The 110 million Bengalis who inhabit the Ganges Delta in the eastern regions of India and Pakistan — 75 million Moslems in the secessionist province of East Pakistan and 35 million Hindus in the Indian state of West Bengal— have been described as the Irish of the Indian subcontinent.

Wiry, mercurial and prone to fits of violence, the Bengalis are at the same time handsome, delicate and gentle, passionately addicted to poetry and politics it is no exaggeration that where there is one Bengali there is a poet; where two, a little magazine, where three, a political party.

The favorite Bengali pastime is adah—conversation carried on endlessly in the coffee houses of Calcutta and Dacca or under the banyan trees, which are the social centers of the rural villages. Indians and Pakistanis from the west tend to look down on the Bengalis as talkative and lazy. The Bengalis, in turn, assert their considerable intellectual and cultural achievements with a disdain for out siders that often borders on insufferable arrogance. To the foreigner living in their midst, the Bengalis are generally charming, always stimulating, not infrequently exasperating.

The moist delta region which the Bengalis call home is, like Ireland, a land of prodigal greenery. But unlike Ireland and much of the rest of India and Pakistan, the Gangetic Delta incredibly productive. Its deep, rich alluvial soils sprout rice, jute and sugar cane at the drop of a seed. Its swirling muddy rivers and placid ponds teem with fish.

Unfortunately, since the advent of modern medicine and the decline of feudal wars, people also have proliferated in this fertile, festering climate, to the point where the most Delta has become one of the world's most thickly populated regions. What once must have been a languid land of lotus eaters has become a disaster area of desperate poverty.

Despite the overcrowding and poverty there is still an idyllic quality to the Bengali landscape where villages of bamboo houses nestle under clumps of cocoanut trees, shimmering in the tropical heat like exotic islands in a sea of lush green paddy. When the monsoon rains move in from the bay, as they will in a few weeks, many of these villages will literally become islands.

The beauty of the Bengal country side and the spirit of the Bengalis is encapsulated in the works of the Nobel Prize‐winning poet‐philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. Every Bengali, Hindu and Moslem reveres Tagore and can recite from his works by heart.

A West Bengal Government agricultural officer—a prosaic bureaucrat if ever there was one—riding in a jeep through the countryside near Calcutta one exquisite evening a number of years ago, suddenly burst forth with lilting stanzas from Tagore. Several weeks ago, during the brutal suppression of the Bengali autonomy movement in Dacca, West Pakistani troops broke into a schoolmaster's home and angrily pointed to a picture of a bearded man on the wall:

“Bhashani?” they demanded accusingly, referring to the East Pakistani Communist secessionist leader.

“No,” he replied scornfully. “Tagore.” Satisfied that he was no rebel, the soldiers left the schoolmaster in peace. But they may well have been mistaken in regarding the revered poet as less dangerous than the radical politician. Tagore, through his enormous contributions to enriching the Bengali language, has been a major force fostering the Bengali nationalism which has precipitated violent division in Pakistan and chronically threatens the unity of India. This is an ironic legacy for a poet who preached the brotherhood of all men.

Divided like the Irish by religion, the Hindus of West Bengal and the Moslems of East Pakistan are unlikely to make common cause against Delhi and Islamabad in the name of a united “Bangle Desh” (Bengali nation) — at least for the present. But no one who knows them doubts that the Bengalis of East Pakistan will continue to resist the domineering exploitive and brutal rule of the Punjabis.

A prolonged guerrilla struggle in East Bengal inevitably will evoke increasingly active support from West Bengal, posing excruciating problems for Indian Prime Minister Gandhi. Already this “internal affair” is threatening to provoke a new Indo‐Pakistani confrontation, a confrontation that could quickly involve the major powers.