Foreign policy hardly figured as an issue in the recent elections to the Lok Sabha and it is not likely to figure prominently in the national debate in the months ahead. But while this does indicate a broad national consensus on major questions of foreign policy, it does not mean that there are no differences of emphasis between the prime minister, Mr Morarji Desai, and his colleagues on the one hand and the former prime minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, and her aides on the other, or that these differences will not be reflected in India’s relations with other countries.
It can, indeed, be said straightaway that a certain amount of cooling off is almost certain to take place in this country’s ties with the Soviet Union and that, as a corollary to it, the relations with the United States and West European countries are likely to become somewhat warmer than they have been for some years.
Several factors account for this assessment. Since, for instance, the Soviet government publicly identified itself with Mrs Indira Gandhi from 1967 till her defeat last month and denounced her critics and political opponents as tools of “right reaction” and of imperialism, if not the CIA itself, at every critical stage in India’s political life in the past one decade, the men who now rule in New Delhi cannot be expected to be particularly enthusiastic towards Mr Brezhnev and his colleagues in the Kremlin.
These men are also highly suspicious of the pro-Moscow CPI which, too, endorsed until the middle of last year almost all of Mrs Gandhi’s moves, including the proclamation of the emergency, from 1968 onward. Mr Morarji Desai has been fairly outspoken on this as on other issues. He regards the CPI as a Trojan horse and has said so publicly.
Critical
As it happens, the present government in New Delhi comprises groups and individuals who were critical of Mr Nehru’s foreign policy stance because, in their view, he tilted towards the Soviet Union and other communist countries, including China, in the ‘fifties. They perhaps placed too literal an interpretation on the concept of non- alignment – they equated it with the theory of equidistance – and did not pay sufficient attention to the compulsions of the situation arising out of extraordinary US ambitions matched only by the American leadership’s misunderstanding of Asian, specially Chinese, aspirations and the consequent need to redress the power balance as far as possible with the help of the Soviet Union.
The material point, however, is not that the criticism was unjustified but that the men now in power in New Delhi have nursed this feeling. The minister for external affairs, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said that the views expressed by him and his Cabinet colleagues while in the opposition will not influence their conduct of foreign policy. And there can be little doubt that he means what he says. But deeply held convictions have a way of asserting themselves. Mr Desai’s emphasis on what he calls “genuine” and “proper” non-alignment is a case in point.
It is possible that Mr Desai is giving expression to an opinion he formed a long time ago. But the balance, too, has changed sufficiently to call for a review of old responses on the part of New Delhi. The United States has ceased to the predominant power it was in the ‘fifties. The dream of Pax Americana turned into a nightmare in the jungles and marshes of Viet Nam. The Soviet Union has caught up with the United States in respect of naval strength and strategic nuclear weaponry and is distinctly far superior on the ground. It has doubtless suffered a major setback in West Asia but it has made significant gains in southern Africa and is well placed to challenge US power in the Indian Ocean. In this situation, there can surely be no question of India leaning towards the Soviet Union in order to contain US influence in the region.
Fair
To be fair to Mrs Gandhi, it cannot be said either that she was wholly insensitive to these changes in the power balance in the region or that she allowed the Kremlin to use the Indo-Soviet treaty of peace, friendship and co-operation to impose its concept of collective security on this country. On the contrary, she befriended the Shah of Iran in order to be able to reduce the threat from Pakistan and in the process India’s dependence on the Soviet Union. And she not only refused to endorse the Soviet concept of collective security but also seized the first available opportunity to begin the process of normalisation of relations with China, which in turn must reduce the Kremlin’s leverage vis-a-vis New Delhi. Even so, she always described India’s relations with the Soviet Union as being special and allowed her aides, both before and during the emergency, to indulge in an orgy of attacks on the United States and other western countries despite the substantial assistance India continued to receive from the latter.
One additional point needs to be noted in this connection. While India, unlike the United States under President Carter, cannot afford to, and is not likely to, take up the cause of human rights in other countries, there can be little doubt that after its own experience of the emergency the Indian intelligentsia has become much more concerned with this issue than ever before. Meanwhile the appeal of anti-imperialism has declined for a variety of reasons.
Morality is a dangerous and often impracticable concept to invoke in international relations. Who can say, for example, whether those who tended to turn the Nelson’s eye to US actions in Viet Nam and Chile have been more cynical than those who endorsed either the Soviet armed intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia or ignored the suppression of some of the basic human rights in communist and third world countries or vice-versa? But this is not a theoretical issue. Societies are guided by their value systems and, in India’s case, human rights have come to occupy a place they did not previously.
All this is not to say that the Desai government can ignore the advantages that have flowed to this country from the Soviet connection. The Soviet Union has been an assured source of supply of sophisticated military hardware for New Delhi on fairly good credit terms since 1965. It has made a valuable contribution to the diversification of the country’s economy through the establishment of basic industries and it has supported New Delhi in international forums on questions of critical importance to it. And the trade between the two countries has steadily expanded in the past two decades to the advantage of both. Indeed, it will be dangerous for this country to lean in the other direction without the anchor-sheet of firm and close ties with the Soviet Union because it can thereby open itself to manipulation by the West, particularly the United States which, though maimed, has not ceased arrogating to itself the role of establishing a so-called stable world order under its auspices.
The Chinese have welcomed the change of government in New Delhi and this offers New Delhi an opportunity to normalise relations with Peking not only in a formal sense but in the sense of restoring a measure of mutual trust. This must in fact be Mr Vajpayee’s first priority for two good and obvious reasons. First, uneasy relations with China have distorted this country’s priorities by imposing on it an unduly heavy defence burden. Secondly, in the absence of reasonably good relations with Peking, New Delhi cannot safely assume that Pakistan will not reverse its current policy and revert to its old stance.
Priority
In order to be able to attend to urgent social and economic problems and to allow the process of realignment of political forces to proceed without any risk to its security, India needs genuine peace and not just absence of active hostilities on its borders, and this it can have only in the context of a reasonable level of political understanding with China. As it happens, the Chinese, too, are fully preoccupied with domestic problems which are not very different from India’s. For, in that country, too, a realignment of political forces is taking place in the wake of the death of Mr Chou En-lai and Mr Mao Tse-tung and its need for assured peace on its southern border is no less urgent than India’s.
No one who has dealt with the Chinese or even read accounts of their dealings with others can minimise the difficulties. They tend to prolong negotiations in order to exhaust the other side’s patience. But once they take a political decision, they can settle issues fairly quickly. Witness their border agreements with Outer Mongolia, Burma and Nepal and Mr Chou En-lai’s offer to Mr Nehru in April 1960. Thus the approach to be effective has to be made at a fairly high level. Meanwhile the process of exploration can begin.
The Times of India, 5 April 1977