NEW DELHI, Nov. 25—Influential Indian officials now acknowledge that they are resolved to apply as much military pressure as necessary short of all‐out war to help wrest East Bengal from the control of embattled Pakistani forces there.

The effort may take weeks or even a few months, these officials say, but they are confident that it has gained them the advantage in the eight‐month‐old duel over the eastern portion of Pakistan. They think the coordinated challenge by their army and East Bengal’ insurgents has left Pakistan's military leaders with only a bitter choice between a politically humiliating or militarily devastating path to partition of their country.

The Indians realize that their tactics may bring a general conflict. Indeed, most leading officials here now expect President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan to choose war before retreat, though they still hope otherwise.

But they feel that time and the configurations of power clearly favor their cause. They already speak of the old and menacing two‐part Pakistan as defunct. They warn that in all-out war their advances into West Pakistan would threaten the cohesion of that region as well.

But all this is said only in private conversation. The Government's public line, faithfully followed by the press, has been to minimize the rumbles and rumors of war along the frontier and to keep the country “unruffled,” as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has counseled.

Pakistan's declaration of emergency is belittled as a ruse.: The extent of Indian help and direct army support in East Pakistan for the Mukti Bahini, or liberation forces, goes publicly unreported.

The 9 A.M. siren rehearsal wails a minute longer than usual in New Delhi nowadays and Parliament has legalized the draft of doctors and others who might be needed in an emergency. But there is no discernible tension in the capital as it enjoys the balm of Indian winter.

Neither is there excessive commotion in the upper reaches of Government. P. N. Haksar, the secretary and top adviser to Mrs. Gandhi, is on holiday. But he is available at home to reflect on the trends of history here and abroad.

Thus, in fact as in word, the Indians try to demonstrate that they seek no larger war and that they have maneuvered events to the point where they need no wider war to attain the goal — an autonomous or wholly independent Bangla Desh (Bengal Nation) in East Pakistan.

Although their army along the East Pakistan border is said officially to be taking only defensive action, high Indian‐officals now concede that it has the offensive mission of diverting, distracting and harrassing the Pakistani forces to give the Mukti Bahini insurgents room for maneuver, and of giving active support in some sectors. It is the Indian variation of the American concept of “protective reaction” in Vietnam.

Slowly but surely, It Is said, these pressures will make “occupation” by 70,000 to 80,000 Pakistani troops untenable in East Bengal, whose population is described as wholly hostile to them.

Since the troops cannot be effectively resupplied or reinforced, the Indians expect President Yahya to decide sooner or later to sue for a face‐saving withdrawal or, more likely, to retaliate against Indian territory in the west in the hope that outside forces or pressures might intervene.

The Indians, however, believe that no outside power can alter the situation. They think they have already diverted Soviet and American diplomatic appeals for negotiation to the Pakistani leaders. They feel certain that the winter weather and larger political interests will keep the Chinese from doing more than protest on Pakistan's behalf.

China Shift Intimated

Indeed, the Indians have been, turning the other cheek to the stream of Chinese charges of “aggression” in recent days. They intimate privately that China has already begun to adjust to the breakup of Pakistan and to make some vague gestures toward New Delhi.

There is not much evidence of an early reconciliation between China and India, but this tactic, too, fits the general effort here to bring psychological as well as military pressure upon President Yahya.

President Nixon's plea that India help President Yahya find a tolerable way out of his predicament is turned aside here on several counts.

After all the terror in East Bengal, the Indians say, even the Bengalis’ imprisoned leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, could probably settle for nothing less than independence.

Moreover, they add, nothing but total autonomy or independence would offer the “credible guarantees of safety and human dignity” needed to return, most of the nine million refugees to East Bengal.

And return of the refugees, whose care at a cost of $700million shattered India's great development hopes for 1971, has been described as India's minimum and nonnegotiable objective.

Would Establish Dominance

A friendly, secular and independent state of East Bengal would also offer the Indians new hope for stability and economic development in their own volatile region of West Bengal. It would relieve them of the constant dread of conflict with Pakistan and establish them once and for all as the dominant power on the subcontinent.

There was virtual panic last August, when it appeared that the United States, China and Pakistan Were all arrayed against India and might force her to retain the refugees and acquiesce in suppression in East Bengal. The swift treaty of friendship with Moscow provided great solace, but no solution.

There was also bitter resentment of the exceptions made in the American embargo on arms sales to Pakistan, deemed more damaging psychologically than militarily, but nonetheless as hostile and coldblooded. But this emotion has faded, too, after President, Nixon's sympathetic conversation in Washington with Mrs. Gandhi and the recognition that India could find her own way out of her predicament.

That way was found in the arming of the Mukti Bahini insurgents and the preparation of the supporting pressures now unfolding. The Indians say it will assure the East Bengalis the satisfactions of self‐determination. They believe, but are reluctant to add, that it will also bring to India the triumph of mastery over her own fate.