A few weeks ago Mrs. Gandhi was stomping the diplomatic world making two urgent points that something must be done about Bangladesh quickly, and that - since it was Yahya’s personal responsibility - he must be made to do it. Now addressing an inflamed New Delhi Parliament, she makes a curiously different case. Far from East Bengal being Pakistan’s “internal responsibility,” the very stationing of Punjabi troops there is a “threat to Indian security.” And, far from seeking international intervention, she castigates governments trying to bring the crisis to the UN Security Council as “suspect in the eyes of the Indian people.” It all adds up to a sorry change of song.

Nobody denies army bungling in East Bengal. Nobody denies the stifling of democracy or terrorization of refugees. The argument is about the best way to set a pitiful, chaotic situation to rights; and Mrs. Gandhi will lose this argument if she stays on her present bewildering course. Reports from inside East Pakistan are already talking of large anti-Indian ( and anti Sheikh Mujib) demonstrations. The peasantry in the paddy fields, in concert with genuine Mukti Bahini leaders, do not want Indian tanks rolling destructively towards them. Yahya, moreover, will hardly yield to such bayonet diplomacy. It is not in the nature of the man.

India’s tactics seem balefully calculated to produce precisely the results. Mrs. Gandhi does not want more refugees, more chaos, and a mindlessly imposed international freeze. Yet, as new interviews with Mr. Bhutto in the West demonstrate, Pakistan’s chronic political instability is on the brink of asserting itself and toppling Islamabad’s fresh attempt to construct a viable civilian regime. That collapse can only rapidly bring the release of Mujib and meaningful constitutional bargaining in train. Paradoxically and tragically the major factor at present averting it is, almost certainly, Mrs. Gandhi’s bizarre belligerence.