Just old friends

The Iran vote was hardly a turning point in Indo-US relations. The two countries have been allies for quite a while now

Diplomatic Correspondent Delhi

India's decision to vote on a resolution initiated by the US-backed western nations against Iran in Vienna on September 25 would perhaps be seen as a major turning point in Indian foreign policy. Delhi claimed the vote actually helped Iran as it provided the opportunity of resolving the controversial nuclear programme being pursued by the leadership in Tehran at the level of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) instead of at the UN Security Council. But so far the claim has found few takers, both within and outside the country. Most saw the vote against Iran as a price that the Indian leadership was willing to pay for the smooth passage of the civilian nuclear deal that it signed with the US in July this year. But opinion in the country is still sharply divided on whether this is the right course for India's future.

The growing closeness between India and the US is still seen with a lot of scepticism by a large number of Indians. However, even as the debate rages on, there is little doubt that the shift in India's foreign policy did not come with its vote against Iran at the IAEA but was a gradual process that started nearly one and half decade back. It began at the end of the Cold War and with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Five wasted decades," former foreign minister and BJP leader Jaswant Singh had said some years back when his party was leading a coalition in Delhi and trying to turn Indo-US ties into a robust and long-lasting relationship. Singh's attempt was perhaps to put the blame on successive Congress governments for not doing enough to reach out to the US.

But the BJP leader's view is not entirely true. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the founder members of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). But unlike many others, he did not see NAM as a tool of confrontation against the US. On the contrary, he did reach out to the US and for a while in the 1950s and early 1960s it seemed that the "two great democracies in the world" might be able to hit it off together. The US not only helped India in setting up the Tarapore Reactor but also offered Delhi military help during the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962.

After Nehru's death, sporadic attempts were made by India and the US to strengthen bilateral ties but for a number of reasons, both within South Asia and elsewhere in the world, they never really took off.

The first serious attempt to reach out to the US began when P V Narasimha Rao became prime minister and brought in "economic diplomacy" as one of the major tools in India's foreign policy. With the stress on economic diplomacy and the decision to offer India as a potential market for foreign investment and business, came the deliberate attempt by Delhi to play down its role to be the champion of the developing world.

Rao not only tried to reach out to close allies of the US in the Association for South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) through his "Look East Policy" but also upgraded India's diplomatic relations with Israel mid-way in his tenure as prime minister. His successors tried their best to keep the anti-American rhetoric to their minimum but the US attempt to pressurise India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and Washington's pro-active role in Kashmir brought back some of the old strains in bilateral ties between the two countries.