In the last two issues of The Sunday Times, we have published graphic despatches from our special correspondent to East Pakistan. These have borne out, and added to, the mass of evidence from other sources, all of it suggesting that a terrible communal bloodbath has been the result of the West Pakistan decision to quell with bullets the democratically expressed wish of the East Pakistan Bengalis for a wide measure of autonomy. On the opposite page, the same correspondent, after visiting West Pakistan, describes the influences and ideas at work there. What emerges, with a force that leaves no room for doubt, is that an appalling error has led to an appalling tragedy. The Indian sub-continent has, unhappily, been witness before now to mass killings by one race or another. But there is no modern precedent in the sub-continent, or elsewhere, for what can only be regarded as the deliberate intention on the part of the central Pakistani Government to wipe out, by killing, as many as possible of the adherents, present and future, of Bengali nationalism.

General Yahya Khan, to do him justice, had a very difficult situation on his hands. It was due to his own, laudable , desire to see democracy restored in Pakistan that general elections took place last autumn, from which Sheikh Mujib and his East Pakistan Awami League emerged triumphant. Faced subsequently with the swelling tide of Bengali separatism, Yahya Khan’s duty, as Head of State, was clearly to seek to preserve the unity of the State. But Mujib, in the negotiations which preceded the final break, had never proposed secession, whatever his more fiery followers were shouting.

Nor was it ever conceivable, whatever the present successes of West Pakistani forces, that a display of military strength could snuff out (and keep snuffed out) years of Bengali grievance and longing for a new deal. The one certain result of Yahya Khan’s fateful decision - other than the bloodshed - is that the way has now been opened, in East Pakistan, to Maoists, Naxalites and other fishers in troubled waters, besides whom Mujib stands out as the epitome of reasonableness.

A deplorable cloud of complacency now seems to be hanging over Islamabad. It is the duty of other governments, the British Government included, to help dispel it. To say that the East Pakistani drama is an “internal affair”, as Sir Alec Douglas-Home has done, is not enough. Internal affairs can become, as this one has, crimes against justice and humanity. Besides, with India, China, and Russia all with an iron in the fire, it is ludicrous to pretend that East Pakistan is a little local difficulty.

The time has come, it is indeed overdue, for the British Government publicly to express its disgust, in far stronger terms than it has yet done, at the course of events in East Pakistan. Using the more traditional, and private, diplomatic channel, it needs to let Yahya Khan know (if it has not already done so) just how dangerous and mistaken his policies are. If necessary the possibility of concerted action among the suppliers of foreign aid to Pakistan should be considered - even if it is rough justice to make the people of West Pakistan suffer for the follies of their own non-elected military rulers. In the end, some sort of discussion between the central Government in West Pakistan and the popular representatives in East Pakistan is going to have to take place. The sooner General Yahya realises this, and send Mujib back to Dacca, so that there shall be someone responsible to talk to, the better.