NEW DELHI, May 21— India's 1,350‐mile border with East Pakistan is beginning to resemble a continuous and severely depressing gypsy camp.

Vast waves of frightened and dazed Bengali refugees —India says the number has exceeded three million—have fled across the border to escape the Pakistani Army. Tens of thousands more are estimated to be pouring into India every day as the army continues its offensive, begun on March 25, to crush the Bengali independence movement in East Pakistan.

Half the refugees are being housed by India in badly overcrowded camps, most of them hastily set up in schools and hostels shut down for the purpose. Others are staying with friends and relatives.

A large number, waiting for new camps to be opened, are simply massed along the roadside—living in makeshift thatch lean‐tos or in the open, unprotected from the monsoon rains, which have already begun.

Some have taken shelter in the large concrete sewer pipes that lie at the roadside awaiting installation. Along some roads Bengalis who were well‐to‐do are begging.

With the massive daily in flux, the situation is too much for India, a country with re sources already strained; to handle, though the Indians seem to be trying.

The sanitation problem is severe. Defecation in the open is common. Cholera has already broken out in some areas, and dysentery and other gastrointestinal ailments are widespread.

Even in some of the camps where rudimentary sanitation facilities have been constructed, conditions have become squalid because of the impossible numbers of people. The stench in some camps is sharp and garbage is often strewn haphazardly.

From the condition of the refugees as they appeared this week during a three‐day press tour arranged by the Indian Government, the Pakistani Army offensive has been much more devastating in human terms than the cyclone and tidal wave that struck the delta area of East Pakistan last November, killing hundreds of thousands of Bengalis and leaving two million homeless and hungry.

Though misery is difficult to measure or compare, most of the stunned refugees seem even more broken in spirit than the survivors of the cyclone be cause they cannot fall back on the will of Allah as the reason for their plight—as they have done through generations of deep poverty and annual natural disasters. They blame only “the Punjabis”—the army is predominantly made up of Punjabis from West Pakistan—and because the disaster is man made, they seem less able to cope with it.

No Foreign Assistance

They do not even have the security of being on their own land, and they have not received the massive foreign relief that was rushed in after the cyclone.

Some of the refugees, in the camps for over a month, still have not overcome their fears. Virtually all have lost members of their immediate family or other relatives or friends, and many witnessed the killings.

A great number look like senile people in old‐age homes, wandering listlessly about with vacant stares. Others weep the moment they begin to tell of what happened to them. The children are spirit less.

In a refugee camp at Sabrum, in the southernmost sector of Tripura Union Territory, a woman of 45 who looked ancient begged a foreign news man to help her find her 16‐ year‐old twin daughters. Whimpering and seemingly in a trauma, she said Pakistani soldiers had set fire to her house and then, when the family came out, grabbed the girls and dragged them away.

Many of the Bengalis say they want to go home when their towns and villages are safe again, but they say it with out any conviction that it will happen soon.

In a camp bursting with 12,000 refugees at Harina, a couple of miles from Sabrum, a 1½‐year‐old boy, tiny for his age and apparently under nourished, was trying to stand up and walk in the bamboo and‐thatch but where he and his parents live with several other families. Lacking the strength, the infant, his eyes bulging from his small head, wobbled and fell down. He could not even crawl.

Hospitals Overflowing

Because of such problems the Indian hospitals in towns along the border are overflowing with patients, many with bullet wounds.

The Government hospital at Agartala, with 260 beds, had 540 patients Wednesday, nearly 100 with bullet wounds. A doctor said 40 such casualties were brought in the day before.

Only a few of the wounded are members of the Bengali in dependence army, which has had frequent clashes with Pakistani troops near the border. The rest are civilians who were apparently unarmed and often fleeing when shot. Several are children.

A 3‐month‐old baby had bullet wounds in its buttocks. A pregnant woman had been shot in the abdomen. An 11‐year‐old boy was wounded in the back of the knee.

The doctor said that most of the wound cases were men, the reason being that women and children die along the way.

The hospital was extremely clean and seemed efficiently run, but because of the lack of beds many patients had to lie on thin mattresses on the floor.

A 17‐year‐old Hindu student from Chittagong, Subal Kanta Nath, who had a shattered right arm, said that without warning the army surrounded his neighborhood of 50 Hindu families with 400 troops, some tanks and jeeps mounted with machine guns and had started firing.

He ran out the back of his house when the shooting began, he said, and managed to escape despite his wound. He does not know what happened to his family.

Like many Hindus he does not waist to return to East Pakistan, preferring to resettle in predominantly Hindu India. Moreover, the minority Hindus are fleeing across the border in larger numbers than the Moslems now because they seem to have become a particular target of the Punjabis.

The 10 million Hindus among the 75 million East Pakistanis, who are largely Moslem, were among the stanchest supporters of the Awami League, which led the movement for more self‐rule in the province. Though the Hindus still speak fervently about the cause, they do not see any immediate hope of dislodging the Pakistani troops.

‘We Don't Know What to Do’

“We are helpless, we don't know what to do,” said Niyoti Rani Chowdhury, a 20‐year‐ old Hindu and a college student who said she and her family fled Chittagong after seeing the army burn their house and kill and rape. She dropped her head in embarrassment when she mentioned the rapes.

The Indian Government is saying hopefully that the Bengalis will return to East Pakistan within six months. But with the continuing army activity there and guerrilla counterattacks, Indian officials conceded privately, such hopes are wishful thinking.

In fact, the Government is now estimating the eventual in flux at six million to seven million. Even this is just guess; some officials think the number will run much higher.

Within earshot of some of the refugee camps, artillery and mortar fire can be heard across the border. Stray shells and fragments sometimes fly into India, and a few Indians and refugees have been killed or wounded.

Pakistani troops are camped only about 100 yards from refugee camp in Sabrum. Dividing them is the Feni River, the international boundary be tween India and East Pakistan, which many Bengalis swam.

Some Plan to Join the Fight

Some of the refugees say they will join the independence army to fight for Bangla Desh, or Bengal nation, the name the independence movement has given to East Pakistan. But it is impossible to generalize about the political mood in the camps.

Many of the others—poor farmers scratching out a living or civil servants satisfied with their well‐ordered lives— were not interested in politics. Some are still not interested and do not express eagerness to fight for independence.

“I've got a family,” said Hindu who had been chief accountant for a large factory. “That's the only difficulty.”

In many cases, however, the apolitical have become polticized.

Khaaled Hussain, a 32‐year‐ old Moslem teacher, was wounded in the leg and is re covering in the Agartala hospital. He did not say so directly, but he implied that he had not voted for the Awami League in the national election last December that gave the league a big margin in East Pakistan and paved the way for the crisis.

Now he sounds like a militant freedom fighter. Asked what he would do when he got out of the hospital, he re plied: “I will join the independence army and fight.”