NEW DELHI—President Nixon boasted at a news conference last week that American aid so far for the more than 7 million East Pakistani refugees who have fled to India — $70.5‐million— “is more than [that of] all the rest of the nations of the world put together.” Perhaps inadvertently, he left out economically strained India, which has absorbed the refugees and will bear the bulk of the crushing cost — perhaps as much as $500‐million or $600‐million a year.

This Nixonian lapse will undoubtedly add another bit of fuel to the virulent anti‐American feeling now raging in India. This feeling stems from the decision of the United States to continue arms shipments to Pakistan, whose army's brutal tactics in trying to crush the Bengali in dependence movement has sent the frightened refugees pouring into India.

But far more significant than the strained United States‐Indian relations is the smothering effect the refugee burden will have on India's struggling economy. Even grimmer, the refugees and the East Pakistan upheaval have raised for India the possibility of communal violence between Hindus and Moslems, social un rest in the volatile eastern region and a third war with Pakis tan.
Sitting on top of this powder keg is Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, counseling restraint, moderation, patience and sacrifice to her emotionally aroused 550 million people. The late Jawaharlal Nehru's 53‐year‐old daughter has an image as a tough‐minded leader who makes her own decisions, no matter what the clamors and pressures.

It will take all her steely qualities, a lot of public cooperation and a fair amount of luck to lead India through this crisis without a severe setback to her economy or social fabric.

Mrs. Gandhi rode to an over whelming re‐election victory five months ago on a platform of removing poverty. She will be fortunate now if she can just keep India's poverty treading water. Foreign economists here estimate that the refugee cost could eat up most, if not all, of India's foreign aid, thus bringing economic development to virtual standstill.

Mrs. Gandhi and her Cabinet members keep insisting that the refugees are but a temporary burden, that they will return to East Pakistan once stability is restored there. But this is wishful thinking designed for home consumption.
The vast majority of the refugees will not go back because there is nothing to go back to but razed homes and confiscated property. Further, most of the refugees are East Pakistan's minority Hindus, special scape goats of the Pakistan Army; they will now always feel safer in predominantly Hindu India than in Moslem East Pakistan, even if the Bengali independence struggle succeeds.

The Pakistani pogrom against the Bengali Hindus has stirred fears here of retaliation by militant Hindus against India's Moslem minority of 60 million. No major Hindu‐Moslem violence has erupted yet, but Government officials admit it is a major and continuing worry.

The East Pakistan upheaval has revived for Indians all the memories of the Hindu‐Moslem bloody rioting at the time of partition in 1947 and of the two subsequent wars with Pakistan over Kashmir.

The specter of another war is now hovering over the subcontinent. West Pakistan's military repression in East Pakistan is not succeeding, and Bengali resistance fighters are becoming increasingly effective, disrupting communications and accounting for sizable army casualties.

Many Indians believe that Pakistani generals, rather than lose East Pakistan ignominiously to the Bengali guerrillas, might prefer to lose it in another holy war against India.

President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan warned recently that if India helped the guerrillas establish a base area in East Pakistan, his Government would treat that as an attack on Pakistan and would declare general war against India. President Yahya also said that Pakistan would not “be alone,” presumably referring to Communist China, Islamabad's closest ally.

India countered by warning that if Pakistan forced her into a war, she, too, would not be alone, apparently meaning the Soviet Union, her closest ally. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko is due in New Delhi tonight for a dramatic visit that diplo mats here view as a gesture of solidarity with India in her confrontation with Pakistan.

India's apparent policy is to bring about an independent Bangle Desh (Bengal nation) by giving the Bengali insurgents sufficient aid: sanctuary, training, arms and sometimes covering fire. But the possibility of an India‐Pakistan war is clearly inherent in this risky policy, and Indian officials privately acknowledge the risk.

“No one in his right mind wants to stumble into a war,” one highly placed official close to Mrs. Gandhi said the other day. “But if it comes, we'll fight it.”