New Delhi: India after Bangla Desh may write off the
United States as a friend, especially if Richard Nixon
remains in the White House for another term. Repeated US
attempts to brand India an aggressor, Washington's
insistence that the Pakistani Army atrocities in Bangla
Desh be played down, cancellation of economic aid to
India and Nixon's "gunboat diplomacy" in the last days
of the war all came as a shock to Indians. Even American
Chamber of Commerce leaders in India found it necessary
to publicly attack their government's policies.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi quoted Jefferson to say
that the Bangla Desh leadership enjoyed the will of the
people, substantially expressed. In reminding Americans
of Jefferson, she seemed to be implying that America's
present leaders had betrayed the principles of the
founding fathers.

India was particularly angered by what it considered
"blatant lies" from the US State Department, whose
spokesmen told of Indian attacks on American ships in
the Bay of Bengal and on aircraft at Dacca airport. The
captain of the US ship The Expeditor said in Madras
before sailing for Rangoon that his ship had not been
harmed and that he was allowed to proceed on giving an
undertaking that he was not going to Chittagong. But the
State Department chose to ignore this.

The impression here was that Nixon was preparing the
ground for intervention in the war. This was confirmed
when the Seventh Fleet nosed up the Bay of Bengal on the
pretext of evacuating Americans from Bangla Desh. Never
was Indian resentment of America more bitter; even
Indian employees of American banks demonstrated against
the US while traditionally pro-American commentators
denounced Washington.

Indians also suspected that the US was surreptitiously
supplying arms to Islamabad. They recalled that spine-
chilling accounts in the American press of brutalities
in Bangla Desh had not prevented Nixon from supplying
arms to Pakistan for several months. It was the
intensity of American public opinion that finally made
him announce a suspension of military aid. But Indians
believed he was still shipping arms through other
members of CENTO and SEATO.

The general feeling is that Nixon is not as pro-Pakistan
as he is anti-Indian. His personal motives are suspect
after his complaint that Mrs. Gandhi sabotaged his
secret moves to bring about a peaceful settlement. It
also appears Nixon was over-anxious to please China on
the eve of his visit to Peking - and that all-out
backing to the military junta in Islamabad was one way
of doing this.

American hostility to India seems to have had two direct
consequences. First, it drove India under the Soviet
umbrella -a development which underlined the self-
defeating nature of Nixon's policies. Moscow's repeated
warnings that there should be no outside interference in
the war were directed against the US as well as China.
And there is little doubt here that if the Seventh Fleet
had queered the pitch in the Bay of Bengal, the Soviet
fleet would have taken it on.

The second consequence is that third countries aligned
to the US have followed the American lead in cutting off
aid to India. Japan's case is especially rankling here.
For one thing, Japan has been treated shabbily by Nixon
in recent months. For another, India was one country
which refused to call Japanese leaders war criminals at
the end of World War II. Alone among Asian countries,
India did not demand war reparations from Japan.