and encourage internationalization of the issue by allowing U Thant’s observers into her refugee camps. Any farther along the present course and the only deduction will be of a deliberate Indian plan to conquer East Pakistan and accept whatever consequences come. It is as well to spell out some of these consequences immediately. They include conflict spreading out of control and may be out of the subcontinent itself, with more millions homeless or starving; an East Pakistani puppet regime which would fast fall prey to the seething grievances of that bedeviled area; and the sickening near certainty of hundreds of thousands of massacred Biharis in the East as Yahya’s writ collapses.

Does New Delhi truly seek permanent stewardship in Dacca? Should East and West Bengal be united in bloody-minded rebellion against all Indian Governments? What happens to Asia if Pakistan falls to pieces? These are huge problems for Mrs. Gandhi to ponder and desperate questions for the world. Perhaps at last, under such shadows, the Security Council, Russia, America and China will bring India and Islamabad together to debate their differences. But as belated telegrams fly and tardy calls for calm abound, one central fact must not be lost sight of. No amount of Big Power pummeling can have a lasting effect if internationalising the confrontation also means atrophying it. Nine million homeless wanderers are an overwhelming argument for chaos. Freedom fighters in the heart of East Pakistan will continue whether the UN likes them or not. Any outside solution must be a dynamic one - a formula that given the Bengalis both the autonomy they seek and Sheikh Mujib, the leader they elected. As Yahya’s latest efforts for lame democracy have waited in the past few weeks, fresh hopes for the release of Mujib and meaningful bargaining have grown. This, surely, remains the tortuous but only road back from the brink. And without it any intervention to staunch the bloodshed is doomed.