The third Indian‐Pakistani war appears to be heading toward an early end with victory for Indian arms in East Bengal and apparent failure of the Pakistanis to make serious inroads on the western front. But even with victory, the Indians, who never fail to set themselves up as apostles of peace, will find that the prospects are dim for conditions that will lead to enduring peace on the stricken subcontinent.

The current conflict will leave ancient antagonisms only intensified. It has seriously retarded development efforts in both India and Pakistan that were already short of achieving the minimal goals necessary to preserve social order; indeed, the lack of development in heavily overpopulated East Bengal was an important source of the discontent in that Pakistani province that sparked the present explosion.

The most critical result of this tragic confrontation will be the emergence of Bangla Desh, as a third major nation on the Indian subcontinent. This was perhaps inevitable. Separated by a distance of 1,200 miles and by differences in language and culture from their Moslem brothers in the West, the East Bengalis were always unlikely partners in the strong, centralized union that Pakistan's leaders have attempted to maintain. The Bengali desire for independence, based on fear and resentment of Punjabi domination, was a logical sequel to the original demand of Pakistan's Moslem leaders for separation from predominantly Hindu India on similar grounds.

The trouble is that there is no telling where such secessionist sentiments will end on a subcontinent that is peopled by many differing races, religions, languages and cultures. The example of Bangla Desh could set off chain reactions in both Pakistan and India that would reduce the subcontinent to a Balkanized hodgepodge of quarreling, permanently impoverished states.

Bangla Desh itself, with 75 million people in an area the size of North Carolina (population five million), will be the world's eighth largest nation in terms of population. But it will also be among the world's poorest countries, with per capita annual income of only, $30 and scant resources for development. It is destined, as one foreign expert recently observed, “to occupy a prominent position on the world dole for a long time to come.” Even if other Pakistani and Indian states do not try to follow its secessionist example, Bangla Desh is bound to be an uncertain and unsettling factor on the subcontinent because of this desperate poverty.

To avoid further disintegration and to regain lost momentum for development, it is essential that the fighting on the subcontinent be brought to a speedy end and that new bridges of understanding and cooperation be built, if possible, among the quarreling states. Like it or not, the peoples of the subcontinent share a common destiny. Disunity is the mortal enemy of the development that all of them desperately need.