Mrs. Gandhi's arrival here this week gives President Nixon the chance to get Indian-American relations out of the tailspin they've been in since the United States began condoning, if not quite endorsing, Pakistan's expulsion of some nine million refugees into India—a movement of people and misery, by the way, which has made war talk in the subcontinent ring louder than it has for years. That Indian-American relations are in a tailspin is apparent. The governments are all but openly snapping at each other and, at least on the Indian side, popular support for continuing a previously deep and friendly association has diminished sharply. This can only disturb those who believe that a good relationship between the world's strongest democracy and the largest is essential to the interests of them both.
There are perhaps three things that Mr. Nixon might consider. The first is to assure President Gandhi that the direct supply of American arms to Pakistan will halt. The amount of arms affected would be trivial; whatever supplies might still be deemed necessary could be routed through third countries. But a halt would remove the most conspicuous and, in India, the most maddening symbol of American favor for Pakistan.
Secondly, Mrs. Gandhi deserves American assurance that the aid-India consortium will treat India's refugee load not merely as a costly relief burden in itself but as a heavy drag on the country's whole economic development. Pakistan declared a moratorium on its debts; the United States acquiesced. Does fairness not argue that India should be "rewarded" for continuing to pay its debts on schedule?
Finally, Mr. Nixon has got to do some sympathetic listening. His own aides seem to have informed him that the humanitarian crisis on the subcontinent arises essentially from the general condition of poverty and from last year's cyclone, and that the political crisis is owed to India's aid and encouragement to the Bengali insurgents. Mrs. Gandhi will be able to offer a perspective closer to reality, namely, that the humanitarian and political disasters alike are chiefly of the Pakistani government's own making and that their resolution will require the kind of changes in Pakistan policy which only American urging can help bring about.