The Government’s support for an unconditional stoppage of US bombing raids on North Viet Nam continues to attract criticism at home. The criticism is often partisan. It ignores the important point that by rejecting the American view regarding the resulting extension of Chinese influence in south-east Asia and the military threat to India itself, New Delhi has indirectly demonstrated that it has largely got over the trauma it suffered in 1962. The process of the revival of national self-confidence is not complete but it is sufficiently well advanced. India is no longer whistling in the dark to keep up its courage against the Chinese.
Washington has sought to justify its Viet Nam policy on legal, moral and strategic grounds. But in New Delhi it has mostly used strategic arguments, first in an attempt to canvass support and when that failed, to ensure that India does not campaign in the United Nations and elsewhere against the American point of view. US spokesmen have gone so far as to claim that they are fighting India’s war in Viet Nam.
The Americans have used two sets of arguments in favour of their military involvement in Viet Nam. For years they stuck to the so-called domino theory arguing that countries of south-east Asia would fall victims to China-inspired communist insurrections one by one if the United States did not take up the challenge in Viet Nam and convince Peking and its allies that their theories of wars of national liberation and guerilla warfare would not be allowed to succeed. President Johnson himself has said several times that if America does not fight in Viet Nam it will have to do so somewhere else where the enemy is even better placed.
More Subtle
The domino theory has been more or less dropped largely because it has ceased to command acceptance in the United States itself. The new line of reasoning is a little more subtle. It is said that as China has emerged as a nuclear power the need for a countervailing power in the region has become more urgent than ever before. Since Asia’s two principal non-communist countries, India and Japan, are neither able nor willing to match China’s military capability and are not likely to be in a position to do so for years, the US has forcibly to move in to redress the balance. This requires America’s long-term presence on the Asian mainland.
This reasoning is easily refuted. The communist movement is no longer the monolith that it was in the early ’fifties and there is no reason to believe that Hanoi is willing to serve as an instrument of Chinese expansionism. In fact it can well be argued that given the opportunity North Viet Nam can become a centre of national resistance to the principal communist power in Asia, as Yugoslavia did in the late ’forties and the ’fifties in Europe. The need for an overall balance of power is adequately met through the American presence in the Pacific on the one hand and the projection of Japan’s economic power in south-east Asia on the other. Slowly this viewpoint has come to prevail in India.
New Delhi has no desire to incur Washington’s displeasure by pressing hard its viewpoint that an unconditional stoppage of US bombing raids on North Viet Nam is the first and the minimum precondition for persuading President Ho Chi-Minh to open negotiations for a peaceful settlement. President Johnson has always been intolerant of criticism or even suggestions from friendly countries, particularly if they happen to depend on US aid. He has become even more so as the support for his handling of the Viet Nam conflict has steadily weakened within his own country. New Delhi cannot ignore the risks of getting involved in the fierce debate that is raging in America on this issue. But it is notable that even at the height of its dependence on Washington for food supplies during the last two years of widespread drought and threat of a devastating famine, the Indian Government did not shrink from an exposition of its position though it was naturally careful to cause the minimum possible offence in Washington. This point has not been sufficiently appreciated by the Government’s leftist critics either at home or abroad.
Influenced
India’s posture on Viet Nam has no doubt been influenced by the past commitment to the concept of non-alignment, desire not to alienate communist countries, particularly the Soviet Union, which have tended to be rather critical of the Government’s domestic and foreign policies on the ground that these have allegedly moved towards the right since Mr Nehru’s death, and by the compulsion to keep in with the radical sentiment in Afro-Asia lest China should effectively represent this country as an imperialist stooge. But these considerations could not have prevailed if psychological dependence on American military might for security against China had remained as great as it was in 1963, 1964 and to some extent even in 1965.
It would be arbitrary to fix a date when India began to recover its self-confidence. In a sense it never gave up the belief that it could contain the Chinese threat by and large on its own. That was the plain meaning of the country’s decision to accept a sharp increase of about Rs 500 crores in defence expenditure in the wake of the Chinese aggression and its refusal to look for a powerful military ally. New Delhi slowly edged away even from the concept of joint air exercises with the United States and Britain which had managed to secure an undue publicity and influence for a fairly limited supply of military hardware after the NEFA debacle in 1962. But it was only with the military success in the war with Pakistan in September 1965 that India can be said to have got over the hump. The fear of China was then reduced to manageable proportions.
There was naturally concern in New Delhi when the Chinese suddenly presented an ultimatum to India in the midst of the war with Pakistan on trumped up charges, accusing India of having built bunkers on Chinese soil across the Nathu-la and of having stolen 859 yaks and sheep. But the ultimatum did not create any panic. The lighthearted presentation of a flock of sheep in front of the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi was an indication that India’s psychological response to the threat in 1965 was strikingly different from that to 1962. In the event the Chinese looked ridiculous when they first extended the period of the ultimatum on the pretext that India was taking a more reasonable line and then announced that their conditions had been met. This incident went a long way in convincing public opinion in India that the Chinese are not prepared to back their words with deeds. Their record in Viet Nam has fully confirmed this conclusion.
The failure of the pro-communist coup and the success of the army-led counter-coup in Indonesia a year later were another milestone for India. With the eclipse of Dr Sukarno the threat of an anti-India axis between Peking, Jakarta, and Rawalpindi disappeared and so did the nightmare of China dominating the whole of south-east Asia. The so-called proletarian cultural revolution has completed the process of isolating Peking from even friendly capitals with the exception of Rawalpindi in south Asia and it has also revealed the terrible internal strains within the regime. The quiet confidence with which New Delhi has handled the recent Nathu-la and Cho-la incidents speaks for itself.
Drought
The fact of Indian recovery would have become evident long ago if the military success against Pakistan in 1965 had not been accompanied by the century’s worst drought which brought the country face to face with economic disaster. Washington’s uncalled for decision to cut off economic aid to this country in 1965, the great reluctance with which it was resumed, the package deal which included the devaluation of the rupee, and the piecemeal allocation of food supplies and other similar developments caused depression and cynicism among the Indian intelligentsia and projected abroad a picture of India which made it out that the country had lost the capacity for self-regeneration.
The defeat of the Congress and the formation of multi-party coalitions in several States after the last general election strengthened the pessimistic view about India’s future. A more balanced view is now beginning to emerge with a bumper crop and hope of an early industrial revival. The moderation of the DMK Government in Madras and of the Left Communist-dominated coalition in Kerala, the absence of a challenge to New Delhi even in West Bengal and stability at the Centre have also lent credence to the Indian claim that neither democracy nor the country’s unity has been placed in jeopardy.
Reports about the visit to China by a group of extremist hostile Nagas and Peking’s propaganda support to the unrest in Naxalbari earlier this year can keep alive to some extent the fear that the Chinese can and will help forces of disintegration and chaos in India. But even in this regard Pakistan may well turn out to be a more formidable foe. Almost all the assistance that Naga and Mizo rebels have secured from outside so far has come from and through East Pakistan. Mr Bhutto’s statement that Assam belongs legitimately to Pakistan is a portent should not be ignored.
The Times of India, 15 November 1967