"I Am Helpless"

A few weeks ago, Pakistan's Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and India's Jawaharlal Nehru were hurling threats of war at each other. This week, the Pakistan-India crisis had grown so grave that it was no longer possible for responsible men to talk carelessly. The Prime Ministers were meeting in New Delhi "in the hope," said Liaquat Ali Khan, "that we shall, with our united efforts . . . remove all misunderstandings which have created tension between our two countries."

Rioting between Hindus and Moslems had broken out again in Bengal. There was more burning and looting than killing, but the pattern was frighteningly like that of 1946. As in 1946, some of the worst scenes took place in filthy, plague-ridden Calcutta.

Half a Million Hindus. From a population of some 2,000,000 before partition, Calcutta had in two years become packed with about 7,000,000 people. Biggest addition: the Hindu refugees from Eastern Pakistan, who last week were still crowding in. Five thousand Hindus were camped in Calcutta's Sealdah railroad station, ragged, stupefied and sick. In spite of efforts of relief workers there were 70 new cases of cholera, typhoid and dysentery every day. A volunteer made the rounds taking down depositions from refugees. One emaciated little man dictated haltingly: "My name is Harun Donath Pal. I lived in the village of Subhodpur. My house has been burned and my two sisters and my aunt are lost. My property has been looted. I have nothing and I am helpless." He signed the deposition with his thumbprint.

Trains brought 5,000 Hindus daily to Calcutta. On foot, other thousands trudged from the east. In little more than a month, half a million Hindus had come to West Bengal and most of them to teeming Calcutta.

Blood for Blood. The inevitable happened. Hindu sidewalk orators, telling wild stories of atrocities against refugees, urged the people to "avenge" their Hindu brothers in Pakistan. Shouting "Blood for blood," Hindu mobs rushed through the city burning, looting and killing.

Even Europeans, usually not molested in communal troubles, were not safe. Alexander Leslie Cameron, 49, president of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, and one of the leading British businessmen in India, tried to protect a friend's Moslem bearer from a mob, was himself beaten to death.

Meanwhile, terrified Moslems had themselves become refugees, huddled together in camps while they waited for a chance to make their way to East Pakistan. One camp, on the Park Circus recreation area in central Calcutta, held more than 10,000 Moslems. Every now & then a group of Hindus slipped up to the camp, threw bombs into the refugee area.

Gallup Poll. Calcutta's riots were one more triumph for the extremist Hindu Mahasabha Party, which opposes Nehru, accuses him of appeasing Pakistan. Even politicians who have been Nehru's friends have begun to turn against him on the Pakistan issue. Oldtime Congress Leader Tushar Kanti Ghosh used his daily paper, Amrita Bazar, to flail Nehru and urge war. He asked readers.for their opinions, got 200,000 replies, 87% of which favored armed attack or "police action" against

Pakistan. Snorted Nehru: "It is fantastic to have a Gallup poll on war."

Nevertheless, the strength of the Mahasabha war party was growing, and it would take all the skill that Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan could muster to bring peace out of the terror that stalked Bengal.

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