India’s standing in this country dropped steeply when the Chinese army cut through our thin defences both in the bleak mountainous wastes of Ladakh and the sparsely inhabited tribal belt of the North-East Frontier Agency last October. Since then India has not been able to recover her lost esteem. The events of the past weeks have produced doubts regarding the country’s political stability. It would be sheer escapism not to face the fact that in the estimation of the people here a big question mark has appeared regarding India’s future.
The British are not unfamiliar with no-confidence motions. In recent months alone the House of Commons has debated so many of them. In our case the no-confidence motion has been seen in a different light. It attracted what many in India would regard as undue attention for a variety of reasons. It was the first to reach the debating stage in sixteen years of independence. It was preceded by the defeat of the Congress party in three key by-elections. It symbolised the widespread discontent against the ruling party’s policies, particularly high taxation and rising prices. All in all it strengthened the prevailing impression that Mr Nehru had lost, and continued to lose, authority. Since he has been regarded as being synonymous with political stability in the absence of an alternative to him in the Congress and to the Congress in the country, the implication obviously is that India has entered a period of uncertainty.
Duality
The popular reaction to the no-confidence motion and the demonstration in front of Parliament House demanding the resignation of Mr Nehru have helped to underline the duality of the approach to him. He was admired for his role of assuring the stability of democratic institutions and was disliked for his efforts to wrench India away from the western sphere of influence. There is therefore at once concern and a sense of relief at the diminution in his stature. Not many are able to see that the two roles have been inextricably tied together and he could play both or none at all. Even the old-time friends and admirers of India are doubtful if the present downhill drift can be arrested soon enough. No one has a single prescription for India’s troubles and problems but economic progress is still seen as a possible catalyst.
Those who pay more than cursory attention to the Indian scene tend to agree that no opposition party or coalition of opposition parties would be strong enough to challenge the Congress party’s monopoly of power in the foreseeable future. As such the Congress alone is seen to offer hope of stability. It is not regarded as a reflection on India’s democracy that for all practical purposes it has been and is likely to remain a one-party state because it is recognised that both within the ruling party and the country there exists the utmost freedom of debate. This view has not been seriously weakened by the recent criticism about the detention without trial of a member of pro-Peking communists and the unending trial of Sheikh Abdullah. What disturbs these students of Indian affairs is that the factional in-fighting in the Congress revolves round persons and not programmes and policies. In fact the reports of squabbles in the Congress are doing India greater damage than the opposition parties’ censure motion and demonstrations.
Necessity
While the need to set our house in order is only too obvious, it is also about time that we began to face the fact that irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the border claims, we no longer enjoy much support in this country in our continuing conflict with China. Neither any public figure nor any organ of public opinion, for instance, has given credence to reports of the concentration of Chinese troops all along our border. The Times has on the other hand gone so far as to say that “there is a dangerous tendency in some circles to cling to the threat as if a hostile China had become a necessity, without which India could not live.”
As has been reported earlier in these columns, the British do not see China as the proverbial dragon threatening to devour the whole world. The consensus of editorial opinion on the question of future relations with her is truly remarkable. From the extreme left to the extreme right there is general agreement that not only must the West make no effort to isolate her by taking advantage of the current Sino-Soviet rift, but that it should seek to improve relations with her. The theme is that China has to be “understood and accepted and not simply cordoned off as a danger to everybody”. The spectre of China trying to seize the leadership of Afro-Asian countries and of the communist world is dismissed is a fiction.
On the specific question of Sino-Indian relations, the general understanding here is that Peking achieved whatever objective it had in view last winter. It consolidated its hold on the Aksaichin plateau and insulated this strategically vital area against possible interference by India. It eliminated even the remotest possibility of India extending any real support to rebels in Tibet. It pushed India out of the “comfortable chairmanship of Afro-Asian sentiment”. It destroyed the broad consensus in India on issues of home and foreign policy which was the life-breath of Indian democracy. It weakened India’s self-confidence and faith in leadership and disturbed economic priorities sufficiently to bring to a grinding halt her already slow rate of advance. In the view of the British commentators, China has nothing to gain by another incursion into India. Since the British Government has not made any commitment beyond the emergency aid agreed upon between President Kennedy and Mr Macmillan at Nassau – British contribution being 15 million pounds – it must be inferred that it shares this assessment.
The synchronisation of the Cuban crisis and the Chinese aggression against India last October had led the British Government to the view that the two principal communist powers were probably acting in concert. The Prime Minister, Mr Macmillan and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, said so more than once. They obviously did not know that the Sino-Soviet dispute had progressed to the point of no return. Now with the Russians accusing China of taking advantage of the Cuban crisis to aggravate the dispute with India and China providing details about Russia’s violation of agreements regarding not only economic aid but also defence technology, including “the sample of atom bomb and the technical data concerning its manufacture” it is an altogether different story. The situation in which Mr Macmillan said “we shall do whatever they ask us to do” no longer exists because the spectre of communism on the march no more haunts the world.
Rethinking
The more discerning observers believe that China cannot possibly contemplate with equanimity the prospects of hostile America in the Pacific, a hostile Russia on her inner Asian frontier and angry India south of the Himalayas. Also the Chinese rulers cannot be so unrealistic as to believe that they can attain the goal of economic equality with other advanced countries without technical knowhow and industrial equipment from abroad and at the same time carry the burden of a modernised war machine. Though there is no evidence, they deduce that the men in Peking must be engaged in some radical rethinking.
In the context of this new assessment of the international scene one has only to recall the British view that India’s claim on Aksaichin is not “as foolproof as Indians like to believe” and one will have a fairly accurate picture of the British position. Admittedly no respectable organ of public opinion has urged India to agree to China’s proposal for unconditional negotiations, but it is equally true that they have not commended India’s unwillingness to do so either. The admiration that was expressed for India’s determination when Mr Morarji Desai produced his budget more than doubling the defence expenditure and gold control regulations has given way to concern as the common people in India begin to find the new burdens unbearable and as it is getting plain that India cannot possibly combine even a modest rate of economic expansion with the projected doubling of the defence forces without a substantial increase in foreign aid. The prospects are that India would be lucky if the present level of foreign assistance is maintained in the coming years.
Viewed in the framework of the British response – other Western countries like West Germany and France are even less sympathetic to the Indian dilemma – the present debate in India on the advantages and disadvantages of the policy of non-alignment does not make much sense. There is no crusade and there is not going to be one in which India can participate. India’s standing in the world will depend primarily on her performance at home in terms of political stability and economic growth. Economic assistance and foreign investment also depend on it. India, like any other country, will have to find the necessary strength from within herself.
The Times of India, 24 August 1963