Crossing the Rubicon

India’s foreign policy is passing through interesting times. The strategic partnership with the United States of America is a paradigmatic shift from a non-aligned worldview to one dealing with the imperatives of a unipolar world. But, can we trust
the United States?

Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

In 1952, Mahatma Gandhi's personal emissary and director of India's first community development project (CDP), Sudhir Ghosh, hit upon a novel idea, which he thought would change the face of the newly-independent India. He proposed to use refugees from Pakistan to build towns. His argument was that if he could be loaned the funds that the government would be using for looking after 40,000 refugees for the next three years, then he could create employment for them and out of their labour build a town that would provide permanent means of livelihood. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru jumped on the idea and extended all help. The town of Faridabad, near Delhi, was the outcome of this enterprise.

But this is just part of the story as Ghosh reveals in his book, Gandhi's Emissary. Building a town from the efforts of a community of refugees was an experiment that had not been attempted in the post-colonial world and held out interesting possibilities for future development of such societies. There was the understandable hype about Faridabad and what Ghosh had achieved. International recognition too followed. But Nehru suddenly chose to withdraw himself from the project. Ghosh explains in his book, "The withdrawal of Nehru's mantle came, strangely enough, through the interest that my American friends showed in the Faridabad experiment".

Nehru's ire at anyone cavorting with the US had a reason. Immediately after independence, Indian leadership expected support from US government, which was an anti-colonial power and a democracy, but it found them indifferent. During Pandit Nehru's visit to Washington, it became clear to him that the US wanted to use India as a lever against China. Nehru was keen to elicit US support as both China and Soviet Union were opposed to India on the issue of Kashmir. But that help was not forthcoming.

He made it clear that India needed help, but not at any cost. "They expected more than gratitude and goodwill and that more I could not supply," said a disappointed Nehru.

Between 1947 and 1949, the US ambassador to India, Henry Grady, told the Indian leadership that US would not invest in India till economic policies were made attractive to them. Interestingly, the Indians were more sympathetic to their colonial rulers. The British occupied many of the important official positions even after independence, so their sway over foreign and domestic policies was very much in evidence. Were the British against the enlargement of US’s interest in India? This is an issue that has been dwelt by Soviet era Indologists, but seldom been the enquiry of Indian historians.

Be that as it may, India's reservations with the US deepened when Washington chose to sign a military agreement with Pakistan in 1954. It was this military agreement that pushed India closer to the Soviet Union. This was in many ways the turning point in India's relationship with US and in some ways with Pakistan. It sharpened conflict between the two neighbours and undid their moves towards peace and amity. In 1952, the two countries came close to solving their border dispute but, for some inexplicable reason, the deal fell through. Consistently, India got a feeling that the US was working against its interest. US maintained a hyphenated relationship between India and Pakistan that endured five decades.