Contrary to the popular belief both in India and abroad, India’s foreign policy had undergone substantial change after 1971 during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s tenure of office as Prime Minister. This fact was obscured from public view because, largely for domestic reasons, she continued to use the old anti-imperialist rhetoric. She often used political lightweights like the then Congress President, Mr Shankar Dayal Sharma, to accuse the US Central Intelligence Agency of interfering in India’s internal affairs. But it was clear that they did so with the consent, and, indeed, at the instigation of the then Prime Minister.
Mrs Gandhi, it has been widely believed, acted in this fashion partly because she needed the support of the CPI and the Leftists in her own party to keep burnished her image as a radical, partly because she wanted to distract attention from mounting economic difficulties from 1972 onwards and partly because she wished to discredit the growing opposition, especially the Jana Sangh, which she knew constituted the principal challenge to her. And there can be little doubt that the tactics paid off till Mr Jayaprakash Narayan emerged out of semi-retirement to lead the agitation against Mrs Gandhi in 1974.
Compulsion
In a sense this was surprising. For any careful and receptive observer of the Indian scene should have known that Mrs Gandhi had no firm ideological commitments – the vague desire to help the poor and to protect the minorities is a different matter – and that the principal compulsion which had, as it were, bound India to the Soviet Union had disappeared with the break-up of Pakistan. By 1974 there was enough evidence to suggest that Mrs Gandhi intended to follow a reasonably pragmatic economic policy and that the Soviet Union had little to offer which could help her tide over economic difficulties.
India’s claims to having been guided by the concept of non- alignment and the principles of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-racialism notwithstanding, no other consideration dominated its foreign policy so much in the ‘fifties and the ‘sixties as the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. Since, with the break-up of Pakistan in December 1971, this problem finally ceased to worry the government and the people of India, it was unavoidable that India’s worldview would change. And the change was duly reflected in Mrs Gandhi’s actions.
Three points are noteworthy in this connection. First, as far as India was concerned, its friendship with the Soviet Union was the result largely of its need for support – for its veto in the UN Security Council in the late ‘fifties and for military supplies in the ‘sixties – which could enable it to cope with the twin threat from Pakistan and China. Since, in the Indian perception, the two dangers had merged, especially after the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965 when China sent a strange ultimatum to New Delhi accusing it of having abducted some Tibetans and stolen some yaks, the elimination of the threat from the principal source, that is Pakistan, could not but be seen to reduce the danger from the other direction as well.
Secondly, though Dr Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China in July 1971, his indifference to the plight of the East Bengal refugees who had poured into India that summer and autumn, his statement during the Indo-Pakistan war that President Nixon had decided to tilt towards Islamabad and, finally, the decision to send a task force of the Seventh Fleet into the Indian Ocean caused a great deal of annoyance in India, the anti-US and therefore the anti-Western sentiment lost its raison d’etre with the break-up of Pakistan. In effective terms, this sentiment dated back to 1953 when the United States concluded the mutual security pact with Pakistan and agreed to provide it weapons to equip a force of a specified strength.
Important
This point is extremely important because it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that India’s response to the outside world has been greatly influenced, if not determined, by its perception of the threat from Pakistan. Indeed, now that the threat is seen to have disappeared, it does not quite know how to relate itself to the rest of the world.
Finally, as India developed its heavy and engineering industries, it ceased to be excessively dependent on the Soviet Union for import of technical know-how and capital goods. This had become evident even before the emergency which witnessed a remarkable upsurge in India’s exports and money transfers by Indians settled abroad and a steady drop in the trade deficit. These two developments clinched the issue. India could now afford to buy in the open market whatever it needed. It did not have to give preference to imports from communist countries with whom it has rupee payment agreements.
Thus, when the Janata Party was voted into power, India was in a position to pursue the policy of what the Prime Minister, Mr Morarji Desai, calls “genuine non- alignment” and would in all probability have opted for it even if many of the Janata Party leaders had been better disposed towards the Soviet Union than they in fact were (and are) or even if the Soviet authorities had been less unsparing in their support for Mrs Gandhi and her actions and in their condemnation of her opponents who are now India’s rulers.
For the basic reality is that New Delhi does not know what to ask for from Moscow and the Kremlin does not know what to offer. From the mid-’fifties to the mid-’sixties, India had little choice but to depend on the Soviet Union for building its basic industries and, from the mid-’sixties to the early ‘seventies, for strengthening and modernising its defence forces. It is not easy to spot a suitable substitute to fit India’s changed’ needs.
If it is recalled that Mrs Gandhi had firmly refused to endorse Mr Brezhnev’s concept of Asian collective security and exchanged ambassadors with China to the annoyance of the Kremlin, it will be difficult to resist the conclusion that she had drawn the parameters for this country’s relation with the Soviet Union. This has clearly facilitated Mr Morarji Desai’s task.
The point needs to be made that Mr Desai’s talk of “genuine non-alignment” also reflects India’s deep-rooted desire for neutrality on the Swiss pattern, that is, for non-involvement in the affairs of other countries.
Despite all that has happened in the past – the armed border conflict with China in 1962, the wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, the helpful Soviet role in all these conflicts, India’s own leading role in the third world, and so on – the desire to avoid external entanglements has remained strong in India. And the fact that India does not now face urgent security problems – both Pakistan and China have ceased to be regarded as serious threats to the country’s independence and integrity – must inevitably strengthen this trend.
As it happens, the Indian intelligentsia has gradually also lost enthusiasm both for the third world and the Soviet-led Communist bloc. Its perspective on international relations has changed as a result of the dramatic change in its own security environment, its own experience of the denial of basic freedoms during the emergency and other major developments in the world, particularly the end of the war in Viet Nam and of the US attempt to establish a Pax Americana which inevitably annoyed India, among other countries.
Difference
Only one major difference has surfaced so far between Mrs Gandhi’s overall approach and Mr Desai’s though it is a fairly significant one. Mrs Gandhi saw India in a leading role in South Asia and she, like Mr Nehru, suspected that the United States would do all in its power to deny it its due status in the region. She was not similarly distrustful of the Soviet Union which she felt had no choice but to support both India and her leadership of India. Mr Morarji Desai has, on the other hand, left no one in doubt that he is content with peaceful borders. He has, for example, disarmed the Bangladesh guerillas operating from Indian territory. Even otherwise, he does not entertain serious misgivings regarding the USA or any other Western country or agency.
But in view of his government’s emphasis on agriculture and cottage and small-scale industries, it is not easy to grasp its perception of the West’s role in India’s economic development. It is already finding it difficult to utilise the aid it is receiving from the West and the West, particularly the EEC, is resisting its bid to gain increased access to its markets. The Janata Party has also found it necessary to heed nation-wide criticism regarding the role of multinationals in the Indian economy.
Thus, all in all, we are likely to witness only a slight change of emphasis and not a radical departure in the field of foreign policy under the present dispensation.
The Times of India, 29 November 1977