MOSCOW, Aug. 9—The Soviet Union's decision to lend official support to India in her current crisis with Pakistan appeared to diplomats today to mark the end of Moscow's ambiguously neutral role in the Indian subcontinent.

Although Western diplomats had expected a show of Soviet solidarity with India, the 20‐ year treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation signed by Foreign Ministers Andrei A. Gromyko and Swaran Singh in New Delhi went further than had been expected.

The general feeling was that Moscow, under pressure from the Indians to match China's support for Pakistan, seized upon the treaty formula as a way of deterring any rash moves in the current crisis and of deepening Soviet influence in India. Diplomats were comparing the 20‐year treaty to a 15‐ year friendship treaty also signed at short notice with Egypt in May. Neither treaty is a security pact, in the normal diplomatic sense, by not obliging the Russians to support their allies militarily in case of conflict, but both treaties leave the impression that Moscow would join in if necessary.

Article 9 of the Indian treaty says that if either side is attacked or threatened with at tack, consultations will take place with a view to eliminating this threat and taking “appropriate measures to insure peace and security for their countries.”

For the last five years the Russians have sought to avoid taking sides in the Indian Pakistani rivalry, and have urged the two neighbors to patch up their quarrels. Moscow has had a proprietary interest since Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin helped persuade India and Pakistan to end their fighting over Kashmir in January, 1966, at the peace table in Tashkent.

In line with this neutral policy, the Russians sought to provide economic and military aid to both India and Pakistan in recent years, hoping there by to reduce American influence in both countries and to at least rival China's efforts to gain a political foothold in Pakistan.

Quiet Diplomacy Tried

When the East Pakistan crisis erupted in April, the Soviet Union first sought to use quiet diplomacy to persuade President Mohammed Yahya Khan to end the bloodshed. Then President Nikolai V. Podgorny publicly urged President Yahya to halt the fighting.

But the Pakistani leader, backed by Premier Chou En‐lai of China, did not heed Moscow's appeals, and has continued to use military force in East Pakistan, leading to the fleeing of some seven million refugees to India and to border incidents between the two countries.

With the United States taking a neutral role by sending food supplies to India and not halting the sale of military supplies to Pakistan, the Russians were presumed to sense some pressure to respond to China's pledge to aid Pakistan.

Since India has been the Soviet Union's largest recipient of aid—more than $1.5‐billion worth up to 1969—and since Moscow has steadily increased its political ties with India's Government, diplomats said it was understandable why Moscow decided to sign the treaty even if it meant a drop in influence in Pakistan.

Of perhaps more importance to the Russians, diplomats speculated, was the long‐range prospect of increasing their military, political and economic presence in a part of the world where the Chinese have shown increasing interest.

The treaty also seemed to underscore again the Soviet Union's continuing outward looking foreign policy. It has started signing the kind of treaties that the United States negotiated in the nineteen fifties and that were so often condemned by Moscow.

Some diplomats noted the irony of the last 20 years, which have seen Moscow shift its interest in Asia away from China to India, a country that at one time was regarded with particular attention by the United States, and which have seen most recently signs of an improvement in Chinese‐American relations.