The millions of mute and innocent sufferers for whose care the Indian Government has been so strenuously exerting itself are not the only people to be caught up in the tragedy of Bengal. Both the Pakistan Government on stage and the Indian Government in the wings are actors in what both must by now see as a tragedy in the strictly dramatic definition.

The soldiers who saw nothing but a narrow military duty, the politicians driven by their own following, President Yahya Khan a despairing protagonist—it is not difficult to fill in the parts played in East and West Pakistan. For India the role has been more one of restraint and nonparticipation yet with every enticement to solve its own problems by intervention and every emotion pressing for engagement. At one time the cry was for a military move into East Pakistan since no other way out of the disaster could be seen. Mrs Gandhi has wisely resisted any such extreme measure and concentrated on the grim task in hand of succour to the millions streaming across the border. By now on the Pakistan side the restraint is that of a government divided, defeated, shocked into indecision. On the Indian side there is a restraint that has been held to in very difficult circumstances.

Both sides speak publicly of the tension and its dangers. In Pakistan suspicion of India tries to allege that their eastern province would never have brought on the crisis but for Indian tampering. Whatever fragments of evidence can be twisted to make this seem true the prospect of Bangla Desh by default or by warfare is not one that India can relish. Mrs Gandhi's demand for world backing in ensuring that the refugees can all return home is a policy for a return to stability and humanity before anything else. It is not a form of pressure on the Pakistan Government to grant secession forthwith to East Pakistan. For the army now in forcible occupation to throw up its hands and walk out of East Pakistan would be to invite the spread of all the communal tensions that have proliferated in the past two months. It would leave one of the most densely populated and poorest zones of Asia without control or direction of any kind.

A solution at the other extreme would be equally disastrous. The record of the Pakistan army-—maybe in circumstances they had not foreseen—has been shocking enough in the past two months even on the minimum of attested evidence. Has the shooting finally stopped even now? The question has to be asked because the intentions of Rawalpindi and the evidence of the refugees suggests that harassed commanders have often taken their own course. At least now there can be few responsible generals on the Pakistan side who think that holding down the east by force is a feasible solution or that it could preserve in any worthwhile way the unity of the country.

For both governments there can be only one solution—a slow, patiently negotiated political solution; an advance under a flag of reconciliation with all arms back in the armoury. Only then might India’s hopes of the refugees flowing back to their homes be fulfilled. As it is the Indians have enough to fear; the mass of Hindus, swept out of East Pakistan by the army’s blundering severity or by the communal tensions, could by their number alone be enough spark to anti-Muslim feeling in India. Once started—as the story-in East Pakistan abundantly proves— the killing gains a momentum that governments find hard to arrest.

Can President Yahya Khan find his way back to a political accommodation, even a temporary one? The idea that international pressure can impose it by cutting aid or other bludgeoning is wide of the mark. This is a government facing ineluctable circumstances that can be encouraged. not compelled. For India, too, the help and encouragement that can be given in a difficult course is obvious. As are the dangers facing both governments.