The forces of history at midcentury dashed any hope of a love affair. Nehru toiled to found a socialist utopia just as the start of the cold war had Washington dividing the world into friends and enemies. India willfully defied categorization. In the name of neutrality, Nehru declined America’s invitations to help build a regional bulwark against Soviet expansion, a position John Foster Dulles once called ““immoral and shortsighted.’’ Nehru sent the brilliantly acerbic V. K. Krishna Menon to the U.N.; after one meeting, President Eisenhower called him ““a menace and a boor.’’ To Washington, neutrality meant keeping quiet; India instead formulated its own moral stands. For America, a country that feels a need to cloak foreign policy in moral righteousness, that may have been the ultimate affront.

Geopolitics, including the touchy issue of nuclear proliferation, shredded what good will remained after the early years. The nadir was 1971, when President Richard Nixon ““tilted’’ toward India’s archrival, Pakistan, seeking an opening toward Pakistan’s ally, China. Still, Washington often helped India - openly by donating food, covertly by building the campaign chests of such favored politicians as Indira Gandhi. The payoff was small. ““They’re not grateful enough,’’ said a U.S. ambassador late one night in a flash of candor. The hostility was mutual. S. K. Singh, once India’s top diplomat, called his U.S. counterparts ““absolutely ruthless in pursuing their self-interest.’’ Nixon was the last U.S. president to officially visit New Delhi.

Now the cold war is over, and India again has rediscovered itself - as a champion of market capitalism. And hostility, though deeply rooted in the two countries’ bureaucracies, may be eroding. Since India reformed its investment laws in 1991, U.S. companies have poured in up to a billion dollars a year. Indians now can watch MTV and ““The Bold and the Beautiful.’’ They eat Big Macs (made from lamb) and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and buy their kids Reeboks and Nikes. Upper-class Indians who used to school their children in England now look to American universities. More of them than ever are visiting the United States - and 355,000 immigrated between 1985 and 1995. There now are a million Indian-Americans, and they’ve begun to assert themselves politically, as befits one of the country’s most affluent immigrant groups. Indians are learning the game. And two thin-skinned democracies may yet realize that their shared values far outweigh their differences.