NEW DELHI — Last Tuesday, the day after India and the Soviet Union signed their surprise 20‐year “friendship treaty” in New Delhi, a member of the Indian Parliament noted that the date of the signing, Aug. 9, was the anniversary of the launching of Mahatma Gandhi's “Quit India” movement in 1942. The member asked, jocularly, whether this meant that three decades after “we ask the British imperialists to get out, we are going to ask the Russians to come in.”

Most foreign diplomats, and some Indians, think the answer to this Jesting question is a serious yes.

The Russians, in a clever and dramatic diplomatic coup, have deepened their influence on the subcontinent at the expense of the United States and Communist China. At the same time, they have made the Indians exuberantly grateful for coming to their side at a time when they felt abandoned, despondent and threatened by their enemy, Pakistan, as a result of the crisis in East Pakistan.

And Moscow has achieved all this with very little effort and at very small cost, either diplomatically or economically “on the cheap,” as one envious Western diplomat put it.

Although nearly all Indians are interpreting the treaty as a mutual defense pact, the agreement does not obligate the Russians to support India militarily in the event of an attack by a third country. The flexibly worded key clause says merely that, if either side is attacked or threatened, the two shall hold “consultations … to remove such threat and to take appropriate effective measures to ensure peace and the security of their countries.”

Moreover, the final Joint communiqué issued after the four days of talks between Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and his Indian counterpart, Swaran Singh, fell considerably short of India's militant stand in favor of independence for Bangla Desh, or Bengal Nation, the name the Bengali insurgents have given to East Pakistan.

The restrained wording of the communiqué was apparently the Russians’ way of keeping their options open for dealing with Pakistan and keeping a foothold there against China, Pakistan's closest ally.

The immediate objects of the India‐Soviet treaty, it would seem, are to discourage Pakistan from declaring war on India, which it has been threatening to do, and, by giving India new confidence, to discourage New Delhi from making any rash moves.

Relations between India and Pakistan, which have already fought two wars over Kashmir, have been worsening steadily since March 25; then the Pakistani Army, composed of West Pakistanis, launched a surprise attack on the East Pakistani population to try to crush their autonomy movement. The continuing military repression has driven more than 7 million Bengali refugees into India, sorely straining the economy — and the influx is still in the thou sands every day.

The chaos inside East Pakistan has been aggravated by the mounting guerrilla activities of the Bengali insurgents, known as the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force), who have been receiving assistance from India in the form of sanctuary, arms and training. Border shelling, and clashes, often between Indian and Pakistani troops, are daily occurrences.

Pakistan's President, Agha. Mohammad Yahya Khan, has repeatedly warned that he will de dare war on India if the Indians keep up their aid to the insurgents.

While China has been supporting Pakistan outright, the United States has been trying to maintain influence with both sides— and not succeeding with either.

Washington's continuing shipments of arms to Pakistan have not produced any softening of the ruthless military crackdown in East Pakistan, and its sizable relief aid for the refugees in India has been dismissed by most Indians as conscience money to try to whitewash its “condonation of genocide.”

Indian‐American relations are in tatters, and United States diplomats ruefully concede that the rupture is so deep and basic that things can never be the same again. “I don't think it means that Americans are going to be spit on in the street,” said one United States diplomat, “but we've suffered a very serious setback.”

The Soviet lobby in the Indian Foreign Ministry is elated, and even moderate Indian officials, while sincerely making a distinction between the Nixon Ad ministration and the sympathetic. American public, press and Congress, are saying that’ the United States has only itself to blame for the Soviet treaty.

Notwithstanding the general enthusiasm in India over the treaty, some neutral observers are already asking whether it does not, in effect, push India virtually into the orbit of the Soviet bloc, thus making a farce of former Prime Minister Nehru's policy of nonalignment.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and other Indian officials argue that the treaty is not a departure from nonalignment but a move that, by bolstering India's position, improves her ability to pursue a nonaligned course. If so, critics reply, then nonalignment will have to be redefined, for, as conceived by Mrs. Gandhi's late father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the policy meant no military alliances or mutual defense, pacts.

Critics, notably some independent newspapers, have contended that the treaty was a hastily conceived and shortsighted move that India grasped at out of emotionalism and expediency. These critics argue that India did not need a treaty to get Soviet arms in case of war with Pakistan, for Moscow is already New Delhi's biggest supplier of military hardware. They also suggest that the treaty could rob India of all maneuverability in foreign policy, binding her to the Soviet Union's whims and making it impossible, for example, to try to improve relations with China.

The Russians give up very little in signing the treaty, even if it means the loss of influence in Pakistan, for Moscow's stake there is no longer significant.

But the gains for the Russians are major ones. The treaty serves to put Washington and Peking on notice that Moscow has sunk its anchor firmly in the largest and strongest country on the subcontinent. In effect, it is a message to the Americans and Chinese, whose steps toward a rapprochement have disturbed both India and the Soviet Union, that Moscow is a power to be reckoned with in Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Yet, for all its international implications, the treaty, aside from easing Indian anxieties, does nothing about the immediate problem it was supposed to alleviate — the upheaval in East Pakistan.

The danger of war may, in fact, have increased. Some observers suggest that, with Moscow's new support, the Indians may be emboldened to step up their assistance to the Bengali guerrillas.

Perhaps even more inflammatory is the military trial of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the Bengali leader of East Pakistan, who is charged with “waging war” against Pakistan and with other offenses carrying the death penalty. The secret trial reportedly began somewhere in West Pakistan last week, amid appeals by the United Nations and several governments, including the United States, for compassion or at least an open and fair trial.

Sheik Mujib is already a god king in East Pakistan and a hero in India. If the Pakistani generals execute him and make him a martyr as well, they could well be lighting the fires of holy war on the subcontinent.