Perhaps the single most careful and detailed statement on India’s foreign policy was made by Indira Gandhi (1916–1984), who was prime minister of India for three terms from 1966 to 1977, then after an electoral defeat was reelected in 1980, serving until her assassination in 1984. Her son Rajiv Gandhi succeeded her as prime minister from 1984 to 1989. After his assassination, his wife Sonia assumed a powerful role in Indian politics, and their son and daughter, Rahul and Priyanka, are both active in politics today. Other members of the family have been ambassadors and governors of states, justifying the term “Nehru Dynasty” that is often applied to the clan.
Mrs. Gandhi prepared this speech in 1972 primarily for foreign audiences (especially ones in New York, at the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University). India’s foreign policy, she insisted, was linked with the two great concerns of India’s national life: safeguarding Indian sovereignty and ending the blight of domestic poverty. The preservation of international peace, she always insisted (as had her father before her), served these ends as well as the larger humanitarian vision of the betterment of life everywhere. Pakistan remains in her view a central focus of India’s abiding concern, but when Mrs. Gandhi uses the phrase “some powers” or “third party” she usually means the United States.
We have also tried to have normal relations with Pakistan. Yet, successive governments of Pakistan based the survival and unity of their country on the idea of confrontation with India. This has stood in the way of cooperation which would have been to our mutual benefit. India was partitioned in 1947 to solve what the British portrayed as irreconcilable Hindu–Muslim antagonism. Pakistan was based on the medieval notion that religion alone constituted nationhood. Encouraged by the imperial power, the Muslim League claimed that Muslim majority areas were entitled to become an independent nation. Thus, Pakistan was born a geographical curiosity, its two halves separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory. India was left with a very large number of Muslims; they formed the largest of her many minorities. …
Pakistan, on the other hand, clung to the political ideology which had led to partition. Those who came to power in Pakistan had sided with the colonial power in undivided India and had opposed the national struggle. Those ruling elements, especially after the establishment of military dictatorship, set Pakistan on a course of pointless and seemingly endless conflict with India. Just as in the earlier days when the colonial power had used religious sentiments to blunt the nationalist drive in India, some powers sought to use Pakistan to offset India. …
Kashmir, as early as October 1947, was the first victim of aggression by Pakistan. … A large part of the state has been under Pakistan’s occupation for many years. India does not intend to recapture this territory by force; on several occasions we have given this assurance to Pakistan and have offered to conclude a “no war” pact. Pakistan has rejected this offer repeatedly, trying to invoke third-party intervention in our affairs. …
The immediate background to the latest aggression against us in 1971 was the other battle which Pakistan was waging for many months against its own citizens of East Pakistan (as it then was). … How could we ignore a conflict which took place on our very border and overflowed into our own territory? Ten million destitute refugees poured into densely populated areas which were also politically sensitive owing to the activities of Marxists and the Left extremists we call Naxalites. This posed unbearable strains on our social and administrative institutions. The terrible stories of genocide … created a volatile situation for us also. …
In the last week of November [1971], President Yahya Khan [of Pakistan] publicly announced that war would begin in ten days, and sure enough, on the tenth day there was a massive air attack on seven of our border cities and a ground attack all along our western border. Thus did Pakistan extend its war to India.
However, when 14 days later, on December 16, 1971, Pakistan troops surrendered on the eastern front, India unilaterally announced a cease fire on the western front also. On March 25, 1972, we withdrew our troops from Bangladesh in consultation with the new government. The political map of the subcontinent had been redrawn and the notion of an inherent and insuperable antagonism between a secular India and a predominant Muslim state had been discredited. …
I have dwelt at length on Pakistan because the problems of the sub-continent for their impact on us [are] immediate and deep. But we want better relations with China also. Even though we were fully absorbed in our own struggle for liberty, we supported China’s parallel fight against imperialism. … We were among the first in 1949 to welcome the establishment of the People’s Republic. Much to our disappointment, the last two decades have failed to fulfil our initial hope that India and China, both great Asian nations, newly independent and faced with similar problems, would learn from and assist each other on the wider international scene. … But the events of the 1950’s brought tension and misunderstanding, culminating in the entry and occupation of thousands of square miles of India territory in 1962. … It would be an over-simplification to regard this merely as the result of a border dispute. … [China’s] persistent, though futile efforts to promote internal subversion—leave us no option but to infer that the border dispute was the outcome of a more complex policy which was aimed at undermining India’s stability and at obstructing her rapid and orderly progress. …
The Soviet Union shares the Indian view on the maintenance of peace and the elimination of racialism and colonialism. … When matters [that] vitally concerned our national security and integrity such as Goa, Kashmir and more lately Bangladesh, became matters of international controversy, the Soviet assessment of the merits of the case coincided largely with our own. … Economic relations with the Soviet Union are easier for us since we repay them through the exports of commodities. … The Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation concluded last year [1971] grew logically from this expanding relationship. … There is nothing in the treaty to which any reasonable person or government could take exception. … Yet there has been some misapprehensions that the Treaty dilutes India’s non-alignment. It is strange that such criticism comes mostly from those who have vehemently denounced non-alignment all along. In the text of the treaty itself there is explicit recognition and endorsement of India’s policy of non-alignment.
Our relations with the United States started off rather well. At that time, the American people and government showed considerable sympathy for the colonial peoples who were struggling for independence and, particularly, for India. However, this phase was short-lived. With the rise of the United States to a dominant world position, Washington’s concern and respect for the national independence of India receded into the background. Everything was viewed solely in the context of checking communism and containing first the Soviet Union, subsequently China, and now once again the Soviet Union. There was a feverish building of military blocs and a continuous extension of a network of bases stretching across oceans and continents. The logical and practical consequence of this policy was to divide the world into two camps and to expect each country to belong to one or the other—preferably the Western bloc. …
To our grave concern, the US policy, as it developed, impinged seriously on our vital interests. The admission of Pakistan into the US controlled system of alliances and the massive supply of arms to Pakistan were ostensibly part of the US grand design against communism. … Has the US succeeded in containing communism? On the contrary, has not the US been compelled to build bridges with the Non-aligned and to woo the opposite bloc—the hated Communists? I have no doubt that if we had followed the advice of the Western bloc, conditions in India would have deteriorated and the extremists would have been strengthened.
In regard to Bangladesh, and during the December war, the United States openly backed Pakistan at the cost of basic human values. This further strained our relations. I do not wish to analyse the US role at that time or to go into the misrepresentations which were circulated. But it is necessary to take note of the dispatch of the warship Enterprise to support a ruthless military dictatorship and to intimidate a democracy and the extraordinary similarity of the attitudes adopted by the United States and China. Imagine our feelings. The original misunderstanding with the United States had arisen because of our contacts with China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We find it difficult to understand why, when the US policy toward these countries changed, the resentment against us increased.
We do not believe in permanent estrangement. We admire the achievements of the American people. Indeed, a large number of Americans expressed sympathetic support for the cause of Bangladesh and India during the last year. We are grateful for the assistance of the United States in many areas of our development. We are ready to join in any serous effort to arrive at a deeper appreciation of each other’s point of view and to improve relations. A great power must take into account the existence not only of countries with comparable power, but of the multitude of others who are no longer willing to be pawns on a global chessboard. Above all, the United States has yet to resolve the inner contradictions between the traditions of the founding fathers and of Lincoln and the external image it gives of a super-power pursuing the cold logic of power politics.
On fundamental questions such as disarmament, the abolition of nuclear weapons, the continuing struggle against colonialism and racialism, the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the war in Vietnam and the conflict in the Middle East, our stand has been consistent over the years and has been clearly stated in appropriate forums. In this article, I have preferred to focus attention on a situation in our sub-continent because it is our special concern, and has significance beyond geographical frontiers. In considering the policies of some major powers, I have confined myself to bilateral relations which are intimately connected with their attitudes to the sub-continent as a whole. …
Each country has its own heritage and distinct personality which it naturally wishes to develop in its own way. But we must also bear in mind our community of interests and take positive initiatives for working together among ourselves and with other countries in order to make a richer contribution towards the evolution of a world more livable for all and of a social order more in consonance with the yearnings of modern man.
[Indira Gandhi, Selected Speeches and Writings, 3:630–637.]
The single most important event for India’s foreign policy, one fraught with meaning for India’s relation with the world, was probably neither the Pakistani intrusion into Jammu and Kashmir in 1947, nor the secession of Bangladesh in 1971, but India’s explosion of a nuclear device in 1974. There is a huge literature discussing the significance of India’s nuclear position, but here only four important Indian reactions will be noted.
Preparations for the first nuclear test were made in great secrecy, and it is said that only three people, aside from the scientists actually involved in the construction of the device, knew about it: Prime Minister India Gandhi, and her private secretaries P. N. Haksar and D. P. Dhar. None of the Cabinet knew, including the defense secretary. Because of the extreme precautions designed to prevent foreign intelligences from learning about the preparations, there are many conflicting accounts of the event, including its alleged code name, “Smiling Buddha.” The test was conducted on the Buddhist festival of Buddha Purnima, but this seems to have been coincidental, and the story that the success of the experiment was conveyed to the prime minister with the phrase, “The Buddha is smiling,” is also undocumented.
Mrs. Gandhi’s announcement of the successful nuclear test at Pokhran, in the Rajasthan desert, on May 18, 1974, was greeted with jubilation throughout the country, except by a few of the old followers of Mahatma Gandhi, who saw this as further betrayal of his legacy. The American ambassador, Patrick Moynihan, voiced the official US reaction when he told Mrs. Gandhi that she had made a huge mistake. “Here you were the No. 1 hegemonic power in South Asia. … Now in a decade’s time, some Pakistani general will call you up and say, ‘I have four nuclear weapons and I want Kashmir.’ … And then what will you do?”15 However annoyed Mrs. Gandhi may have been by this American presumptuousness, her only response was silence.
Honourable Members, you are aware that at 8.05 hours on May 18, 1974 our Atomic Energy Commission successfully carried out an underground nuclear explosion at a depth of more than 100 metres in the Rajasthan desert. This experiment was part of the research and development work which the Atomic Energy Commission has been carrying on in pursuance of our national objectives of harnessing atomic energy for peaceful purposes.
Honourable members may recall that on November 15, 1972, I had stated in the Lok Sabha that “The Atomic Energy Commission is studying conditions under which peaceful nuclear explosions carried out underground could be of economic benefit to India without causing environmental hazards.” Exactly one year later, on November 15, 1973, I informed Honourable Members of the Rajya Sabha … that after satisfactory answers to the problems of the possible effects on environmental and ecological conditions are available, the question of actual underground tests for peaceful purposes could be considered. … All the material, equipment and the personnel in this project were totally Indian. India had not violated any international law or obligation or any commitment in this regard to any country.
This experiment has evoked mixed responses from various countries. While the developing nations, have, by and large, welcomed the experiment as a step in the research and development work carried out by India in the field of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, the advanced nations, with some exceptions, have not shown equal understanding. The United States … has reiterated that the policy of that government is against nuclear proliferation. The USSR has noted that India has carried out a research programme striving to keep level with the world technology in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. … China officially reported the event without commenting on the explosion. The reaction of the Government of Japan has been to express regret for the experiment. …
The Government of India is unable to comprehend the repeated talk of nuclear blackmail indulged in by the representatives of Pakistan. … [I have] stated that India is willing to share her nuclear technology with Pakistan as she is willing to share it with other countries, provided proper conditions for understanding and trust are created. …
No technology is evil in itself; it is the use that nations make of technology which determines its character. India does not accept the principle of apartheid in any matter and technology is no exception.
[Indira Gandhi, to Lok Sabha, July 22, 1974, in Selected Speeches and Writings 3:413–415.]
Raja Ramanna (1925–2004) was director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission at the time when India carried out its first nuclear test. He held virtually every important post in India’s scientific establishment, and received the country’s highest national honors. In addition, he was a student of Sanskrit, wrote on Indian classical music, and was an accomplished Western classical pianist.
Pokhran came as a surprise to the world. They hadn’t expected such an achievement from a developing nation. Some sent us congratulatory letters and several others protested. Inevitably and inexorably, the protests mounted. The objections were predictable variations on a theme: who were we to upset the balance maintained by the superpowers, a privilege bestowed only upon those who had won the Second World War? In time the pressures on India, by way of embargoes and other sanctions, reached a nearly unbearable level. It appeared the advanced nations were determined to crush India for its temerity. Pokhran exposed the hypocrisy of those nations who talked on non-proliferation and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. It was clear that these countries applied one set of standards to themselves and another to the rest of the world. Accompanying all the noises of protest was genuine shock that a country like India was capable of something as sophisticated as a [nuclear explosion]. The West looked upon India as one of the most backward countries in the world. Their criterion for measuring progress was different in the sense that they judged the success of a country by its material acquisitions and its overt proof of development—sanitation, quality of roads and general sense of discipline. India didn’t conform to any of these, and in this context alone, it seemed somewhat relevant when the Western world expressed bewilderment, coupled with fear and panic, at the success of Pokhran.
[Raja Ramanna, Years of Pilgrimage: An Autobiography (Delhi: Viking, 1991), 92–93.]
As leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister in 1996 for only a few months, until his party was defeated, but the BJP won the election in 1998, and he was prime minister until the BJP was voted out in 2004. Shortly after he took office in 1998, he announced that India had tested a nuclear weapon, so that the country had become the sixth avowed nuclear-weapon power, along with the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, and China. The international community reacted strongly, with many nations, led by the United States, instituting a boycott of India that prevented further nuclear cooperation in all fields. Pakistan was soon to announce its successful nuclear test. Vajpayee’s statement on the evolution of India’s nuclear policy essentially built on India’s position as stated by Mrs. Gandhi.
Sir, I rise to inform the House of momentous developments that have taken place while we were in recess. On 11 May, India successfully carried out three underground nuclear tests. Two more underground tests on 13 May completed the planned series of tests. I would like this House to join me in paying fulsome tribute to our scientists, engineers and defence personnel whose singular achievements have given us a renewed sense of national pride and self-confidence. Sir, in addition to the statement I make, I have also taken the opportunity to submit to the House a paper entitled “Evolution of India’s Nuclear Policy.” …
In 1965, along with a small group of non-aligned countries, India put forward the idea of an international non-proliferation agreement under which the nuclear weapon states would agree to give up their arsenals provided other countries refrained from developing or acquiring such weapons. This balance of rights and obligations was not accepted. In the sixties our security concerns deepened. The country sought security guarantees but the countries we turned to were unable to extend to us the expected assurances. As a result, we made it clear that we would not be able to sign the NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty). The Lok Sabha debated the issue on 5th April, 1968. Prime Minister late Shrimati Indira Gandhi assured the House that “we shall be guided entirely by our self-enlightenment and the considerations of national security.” This was a turning point and this House strengthened the decision of the then Government by reflecting a national consensus. …
India is now a nuclear weapon state. This is a reality that cannot be denied. It is not a conferment that we seek; nor is it a status for others to grant. It is an endowment to the nation by our scientists and engineers. It is India’s due, the right of one-sixth of humankind. Our strengthened capability adds to our sense of responsibility. We do not intend to use these weapons for aggression or for mounting threats against any country, these are weapons of self-defence, to ensure that India is not subjected to nuclear threats or coercion. We do not intend to engage in an arms race. … In this fiftieth year of our Independence, we stand at a defining moment in our history. The rationale for the Government’s decision is based on the same policy tenets that have guided us for five decades. These policies have been sustained successfully because of an underlying national consensus. It is vital to maintain the consensus as we approach the next millennium. In my statement today and in the paper placed before the House, I have elaborated on the rationale behind the Government’s decision, and outlined our approach for the future. The present decision and future actions will continue to reflect a commitment to sensibilities and obligations of an ancient civilisation, a sense of responsibility and restraint, but a restraint born of the assurance of action, not of doubts or apprehension. Avoiding triumphalism, let us work together towards our shared objective in ensuring that as we move towards a new millennium, India will take its rightful place in the international community.
In 2005, with considerable fanfare, President Bush announced that he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had committed the United States and India to a historic breakthrough in relations by agreeing to expand cooperation in civilian nuclear activities, space programs, high-technology trade, and other forms of commerce. The American administration was able to get the arrangements approved by Congress with large majorities, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ran into very considerable opposition. American negotiators found, apparently to their surprise, that there was very strong opposition in India, including from partners in Singh’s own coalition government, and that many people regarded the arrangement as an infringement of India’s sovereignty. Leading members of the scientific community argued that India’s nuclear research programs would be hampered by American laws; the Left revived anti-American slogans; and the Right called upon the deep wells of nationalism. Thus all circled back to sovereignty, the unity and integrity of the nation, self-sufficiency, and non-alignment as the traditional basis of India’s foreign policy.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attempted to address these concerns in a long speech in the Rajya Sabha on August 17, 2006, only the main points of which are excerpted here.
Mr. Chairman, Sir, as I stand before this august House, I would like to share with you and the Hon. Members the vision [of] Jawaharlal Nehru, on the eve of Independence: “Our task will not be complete so long as we cannot get rid of chronic mass poverty, ignorance and disease.” Sir, it is my conviction that mass poverty can be removed only if we have a fast expanding economy. … If India is to grow at the rate of 8 per cent to 10 per cent a year and, maybe, more, India needs rising amounts of energy. … Soon after the Pokhran Tests in 1974, I became Minister for Finance of the Atomic Energy Commission and … we worked out the role of nuclear energy in meeting the deficit in our energy requirements. By this context, we must never forget the primary motivation for India’s nuclear programme was the production of energy, defence came much later. …
It is my belief that the nuclear order that prevailed in the world for thirty odd years, which has imposed restrictions on nuclear trade with India—if this order is not changed, India’s development options, particularly its quest for energy options, will face, to put it mildly, a great degree of uncertainty. … I think the Planning Commission has done some work, and they have come to the conclusion that having the nuclear option is something which will give us greater degree of security on the energy front. …
Two types of comments have been made during the discussion in the House. The first set of issues pertains to the basic orientation of our foreign policy. Some Hon’ble Members have observed that by engaging in discussions with, and allegedly acquiescing in the demands made by the United States, we have compromised the independent nature of our foreign policy. The second set of issues pertain to deviations from the July 18 Joint Statement and the March 2 Separation Plan [separation of civilian and military nuclear uses]. Many of the points raised by the Hon’ble Members have also been aired outside Parliament, notably also by some senior members of the scientific establishment. Overall, a listing of the important concerns includes the following: that the India–US Nuclear initiative and more particularly the content of the proposed legislation in the US Congress, could undermine the autonomy of our decision-making; limit the options or compromise the integrity of our strategic programme; and adversely affect the future of our scientific research and development. …
I recognize that many of these concerns are borne out of genuine conviction that nothing should be done that would undermine long standing policies that have a bearing on India’s vital national security interests. [Our commitment to] nuclear disarmament remains unwavering. … Pending global nuclear disarmament, there is no question of India joining the NPT [Non-proliferation Treaty] as a non–nuclear weapon state, or accepting full-scope safeguards as a requirement for nuclear supplies to India, now or in the future. … There is provision in the proposed US law that were India to detonate a nuclear explosive device, the US will have the right to cease further cooperation. Our position on this is unambiguous. The US has been intimated that reference to nuclear detonation in the India–US Bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement as a condition for future cooperation is not acceptable to us. … We are very firm in our determination that agreement with the United States on Civil Nuclear Energy in no way affects the requirements of our strategic programme.
In this final section of chapter 8, we feature not one particular viewpoint on India, but the characterization, as being particularly Indian, of one style of expression.
Selections from Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom were presented earlier in this chapter. In a more recent book of essays, Sen has tried to highlight the enduring Indian traditions of discussion, argumentation, and wide-ranging philosophical exploration. The paragraphs to follow are taken from his essay about “the argumentative Indian.”
It would be a great mistake … to assume that because of the possible effectiveness of well-tutored and disciplined arguments, the argumentative tradition must, in general, favour the privileged and the well-educated, rather than the dispossessed and the deprived. Some of the most powerful arguments in Indian intellectual history have, in fact, been about the lives of the least privileged groups, which have drawn on the substantive force of these claims, rather than on the cultivated brilliance of well-trained dialectics.
Does the richness of the tradition of argument make much difference to subcontinental lives today? I would argue it does, and in a great many different ways. It shapes our social world and the nature of our culture. It has helped to make heterodoxy the natural state of affairs in India … : persistent arguments are an important part of our public life. It deeply influences Indian politics, and is particularly relevant, I would argue, to the development of democracy in India and the emergence of its secular priorities. …
The issue relates directly to the plurality of identities I have already discussed, and to the scope for choice in the determination of identity. People’s relation to … India need not be mediated through the “culture” of the family in which they may have been born, nor through its religion. People may choose to seek identity with more than one of these predefined cultures, or, just as plausibly, with none. People are also free to decide that their cultural or religious identity is less important to them than, say, their political convictions, or their literary persuasions, or their professional commitments. It is a choice for them to make, no matter how they are placed in the “federation of cultures.”
To conclude, the inclusionary view of Indian identity, which we have inherited and which I have tried to defend, is not only not parasitic on, or partial to, a Hindu identity, it can hardly be a federation of the different religious communities in India: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Parsee and others. Indian identity need not be mediated through other group identities in a federal way. Indeed, India is not, in this view, sensibly seen even as a federal combination of different communities.
I quoted earlier a statement of Jamsetji Tata of an affirmatively nationalist kind, when—commenting on the excellence that young Indians can achieve through education—he said that Indian students “can not only hold their own against the best rivals in Europe on the latter’s ground, but can beat them hollow.” That expression of pride—even perhaps of arrogance—is not the pride of a Parsee who happened to be an Indian, but of an Indian who happened to be a Parsee. There is a distinction here, and it is, I would argue, both important and in need of some understanding right now.
[Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2005), 12 and 356.]