The resort to force by both sides in Pakistan's constitutional crisis is a tragic mistake that can only inflict horrible new suffering on the Bengalis, recent victims one of history's worst natural disasters, and cannot hope to achieve President Yahya's goal of preserving a strong and united Moslem state.

Even if West Pakistani troops should succeed in imposing a semblance of central rule over the nation's rebellious Bengali majority, the violence that Is now sweeping East Pakistan and the sustained repression that would be required to bend the Bengalis to Islamabad's will would add an insuperable barrier of hate the differences of race, language, custom and geography that have led to the present division.

Although the marriage of East and West Pakistan— separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory and sharing only a common religion—was improbable from the beginning, there are compelling arguments for preserving some form of federal linkage after 23 years of union. Separatism on the Indian subcontinent threatens to touch off a chain reaction that would render the entire region unstable and insecure in all of its parts.

But the imposed unity that has characterized Pakistan's history, particularly during the years of military rule, could not endure. The demands of the Bengali leader, Sheik Mujibar Rahman, for local autonomy were certainly extreme, but Mujib eschewed a call for total independence until the army forced his hand.

If it is not already too late, President Yahya would do better to accept Mujib's proposals for a loose federal state than to pursue a policy of bloody repression that will destroy the substance, if not the form, of union anyway. The Bengalis should not be so quick to cast off an alliance which under a new, democratic constitution could serve them well—provided that the central government is not so weakened as to become totally ineffective. Going it alone is no solution for the problems of a desperately impoverished state with limited resources in which 73 million people are crowded into an area the size of Arkansas. There would be 4.5 billion Americans if the United States had an equivalent population density.