It is a sheer coincidence that India should be hosting a meeting of commonwealth prime ministers in the same year that it has served as a venue for a non-aligned summit. But this coincidence speaks of this country’s ability to span different worlds. Indeed, in view of its role in shaping both, it should have hosted both years ago.
India is, of course, not the only country which is at once a member of the commonwealth and the non-aligned movement. Most commonwealth countries fall in this category. But no one can seriously dispute India’s special place in either group not only because of its size and potentiality but also because it is one of the principal architects of both. Britain alone shares the honour in the case of the commonwealth and Egypt and Yugoslavia in that of the non- aligned movement.
India had, of course, its own good reasons to have remained in the commonwealth; the fear, for instance, that Pakistan would stay on and thereby gain an advantage on the Kashmir issue. But it is evident that nothing like the new commonwealth could have emerged in case India had decided to opt out. For it is almost certain that many Asian and African countries, especially the more radically inclined among them, would not have joined if India had not. As a pioneer in the struggle for freedom, India made the commonwealth respectable and acceptable among the newly independent countries as no other nation could have done.
Intimate Relationship
It is a surface view of history to say that the Indian leadership decided to remain in the commonwealth because it made some hard calculations and because a suitable formula could be devised whereby it could stay on without compromising its republican commitment and aspirations. Much deeper forces were at work. Britain and India had come together in a far more intimate way than the imperial-colonial (master-subject) relationship would suggest.
The empire itself was an Indo-British enterprise, with India not only supplying the muscle and the resources but often also benefiting from its expansion even if in a much smaller way than Great Britain. India dominated Britain’s foreign policy as much as Europe in the 19th century. It is in fact notable that Europe became decisive in British thinking in the early part of the 20th century when their power had begun to decline – a process which has essentially not been reversed despite the apparent expansion of British power and influence in West Asia after World War I.
Similarly, Mr. Nehru was guided by immediate considerations of our national interest as well as by an awareness of the strong currents of history when he first opted for the policy of neutrality (later rechristened non-alignment) and then took the initiative in launching the non-aligned movement. Both were logical corollaries to the end of the era of Western dominance in an age which is dominated as much by assertive nationalism as by globalism and the need for large groupings.
It can be argued that Mr Nehru might have continued to concentrate his efforts on promoting the Afro-Asian grouping in case the dispute with Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir had not proved intractable and a new one had not arisen with China on the border question. In plain terms, the proposition can be made that he thought of launching the non-aligned movement because both China and Pakistan would automatically stand excluded from it by virtue of their alliances with the USSR and the US respectively. But to say that is to ignore the dynamics of India’s foreign policy deeply inspired by the passion to promote peace and the vision of Mr Nehru which was not at all limited to Asia and Africa. Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States figured prominently in his thinking and he wanted India to interact with them. He was no mere Afro-Asian in his orientation. He was very much a product of the Indian interaction with Europe via Britain.
Independent Approach
The importance of this perception in the shaping of the Indian approach is often not appreciated with the result that the country’s foreign policy is generally explained in terms of its commitment to anti-imperialism, anti-neocolonialism and anti-racialism and, therefore, in anti-Western and pro-Soviet terms. But as any worthwhile observer of the Indian scene can see for himself, no strong anti-Western sentiment is at work among any section of the Indian people, not even among the leftists, including the communists who too depend almost exclusively on Western sources for their mental diet. By the same token, there is no strong pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet sentiment in India.
There is a north Indian saying which can roughly be translated as: “If he goes for a bath in the Jamuna, he calls himself Jamuna Das. And if he goes for a dip in the Ganga, he calls himself Ganga Ram”. Not to speak of foreigners, many of us have often described the country’s foreign policy similarly – in such self-deprecatory terms. Thus we have made fun that when our leaders visit a Western country, especially the United States or the United Kingdom, they tend to speak of India as a functioning democracy and a plural society. And that when they visit the Soviet Union or any other communist country, they emphasize India’s commitment to peace, anti-imperialism, anti-racialism and socialism.
The implication that India is a slippery customer is a slander. Few countries can boast of a better record of forthrightness than it can. It refused to endorse the US intervention in Vietnam in the sixties when it was critically dependent on American aid, especially in 1966 and 1967 when it received one-seventh of its total food requirement from there. Similarly, it refused to endorse the Brezhnev doctrine in 1971 when it desperately needed Soviet military assistance and political support in its conflict with Pakistan over Bangladesh, especially in view of US and Chinese support for Islamabad and the opening of direct talks between Washington and Peking.
So it is indisputable that India does not see the world in black-and-white terms and it does not see its friendly ties with the West as being inconsistent with close relations with the Soviet Union and vice versa. And who can say that this approach does not accord with the reality of our world? There are any number of Americans, Europeans and Soviets who recognise that the black-and-white view of the world is infantile nonsense.
We live in a strange age. On the one hand, the world is shrinking and becoming, to use a shop-worn cliché, a global village and, on the other, the divisions in it – West-East, North-South and among and within individual countries – have seldom been sharper because self-awareness and the perception of the threat to one’s identity have never been as acute. In such a world it is only natural that rival groups and interests should try to pull India in their separate directions. It is equally understandable that they should seek to impose their concepts on it.
Some of these concepts are very seductive. In the fifties, for example, the theory was advanced, among others, by Mr Chester Bowles, that the India-China competition with their rival paths of economic development was the dominant feature of the Asian scene and that its outcome would determine the future shape of much of Asia. Indeed, comparisons are still made as if the result can lend legitimacy to, or withhold legitimacy from, either system. It is difficult to say how such a perception on either side has contributed to the bad blood between the two countries but it cannot be disputed that there has been no such competition and that the people in no other third country have been influenced by the relative figures of India’s and China’s performance.
Global Aspirations
Another theory has held the field for years and of late it has come especially into prominence. Broadly it runs as follows: India is not a global power; it is too big, resourceful and full of potentialities to concentrate on its own self-renewal; so it must be a regional power, indeed the most important one in South Asia; as such it must either befriend its neighbours of dominate them.
It is just not possible to find a commentator anywhere who has not bought this theory. The Indian government itself seems to have bought it. But it does not accord with the true Indian perception or the reality.
India is, of course, not a global power but its aspirations are global. It wants to reshape the global world order. It has been misunderstood on that account and has been accused of moral hypocrisy. But we can ignore that kind of ignorant criticism. It may be interested in regional co-operation. But that takes a lower place in its list of priorities. In the past India represented a universal order; it would want to do so again once it has renewed itself by reviving from its past the essence of its ways of life and integrating these with the new gods – science and technology. Unavoidably, its principal preoccupation is with itself. It cannot be seriously and truly interested in dominating its neighbours who have little to contribute to its self-renewal. It can only be interested in safeguarding itself against any mischief by them since in these days of globalism they have powerful external supporters. The West remains India’s main interlocutor.
The Times of India, 23 November 1983