lightning attack on Pakistan, for such an attack would certainly have stopped the refugees at the border, and, in the bargain, dismembered Pakistan -gain that would have offset any price fix might have had to pay in western India, such as the loss of Kashmir. Some even deem her failure to go to war immediately. It is said that as word of this hospitality got about, it encouraged more refugees to flee, compounding tragedy.
No doubt the impulse to help was humanitarian, but few believe that it had no other source; the urge to destroy Pakistan-perhaps even to unite India as it was before partition-must, it is thought, have played some part in Indian political calculations. According to this argument, the Hindus in Pakistan had been living on borrowed time, and, in a sense, the Indian government had always expected to be saddled with them sooner or later. Now the presence of the refugees, in destitution, gave India the opportunity to expose and dramatize to the world the theocratic nature of Pakistanwhose creation had been forced upon India, and whose existence the Indians had never accepted-and to place the blame for their exodus on the Pakistani military junta. (The Pakistanis who claim that the Indians have inflated the figures on refugees, partly by misstatement and partly by adding to the camps' population the riffraff of the Indian streets, put the number of refugees at two and a half million but all would relief organizations accept the Indian figures as accurate.)
Whatever India's motives, it certainly seems that concern for the welfare of the refugees, which should have been the primary consideration has not had much to do with the policies adopted by the United States, the Soviet Union or China-the big powers caught up in the situation. The American government, possibly taking its cue from the old State Department dictum that in the underdeveloped world the only reliable allies are military governments not only has never publicly censured General Yahya's military government but had continued to supply arms to it until Mrs. Gandhi's state visit to the United States last month. The monetary value of this material was relatively insignificant, but, consisting, as it did, of spare parts for imported equipment, it must have been of considerable military value to Pakistan, and, being sent, as it was in full knowledge of the effects of General Yahya's policy, it had an alienating effect on the Indians which cannot be underestimated. The State Department's view-even if it were plausible- that it is best to be on the right side of General Yahya so as to be better able to influence his policy has been maintained only at the expense of moral leadership, and, even so, has borne on visible fruit. The main significance of the much heralded Indo-Soviet friendship treaty of last summer-which was concluded at a time of rampant anti-Americanism in India-is also military. The Russians, real purpose much have been to tip Indian “neutrality" toward the Soviet Union, and to do so on the cheap, as that, because it is generally thought that India must have given assurances that it would not be the first to go to war and so drag the Soviet Union into the conflict. No one knows what the Chinese have promised the Pakistanis, because so far there have been only certain gestures to go on- Kissinger's flying from Pakistan lo China last summer. China's playing host to Bhutto this autumn. China's issuing veiled warnings to India in the United Nations.
Although India, Pakistan, the United States, the Soviet Union and China all profess solicitude for the refugees, whose suffering increases each day, have become irrelevant to
