424 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড tormented India by ordering the shelling of civilians and refugees in border towns, week after week. Eleven days ago, India, her exchequer almost drained for caring for the refugees of her neighbor, and her pleas to Western Governments for help at best cynically shelved, decided she could take no more. She hit back at the Pakistan army in a border action designed to give the Bangladesh guerrillas some chance against the superior Pakistani fire power. This was not altogether successful, but still India held back. Certainly, no modem leader has shown such restraint as Indira Gandhi. Since then, the Pakistani shelling has intensified, and on Thursday, three Pakistani jets bombed an airfield in India's Tripura State, killing" five and wounding forty-five. At the same time, Pakistan requested a United Nations "cease-fire", knowing that U.N. intervention would shore up its attempts to maintain a sovereignty over Bangladesh, as well as its hold over the Bengali people. India, having moved its forces into Bangladesh, would be cast in the role of aggressor. Mrs. Gandhi has just said: "If any country thinks that by calling us aggressor, it can press us to forget our national interest, then that country is living in its own fool's paradise. "The times have passed when any nation sitting three or four thousand miles away could give orders to Indians on the basis of their color superiority to do as they wished, India has changed and is no more a country of natives". The choice of war or peace is no longer Mrs. Gandhi's. It is the choice of those Governments who now support and listen to a desperate group of Generals in Pakistan. If the wrong choice is made, there may be a war which will involve directly not only Indians and Pakistanis, a war for which no one bargained.
