NEHRU’S NON-ALIGNMENT AND THE WEST

M.V. KAMATH

Given the Cold War and the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union and India’s desire – not just Jawaharlal Nehru’s but even that of the man-in-the-street to stay away from Super Power conflicts it was inevitable that India’s first Prime Minister should fashion a foreign policy of studied non-alignment.

India had no alternative if it were to retain its self-respect. Jawaharlal Nehru has often been accused of arrogance in wishing to keep India out of Super Power conflicts but in doing so he merely reflected the nation’s gut feelings. Of course, there were some who would have liked to see India firmly in the western camp and similarly there were a few wanting India to side with the Soviet Union.

Both these groups were vociferous but Nehru kept his cool and remained unmoved. For that, he was the target of much vicious attack and India itself had often to pay dearly for its stand. The “West”, during the early post-war years, by and large meant the United States. The European nations hardly mattered. Britain was still recovering from the battering it had taken during the war years. Leadership had passed on to the United States. The men in power when Nehru first visited the country were President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

ACHESON’S APATHY

Acheson was as arrogant a man as Nehru has often been accused of; he had his views on where countries of the world belonged as, no doubt, Nehru had and it was inevitable that the two men should dash. Acheson has some nasty comments to make about Nehru in his memoirs entitled “Present at the creation”. During his visit to Washington, Acheson sought to have a person-to-person meeting with Nehru. It did not work. Writes Acheson: “He (Nehru) talked to me as Queen Victoria said of Mr. Gladstone, as though I were a public meeting”. Nehru, who hated Imperialism, spoke to Acheson about the failings of the Dutch and the French, then still holding on to their colonies. It did not interest Acheson. The two held discussions from ten-thirty at night till one-thirty in the morning, with neither side yielding to the other. Records Acheson: “I was convinced that Nehru and I were not destined to have a pleasant personal relationship. He was so important to India, and India’s survival was so important to all of us that if he did not exist – as Voltaire said of God .. he would have to be invented. Nevertheless, he was one of the most difficult men with whom I have ever had to deal”.

Relations between India and the United States during the days of John Foster Dulles, who succeeded Acheson as Secretary of State, were no better. It was Dulles who told Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Pandit, then Ambassador to Washington, that it was “a sin” to be neutral. Dulles made India to pay dearly for its non-alignment. Quite early the United States had decided to support Pakistan land on Kashmir, Washington was positively hostile to Delhi. It showed in every U.S. action.

WESTS REVENGE

When India supported Egypt over the Suez Canal issue and raised hell in the United Nations, it was asking for trouble. India, unfortunately, had also alienated the Soviet Union in the matter of Hungary. In 1956, all the western members of the Security Council (the United States, France and Britain leading) and the Soviet Union as well raised the Kashmir issue in the Security Council and for full 48 hours India was called over the coals. The western powers had their revenge on India.

It was expected that when John Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower, as President, there would be some relaxation in US-Indian tensions. Kennedy personally admired Nehru, but that admiration did not extend to Nehru’s foreign policy. By the time Kennedy had become President, Nehru also was on his last legs. He was a tired man and Kennedy was to give Pakistan’s Ayub Khan greater attention.

Under Johnson, things were no better. A biographer of President Johnson writes about the latter’s visit to India as Vice-President: “He (Johnson) considered Prime Minister Nehru with suspicion because of his academic manner and his neutralist stand against communism ... Ayub Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan, was more to his liking than the intellectual Nehru ...”

Non-alignment stuck in American gullets. There was no way Americans could accept it. It was an article of faith for many of them that if you were not with them, you were against them. Nehru had played a solitary role starting from the Peace Treaty with Japan (which India declined to sign), recognition of Red China (that the U.S. opposed tooth and nail), the importance of Ho Chi Minh (whom Nehru described as a nationalist first, communist afterwards), the necessity of recognising Indonesian freedom etc etc· On every issue, India clashed with the United States. There was hardly any meeting ground.

UNFIT MENON

No even the U.S. press had much of a good word for India, starting from the New York Times. Throughout the fifties and early sixties India barely managed to keep the friendship of the United States. Nehru did not make it any the easier for himself by sending V. K. Krishna Menon as his representative to the United Nations. Menon was arrogant, abrasive and difficult to deal with. He symbolised everything that the Americans hated about India. A Benegal Narasimha Rao might have been more successful in putting the lid off anti-Indian sentiment in America which has soft voice and gentle manners. As a matter of fact, even Gaganvihari L. Mehta, as Indian Ambassador to Washington, helped soften American ire against Delhi. But Krishna Menon messed up whatever good will that G. L. Metha might have accumulated for his country. Menon was the wrong man to sell non-alignment to the west. What was needed was a low profile; that Krishna Menon was incapable of. He was aggressive, assertive, arrogant and carried a chip on his shoulder. If anyone man can be charged with destroying western goodwill towards India, it was this former founder of India League in London.

It has been argued that the only way western domineering attitude could be faced was by a show of Indian independence. But Krishna Menon was not the man to play the role. It needed a more subtle mind which understood the reality of the times and rode it with aplomb. Krishna Menon was offensive and often, it seemed, with deliberate intent. India, with a more sophisticated representative, could have gotten away with its independent stance, but with Krishna Menon to speak for India, disaster was built in. If India got off reasonably lightly, thanks are due to the guilt complex of an America that knew in its heart of hearts that India was a democracy while Pakistan was not. So the West hit India but took care not to knock it down. Food aid, for instance, was given but until Delhi was humiliated and made to look like a whining beggar.

EMBARRASSMENT

Looking back, I am amazed that for all the official dislike of India’s foreign policy, I personally did not encounter any anti-Indianism during the three years I lived in New York during the reign of Nehru. There were moments of tensions, of course, especially during the Suez crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. But the antipathy was more against Krishna Menon as the articulator of India’s foreign policy than against the policy itself. Nehru did neither himself nor his country any good by keeping Krishna Menon in New York during those crucial days. It was counter-productive. One suspects that he was aware of this, at least some of the time. He was to write to his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit: “Krishna has often embarrassed me and put me in considerable difficulties. If I speak to him, he has an emotional breakdown. He is always on the verge of some nervous collapse”.

One suspects that when China attacked India, the west was secretly pleased that Beijing, which Nehru had so often upheld, had in the end given him a bloody nose. The feeling in the United States was: It served India right! When India sought western aid, the British had the nerve to suggest to Nehru that he compromise on Kashmir. The British delegation that came to Delhi was out to twist India’s arm at a most crucial time. Nehru’s role during the Suez Crisis had not been quite forgotten. Nor was India’s takeover of Goa which riled the West greatly. The West never took to Nehru. It knew that he would never be in its camp, come what may. Nehru’s independence rankled in the minds of British as well as American politicians, who were politicians, not statesmen.

WESTERN NEED

India’s pride was mistaken for arrogance and neither Nehru nor Menon helped in changing that misunderstanding. The west, it seemed, wanted a subservient and docile India, not an India determined to hold its own in the comity of nations. Nehru not only stood for non-alignment, he wanted others to subscribe to it. His advocacy of non-alignment at Bandung – it was during the high-noon of Nehru’s career – disturbed the West which till then had not been accustomed to see ex-colonial nations running their affairs with such verve and daring. Importantly, Nehru stood out among the many mediocrities of the times throughout Asia. No wonder that from Acheson to Dean Rusk, the approach towards India was one of subdued hostility.

Were Nehru alive today, he would have had the last laugh on Detente between the United States and the Soviet Union? That was what he had pleaded for long and been figuratively booed for that. That it should have taken a quarter of a century for his thesis to be proved right remains one of the supreme ironies of our times.

(* Mr. M. V. Kamath is a veteran Indian journalist, who was Washington-based correspondent of “The Times of India” for more than 20 years, and is also a former Editor of “The Illustrated Weekly of India”.)

- Courtesy The Times of India

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