No member of the previous establishment can take the slightest exception to the numerous statements Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee has made outlining the broad principles of the Janata government’s foreign policy. Indeed, so completely has he identified himself with Mr Nehru’s approach that it sometimes becomes difficult to recall that not long ago he himself belonged to the Jana Sangh, which was highly critical of all that the late Prime Minister did and stood for, and that many of Mr Vajpayee’s present cabinet colleagues shared this view.
This kind of change is, however, not unusual in a democracy. On the contrary, it is easy enough to quote any number of examples of opposition leaders implementing the previous government’s policies on moving to the treasury benches. In Britain, for example, the Attlee government turned out to be even more pro-Arab than the Conservative Party and the latter as determined as the Labour Party to break up the Central African Federation and concede independence to Malawi and Zambia. And in the case of the Soviet Union, it has often been argued, not without some justification, that not only Stalin’s but also Mr Brezhnev’s policies represent a continuation of past policies.
History
Implicit in all this is the acknowledgement that a country’s basic and long-term interests are determined by its geography, history, culture and economic requirements and that ideology in the superficial sense cannot substantially alter its policies. Though ideology inevitably influences the ruling group’s perception of the international reality and the nation’s interests, it is not decisive as Yugoslavia’s and China’s disputes with the Soviet Union amply demonstrate.
In a superficial sense the Federal German Republic’s relations with other West European countries and the United States can be cited in support of the rival viewpoint that ideology counts. But that is a wrong example. For, it is commonly accepted that united Germany could not have been contained within the Western alliance even if it had chosen to be democratic. Indeed, despite the partition, the Soviet Union and East European nations possess an almost irresistible pull for Bonn.
Interpreted in this light, it appears that friendship with the Soviet Union must continue to serve as the corner-stone of India’s foreign policy and that it is no accident that Moscow has stood by New Delhi in every political crisis the latter has faced since the mid- ‘fifties.
This fact has been thoroughly confused because from the very beginning supporters as well as opponents have viewed Mr Nehru’s policy of friendship towards the Soviet Union in terms of the East-West struggle on the one hand and the Sino-Soviet rivalry, implicit in the early ‘fifties and explicit since, on the other. But it should be possible to separate the two issues and place Russo-Indian friendship in a proper historical context.
The task is not easy. The Soviet foreign policy in our part of the world has inevitably been dominated by the compulsion and desire to reduce, if not eliminate, the West’s dominance. The Kremlin, for example, decided to reciprocate Mr Nehru’s initiatives only in the wake of the US decision in 1953 to enter into a mutual security pact with Pakistan in order to establish base facilities in that country which it could use against the Soviet Union and to promote an anti-Soviet regional alliance system known as the Baghdad Pact. Mr Nehru, too, on his part, was influenced by the compulsion to contain the USA which was then seeking to replace the declining West European imperial powers all over Asia. But the Soviet Union and India could and would have drawn close to each other even if the cold war had not spilled over into Asia.
Religion
China is relevant in this context. A unified, resurgent and aggressively self-confident China was bound to move into Tibet in fulfilment of its claims of sovereignty and cause, whatever its intentions, concern in New Delhi in view of the absence in the ‘fifties of security arrangements in the vast regions bordering Tibet, and therefore incline it towards the Soviet Union. But that was not all. The establishment of Pakistan as a separate state on the basis of religion had placed India under an even stronger compulsion to befriend the Soviet Union.
This issue, too, has been confused. For western scholars and publicists have successfully sold the proposition that the Western world would have opted for India and not for Pakistan if Mr Nehru had not unnecessarily adopted an anti-Western stance. But despite such supporting evidence as the American obsession with China and President Eisenhower’s offer of arms to India, in the wake of the security pact with Pakistan in 1954, the Western proposition cannot stand scrutiny. Britain in the early ‘fifties was determined to establish an alliance of Muslim countries, including Pakistan which, as Mr Olaf Caroe wrote in the famous anonymous article in Round Table in 1948, it regarded as part of the Persian Gulf. And the United States generally followed the British view in regard to this region. Two additional points need to be made to put the facts straight.
First, over the years Mr Nehru’s admirers and critics alike have taken as self-proven the view that his policy of opposition to Western plans in Asia was logical and unavoidable consequence of his anti-imperialism and anti-racialism and his bias in favour of the first socialist state in the world. But this is only partially true. For, there cannot be the slightest doubt that Mr Nehru was deeply annoyed at the West’s partisanship for Pakistan over Kashmir in 1948 itself and that his subsequent anti-Western pronouncements were to no small extent influenced, if not determined, by this fact. It was not so much Nehru the socialist as Nehru the nationalist who found himself at odds with the West.
Secondly, while it has been widely recognised that the Soviet Union was justified in being alarmed over Western moves in West Asia and Pakistan in the early ‘fifties and in seizing with both hands the opportunity President Nasser’s defiance of the West offered it, the fact that India had almost as much stake in the failure of the Western plan has not received similar recognition. Most commentators, including Indians, have failed to realise that the risk of a major alliance in West Asia would have harmed this country as well. Indeed, it cannot be ruled out that India would have suffered more than the Soviet Union because, unlike the latter it was not militarily invulnerable against Pakistan which would have felt greatly encouraged.
Things have changed a great deal since Mr Nehru turned to the Soviet Union in search of support first against the West and Western-backed Pakistan and then against China. But a careful inquiry will show that certain basic facts have not changed and they continue to underline the importance for this country of Soviet friendship.
The Soviet leadership has been extraordinarily naive, ill-informed and unimaginative in recent years and Indo-Soviet economic relations appear to have reached a plateau. But that cannot detract from the fact that the two countries need each other. The deterioration in the Soviet Union’s position in West Asia in recent years and the threat to it in Somalia reinforces this argument rather than weakens it because in a sense we are back to early ‘fifties when the West was dominant in the regions around India.
Hardware
For India, the point is specially pertinent in respect of its requirements for military hardware and its relations with China. Some influential persons in the previous setup were planning to turn to the West for arms purchases in the name of diversification of resources and the same argument is being repeated now. But a case for it has yet to be made. And it is doubtful if it can be made in view of the admission by Western experts themselves that the Soviet Union has caught up with the West and in some cases surpassed it in the sophistication of conventional weapons. Indeed, right now there is a strong case that India should not go in for more sophisticated weapons systems than it already possesses and that it should utilise the time the present disarray in Pakistan gives it to tackle the problem of modernisation of its armed forces on the basis of self-reliance. In any case the issue deserves to be discussed publicly as such questions are in democracies and not be disposed of in secrecy as in the past.
As for relations with China, it will be naive to suggest either that it is necessary for India to “disentangle” itself from the Soviet Union in order to reassure Peking or that Sino-Indian relations can acquire much strength and depth in the best of circumstances. On the contrary, New Delhi needs a strong leverage if it is to persuade Peking not to try to take advantage of its difficulties in the border areas and in the circumstances nothing can replace dependable ties with the Soviet Union for such leverage.
The Times of India, 17 August 1977