New Delhi: It was a wild extravagance - poor Indians slinging eggs and tomatoes-but the point was made: US Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon's adviser Henry Kissinger have left India thoroughly convinced that Indo-American relations have hit a new low.

Even Indians well disposed towards Washington admit that America's repeated habit of lumping India and Pakistan together fails to do elementary justice to the democratic principles and values for which India and America stand. The most bitter of critics see a diabolical plot by the right-wing element in the US administration to undermine India's stability by continuing to prop up an irresponsible military regime in Pakistan.

The concrete target of anti-US demonstrations during Agnew's and Kissinger's visits were the vessels sailing out of American ports loaded with arms for Pakistan. First it was one, then two then official pronouncements became so vague it was not clear how many ships were involved and there was rumour that as much as US$35 million worth of arms were Pakistan-bound. The storybroke just as Indian Foreign Minister Swaran Singh was in Washington being reassured that America's embargo on arms for Pakistan was still in force.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi rightly pointed out that it was not the nature of the arms involved which mattered: more to the point was that Washington was bolstering a regime which had un- leashed a reign of terror on millions of unarmed East Pakistanis.

Not surprisingly, Indians don't expect their disapproval to have any effect on Washington: public opinion against Pakistan has been pretty strong in the US but the government has remained unmoved. One commentator on All India Radio summed it up this way: the gulf between the people and government in the United States is so wide (as the Pentagon papers have proved) that the "double cross" should be considered a "normal norm" in the US administration's actions.

Mrs Gandhi has kept her cool throughout the affair. She has silenced nearly all her critics who have been urging India to lend military support to the civil uprising in East Pakistan. At the last meeting of the Congress Party's parliamentary executive she warned that all those who spoke of war were shortsighted demagogues who had not even bothered to canvass for relief supplies for the millions who had sought refuge in India.

But at the same time seasoned politician Jayaprakash Narayan, who happens to be chairman of the Indo-Pakistan Conciliation Front, was asserting that India would do itself untold damage unless it was willing to go to war on an issue like East Pakistan.

The new burden on India today is as great as it was in 1948 soon after partition. Although there are repeated statements that the seven million - mostly Hindu-refugees must return to Pakistan, no one really believes this will happen. On the eve of Kissinger's arrival in New Delhi, one newspaper reported that the Soviet Union too was supplying arms to Pakistan. The Soviet ambassador to India denied the report while Swaran Singh suggested that arms shipped before March 25 might have arrived in Pakistan after that date.

Leftwing Indian MPs got suspicious that other elements were trying to drag Moscow into the same boat as Washington. But generally a feeling has reigned that big powers do not always know what is best for weaker ones.

During the recent parliamentary debate on the defence ministry's budgetary requirements, it was made clear that India could buy arms from any source and, more importantly, that each year it was becoming less dependent on others for armaments. This led many to start thinking that it was time India, instead of reacting to outside pressures, should act more from its own position of strength - if only it knew what its strength was and how it could be bolstered further.

One consequence of America's diminishing popularity in India is a rising affection for Canada. The visiting Canadian MPs' suggestion that big powers would be well advised to follow Ottawa's example and cut off all arms supplies to Pakistan, and their hint that Canada might raise the East Pakistan question in the United Nations, was welcome news to frustrated, angry Indians.