The idea of Pakistan, of nation built on a shared faith in Islam and fear of India's vast Hindu majority, was an abstraction from the beginning.

The very word is an acronym for eight separate territories of British India and Central Asia that might have been incorporated into a single Islamic state. The young Moslem who coined it at Cambridge University in 1933 included Iran and Afghanistan —but not Bengal.

Now, as a result of the fierce onslaught of the forces of West Pakistan on the Bengalis —the people of East Pakistan —the foundation on which this improbable nation has rested for 24 years appears destroyed once and for all. For if Pakistan is held together now it will not be by an idea but by force of arms.

It was not until 1946 a year before independence, that anyone suggested that they Pakistan idea was powerful enough to transcend 1,000 miles of Indian territory and the profound differences of language and culture that separate the dominant Punjabis of the Western wing from the Bengali majority in the East.

Two States Envisioned

Six years earlier, when the Moslem League of Muhammad All Jinnah endorsed the Pakistan idea, it called for the creation of two states, one in the East and another in the West. The league was not especially strong at that time in Bengal or the Punjab, where Moslems were in a majority. Its strength was in the heartland of India where their minority status made them feel vulnerable.

Even in 1946, it was generally presumed that the proposal for a two‐part Pakistan was not meant literally but merely for bargaining purposes. The idea took practical shape only when it was announced in London by Clement R. Attlee, the British Prime Minister, on June 3, 1947, less than three months before India and Pakistan were declared independent.

Since then, Pakistanis have commonly talked about their country not as an accomplished fact but as an idea awaiting realization, or an aspiration that had been denied.

“If we had known it was going to be like this, we would have made Pakistan with Saudi Arabia instead of the Punjabis,” a Bengali leader declared two years ago. “With their oil and our jute, we really would, have had something.”

Fruitless Negotiations

Despite much bitterness, there were hopes of a political settlement between the two wings as recently as three weeks ago. It is unclear what brought about the collapse of the negotiations between President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan and Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the undisputed leader of East Pakistan.

Some observers think that the armed forces never intended: to grant the, autonomy Sheik Mujib was demanding for his province. Others suggest that Sheik Mujib might have been holding out for some control by East Pakistan over the armed forces, which had been commanded exclusively by West Pakistanis, in order to lessen the dangers of another coup d'etat against the central Government.

Whatever led President Yahya to break off the talks, it is not hard to imagine the calculations that led to his desperate decision to resort to armed suppression of Sheik Mujib's movement rather than give in to the logic of geography and allow East Pakistan to chart its own course as an independent state.

Poor as East Pakistan is, its jute exports bring in more than half of Pakistan's foreign earnings. The territory is also the main market for West Pakistan's growing industries.

With the eastern wing, West Pakistan can maintain armed forces suitable for a nation with a total population of 130 million and still keep more than 80 per cent of these forces in its own territory. Without the east, West Pakistan's military establishment would have to be drastically reduced, to the point that it would no longer pose any danger to India.

Other Minorities Resentful

Inevitably, West Pakistan would then have to turn its back to the Indian subcontinent, relinquish its lingering hopes for control of disputed Kashmir and define for itself new future as a Middle Eastern nation of middling size and prestige.

It might also have to face renewed claims for autonomy by the minority people of the western wing the Pathans, Baluchis and Sindhis —who have often shown themselves to be as resentful of Punjabi domination as the Bengalis of the east. The armed forces may well have wondered whether the loss of East Pakistan would have marked the end or the beginning of the country's disintegration.

Many Indians might welcome, such a, spectacle, but, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Government would almost certainly have preferred the status quo of the armed truce that has existed since the two nations went to war in 1965. An independent East Pakistan, especially one born out of turmoil and mass death, could introduce a new measure of instability into the sensitive areas of northeastern India that border it on three sides.

Major Assistance Unlikely

For this reason, New Delhi is unlikely to offer the East Pakistanis significant assistance, despite strong popular pressures and notwithstanding charges by President Yahya.

Similarly, despite Pakistani fears, India would have little reason to welcome any reconsideration of the partition of 1947. The addition of 75 million desperately impoverished Bengalis to her rapidly rising population could hardly be considered a boon. And proposals for a reunited and independent Bengali nation through the merger of East Pakistan and the Indian state of West Bengal would be seen, inevitably, as raising the specter of India's own disintegration.

In any event, such possibilities are‐too distant even to be called remote. What is not remote is the chaos and killing rending the countryside of East Pakistan where, normally, a harvest would now be under way.