Washington Star/Evening Star

The visit here next week of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi comes at a particularly sticky time. In the view of both Indian and American officials, relations between the two countries have never been worse.
Nor are they likely to improve very much as the result of Mrs. Gandhi's trip. It would appear that her purpose in coming is less to cultivate goodwill—at least with the Nixon administration—than to change American policy. Mrs. Gandhi apparently plans to use her very considerable powers of persuasion in a direct appeal to American public opinion in the course of her two-day stay in Washington.
The visit takes place against a background of deepening crisis between India's and Pakistan in which the danger of full-scale war has grown measurably within the last week. Tensions between the traditional enemies have risen steadily since March, when West Pakistan sent its army to suppress a movement toward independence in its detached eastern province. Last week, as Mrs. Gandhi prepared to leave on her three-week foreign tour, India mobilized its military reserves for the first time since the Indian-Pakistani war in 1965.
The growing tension between India and Pakistan is the outcome of the effort to crush the rebellion in East Bengal. Military operations there have produced a flood of refugees—now numbered at more than 9 million—in India's eastern states, creating an intolerable burden on the Indian economy. In addition, Pakistan blames India for providing sanctuary and arms to rebellious East Pakistanis and for encouraging increasingly effective guerrilla activities.
The anger of the Indians toward the United States, in turn, is a direct outgrowth of this situation. The Indians, who feel they are the chief victims of the East Bengal rebellion, bitterly resent the efforts of the administration to maintain a neutral position in the dispute. In particular, they have been infuriated by reports of continuing American aid for Pakistan, including the delivery of some military equipment.
American efforts to cool the conflict have only increased Indian irritation. Suggestions that India and Pakistan should pull their military forces back from their respective borders have been angrily rejected by the government in New Delhi. Since the Indians are convinced that the government in West Pakistan is entirely to blame in the present confrontation, they consider that any pressures brought to bear on them are both immoral and unjust.
It might be noted that the irritation of the Indians is reciprocated, with interest, by American officials dealing with the problems of the subcontinent. In both the Pakistan rebellion and the India-Pakistan crisis, the central American interest is to prevent the outbreak of war, restore the stability of the area and eventually to work toward a political solution of the problems.
American officials are by no means certain that the Indian government shares these goals. Although the Indians insist that they are acting with great restraint so far as Pakistan is concerned, they also make no secret of their support for the secessionist movement in East Bengal. Indeed, Indian encouragement and arms are essential to the success of the rebellion.
American officials, furthermore, are not persuaded that the Indians are quite as anguished over the current state of affairs as they appear to be. The refugees, to be sure, are a temporary problem for India. But it is Pakistan that is in real trouble over the long run. And so far as virtually every Indian is concerned, what is bad for Pakistan cannot also be bad for India.
Pakistan, it is widely believed, will not be able to control the secessionist forces in its eastern province over the long run. The area is separated from West Pakistan by 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Its population is larger than that of West Pakistan. And the repressive action of the army has, according to all observers, thoroughly alienated a large majority of the people.
A sustained military effort in the East would be not only futile but ruinously expensive for the government in Islamabad. In West Pakistan itself, there is growing unrest aimed at the ruling military establishment and a possibility of new movements toward regional autonomy.
It would not be altogether surprising if the Indians should be content to sit back and watch the disintegration of their major enemy in Asia. Not surprising, either, if they should help the process along a bit, even at the risk of a war which most observers agree would be suicidal for Pakistan. It is the fact that American officials see the problem rather differently that accounts for the bad relations that Indian officials complain about.