INDIA: Little Cold War

Ever since they achieved independence in 1947, India and Pakistan have been quarreling—over Kashmir, over Moslem and Hindu evacuees, over irrigation water, over currency and trade. Last week their little cold war sharpened tellingly.

In New Delhi, while Parliament clapped and cheered, India’s Commerce Minister Kshitish Chandra Neogy proclaimed an embargo forbidding Indian coal shipments to Pakistan. It was retaliation, said Neogy, for Pakistan’s embargo on half a million bales of raw jute bought by Indian dealers last summer and still undelivered.

The two countries need each other economically, but by last week trade between them had almost stopped.