Its other results apart, Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Washington must mark the end of the destabilisation theory which the Congress Working Committee had espoused on April 18 at his instance. Surely, the Prime Minister cannot now credibly go on accusing the CIA of trying to overthrow him. A number of possible, though, of course, contradictory, inferences follow.
First, the CIA was in fact not involved in the multi-faceted attack on the Prime Minister from March onwards. This has been the general view in the country, interestingly enough, especially among the left which has taken the stand that the anti-Rajiv campaign has essentially been the product of actions of private individuals guided by their own interests.
Secondly, if the CIA was indeed party to the campaign, its purpose was not to overthrow him but only to put pressure on him so that he could be compelled to fall in line. And, once Mr Gandhi demonstrated his willingness to respect American susceptibilities and interests in the region, they agreed to withdraw their support from the anti-Rajiv elements.
The Prime Minister’s decision to go to the rescue of President Jayewardene can be said to have assured the Americans that it was possible to do business with Mr Gandhi. That India, in its own interest, had no other option in Sri Lanka does not necessarily detract from the above proposition. In his book on the CIA’s activities, Bob Woodward has disclosed that the Americans were supporting the same Mr Ramgoolam in Mauritius as was India.
Additional Help
Thirdly, as the CPM-led left took up a firmly anti-Rajiv line, and as Mr VP Singh let it be known that he regarded the left as his natural ally, the Americans felt obliged to back Mr Gandhi. It can also be argued that the Prime Minister was also left with no option but to mend his fences with the Americans especially in the context of the drought which must oblige India to increase its imports and seek additional assistance from abroad.
Finally, it cannot be ruled out that Mr Rajiv Gandhi himself was not particularly serious about the destabilisation theory, that he bought it only as a temporary expedient to tide over a difficult situation, that since it did not in fact serve his purpose because, even its traditional customers refused to buy it, he soon lost interest in it, and that gradually he has gone back to his instinctive responses which favour close ties with the United States and a wider scope for the private sector at home. Quite candidly, I am in no position to say which one of these possibilities is closer to the truth. Even last April I had neither bought nor rejected the destabilisation theory for the same reason of lack of access to conclusive evidence one way or the other. That, however, is an aspect of the matter which we cannot settle. But whatever the truth, the failure of the destabilisation theory to take off is an indisputable fact. And it shows that it is not easy at least for a Prime Minister in difficulty to stir up an anti-US sentiment on a significant scale. Mrs Indira Gandhi failed to sell to the Indian intelligentsia even the proposition that Pakistan, armed by the United States under President Reagan, constituted a grave threat to the country even against the backdrop of terrorism in Punjab.
India has never been anti-American in a fundamental sense. But there is a difference between weak anti-Americanism and the present resistance to anti-Americanism which, in my opinion, can be traced back to 1971 when Pakistan broke up into two. The secession of Bangladesh did not weaken Pakistan in military terms. On the contrary, it eliminated a basically indefensible border. And on coming to power in 1972 Mr Bhutto stepped up his country’s military strength fairly dramatically.
The US aid since 1981 has further added to that prowess, obliging India to buy comparable equipment. But, whatever Islamabad’s military capability, the popular Indian response since 1971 has been consistently of confidence. This, in my view, has been a development of the greatest significance for India’s foreign policy.
No Alarmist View
This proposition would become evident if we recognise, as we should, that our pro-Soviet stance has basically been a function of our fear that Pakistan armed by the United States can seriously threaten our security. I am persuaded that Mr Nehru could not have sold his anti-US view of the cold war to the Indian people if Washington had not decided to provide hardware to Pakistan in 1954.
I am aware that Mr Nehru himself did not take an alarmist view of Pakistan’s military prowess. India’s defence expenditure increased fairly slowly till the early ’sixties when we ran into trouble with the Chinese, and that it was only in 1961 that Mr Krishna Menon negotiated the first defence deal with the Soviets whereby they agreed to deliver one squadron of MiG-21s to India.
But all that is not central to the proposition I am advancing. Which is that in a fundamental sense the popular appeal of anti-Americanism and therefore of pro-Sovietism has been the result of our fear of US-armed Pakistan and that with the disappearance, rightly or wrongly, of that fear, it has become difficult for the Indian rulers to repeat Mr Nehru’s performance. They can, of course, adopt the same stance as Mrs Indira Gandhi in fact did. But they cannot sell it to the intelligentsia. The United States, particularly under President Reagan, has in several cases behaved like a rogue elephant. But all that just does not interest a vast majority of the Indian intelligentsia.
A number of other developments have contributed to this popular response. Communism began to cease to be attractive in liberal-humanist terms after 1956 when Mr Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s unbelievable crimes against his own people; in the past decade or so it has steadily lost its appeal as an economic system as well; Mr Deng Xiaoping’s openings to Japan and the West and attempts to introduce the market mechanism, followed by Mr Gorbachov’s exposure of the weaknesses of the Soviet economy after six debates of central planning have clinched the issue.
The Soviet Union has not been seen to be in a position, often wrongly, to provide the state-of-art technology India wants. For years on end, it has found it difficult to balance its current trade account with this country, with the result that its aid announcements have had no real content. It, of course, provided us highly concessional credit for our military purchases from it and we depend on it for a good deal of our military equipment. Indeed without this assured source of supplies we could face serious problems. But while it ensures friendly feelings towards Moscow, it does not help refurbish the Soviet image which is of a failed system.
More than half a million educated and professionally trained Indians have settled down in the United States. They have done remarkably well; they are related to influential Indians back; the Indians settled in America have as a rule bought the American-ideology and foreign policy which they transmit to their relations and friends effectively ever if indirectly.
New Isolationism
The composition of the Indian intelligentsia itself has undergone a remarkable change. Most educated Indians at the time of independence were middle class only in name; the vast majority of them were without any worthwhile property, inheritance and savings. Now the self-employed constitute a sizeable segment of the population. The sons and daughters of businessmen of all sizes have got educated. Even if they are not sufficiently articulate, they cannot be enthusiastic about either the destabilisation theory or its offshoot in the shape of the newly resurrected Socialist Forum.
If anti-Americanism and pro-Sovietism have ceased to be viable propositions in India, it however does not follow that pro-Americanism and anti-Sovietism have taken their place. They have not. The US continues to be distrusted on account of its military aid to Pakistan and anti-communism, and therefore anti-Sovietism does not have much appeal in India. But in a basic sense India has come to practise its own variant of isolationism. It is concerned, more or less exclusively, with strictly its own interests.
The Times of India, 21 October 1987