International Herald Tribune

It would seem that the imminent possibility of a major clash between India and Pakistan has mobilized, if not the conscience, at least the practical interest, of virtually all the world’s powers. The Soviet Union is reportedly urging India toward restraint; Red China is reportedly doing the same with Pakistan; the United States is using what influence it still retains in both countries to similar purpose, and the Western nations in general are trying to apply the brakes before collision occurs. The United Nations—in the person of Secretary-General U Thant is being consulted. This unanimity is as rare as the situation is dangerous.

The hostility between the two states that occupy the sub-continent antedates independence; the friction that divided Moslem and Hindu (to say nothing of the Sikhs and other creeds that make up non-Moslem India) is of centuries-old standing, and created both the partition of India and the numerous territorial disputes that have since exacerbated relations in the divided region.

Neither India nor Pakistan can come before the court of world opinion with wholly clean hands. India’s hold on Kashmir may have satisfied the legalistic requirements under which the princes were permitted to opt for either Pakistan or India—it satisfied no other consideration. Pakistan’s sin against East Pakistan was far more grievous and more recent. Moreover, it dumped seven million refugees into an India which certainly needs no increments of population, particularly of uprooted peasants with no means of livelihood. The Indian response — to encourage an independent Bangla Desh by every means short of open war — may have been natural, but it certainly was risky, and not necessarily wholly inspired by humanitarian motives.

But war, with its concomitant arousal of the worst forms of communal hatred throughout the sub-continent, and the eventual involvement of other states (the Soviet Union and mainland China, in particular) would be a human tragedy on a scale that would make the respective degrees of guilt of the primary contenders almost irrelevant. An awareness of this has called into being something like that concert of Europe, which functioned, after a fashion, from the downfall of Napoleon to the outbreak of World War I.

The concert of the powers is hardly a perfect device for maintaining the peace. Indeed, it reflects, as much as anything, the weakness of the United Nations. It may be unable to prevent Indians and Pakistanis from grasping at one another’s throats. But that it exists at all may give a glimmer of hope for the future, for a day when the UN will be not only universal, but be backed by a measure of recognition useful in preserving the peace.

The present urgent necessity is to find some better way than force to resolve the terrible dilemma of East Pakistan. But beyond that lie the equally portentous problems of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Concert there could mean a genuine rebirth of confidence for the world.