ABSTRACT
In his memoirs Henry Kissinger refers on more than one occasion to the sympathy that India, as the world's most populous democracy, enjoys among opinion-making groups in the United States (US). This chapter examines all the surveys in the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research that have included a question on India. It focuses on two issues: US economic assistance to India and the US relationship with Pakistan. Editorials from leading newspapers and the public opinion poll data indicate that there would have been strong public support for a much more prompt and generous response by the US to India's food crisis. The mid-1950s was also a time when policy differences between the US and India intensified with the extension of US military aid to Pakistan in 1954 and with the mutual recriminations that resulted from opposing views concerning Indochina in 1954 and 1955.
