WASHINGTON. Oct. 4—Slowly, yet unmistakably, the bonds of friendship and strategic interest between the United States and India are dissolving.

The strains and irritations spawned as a result of rebellion and repression in East Pakistan have been obvious in recent months, but there is also now discernible beneath the surface a more basic shift in attitudes here. Some degree of official annoyance has always plagued relations between Washington and New Delhi. And for half a year now, these customary tensions have been exacerbated by, President Nixon's refusal to denounce Pakistan and by his eagerness to repair communications with China—the two neighbors that India fears and resents the most.

The Indians, in turn, have further frayed sentiments here by seeking strength in a new intimacy with the Russians and by making a vigorous display of their resentment of American conduct.

It is thought here that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's visit to the White House early next month may take some of the heat out of the immediate quarrels. It seems doubtful, however, that she can arrest an underlying deterioration.

The depths of the rift are discernible so far only in private discussions with leading officials. But whenever India is mentioned to them, the response is remarkable, both for what is said and what is left unsaid.

Pro‐Soviet Stance Discerned

Quickly brought to the surface here are contentions that the Indians have been pro‐Soviet for a long time and, despite their professions of nonalignment, deeply antagonistic to American positions on such issues as Vietnam, the Middle East and arms control.

Moreover, the Indians are almost always spoken of in tones of deep annoyance, as not very “lovable” people, while their Government is said to have become singularly “obsessed” with the rivalry against Pakistan and therefore “short‐sighted” about everything else. The Indians are variously described as uncooperative and arrogant and as deserving of official sympathy only on humanitarian grounds.

Almost never heard any more in top Government circles here are the great generalizations that stimulated an enormous American emotional and financial investment in India over the last two decades—$9‐billion in aid alone.

India is no longer referred to as an Asian “showplace” of development by democratic means. She is no longer talked about as the great “alternative” to totalitarian prescriptions for economic progress. She is no longer seen as particularly useful in luring other poor nations from the temptations of Communism. Indeed, as the fear of Communism has receded, so has the positive interest in the subcontinent.

New Status for China

Whereas China has been accorded almost big‐power standing in the new American view of Asia—as a nation with which the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan must now share influence in the Pacific—India remains merely an object of policy. Specifically, she is regarded as only the largest country of a vast subcontinent in which the main American objectives are the preservation of a big‐power balance of influence and of commercial access for American enterprise.

There remains a firm intention to help promote economic development in both India and Pakistan. For as President Nixon wrote in his State of the World message last winter, South Asia's progress is important to the United States because “we cannot deny our humanitarian interest in the well‐being of so many people with such exigent needs” and because “unresolved enmities [between India and Pakistan] could make the area vulnerable to an undesirable level of foreign influence.”

But these cool suggestions of concern appear to have become also the limit of American commitment. There is no particular fear that American coolness may drive the Indians toward greater dependence on the Russians. On the contrary, some high officials have been heard to remark in moments of irritation that Moscow was most welcome to a larger share of the annual cost of assisting India.

Thus gradual separation of so‐called humanitarian feelings from ideological and strategic interests in South Asia suggests a more rigorous application than anywhere else of President Nixon's new foreign affairs doctrine, as defined in last year's State of the World message: “Our interests must shape our commitments, rather than the other way around.”

No More ‘Indian Lobby’

It is certainly a far cry from the days when the surface irritations were kept in check, in and out of Government here, by a kind of “Indian lobby,” personified by former Ambassadors Chester Bowles and John Sherman Cooper. The success of India's democratic experiment was deemed an important policy objective even in the darkest years of the cold war, when the Eisenhower Administration drew Pakistan into military alliance and looked upon India's practice of neutrality between East and West “immoral”

Pakistan did not yield a greater diplomatic return. She used her American‐made arms largely to fortify her position against India. She, too, refused to support American policies in Vietnam and the Middle East. She was among the first of the “Western” allies to repair relations with Peking—in return for support against India—and evicted Americans from a major air base in return for some Soviet support.

Yet the Pakistanis have somehow fared much better than the Indians in official American estimation. Their leaders are generally discussed in sympathetic terms and President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan is thought to have been sincere in his desire to transform a military regime into a constitutional government. And his help this year in smoothing President Nixon's path to Peking is warmly appreciated.

Officials here do not condone President Yahya's repression of the autonomy movement in East Pakistan. But they refuse to denounce it and have refused to cancel what they say were only modest amounts of previously ordered shipments of spare parts and other military equipment for the Pakistani Government.

The passionate Indian response to these American policies has only added to the annoyance here. Mrs. Gandhi's Government is privately accused of stirring up anti Americanism. It is also accused of aiding Bengali guerrillas in East Pakistan and risking out‐right war for the secret purpose of dismembering Pakistan once and for all.

Even so, American officials resent the persistent Indian charges of unfeeling hostility in Washington. They say that they entertained high hopes for India's economic progress and political stability after Mrs. Gandhi's resounding victory in the general election last March. They point to the immediate provision of $70‐million and the plan to provide $250‐million more—divided between India and Pakistan — to help care for the eight or nine million refugees who have poured into India from East Pakistan.

‘Emotionalism’ Blamed

Some high officials here will even acknowledge that a combination of bad luck and bureaucratic error upset their attempts to appear evenhanded in response to the turmoil in East Pakistan. But they blame Indian “emotionalism” for prolongation of the crisis and resent India's refusal to urge restraint upon the East Pakistan rebels.

With India's cooperation, American planners contend, they could probably help to negotiate a fair degree of autonomy for the eastern half of Pakistan from the long dominant western section. Over the years, they say, this might even evolve into independence or at least a considerable weakening of the joint Pakistani state.

But there is no sympathy here for the argument that high passions in New Delhi make such even‐handedness appear cold and hostile. In a most peculiar diplomatic inversion, it is now India's turn to make what it will of American “non‐alignment.”