Unlike Mr. Nehru, Mrs. Indira Gandhi is not ideologically inclined. She has no hang-up about Asianism or anti-imperialism or whatever. She is interested in asserting India’s independence and promoting India’s interests as she sees them. Her emphasis in her relations with you (the United States) and the Soviet Union will shift as the exigencies of the Indian interests require. That is the Indian meaning of non-alignment and it is not likely to change.
On the other hand, there is considerable goodwill in our country for yours. After our brief experience of the emergency from June 1975 to March 1977 our intelligentsia has come to respect democratic values more than before. The hold of the leftist ideology in our country has declined as a result of the poor performance of all socialist economies and our own public sector. Several hundred thousand people of Indian origin are doing well in your country and they have relations and friends back at home. I think we are also more self-assured than we used to be. That is why we have been able to take your military assistance to Pakistan in our stride. Mrs. Gandhi sought to rouse public opinion on the issue. But she did not get the response she might have expected.
Much One-sidedness
You inevitably loom much larger in our scheme of things than we do in yours. You are rich and strong and you do not need our goodwill as much as we do. You are preoccupied with numerous immediate and pressing problems and have little time for us. We are of little relevance to you in your contest with the Soviet Union, or in your efforts to promote some kind of stability in West Asia. Even as a non-aligned country we mattered for you so long as you regarded Communist China as a source of danger to your own interests. Now you regard China as a friendly power, though perhaps no longer as the Asian member of NATO. We need you for aid from the World Bank and the IMF, to ensure that Pakistan does not use your weapons against us and to avoid undue dependence on the Soviet Union. You have no similar need for our goodwill.
So there is bound to be a great deal of one-sidedness in the Indo-US relationship. This is not a complaint. It suits the Indian temperament and policy quite well. Moreover by virtue of its thinness the relationship is likely to be a stable and a more equal one. We are beginning to learn not to expect too much from you and, therefore, we will not be too critical of you. In the past we have perhaps expected too much from you not only in bilateral terms but also in general terms. We used to be shocked that you supported cruel dictatorship. In that sense, President Carter was like a breath of fresh air for us. You as a people hardly worry about us.
During my last visit to your country in June this year, a taxi driver in New York asked me if I was a Pakistani. I told him that I was an Indian and then I asked him why he wanted to know. He said: “you know those Pakistanis are making the bomb. So I wanted to know if you were a Pakistani so that I could find out about the bomb”. Having discovered that I was an Indian, he had no questions to ask of me. By itself it was an innocent encounter. But it told me a lot. Even as a source of the dreaded nuclear proliferation, Pakistan has come to arouse more interest in the US than India. Perhaps this is as well both for you and us.
An American friend has asked me to try to answer some questions which he regards as pertinent. I shall quote him.
“The first is alternative Indian perspectives on Pakistan’s role in South Asia now that the Russians are on the Khyber (e.g. – a weak buffer existing on terms agreed between Moscow and Delhi; a strong buffer capable of raising the risk of further Soviet pressure – a principal antagonist of India; a stooge of the United States, etc.). The second issue concerns the way Indian analysts perceive threats to Indian security that could come from the Gulf (e.g Saudi support for an adventurist Pakistan; Pakistan seeking to overcome its sense of weakness by adventure towards Iran; the Islamic military community as a threat to India; an American establishment in the Gulf and how it would work to India’s disadvantage, etc) . . .”
For me, nothing could better illustrate the sharp difference between the way we look at developments in that part of the world from the way some of your thinkers view them from here.
Pakistan No Buffer
As far as I can see, there can be no question of India and the Soviet Union being able to work out a status for Pakistan which makes it a weak buffer and enforcing it on Islamabad. First, India has never entered into this kind of dialogue with the Soviet Union either on Pakistan or on China. Mr. Nehru knew of the problems between the Soviet Union and China, for example, when Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Bulganin visited India in the winter of 1955. But to the best of my knowledge, there was never any discussion between the two countries on how best China could be “contained”. The same applies now, in my view, to Pakistan.
Secondly, Pakistan is not a little helpless country whose status India and the Soviet Union can define. Pakistan has powerful friends in the United States and in the Muslim world. India is in no position to defy this powerful combination. As you know, India seeks reasonable relations with the United States and with Muslim countries. If anything, it has been deferential towards their interests and susceptibilities.
As I have made it clear in the earlier part of my talk, India is interested in a strong and stable Pakistan. But it is not in a position to do much in this regard. It also does not look upon Pakistan as a buffer. India also does not look upon Pakistan as a stooge of the United States and Indian analysts at the moment are uncertain whether Pakistan will re-emerge as an antagonist or seek a measure of cooperation in promoting stability in the sub-continent.
To the best of my knowledge, no influential and well-known Indian analyst has so far discussed any possible threat to India’s security resulting from developments in the Gulf. We have seen our security problems wholly in the context of Pakistan, China and some kind of alliance between them.
Some Indians are concerned lest the Soviet Union emerges as the dominant power in the Gulf region. They fear the rise of a Muslim grouping backed by the Soviet Union and hostile to India. I for one see no possibility of such a development in view of the prevailing or likely balance of power in the region.
Peace Zone
I don’t believe, and I don’t think any other serious Indian analyst believes, that Saudi Arabia would ever support any adventurist action on the part of Pakistan, or that Pakistan would wish to or be able to undertake an adventure towards Iran out of a feeling of either weakness or strength, or that anything like a Muslim military community can arise to threaten India’s security. Finally, as you know only too well, the government of India has been opposed to US military presence, as it has been opposed to the Soviet military presence, in the Indian Ocean in general and in areas close to its coast in particular. New Delhi has been campaigning for the Indian Ocean to be declared a zone of peace so that the superpowers are kept out of it except for peaceful purposes. But it does not follow that the Indian government fears that the US presence will be specifically to its disadvantage. Its main concern has been that the intensification of the US-Soviet competition in the region will vitiate the atmosphere and add to the existing instability.
To sum up, the South-Asian and South-West scene, as I view it and as I think most Indians view it, is full of uncertainties. So we regard it impossible to make any firm assessment or prediction about it. We are generally trying to strengthen our security arrangements within the resources available to us so that we can take care of any contingency that may arise. We are not imagining the worst and trying to provide for it. Such a frame of mind can only lead us either to step up our defence expenditure to a level where it disrupts our economy or to abandon our policy of non-alignment and to align ourselves with one of the superpowers. We find both options abhorrent and unacceptable. We may be running some risks but we find them more acceptable.
(Concluded)
This is the third and last part of the talk at a seminar organised by the Columbia University, New York, on November 15
The Times of India, 3 December 1982