CALCUTTA, India, March 8 —Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the East Pakistani leader, who is a Moslem, has become a folk hero to the Hindus of West Bengal, in India.

In coffee shops, in the streets, in living rooms, in a discothèques and on the front pages of Calcutta newspapers, Indians speak with pride of the 50‐Year‐old nationalist leader in 1965.

“His independent spirit, his concern for his downtrodden people ‐ that is what evokes great admiration from our people,” a West Bengal politician said in a comment typical of the praise heard here these days for Sheik Mujib.

He has taken a defiant stand against central government, which is based in West Pakistan and has long exploited the more populous but poorer eastern province. He and his Awami League party originally campaigned for provincial autonomy for East Pakistan, but recent events have made a declaration of independence, or something close to it, more likely.

Animosity Muted in Area

Although most Hindus left East Pakistan for West Bengal at the time of partition of the subcontinent into predominantly Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan in 1947, the Hindu Moslem animosity has always been more muted in this region than in West Pakistan, separated from East Pakistan by over a thousand miles of Indian territory.

Except for religion, the 75 million people of East Pakistan and the 44 million people of West Bengal share a common culture and language. They are all Bengalis, a small, lithe, brown‐skinned people whose favorite diet is fish and rice and whose favorite pastimes are literature and, politics. They have a common tongue, Bengali, and they are romantic, excitable and warm.

Many of the leading figures of West Bengal — businessmen, politicians, writers, officials — migrated here from East Pakistan, and they have a deep nostalgia for their homeland.

“We are proud of Mujib,” said a Calcutta doctor over coffee and sweets in his living room. “And why not? They are Bengalis and we are Bengalis. Our roots are the same.”

‘No Communal Bias’

“And Mujib has no communal bias,” the doctor's friend added, referring to the Hindu Moslem antagonisms.

Indian sentiment in general favors the East Pakistanis, who, unlike the West Pakistani Government, care little about the Kashmir Issue and would like to normalize trade with India. Such trade has been forbidden since the brief Kashmir war of 1965.

For all the sentimental warmth the West Bengalis feel for their neighbors, few would want to live in a nation dominated by Moslems.

The East Pakistani freedom movement has fanned the coals of nationalism in West Bengal, a chaotic and violent state where political murders are counted in the dozens every week. Some politicians, particularly the pro‐Peking Communists, who have a large following, have begun stressing the theme that the Government in New Delhi is callously neglecting and exploiting Bengal.