India's Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ii India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 South Asian History and Culture

Series Editors: David Washbrook, University of Cambridge, UK Boria Majumdar, University of Central Lancashire, UK Sharmistha Gooptu, South Asia Research Foundation, India Nalin Mehta, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore This series brings together research on South Asia in the humanities and social sciences, and provides scholars with a platform covering, but not restricted to, their particular fi elds of interest and specialization. A signifi cant concern for the series is to focus across the whole of the region known as South Asia, and not simply on India, as is often the case. We are most conscious of this gap in South Asian studies and work to bring into focus more scholarship on and from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other parts of South Asia. At the same time, there will be a conscious attempt to publish regional studies, which will open up new aspects of scholarly inquiry going into the future. This series will consciously initiate synergy between research from within academia and that from outside the formal academy. A focus will be to bring into the mainstream more recently developed disciplines in South Asian studies which have till date remained in the nature of specialized fi elds: for instance, research on fi lm, media, photography, sport, medicine, environment, to mention a few. The series will address this gap and generate more comprehensive knowledge fi elds.

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Jayanta Kumar Ray Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI First published 2011 in India by Routledge 912 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001

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Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ISBN 978-0-415-59742-5 For my granddaughter

ANUMEGHA Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 vi India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Contents

List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgements xv

1. Introduction 1 2. Non-alignment: Pronouncements and Practices 18 3. Relations with the United Kingdom 52 4. Relations with Pakistan 113 5. Relations with China 197 6. Relations with Bangladesh 324 7. Relations with Nepal 410 8. Relations with Sri Lanka 487 9. Relations with the Former Soviet Union/Russia 533 10. Relations with the United States 579 11. Nuclear Policy 692 12. Epilogue 761

Bibliography 780 About the Author 804

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Index 805 viii India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 List of Abbreviations

ADB Asian Development Bank AICC All India Congress Committee AJTs Advanced Jet Trainers APC All Parties Conference AWACS Airborne Early Warning Command and Control System BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BHEL Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited BJP Bharatiya Janata Party BNP Bangladesh Nationalist Party BRC Border Restoration Committee BRO Border Roads Organisation BSF Border Security Force CAG Comptroller and Auditor General CAVTS Combined Acceleration Vibration Climatic Test System CBMs Confi dence Building Measures CCPA Committee of Political Affairs CENTO Central Treaty Organisation CEPA Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement CFL ceasefi re line CHT Chittagong Hill Tracts CIA Central Intelligence Agency CICA Conference on Interaction and Confi dence Building Measures in Asia CIR Canada–India Reactor CISS China Institute of Strategic Studies Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 CPA comprehensive peace agreement CPN-UML Communist Party of Nepal–United Marxist- Leninist CPT Calcutta Port Trust CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty CWC Congress Working Committee CWC Central Water Commission DC developed country x India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

DCG [India–UK] Defence Consultative Group DDP Department of Defence Production DGFI Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (Bangladesh) DIB Dubai Islamic Bank DPG Defence Policy Group DRDO Defence Research and Development Organisation EEC European Economic Community EPRLF Eelam People’s Revolutionary Front EROS Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students EU European Union FDI foreign direct investments FERA Foreign Exchange Regulation Act FICCI Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry FII Foreign Institutional Investors FMCT Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty FSU Former Soviet Union FTA Free Trade Agreement GATT Geneva Agreement of Trade and Tariff GHG greenhouse gas GNLF Gorkha National Liberation Front GSOMIA General Security of Military Information Agreement HSMP Highly Skilled Migrants Programme HUJI Harkatul-e-Jihad-e-Islam HuM Harkat-ul-Mujahideen IAC Interim Administrative Council IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency IAF Indian Air Force IAS Indian Administrative Service

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 IB Intelligence Bureau IBBL Islamic Bank of Bangladesh Ltd. IBPI Indo-British Partnership Initiative ICT Information and Communications Technology IDA International Development Agency IDP internally displaced person IDSA Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses IFS Indian Foreign Service IIG Indian Insurgent Group List of Abbreviations xi

ILO International Labour Organisation IMDT Act Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act IMF International Monetary Fund IMLG Indian Military Liaison Group IMM Indian Military Mission INA Indian National Army IOC Indian Oil Corporation IPKF Indian Peace Keeping Force IPR intellectual property rights ISRO Indian Space Research Organisation ISI Inter-Services Intelligence JCWR Joint Committee on Water Resources JDPSA Jaguar Deep Penetration Strike Aircraft JeI Jamaat-e-Islami JeM Jaish-e-Mohammed JeMB Jaish-e-Muhammad Bangladesh JGE Joint Group of Experts JHU Jathika Hela Urumaya JRWA Jumma Refugee Welfare Association JSS Jathika Sevaka Samghamaya JuD Jamat-ud-Dawa JuMB Jamat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh JTE Joint Team of Experts JVP Janatha Vimukti Peramuna JVS Jathika Sevaka Sanghamaya JWG Joint Working Group LAC Line of Actual Control LeJ Lashkar-e-Jhangvi LCA Light Combat Aircraft LDC less developed country LeT Lashkar-e-Taiyaba LIOC Lanka Indian Oil Corporation

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 LPG Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam MCC Maoist Coordination Centre MCND Minimum Credible Nuclear Deterrent MEA Ministry of External Affairs MECON Metallurgical and Engineering Counsultants (India) Ltd MIRVs Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles xii India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

MNNA Major Non-NATO Ally MoD Ministry of Defence MoU Memorandum of Understanding MP Member of Parliament MRTP Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime NAM Non-Aligned Movement NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCAER National Council of Applied Economic Research NDA National Democratic Alliance NEFA North East Frontier Agency NGO Non-government organisation NIDC National Industrial Development Corporation NIEO New International Economic Order NMD National Missile Defence NNPA Nuclear Non-proliferation Act NNWS Non-Nuclear Weapon States NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group NSD National Security Decision NSI National Security Intelligence (Bangladesh) NWFP North West Frontier Province NWFW Nuclear Weapon Free World NWS Nuclear Weapon States NNWS Non-Nuclear Weapon States NZOP Nepal as a Zone of Peace OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OHCHR Ofﬁ ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights OFNS Observer Foreign News Service

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 OPEC Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries OSS Ofﬁ ce of Strategic Services OVL ONGC Videsh Ltd PCJSS Parbattya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti PIO People of Indian Origin PLA (China’s) People’s Liberation Army PLOTE People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam POK Pakistan-occupied Kashmir POTA Prevention of Terrorism Act List of Abbreviations xiii

PTBT Partial Test Ban Treaty PWG People’s War Group RAPP Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant RAW Research and Analysis Wing RDF Rapid Deployment Force RNA Royal Nepal Army RSO Rohingya Solidarity Organization SAFTA South Asia Free Trade Area SAPTA South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangements SCIP Standing Committee on Inundation Problems between Nepal and India SEATO South East Asia Treaty Organisation SEBI Securities and Exchange Board of India SLAF Sri Lankan Armed Forces SLFP Sri Lanka Freedom Party SLMM Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission SNE Subterramean Nuclear Explosion SPA Seven-party alliance TAF Tamil Eelam Air Force TAPS Tarapur Atomic Power Station TeT Tehreek-e-Taliban TELO Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation TMVP Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal TRIPs Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights TUF Tamil United Front TULF Tamil United Liberation Front ULFA United Liberation Front of Assam UN United Nations UNCIP United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan UNEF United Nations Emergency Force UNF United National Front

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 UNP United National Party UPA United Progressive Alliance USAID United States Agency for International Aid USIS United States Information Service VOA Voice of America WIT Worldwide Islamic Terrorism WMD Weapon of Mass Destruction WTO World Trade Organization xiv India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Acknowledgements

I have received assistance in various ways from a large number of colleagues, friends and students in preparing this book. I humbly list here their names in alphabetical order (in accordance with ﬁ rst names). My sincerest apologies to anyone I may have inadvertently missed. Ambalika Guha, Amiya Chaudhuri, Ashis Bhowmick, Binoda K. Mishra, Kali Prasad Mukherjee, Kausik Bandyopadhyay, Kingshuk Chatterjee, Mainak Sen, Pradyut Banerjee, Priyanka Basu, Purabi Ray, Rakhee Bhattacharjee, Safoora Razeq, Sandip Sarkar, Sanjay Bhardwaj, Sanjay Pulipaka, Shantanu Chakrabarti, Soumya Kanti Mitra, and Sushanta Banerjee. Over a number of years, I have received generous assistance from Professor Suranjan Das, currently Vice Chancellor and Director, Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata and Professor Hari Shankar Vasudevan, currently Director, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata. In all my research endeavours, including this one, I have received unstinted support from my wife, Krishna Ray. Two institutions have greatly contributed to the progress of my work, and I mention them here: History Department, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, with which I am still associated, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, with which too I remain associated. Finally, but for the help from Dr Boria Majumdar and Dr Sharmishtha Gooptu, it would not have been possible to publish this book. I thank the team at Routledge, New Delhi for their work in bringing out this book. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 xvi India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1 Introduction

Perhaps the most crucial question facing the author of this book is this: how much were the major practitioners of Indian foreign relations wedded to ethics and/or realism? A related question is, who they were around 1947. It is advisable to start with attempting an answer to the second question. The most inﬂ uential Indian leaders were: M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel. As to Pakistani leaders, there was only one: M.A. Jinnah. The two most prominent British personalities—towering far above all these Indian and Pakistani leaders—were Louis and Edwina Mountbatten. This list obviously reﬂ ects an emphasis on the Partition of 1947, which demands an explanation. The explanation is also obvious. Some of the most important and persistent problems of post-1947 foreign relations of India (even in 2007, the last year broadly covered by this book) can be traced to Partition. These problems lie in the domains of foreign-defence policy interface, and domestic-foreign policy interface. These, again, can be telescoped into problems emerging from what, for lack of a better phrase, can be depicted as Pakistan-sponsored international Islamic or Jihadi terrorism. This phenomenon of extraordinary force and complexity appeared in an embryonic form as early as 1947, and, as of 2007 or 2009, has not ceased to grow.1 This has signalled a collapse of the scenario presumably constructed by the Indian leaders (mentioned above) who conceived and operationalised Partition in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the ways they actually did around 1947. In this is latent, the ethical and realistic propensities of these leaders, who, after the lapse of 60 years, may be notionally confronted with an alternative scenario animated by a greater degree of ethics and realism. It is essential for this purpose to examine whether the main Indian architects of Partition seriously pondered the cataclysmic consequences—short

1 Madhav Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition: An Inquest, New Delhi: Rupa, 2006, pp. 428, 469–71. 2 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

term and long term—of Partition. The short-term and fully visible consequence was the massacre of around two million persons, and the displacement or forced migration of about 18 million persons. No national/international court has ever been set up to ﬁ x responsibilities for (at least) the murders, and award punishments to the guilty.2 As to the long-term consequences of Partition, these included forced conversions, involuntary migration, etc. (easily observable in East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh even in 2007). But the most important cataclysmic and nearly irreversible consequence has been the perpetuation and consolidation of communal (Hindu-Muslim) antagonisms mutating into Jihadi terrorism. Jihadi terrorism was recognised rather late—in the wake of several wars and decades of arms races between India and Pakistan, destroying the very rationale of Partition. For, if there was any justiﬁ cation of Partition, it was that Partition was the only way out of a civil war.3 In both quantitative and qualitative terms, human suffering caused by a civil war (whatever the duration) would have been incomparably less than what has been caused—and what will continue to be caused—by wars and Jihadi terrorism.4 In order to appreciate the impact of Partition on India’s foreign relations, one has to look before and after 1947, and review the actions and thought processes of the chief Indian architects of Partition. This may bring to the fore an alternative scenario of actions and thoughts which, if adopted, could have averted Partition, and minimised (though not eliminated) the resultant human suffering. It is advisable to begin with M.K. Gandhi, and scrutinise his thoughts and actions. Undoubtedly, Gandhi was an indefatigable advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity. But some of his decisions and actions tended to disrupt rather than develop this unity. One can go back to the Khilafat Movement launched by Gandhi after the First World War.5 It fanned Muslim separatism. Moreover, it Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

2 Ibid., pp. 425–27. 3 Ibid., pp. 214–22. 4 Ibid., p. 439. Shashi Tharoor, Nehru: The Invention of India, New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2003, p. 154. 5 Gandhi failed to grasp the signiﬁ cance that in Turkey itself, the home of caliphs, ‘the anti-European freedom ﬁ ghters under Mustafa Kamal Pasha themselves abolished the institution that, in their opinion, had lost its relevance as well as prestige’. No talk of political tactic could condone this intellectual lapse in Gandhi. For the quotation in this note, see D.R. Goyal, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni, A Biographical Study, New Delhi: Anamika, 2004, p. 127. Introduction 3

aggravated the antagonism between Hindus and Muslims because, in the course of the Khilafat Movement, the agitators suffered from goal displacement, and, instead of treating the British as the main adversary, they fought and killed a large number of Hindus.6 Gandhi was so embarrassed by this development that he deliberately underestimated the number of Hindus slain by Muslim agitators. Evidently, Gandhi did not think of, or foresee, the consequences of the Khilafat agitation. Similarly, he failed to comprehend the consequences of rejecting the Government of India Act of 1935. With a few amendments, this Act remained in the Constitution of free India for three years after 1947. Gandhi rejected the 1935 Act without even reading it, something he confessed to as late as 1944. Mountbatten is correct—at least once—when he observes that the 1935 Act, if accepted, could have averted Partition. In addition, post-1947 India’s foreign relations might have escaped some very agonising episodes. (Nehru too proved himself to be devoid of both ethics and realism when he described the 1935 Act as a ‘charter of slavery’.)7 The next question is this. Was Gandhi unaware—as he was in the case of his decision on the Khilafat agitation—of how his dictate to the provincial governments (run by the Congress Party) to resign in 1939 contributed to separatism and Partition? Obviously, M.A. Jinnah could deftly utilise the power vacuum created by the Congress Party’s political abstinence, and spread the message of Muslim separatism throughout India.8 How is it that, while taking momentous decisions, Gandhi would not calculate the consequences?9 Moreover, Gandhi’s directive on the resignation of Congress ministers in eight provinces suffered from a host of anomalies and/or inconsistencies. On 3 September 1939, Britain declared war Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 6 Koenraad Elst, Negationism in India, New Delhi: Voice of India, 1993, p. 55; Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day, London: Jonathan Cape, 1997, p. 192. 7 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 255. 8 The following comment satirically illustrates how Gandhi facilitated Jinnah’s task: ‘Jinnah is on record to have claimed: “I have won Pakistan with the help of my Secretary and his typewriter”.’ M.H. Saiyid, The Sound of Fury: A Political Study of M.A. Jinnah, New Delhi: Akbar Publishing House, n.d., p. 347. Saiyid was Secretary to M.A. Jinnah. Also see Stanley Wolpert, Shameful Flight, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 8. 9 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 444; Tharoor, Nehru, p. 117. 4 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

on Germany. The same day, Lord Linlithgow, India’s then viceroy, declared India to be a belligerent country. He further promulgated an ordinance to deal sternly with domestic disturbances during the war. On 11 September 1939, he also postponed, until the end of the war, the introduction of the federal constitution in accordance with the 1935 Act. Meanwhile, on 6 September 1939, Gandhi met Viceroy Linlithgow and issued an important statement to the press. The statement underlined India’s duty to cooperate with Britain in a moment of danger, even though differences over India’s independence persisted.10 This was quite consistent with Gandhi’s views, expressed in the meetings of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), which took place in September 1938, at the outbreak of the Munich crisis in Europe. At that time, Subhas Chandra Bose was the Congress president, and he despaired of the fact ‘that Gandhi regarded a struggle with Britain in the near future as outside the domain of possibility’. In fact, Subhas even attributed this estimate to ‘Gandhi’s old age’.11 In October 1939, Congress ministers in eight provinces resigned, in refusal to cooperate with Britain in the prosecution of the war. A movement of passive resistance against British rulers for expediting India’s independence, as advocated by Subhas, would have been consistent with the Congress decision to withdraw from provincial governments. But Nehru and Gandhi took a different line. On 20 May 1940, Nehru said, ‘Launching a civil disobedience campaign at a time when Britain is engaged in a life and death struggle would be an act derogatory to India’s honour’. Similarly, Gandhi said, ‘We do not seek our independence out of Britain’s ruin. That is not the way of nonviolence’.12 Such inconsistency in the approach of Gandhi (or Nehru) persisted. In June 1940, when France succumbed to the German invasion, Subhas had a lengthy discussion with Gandhi. Subhas appealed to Gandhi asking him to lead a passive resistance movement against

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the British Indian rulers. However, Gandhi simply repeated his earlier view that ‘the country was not prepared for a ﬁ ght and any attempt to precipitate it, would do more harm than good to India.’13

10 Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian Struggle, Kolkata: Natyachinta Foundation, 2005, pp. 426–27. 11 Ibid., pp. 422–23. 12 Ibid., p. 432. 13 Ibid., p. 431. Introduction 5

This tale of inconsistency in Gandhi (and the Congress) probably reached an inglorious climax on 14 July 1942, when the CWC adopted a Quit India resolution, which proclaimed an immediate end to British rule in India. The cleavage between Gandhi and the Congress was conﬁ rmed (if at all any conﬁ rmation was needed) with Gandhi looking upon this Wardha resolution as a call for an ‘open rebellion’, whereas the resolution clearly stated that if the appeal of the CWC was not heeded, ‘the Congress would then reluctantly be compelled to utilise, under the inevitable leadership of Gandhi, “all the non-violent strength it has gathered since 1920, when it adopted non-violence as part of its policy for the vindication of its political rights and liberty”’.14 The contradiction pervading the thoughts and actions of Gandhi and the Congress became all the more glaring with statements such as the following:

Expressions in the resolution itself, such as, that the Congress has no desire whatever “to embarrass Great Britain or the Allied Powers in their prosecution of the war”, or “jeopardize the defensive capacity of the Allied Powers”, or that the Congress would be agreeable to the stationing of the armed forces of the allies in India for defensive purposes if India was free, clearly show that the idea of the desir- ability of an understanding with Britain and the possibility for realizing this desired understanding was still in the minds of some Congress leaders.15

On 4 August 1942, the CWC passed a fi nal draft resolution, which, according to the Manchester Guardian, adopted ‘a more constructive approach’ than the Wardha resolution of 14 July, because it assured that Free India would ‘throw all her great resources’ on Britain’s side in the war.16 On 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) passed this resolution in Bombay, and ‘Gandhi, in a stirring ninety minute speech, gave expression to his determination to fi ght to the fi nish even if he stood alone against the whole world’.17 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 The British refused to interpret this as a language of non-violence. They arrested top-ranking leaders like Gandhi and Nehru and kept them in jail for several years during the Second World War.

14 Ibid., p. 439. 15 Ibid., p. 440. 16 Ibid., p. 441. 17 Ibid., pp. 441–42. 6 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Once again, M.A. Jinnah took advantage of this situation and successfully promoted the idea of Partition.18 Gandhi and his followers could be accused of lack of foresight and vision. Top-ranking Congress leaders were at least physically safe inside prison. However, many ordinary Indians, unprepared and leaderless, lost their lives and destroyed their careers by joining the Quit India campaign. Moreover, it was impossible for Gandhi to answer why he had reversed his earlier stand: (i) that the Indian people were not prepared for any large-scale passive resistance against British rulers; and, (ii) that India should not try to obtain independence at the expense of Britain’s destruction in a war, more so because by 1942 the war situation had become all the more precarious, especially with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese on 15 February 1942. While Gandhi did not bother about such contradictions, as also the inordinate facilities granted to Jinnah, ordinary mortals might raise the question of whether Gandhi was devoid of common sense and/or devoted to the British design of partitioning India.19 On a number of critical occasions in his career, Gandhi decided to fast unto death for the fulﬁ lment of political objectives. The prevention of India’s Partition was certainly a supreme objective. Before the 1946 provincial elections, therefore, Gandhi assured voters that Partition could only take place over his dead body. His assurance moved not only Hindus but also Muslims, so that, despite Jinnah’s energetic campaigns in the preceding years, the Muslim League won only 429 out of a total of 1,585 seats in the provincial assemblies. Yet, when talks on Partition were proceeding apace, Gandhi never threatened to go on fast unto death. Why? Was it because he was aware that as early as 31 August 1945, the Secretary of State for India had placed before the India and Burma Committee of the British Cabinet a plan for India’s Partition, which was nearly Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

18 Narendra Singh Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition, New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2005, p. 117. 19 As Stanley Wolpert writes, from August 1942 to the end of the Second World War, Viceroy Linlithgow allowed leaders like Gandhi and Nehru ‘to rust behind British bars’, whereas Jinnah ‘took advantage of his wartime freedom to enhance the prestige of his Muslim constituency’ and ‘kept demanding nothing less than a sovereign Muslim nation of Pakistan’. See, Wolpert, Shameful Flight, p. 9. Introduction 7

indistinguishable from the Mountbatten Plan of 3 June 1947?20 Moreover, by December 1946, the Congress Party was ready to accept Partition. Can it then be argued that Gandhi deceived the Indian people in the matter of his promise to reject Partition, and thereby created enormous problems for post-1947 India’s foreign relations? This deception became all the more glaring when Gandhi (and other Congress leaders), instead of combating Partition, began to preach that Partition would be short-lived, and that eventually India and Pakistan would endorse reuniﬁ cation.21 In this context, it is instructive to refer to Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s assessment of ‘Indian nationalist leaders’, including obviously Gandhi. He writes:

They had shown an adamantine opposition to any partition of India, declaring that to accept it would be acceptance of the “two-nation” theory. Yet in the space of only seven days in March 1947 they accepted the proposal made by the British government to partition India. This deﬁ ed even the wildest calculation of probabilities.22

Gandhi’s capacity for self-deception and lack of elementary comprehension of realities is incredible. This assessment arises from plausible responses to a number of questions. For instance, did Gandhi refuse or fail to understand the complex circumstances confronting the subcontinent, or, did he intend to add confusion to complexity? In March 1947, at the age of 46, Mountbatten became the viceroy of India with a mandate from London to transfer power by June 1948.23 Gandhi had to think deeply over whether, ﬁ rst, he would press for an immediate transfer of power around March 1947; second, whether there was to be a transfer of power before or after

20 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 284. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 21 Ibid., pp. 308–9. 22 Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 19. Jaswant Singh, a former external affairs and defence minister of India, correctly observes: ‘…it has to be said, and with great sadness, that despite some early indications to the contrary, the leaders of the Indian National Congress, in the period between the outbreak of war in 1939 and the country’s partition in 1947, showed in general, a sad lack of realism, of foresight, of purpose and of will.’ See Jaswant Singh, Jinnah India–Partition Independence, New Delhi: Rupa, 2009, p. 495. 23 Sudhir Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, London: Cresset Press, 1967, p. 198. 8 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Partition; and, third, whether the British army should be used to minimise the inevitable clashes and losses of lives and properties on account of a mere announcement of Partition. On none of these three points could Gandhi claim clear, consistent or realistic thinking. On 1 April 1947, Mountbatten received a shocking suggestion from Gandhi: M.A. Jinnah and his Muslim League colleagues should be immediately asked to form the Central Interim Government. The next day, on 2 April 1947, Gandhi agreed with Mountbatten on Partition, but wanted Mountbatten to not only head the central government, but also to retain veto power until June 1948. On 3 April 1947, Gandhi repeated his plea before Mountbatten that Jinnah should be invited to form the central government, and that, until June 1948, Mountbatten should be in-charge at the centre.24 On 12 April 1947, Gandhi asked Mountbatten to stop the use of the armed forces to quell the riots, while admitting that he had failed to persuade his own party colleagues in riot-torn Bihar not to use troops, and to stick to non-violence and self-sacriﬁ ce. It may be pertinent to argue that, despite the announcement of Partition on 3 June 1947, the process of transfer of power could have been completed by the originally scheduled date of June 1948.25 This would have created a chance for a less disorderly and violent movement of population, a partially planned and peaceful exchange of people/property, as also for a less irreversible feeling of animosity between Hindus and Muslims, thereby pre-empting the perpetuation over the following decades of hatreds/conﬂ icts between individuals/governments.26

24 See Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 244–47; Tharoor, Nehru, p. 152. Remarkably, even Subhas Chandra Bose was willing to have Jinnah as ‘the ﬁ rst Prime Minister of Free India’. See Bose, The Indian Struggle, p. 432. 25 As M.H. Saiyid, Jinnah’s secretary, writes: ‘As a direct result of the Award, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a mass exodus of population began. Emigration from either side was no doubt the natural consequence of partition, but had the Boundary Award remained in abeyance for some time the much accelerated speed of mass movements would have been considerably checked and both the countries would have gained time to negotiate an agreement on a peaceful exchange of population.’ See Saiyid, The Sound of Fury, p. 333. Note that the Boundary Award means the Radcliffe Award. 26 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 344–48. As Stanley Wolpert writes: ‘I believe that the tragedy of Partition and its more than half century legacy of hatred, fear, and continued conﬂ ict—capped by the potential of nuclear war Introduction 9

However, on 5 May 1947, in an interview granted to a Reuter’s correspondent, Gandhi renounced his earlier (and repeated) preference for transfer of power by June 1948, as also for Mountbatten heading the central government until that date. He said that the British should leave immediately, even if that led to anarchy or chaos due to communal hostilities. Gandhi even argued that such a fi ery experience would purify India. On 10 May 1947, in a letter to Mountbatten, Gandhi urged that the Congress and the Muslim League should be allowed to sort out the issue of Partition after the departure of the British. On 30 May 1947, Gandhi publicly commented that India was suffering from momentary insanity, and asked the British if they had the courage to establish Pakistan in such a situation. On 31 May 1947, in his prayer meeting, Gandhi announced that he would not accept Pakistan, even if Muslims used force to achieve it and even if the entire territory of India was afi re. Yet, on 14 June 1947, at the meeting of the AICC, he pleaded for Partition, absolved himself of the guilt of Partition, warned that Partition would harm the country, and lamented that his party colleagues were ‘impatient for independence’.27 Although Gandhi did not say it, gaining independence actually was a euphemism for grabbing of high offi ces of political power by a few. If we keep in mind this quest for high political offi ces, we may realistically review how Jawaharlal Nehru acquitted himself in the course of negotiations on transfer of power. Nehru was of an impatient, imperious and intolerant disposition. His love of power was in sharp contrast to his utter lack of experience in government positions. For a brief period, in the 1920s, he had presided over the municipality in Allahabad.28 The jump from that position to the position of vice-president of the viceroy’s Executive Council (the Interim Government) was too high to be smoothly negotiated. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

over South Asia—might well have been avoided, or at least mitigated, but for the arrogance and ignorance of a handful of British and Indian leaders. Those ten additional months of postwar talks, aborted by an impatient Mountbatten, might have helped all parties to agree that cooperation was much wiser than conﬂ ict, dialogue more sensible than division, words easier to cope with and pay for than perpetual warfare.’ See Wolpert, Shameful Flight, p. 2. 27 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 245, 249. 28 Tharoor, Nehru, pp. 51–52. 10 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Nehru occupied this post on 2 September 1946. Meanwhile, the British had kept him in prison for a total of 3,251 days, including the period from August 1942 to 15 June 1945. As early as November 1946, Nehru demonstrated his love of power and aversion to democratic decorum in dealing with the Congress Party. At the time, Nehru went to London for talks with the British government. J.B. Kripalani, then Congress Party president, read about it in the press. Kripalani told Nehru that he should have been informed of the decision to take part in the London talks. At this, Nehru not only expressed his annoyance, but also arrogantly queried whether the withholding of information from Kripalani mattered at all.29 Nehru was fond of imagining himself to be the prime minister in the Interim Government. Since the reality was far different, and Nehru was eager to exercise much more of substantial authority (than he actually had), he would sometimes threaten to resign. In fact, he was so impatient that as late as 17 May 1947 he told Mountbatten that the Interim Government should be equated to the Government of a British Dominion, although this was a totally unrealistic plea.30 Acquisition of political power at the earliest was the principal concern of Nehru and his Congress colleagues (including Vallabhbhai Patel). They did not bother much about the horrendous impact of Partition upon millions of powerless individuals. Consequently, while Nehru (and, to a lesser but signiﬁ cant extent, Patel) carried out vital negotiations on transfer of power, he did not hesitate to ignore the AICC or CWC. Partition was not discussed, for instance, on 1 May 1947, when the CWC met to discuss how the country could establish communal amity. In June 1947, when the proposal for Partition was placed before the CWC and the AICC, these venerable bodies had hardly any opportunity to debate. They could only put the stamp of endorsement.31 Nehru’s fondness for the exercise of unfettered power Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

29 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 257. 30 Ibid., p. 256. 31 Ibid., pp. 256–57. On 3 June 1947, Mountbatten broadcast the message of transfer of power and creation of Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru followed him. It is logical to ask why Nehru and the Congress now accepted the Pakistan proposal, ‘though it had been rejected and blasted as “insulting” ﬁ ve years earlier, when Cripps made it’. See Stanley Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 397. Introduction 11

was coupled with the chronic tendency to lose his temper, which could not be explained away by strenuous work schedules. After all, the strain of work could be reduced by sharing power, which Nehru was not prepared to do. Addiction to power, and, among other things, the resultant over- strain, appeared to affect Nehru’s mental balance. He exhibited this in ways totally unbecoming of a future prime minister of a great country like India. For example, on two occasions—30 October and 10 November 1946—Lord Wavell noticed that Nehru was on the brink of nervous collapse. Mountbatten repeatedly warned Nehru to control his temper if he was to run the administration after Mountbatten’s departure. In fact, Mountbatten frequently played the role of sounding board for Nehru, who used to air his grievances openly to Mountbatten. In June 1946, when the Cabinet Mission to India was engaged in crucial negotiations on transfer of power, Nehru visited Kashmir. He behaved in such an irresponsible and hot-headed manner that the Maharaja of Kashmir put him under arrest. Subsequently, with 15 August 1947 barely 17 days away, Nehru wanted to revisit Kashmir on a private matter. Afraid of a recurrence of the embarrassing episode in June 1946, Mountbatten and Patel restrained Nehru from visiting Kashmir a second time. Nehru wept in Patel’s presence on this occasion because Kashmir was more important to him than any other matter.32 Addiction to power, hot-headedness, an unsteady mind and selective sentimentalism (selective because Nehru did not appear to pay any heed to the sufferings of the countless Partition victims), all of these prevented Nehru from being a person fully ﬁ t for the post of India’s prime minister. The situation was further aggravated by his awkward, romantic relationship with the viceroy’s wife (Edwina Mountbatten), a relationship Lord Mountbatten found greatly helpful, especially since he was not jealous.33 Undoubtedly,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the relationship between Nehru and the vicereine enabled Viceroy Mountbatten to enhance his capacity for political manipulation

32 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 224–25, 258–61. 33 Tharoor, Nehru, pp. 148–49, 168, 201; Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 254–55. Also see, Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, pp. 171, 176, 208–10, 213, 276, 298–99, 314–15, 323–30, 335, 337, 339–41. 12 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

vis-à-vis Nehru. Correspondingly, this also reduced Nehru’s infl u- ence (if any) over Lord Mountbatten. In fact, it is plausible to fi nd here an explanation of how Lord Mountbatten succeeded in advancing the date of the fi nal transfer of power from June 1948 to August 1947, thereby pandering to Nehru’s desire for power as soon as possible, and also facilitating Mountbatten’s early return to England for occupying a coveted military position.34 All this naturally enhanced Lord Mountbatten’s political control over Nehru, especially because, as Lord Wavell recognised, Nehru suffered from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis Englishmen in certain situations. Sentimentalism might have exacerbated this sense of inferiority, and thus impelled Nehru, on 27 August 1947 for instance, to write to Mountbatten. In the letter, Nehru stated his irresoluteness as the reason behind the act, except the need to unburden his mind. Mountbatten promptly replied the next day, talking of their mutual friendship. Mountbatten also tried to expand his political infl uence over Nehru, as Governor General vis-à-vis the prime minister of India, by stressing that their friendship would be of help to both in encountering the diffi culties before them. Prime Minister Nehru agreed, overlooking the transgression of constitutional decorum, for Governor General Mountbatten could send personal/confi dential letters to the English monarch. Governor General Mountbatten tried—although he did not always succeed—to infl uence Nehru on who should be his Cabinet colleagues.35 If one were to add a remarkable lack of realism to all the aforementioned traits of Nehru, especially on international affairs, it would strengthen the view that Nehru was not really equipped to occupy the post of prime minister of India. For example, in 1937, in the important American journal Foreign Affairs, Nehru pointed out that India did not suffer from a communal or religious problem, and that contests for power among upper-class persons were to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 be equated to this problem. Certainly, in 1947, this assessment of Nehru was proven totally unrealistic. Again, on 12 April 1938,

34 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 310–11. After the passage of the Indian Independence Bill on 17 July 1947, Prime Minister Attlee congratulated Mountbatten on ‘managing to jump a lot of awkward hurdles’, and acknowledged that ‘Edwina has played a great part in creating the new atmosphere’ in which Mountbatten could succeed. See Wolpert, Nehru, p. 403. 35 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 262. Introduction 13

Jinnah, in a letter to Nehru, remarked that Nehru’s obsession with international politics prevented him from comprehending the hard realities confronting India. To some extent, perhaps, Nehru’s preoccupation with international politics signified a quest for glamour and publicity. Otherwise, it was diffi cult to explain how, during March–April 1947, when India was yet to attain formal independence, and communal feuds were raging in different parts of the country, Nehru convened an Asian Relations Conference, and harped on equality of peoples and races forming one world. Again, on 9 August 1947, at a public meeting in Delhi (when Punjab and many other areas were engulfed in communal disturbances), Nehru propounded a Monroe Doctrine for Asia, demonstrating that his reputation for unrealistic thinking was reinforced by immaturity. Moreover, Nehru desired that, soon after 15 August 1947, India’s combat aircraft should be mobilised to help freedom fi ghters in Indonesia. The Indian Air Force somehow dissuaded Nehru from launching this action, which was as adventurous as it was unpractical and mired in problems of international law. (No wonder that Lord Wavell called Nehru ‘emotional’ and ‘quixotic’.)36 It is fair to argue (going back to certain characteristics of Nehru mentioned earlier) that Nehru was also unfi t for the post of external affairs minister of India. Yet, his love for power and international publicity impelled him to not only occupy the post of prime minister, but also external affairs minister of India. He did not realise that in mid-1947 the tasks of the prime minister of India could prove too onerous, even if he had been free of certain dysfunctional traits. In this context, it is essential to remember Mountbatten’s comment on what would have happened had Nehru, and not Patel, taken charge of the department dealing with the knotty problems of hundreds of princely states in India: ‘I am glad to say that Nehru has not been put in charge the new States Department, which would 37

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 have wrecked everything’. Mountbatten characterised Patel as ‘essentially a realist and very sensible’. Obviously, Nehru did not possess these qualities attributed to Patel. In fact, Mountbatten took advantage of Nehru’s lack of realism (and Nehru’s capacity for wrecking India’s vital interests) when, in 1948, Nehru yielded

36 Ibid., pp. 224, 262–63. 37 Ibid., p. 260. 14 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

mainly to Mountbatten’s pressure, and committed two grievous errors with calamitous consequences upon key areas of interface between domestic and foreign/defence affairs. The fi rst error was to refer the Jammu-Kashmir issue to the United Nations (UN) without fi rst evicting the Pakistani invaders from Indian territory. The second—and even more unpardonable—error was to stop military action against these invaders at a time when they were about to be thrown out of Indian territory (forcing Pakistan to plead for a ceasefi re). The long-term consequences of these errors continue to affl ict India even after six decades. Since one cannot re- enact the events since 1947–48, one can only construct alternative scenarios, while suffering from the excruciating thought of what was lost and what could have been gained. Militarily, in 1947–48, as admitted by Field Marshal Ayub Khan himself, Pakistan was incomparably weaker than India. Still, on account of the errors mentioned, Pakistan got away with a windfall gain of nearly one third of Jammu-Kashmir. This prompted the Pakistani rulers to believe that India’s rulers lacked realism and self-confi dence, and that it would not be entirely unsafe if Pakistan took risky ventures to grab Indian territory, with foreign military assistance if required. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) was an invaluable strategic asset, and, snubbed by India, the United States (US) planned to recruit Pakistan as a military ally in the 1950s. Offi cial and non-offi cial sources in Pakistan left no doubt that Pakistan pretended to join America in an anti-Communist alliance system, although its real aim was to counteract India’s military superiority. The US on its part chose to be deceived by Pakistan.38 The chain reaction of consequences has been amazing: India– Pakistan arms races, wars and proxy wars; India’s political-military dependence on the Soviet Union on account of the compulsion to seek Soviet support at the UN on the Jammu-Kashmir issue, which

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 again led to India being branded as pro-Soviet and anti-American; the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan (which India never openly criticised), which was used by Pakistan to accumulate arms/money (donated by America) and also to launch or patronise Jihadi onslaughts upon India and many other countries; Pakistan’s full-scale support to the Taliban for gaining ascendancy in Afghanistan; 9/11

38 Jayanta Kumar Ray, Public Policy and Global Reality: Some Aspects of American Alliance Policy, New Delhi: Radiant, 1977, Chapter 3. Introduction 15

and Pakistan being compelled by America to join the anti-Taliban war (while Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI continued to support the Taliban and such allied agencies as Al-Qaeda). Unavoidably, this is a brutal summary of developments since 1947, and especially since 1954 when Pakistan signed a military pact with America. In the case of almost all these developments, India’s role was dangerously (and at times humiliatingly) reactive and never proactive. All these developments could have been forestalled if Indian leaders (Gandhi, Nehru, Patel) had played a proactive part in 1946–47 to avert Partition. The task of torpedoing the Pakistan proposal (and Partition) could not be deemed to be unmanageable in view of the following facts. At a press conference on 14 July 1945, Congress President Maulana Abul Kalam Azad afﬁ rmed the following:

In the provinces where Muslims were in a majority, there was no League Ministry. There was a Congress Ministry in the Frontier Province. In the Punjab it was a Unionist Ministry. In Sind, Sir Ghulam Hussain depended on Congress support and the same position was in Assam. It could not, therefore, be claimed that the Muslim League represented all the Muslims. There was a large bloc of Muslims who had nothing to do with the League.39

For example, Wali Khan, the son of Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, commented that the Partition of India was actually the Partition of Muslims. Mushirul Hasan has made an insightful comment about Partition: ‘Never before in South Asian history did so few decide the fate of so many. And rarely did so few ignore the sentiments of so many in the subcontinent.’40 Of these few decision makers, Gandhi, Nehru and Patel must not be allowed to escape the indictment of history that they have been

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 39 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: An Autobiographical Narrative, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1959, p. 116. For a conﬁ rmation of Azad’s assessment, read the resolution of the Working Committee meeting of the Jamiat Ulema (chaired by Maulana Madni) on 28 June 1945, which declared that Jinnah’s ‘Muslim League could not be treated as the sole representative of the Muslim community, that there were other organizations of the community that had made more sacriﬁ ces and had therefore better standing among people’ in Goyal, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni, p. 203; also see p. 202. 40 Mushirul Hasan (ed.), India’s Partition — Process, Strategy and Mobilisation, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 41. 16 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

largely responsible for Partition and the resultant consolidation of communal antagonism evolving into what was by 2007–8 the most intractable problem in India’s foreign relations: international Jihadi terrorism, piloted by Pakistan, which takes advantage of India’s competitive electoral politics, and even threatens to destroy India’s secular-democratic order. This author regretfully praises Jinnah, because he achieved what he set out to do, and India’s great leaders failed to counteract him, even though, according to Mountbatten, Jinnah was ‘a psychopathic case’, and completely lacked any ‘sense of responsibility’.41 Undoubtedly, the British engaged in manifold manoeuvres to divide their Indian empire, and only then depart from India.42 Mountbatten masterminded these manoeuvres after his arrival in India, although these had started much earlier. Any other British viceroy would have done the same thing—with or without the same skill, and with or without the aid of the wife. What was really unfortunate was the abysmal failure of Indian leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel to outrival a 46-year old British military ofﬁ cer, despite their supposed and widely publicised greatness. When, without offering much resistance, they surrendered before the proponents of an entirely unethical and unrealistic Partition, they laid the foundation for a glaring incapacity to conduct, in most cases, India’s foreign relations in an ethical and realistic manner. Since this book is on India’s foreign relations, and Nehru remained India’s prime minister as also its external affairs minister for 17 years, his failures have handicapped his successors over the decades. For readers habituated to hero-worshipping Nehru and never having the time or inclination to scrutinise facts, this may appear to be a harsh judgement. Actually, it is a lenient judgement. For, in the ﬁ rst week of September 1947, Prime Minister (and External Affairs Minister) Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister Patel confessed to unmitigated

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 bankruptcy, and begged Louis Mountbatten to govern India as its de facto supreme ruler. They plaintively pleaded that spending long years in British jails had left them with little idea of how to administer India. As the de jure Governor General, Mountbatten

41 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 265. 42 For a simple sample of such manoeuvres by Viceroy Linlithgow in 1940, see Goyal, Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni, p. 205. Introduction 17

said he could govern India (terminating his holiday in Shimla), provided he was asked to be the Chairman of an Emergency Committee of the Cabinet, to nominate the members of this Committee, and take decisions in the name (but not with the consent) of Nehru and Patel, without having to confront any delay born of arguments and discussions. Nehru (and Patel) agreed to this humiliating re- birth of British colonial rule (even if temporary). These events have been shrouded by secrecy, either by destroying government documents or withholding access to them. Nehru’s pathetic surrender to Mountbatten—a prelude to his momentous failures in managing the foreign relations of post-independence India—remains largely unknown, except to a few iconoclastic researchers.43 A ﬁ nal word about the relevance of a debate on Partition in the post-9/11 world. During 1942–45, British India’s foreign secretary, Sir Olaf Caroe, vigorously argued for a united independent India, and opposed Partition. According to him, like the British Empire in colonial times, an independent united India, with strong connections with Britain in the Commonwealth, could not only play an important part in managing the defence of Asia but also in shaping the global balance of power.44 ‘Openly vetting the strategic case against partition…. Caroe found a sympathetic ear in the India Ofﬁ ce. Authorities there agreed that’ a united and powerful India was vital to Asia’s security.45 Eventually, Caroe’s recommendation for a united India did not prevail. As to the great Indian leaders wasting their time in British prisons, they were probably not aware of, or interested in, Caroe’s defence of a united India based on strategic and geopolitical arguments. ‘In the aftermath of the Cold War, however, and more recently of 9/11, United States policy has increasingly come to recognize the centrality of the subcontinent in the defence of Asia.’46 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

43 Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, New Delhi: Vikas, 2007, pp. 396–98. Also see Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Mountbatten and Independent India, New Delhi: Vikas, 1984, pp. 30–34. 44 Peter John Brobst, The Future of the Great Game, Akron, Ohio: The University of Akron Press, 2005, p. 15. Also see Stephen F. Burgess, ‘India and South Asia: Towards a Benign Hegemony’, in Harsh V. Pant (ed.), Indian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World, New Delhi: Routledge, 2009, p. 235. 45 Brobst, The Future of the Great Game, p. 17. 46 Ibid., p. 14. 2 Non-alignment: Pronouncements and Practices

Any discussion on the theory and practice of non-alignment has to commence with the uncomfortable task of waste disposal. It is an enormous heap of waste, full of nebulous notions, illicit generalisations, self-fl attering myths and shibboleths of hero-worship. Take, for instance, the claim by T.N. Kaul, a former foreign secretary of India, that the concept of non-alignment originated from India’s non- violent struggle for independence, and became its replica in foreign relations. This claim merrily sweeps aside the fact that India’s struggle for freedom was too complex a phenomenon to be oversimplifi ed as a non-violent struggle. T.N. Kaul supports this claim by a series of awkward observations. To quote just one observation will suffi ce to underline the importance of the above-mentioned task of waste disposal. ‘The concept of nonviolence of Gandhi was translated to the international fi eld by Nehru who pleaded for world disarmament in the UN from 1954 onwards.’1 In order to glorify non-alignment, it is not enough to refer to the name of M.K. Gandhi. There are other names—notably, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The ancestry of non-alignment can be traced to the former’s farewell address, and the latter’s inaugural address. On this occasion, however, the catchphrase is not non-violence but evasion of entanglement in alliances.2 The comparison between post-1947 India and post-independence United States of the 18th century is totally invalid. The vast geographical Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

1 T.N. Kaul, India and the New World Order, vol. 1, New Delhi: Gyan, 2000, p. 263. 2 A.K. Damodaran, ‘Non-aligned Movement and its Future’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, p. 126. Damodaran is a former secretary to India’s Ministry of External Affairs. Non-alignment 19

distance between America and Europe provided a cushion against potential enemies, as also facilitated the pursuit of autonomy in foreign policy and avoidance of alliance. In case of India, there was no geographical isolation from Pakistan, the hostile neighbour, who started a war against India in a few weeks following Independence. As to autonomy in foreign relations, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru struck at its roots immediately after Independence by abdicating power in favour of Louis Mountbatten, who virtually dictated India’s Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) policy, the evil effects of which still persist in the fi rst decade of the 21st century. If professional diplomats can engage in fl ights of fancy to sanctify non-alignment, academics can go much further. For instance, it has been argued3 that non-alignment challenges the salience of power in international relations, and thus elevates the moral standards of international relations. Such arguments may safeguard the vanity of the relatively powerless countries that have formed the majority of non-aligned countries. But they do not correspond to the realities of world politics before, after, or during the Cold War of the 20th century, and non-alignment derived whatever justifi cation it claimed from the complex power play of Cold War days. It is no use denying or defl ating the importance of various tangible and intangible components of power, which are ceaselessly employed in the conduct of international relations. Any attempt to detach non-alignment from the realities of power politics may even co-exist with an indefensible idolisation of leading proponents of non-alignment. Thus, when an academic who denigrates power politics writes ‘Sukarno, Tito, Nkruma and other nationalist leaders were sound theoreticians who held social philosophies that must have taught to them the principles of independent policy-making on the basis of concrete assessment of world affairs’, he forgets that all these three leaders were notorious 4

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 for their dictatorial proclivities. Moreover, as the same academic illustrates, a deﬂ ation of realities of power may degenerate into an

3 Zaheer M. Quraishi, ‘Relevance of Nonalignment’, India Quarterly, January- June 1994, p. 2. 4 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 20 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

abandonment of national interest as the key determinant of foreign policy. Thus, he writes:

Nonalignment is, therefore, a policy stance which undermined the power orthodoxy and was suspicious of relying exclusively on national interests as a source of foreign policy. In fact, the concept of national interest is a simplistic dictum based on a psychological tautology stating that every individual is prone to act according to the best of his ability, knowledge, judgement and conviction.5

Such is the logical outcome of an illogical exposition of non- alignment!

Elusive Defi nition: Realpolitik Exponents of non-alignment knew that it was impossible to defi ne the concept, and exceedingly diffi cult even to describe it logically, to defend it in a proper historical perspective, or even to extol it morally without deforming realities. Yet the compulsions of idolisation are so overpowering that when, on 26 September 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru made a misleading statement on non-alignment, there was no writer for decades to question its logic or morality. Nehru’s radio speech of 26 September 1946, when he was a member of India’s Interim Government, stressed that alliances gave rise to the two world wars and caused infi nite devastation in the world.6 This was a shocking oversimplifi cation of the realities that had led to the two world wars. One could go further and suggest to the votaries of Western liberal democracy (including this author) that the fact the two wars eventually drew America within the victorious alliance system proved that had it not been for America’s entanglement into this alliance, Western liberal democracy (in countries like France, for example) would have collapsed. This collapse would have been one of the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 most shattering blows to humanity. Again, if one considers Hitler’s aggressive and warlike acts before the Second World War, one cannot attribute them to rival alliance systems. On the contrary, the war

5 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 6 See, for example, A.P. Rana, ‘The Nehruvian Tradition in World Affairs: Its Evolution and Relevance to Post-Cold War International Relations’, in Nalini Kant Jha (ed.), India’s Foreign Policy in a Changing World, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 2000, p. 32. Non-alignment 21

led to the emergence and consolidation of rival alliance systems, which, as already stated, ensured the survival of Western liberal democracy, and introduced the same to the defeated countries, viz. Germany and Japan. Votaries of non-alignment—especially Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru—excelled in denouncing post-1945 Western military alliances (including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO) of which some members were weak small countries like Turkey or Iran. ‘Nothing irritates the thinking citizen of a small country like Turkey or Iran more than Mr. Nehru’s blanket condemnation of pacts and alliances.’7 An enlightened citizen of Turkey would question Nehru’s knowledge of history as also post-1945 realities. For centuries, Russia (subsequently the Soviet Union) engaged in manoeuvres to establish its domination over Turkey and earn access to the Mediterranean. Turkey’s own military capabilities were not enough to preserve its independence till the Second World War. The balance of power strategy pursued by England and Germany was an effective antidote to Russian/Soviet ambitions. After 1945, Turkey faced an extremely unsafe situation. The United States had demobilized and withdrawn its troops from Europe, while the Soviet Union was establishing its control over the East European countries. It was after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia that the United States responded, and brought into existence the NATO. Armed with NATO membership, Turkey could avail of a boosted physical security, and psychological strength; no statesman of a non-aligned country has the moral right to pass any philosophical judgement on Turkey’s decision to join the NATO. Iran, too, could offer a similar argument for entry into the Western alliance system, and thereby safeguard its own freedom from Soviet domination.8 A related, though serious, criticism of self-righteous pontiﬁ cating by exponents of non-alignment (like Nehru) was that, despite their

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 legitimate craving for independence for non-aligned countries, and abhorrence of Western colonialism, they remained almost blind to the post-1945 history of the East European countries, which were compelled to submit to Soviet hegemony. New Delhi never hesitated, and rightly so, to denounce Western colonial rule. However, colonial rule had various manifestations, and post-1945 Soviet rule over

7 A.D. Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, Bombay: Jaico, 1958, p. 260. 8 Ibid., pp. 261–64. 22 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

East Europe was one such manifestation. As early as March 1946, the CWC candidly observed, ‘the old imperialism still continues and in addition new types of imperialism are growing’. It denounced efforts to ‘hold on to colonial areas’ as also to ‘create satellite states’.9 But New Delhi consistently refrained from criticising Soviet colonial rule over East Europe, which was totally antithetical to the creed of non-alignment. Nevertheless, the query that was somewhat shocking and unanswerable was this. What ‘made the [Indian] Prime Minister on the death of Stalin, the savagest of dictators according to the testimony of his own follower Khrushchev, adjourn Parliament and eulogize him as a Man of Peace’.10 Occasionally, one did notice cracks in New Delhi’s wall of pro-Soviet orientation. For example, in October 1948, at the Commonwealth Conference, India endorsed the military alliance called the Brussels Pact.11 In 1950, India opposed the Soviet-backed North Korean military adventure in South Korea, and endorsed the UN resolution declaring North Korea an aggressor. At the time, Nehru told an American journalist that the Soviet Union was adopting a ‘nationalistic expansionist policy’.12 In a widely circulated essay entitled Nonalignment, Swaran Singh, who was then India’s external affairs minister, rebuked the critics of non-alignment in the following words: ‘Most of those who have reviled it [i.e. non-alignment] have not even troubled to deﬁ ne it for themselves.’13 Swaran Singh may be right, but only if he adds that opponents cannot be really blamed as long as the proponents of non- alignment do not themselves take care to deﬁ ne it. This carelessness can give rise to criticism, which the proponents and practitioners of non-alignment consider to be unfair. A dramatic illustration of this appears in the writings of retired Indian diplomats who ‘were privileged to play some part in implementing our foreign policy in the years following our Independence’.14 These diplomats were Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

9 A.G. Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, Bombay: Jaico, 1970, p. 5. 10 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, p. 267. 11 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, p. 2. 12 Ibid., p. 7. 13 Sardar Swaran Singh, Nonalignment, New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, External Publicity Division, 1972, p. 1. 14 The quotation is from P.N. Haksar’s ‘Nonalignment: Retrospect and Prospect’, Mainstream, 26 May 1979, reproduced in Strategic Digest, July 1979, p. 411. Non-alignment 23

habituated to doing many things in the name of non-alignment without ever bothering to defi ne it. They continued this practice for such a long time, from the days of Jawaharlal Nehru to the days of Indira Gandhi, that they equated whatever they did to non-alignment. Since there was no defi nition of non-alignment, when the 30-year reign of the Congress Party in New Delhi gave way to the Janata Party rule during 1977–79, the new party too began to affi rm that whatever they did conformed to non-alignment. The Janata Party went one step ahead by claiming to practise ‘genuine’ non-alignment without, again, defi ning it. Consequently, some retired diplomats, who practised non-alignment during the Congress rule, have considered it proper to criticise severely the Janata Party’s brand of non-alignment, quietly forgetting that a similar criticism applied equally well to their brand of non-alignment. P.N. Haksar, for instance, complains that in the Janata Party brand ‘there is greater involvement with phrases than with meaning and substance’.15 T.N. Kaul, again, appears to be thoroughly allergic to the use of the word ‘genuine’.16 Kaul bitterly observes that ‘“genuine” only raises doubts in our own mind and that of others that perhaps we have not been “genuine” in the past’.17 Bitterness can be an ally of candour, and Kaul makes some observations which indicate that criticisms and counter criticisms of non-alignment rest not merely upon the absence of a defi nition but upon the much more important matter of the relationship between non-alignment and realpolitik. The doctrine of ‘genuine’ non-alignment seems to insinuate that previously India was friendlier with USSR than with the United States and the new doctrinaires would now seek to ‘redress the imbalance’.18 Kaul retorts:

A mere show of ‘genuine’ nonalignment is not going to fool anyone. It is only a cover to hide a pro-Western stand and is not even ‘neutrality’. What does it really mean? That we are not more friendly with the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 USSR than with China or the USA?19

15 Ibid., p. 426. 16 T.N. Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, Delhi: Vikas, 1979, pp. 5–6, 236, 238–39. 17 Ibid., p. 239. 18 Ibid. p. 6. 19 Ibid., p. 238. 24 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Furthermore, writes Kaul ‘Why should a nonaligned country ignore its own interests and be equally friendly with two great powers—one of whom is friendly and the other hostile to her?’20 These comments by Kaul point to the root of the criticisms and counter criticisms about the practice of non-alignment: the practitioners can honestly take certain measures in defence of national interests, and others can, equally honestly, notice in these measures the familiar exercises in realpolitik. Certainly, a state has an incontestable right to engage in realpolitik. Certainly, observers, too, can look upon some moves of realpolitik to be pro-Western or pro-Soviet. In fact, in the same period, the Nehru era for example, a commentator can choose different criteria (for example, the quantity of economic aid received from various sources, or voting behaviour in the UN on some issues) to depict India’s foreign policy as pro- Western or pro-Soviet. A country’s interests are diverse, and measures to promote these interests may vary with time, may not be fully consistent with one another, and may not always conform to high moral principles. Consequently, a country like Pakistan, ‘America’s most allied ally in Asia’21 in the middle of the 1950s, succeeds in joining the 1979 conference of non-aligned countries in Havana as a full member. This provides an excellent example of the lack of defi nition of non-alignment, for Pakistan’s military pacts with America (signed since 1954) did not stand abrogated. This also points to the fundamental query of whether non-alignment—and alignment—merely represent different forms of (though not mutually exclusive) exercises in realpolitik. In order to answer this query we have to fi nd out whether non- alignment, although undefi ned, stands for some aims which can differentiate it from alignment. We have also to fi nd out whether a country like India, proclaiming non-alignment, can demonstrate

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a steadfast intention and proved capacity to further those aims. When we survey the writings of India’s political leaders, viz., Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, external affairs ministers, or of Indian diplomats and foreign secretaries, we ﬁ nd frequent references to

20 Ibid., p. 6. 21 Mohammed Ayub Khan, ‘Pakistan American Alliance’, Foreign Affairs, January 1964, p. 195. Non-alignment 25

Nehru’s speeches and repeated affi rmations of the following aims: preservation of (a) political independence, (b) world peace, and (c) independence of opinion and action on every issue.22 As to (a) and (b), a country like Britain, which is an aligned country, can certainly claim that its membership of the NATO has not only safeguarded its political independence, but strengthened the cause of world peace by averting war and aggression. It may be quite pertinent for British policy makers to claim that the aims of alignment and non-alignment are identical in terms of preservation of political independence and world peace. As to (c), policy makers of a country will never concede that they have to sacrifi ce independence of judgement and action by adopting a policy of alignment. In 1956, Britain and France defi ed America when they launched an invasion of Egypt.23 France struck a sharp posture of independence when it began to build an autonomous nuclear force in defi ance of America.24 In actuality, the degree of independence varies remarkably from case to case, and no country, aligned or non-aligned, can enjoy absolute independence in any case. Policy makers of any country, aligned or non-aligned, encounter a variety of pressures, internal and external, on every important issue. Responses of policy makers represent an accommodation of these pressures, and vary from case to case. Barring exceptions, these responses are exercises in realpolitik, and the question of independence or impartiality may not necessarily be relevant. At any rate, supporters and opponents of a response can always fi nd some evidence strengthening or vitiating the plea of independence

22 Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches, New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications Division, 1961, p. 2 (speech broadcast on 7 September 1946), 38 (speech in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Constituent Assembly, 8 March 1949), 48 (speech at the Indian Council of World Affairs, 22 March 1949), 54 (speech in Parliament, 7 December 1950), 66–69 (speech in Lok Sabha, 25 February 1955), 71 (speech in Lok Sabha, 2 September 1957), 79–80 (speech in Lok Sabha, 9 December 1958). Indira Gandhi, India and the World, Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, External Publicity Division, New Delhi, 1972, pp. 5–6. 23 Hugh Thomas, The Suez Affair, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1970, pp. 60–66, 101, 148–49. 24 Albert Legault, Deterrence and the Atlantic Alliance, Toronto: Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 1966, pp. 76–80, 96. 26 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

or impartiality. Consequently, it may be nearly impossible to identify a response to an issue as speciﬁ cally connoting non-alignment or alignment. Take, for instance, the issue of anti-colonialism. India can certainly be proud of its record on this issue. But pressures of circumstances, honest differences in interpretations of high principles, and considerations of realpolitik may lead any country—including India—to take certain steps, which others may interpret as supportive of colonialism. Thus, in the early 1950s, India permitted Britain to operate four depots in this country which supplied Gurkha recruits to the British army ﬁ ghting a war in Malaya. Faced with the accusation of pro-colonialism, Prime Minister Nehru initially denied, and subsequently acknowledged, the existence of these depots.25 At the Cairo conference of non-aligned countries, held from 5 to 12 June 1961, India opposed the participation of the provisional government of Algeria. Subsequently, India submitted to the majority opinion, and withdrew its opposition. Meanwhile, India was accused of a lack of adequate sympathy for the anti-colonialist struggle in Africa.26 India welcomed the formation of Malaysia in 1963.27 To India, this was a measure of decolonisation. But, to Indonesia, another stalwart among the non-aligned states, this was subservience to British colonialism. In fact, this was an important matter of discord between India and Indonesia in those days. As to the use of force for the purpose of decolonisation, Indonesia accused India of double standards. India used force in 1961 to liberate Goa from Portuguese domination. But India had been advising Indonesia to resort to peaceful methods for freeing West Irian from Dutch domination.28 Cuban troops played an important part in the decolonisation of Angola. Although it is a matter of debate whether Cuba played this part at its own initiative or on orders from Moscow,29 there is little Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

25 Crossroads (Bombay), 3 August 1952, p. 8; 17 August 1952, pp. 8–9. 26 Editorial, The Statesman, 17 June 1961. 27 India, Lok Sabha Debates, Vol. 21, 1963, Col. 6280. 28 India, Rajya Sabha Debates, Vol. 19, 1957, Cols 2346–48, 2357–58; India, Lok Sabha Debates, Vol. 10, 1957, Col. 5880. 29 Hugh O’Shaughnessy, OFNS (Observer Foreign News Service) in The Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta), 30 May 1978. Also see, Haksar, ‘Nonalignment’, pp. 422–23. Non-alignment 27

doubt that the Government of India and those Indians who had the opportunity to think about these matters, in general, appreciated Cuba’s role. Suppose, however, that in collaboration with a new protagonist of non-alignment, viz. Pakistan, Cuban forces landed in Kashmir to fi ght for the national self-determination of the Kashmiris, Indians would certainly hasten to revise their opinion about Cuba. Eritreans deeply resented the colonial stranglehold of Ethiopia led by Emperor Haile Selassie. They received enormous aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union in their struggle for independence against Ethiopia. When a government proclaiming socialist revolution replaced Haile Selassie’s government, Eritreans found Cuba and the USSR switching their loyalty towards Ethiopia, which itself happens to be a non-aligned country.30 These are only a few illustrations to show that realpolitik—a shifting amalgam of high principles and cold self-interest—governs some of the complex foreign policy moves of a country, be it Cuba or India. The phrase ‘non-alignment’ is thoroughly inadequate as an explanation of these moves. Circumstances facing a non-aligned country may even be such that (leaving out exceptions) the country may fi nd it diffi cult to express independent views on controversial issues—not to speak of independent actions. For years, India was so dependent on America (for food or economic aid for the implementation of Five-Year Plans), and on the Soviet Union (for military-industrial technology or political support at the UN on the Kashmir issue), that it was hardly possible for India to express opinions freely on issues considered sensitive and vital by America or the Soviet Union. Thus, in 1956, Prime Minister Nehru refrained from condemning the Soviet intervention in Hungary.31 In 1958, he refrained from condemning American intervention in Lebanon. The explanations offered by Nehru are signifi cant in terms of realpolitik. In the case of Hungary, 32

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 he did not want to say anything that might worsen the situation. In the case of Lebanon, he afﬁ rmed: ‘Who are we to denounce?

30 Ian Murray, dispatch to The Times (London), reprinted in The Statesman, 29 May 1978. 31 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, p. 12. 32 The Times, 4 July 1957. 28 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Who are we to hold forth the light to others? We have enough dark- ness in our own minds.’33 In 1961, Nehru expressed a mild and oblique disapproval of American intervention in Cuba. This caused annoyance to America. Subsequently, Nehru adopted a view that must have removed this annoyance. Nehru said that he was not competent to pass any judgement on the rights and wrongs in the Cuban case, and that, according to available data, American citizens did not land in Cuba.34 Nehru thus showed a realistic respect for the security concerns of a super power. He had paid a similar respect to the security concerns of the Soviet Union in a speech on 30 April 1955. He then spoke of India’s refusal to accept the view of some participants at the Bandung Conference that the Soviet Union practised colonialism in East Europe.35 The phrase ‘hegemonism’ was not in vogue in those days. But India did not criticise the fact of continuing Soviet intervention in East Europe. At this stage of our analysis we can point to one valid distinction between non-alignment and alignment. A non-aligned country is one which is not a member of NATO or the Warsaw Pact. But this distinction is not of much signifi cance if one accepts the hypothesis that a non-aligned country can do, and has done, everything that an aligned country does in pursuit of realpolitik—except that it does not enjoy the formal membership of a military alliance. Moreover, this distinction loses whatever little signifi cance it otherwise has if one takes into account the numerous ways of reaping the benefi ts, even without any formal membership, of a military alliance. I give some examples below. In course of the India–China confl ict of 1962, India asked for, and received, military aid from such NATO countries as Britain and America. Offi cers and men fl ew in from America and took an active part in some military operations along with the Indians.36

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Indians began to plead for a ‘military association’ with America whereby the American Air Force would ‘back them up so that they

33 Lok Sabha Debates, Vol. 18, 1958, Col. 1661. 34 The New York Times, 26 April 1961; John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, New York: Signet Books, 1969, p. 96. 35 Haksar, ‘Nonalignment’, p. 415, Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 276. 36 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, pp. 388, 426. Non-alignment 29

can employ theirs tactically without leaving their cities unprotected’.37 India wanted a ‘tacit air defence pact’, ‘semi-military pact’, which would make America ‘contribute the planes: the Indians, the ﬁ elds and ground support. The planes would come into the ﬁ eld in emergencies’.38 Nehru and his then foreign secretary even thought of ‘containment of the Chinese’ by working ‘with the United States both politically and militarily in the rest of Asia’.39 Undoubtedly, the fear of America lining up with India was an important factor deterring China from advancing further into Indian territory and explained the abrupt withdrawal by Chinese forces.40 Galbraith satirises aptly,

And I am inclined to think they [the Chinese] took Nehru’s talk about nonalignment seriously and were honestly surprised at the speed with which we reacted. If they move again, they must wonder what they will provoke and what will happen to their very long supply lines.41

After all, ‘you cannot be nonaligned towards a threat of war to your own country’, Nehru himself observed.42 A.G. Noorani has aptly commented,

The world of unreality was rudely shattered by the Chinese invasion. Russia could neither restrain China nor help India…. The non-aligned, following our example, believed that ‘the essence of nonalignment is to be non-aligned’—even to truth. The West rushed in with support without any military alliance. India now realized what she had never realized before: her non-alignment could exist only if the West’s military strength contained the East’s.43

By 1971, circumstances changed so much that India invoked Soviet military support as a deterrent to the threat of probable Sino- American intervention in the Bangladesh crisis. India took the initiative in signing a Treaty of Friendship and Peace with the USSR. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

37 Ibid., p. 424. 38 Ibid., pp. 438–39; also see p. 477. 39 Ibid., p. 456. 40 Ibid., pp. 425, 433. 41 Ibid., p. 444. 42 Quoted in Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, p. 116. 43 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 8–9. 30 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The Soviet people ‘may have been a little surprised but they did not hesitate’.44 The treaty, signed on 9 August 1971, provided for ‘immediate consultations’ to remove a threat of attack upon either party. T.N. Kaul, the then foreign secretary, is understandably anxious to preserve the honour of the phrase ‘nonalignment’, when he writes: ‘This was the sovereign right of any country and non- alignment did not mean we would not enter into consultations with others.’45 Kaul, however, does not stick to the view of consultations counteracting threats when he adds:

The treaty served as a warning to China and America to keep their hands off the subcontinent. Although, China made some noises, she did not physically intervene; America was more audacious and sent its Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal hoping to frighten India and Bangladesh. It had the opposite effect. The Seventh Fleet would not dare to land in Bangladesh because they knew Soviet submarines were following them.46

Indian military operations in Bangladesh succeeded too well to need any recounting. Benefi ts of the treaty were obvious. India enjoyed them without formally entering into a military pact (like the Warsaw Pact). It was futile for Indira Gandhi to plead that the Indo-Soviet Treaty was not ‘aimed against any country’.47 When this writer refers to the aforesaid Indian moves in 1962 and 1971, he does not try to comment on the adequacy of threat perception or the quality of crisis management in the Government of India, as that is beyond the scope of this chapter. What he intends to emphasise is that Indian policy makers were taking those moves in defence of the country’s interest, and thus giving a priority to considerations of realpolitik rather than to preserving the purity of an undefi ned (and possibly indefi nable) phrase ‘non-alignment’. It is instructive to recall that some passages in Nehru’s vital speeches,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 enunciating non-alignment, endorse this priority, although Nehru’s protégés in politics and administration have never indicated (in what they say or write) their acquaintance with those remarkable passages.

44 Ibid., p. 196. 45 Ibid., p. 195. 46 Ibid., p. 196. 47 Gandhi, India and the World, p. 14. Non-alignment 31

As early as 4 December 1947, in a speech before the Constituent Assembly, Nehru observed:

We may talk about peace and freedom and earnestly mean what we say. But in the ultimate analysis, a government functions for the good of the country it governs and no government dare do anything which in the short or long run is manifestly to the disadvantage of that country. Therefore, whether a country is imperialistic or socialist or communist, its foreign minister thinks primarily of the interests of that country.48

On 8 March 1948, in a speech49 at the Constituent Assembly, Nehru said:

It is certainly true that our instructions to our delegates have always been to consider each question ﬁ rst in terms of India’s interest and secondly on its merits—I mean to say if it did not affect India, naturally, on its merits—and not merely to do something or give a vote just to please this power or that power, though, of course, it is perfectly natural that in our desire to have friendship with other powers, we avoid doing anything which might irritate them… I have come more and more to the conclusion that the less we interfere in international conﬂ icts the better, unless, of course, our own interest is involved, for the simple reason that it is not in consonance with our dignity just to interfere without producing any effect. We should either be strong enough to produce some effect or we should not interfere at all.

In the same speech he added:

It may be that sometimes we are forced to side with this power or that power. I can quite conceive of our siding even with an imperialist power—I do not mind saying that; in a certain set of circumstances that may be the lesser of the two evils…. I am not prepared to rule

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 out the possibility of our subordinating our viewpoint in international conferences in order to gain something worthwhile. That is perfectly legitimate, and it is often done.

48 Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 28. 49 Ibid., p. 33. 32 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In a speech before Parliament on 7 December 1950, Nehru afﬁ rmed:

The most relevant fact at the moment is that there are some great nations in the world with concentrated power in their hands that infl uence all the other nations. That being so, there is a confl ict between these powerful nations—an ideological confl ict as well as a political confl ict…. Although there is a great deal of talk about ideologies, I doubt if they come into the picture at all except as weapons…. I can only say that in every matter that comes up we have friendly consultations with a large number of countries…. I am on my country’s side and on nobody else’s.50

In a book published in 1979, T.N. Kaul, a foreign secretary under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, has repeatedly pleaded for preserving a tilt towards the Soviet Union in India’s policy of non-alignment, because the Soviet Union has been a friend in need, and India is high on the list of Soviet foreign policy priorities (in contrast to the American list).51 Kaul has thus expressed a preference for realpolitik, which is reminiscent of Nehru. In a Lok Sabha speech of 12 June 1952, Nehru commented:

It has repeatedly been said that we incline more and more towards the Anglo-American bloc…. That some people obsessed by passion and prejudice disapprove of our relations with Anglo-American bloc is not sufﬁ cient reason for us to break any bond which is of advantage to us.52

It is noteworthy how some other countries practise realpolitik in the name of non-alignment. In particular, one should point to instances of non-aligned countries gaining the advantages of a military alliance without formal membership of such blocs as NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Afghanistan, Kampuchea, Vietnam, and Cuba—all are non- aligned countries. In the 1980s, Afghanistan had thousands of Soviet

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 military advisers engaged in direct combat by the side of government troops ﬁ ghting rebel forces. This prompted China to call Afghanistan ‘the 16th Republic of the Soviet Union’.53 The Vietnamese stationed,

50 Ibid., pp. 35–36. 51 Ibid., pp. 53–54. 52 Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, pp. 6, 154, 239, 243. 53 Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 59. Non-alignment 33

in the same period, an estimated 100,000 soldiers in Kampuchea in order to prop up the Heng Samrin government, whereas a treaty with the Soviet Union assured Vietnam of Soviet military support.54 Cuba, which was excessively dependent on the Soviet economic subsidy, had a brigade of Soviet troops on its soil, while, in the 1970s, a large number of Cuban soldiers were stationed in several African countries.55 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve into the rights and wrongs of the exceedingly complex military situations noted in this paragraph. But one can certainly stress that all these non-aligned countries—Afghanistan, Cuba, Kampuchea, Vietnam—were reaping the beneﬁ ts of a military alliance without formally joining the blocs led by America and the Soviet Union. They were certainly entitled to safeguarding their national interests by means of realpolitik, although they might thereby appear to reduce non-alignment to rhetoric. As A.G. Noorani puts it, non-alignment is not more or less moral than alignment. He quotes Nehru on this point: ‘I do not think it is purely idealistic: I think it is, if you like, opportunistic in the long run.’56

Non-alignment Movement At the sixth summit conference of the non-aligned countries, held in Havana in September 1979, even the rhetorical value of non-alignment was threatened with extinction. For, a number of states, under Cuban leadership, made determined, even though unsuccessful, efforts towards identifying the non-aligned countries with the Soviet bloc. Cuba and its supporters looked upon the

54 For some comments on the situation in Afghanistan, see Gavin Young, OFNS dispatch, in The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 21 October 1978; Editorial, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1 April and 20 September 1979; Editorials, The Statesman, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 7 August, 18 September and 17 October 1979; Reuters report, The Statesman, 19 October 1979. In 1980, the number of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan rose to nearly 100,000. By the end of 1980, the USSR’s military expenditure in Afghanistan was estimated to stand at 2–4 billion US dollars, and the number of soldiers from the USSR dead at 2,000–3,000. See M. Binyon, dispatch to The Times, reprinted in The Statesman, 3 January 1981. 55 Mark Frankland, OFNS dispatch, in Amrita Bazar Patrika, 25 January 1979; Denis Gray, AP dispatch, The Statesman, 8 February 1979; The Statesman, 20 March 1979. 56 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, p. 14. 34 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Soviet bloc as the natural ally of the non-aligned countries. Others differed, and resisted the Cuban manoeuvres. The disarray of the doctrine of non-alignment was at its deepest. Proceedings at the conference revealed more of the rivalries in realpolitik than unity over the meaning of non-alignment. Even on such matters as fi xing up the list of speakers, giving them proper notice, arranging press conferences, and the reporting of conference proceedings by Cuba’s offi cial news agency, the host country, Cuba, grossly discriminated against countries which refused to push non-aligned countries towards the Soviet bloc.57 The malady was old, and it struck at the essential feature of non- alignment, viz. aloofness from alliances and two Cold War blocs. Even at the fi rst summit of non-aligned countries in Belgrade in 1961, for example, a sort of proxy war was launched by some countries led by President Sukarno of Indonesia on behalf of the Soviet bloc. According to him, Western imperialism was responsible for all the sufferings in the world. India tried to moderate the intensity of this war, as Nehru urged that the non-aligned countries should concentrate on the most important threat to the world, that is the threat of common destruction of humanity in case of a nuclear showdown between two Cold War blocs.58 At the second summit of non-aligned countries in Cairo in 1964, again, Sukarno and some African leaders directed a proxy war against Western colonialism, while ignoring Soviet colonialism in East Europe. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of India, however, distracted the attention of non-aligned countries from such a proxy war. He stressed peaceful co-existence between the Cold War rivals, peaceful settlement of disputes, and nuclear disarmament.59

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 57 W.W. Unna, The Statesman, 2 and 7 September 1979. Cuba reportedly receives a daily subsidy of $1 million from the USSR. This cannot but militate against the pursuit of an independent foreign policy by Cuba. See V.M. Nair, The Statesman, 13 October 1979. 58 S. Krishnamurthy, ‘Indonesia: Militant Anti-Imperialism’, in K.P. Karunakaran (ed.), Outside the Contest: A Study of Nonalignment and the Foreign Policies of Some Nonaligned Countries, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1963, p. 127; Deva Narayan Mallik, ‘Belgrade, New Phase’, in ibid., p. 200. 59 Kapileshwar Labh, ‘Intra-Non-Aligned Discords and India’, India Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, January–March 1982, p. 67. Non-alignment 35

India, under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, tried to reinforce the unity of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) at the third summit held in Lusaka in 1970. She reminded NAM members of attempts by powerful countries, especially the two super powers, to subjugate the poor countries economically, as also to create disunity by spreading distrust and suspicion.60 That India’s attempt had little success became clear at the fourth NAM summit in Algiers in 1973, where the surrogates of Cold War adversaries asserted themselves vigorously. While Libya’s Muanmar Gaddaﬁ appeared to take a balanced view by accusing both the super powers of colonialism, Cuba’s Fidel Castro would not put them on the same pedestal, and argued strongly that the Soviet Union deserved favourable treatment from NAM members. Cambodia’s Norodom Shihanouk, however, rejected Castro’s plea. In 1972, America and the Soviet Union reached a détente, and India welcomed it at the Algiers summit of NAM. But India alerted NAM countries against persistent attempts to threaten world peace by, for example, such forms of foreign interference as arms supply to poorer countries on the pretext of preservation of a regional balance of power.61 At the ﬁ fth NAM summit in 1976 in Colombo, too, the surrogates of the super powers were in action, with Singapore pleading for cooperation with the West, and Cuba insisting that the Soviet Union was the chief ally of NAM (a theme paraded in the 1979 Havana summit too, as stated in this chapter already). India warned against attempts to disrupt the unity of NAM, and emphasised that NAM could contribute to world peace only if it preserved its unity.62 Non-aligned countries have long been suffering from a crisis of identity. Rhetorical outbursts cannot resolve this crisis. This is not unexpected in a situation where, as of 1979, 88 countries, with marked diversity in intentions and capabilities, proclaim non- alignment. Perhaps one should quote here Prime Minister Lee

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Kuan Yew of Singapore. At the ﬁ fth summit of the non-aligned

60 Asian Recorder, 10–16 December 1970, p. 9906; Jayantanuja Bandyopadhyay, ‘The Nonaligned Movement and International Relations’, India Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 1, April–June 1977, p. 143. 61 The Statesman, 7 September 1973; Hindustan Times, 9 September 1973. 62 The Indian Express, 18 August 1976; The Guardian, London, 19 August 1976. 36 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

countries, held in Colombo in August 1976, Lee observed: ‘The question I asked myself, as I read through the draft resolutions submitted to this conference was: who am I uniting with, and for what objectives and purposes, and against whom?’63 This leads one easily to the hypothesis that a country can preach or practise non-alignment as long as it does not raise the fundamental question raised by Singapore at the fi fth summit. Burma raised the same question much more sharply and purposefully at the sixth summit when it demanded the appointment of a committee to redefi ne the principles of non-alignment, and the qualifi cations for membership of the non-aligned group. This legitimate demand was turned down. Burma left the non-aligned group.64 ‘Nonalignment’ remained an overworked phrase in search of a meaningful defi nition. Disunity in NAM often caused the movement to teeter on the brink of chaos. With the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war on 22 September 1980, a crisis occurred. It was not possible to hold the seventh NAM summit in Baghdad in 1982 (as resolved in the Havana summit of 1979). Eventually, the seventh summit took place in New Delhi, 7–12 March 1983. India got hardly six months’ notice to host such a big conference: 97 members (of whom one was absent), four new members admitted at the summit, 16 observers, and 27 guests. India deserved great credit for the smooth management of this conference. Much more creditworthy was the ability to draft political and economic declarations which were so circumspect as to obviate large- scale amendments, even though there were appreciable additions. Prime Minister Indira referred to NAM in her keynote address as the largest peace movement witnessed by history. Unfortunately, and ironically, although NAM was created to safeguard world peace, its members themselves generated confl icts, for example, in Southeast Asia and West Asia. Actually, these overshadowed the tensions among NAM members caused by Cold War rivalries.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Moreover, when one super power (America) mediated a peace pact between Egypt and Israel on 26 March 1979, that too created bitter

63 See William Borders, The New York Times, 22 August 1976. Also see Malcolm W. Browne, The New York Times, 20 August 1976. 64 For some facts and comments, see The Times of India, 9 and 12 September 1979; Editorial, The Statesman, 15 October 1979. Non-alignment 37

discord among NAM members. NAM’s ostensible objectives are universalistic. But a study of the summit declarations would reveal how regionalism superseded universalism, and Asian, African, European, and Latin American groups inscribed their narrow agendas in summit declarations. This was a major reason why the political and economic declarations of the 1983 NAM summit fi lled 119 pages. Moreover, the fi nal documents of the summit covered 157 pages.65 India remained NAM Chairperson till 1986, when the eighth summit took place in Harare. It, therefore, had ample opportunity to apply its diplomatic skills before and during the summit for the purpose of promoting solidarity in NAM, or, at any rate, for moderating clashing viewpoints among NAM members. It will not be unfair to affi rm that these diplomatic skills were telescoped into drafting skills. Consequently, a large part of the Harare Declarations seemed to repeat, as also refl ect, the judiciousness of the New Delhi Declarations. The Harare summit paid the greatest attention to the South African question. The 52 paragraphs of the Political Declaration, however, could not substantially advance the emancipation of the people of South Africa from racial discrimination. The summit advised member states to impose selective and voluntary sanctions upon South Africa, while expecting the international community to devise compulsory and comprehensive sanctions. Since the application of sanctions by South Africa’s neighbours might have lead to retaliation by South Africa, the Harare summit brought into existence a Solidarity Fund for Southern Africa. India took the initiative in setting up this Fund, and became Chairman of the nine-member committee established at the summit to deal with the matter urgently. One traditional item in all NAM summits was the condemnation of the super powers for undue interference in the internal affairs of weaker countries. Libya was

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 subjected to a brief American assault in April 1986. Washington was annoyed at being denounced 54 times in Harare; in New Delhi the number was 30, and only 14 in Havana. However, it should

65 For an elaborate analysis of some of the points mentioned in this paragraph, see M.S. Rajan, ‘The Seventh Nonaligned Summit’, in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy 1982–83, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1983, pp. 53–60. 38 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

be added that in Harare some NAM members sharply criticised one another for undue intervention in internal affairs, notably in South and Southeast Asia. The Political Committee witnessed a walkout by the Iranian representative, because a draft paragraph advocated ceasefi re in the Iran-Iraq war.66 One traditional, though ritualistic, agenda in all NAM summits is the plea for disarmament, although Muanmar Gaddafi of Libya called this appeal, and the entire NAM, ‘a big farce’ and ‘a funny movement of international fallacy’. For, in Gaddafi ’s view most NAM members were incapable of self-defence. He reversed his stand at the 1973 Algiers summit, and argued that NAM could not do without the support of the Socialist bloc. If Gaddafi ’s outburst was a disquieting feature for NAM—whose members were growing, but not prestige—equally unsettling was the persistence in substitution of regionalism for universalism.67 When the fi rst NAM summit met at Belgrade in 1961, it paraded the precocious pastime of bringing about peace in a world torn by the Cold War, which, in its view, sanctifi ed non-alignment. By the time the ninth NAM summit met in Belgrade again in 1989, the super powers had reached a substantial reconciliation and had renounced the Cold War, whereas the 102 NAM members had failed to solve any problem of peace and war affecting them (for example, the Iran-Iraq confl ict, the Afghanistan-Pakistan confl ict, etc.). Para- doxically, instead of successfully moderating the rivalries among the super powers, NAM itself appeared to change—at least in the ninth summit in 1989—on account of a transformation of relations between the Cold War captains. This was refl ected in virtually the most effective domain of NAM, the domain of words. In the past, summit declarations sometimes covered as many as 250 pages (which could not probably be read by anyone except highly paid offi cers, many of them Indians, who burnt the midnight oil to exercise

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 their extraordinary drafting skills). This burlesque of verbiage— noble sentiments, ignoble propaganda and counter-propaganda,

66 M.S. Rajan, ‘Eigth Nonaligned Summit Conference’, in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy 1985–86, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1988, pp. 97–107. 67 Ibid., p. 96. Also see, The Statesman, 4 and 5 September 1986; Editorial, The Statesman, 9 September 1986. Non-alignment 39

ambitious impracticable assertions, boundless rhetoric and unsavoury compromises—ended with the ninth NAM summit of 1989 and its 10-page declaration. It was businesslike, avoided homilies and platitudes with an ideological garb, and concentrated on the priority sectors of peace, development, security, disarmament, human rights, and multilateralism. Among the 102 NAM members, nearly 60 were tiny states ever dependent on Big Powers for economic sustenance or military support. A consolation prize for the NAM summit in 1989 was the entry of Australia as an observer, and Canada as a guest. As to Indian diplomats, they continued to excel in building consensus through their superb drafting skills.68 The irrevocable irrelevance of NAM was conﬁ rmed in every summit, including the ninth summit in 1989. However, in 1990, NAM received an almost knockout blow from Iraq, when, to enhance its status in West Asia and to solve its unmanageable problem of foreign debt, a non-aligned Iraq invaded a weak but immensely rich non-aligned country, Kuwait. The timing was inopportune because its old patron, the Soviet Union, was facing tremendous economic and political problems, obliging it to maintain good relations with the West, especially the United States, which by then had emerged as the sole super power. China joined the Soviet Union in supporting the American initiative at the UN Security Council to condemn Iraqi aggression and impose sanctions upon Iraq. America assembled an unprecedented armada in the Gulf, and launched a multi-country military action to rescue Kuwait. The story of Iraq’s defeat need not be recounted here. But the discomﬁ ture of NAM should now be depicted (and, later, the accumulated and continuing dysfunctionalities of India’s foreign policy). Yugoslavia was then the NAM Chairperson and steeped in its own domestic ethnicity crises. It strongly denounced Iraqi aggression, and convened a meeting of the NAM Coordinating Bureau in New York at the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 UN premises. The Iraqi delegate boycotted this meeting, which unanimously condemned Iraq, and recommended the withdrawal of Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Yugoslavia duly invited the NAM members to join the international community in resolving the

68 Inder Malhotra, The Times of India, 31 August 1989; The Statesman, 4 September 1989; Shekhar Bhatia, The Telegraph, 4, 5 and 8 September 1989. Editorials, The Telegraph and The Statesman, 11 September 1989. 40 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Gulf crisis. All these were symbolic gestures, attesting to the chronic inability of NAM to achieve anything signiﬁ cant in world affairs.69 India’s performance during the seven-month long occupation of Kuwait by Iraq was incredibly inept. It demonstrated India’s habitual failure to achieve a balance between constraints of domestic politics and compulsions of foreign relations, as also to rely on clichés to cover up this failure. The cliché in domestic politics was secularism, which degenerated into vote bank politics, encouraged communalism, and supplanted secularism. In foreign affairs, the cliché was non-alignment, negating a proper comprehension of vast changes in global realities. When Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, India’s immediate response was an unpardonable silence. Next came an extraordinary statement, which appeared to cast doubts on which country was the aggressor, although it asked for withdrawal of Iraqi troops. India did not have the moral courage or pragmatic sense to criticise Iraqi aggression before the lapse of several days. During the Gulf crisis, the ﬁ ve permanent members of the UN Security Council acted virtually as the ‘Super Policeman’ of the world, and President Gorbachev went so far as to recommend this role for future contingencies. India had the option to be an associate of this Super Policeman. But it failed miserably, while Pakistan was alert and decided to send soldiers to Saudi Arabia. India remained so enmeshed in the cobwebs of minority politics at home, and anti-Americanism cum non-alignment abroad, that it rightly provided refuelling facilities to American combat aircraft, but wrongly withdrew them soon. The Congress Party was not in power in New Delhi, although it extended support to the then government of Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar. As S. Nihal Singh put it,

The song and dance Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress Party made of the issue of refueling American military aircraft was a clear indication to the world that he was using the Gulf crisis for his domestic propaganda Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 purposes. It was a ploy either to win Muslim votes or an attempt to get closer to the communists in an effort to refurbish the Congress’ leftist credentials.70

69 S. Nihal Singh, The Telegraph, 31 August 1990. 70 S. Nihal Singh, The Telegraph, 4 March 1991 and Seema Sirohi, The Telegraph, 4 March 1991. Non-alignment 41

Here, it is pertinent to remind oneself of the unfathomable depth of humiliation suffered by the Indian foreign policy establishment at the time of the Iraq–Kuwait confl ict of 1990–91. At one stage, India’s external affairs minister, I.K. Gujral, visited Baghdad to ensure the safety of Indian workers in Iraq and Kuwait, and arrange their journeys to India. He was peremptorily told to supply medicines before dealing with the Indian expatriate community. For decades, India pampered countries like Saudi Arabia, and ignored Israel thoughtlessly. Perhaps this was a bizarre application to foreign relations of secularism in internal affairs. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia, which availed of the services of hundreds of thousands of Indian workers residing on its territory, did not permit any Indian newsman to visit Saudi Arabia in order to prepare reports on the Iraq–Kuwait War. As to America, it had the broadmindedness and good humour to pardon India for its queer pretensions to non- alignment in the course of the 1990–91 Gulf War, as it had done during the India–China confl ict of 1962.71 The Gulf War provided a timely signal for gradually winding down India’s participation in NAM, suspending thereby a thoroughly wasteful diplomatic exercise, and injecting greater realism in India’s foreign policy. After all, there was nothing, nothing at all, that India could accomplish exclusively through NAM and not through any other international institution within or outside the UN system. Evidently, it was the vested interests of politicians and offi cials that had sustained India’s role in NAM. For example, at the tenth NAM summit in Jakarta in 1992, when, due to a number of factors— including the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, as also the absence of Egypt—NAM was almost a corpse, India tried energetically to keep it alive. As in all previous summits, at the Jakarta summit too India’s great wordsmiths were in action, accomplishing consensus in form and preserving NAM’s unity on paper. ‘NAM

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 would not have moved on if there had been a breakdown at Jakarta. That this did not happen was largely due to India.’72 The Draft Jakarta Declaration for 108 members confronted 130 amendments, and India submitted as many as 41 of them. In order to illustrate India’s skill in averting rifts in the summit, one may refer to the

71 Ibid. 72 Mohit Sen, The Telegraph, 16 September 1992. 42 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

issue of violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A split was about to occur on who was to be blamed formally for this bloodshed. The split could be avoided because Serbia was spared, and local Serbs were held responsible for violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina. ‘It is here our articulate mandarins from South Block seem to make their presence felt very successfully…. It is not surprising to learn that the bright mind which thought of substituting ‘Serbs’ for ‘Serbia’ belonged to the Indian delegation.’73 A few of the areas where India registered success can be noted here. The summit document recognised India’s apprehensions that an overly strict enforcement of trade-related intellectual property rights or TRIPs might suppress innovations. India proposed the establishment of an international fund for improvement of environment and technology transfer, and the Jakarta summit approved it. The summit appreciated India’s concerns vis-à-vis terrorism, abetted and sponsored from a foreign land, and the ﬁ nal document severely condemned it, while distinguishing it from any struggle for national liberation.74 But all these were psychological and/or propaganda victories without any probable impact on ground realities. The phrase ‘non-alignment’ or ‘Third World’ was a myth. Even if 108 countries passed elegant resolutions, they were not taken seriously by advanced countries. NAM countries advocated North-South cooperation, but they failed miserably in promoting even South-South cooperation. They asked for debt relief from donor countries, but it was well known that aid money was not properly used mostly because of massive corruption and limitless incompetence. The seven-page Jakarta message laid stress on, among other things, the protection of human rights. But this was contradicted by Myanmar’s (Burma’s) re- entry into NAM, for Myanmar’s human rights record was dubious, to say the least. A large number of NAM countries themselves developed reservations about NAM. ‘In an organization where

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 membership and attendance were the primary acts of commitment, that only a little over half of the countries bothered to send their rulers to Jakarta is a telling statement as to nonalignment’s bleak future.’75 An interesting but related feature of the Jakarta summit

73 N.J. Nanporia, The Telegraph, 17 September 1992. 74 The Telegraph, 5, 6 and 7 September 1992. 75 Editorial, The Telegraph, 4 September 1992. Non-alignment 43

was the dwindling passion for anti-West (especially anti-American) outbursts. One explanation could be the continuous failure to get multilateral proposals translated into realities, and the inevitable reliance on bilateral negotiations (often appeals) for tangible actions: ‘Bilateralism is therefore what ﬁ nally matters. Each of the 108 NAM members is cultivating its own relationship with the United States and other donor countries. Pragmatism, happily, is at work behind all the Jakarta theatrics.’76 The eleventh NAM summit was held in 1995 in Cartagena (Colombia). Of the 113 countries attending the conference, only 52 chose to be represented by their heads of state. The declining relevance of NAM was evident from the simple fact (in addition to many others) that, although the summit took place in Latin America, important countries of that continent were absent. The economically powerful countries of East Asia, too, remained absent. In these circumstances, it was a minor mystery as to why the then Indian prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, not only decided to attend the Cartagena summit but reached there about 36 hours before the inauguration of the summit. Soon after his arrival, Rao engaged in a number of bilateral meetings. This inspired a belief that India wanted to exercise leadership over NAM, even though, since 1991, India had pursued those policies of liberalisation and globalisation, which could lead to closer links with the Western countries (including the United States), and a weakening of support for NAM. What India could actually gain from such a leadership role was indeed doubtful. At most, India could employ high-sounding phrases to preach the relevance of NAM and the importance of unity among NAM countries to cope with the stresses and strains of globalisation. The talk of unity sounded utterly hollow because of the glaring rivalries among the various groups within NAM, for example, among the countries belonging to the northern and southern regions of Africa,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 or between the members of the Organization of Islamic Conference and non-members, etc.77

76 N.J. Nanporia, The Telegraph, 17 September 1992. 77 Aziz Haniffa, The Statesman, 23 October 1995; J.N. Dixit, ‘Seen, but not Heard: India’s Voice Makes Little Impact at the NAM and UN Summits’, Outlook, 8 November 1995. 44 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

According to some protagonists of NAM, India seemed to score a few diplomatic victories at the Cartagena summit. India was in a position to sabotage Pakistan’s usual effort to drag the J&K issue to the NAM summit.78 But the wastage of time and resources on this was not worth the diplomatic gain. Moreover, India could get 113 countries to support India’s proposal for complete and general disarmament.79 ‘The problem is that passing a resolution in a NAM summit is like winning a painting competition for the blind. It pulls at the heartstrings but has no worth in the real world.’80 It must not be overlooked, however, that nearly all countries which supported India’s disarmament proposal at Cartagena had earlier voted for an indefi nite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), whereas India was opposed to it because it discriminated in favour of the ‘Nuclear Haves’, who wanted to perpetuate their oligopoly. The lack of signifi cance of numerous propositions in the 130-page summit document could be comprehended from the fact that this document obliged India to subscribe to certain things to which it was totally opposed, for example, regional and sub-regional non- proliferation schemes. At a time when NAM could claim little practical signifi cance, it could have tried to substitute utopianism for realism by majestically harping on mega issues of environment, development, transfer of technology, or fundamental human rights. However, even this option could not be availed of due to the acute differences on such issues.81 The 12th NAM summit took place in Durban in 1998. India’s participation in this summit attested to a persistent immaturity and attendant dysfunctionality of the Indian diplomatic establishment. It was well known for years that ‘the NAM’s relevance has eroded because its fundamental terms of reference have become obsolete’, and that, like its predecessors, the Durban summit would be another ‘cosmetic exercise’.82 Whey then did the Indian diplomatic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 establishment take the Durban summit so seriously as to take even

78 Editorial, The Indian Express, 21 October 1995. 79 K.P. Nayar, The Indian Express, 21 October 1995. 80 Editorial, The Telegraph, 24 October 1995. 81 J.N. Dixit, The Telegraph, 23 October 1995; Pranay Sharma, The Telegraph, 23 October 1995. 82 J.N. Dixit, The Hindustan Times, 16 September 1998. Non-alignment 45

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Durban? With the huge diplomatic baggage of several decades, it was not possible to say farewell to NAM formally or openly. However, in the year 1998, when India had the guts to defy the Nuclear Haves (P-5) and hold fi ve nuclear tests, and when it was known even to non-diplomats that most NAM countries would be unhappy with these tests, India could gradually commence the exercise of minimising its role in NAM. This exercise would not have hurt the country’s self-interest in any way. On the contrary, India’s vigorous high-level participation at the Durban summit not only caused an avoidable loss of prestige on some vital issues but also highlighted India’s diplomatic failures. What was worse, with the generous cooperation of media persons, even failures were projected as successes. Take, for instance, the draft NAM Declaration prepared by the host country, viz. South Africa. It contained a number of paragraphs denouncing India’s nuclear tests. Despite their unexcelled capacity for word games, successfully demonstrated in previous summits, Indian offi cials tried in vain for four pre-summit days to change the South African draft on India’s nuclear policy.83 Eventually, the draft was changed only after India threatened to dissociate itself from the NAM Declaration. The fi nal document omitted any direct criticism of the nuclear tests conducted by India (as also by Pakistan whose tests followed India’s), although it ‘noted the complexities arising from nuclear tests in South Asia’, and supported India’s proposal for a global conference on nuclear disarmament, as also for universal compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This was paraded as India’s diplomatic victory.84 Actually, it was a failure, which could have been easily avoided by de-emphasising India’s role in, and commitment to, NAM. The alternative was a massive and cost-ineffective diplomatic manoeuvre to pre-empt criticisms of India’s nuclear policy at the Durban summit. Moreover, why

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 should a prime minister of India appear as a sort of supplicant before a motley crowd of 113 countries (most of whom distinguished themselves by poverty and lack of democracy), and talk of disarmament in seven out of 16 pages of his speech?

83 Hari Sharan Chhabra, Delhi Mid Day, 16 September 1998. 84 Aunohita Mojumdar, The Statesman, 5 September 1998. Also see The Statesman, 6 September 1998. 46 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

To provide another instance of immature diplomacy and self- inﬂ icted injury centring on avoidable preoccupation with a sham called NAM, one has to refer to the speech by President Nelson Mandela at the plenary session in Durban. Mandela made a number of observations on J&K, which violated grossly the NAM summit tradition of avoidance of bilateral issues. No NAM summit Chairman had dealt with J&K in the past. Shockingly, Mandela went so far as to equate J&K with Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Sudan, Libya, Western Sahara, the Middle East, Cuba, Korea, and Cyprus. This clubbing was so absurd that it did not merit any rebuttal. At the banquet hosted by Mandela, the Indian prime minister told him that the references to J&K were completely unacceptable. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki then met Vajpayee ‘to tender an apology for the episode’.85 Indian commentators may retrieve their honour by imagining that an apology was offered. But the truth may be otherwise. As J.N. Dixit wrote: ‘I do not think there was any clearly expressed apology. All that must have been conveyed was the global context in which Mandela referred to Kashmir.’86 The shock imparted by Nelson Mandela’s speech was as much political as emotional, especially because it was so unexpected. Throughout the 20th century, India probably remained the greatest friend of South Africa, while it fought consistently and loudly (despite the annoyance caused to Western countries) for emancipation of South Africa from apartheid.

That Mr. Mandela holds a special place in Indian hearts, and has been identiﬁ ed as one of the champions of our times, is one aspect of the issue; the other, objective, aspect is the failure of the Indian foreign ofﬁ ce, yet again, to prevent diplomatic points being scored against India in the post-Pokhran phase.87

Indian diplomats, evidently, could not probe the change in mindset in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a Mandela in a country addicted to apartheid, and another Mandela leading post-apartheid South Africa. When, in the days of apartheid, white racist rulers gave up the nuclear option, Mandela depicted

85 Hari Sharan Chhabra, Delhi Mid Day, 16 September 1998. 86 The Hindustan Times, 16 September 1998. 87 Editorial, The Asian Age, 4 September 1998; Editorials, The Sentinel, Guwahati, 4 and 5 September 1998. Non-alignment 47

the situation as one of nuclear apartheid. But, as the president of post-apartheid South Africa, Mandela could try to win over the former opponents (for example, America) to promote South Africa’s national interest. So, an observer from Washington visited Durban, and may (or may not) have infl uenced Mandela on the issue of J&K.88 On the linkage of labour standards to international trade, again, South Africa toed the American line, whereas India opposed it fi rmly. Actually, on various matters of overriding importance, despite the nearly 150-page long Durban Declaration, the policy statements of various countries could not paper over the cracks. These matters were (and remain) so vital—for example, good governance, human rights, transfer of resources/technologies, World Trade Organization (WTO), etc.—and differences among NAM countries were so pronounced, that, like the previous summits, the Durban summit too revealed more disunity than unity, and India’s satisfaction about changing the declaration on J&K or nuclear policy did not signify any change in national policies of various countries on such subjects.89 The Indian foreign policy establishment should have been chastened by the negative experiences of the 12th NAM summit in Durban. One could hope against hope that India would deliberately scale down its participation at the 13th Kuala Lumpur summit in 2003. But this did not happen, despite the fact that on 17 February 2003, the president of India delivered an address to Parliament, which contained 19 paragraphs on India’s foreign relations without any reference to NAM. Obviously, vested interests of politicians and offi cials proved more powerful than realism. As before, there was no unity on principal issues of common concern, for example, multilateralism, terrorism, North-South and South-South cooperation, etc. There was sheer wastage of resources on containing Pakistan’s manoeuvres on J&K and North Korea’s nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ambitions. The Declaration by 116 members could not move beyond inane generalities on how to make NAM relevant towards building a peaceful, prosperous, equitable, and just international order. The usual dullness of the summit was punctuated by such occasional excitement as caused by the comment of Malaysia’s prime minister,

88 Palash Kumar, The Asian Age, 4 September 1998. 89 J.N. Dixit, The Hindustan Times, 16 September 1998. 48 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Mahathir Mohamad, that the war in Iraq was directed not towards terrorists but towards Muslims.90 What was, however, disturbing to any discerning student of India’s foreign relations was that, despite NAM’s unbroken history of tall promises and uniform non-performance, there were powerful Indian protagonists who, in the same breath, would blow hot and cold on NAM, and yet insist on India’s commitment to NAM. Take, for instance, K. Natwar Singh, a former diplomat and former external affairs minister of India. He writes:

India has a pivotal role to play, but cannot by itself reinvent, restructure and revitalize NAM. It has to be a collective effort…. Nonalignment is not a doctrine, not a dogma, not a business. It is a state of mind. Its ideals are noble but implementation poor. It is long on rhetoric, short on ideas…. NAM countries, to be taken seriously, have to act unitedly and purposefully. This is not easy, but persevere we must.91

The following view prevailed in New Delhi: NAM was everything and nothing. Therefore, India got ready to participate in the 14th NAM summit. This was held in Havana in 2006. The number of participating countries was 118, but only 50 heads of state attended. Obviously, others acted upon the realisation that NAM did not ‘represent anything at all’, and that it was ‘just a rag-tag bunch of discordant and glib voices unable to speak cohesively on any issue’.92 There was no reason why India would not have the same realisation, but it chose not to act in accordance with it. So, the Indian prime minister joined the summit, and made some unavoidably vague observations on a few crucial issues, for example, the crisis in West Asia. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested that the world community should set up a high level body, and try to resolve this crisis. An Indian delegate to the NAM summit, Sitaram Yechury,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 chosen by Singh himself, criticised Singh for equivocation on ‘who was responsible for the crisis in the ﬁ rst place’. Yechury added: ‘Obfuscation rather than clarity often reduces a potentially powerful movement into inaction.’93 He was wrong. It was obfuscation which

90 The Statesman, 24 & 25 February 2003. 91 The Hindustan Times, 7 March 2003. 92 Editorial, The Times of India, 14 September 2006. 93 The Hindustan Times, 21 September 2006. Non-alignment 49

saved NAM from a total collapse through a large-scale split. In 1979, for example, at the NAM summit in Havana, pro-Western members of NAM stalled attempts to denounce China for its naked aggression upon Vietnam. In this way, NAM avoids destabilising divisions and survives, since it is just a debating club that often refuses to face facts, and talk candidly (not to speak of taking action). One may recall in this context how, at the New Delhi NAM summit of 1983, ‘Indian negotiators had to work tirelessly to rein in moves to condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan’.94 The 14th NAM summit of 2006 is the last such summit being dealt with in this chapter. It is, therefore, pertinent, though hardly necessary (in view of what has been discussed by many writers, including the present writer), to offer some reﬂ ections on the unredeemed worthlessness of NAM, and the chronic thoughtlessness behind India’s highest-level participation in a NAM summit. In the early days of NAM, the three most important member countries were: Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, and Jawaharlal Nehru’s India. As of 2006, Yugoslavia has disappeared. As for Egypt and India,

Nasser’s Egypt, which took its cue on all matters internal and external from Moscow, is now dependent, in large measure, on American aid; and, Jawaharlal Nehru’s India, which ﬂ oundered for decades in abject poverty because it was forced to replicate the Soviet economic model, is now soaring high on private enterprise and foreign capital.95

In the early decades of NAM, decolonisation was a principal plank. In the post-colonial era, NAM watched helplessly as some African countries (for example, Burundi, Congo, or Rwanda) crumpled on account of tribal conﬂ icts, and others (for example, Somalia) lost the basic eligibility for being counted as a modern state, whereas Sudan set a horrendous example of crimes against humanity. Perhaps

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the cruelest joke was that, in some cases, ex-colonial powers had to undertake peacekeeping operations in their former colonies.96

94 G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, in The Pioneer, 9 September 2006. 95 Editorial, The Pioneer, 4 September 2006. 96 K. Srinivasan, a former foreign secretary of India, in The Telegraph, 11 December 2006. Also see, G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 9 September 2006. 50 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Protagonists of NAM sometimes claim side-beneﬁ ts from a NAM summit. In the 14th summit, for example, the Indian prime minister met with the Pakistani president. Some commentators regarded this as the most important outcome of the NAM summit. Such comments appropriately highlighted the absurdity of NAM (which traditionally left out bilateral issues among members), as also of the diplomatic exercises by India and Pakistan, two neighbours who could not ﬁ nd a meeting place that was at a distance of less than 12,000 miles. At every NAM summit, including the 14th one, Indian diplomats boast of their ability to soften the tone of remarks by some members, which are directed against Western countries, especially the United States.

One wonders why they should have put themselves through all this trouble; it is well-known by everyone that nearly all the nations participating in the summit tell the Western donors, and the United States of America in particular, not to pay any attention to the rhetoric that emerges from such a meeting.97

If the term ‘non-alignment’ has been in search of a proper deﬁ nition, the movement of non-aligned countries has been in quest of a viable cause. Some of the old causes—for example, the regular Israel- bashing on the Palestine issue—have become nearly obsolete. For NAM has not been able to take any fruitful step towards resolving this issue, whereas presently the UN, the European Union (EU), the United States, and Russia have combined to take some positive measures towards promoting negotiations between Palestine and Israel. Moreover, ‘two of Israel’s four Arab neighbours today have extensive diplomatic, economic and even intelligence ties with the Jewish state’.98 In the 21st century, combating international terrorism can be a good cause for NAM.99 But beyond passing harmless resolutions on the matter, NAM cannot achieve anything

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 meaningful, partly because some of the NAM members are themselves progenitors of terrorism with a religious label, and, ironically, at a NAM summit, India, the biggest victim of such terrorism, has to negotiate with the perpetrators of international terrorism for

97 K. Srinivasan, The Telegraph, 11 December 2006. 98 G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 9 September 2006. 99 Hiranmay Karlekar, The Pioneer, 21 September 2009. Non-alignment 51

endorsement of insigniﬁ cant counter-terrorism resolutions. At the end of this chapter, thus, one can do no better than concur with a former foreign secretary of India that, years ago, more speciﬁ cally in the early 1990s, the Indian diplomatic establishment should have concluded boldly ‘that India’s best interests were no longer served by being a member’ of NAM, and ‘that the movement had lost its raison d’etre, and that there was much more that divided the member countries than united it’.100 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

100 K. Srinivasan, The Telegraph, 11 December 2006. 3 Relations with the United Kingdom

Any essay on India–UK relations has to begin with an act of cliché disposal. The fi rst cliché is that Britain and India parted as friends, because there was no war between the two countries, and the transfer of power was peaceful. Nothing could be further from the truth. Transfer of power was deliberately linked to Partition, which, again, was planned in such a way as to produce an unpardonable chaos and holocaust. If one studies the British parliamentary debates between February–March 1947, one cannot but be horrifi ed by the casual attitude of Clement Attlee’s government in London towards transfer of power to India.1 Prime Minister Attlee announced in the House of Commons on 20 February 1947 that power would be transferred to India on a date not later than June 1948. To fi x an arbitrary timetable was to forestall the preservation of India’s unity. Those who did not want unity had only to remain patient, and, once the fi nal date came, they would get away with the fulfi lment of their demands.2 Moreover, as John Anderson argued, it was a gamble that ‘is unjustifi ed, when the stakes are beyond the means of a gambler and the stakes here are the lives and happiness of hundreds of millions’.3 The intervening period, till the transfer of power in June 1948, would ‘be marked continually by disturbances and disorders’, as Winston Churchill stated, while referring to communal clashes in Lahore.4 That the London government was virtually planning chaos for India in the name of transfer of power could be surmised from

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the decision to reduce the number of British troops in India at a time when British policy inevitably gave rise to communal disorders.

1 The Indian Annual Register: January–June 1947, Delhi: Gyan, 2000, esp. pp. 142–46,155–82. 2 Ibid., p. 174: Winston Churchill’s statement. 3 Ibid., p. 170. Also see p. 156. 4 Ibid., p. 174. Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 3. Relations with the United Kingdom 53

As Churchill observed, there was no timetable for Palestine, a tiny area, but there was one for India, a vast territory; yet the number of British troops in Palestine was at least three times higher than that in India.5 There was a hint of Partition, preceding the transfer of power to India, in Attlee’s 20 February 1947 announcement. The hint became a certainty in the British government’s statement of 3 June 1947. Moreover, this statement sanctiﬁ ed an aggravation of chaos by talking about a probable shortening of the timetable for transfer of power. It will be fair speculation that, for this purpose, the viceroy of India, Field Marshal Wavell, was replaced by Admiral Mountbatten. For, when, repeatedly in the House of Commons, Churchill asked for the reasons for this important decision, and whether there was any serious disagreement between the British government and Wavell in the matter of transfer of power, Attlee refused to answer.6 Mountbatten was profoundly interested in hastening the transfer of power, and accomplishing it by 15 August 1947, because, to him, the resultant chaos and bloodshed in India mattered much less than the urgency of returning to England and occupying the post of First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy.7 On 6 March 1947, Churchill declared in the House of Commons that ‘by premature and hurried scuttle, let us not add to the pangs of sorrow, which many of us feel, the taint and smear of shame’.8 Mountbatten proved the accuracy of these observations of Churchill not only by hastening abruptly the date of transfer of power, but also by keeping secret the details of the Partition of Bengal and Punjab, which, whenever announced, were sure to set off a large-scale communal conﬂ agration. After all, the boundaries were drawn haphazardly (if not recklessly) by Cyril Radcliffe, a British barrister, in a month,9 although he should have spent at least a year on this job. Where Mountbatten was reconciled to provoking disturbances after the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 15 August 1947 celebrations, Radcliffe was so afraid of assassination

5 The Indian Annual Register: January–June 1947, p. 175. 6 Ibid., pp. 173, 177–78. Also see Catherine Clement, Edwina and Nehru, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 66. 7 Sayeed Hasan Khan, ‘A Mohajir Reﬂ ects’, The Statesman, 4 November 2007. Also see, Clement, Edwina and Nehru, pp. 56, 74. 8 The Indian Annual Register: January–June 1947, p. 176. 9 Wolpert, Nehru, pp. 402, 404. 54 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

by disgruntled Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, that he left India as soon as he submitted the Partition plan. Mountbatten’s demeanour was so diabolical that he not only kept the Partition details (ready on 9 August) secret till the Independence Day celebrations (on 14–15 August 1947) were over, he also did not share the secrets with the governors of Bengal and Punjab, who, otherwise, might have used troops to mitigate the scale of communal atrocities.10 It was indeed a peaceful transfer of power from Britain to India! An abiding but abominable cliché! The second cliché about India–UK relations was that the two countries were destined to have mutually benefi cial relations, because their leaders—Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, for example—were persons of outstanding ability, honour, and statesmanship. To start with Louis Mountbatten, his principal qualifi cations were that he had powerful family connections (being, for instance, a cousin of the British King), a handsome appearance, and a determination to amass power without caring much for attendant responsibilities. As a navy offi cer, his ineffi ciency was coupled with rash risk-taking, which failed, and he avoided court martial because of his pedigree.11 During the Second World War, his breeding and good fortune saw him catapulted from the position of Navy Captain direct to that of Chief of Combined Operations, giving him ‘the acting ranks of Vice-Admiral of the Navy, Lieutenant General of the Army and Air Marshal of the Royal Air Force’. The Chiefs of Staff, men of far greater strategic experience than their new peer, regarded him as a dangerously callow upstart,12 and, one with ‘no concern for human lives’. Louis Mountbatten soon disgraced himself by his faulty, impetuous, and counterproductive decisions.13 M.K. Gandhi had a rare gift for taking precisely those decisions (even if involuntarily) which would damage vitally the interests of the common Indians (Hindus, Muslims, etc.) by destroying the unity

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of India. Before doing all this, he almost ruined his credibility, demonstrating queer peculiarities, which could not but shock powerful British statesmen. For example, in April 1938, ‘the sixty-eight-year- old Mohandas Gandhi had an involuntary orgasm’. He felt ‘that

10 Ibid., pp. 404–6. 11 von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, pp. 110–11. 12 Ibid., p. 115. 13 Ibid., pp. 115–20, 135. Relations with the United Kingdom 55

this challenged his spiritual integrity’, and went so far as to make ‘a public declaration that his own impurity was a major cause of the problems in Indian society’. Unbelievably, ‘it was as a result of this ejaculation that Gandhi took up the practice of sharing his bed with young women, in an attempt to test his vows of brahmacharya’. One can, therefore, scarcely disagree with the observation that ‘from the late 1930s onwards, Gandhi was a liability to the freedom movement, pursuing an eccentric agenda that created as many problems as it solved’.14 Even in the stormy days of 1946 and 1947,

The aged Mahatma had been ‘testing’ his vow of celibacy by sleeping at night in bed with a naked or partially clothed woman…. One night, when the police turned up to arrest him, they found him in bed with a girl of eighteen. The British authorities decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and hushed up the police report.15

No wonder, Arthur Koestler wrote, ‘Gandhi was an extremist in every respect’, who, for example, ‘treated his two oldest sons abomin- ably’, as ‘he refused to send them to school, and denied them a professional education’. Moreover, when at the age of 40 Gandhi ‘decided to renounce sex forever, he expected the two boys to do the same’. Gandhi preached ‘a kind of civil non cooperation between the sexes’, and even ‘the rejection of sex among married couples, as a source of spiritual and physical debility…’.16 Setting aside sex relations, even on matters of war and peace, Mohandas could easily provoke allegations of a total lack of sense of proportion. During the Second World War, Gandhi advised the British to abandon the struggle against Hitler or Mussolini, and to get themselves killed, without swearing loyalty to enemies capturing the British Isles. Similarly, Gandhi asked the Jews in Hitler’s Germany to sacriﬁ ce their lives, while launching passive resistance and praying for Hitler.17 Gandhi was aware that the British followed a policy Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

14 Patrick French, Liberty or Death, New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1998, p. 105. 15 von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 144. Nirmal Kumar Bose has written that ‘objections poured in’ as late as 1947 ‘from some of Gandhiji’s closest and most respected co-workers’ about Gandhiji’s sexual experiments. See Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi, Calcutta: Nishana, 1953, p. 153. 16 See Arthur Koestler, The Lotus and the Robot, London: Macmillan, 1961, pp. 134, 143–50. 17 Ibid., pp. 107–8. 56 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of divide and rule, and favoured Jinnah as the only leader of the Muslims, even when there were equally eminent Muslim leaders in Gandhi’s Congress Party. In order to preserve India’s unity, Gandhi should not have done anything to strengthen Jinnah’s hand. But he did exactly the opposite. When the viceroy of India joined the Second World War without consulting Gandhi and other Congress leaders, who, on the basis of elections in 1937, held ofﬁ ces in eight of a total of 11 provinces, they could have registered strong protests. Instead, they resigned. This enabled Jinnah’s Muslim League to take advantage of the administrative-political vacuum, and gain legitimacy by raising the share of Muslim votes from less than 5 per cent in 1937 to nearly 75 per cent in the 1945–46 elections.18 If Gandhi demonstrated eccentricity in the 1930s, failed to overcome it in the 1940s, and succumbed to Louis Mountbatten’s manoeuvres for an indefensibly quick partition of the subcontinent, causing untold and undeserved misery to tens of millions of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc., Nehru too could not exonerate himself from the charge of eccentricity. He was, however, quite different from Gandhi in that he shared Mountbatten’s love of power, as also the lack of adequate concern for the sufferings of innocent Indians on account of Partition. Undoubtedly, from time to time, Nehru would feel sad about disturbances, actual or potential, before and after Partition, but he did not seek relief from this sadness by thinking deeply about how to avoid Partition, or to alleviate the distress caused by Partition, for example, by prolonging the process, delaying his accession to the prime minister’s post, and easing a relatively peaceful exchange of population between India and Pakistan. Nehru sought relief in amorous adventures with Edwina Mountbatten (encouraged by Louis, with the obvious aim of keeping Nehru on the right side of his manipulations). On 18 March 1946, at Singapore, Nehru met the Mountbattens and had dinner with them. They built a lasting

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 friendship that very night.

So many promises, spoken and unspoken, were communicated among them that night in the eloquent language of trust and love from Nehru’s hypnotic eyes to the beautiful faces of Dickie and Edwina,

18 Ibid., pp. 108, 124. Also see, French, Liberty or Death, pp. 111–12, 120–21; Wolpert, Nehru, p. 273. Relations with the United Kingdom 57

each so sensitively attuned and receptive to the other that words were almost redundant.19

The meeting obviously created another redundancy: the horrendous suffering of ordinary Indians due to an avoidably hurried Partition. The inﬂ uence of Edwina Mountbatten upon Nehru, and its far-reaching impact upon expediting Partition, became evident in May 1947 at the viceroy’s lodge in Mashobra, near Shimla, where the Mountbattens, the viceroy’s Indian and European staffers, as also Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon, gathered to devise a Partition formula. One must stress here that Krishna Menon played an important part in shaping this formula, which he handed over to Mountbatten in London before he left for India to take up the position of the viceroy. Jawaharlal Nehru promised Krishna Menon the High Commissionership of the United Kingdom after independence. Krishna Menon was eager to occupy this position as quickly as possible (regardless of the misery of the victims of Partition), just as his friend Nehru was, to step into the position of India’s prime minister. Krishna Menon and Mountbatten (as also other staffers) worked strenuously to chalk out details of the Partition plan, and to ensure that Nehru would not only agree to Partition but also forget the Congress Party goal of complete independence, and accept Dominion Status within the Commonwealth for the initial years at least. The task of persuading Nehru was not difﬁ cult, partly because he was spared to some extent the hard work, rejuvenating himself in Edwina Mountbatten’s charming company.

[In] a lovely isolated garden spot surrounded by lush orchards… [Edwina and Jawaharlal]… strolled and climbed together, alone at last, their rarest luxury—privacy together. She was very much like him, a lonely heart, introspectively passionate, a soul long seeking its other half…. they ﬁ nally found each other, while India lay smouldering 20

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 far below.

The observation by Lord Ismay, that the preparation of the plan for transfer of power (or Partition) took only three days,21 acquires

19 Wolpert, Nehru, p. 361. 20 Ibid., p. 393. Also see, pp. 381–82. 21 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, p. 346. 58 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

signiﬁ cance in the context of the success of the meeting planned by Louis Mountbatten in Shimla-Mashobra in May 1947. Edwina’s contribution towards winning Jawaharlal’s support for Partition and Dominion Status was immeasurable to say the least.22 In all fairness, it must be stated that, even without the aid of such romantic interludes, Nehru was more than anxious to accelerate Partition, and elevate himself to the position of India’s prime minister. He was deeply worried about Subhas Chandra Bose returning to India from the Soviet Union, where he had reached in 1945.23 Whether Bose was in a mood to contest Nehru’s leadership, and whether he would have succeeded in this contest, cannot be taken for granted. But there is no denying that Nehru was so worried about such a contest that—without bothering much about the incalculable horrors of deliberately hastening Partition—he conformed to Louis Mountbatten’s manoeuvres. It is important to remember that Nehru, on 19 March 1946, in Singapore, at the insistence of Louis Mountbatten, practically insulted Bose and the Indian National Army (INA), as he ‘agreed to forgo the planned jamboree around the laying of wreath on the INA memorial’.24 At this stage, the role played by Gandhi becomes increasingly curious (demanding elaborate research bereft of hero-worship— though such research is outside the scope of this book). Louis Mountbatten was worried about Gandhi’s reaction to his 3 June 1947 plan for Partition. However, Gandhi chose instead to observe a day of silence on such an important day. When Mountbatten met him, and expressed the desire that Gandhi should not oppose the Mountbatten Plan, he received a written response: ‘Have I ever opposed you?’ ‘Mountbatten preserved that paper as historical evidence and it is still there in the Mountbatten papers.’25

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 22 von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, pp. 189, 193–94. Also see, Azad, India Wins Freedom, pp. 183–84. 23 Report of Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry on the Alleged Disappearance of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Volume I, Kolkata, 8 November 2005, esp. pp. 98, 123, 291–93. Communications from G. Mukerjee to The Statesman, 5 February 2009, and from Dipak Basu, The Statesman, 5 March 2009. Also see, Anuj Dhar, Back from Dead: Inside the Subhas Bose Mystery, New Delhi: Manas, 2007, chapter 8, esp. pp. 188, 215; von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 132. 24 von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 141. 25 Rajinder Puri, The Statesman, 30 January 2009. Relations with the United Kingdom 59

Was this a vindication of the depiction of Indian leaders as ‘men of straw’ in Winston Churchill’s speech on 6 March 1947? If any further vindication was necessary, it was provided by the sharp contrast in the attitudes—of Jinnah on one side, and Gandhi or Nehru on the other—towards keeping Mountbatten in the position of Governor General after transfer of power. Where Nehru’s acquiescence (even eagerness) could be taken for granted,26 it was amazing how Gandhi virtually cowered before Mountbatten, in order that the latter could agree to act as independent India’s fi rst Governor General. To some extent, he had to do it because Nehru developed a sort of neurosis as 15 August approached, and he prevailed upon Gandhi to meet Mountbatten for this purpose. More- over, as Jinnah humiliated Mountbatten by refusing straight-way to have him as independent Pakistan’s fi rst Governor General, Mountbatten had second thoughts about whether he should eventually become free India’s fi rst Governor General, making Nehru extremely panicky. So, Gandhi humiliated himself by meeting with Mountbatten, and persuading him to become independent India’s fi rst Governor General. Edwina Mountbatten, it must be stressed, played a very important part here, in persuading Gandhi to meet Louis Mountbatten, and to obtain his consent to become free India’s fi rst Governor General.27 Mountbatten accused Jinnah of megalomania.28 Actually, Mountbatten himself was suffering from megalomania. Moreover, it seemed that Jinnah had greater self- respect than Nehru or Gandhi. He was not a man of straw. Louis Mountbatten was keenly aware that the ‘partition business is sheer madness’, and, therefore, he wanted ‘to put the responsibility for any of these mad decisions fairly and squarely on the Indian shoulders in the eyes of the world, for one day they will bitterly regret the decision they are about to make’.29 As of 2007 (the approximate terminal date for this book), the consequences of Partition for independent India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 are fairly obvious. Partition has institutionalised and perpetuated

26 von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 190. 27 While the facts are well known, Catherine Clement’s literary presentation is indeed priceless; see, Clement, Edwina and Nehru, pp. 176–88. Also see von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, pp. 186–87. 28 Wolpert, Nehru, pp. 401–2. 29 von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, p. 185. 60 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

communal antagonisms, which have eventually created the biggest menace to India’s domestic and foreign policy makers in the shape of Jihadi terrorism. Although Mountbatten did not have the capacity to foresee all this, he was absolutely correct in depicting Partition as a mad proposition. Yet, at the ﬁ nal stage of announcement of the Mountbatten Plan for Partition on 2–3 June 1947, it was amazing how the viceroy out-manoeuvred the Indian leaders, despite being much junior to them in age, and having virtually no experience of practical politics. Mountbatten fooled Jinnah into believing that the Congress Party had accepted the Plan, that rejection by Jinnah would lead to chaos, and that Jinnah’s Pakistan would reduce itself to nothingness. Mountbatten also fooled the Congress leaders into believing that the Muslim League endorsed his Plan.30 The viceroy not only made fools of the Indian leaders but also threw them into utter confusion by advancing the date of transfer of power from June 1948 (as set by Prime Minister Attlee) to 15 August 1947. The Indian leaders attested to their lack of maturity and foresight, as they had not insisted on sticking to the original timetable, which could have averted the inevitable chaos and bloody atrocities due to the overhasty Partition, and facilitated a relatively peaceful exchange of population between India and Pakistan.

Political Transactions The lack of maturity in the Indian leaders could not but be refl ected in the political relations between independent India and Britain. Probably, one of the most lamentable manifestations of this immaturity was the appointment of V.K. Krishna Menon by Nehru as India’s fi rst High Commissioner to Britain. If, in the immediate pre- Partition days, Nehru’s role did not build confi dence in his leadership capabilities, and his capacity for safeguarding India’s vital interests, Krishna Menon’s diplomatic assignment raised almost unanswerable Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 questions about Nehru’s competence as prime minister and external affairs minister of India. After all,

[Krishna Menon]… was a sour-tempered barrister without briefs and spent his energies building up his India League and paying court to

30 Ibid., pp. 198–99. Relations with the United Kingdom 61

Pandit Nehru whenever he was in England. His appointment as High Commissioner was badly received in India and the Indian community in England as gross favouritism.31

Even Louis Mountbatten, a great friend of Krishna Menon and co-plotter of Partition, had observed that ‘Krishna Menon rubbed most Englishmen and virtually all Americans the wrong way’. Inexplicably, Nehru did not care for this glaring deﬁ ciency in Krishna Menon.32 ‘There are some people in this country and some people in other countries whose job in life appears to be to try to run down Krishna Menon, because’, as Nehru once observed, without any supporting evidence, Krishna Menon ‘is far cleverer than they are’.33 Krishna Menon was indeed extraordinarily clever. This is why he was chosen even though Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister, wanted to be India’s ﬁ rst High Commissioner to Britain. Nehru chose Krishna Menon, ‘since Krishna Menon would be a far more discreet asset in helping him visit Edwina back at Broadlands in top-secret privacy’.34 This favouritism was indeed inexplicable. Even before he became High Commissioner, Nehru nominated Krishna Menon as a member of the delegation to the UN General Assembly in 1946. Among the members of this delegation were Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and M.C. Chagla, the former being the leader of the delegation. There is no reason to doubt the objectivity or authenticity of Chagla’s assessment of Krishna Menon. He writes:

Krishna Menon, I must confess, was a rather disturbing element in an otherwise well-knit harmonious delegation. His very appearance, his gestures, his way of talking always made me feel that the only way in which one could characterize him was as Eminence Grise…. I must be frank and state candidly that Mrs. Pandit was overawed by him. This was partly because of the fact that he enjoyed the conﬁ dence of the Prime Minister, who had the highest opinion of him. Very often Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 she accepted his advice as against the opinion expressed by the other

31 Khushwant Singh, Truth, Love and a Little Malice: An Autobiography, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2002, p. 118. 32 Wolpert, Nehru, p. 398. 33 Ibid., p. 468. 34 Ibid., p. 391. 62 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

members of the delegation, although she genuinely realized that his advice was unsound and misleading.35

It was in this way, for instance, that Krishna Menon browbeat Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit into contesting an election to the Security Council. The result of Krishna Menon’s ill-informed insistence was severe humiliation for India, which lost to Syria. It is no wonder that, as the High Commissioner to Britain, Krishna Menon continued to cause indignity to India in a variety of ways. One basic reason for this was his ‘bad temper and discourtesy’ and ‘convoluted mind’.36 A few examples may be noted here. On one occasion, at Dover, Krishna Menon and his political associate, Rajni Patel, ‘jumped the queue of passengers awaiting immigration clearance. When the immigration offi cer told him to go back to the line, Menon accused him of racial prejudice. The fellow let him through’.37 On another occasion, at a meeting with David Astor— owner of a highly infl uential London daily, Observer—and his colleague, William Clarke, Krishna Menon performed a stupefying act of public relations for India when, without any provocation whatsoever, he called ‘the English a race of brigands’.38 Krishna Menon vitiated administration in diverse ways at the Indian High Commission in London. For instance, he refused to consider the merits of a proposal submitted to him by any High Commission offi cial. He rejected it straightway. While Krishna Menon did not mind sacrifi cing Indian interests in this way, his subordinates hit upon a device to safeguard the country’s interests. They would draft a proposal in such a way that its rejection would facilitate the acceptance of the proposal conducive to India’s interests.39 Krishna Menon was determined to obtain promotions for his favourites to the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), regardless of their competence and eligibility. For this purpose, he was ready to use his infl uence upon Prime Minister Nehru. Thus, he recruited to the IFS a low-ranking Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 employee, a lady, whose major qualifi cation was her acquiescence in having an ill-concealed affair with the High Commissioner.40

35 M.C. Chagla, Roses in December: An Autobiography, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1974, pp. 232–33. 36 Singh, Truth, Love and Malice, pp. 120, 144. 37 Ibid., p. 142. 38 Ibid., p. 144. 39 Ibid., p. 143. 40 Ibid., p. 145. Relations with the United Kingdom 63

Nehru’s fi rst visit to London as India’s prime minister took place when he went there in October 1948 to attend the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference. Nehru’s record in London appeared to match Krishna Menon’s in terms of a pronounced indifference to safeguarding India’s image or dignity, not to speak of interests. The prime minister arrived at Heathrow airport at night. Senior High Commission staffers were present to receive him. Nehru asked everyone, including the Public Relations Offi cer, Khushwant Singh, to go home and sleep. Next morning, The Daily Herald ‘carried a large photograph of Nehru with Lady Mountbatten in her negligee opening the door for him. The caption read ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Midnight Visitor’. It also informed its readers that Lord Mountbatten was not in London. Thus, the Indian prime minister’s ‘liaison with Lady Edwina had assumed scandalous proportions’.41 Next morning, Nehru arrived at the scheduled press conference at 11.00 am, even though he had been duly apprised that the press conference was to commence at 10.30 am. He pretended ignorance of the time of the press conference. However, his effective responses to questions on Kashmir punctured this pretence. Evidently, and rightly so, he was thoroughly prepared. He satisfi ed his vanity, but humiliated Khushwant Singh by pretending to speak without any preparation. Nevertheless, the luncheon meeting with editors of The Times, Telegraph, Manchester Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, and Nation, writes Khushwant Singh in his eye-witness account, ‘was an unmitigated disaster’. In fact, Singh states that not long after the meeting began,

Everyone turned to Menon. His head was sunk low over his chest and he was nodding sleepily…. Then Panditji himself lost interest. When an editor asked him a question, he stared vacantly into space. The question hung in the air without getting an answer…. Before the dessert was served, Panditji was also nodding with his head sunk on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 his chest. The editors left without waiting for coffee to be served.42

At the end of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Nehru visited a bookstore and bought some books by Bernard Shaw who passed away a few weeks earlier, although he confessed to Khushwant Singh that he had no time to read books. Nehru invited

41 Ibid., p. 135. 42 Ibid., pp. 136–37. 64 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Edwina Mountbatten to a Greek restaurant at Soho for dinner. ‘The next morning’s newspapers’, Khushwant Singh attested, ‘carried photographs of the two sitting close to each other’, and, quite unfairly, Nehru blamed Khushwant Singh for such publicity. Krishna Menon was as much interested in currying Edwina Mountbatten’s favour as his benefactor, Nehru. A room on the fi rst fl oor of the Indian High Commission in London boasted of a nameplate: Countess Mountbatten of Burma. ‘She did not enter it even once’.43 Approximately a year before the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Pakistan committed aggression in J&K. While the J&K issue has been discussed elaborately in Chapter 4, a few pertinent observations may be recorded here to highlight the failure of Nehru (not to speak of Krishna Menon) to counteract the brazen British manoeuvres to assist Pakistan but harass and harm India. Whether it was the British prime minister, his representative at the UN Security Council, India’s Governor General Mountbatten, the British Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, or even the British High Commissioner in New Delhi—all of them engaged in these manoeuvres. Senior British offi cers in the Indian Army did not bother much about proving their loyalty to India.44 The British pretended that only Pathan tribesmen had invaded J&K. Actually, Pakistani military offi cers had mobilised not only tribesmen and in-service soldiers (nominally on leave) but also retired Pakistani soldiers to launch this invasion.45 While the J&K ruler appealed to India for immediate military assistance—and the Indian political leaders responded positively—the British Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army deliberately delayed the supply of arms to J&K.46 Governor General Mountbatten delayed the dispatch of Indian troops to J&K.47 Nehru, on his part, unnecessarily wrote to Prime Minister Attlee about the J&K crisis, and received advice that the Indian Armed Forces should not intervene.48 This advice was irrelevant, because Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

43 Ibid., p. 133. 44 C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947–48, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002, p. 26. 45 For numerous details, see Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir—Story of the Kashmir War (1947–48), Karachi: Pak Publishers, 1970. 46 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, pp. 40–41, 51. 47 Ibid., pp. 45–50. 48 Ibid., pp. 54–55. Relations with the United Kingdom 65

there was no alternative to military action by India if raiders were to be expelled from J&K. Nehru’s inexplicable diffi dence and Attlee’s unwarranted advice delayed the dispatch of Indian troops, and the invaders advanced dangerously close to Srinagar, only about 35 miles away. The J&K ruler legally acceded to the Indian Dominion, and India airlifted troops to Srinagar. Attlee then offered the absurd recommendation that India should not continue any troop movement into J&K without Pakistan’s consent.49 The British continued hurting India’s interests, confi rming and reconfi rming India’s failure to cope with British machinations. Governor General Mountbatten pretended to mediate. But his mediation amounted to extracting a unilateral climb down by India. Nehru agreed to hold a plebiscite in J&K under UN auspices, although there was no reciprocal offer from Pakistan.50 This was hardly unexpected because, as already noted, the Mountbatten family exercised exceptional infl uence upon Nehru. Moreover, as already recorded in this book, Nehru had abdicated his authority in favour of Governor General Mountbatten. He and his Cabinet colleagues, therefore, had scarcely any option but to succumb to the Governor General’s manoeuvres in collusion with the Chiefs of India’s Armed Forces who were all British. To have British service chiefs was an unpardonable blunder on the part of Nehru. From time to time, the Governor General would use the service chiefs, and sometimes the latter would utilise the Governor General, for the purpose of sabotaging the preference of the Indian leaders for decisive actions to push the aggressors out of J&K.51 Nehru deeply resented the weak, defensive, and almost ‘apologetic’ response to Pakistani aggression, which extended advantages to Pakistan, and advocated military strikes upon the bases of the invaders inside Pakistan. He faced obstinate obstruction from the Governor Gen- eral and the Chiefs of Staff. Lord Mountbatten asked the British

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 High Commissioner in New Delhi to send secret messages to Prime Minister Attlee, apprising the latter of Nehru’s thinking, and Mountbatten even prompted Nehru to write to Attlee on 28 December 1947. Although this was unnecessary, Nehru pleaded

49 Ibid., p. 56. 50 Ibid., p. 85. 51 Ibid., pp. 86–96. 66 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

that India could exercise the right of self-defence under international law and take military action inside Pakistani territory. Despite the fact that there was no option other than trying for a military solution, Attlee followed Lord Mountbatten and discouraged Nehru from attempting a military solution. Nehru was virtually compelled by Lord Mountbatten to compromise. He agreed to appeal to the UN on the assurance that the Chiefs of Staff would prepare plans for the expulsion of the invaders from J&K. This assurance was ignored, although India appealed to the UN on 1 January 1948.52 It was an unpardonable breach of faith on the part of the British. This breach of trust was all the more deplorable since the British were aware of an on-the-spot assessment by General Scott, which stated ‘that there was little support for Pakistan among the Muslims of Kashmir’.53 The British appeared to suffer from a guilt and fear complex because they had abandoned the Palestinians, acquiesced in the establishment of Israel, and aroused Muslim anger in West Asia. In order to compensate for this diplomatic loss, the British thought of supporting Pakistan in the J&K war, and demonstrating visibly the support for a Muslim state.54 While India accepted the crucial United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) resolution of 13 August 1948, which enjoined a ceasefi re, to be followed by other preparatory steps towards a plebiscite in J&K, Pakistan rejected it. At the UN, the British representative openly collaborated with the Pakistani representative to create diffi culties for India.55 On the war front, the British Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army behaved like a deputy to his Pakistani counterpart, and took overt as well as covert steps to favour Pakistan militarily, and prevent India from taking those feasible military measures which would have pushed the invaders out of J&K.56 However, at that point of time, the disparity between the military might of India and Pakistan was so enormous that, despite British machinations, Indian generals could infl ict

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 reverses on Pakistan. Pakistan’s prime minister would be so fearful that, as on 17 November and 8 December 1948, he appealed to Prime Minister Attlee. The British prime minister did not hesitate

52 Ibid., pp. 98–109. 53 Ibid., p. 112. 54 Ibid., pp. 111–12, 160, 189. 55 Ibid., pp. 154–55. 56 Ibid., pp. 135, 138, 141–42, 169, 177, 184–85. Relations with the United Kingdom 67

to resort to direct interference and urge restraint upon Nehru, who in turn complained in vain about the Pakistani troops and other forces that ‘are controlled and led by British offi cers who are thus participating in invasion of the territory of the Indian Dominion’.57 Unlike India, Pakistan was extremely dependent on the services of British military offi cers.58 Moreover, Attlee’s government could exert pressure upon Nehru through the British High Commissioner and the British Commander-and-Chief of the Indian Army. The British High Commissioner used the services of the British Commander-and-Chief for conveying totally wrong information about a decline in morale of the Indian troops in J&K, taking advantage of the fact that London delayed unwarrantedly the sale and supply of essential military supplies to India. The British Commander-and-Chief wrote to the Indian prime minister about serious shortages of ammunition, spares for military transport vehicles, etc., while ruling out the possibility of obtaining these supplies at an early date.59 In all these ways, the British were determined to forestall any military initiative by India to wrest occupied J&K territory from the Pakistani aggressors. Pakistan made a substantial territorial- political gain as the Indian prime minister was compelled to propose a ceasefi re, which took effect on 1 January 1949. Undoubtedly, Britain was fi ghting a sort of proxy war for Pakistan, which further demolished the argument of many writers that Indo-British relations were cordial simply because there was no war between the two countries at the time of transfer of power. A measure of the strength of the political ties with Britain was independent India opting for membership of the Commonwealth. For, ‘Membership in the Commonwealth signifi ed a state’s attachment to certain values and modes of behaviour in political affairs which were originally sponsored by Britain and generally praised by 60

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 other countries.’ This observation could at best be treated as hollow in view of what Britain did to India (as noted above) on the war in

57 Ibid., pp. 180–81. 58 Ibid., pp. 155–56. 59 Ibid., pp. 182–83. 60 Charles H. Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, A Diplomatic History of Modern India, New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1971, p. 33. 68 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

J&K during 1947–48. Commonwealth members certainly engaged in consultations, exchanged information, and talked of cooperation. These interactions probably induced some realism in Nehru. For, although preoccupied with an indefi nable non-alignment, Nehru even justifi ed the existence of NATO while speaking at the Lok Sabha in 1953. He argued that NATO countries had the right to counteract aggression and prepare for self-defence, although they should not misuse their power for the perpetuation of colonial rule.61 India sometimes went to awkward lengths to please Britain. For instance, on the Queen’s birthday on 5 June 1952, the Parliament building in India hoisted the British and Indian national fl ags side by side.62 In the mid-1950s, India resented Britain’s participation in the US-sponsored military alliance system, which virtually propped up Pakistan as a counterweight to India. Still, in 1955, when the then British prime minister, Anthony Eden, visited India, the Indian prime minister referred to Indo-British differences, but also spoke of the mutual respect of the two countries for each other.63 According to Eden, this visit ‘was wholly delightful’.64 In course of the Suez crisis of 1956, India’s relations with Britain suffered a severe setback. On 26 July 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, nationalised, and took possession of, the Suez Canal. He planned on obtaining the resources for building the Aswan High Dam from revenues earned by the Canal. Undoubtedly, Nasser took this step because America and Britain had promised to fi nance the Aswan project only to withdraw the offer in early July. To India and other ex-colonies of the Western countries, Nasser’s move was justifi ed, both politically and psychologically. India was substantially dependent on the Canal for its exports and imports. On 8 August 1956, in his speech at the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Nehru referred to the Asian experiences of colonial rule, and urged that force not be used to resolve the dispute over the Suez Canal. In this speech,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 as countries like Britain and France might argue,

There was no reference to the fact that in June 1956 Britain had faithfully kept the agreement with the Egyptian Government and

61 Ibid., p. 37. 62 The Times, London, 6 June 1952. 63 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, p. 46. 64 Anthony Eden, Full Circle, London: Cassell, 1960, p. 221. Relations with the United Kingdom 69

withdrawn its remaining forces from the Canal zone, and that in any case the Canal concession was due to expire in 1968; nor to the fact that the Egyptian dictator had abruptly and unilaterally repudiated an agreement of long international validity.65

On 16 August 1956, an international conference to settle the Canal dispute commenced in London. Representatives of 22 countries, including India, attended this conference. Although Nasser wanted India to boycott the conference, Nehru disagreed. The reasons for doing so were not far to seek.

There was to Nehru an element of warmongering in Egypt’s action…. No one could doubt Egypt’s right to nationalize the Canal, but the manner in which it was done and the offensive language employed made it difﬁ cult to reach any acceptable agreement providing for what Egypt had already promised, the continuance of the Canal as an open international waterway.66

India’s participation in the London Conference could pave the way for a reconciliation between Egypt and the international community. Nehru wanted to expand the list of invitees to this conference, although this attracted some criticism.

The omission of Burma and Yugoslavia was regarded in Delhi as particularly regrettable, and it is fair to say that Nehru showed unusual solicitude for those countries which were least affected by the expropriation of the Canal and not very much for those which were.67

As to Britain’s invitation to Egypt for participation in the London Conference: ‘Taking seriously a polite request from Nasser for advice, Nehru rashly sent a draft of the reply which Nasser should send to Britain’, recommending conditional acceptance of invitation. ‘But Nasser rejected this draft and said his government would not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 be represented, under any circumstances, at a conference convened by Britain.’68

65 Geoffrey Tyson, Nehru: The Years of Power, Bombay: Jaico, 1970, p. 167. 66 Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, 1947–1956, vol. 2, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989a, p. 278. 67 Tyson, Nehru, p. 167. 68 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, p. 279. 70 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In this context, some comments by Krishna Menon, the leader of the Indian delegation to the London Conference (commencing on 16 August 1956), were far from accurate. He deplored the abstention of Egypt from this conference. However, ‘from Menon’s melancholic and complaining tones it might appear that Egypt had been deliberately shut out of the conference room’.69 At this conference, which lasted seven days, Krishna Menon submitted a complex proposal that provided, among other things, for an advisory body of Canal users (as distinguished from owners), and the submission of annual reports of the Egyptian Canal authority to the UN. Egypt did not support this proposal, nor did Britain and France. ‘We were savvy’, writes Anthony Eden, ‘that India was out of step with the majority of the Conference, which represented more than 95 per cent of the tonnage passing through the canal.’70 The United States secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, proposed international control by the establishment of a Canal Users Association.71 This was opposed by a number of countries, including the Soviet Union, India, and Japan. India did not attend the second London Conference on 19 September 1956, lasting only two days. England and France referred the matter to the UN on 23 September 1956. It was debated on 5 October 1956. Before and after these dates, Krishna Menon transmitted proposals to Britain and Egypt. He proposed the creation of an international consultative agency with a vague supervisory capacity, which would work with the Canal authority set up by the Egyptian government. While Egypt’s response to this proposal was not made public, England’s rejection was clear. Krishna Menon was thus unsuccessful, but, ‘oddly enough, he was, for once, batting on much the same wicket as John Foster Dulles’.72 The Anglo-French resolution before the Security Council, which recommended, among other things, that the Users Association was to receive payment of Canal charges, was vetoed by the Soviet

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Union. ‘India’s policy of nonalignment had enabled it to pay a not unhelpful, if somewhat devious, part off-stage.’73 Krishna Menon

69 Tyson, Nehru, p. 168. 70 Eden, Full Circle, p. 451. 71 Ibid., p. 169. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, pp. 280–81. 72 Tyson, Nehru, p. 170. 73 Ibid., p. 171. Relations with the United Kingdom 71

travelled at a furious pace to Cairo and other places on so many occasions in the course of his unsuccessful attempts to resolve the Suez Canal crisis that Anthony Eden called him ‘the aviatory Mr. Krishna Menon’.74 In 1948, war broke out between Egypt and Israel, following which there was intermittent fi ghting, and Israeli ships were barred from using the Suez Canal. On 29 October 1956, when the foreign ministers of Britain, Egypt, and France were to meet in Geneva for further negotiations, Israeli soldiers moved into Egypt. This was followed by England and France making a move that was little short of suspicious. They delivered an ultimatum directing Israel and Egypt to withdraw within 12 hours to places 10 miles away from either side of the Canal. In case of non-compliance with the ultimatum, England and France would militarily occupy strategic areas like Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said. As expected, Israel accepted and Egypt rejected the ultimatum. Consequently, Anglo-French troops started military operations against Egypt. Britain used its veto power for the fi rst time on 31 October 1956, as the United States demanded a ceasefi re at a meeting of the Security Council.75 The Indian prime minister pointed out that the Anglo-French action was ‘clear aggression and a violation of the United Nations Charter’, and ‘a reversion to a previous and unfortunate period of history when decisions were imposed by force of arms by Western Powers on Asian countries’.76 The United States criticised the Anglo-French attack on Egypt, and cooperated with the Soviet Union in passing a number of resolutions on the Suez crisis at the UN General Assembly in the fi rst week of November 1956. The ceasefi re took place on 5 November 1956. A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) replaced the Anglo-French troops. India’s participation in this process was signifi cant, but less important than Canada’s.77 Egypt began to exercise undisputed control over the operations of the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

74 Eden, Full Circle, p. 444. 75 Tyson, Nehru, p. 172. Also see, Subimal Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977, p. 169. France too joined Britain in exercising the veto. 76 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, p. 286. 77 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, p. 285. Also see, Tyson, Nehru, p. 173. 72 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Canal, and since Egypt was a friendly country for India, India had nothing to worry about. At the UN General Assembly, the Anglo- French invasion of Egypt was debated almost simultaneously with the Soviet intervention in Hungary. India’s role in the Hungarian case was criticised, since it was ‘not possible to justify India’s ambivalent and generally supportive stance of the Soviet invasion of Hungary on moral or normative political grounds’.78 The British evidently failed to appreciate the dissonance between India’s stands on Suez and Hungary. Nor could they appreciate the United States’ stand on the Suez crisis. ‘To denounce and neither to offer nor to accept any constructive suggestions was the core of American policy’, wrote Anthony Eden.79 As Margaret Thatcher observed, ‘the conclusion drawn by most of the British political classes was understandable— that Britain could no longer rely on the United States’.80 ‘To Nehru the Suez adventure was the aberration of one man, and the Indian public should remember that Eden did not sym- bolize the totality of British opinion.’81 Some sections of the British Foreign Offi ce, as also of the Conservative and Labour parties, did not approve Prime Minister Eden’s Suez policy. Yet, the Suez issue did strain India–Britain relations, though not for long. Eden retired from active political life due to bad health.82 In January 1957, Harold Macmillan became the prime minister of Britain. Relations between the two countries improved fast, so much so that, during the India–China confl ict of 1962, India received from Macmillan the fi rst message of support and sympathy, with an unambiguous assurance that Britain was prepared to do whatever it could to help India.83 As Britain upheld the validity of the McMahon Line as the border between India and China in India’s eastern sector, the Chinese leaders described the Indians and the British as ‘jackals of the same lair’.84 India received the fi rst instalment of foreign Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

78 J.N. Dixit, Across Borders: Fifty Years of India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Picus Books, 1998, p. 66. 79 Eden, Full Circle, p. 529. 80 Margaret Thatcher, Statecraft, New York: Harper Collins, 2002, p. 363. 81 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, p. 288. 82 Tyson, Nehru, p. 174. 83 Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–1963, London: Macmillan, 1973, p. 228. 84 Daily Express, London, 8 October 1962. Relations with the United Kingdom 73

military assistance from Britain, as it chartered civilian aircraft to send arms to India. India received from Britain, in course of the confl ict with China in 1962, about £5.35 million worth of arms. These were partly donated, and partly provided on lend-base terms. Both Britain and India thus prevented India’s non-alignment from becoming a barrier to military assistance in a time of crisis. In this perspective, Indians should not blame Prime Minister Macmillan for his private assessment that the war with China changed Nehru ‘from an imitation of George Lansbury into a parody of Churchill’.85 The diplomatic support that Britain extended to India in late 1962 was highly commendable. For instance, when China and Ghana asked Britain to mediate between India and China, Prime Minister Macmillan went so far as to assert that there could be no mediation between a burglar and the victim of the burglar. Moreover, the visit of a Chinese trade delegation to Britain was cancelled in November 1962, because of the war on the India–China border. All this certainly added to the signifi cance of prompt British military aid to India at the time of this war.86 It may be added that ‘Indian forces were yet to be trained to use’ the arms supplied by Britain (and America).87 The British, however, like the Americans, made it cumbersome to use their arms, as they posted observers to ensure that these were not being deployed against Pakistan. There was a chance, following the India–China confl ict of 1962, of Britain formulating a long-term or medium-term programme of comprehensive military assistance to India. But the British did not appear to display much enthusiasm, except for some ‘joint air defence exercises’, which ‘were purely for training purposes’.88 A major reason for this was Pakistan’s vigorous opposition to any British scheme of military aid to India.89 It was, however, unfortunate that Britain (and America) tried to use the India–China war as an alibi for infl uencing India to offer concessions to Pakistan on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 J&K, partly because (as they may have thought) they had helped

85 Macmillan, End of the Day, p. 228. 86 Commonwealth Survey, published for the Central Ofﬁ ce of Information by Her Majesty’s Stationery Ofﬁ ce (HMSO), London, 1962, pp. 964–65. 87 Kuldip Nayar, India: The Critical Years, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p. 142. 88 Macmillan, End of the Day, p. 235. 89 The Hindu, 23 December 1962. 74 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India at the time of the war by putting pressure on Pakistan not to create any diffi culty for India.90 On 9 April 1965, the Pakistani armed forces attacked a post of India’s Central Reserve Police at the Rann of Kutch on the undefi ned Kutch-Sind border. The Indian Army had to intervene. Small-scale fi ghting went on till 26 April, subsequent to which an informal truce was brokered, which Pakistan broke on 25 May 1956. The Indian Army retaliated and there was intermittent fi ghting until June 1956. Harold Wilson, the then British prime minister, took the initiative towards a ceasefi re, which took place on 1 July 1956.91 Subsequently, the Kutch issue was referred to an international tribunal which (on 19 February 1968) recognised India’s claim to the Rann of Kutch, awarding to Pakistan only 350 out of 3,500 square miles that Pakistan claimed.92 There was, however, ‘conclusive evidence that the entire territory clearly belonged to India’.93 Signifi cantly, even when the Kutch ceasefi re negotiations were on, Pakistan was planning an aggression in J&K, which commenced on 1 September 1965. It began with the infi ltration by offi cially- sponsored irregular combatants. The British newspapers had assessed this situation correctly.94 But the British government’s role was not at all helpful to India. Britain had military transactions with India, but not with Pakistan, and yet it stopped military supplies to India.95 Probably, Britain (like America and China) had the impression that Pakistan would be able to defeat India.96 Subsequently, however, as Pakistan’s regular forces launched a large-scale attack upon India, and India had no alternative but to initiate a counter- attack towards Lahore, Prime Minister Wilson could not suppress his blatant anti-India bias. Wilson sent messages to Prime Minister

90 Nayar, India, pp. 142–43. 91 Harold Wilson, The Labour Government, 1964–1970: A Personal Record, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974, pp. 112–13. 92 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 295–96. 93 B.M. Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p. 20. Also see, Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 293–94. Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, p. 162. 94 The Times, London, 12 August 1965; The Daily Telegraph, London, 23 August 1965. 95 T.V. Kunhi Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade, New Delhi: Hind Pocket Books, 1973, p. 102. 96 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 69. Relations with the United Kingdom 75

Shastri and President Ayub, which talked of ‘a completely new situation’, and stressed that India had attacked Pakistan, while keeping silent about the prior Pakistani aggression.97 ‘Prime Minister Shastri was puzzled by Wilson’s message. Indian political circles were incensed’.98 Wilson, however, took an extraordinarily sympathetic stance towards India when China, on the basis of a completely false accusation, tried to help Pakistan (or rather made a gesture), and served an ultimatum on India on 16 September 1965.99 On the day of expiry of the ultimatum (which was not acted upon), that is 19 September, Wilson warned China that, in case of an attack by China, Britain would be obliged to assist India.100 In his memoirs, it should be added, Wilson confessed that during the 1965 India– Pakistan war, he wrongly denounced India because of being misled by a pro-Pakistani coterie in Britain’s Commonwealth Relations Ofﬁ ce.101 At the end of the 1965 India–Pakistan war, when the Soviet Union became a mediator, there was an opinion in Britain that Wilson, by his maladroit moves, forfeited an opportunity for Britain to play the part of the mediator, and an India–Pakistan settlement took place not in London but in Tashkent.102 The strength of Indo-British relations was tested during the East Pakistan/Bangladesh crisis of 1971. The British press condemned the genocide unleashed in East Pakistan by the military regime of President Yahya Khan. British newspapers deplored the disruption of the democratic process, and even predicted the emergence of an independent Bangladesh. The British government’s view was remarkably close to that of the Indian government. Both favoured the restoration of democratic rights by means of a peaceful political settlement that would pave the way for the return of refugees from India.103 A British parliamentary delegation visited East Pakistan. Its report contradicted Pakistani propaganda that the unrest in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 97 C.P. Srivastava, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 241–43. 98 Ibid., p. 242. 99 Wilson, The Labour Government, p. 138. 100 Daily Telegraph, London, 20 September 1965. Also see, Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 73. 101 Wilson, The Labour Government, pp. 133–34. 102 The Sunday Telegraph, London, 26 September 1965. 103 The Indian Express, 15 May 1971. 76 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

East Pakistan was a product of Indian intervention.104 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited London, and met Prime Minister Edward Heath to explain the predicament caused by the East Pakistan crisis, especially the arrival of millions of refugees from East Pakistan to India. She received a favourable response.105 On 3 December 1971, Pakistan attacked nine Indian airﬁ elds.106 This led to a full-scale conventional war between Pakistan and India. At the UN Security Council, Britain (and France) helped India by refusing ‘to be associated with a decision which was unlikely to be accepted by either of the parties directly involved. In their view, adoption of any such draft resolution would make its implementation impossible.’107 It may be added that Soviet vetoes on these resolutions enabled India to continue its military expedition and ensure the emergence of an independent Bangladesh.108 In the mid-1970s, there were two major areas of discord between India and Britain. One was the Anglo-American agreement for the development of a naval base (including anchorage, shore facilities, and airﬁ eld) in the British Indian Ocean Territory of Diego Garcia. The other was India’s nuclear explosion on 18 May 1974. India protested that the expansion of the Diego Garcia base constituted a threat to India’s security.109 Sir Alec Douglas Home, Britain’s foreign and Commonwealth secretary, responded by observing that India did not care to criticise the Soviet Union for its naval activities in the Indian Ocean.110 Western powers with nuclear weapons sharply denounced the nuclear test conducted by India in 1974.111 Britain was no exception. An important area of disagreement between India and Britain (as also the United States) from the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. ‘When Soviet troops directly intervened in Afghanistan between 27 and 29 December 1979, India was not altogether surprised, but the suddenness of the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

104 The Times, London, 2 July 1971. 105 Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, p. 183. 106 Ibid., p. 184. 107 C.S.R. Murthy, India’s Diplomacy in the United Nations, New Delhi: Lancers Books, 1993, p. 68. 108 Dixit, Across Borders, , p. 108. 109 The Statesman, 7 February 1974. 110 The Statesman, 11 February 1974. 111 Dixit, Across Borders, p. 286. Relations with the United Kingdom 77

intervention was unexpected.’112 Pakistan became ‘a major source of support to the Afghan resistance’.113 Britain (like the United States) advocated large-scale military assistance to Pakistan. But India became worried, for it had to cope with ‘heightened levels of Pakistani subversion in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir’.114 It must be admitted, however, that India failed to maintain a proper balance between ethics and realism in its Afghan policy. Initially, India respected ethics, and Prime Minister Charan Singh clearly impressed upon the Soviet ambassador to New Delhi the view that the Soviet Union should withdraw troops from Afghanistan at an early date. During the course of the UN debate, the Indian ambassador did not hesitate to criticise the Soviet Union openly. Subsequently, as Indira Gandhi replaced Charan Singh in the middle of January 1980, India ceased to criticise the Soviet Union in any international forum.115 Moreover, in the 1980s, Britain (like the United States) had no appreciation for India’s policy towards Kampuchea (Cambodia). India supported the Kampuchean government headed by Heng Samrin, and supported by Vietnam.116 The Vietnamese, again, had the Soviet Union as their sponsor. In the 1980s, India also had a vital difference of opinion with Britain on the establishment of a Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) in the Indian Ocean region by America (supported by Britain). While India favoured demilitarisation of the region, Prime Minister Thatcher was worried that a substantial part of the world’s oil moved through the Gulf of Hormuz, to which Soviet forces were dangerously close.117 One could, however, raise the question of whether, because of the marked disparity in power between the RDF and Soviet forces based in Central Asia, the RDF was to be treated as merely a trip-wire.118 A number of such issues—for example, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan—became obsolete at the end of the Cold War in 1991. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

112 Ibid., p. 134. 113 Thatcher, Statecraft, p. 201. 114 Dixit, Across Borders, p. 135. 115 Ibid., pp. 134, 137–38. 116 Ibid., p. 174. 117 The Statesman, 12 April 1981. 118 U.S. Bajpai (ed.), India’s Security: The Politico-Strategic Environment, New Delhi: Lancers Books, 1983, p. 111. 78 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

New issues emerged in the post-Cold War days, notably, international Islamic terrorism, or Jihadi terrorism. Before we take up the post- Cold War era in Indo-British relations, it may be advisable to deal with an issue, viz. immigration, which has been common to days before and after the Cold War. Potential migrants to Britain from India (and many other countries) were certainly inspired by the striking liberalism of the British Nationality Act of 1948, which conferred a common status on all citizens of independent Commonwealth countries (barring Eire and Southern Rhodesia) and all British subjects. To some extent, this reﬂ ected an appreciation of the exceptionally useful role of soldiers from such countries as India in the Second World War.119 It was a sort of redemption of debt incurred in the days of the Empire. Countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as also Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), refused to emulate the spirit of idealism of the 1948 British Nationality Act. Probably, the makers of this open-door immigration policy, deserving praise for benevolence, could not foresee how long they would be able to pursue this policy in the face of hard realities. The Act ‘was passed at a time when large scale migration to Britain seemed unlikely’, writes Alison Blunt.120 While Indians will be concerned mainly with the problem of Indian migrants to Britain, one cannot lose sight of the fact that this was part of the larger problem of what the British government would depict as that of ‘non-white’ or ‘coloured’ migrants. In the mid- 1950s, the British government was perturbed by ‘the sudden inﬂ ux of immigrants, especially from the new Commonwealth countries’, wrote Harold Macmillan.121

The problem was ﬁ rst brought to the attention of Ministers in 1954 during Churchill’s last administration. At that time, the total coloured population was about 40,000, compared with about 7,000 before Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the war, but immigration was increasing dramatically. In 1954 the number of coloured immigrants entering the United Kingdom increased fourfold over 1953, and there was every prospect of the ﬂ ow

119 Arun Kumar Banerji, The Statesman, 15 May 1981. 120 Alison Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, p. 138. 121 Macmillan, End of the Day, p. 73. Relations with the United Kingdom 79

growing steadily larger. As can well be imagined, serious housing and social problems began to emerge…. 122

It was, therefore, natural that Britain would have to devise some restrictions on immigration from India (and many other countries), although the number of Indians in Britain stood at only 2,205 in 1951.123 The number appears to be somewhat small, especially when we remind ourselves that a number of Anglo-Indians left for Britain after independence, because they ‘felt at home in British India, but feared discrimination, unemployment and fewer opportunities for their children after Independence’.124 In the 1950s, Britain witnessed an increase in immigration because of two reasons. First, the United States passed an act in 1952, which nearly stopped immigration from the West Indies, even though for decades, thousands of West Indians had been migrating to the United States for jobs.125 This led to a rise in immigration from the West Indies to Britain. Second, British industries faced labour shortages, and unskilled as well as semi-skilled labourers migrated from India, Pakistan, and the West Indies.126 The British government did not want to act against the tradition of free movement between the Commonwealth and the United Kingdom, even when, in 1955, the number of migrants from Aden, Africa, Cyprus, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, and the West Indies reached 43,000. But the race riots of 1958 compelled the British government to consider restriction on immigration. Job opportunities in Britain, as also beneﬁ ts for the jobless in Britain’s welfare state, attracted immigrants, whose number stood at 58,000 in 1960, and doubled in 1961.127 In November 1961, a Bill was introduced in the British House of Commons to control immigration. Harold Macmillan of the Conservative party was then the prime minister.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 122 Ibid. 123 Darshan S. Tatla, ‘Indian Diaspora in the United Kingdom’, in Sarva Daman Singh and Mahavir Singh (eds), Indians Abroad, Gurgaon: Hope India Publications, 2003, p. 113. 124 Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, p. 105. 125 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971, p. 205. 126 Tatla, ‘Indian Diaspora’, pp. 113–14. 127 Macmillan, End of the Day, pp. 74–77. 80 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

‘The recent and startling increase,’ wrote Macmillan, ‘was clearly reaching a rate which was incompatible with the absorption of these newcomers into the life of the country…. Therefore this absolute right of free entry could no longer be maintained.’128 The Bill provided that in future citizens of Commonwealth countries would be permitted entry into Britain if, within a quota system, tied to a ‘ﬁ rst come ﬁ rst served’ rule, the potential immigrants had certain skills, which entitled them to receive a job voucher from the Minister of Labour. In addition, special consideration would be given to students. The Bill was attacked for its racial bias by the Labour party, which was in opposition. According to a Gallup Poll, more than 90 per cent of the British people were in support of the Bill.129 The Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 eventually came into force on 27 February 1962. The following comments by Prime Minister Macmillan deserve close attention:

It is strange to reﬂ ect that the charge brought against my colleagues and myself a very few years later was one not of undue harshness, but of thoughtless leniency. In spite of all the noble sentiments and splendid protestations of the Labour Party in opposition, they were, in ofﬁ ce, compelled to introduce measures which were far more stringent than those for which we were responsible.130

The Times, London, which severely criticised the Act of 1962,131 revised its assessment on 16 February 1967, and wrote that this Act prescribed controls on immigration which were ‘essential’. It was no surprise, therefore, that the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 imposed far more severe controls on entry into Britain. Citizens of independent Commonwealth countries, as also UK and its colonial territories, were stripped by the 1962 Act of the right to enter Britain freely. Citizens of UK and its colonies, who were not born, and whose parents were not born, in Britain, were denied this

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 right by the 1968 Act. Michael Dummett wrote:

People of Indian descent living in East African colonies had, when these countries became independent, been offered the option of remaining

128 Ibid., p. 80. 129 Ibid., p. 81. 130 Ibid., p. 83. 131 The Times, 4 December 1961. Relations with the United Kingdom 81

citizens of the U.K. and Colonies, on the clear understanding that this would entitle them, as no longer living in a colony, to move to Britain and settle there without impediment. The 1968 Act in effect nulliﬁ ed their citizenship by taking away their right to enter Britain: they became the ﬁ rst people in the world who, without being stateless, had no place on the globe where they had a right to go or stay.132

The Immigration Act 1971 had a rather explicit anti-white or racial bias, and was disadvantageous to potential Indian immigrants. For, it conferred the right of free entry to Britain upon citizens of other Commonwealth countries on the basis of descent.133 In March 1980, Britain enforced new rules to limit immigration, and thereby provide an antidote to the deterioration in the prevalent unemployment situation. Husbands and ﬁ ancés of immigrant women (including Indians) were restrained from coming to Britain for the purpose of compliance with arranged marriages. It should be noted that this restriction clearly violated the European convention on human rights.134 The British Nationality Act 1981 created three categories of citizenship. First, there were ‘British Citizens’, who had all rights. Second, there were ‘Citizens of the Dependent Territories’, who lived in a few surviving colonies without any automatic right of entry or re-entry into the colony where the citizens were born or resided. This would be determined by the laws of that colony. ‘British Overseas Citizens’ formed the third category, comprising those persons who did not live in colonies, and who were not eligible, by dint of proved residence in Britain or descent, for ‘British citizenship’. This category included Indians expelled in 1972 by Idi Amin, the president of Uganda. Most of them held British passports, and 27,000 of them arrived in Britain in course of a year.135

British Overseas citizenship will entitle its holder to nothing: there

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 will be no place in the world where he will have a claim to live. He will hardly dare travel out of the country in which he is living, since he will be returnable neither to that country nor to Britain, and foreign immigration ofﬁ cers will therefore be chary of admitting

132 The Statesman, 11 April 1981. 133 Ibid. 134 Reuters report, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 12 March 1980. 135 Tatla, ‘Indian Diaspora’, p. 114. 82 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

him… It was not for this that people of Indian descent in East Africa opted when they decided to accept the offer to remain British citizens. British overseas citizenship represents a cynical abrogation of promises accepted in good faith and already shamelessly betrayed.136

It was not possible to reconcile Britain’s absolutely unchallengeable right to control entry to a small island country with the charges of racial discrimination against immigration laws passed by Con- servative as well as Labour governments. The 1981 Act at least brought about a consistency between Britain’s nationality and immigration laws.137 Even before the passage of the 1981 Act, however, as revealed by a report of the UK Immigrants Advisory Services published in March 1989, Indians were unduly harassed and humiliated by the immigration department of Britain. In the late 1970s, Indian (and other Asian) women trying to join their husbands in Britain were subjected to notorious virginity tests. The claims of a large number of Indians trying to join their families in Britain were initially dismissed as false and deceitful, but subsequently accepted as correct because of DNA tests. But, before these tests were introduced in 1987, Indians had to submit to disgraceful interrogation on purely private matters.138 The Immigration Act of 1988 further tightened the controls. It provided for summary deportation of migrants for minor breaches of law, for example, the acceptance of part-time work by students.139 In February 1993, the British Parliament amended the law on Asylum and Immigration appeals. As a result of this amendment, potential students and visitors from the Indian subcontinent, if refused entry visas, would cease to have any right to appeal. Protests by Indians (and others) against this amendment were of no avail.140 Nevertheless, a considerable number of Indians continued to migrate to Britain. For example, in 2001, 6,000 Indians, including Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 school teachers, members of the medical profession and industries

136 Michael Dummett, The Statesman, 11 April 1981. 137 Arun Kumar Banerji, ‘Recent Developments in Indo-British Relations’, The Calcutta Journal of Political Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, Summer 1982, p. 52. 138 Sajeda Momin, The Telegraph, 25 March 1989. 139 Ibid. 140 The Telegraph, 19 February 1993. Relations with the United Kingdom 83

in the fi eld of high technology, settled in Britain. Indians found it very useful to avail of the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) introduced by the UK in January 2002. British Foreign and Commonwealth Offi ce minister, Ben Bradshaw, observed in February 2002, that 1.3 million Indians formed an important component of Britain’s economy and culture.141 In the same year, with effect from 8 November 2002, a new immigration law prescribed that applicants for British citizenship were to join language classes, and also prove that they had a comprehension of British society.142 This was certainly not an unreasonable requirement. Moreover, this was in accordance with a comprehensive White Paper on ‘Nationality, Immigration and Asylum’ by Britain’s home minister, David Blunkett. If in the past British legislation could sometimes be depicted as directed against Indians (and other Asians), the law of 2002 was a little different. It prohibited any consideration of requests for asylum from those 10 countries that were candidates for membership of the EU. In 2007, the British government announced strict controls on migration. Implementation was to begin from 2008. Migration was to be regulated in such a way as to serve Britain’s national interests. Potential migrants would be placed under fi ve tiers. Highly skilled persons like entrepreneurs and scientists would be placed, from early 2008, under Tier 1. Such skilled workers as engineers, nurses, and teachers would be eligible, from the third quarter of 2008, for placement in Tier 2. Low-skilled workers in the construction sector (and elsewhere) would be permitted under Tier 3 to cope specifi - cally with temporary labour shortages. While students would be placed in Tier 4 from early 2009, Tier 5 would take care of youth mobility and temporary workers from the third quarter of 2008. No amount of parochial concern for Indian migrants could fi nd fault with such a comprehensive and thoughtful immigration policy.143

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 This was logically followed by measures, announced in November 2007 but to be enforced from February 2008, which, among other things, imposed severe penalties upon employers recruiting illegal migrants. As Britain’s home secretary, Jacqui Smith, put it, ‘by

141 The Statesman, 22 February 2002. 142 The Statesman, 10 November 2002. 143 Nandini Jawli, The Pioneer, 20 April 2007. 84 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

working together with employers and others, we have developed a system that delivers the migrants the UK needs, but which also keeps out those that it does not’.144 On 8 April 2008, the HSMP Forum, representing 49,000 Indians, obtained a valuable judicial verdict in London, which upheld its petition for revision of retrospective amendments to the HSMP carried out by the UK government in November 2006. These amendments, unless thrown out by the court, would compel thousands of highly skilled Indian migrants (and others) to leave Britain. One can only predict that, in future too, the UK government may try to tighten rules of immigration from time to time, which may appear controversial to migrants, who will seek judicial redress. In fact, the UK government may sometimes try to revise rules to cope with the problem of organised gangs of criminals with cross- national linkages.145 Militancy, immigration, and asylum got intertwined in the 1970s and 1980s and disturbed Indo-British relations. Britain appeared to be reluctant, although it had the ability, to take strong actions against those supporters of militants in Punjab and J&K who were residing in Britain. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi became so annoyed that he

… resorted ﬁ rst to a virtual freeze on Indo-British economic relations (1984) and later a ‘broad-fronted restriction in all Indo-British dealings’ (1987), because Britain would not move, despite the assassination on British soil of an Indian diplomat, Rabindra Mhatre in Birmingham, or even after Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of a Sikh militant in her security entourage. For a year and a half, there were no defence or commercial contracts awarded to Britain, no VVIP or VIP visits, British aid offers were bluntly rejected, the British High Commissioner lost his privileged access to senior levels of the Government in New Delhi.146

The Indian government was unhappy. For instance, a militant leader, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Jaswant Singh Bharj, against whom criminal cases were registered

144 The Times of India, 23 November 2007. 145 The Times of India, 7 February 2008; The Statesman, 9 April 2008; The Times of India, 7 May 2008. 146 Krishna V. Rajan, ‘India and the United Kingdom’, in A. Sinha and M. Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, p. 747. Relations with the United Kingdom 85

in India, was not deported to India despite India’s request. On the contrary, Britain’s Conservative party went so far as to allot coveted accommodation to him.147 The situation changed in 1992, when Britain and India signed an extradition treaty. This led, for example, to the surrender in India of a militant leader, Gurdeep Singh Sibia, who evidently felt that, in view of this treaty, he would not be able to return safely to his Birmingham house.148 By means of this treaty, John Major’s government took the unprecedented step of applying to India Britain’s own Suppression of Terrorism Act of 1978. This blew the political cover from all terrorism-related extradition cases. As the process of ratifi cation of this extradition treaty was completed in 1993, India became the only Commonwealth country to have such a treaty with Britain. Moreover, the two countries had an agreement on confi scation of terrorists’ assets, which was an antidote to illegal money transfers and money laundering.149 In 1995, Britain went a step further as it decided to place India on a list of countries called the White List. Political safety in these countries was at such a level that requests for political asylum by their nationals were likely to be treated as spurious by British offi cials.150 It is indeed a matter of speculation whether a surge in Indo-British relations in the 1990s (especially in the context of what happened in the 1980s, as already noted in this chapter) could be attributed to a near-simultaneous end of the Cold War and the embracing of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation by India.151 Some of the issues of discord in the Cold War years disappeared, for example, those relating to the Anglo-American naval base in Diego Garcia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Soviet-backed Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea. Others like the Indo-Pak differences on J&K and American arms supply to Pakistan persisted and/or reappeared in the aftermath of 9/11. Coping with international Islamic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 terrorism (or Jihadi terrorism) became a major focus of attention for both India and Britain, and they were not always able to accomplish

147 The Statesman, 24 February 1986. 148 Editorial, The Telegraph, 14 August 1992. 149 The Statesman, 23 July and 16 October 1993. Also see, Rajan, ‘India and the United Kingdom’, p. 749. 150 Dipankar De Sarkar, The Telegraph, 21 November 1995. 151 Rajan, ‘India and the United Kingdom’, p. 748. 86 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

convergence, for example, on Pakistan’s role in sponsoring international terrorism, or the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. In 1995, a policy statement on J&K was issued by Britain’s Labour party, in course of its annual conference. It endorsed the validity of UN resolutions on J&K. Simultaneously, it extended recognition to the 1972 Shimla agreement between India and Pakistan, which advocated bilateralism. Evidently, the Labour party tried to appease Indian and Pakistani voters by passing a resolution that reﬂ ected the ignorance of its framers, for, it was self-contradictory, endorsing multilateralism and bilateralism in the same breath. This may be a reason—apart from the fact that there was no accusation directed against India—that India refrained from any sharp criticism of the Labour party resolution on J&K.152 In 1997, again, the British Labour party persisted in an entirely self-contradictory manoeuvre in pursuit of the politics of vote banks. At the annual conference of the party, Derek Fatchett, a senior British minister, advocated self-determination for J&K at a meeting convened by Pakistani supporters; the following day, he pleaded for India–Pakistan bilateral talks at a meeting organised by Indian supporters.153 One could speculate on whether this was a sign of maturity (or otherwise) of British electoral politics. New Delhi did not like British foreign secretary Robin Cook’s observation in New York in September that he was ready to be associated with any India–Pakistan dialogue on J&K. Nor was New Delhi happy about the comments of Derek Fatchett on J&K at the aforementioned Labour party conference. Nevertheless, the Government of India did not bother to react to Fatchett’s remarks. V.N. Gadgil, the Congress Party spokesman, however, expressed mental anguish over the apparent inability of the Labour party leaders to reconcile themselves to the extinction of the British Empire, and to the reality that India’s global role was now signiﬁ cant.154

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 On 9 October 1997, at Islamabad, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook reportedly told journalists that Britain was no longer managing an empire, and that it was not in a position to inﬂ uence India to promote a settlement of the J&K issue. On the same day, the

152 Vijay Dutt, The Hindustan Times, 14 October 1997. 153 Sanjay Suri, The Statesman, 3 October 1997. 154 The Times of India, 7 October 1997. Relations with the United Kingdom 87

Pakistan foreign ministry issued a statement about a meeting between Robin Cook and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, which underlined Cook’s readiness to provide assistance towards forging negotiations for a peaceful resolution of the J&K issue.155 All this was probably provocation enough for Prime Minister I.K. Gujral to tell intellectuals in Cairo that Britain was a third-rate power, while he denounced the British government’s attitude towards the J&K issue. This ‘uncharacteristic outburst’ of Gujral, writes K.P. Nayar, ‘was prompted by a feeling that he has been badly let down by the leadership of the Labour Party, whom he had assiduously wooed during the long years when Mr. Gujral and Labour leaders were both out of power’.156 Eventually, diplomacy by denial took the centre stage. The Indian government announced that the report on Gujral calling Britain a third-rate power was baseless, and Cook denied referring to J&K during his recent Pakistan visit.157 Branding media reports on statements by Cook and Gujral as incorrect was a time-tested face-saving device. ‘Even if the media reports were not wrong but had to be denied for understandable reasons, the observations supposed to have been made by the Prime Minister and the British Foreign Secretary do not merit disproportionate importance’, read one editorial.158 The sobriety of this editorial was not reﬂ ected in the conduct of politicians holding some of the highest positions in India and Britain. Cook had a meeting with Gujral in New Delhi for an hour. The J&K issue was not discussed in that meeting.159 Subsequently, in course of a radio interview in London, Cook afﬁ rmed that he did not make any public statement on J&K in Islamabad or Delhi.160 Robin Cook went far in blaming the press, as he commented that media persons were mischievously attempting to spoil his relations with Gujral.161 Queen Elizabeth visited India for a week in mid-October 1997

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in commemoration of 50 years of Indian independence. A number

155 Amit Barua, The Hindu, 10 October 1997. 156 The Telegraph, 15 October 1997. 157 Mahendra Ved, The Times of India, 14 October 1997. 158 The Hindu, 15 October 1997. 159 Jyoti Malhotra, The Indian Express, 14 October 1997. 160 Sanjay Suri, ‘Cook in the Frying Pan’, Outlook, 3 November 1997, p. 40. 161 L.K. Sharma, The Times of India, 17 October 1997. 88 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of unpleasant—though not unavoidable—incidents took place during this visit, and created the impression that unworthy persons occupied some of the highest offi ces in India and Britain. On the very day of her arrival, 12 October 1997, protesters assembled before the British High Commission in New Delhi. Till the police dispersed them by the application of water canons, they shouted demands for a British apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 (carried out by General Dyer).162 The question was: why had offi cials of both the countries scheduled a visit by the Queen and her husband to Jallianwala Bagh? Even before the Queen reached India, David Gore-Booth, the British High Commissioner, made it emphatically clear that the Queen would lay a wreath at the memorial in Jallianwala Bagh as a ‘special gesture’, but there would be no apology.163 Although there was a newspaper report about Prime Minister Gujral’s suggestion that the Queen should avoid a visit to Amritsar, there was evidently a lack of coordination among the offi cials of the two countries on this matter.164 That this lack was not accidental but habitual was soon manifest. British offi cials failed to equip the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, with proper briefs. ‘At Jallianwala Bagh, Prince Philip, betraying unbelievable insensitivity, disputed the number of those killed, and that too on the dubious authority of General Dyer’s son.’165 The Queen’s visit to Chennai, again, raised an unseemly (and easily avoidable) controversy. Indian and British offi cials wrangled over whether a banquet speech by the Queen was scheduled in Chennai. British media persons were so upset by the cancellation of a banquet speech in Chennai that one of them dubbed Indian offi cials as ‘caricatures of unimaginable objects’.166 The most reprehensible lack of coordination between British and Indian offi cials, as also the unpardonable failure of British offi cials to enlighten the royal couple on a proper (though obvious) code of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 conduct, became distressingly evident in course of their visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The following commentary, remarkably apposite, deserves reproduction.

162 The Telegraph, 13 October 1997. 163 The Hindustan Times and The Telegraph, 8 October 1997. 164 The Telegraph, 8 and 13 October 1997. 165 Editorial, The Times of India, 18 October 1997. 166 The Times of India, 16 October 1997. Relations with the United Kingdom 89

At the Golden Temple, the highest seat of worship for the Sikhs, the royal couple remained seated when presented with mementos and turned down the ‘prasad’ offered customarily at the sanctum- sanctorum. It is possible that the Queen was not briefed properly on what to expect at the temple. Yet, she is not merely the titular head of the British monarchy, she heads the Church of England, by virtue of which alone she should have been aware of the proprieties to be observed in a place held sacred by the followers of another religion, indeed, known that such open disrespect was bound to offend local sensibilities. Even a casual tourist dropping in at St. Paul’s [in London] would have done better than to cause offence in this manner.167

Thus, if the year of commemoration of 50 years of India’s independence was not wholly pleasant for India and Britain, the same can be said of the following year, 1998, when India conducted a series of underground nuclear tests in the month of May. In the US, the reaction was predictably adverse, because the Indian tests challenged a number of US laws and rules about prevention of nuclear proliferation. Moreover, as noted elsewhere in this book, India’s Tarapur Atomic Power Station, built with American assistance, faced a number of problems after India refused to sign the 1968 NPT, and, later in 1974, carried out an underground nuclear test. However, Britain’s reaction to the Indian nuclear tests of 1998 appeared to be unexpectedly hostile. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government seemed to be determined to penalize India for its 1998 tests. It suspended all high-level contact, and displayed its displeasure in a number of ways, although it did not impose any sanctions. Britain tried, but failed, to inﬂ uence the EU to subject India to collective sanctions. Britain also proposed that the EU countries should recall their ambassadors from India. Some EU countries, including France, counteracted this. ‘European Governments rightfully pointed out that it was important for Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 their envoys to be in New Delhi, to report back home the Indian Government’s position on the nuclear question.’168 India was deeply peeved by the British reaction to its 1998 nuclear tests. After all, as Margaret Thatcher would tend to agree, Indian

167 Editorial, The Times of India, 18 October 1997. 168 Seema Guha, The Times of India, 3 November 1998. 90 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

nuclear capability was not a threat to the Western powers (including Britain), and if the West could trust a nuclear-capable China, an India with nuclear weapons also deserved the trust of the West.169 London recalled its High Commissioner to India, David Gore-Booth. Envoys of other EU countries stayed on in New Delhi. Gore-Booth, therefore, returned, but found that his contact with Indian authorities remained restricted to routine matters. Subsequently, Britain decided to change its posturing towards India, and, when Lalit Mansingh took up the position of the Indian High Commissioner in London in late 1998, he received accreditation without any delay. One reason behind the change in British stance could be the realisation that ‘French maturity in dealing with New Delhi’s nuclear tests had led to India and France developing a special relationship’ and holding ‘strategic talks’.170 In 2001, attacks by Jihadi terrorists upon the US (the 9/11 phenomenon), India’s J&K Legislative Assembly, and the Parliament in New Delhi, should have set the stage for close political collaboration between Britain and India on a wide range of counter- terrorism manoeuvres. However, like America, Britain too remained preoccupied with helping Pakistan, the major source of Jihadi terrorism, rather than devising a joint counter-terrorism strategy with India, the principal victim of this terrorism for many years. This is evident, for instance, from a perusal of The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries.171 Prime Minister Tony Blair’s concern for President Musharraf and Pakistan appeared to overshadow his concern to combat terrorism with India’s help. Blair was anxious that ‘a message of support for Musharraf’ was essential172 if, in order to eliminate Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, Afghanistan was to be invaded. Blair appreciated Musharraf’s view that ‘the risks he was taking were real and he needed real help’.173 The points that were missed by the British prime minister were that

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Musharraf himself had generated those risks by providing full- ﬂ edged support to the Taliban, as also Al-Qaeda, for years, and that

169 Thatcher, Statecraft, pp. 56 and 200. 170 Seema Guha, The Times of India, 3 November 1998. 171 Alastair Campbell, The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. 172 Ibid., p. 568. 173 Ibid., p. 569. Relations with the United Kingdom 91

he had used these (and other) terrorist agencies as instruments to wage a proxy war against India. Blair thought deeply about how to fashion ‘a deal for Pakistan, help Musharraf’,174 forgetting that, in the past, Western help for Pakistan (in the anti-Soviet war) was substantially diverted towards the proxy war against India, and that such a diversion could again take place in the case of assistance to Pakistan towards the war against the Al-Qaeda and Taliban. President Bush regarded Britain as ‘a true friend’ in implementing the following doctrine: ‘we were going after terrorists and all who harbour them’.175 Amazingly, no attention was given to the incontestable fact that Pakistan harboured the largest number of highly trained and equipped terrorists for worldwide operations. In an intelligence meeting on 24 September 2001, for instance, Blair said he ‘was interested in what more we could do for Pakistan’.176 The following entry on 3 October 2001 in The Alastair Campbell Diaries, in which TB stands for Tony Blair, is signiﬁ cant:

We had a real problem with the Indians over the planned visit to Pakistan. [Atal Behari] Vajpayee [Prime Minister of India] was on the phone, totally adamant that if TB went to Pakistan without also visiting India, it would be a real disaster for him. He was normally so quiet and soft-spoken but there was both panic and a bit of anger in his voice. TB said that having listened to him, there was no way we could do one without the other.177

‘The security committee, which advised on TB’s own safety, had met yesterday, and basically would prefer that he didn’t go to Pakistan’, the entry on 3 October 2001 added signiﬁ cantly. In Pakistan, as the 5 October entry recorded, TB was impressed by Musharraf’s ‘tough character’.178 Musharraf and the other Pakistanis, whom TB talked to, expressed their desire to eliminate Osama Bin Laden (OBL). However, despite the tendency of the British (like the Americans)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to treat Pakistan as a reliable ally in the war on terror, the Pakistanis easily demonstrated that they neither deserved the trust, nor did they

174 Ibid., p. 572. 175 Ibid., p. 574. 176 Ibid., p. 575. 177 Ibid., p. 576. 178 Ibid. 92 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

have the proper sense of priorities in the prosecution of the war on terror. As Campbell noted on 5 October:

They seemed pretty keen to get OBL, but you could never be absolutely sure who was saying what for what reason. He [Musharraf] told TB we shouldn’t underestimate how unpopular the Americans are here. He said Mullah Omar [Head of the Taliban] was impossible to talk to because he is a mystic constantly talking about the afterlife.179

Thus, evidently, Musharraf was creating confusion and attempting blackmail. Campbell added on 5 October: ‘At dinner I was between two fi ve-star generals who spent most of the time listing atrocities for which they held the Indians responsible, killing their own people and trying to blame “freedom fi ghters”.’180 Pakistanis, therefore, were far more interested in carrying on the proxy war (also a form of Jihadi terrorism) against India than against the Taliban or Al-Qaeda—a glaring fact that the British (and Americans) did not (or would not) comprehend. In New Delhi, Blair informed Vajpayee ‘he had been very forceful with Musharraf over the attacks on the Kashmir Assembly’ and advised ‘the need for restraint by India to build stability in the region’.181 The advice was directed to the wrong address, because India never tried to match Pakistan’s proxy war (or Jihad) against India by a retaliatory proxy war. It must be said to the credit of the Blair government, however, that a minister in this government, while on a tour of India, supported India’s demand that Pakistan should hand over to India 20 terrorists who were accused of acts of terrorism against India.182 Moreover, subsequently, Tony Blair himself upheld the claim of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that those responsible for indiscriminate slaughter and destruction in J&K were ‘terrorists, rather than “freedom fi ghters” or anything in between’.183

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 In this context, it may be stressed that Britain’s participation in the war on terror in Afghanistan under American leadership

179 Ibid., p. 577. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid. 182 The Statesman, 23 February 2002. 183 Editorial, The Statesman, 23 September 2004. Relations with the United Kingdom 93

(following 9/11) did not lead to any difference with India. But the subsequent war in Iraq marked some divergence between India and Britain (as also America). To India, the war was unfortunate and avoidable. According to India, both Britain and America were guilty of double standards because they targeted Iraq for links with international terrorism (for example, by way of training and fi nancing suicide bombers), in addition to other reasons like the violation of UN directives on renouncing the possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). However, they did not take Pakistan to task, although Pakistan fomented international terrorism on an incomparably larger scale than Iraq. Let us take just one of numerous instances, the bombing of a synagogue at Istanbul in November 2003. The three bombers were trained in Pakistan, and one of them carried a Pakistani passport.184 As to the quality of British intelligence reports about Iraq possessing WMDs (which justifi ed the war on Iraq), the British government held an inquiry. The inquiry report affi rmed on 14 July 2004 that the British intelligence sources were ‘unreliable’ or ‘seriously fl awed’, and that Iraq did not ‘have signifi cant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fi t for deployment or developed plans for using them’.185 Nevertheless, few Indian writers have had the candour to acknowledge that India has received signifi cant (though indirect) benefi ts from the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq commencing in 2003. The invasion virtually compelled Libya and Iran to reveal the black-market operations in nuclear weapons/ technology, masterminded by the Pakistani scientist, A.Q. Khan, who not only believed in, but facilitated countermeasures against, European hostility to Islam. The Indo-British disagreement over Iraq did not leave any lasting impact. On 20 September 2004, Manmohan Singh and Tony Blair signed the ‘Prime Minister’s Initiative’ which was to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 consolidate a strategic partnership between the two countries, and promote cooperation not only in the war against terror but also in such other areas as science, technology, environment, trade, investment, etc.186 Moreover, the British Foreign and Commonwealth

184 Ibid., 24 November 2003. 185 The Statesman, 15 July 2004. 186 Rajan, ‘India and the United Kingdom’, p. 750. 94 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Offi ce commissioned a report that underlined urgent international priorities for Britain in the early years of the 21st century. This report advocated strategic cooperation with some countries, including India, towards combating international terrorism, resolving international confl icts, promoting good governance and sustainable development, etc.187 In the fi rst decade of the 21st century, Britain developed a proper appreciation of the Indian view of international terrorism after Britain (like India) had shattering experiences of attacks by terrorists drawing sustenance from a democratic pluralist society. Consequently, the Joint Working Group of the two countries on terrorism holds conferences regularly, shares intelligence, and coordinates operations.188 The task, though, is getting more and more complicated with the pronounced failure of Pakistan to cope with the Taliban inside its own territory.189 Yet, the future may not be bleak, provided decision makers in both India and Britain agree with Margaret Thatcher on the following: ‘Terrorism should not just be analyzed and it cannot ultimately be combated by concentrating on its “causes,” religious or secular, political or economic, social or ethnic’.190

Economic Transactions In 1947, and up to the mid-1960s, India had Britain as its principal trading partner. In 1948–49, for instance, India’s exports to Britain accounted for 23.2 per cent of India’s total exports, and 28.6 per cent of all Indian imports came from Britain. In contrast, in 1969–70, these ﬁ gures came down, respectively, to 11.7 per cent and 6.4 per cent. India’s exports to Britain declined primarily because some of the major export items—for example, tea and textiles—faced serious competition from other countries, namely, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, and Hong Kong. Imports from Britain came down due to a number of factors, for example, India’s decision to diversify Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 trade for avoidance of dependence upon any one country, India’s determination to promote indigenous manufacture and save hard

187 Ibid., p. 751. 188 Ibid., pp. 751–52. 189 One need not cite more than one from numerous reports on this subject: Associated Press, The Statesman, 23 April 2009. 190 Thatcher, Statecraft, p. 220. Relations with the United Kingdom 95

currency by import substitution, and reduction in Britain’s share of foreign aid to India, as also a consequent decrease in imports from India tied to purchases with aid money. One impact of all these factors was the enjoyment of a trade surplus by India in the mid-1970s.191 The situation, however, changed in the late 1970s, when Britain began to enjoy a surplus balance of trade. From 1978 to 1981, for example, India’s exports to Britain declined from `5,380 million to `4,280 million. Simultaneously, India’s imports from Britain rose from `5,700 million to `8,250 million. ‘The question is one of explaining why, during a period when India’s industrialization process was showing progressive sophistication and production was undergoing thoughtful diversifi cation’, there took place this fall in exports and increase of imports.192 One explanation was the recent entry of Britain in the European Economic Community (EEC), and the EEC’s policies of protectionism, which could not but cause a decline of Indian exports. Moreover, Britain had to take protectionist measures against India’s textile exports, for example, because Britain was then suffering from an acute unemployment problem.193 However, it should be added that there was a 23 per cent rise in Indo-British trade turnover during 1976–79, and India’s third largest export market was Britain (the Soviet Union being the fi rst and America the second).194 Moreover, although only 8.5 per cent of Indian exports went to Britain in the late 1970s, it absorbed nearly 40 per cent of all Indian exports to the EEC.195 Signifi cantly, in the 1970s, Britain supplied the largest bilateral aid to India.196 Since 1965, British aid to India was interest-free. From the mid-1970s, the entire amount of aid was provided as

191 Arun Kumar Banerji, ‘The Quest for a New Order in Indo-British Relations’, India Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, July–September 1977, pp. 293–94. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Also see, J. Sengupta (President, Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry), The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 November 1977. 192 Editorial, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 3 July 1982. 193 Banerji, ‘Indo-British Relations’, p. 54. Also see, E.I. Brown (Director, British Importer’s Confederation), The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 November 1977: Unemployment in the UK was nearly 6 per cent, and rising. 194 V.K. Garg, The Statesman, 6 December 1980. 195 Ibid. 196 Judith Hart (British Minister for Overseas Development), The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 November 1977. 96 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

a grant.197 To take an instance of persistent British interest in supplying grants to India in the 1970s, the amount of these grants rose from `1,095 million in 1973–74 to `2,280 million in 1977–78. In other words, the grant was more than doubled in four years.198 It was nothing extraordinary that the grants should be tied to purchases in Britain. But criticisms were aired when, for example, the Shipping Corporation of India had to procure six ships from Britain with Britain’s grants, and each ship carried an exorbitant price tag of US$15 million. For, Japan or Venezuela could sell the same ship at US$9 million.199 Nevertheless, one should remember that—in addition to the privilege of procurement of these ships through outright grants—India also benefi ted substantially from the British decision (in late June 1978) to write off all debts to India (and, 28 other poorest countries in the world). India’s share exceeded `8,500 million.200 In the tide of publicity about Soviet contributions to India’s industrial progress the British contributions have remained relatively unnoticed. In addition to the fact that until the early 1980s British investment in India was the single largest foreign investment, Indo-British techno-economic collaboration led to the indigenous manufacture of products as diverse as soaps, shoe polish, bicycles, cars, heavy electrical machinery, aircraft, frigates, tanks, as also oil pipelines. Both the private and public sectors have benefi ted from collaboration with Britain, although the public sector obtained mainly technical aid, whereas the private sector secured both fi nancial and technical aid. From 1957 to mid-1980, for example, India had 5,969 agreements of collaboration with foreign entities, and 1,351 of those were with the British. Such important central public sector undertakings as Bharat Electronics Ltd., Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd., Bharat Ophthalmic Limited, Engineers India Limited, Hindustan Machine Tools, Instrumentation Ltd., and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation, beneﬁ ted immensely from collaboration with British ﬁ rms. Moreover, a large number of

197 C.S. Pandit, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 November 1977. 198 The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 5 January 1978. 199 Editorials, The Statesman, 6 January 1978, and The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 12 January 1978. 200 V.M. Nair, The Statesman, 29 June 1978. Also see, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 7 August 1978. Relations with the United Kingdom 97

state government undertakings in, for example, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, availed of collaboration with British fi rms. Moreover, some private Indian fi rms had as many as fi ve agreements of collaboration each with British fi rms.201 In 1991, India adopted the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG), which appeared to set the stage for a vast change in the entire scenario of Indo-British economic relationships, although there could not be any overnight change. Prime Minister John Major, in a speech at New Delhi on 25 January 1993, expressed appreciation for India’s policy change, and rightly added:

The far reaching changes India has been making, and will continue to make, are opening up signiﬁ cant new opportunities for mutual business and investment. That is why I have brought with me to India some of Britain’s most senior and successful businessmen. Many of these companies have been in India for many years. They are household names as much here as in Britain. Others have developed their Indian business more recently.202

As of 1993, more than 1,200 British companies were engaged in diverse types of business in India. British investments in India amounted to nearly £2 billion (`9,000 crore), even though out of Britain’s total trade, India accounted for less than 1 per cent, whereas Britain was India’s fourth largest trading partner, and shared about 25 per cent of India’s total trade.203 It was in 1993, during Prime Minister John Major’s visit to India, that the Indo-British Partnership Initiative (IBPI) was inaugurated. This led to a rejuvenation of Indo-British relations, underpinned by mutual interest. Industrialists sustained the IBPI, increasing trade, investment, and technology transfer. In three years—1993, 1994, and 1995—two-way trade rose by 70 per cent, and amounted

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to £3 billion in 1995. British investment in India rose ﬁ ve times to `12.9 billion in 1994 (as approved), and doubled in the ﬁ rst nine

201 Judith Hart, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 November 1977. Also see, V.K. Garg (Assistant Economic Adviser, India Investment Centre), The Statesman, 6 December 1980. 202 Strategic Digest, May 1993, p. 718. 203 The Times of India, 16 November 1993. 98 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

months of 1995. Britain thus earned the status of the second largest foreign investor in India. A large number of Indian investors too began to operate in Britain, accounting for 172 new joint ventures in 1993, 193 in 1994, and 158 in the ﬁ rst nine months of 1995.204 Almost every year, the favourable impact of India’s LPG policies upon Indo-UK economic transactions became more and more visible. For example, from 1992 until the end of 1997, Indo-UK trade nearly doubled from £1.8 billion to £3.1 billion. Trade was largely balanced in 1997, with Indian exports standing at £1.62 billion, and British exports at £1.57 billion. British investments rose to about £3 billion in 1997, making Britain the second largest new investor in India since 1991, and the biggest historical or cumulative investor in India. During 1994–96, 600 new Indo-British joint ventures emerged. As of mid-1998, 100 Indian companies were operating in the UK.205 By 6 January 2002, when Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Tony Blair signed the New Delhi Declaration on Partnership for a Better and Safer World, the number of Indian companies established in the UK rose to about 250, including more than 70 in the sector of information and communications technology (ICT). India became the eighth largest investor in the UK. Every year, from 1994 to 2001, Indian and British companies started nearly 200 joint ventures, mainly because India’s LPG policies attracted British companies. Britain was India’s second largest trading partner in the world, and the largest in Europe. Britain decided that, by 2004, it would triple its development aid to India.206 On 19 September 2003, the outgoing British High Commissioner to India, Rob Young, reconﬁ rmed the status of the UK as India’s second largest trading partner (next to the US). He further noted that by March 2003 (the year of formalisation of the India–UK trade partnership), the number of approvals of India–UK joint ventures rose to about 1,905.207 In

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 this process, interestingly, by the middle of the ﬁ rst decade of the

204 Statement of Nicholas Fenn in Calcutta, The Statesman, 17 January 1996. 205 Statement by Simon Scaddem, British Deputy High Commissioner in Calcutta, The Statesman, 30 July 1998. 206 ‘The New Delhi Declaration: India and United Kingdom: Partnership for a Better and Safer World, January 6 2002’, Strategic Digest, February 2002, pp. 239–41. 207 The Statesman, 20 September 2003. Relations with the United Kingdom 99

21st century, Britain was the third largest foreign investor in India, whereas India, too, emerged as the third largest foreign investor in Britain.208 By March 2007, India became the second largest investor in the UK.209 In March 2008, India’s Tata group spent £1.15 billion to take over the Jaguar and Land Rover luxury cars from Britain’s Ford, although, earlier, the Tatas had acquired such high-status British companies as Tetley Tea, and steel giant Corus.

This development, albeit not so new, still goes against common perceptions. Traditionally the rich West invested their spare cash into developing countries, hoping for higher rates of return. So this form of ‘reverse’ investment, from a developing country into a developed country, is for many another sign that the global balance of power is shifting.210

But this sign must not be misread. Britain, for instance, is a leader in research and development (R&D) in such important ﬁ elds as alternative energy technology, biotechnology, computers, electronics, performance engineering, designing/construction of satellites, telecommunications, etc. The entire world (including India) has a lot to learn from Britain.

With 1 per cent of the world’s population, the UK conducts 4.5 per cent of the world’s science and produces 8 per cent of the world’s scientiﬁ c papers. The UK has been involved in some of the leading innovations of the past 25 years. These include the internet, the cellphone with GSM services, GPRS, dual mode 3G….211

When, due to LPG policies, India made rapid advances, especially in the information technology sector, and transformed a relatively poor country like India into a world leader, there was a tendency in some circles to treat India as the back ofﬁ ce for UK and Europe, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 208 Rajan, ‘India and the United Kingdom’, p. 752. 209 Speech by India’s minister for external affairs, Pranab Mukherjee, in Gerhard Wahlers (ed.), India and the European Union, New Delhi: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2007, p. 7. 210 Katerina Rudiger, The UK and India: The Other ‘Special Relationship’? Provocation Series, vol. 4, no. 3, p. 4, London: The Work Foundation. It must be added here that any discussion on the global economic meltdown, commencing in late 2008, is outside the scope of this book. 211 Rajan, ‘India and the United Kingdom’, p. 753. 100 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and nurture apprehensions of job losses through offshoring. These tendencies began to vanish as India registered striking progress with the passage of years.

Indeed, Indian companies such as Tata, Infosys, Wipro and Reliance are amongst the many companies which are becoming world leaders and international brand names in their own right. To see India’s role as limited to ‘Europe’s back ofﬁ ce’ would mean grossly underestimating the situation as India is rapidly increasing its Research and Development (R&D) performance in a number of industries such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace, telecom and computer networking, and automotive.212

India has 60 per cent of its people in the 15–59 age group, and more than 50 per cent below the age of 25. In contrast, the UK and other European countries have an ageing population.213 To this demographic attraction can be added the attraction of India as a business destination for European entrepreneurs. According to a 2008 survey, India is the fourth most preferred business destination for decision makers in Europe.214 Moreover, British ﬁ rms (including law ﬁ rms) have to recruit highly skilled young Indians in order to cope with global competition.215 Taking all such factors into account, one can argue the following:

[that] increased global trade and innovation will…continue to make developed countries richer, for instance by acting as a driver for the transition to the knowledge economy. This is why the UK, as well as other developed countries, should welcome the rise of India instead of seeing it as a threat.216

Law makers, ofﬁ cials, and experts in the UK, therefore, have stressed the need to engage India persistently—by means of the UK–India Business Council, for instance—so as to obtain adequate beneﬁ ts 217 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 from India’s policies of market liberalisation. There can perhaps

212 Rudiger, The UK and India, pp. 7–8. 213 Ibid., p. 9. 214 Ibid., p. 11. 215 Ibid., p. 167. 216 Ibid., p. 6. 217 For details, see UK, House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, Trade and Investment Opportunities with India, Third Report of Session 2005–06. Relations with the United Kingdom 101

be no better way to conclude this section of the chapter on India–UK relations than to quote the following sentence: ‘The United Kingdom has woken up to India, but progress must not now be slowed in response to global concerns or expressions of doubt about India’s future.’218

Military Transactions As we try to analyse Indo-UK military transactions, we enter into an extraordinary domain: we come across the fi rst major case of political corruption in India. It is all the more extraordinary, because it brought to the fore the corrupt practices of V.K. Krishna Menon, and the inexplicable protection that he received from Prime Minister Nehru. Actually, it was a package of cases, the fi rst in the package relating to the procurement of jeeps urgently needed in the war against Pakistan at J&K. As G.S. Bhargava wrote: ‘What is known as the jeep scandal belongs to a class by itself. It was the fi rst of its kind to come to light in free India.’219 As the 1951 report of the Congress Party Parliamentary Committee noted,

[G]iven a principled approach on the part of Nehru, it would have helped the effective tackling of the problem of political corruption. Instead, an impression had been created that the corrupt could get away with it if they were on the right side of the rulers. The result was that more and more people took to public dishonesty almost as a policy, while mouthing radical slogans and striking a Leftist posture.220

Both Krishna Menon and Nehru would be happy to be called radicals and Leftists. However, despite their intimate relationship, how could Nehru ignore the First Report of the Estimates Committee, 1950–51 (of the Indian Parliament), the Ninth Report of the Public Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

218 UK, House of Commons, Business and Enterprise Committee, Waking up to India: Developments in UK–India Economic Relations, Fifth Report of Session 2007–08, p. 3. 219 G.S. Bhargava, India’s Watergate: A Study of Political Corruption in India, New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1974, p. 196. 220 Krishan D. Mathur and P.M. Kamath, Conduct of India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1996, p. 84. 102 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Accounts Committee, 1954, and the Fourteenth Report of the Public Accounts Committee, 1955, all of which severely indicted the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Krishna Menon, as did the already mentioned 1951 report of the Congress Party Parliamentary Com- mittee with such eminent members as Ananthasayanam Ayyangar (Chairman), Thakurdas Bhargava, B.P Jhunjhunwala, R.K. Sidhwa, and Shiva Rao? It is true that, before India’s independence, Krishna Menon ‘had served as Nehru’s literary agent’ in London, and managed the affairs of the India League.221 Nevertheless, when Nehru opines that he hardly came across a person with ‘keener intelligence and brain’ than Krishna Menon222 one cannot but question the sagacity of Nehru himself. For, as the High Commissioner to the UK, Krishna Menon ‘was becoming increasingly a liability’, as he ‘distrusted most offi cials, had no fi nancial judgement and was incapable of delegating authority at any level. Even clerks going on short leave had to secure his permission, and he spent hours every day scrutinizing the use of offi cial cars’.223 As High Commissioner, again, Krishna Menon ‘kept long hours which he wasted on trivia, like checking the menus of the canteen and the consumption of petrol by the offi ce cars’.224 Above all,

Living for years on the drug Luminal, frequently fainting, or speaking incoherently in public, obsessed with an infatuation and closely shut in by an imaginary circle of his enemies, his behaviour had become increasingly unpredictable. Even in 1950 he denounced Patel to the director of the intelligence bureau when the latter was on a visit to London.225

With a psychological case like Krishna Menon occupying the chair of the Indian High Commissioner in London, praising Nehru as ‘the greatest man in Asia today, may be in the world’,226 and the latter on his part taking extreme steps to cover up the former’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 jeep scandal, one could only surmise whether Nehru was himself

221 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, p. 140. 222 Ibid. 223 Ibid. 224 Singh, Truth, Love and Malice, p. 143. 225 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2. p. 141. 226 Ibid., p. 142. Relations with the United Kingdom 103

becoming a psychological case, and what other misfortunes were likely to overtake India under the leadership of these two men. So that the assessment of Nehru may not appear unduly harsh, one should recount some facts about the purchase of jeeps by Krishna Menon in gross violation of nearly all normal government practices. The Indian Army needed jeeps for the war in J&K. Krishna Menon himself placed order for 2,000 old reconditioned jeeps at a price for which new ones were available from the USA or Canada. His argument was that deliveries would take place immediately, and that spare parts expected to be required over a period of three years would also be supplied. Krishna Menon did not bother to consult the ﬁ nancial adviser, Defence Services, Bhavani Shankar Rao, or his predecessor, A.K. Chanda (who later became the deputy High Commissioner in London).

The contract entered was not of the standard form with the usual stipulations regarding penalty, security deposit and the like. The Legal Adviser attached to the ofﬁ ce of the High Commissioner was kept in the dark presumably because he would have raised objections.227

Krishna Menon placed the order for jeeps with a nondescript fi rm, Messrs Anti-Mistantes, with a capital of £605. Payments were to be made in the following stages: 65 per cent after the inspecting fi rm submitted certifi cates; 20 per cent on receipt of the bill of lading; the remainder of 15 per cent within one month of arrival of the jeeps at an Indian port. Incredibly, High Commissioner Menon cavalierly fl outed these terms of payment, and, within a month after 9 July 1948 (the date of signing of the contract), and without caring for inspection certifi cates, 65 per cent of the price was paid to the potential supplier. Messrs Hunts were the inspectors according to the contract. The Indian Stores Department, too, had Indian inspectors in London. But inspection reports were not obtained

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 from either of these sources before the payment of US$172,000 to a ﬁ rm without capital or reputation. But High Commissioner Menon’s ingenuity for malfeasance seemed to be inﬁ nite. Messrs Hunts persuaded Krishna Menon that Messrs Lloyds should be the inspecting agency. Krishna Menon further decided—without

227 Bhargava, India’s Watergate, p. 199. 104 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

assigning any reason—upon another change in the contract. He agreed to an inspection of 10 per cent of the jeeps instead of 100 per cent, even though in case of reconditioned jeeps the previous stipulation of 100 per cent inspection was essential. According to the contract of 9 July 1948, the shipment was to be completed by 9 December. India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefi re in J&K on 1 January 1949. Jeeps arrived in Madras as late as March 1949. Not even one of the 155 jeeps was serviceable. Advance payment for 2,000 jeeps was made without any reference to the defence ministry—not to speak of obtaining the usual approval.228 The defence ministry naturally refused to accept the fi rst consignment of 155 unserviceable jeeps from Messrs Anti-Mistantes, which stopped any further supply. Although rated as an exceptionally meritorious person by Nehru, High Commissioner Menon failed to get in touch with this fi rm subsequently. But with his boundless ingenuity, Krishna Menon signed a new contract with Messrs S.C.K. Agencies of London. The old agency was to charge £300 per jeep. The new fi rm would sell at £458.10 per jeep, supply 68 jeeps per month, a total of 1007 jeeps. The new supplier, amazingly, agreed to shoulder the liability of `1.9 million thrust on the Indian government by the old supplier. But Krishna Menon’s initiative was irrepressible. He did not consult anyone, and revised the terms of the new contract in favour of the supplier. Only 12 jeeps instead of 68 were to be supplied per month for a period of six months. Afterwards, supplies were to rise to 120 jeeps per month. Nevertheless, in two years, in addition to one specimen kept in Belgium, only 49 jeeps reached India. Their estimated value was £7,100, that is `94,667 approximately. Subsequently, the new fi rm declined to provide any more jeeps at the stipulated rate. It also refused to fulfi l the promise of compensation for the loss arising out of the transaction with Messrs Anti-Mistantes.229

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 The intellectual brilliance of Krishna Menon (which was what had attracted Nehru to him) manifested itself again on 9 July 1948, when, along with the abortive deal for 2,000 jeeps with Messrs Anti-Mistantes, another agreement was signed with Messrs J.C.J. Knott & Co. for the supply of riﬂ es and ammunition worth

228 Ibid., pp. 198–201. 229 Ibid., pp. 201–2. Relations with the United Kingdom 105

£19,44,000. The supply of rifl es was to commence in 10 days following 9 July 1948, 50 per cent of the rifl es were to be delivered within 90 days, and the remainder within 120 days. Deliveries were to be completed by the end of November 1948, and the defence ministry, needing rifl es for the war in J&K, would not accept any supply after November 1948. In actuality, supplies did not commence till 8 January 1949, whereas J&K witnessed a ceasefi re on 1 January. The defence ministry logically cancelled the order. But Krishna Menon was unstoppable. He threatened that this cancellation would generate a claim of £60,000 as compensation by the defaulting supplier. In addition, High Commissioner Menon tried to create for his government another corruption trap. He pleaded that this fi rm would not press for compensation if it were given an order for steel plates. Fortunately, the Indian deputy High Commissioner in London took the initiative to rescind the contract and avoid the payment of compensation.230 High Commissioner Menon had great talents for embroiling his government in fi nancial losses and other administrative incon- veniences by identifi cation of unworthy suppliers of essential hardware, by changing such important terms of contract as those related to the delivery schedule or opening up of letters of credit, without consulting anyone in London or New Delhi. High Commission Menon’s loyalty to defaulters or fraudsters was so profound that in the early part of 1949 he placed orders for steel plates at £33.5 per ton with that disreputable fi rm which had earlier been asked to supply rifl es and failed. According to the terms of the contract communicated to the Ministry of Industry and Supply, New Delhi, which required steel plates immediately for the Indian Railways and other agencies, deliveries were to commence within 30 days following the receipt of details about steel plates, and to be completed within 12 months. Actually, deliveries did not start till the lapse of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 nine months after the due date, the ﬁ rst shipment took place on 23 December 1949, and shipments were completed by the end of 1950. On 3 September 1949, the industry and supply ministry— frustrated by lack of delivery—cancelled the order. However, this ministry was no match for Krishna Menon’s wizardry. Krishna Menon replied on 1 September 1949 that, on the previous day (!),

230 Ibid., pp. 201–3. 106 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

a letter of credit for £70,000 had been opened, and, therefore, it was not feasible to cancel the order. Krishna Menon’s brilliance, bordering on malevolence, lay in changing the terms of the contract without informing anyone, and unilaterally altering the contract by stipulating that delivery of steel plates was to commence not within 30 days of submission of details about steel plates but within 30 days of opening of the letter of credit. Another irony in the whole transaction was that Krishna Menon’s favourite supplier obtained steel plates at £29 per ton from Austria, and that it was possible for India to obtain them at £28.10 per ton from the manufacturer (instead of at £33.5 per ton from the wayward supplier in London).231 As already noted in this chapter, on 8 January 1949, the defence ministry cancelled the contract for supply of 303 rifl es by Messers J.C.J. Knott & Co. on the ground of non-performance. But Krishna Menon’s propensity towards malfeasance was so magical that the defence ministry was ignorant that the contract with this fi rm included the supply of ammunition too. On 11 February 1949, the defence ministry wrote to High Commissioner Menon for an urgent procurement of 9 millimetre ammunition. The High Commissioner nonchalantly replied that there was already a contract with the defaulting fi rm for supply of 9 millimetre ammunition at £14 per 1,000 rounds, whereas the contract of 9 July 1948 had put the price at £11 per 1,000 rounds, and the normal price in Britain stood at £3.17 for 1,000 rounds. Krishna Menon’s passion for the choice of incapable fi rms appeared to be insatiable. For instance, he entered into a contract with Messers Hughsons Aeronautical Corporation on 13 September 1948 for the supply of 25 Mitchell bombers at £32,000 each. As early as January 1949, the contract had to be cancelled for lack of delivery. Another addition to this Krishna Menon category of contracts was that for Staghound armoured cars.

If Krishna Menon was the constant representative of the government, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 at the receiving end of the contracts and their proceeds was a ubiquitous and even mysterious character called E.H. Potter. He represented all the four companies with which Krishna Menon did business, involving millions of rupees of the tax-payer’s money. He was the spokesman for the supplier of the jeeps, who ultimately did the vanishing trick; he negotiated the sale of riﬂ es and ammunition

231 Ibid., pp. 203–4. Relations with the United Kingdom 107

which were never supplied; he offered the Mitchell bombers which never got off the ground and ﬁ nally he contracted to sell steel plates of the value of £400,000. Thanks to Krishna Menon’s undying solicitude for him, Potter wangled a fresher and juicier contract every time he failed to live up to his earlier commitment.232

Such tales of High Commissioner Krishna Menon’s sordid activities may be endless. After the Second World War, India had a huge Sterling balance, which Krishna Menon did not mind squandering. His past experience and activities (before 1947) would provide a clue to why his conduct as High Commissioner was so vicious, raising questions about not only his honesty but also patriotism (because defence supplies were endangered at critical moments). His illustrious patron, Prime Minister Nehru, too, would have to face these questions, because he autocratically exonerated Krishna Menon of numerous and obvious criminal charges. Prior to 1947, Krishna Menon lived in London for many years. The times were difﬁ cult. In order to pursue his legal studies, he had to work as a restaurant waiter. He was not successful in legal practice. He conducted the affairs of the India League. He became a member of a panel of editors for Pelican Books. ‘Till he became High Com- missioner he was always very hard-up and eager to accept any hospitality extended to him.’233

He didn’t spend a penny of his salary but set up many sub- organizations of his India League and got money from rich Indians and his English friends as donations to his organizations; in return, he gave the latter contracts for the supply of arms to India.234

So, this provides a partial though convincing explanation of the thrilling stories about jeeps, riﬂ es, ammunition, bombers, and armoured cars already narrated in this chapter. Actually, there were other relatively smaller scandals. Krishna Menon seemed to have Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 an indefatigable capacity for locating British agents, who, by their shady armament deals, caused heavy ﬁ nancial losses. For instance, there was a grenade scandal and a tank scandal. A huge number of strum grenades, made in France and available there at a much

232 Ibid., pp. 205–6. 233 Singh, Truth, Love and Malice, p. 142. 234 Ibid., p. 143. 108 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

lower price, were procured through a British agent at an unjustifi ably higher price.235 The story of purchase of tanks, too, was colourful: these were so run-down as to be treated as scrap.236 Krishna Menon made himself an easy target of charges of corruption and controversies around Indo-UK military transactions. But it would be unfair to concentrate on him. There were far more important personalities embroiled in such transactions, viz. Nehru, and the Mountbattens, under whose patronage, obviously, Krishna Menon thrived. Take, for instance, the acquisition of a British cruiser (known as INS Mysore) in 1954. A major blunder committed by Nehru was to retain British offi cers as Chiefs of the Armed Forces for quite some time. In fact, a British offi cer commanded the Indian Navy as late as 1958. Vice Admiral Mark Pizey was the Chief of the Indian Navy in 1954, when the INS Mysore was procured. A letter from Pizey to Louis Mountbatten, dated 23 March 1954, available in the Southampton University archives, suggests that Edwina Mountbatten persuaded Nehru to overrule objections from the defence and fi nance ministers of the Government of India (GOI), and buy this cruiser. Even the decision of GOI offi cials to send a team of experts to assess the British cruiser before the fi nalisation of purchase was rejected by Prime Minister Nehru. As Pizey candidly testifi ed, ‘Edwina has been wonderfully helpful and it was mainly due to a ‘whisper’ in the right direction’, and to the crucial fact that ‘Edwina dropped the necessary pennies’, that the cruiser deal could be accelerated.237 On 31 January 1957, India purchased from Britain the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, at a price of `200 million. It was a thoroughly wrong decision that Louis Mountbatten pressed the GOI to take. A poor country like India—unlike the United States—could not afford to pursue a strategy of sea control by aircraft carriers. India should have favoured the strategy of sea control by submarines. After all,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 an enemy country could easily in future knock off Vikrant using guided missiles. Moreover, even in times of peace, Vikrant needed `1–1.5 million per day just to remain aﬂ oat. Thus, a vessel like Vikrant ‘virtually drained the Navy’s budgetary allocations over the

235 Manohar Malgonkar, The Statesman, 23 October 1995. 236 Ibid. 237 Srinjoy Chowdhury, The Telegraph, 17 October 1995. Relations with the United Kingdom 109

years to the neglect of other important maintenance and replacement needs of the fl eet’.238 The UK remained the major supplier of arms to India till the mid-1960s, when the Soviet Union displaced the UK. Nevertheless, the 1978 decision to acquire the Jaguar Deep Penetration Strike Aircraft (DPSA) from the UK at a cost of `13 billion stirred up a lot of controversies. There were competitors like the French Mirage F-1 and the Soviet MIG23-B, but the GOI preferred the British Jaguar. The Mirage was both a fi ghter and a bomber, whereas the Jaguar was only a bomber. The Jaguar was more vulnerable to attack than the Mirage, because it was much larger than the Mirage. The Jaguar was also very heavy, because it had two engines, although a second engine would appear to critics to be redundant (and to add to vulnerability), because a combat aircraft engine was not supposed to fail. NATO countries like France and England had several attack planes in their air forces, including the Jaguar. But it was risky to have it as the sole attack aircraft. Therefore, critics pondered whether the GOI exercised necessary caution before it decided to acquire the Jaguar, also because NATO was already examining the option to phase out the Jaguar.239 If India was to strengthen its capabilities for self-reliance in the fi eld of combat aircraft manufacture, then it could acquire the MIG23-B, since it already possessed the production base for the MIG21. Moreover, in the emerging security environment, where Pakistan was likely to receive from America the F-5E, which had greater capacity for manoeuvres than the Jaguar, India’s inferiority would be evident. In view of all such criticisms about the acquisition of Jaguar, one would be inclined to consider whether the GOI decision in favour of the Jaguar was restricted by its quest for diversifi cation of armament sources, especially in view of the familiar Soviet pusillanimity over supply of technology, parts, 240

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ancillaries. Two notorious Indo-UK military transactions of 1986, when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister, related to the acquisition of the Hermes/Viraat aircraft carrier at about £60 million, and of

238 Wing Commander (Retd.), Amar Zutshi, The Statesman, 7 March 1997. 239 Organiser, 22 October 1978, p. 16. 240 P.R. Chari, ‘The DPSA Question’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 2, no. 7, October 1978, pp. 233–41. 110 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Westland helicopters at about £65–75 million—the two deals being separated by only two days in March 1986. Hermes was a 28,700-ton ship. During the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, Hermes was Britain’s fl agship. Afterwards, it remained anchored at Portsmouth for two years. Britain looked for a buyer, but failed to locate one, and nearly decided to scrap it. At that moment, India agreed to procure Hermes as its second aircraft carrier (the fi rst being Vikrant, as already noted in this chapter).241 As to the purchase of helicopters from a British company, Westland, it was common knowledge that these machines not only had many technical defects, but also high operating costs. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi went so far as to announce, at the Parliament’s budget session in 1985, that India would not procure these helicopters even as gifts from Westland. The GOI got the matter examined by a number of offi cials and technical experts, nearly all of whom fi rmly overruled the purchase of these helicopters. In April 1985, again, Prime Minister Gandhi informed The Times of London that, commercially as well as technically, from the GOI’s viewpoint, Westland helicopters were not usable. In spite of all these statements by the Indian prime minister, the GOI decided to purchase these helicopters in March 1986. The decision was inexplicable, unless one referred to an important event in the life of Westland towards the end of 1985. At that time, an American- Italian consortium, with an in-law of the Indian prime minister in a dominant position, took over the Westland helicopter company. The performance of these helicopters on Indian territory was unspeakable. As of mid-1987, of the actually delivered 13 helicopters (out of a total of 21 acquired by India), seven were grounded. They lay in disuse at the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. or HAL, Bangalore, as their rotors did not work.242 The Westland scandal was almost a replay of the London scandals

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 presided over by High Commissioner Menon in the late 1940s and 1950s. The Westland helicopters suffered from numerous design and production defects. In July 1988 and February 1989, two

241 The Statesman, 17 March 1986. 242 The data in this paragraph are available in a long report of the Special Representative, The Statesman, 15 July 1987. Relations with the United Kingdom 111

helicopters ran into accidents, which proved to be fatal. In December 1989, the remaining 19 helicopters were grounded. An expert committee was appointed to examine these helicopters. The report of this committee stated that a total of 1,031 defects were noticed during the three and a half years of operation of these Westland machines. Investigation reports were not prepared in as many as 388 of these 1,031 cases. ‘This shows indifference both on the part of the manufacturer and the user.’243 All the Westland helicopters were grounded permanently by February 1991.244 The Guardian of London carried an exciting report on 18 October 2000: Westland helicopters were resold to Britain for a scrap value calculated at £900,000.245 Despite all the controversies and scandals surrounding a large number of Indo-UK defence deals in the 20th century, military transactions between the two countries acquired a new dimension in 1995, when the India–UK Defence Consultative Group (DCG) was established.246 The DCG met annually in New Delhi or London. It set up three sub-groups to deal with defence equipment, research and technology, and military-to-military contacts. This generated a robust and expanding programme of exchange of high-level personalities and offi cers, of common training courses and joint exercises. From 2002 to 2005, such training programmes/exercises increased threefold. In March 2005, for the fi rst time since 1947, India and Britain conducted in Hyderabad a joint exercise called Emerald Mercury.247 From 2002 to 2006, again, DCG programmes expanded activities threefold. For example, on an average, fi ve ships visited the two countries annually. Land and maritime exercises embraced increasing intricacy. In May 2006, the Indian and Royal Navies jointly held a huge maritime exercise christened Konkan 2006. In October 2006, again, the Indian and Royal Air Forces jointly conducted a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

243 The Telegraph, 28 July 1990. 244 The Telegraph, 19 February 1991. 245 Hasan Suroor, The Hindu, 19 October 2000. 246 ‘UK & India’, Foreign and Commonwealth Service Bulletin, London, 2006. 247 Statement by UK Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, New Delhi, 8 October 2005. 112 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

large-scale exercise called Indra Dhanush. Signifi cantly, all of these set the stage for further such exercises in 2007–8.248 One of the biggest military transactions between India and Britain relates to the acquisition of the Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers (AJTs). It is a refl ection of the chronic incompetence of the GOI (with profound implications for the fi elds of defence and foreign affairs) that negotiations started in the 1980s, but a Memorandum of Understanding was signed as late as 19 March 2004, and the contract on 26 March 2004. Meanwhile, on account of lack of proper training for pilots, the Indian Air Force (IAF) suffered from more than 700 crashes since 1970, killing not only about 180 pilots, but also a substantial number of civilians. It was not merely incompetence but also mindlessness on the part of Indian decision makers in the fi elds of defence and foreign relations that young Indian pilots were compelled to fl y supersonic combat aircraft without adequate training. Under the AJT programme, the IAF is to receive 24 Hawks in a fl yaway state, and HAL, Bangalore, will indigenously manufacture 42 Hawks by 2011. The IAF received the fi rst Hawk, however, from HAL on 14 August 2008. HAL produced it by simply assembling various components from Britain in a CKD (completely knocked down) condition. It may be noted that the `80 billion contract for Hawks made the UK the third largest supplier of armaments to India, next to the countries in the former Soviet Union and Israel.249 At the end of this chapter on India–Britain relations, one cannot but observe that the quality of foreign policy management by New Delhi has been rather poor. Signs of improved management appeared only after 1991, thanks to adoption of the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation by India in that year. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

248 ‘UK & India’, Foreign and Commonwealth Service Bulletin, London, 2006. 249 The Tribune, Chandigarh, 27 February 2002; The Statesman, 20 March 2004; The Times of India, 29 April 2004; The Telegraph, 28 September 2004. Also see, Vijay Goel and Himangshu Pimpalkhute, The In-House Lawyer, February 2008, p. 83; Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 24 February 2008; The Statesman, 15 August 2008. 4 Relations with Pakistan

Any study of India’s relations with Pakistan has to begin with a probe into the problem of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), which has, since 1947–48, vitiated India’s foreign policy. Enormous diffi culties are encountered when researching on the J&K issue. They arise mainly out of inaccessibility to archival materials, and accessibility to misleading information in offi cial papers. The long-venerated 30- year rule on the release of archival documents has been reduced to a farce. Post-1913 papers on essential foreign policy and related defence policy matters are concealed from the view of researchers. Bureaucrats and politicians at high levels play this game (with varying success) all over the world, ostensibly for safeguarding public interest, but actually for covering up mistakes. Since the effects of mistakes can become transparent, in most cases ruling offi cials and politicians succeed not really in hiding mistakes, but in retaining the privilege to plead that there was no mistake, that a critic pointing to a mistake could not cite (what the protagonist would consider) incontrovertible evidence, and that whatever the persons in power could do was (according to their divine judgement!) the best under the circumstances. In some countries, notably the United States, this self-righteousness is counteracted by the publication of sensitive offi cial papers by design or default, by journalists-turned-investigators, as also by writings of some retired diplomats. The US government boldly published the China White Paper in 1949, and exposed its own moves

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 about China so thoroughly as to leave no alibi for any plea by practitioners that they had no better policy option vis-à-vis China (other than the one they actually followed) in the 1940s. In 1971, the unofﬁ cially leaked Pentagon Papers served the same purpose with regard to the Vietnam policy of the US. In India, there is as yet no counterpart of the China White Paper of 1949 or the Pentagon Papers of 1971. From time to time, however, some retired Indian ofﬁ cials shed new light on a few aspects of India’s foreign policy. 114 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

There is, thus, not much to offset the data deﬁ cit due to the absence of access to archival data.

The 1947–48 Confl ict In this perspective, historiography on the origin of the J&K problem has received an extraordinary bounty from C. Dasgupta, a retired Indian diplomat. He wrote on the subject by consulting extensively at the India Offi ce Records (London) and the Public Records Offi ce (London), as also the book Foreign Relations of the United States, thereby counteracting the disadvantages of lack of access to Indian archival materials.1 What is extremely rewarding for a researcher is that Dasgupta’s account not only confi rms but also reinforces the account provided by Lt. Gen. L.P. Sen (who commanded an Infantry Brigade in the 1947–48 Kashmir war).2 For, until the publication of Dasgupta’s book, Sen’s memoirs were one of the mainstays of teachers and researchers dealing with how India’s decision makers coped with the Kashmir problem in 1947–48. These two books, read with other accessible sources, for examples, newspaper reports, journals, books, memoirs, etc., reveal glaring defi ciencies in India’s decision making in 1947–48. These also reveal pro-Pakistan and anti-India manoeuvres by British political leaders and military offi cers in London and New Delhi. Consequently, Pakistan could continue its unlawful occupation of approximately one third of the territory of J&K. This had a long term and adverse impact upon India’s foreign relations. Before we try to understand this impact, we may review the Pakistani aggression upon J&K in 1947. The Pakistani attack, using a sphinx of regular Pakistan troops and irregular tribal warriors, commenced on 20–21 October 1947. After independence, Pakistan became pathologically inclined to assert its equality with India, ignoring geographical, economic, technological, political, military, and demographic realities. Shortly after Partition, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Pakistan’s Governor General, M.A. Jinnah, was inclined towards large-scale military action in J&K. After Indian troops landed in

1 Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 3, Washington DC: US Department of State, 1947. See C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2002. 2 Lt. Gen. L.P. Sen, Slender was the Thread, New Delhi: Sangam/Orient Longman, 1973. Relations with Pakistan 115

Srinagar on 27 October 1947, Jinnah actually ordered a full-scale military attack in J&K. The Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Pakistan Army, General Frank Messervy, was then on a short visit to Britain. General Douglas Gracey was the Acting C-in-C of the Pakistan Army. Gracey refused to carry out Jinnah’s order and secured the intervention of Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck who was the Supreme Commander of India and Pakistan, with jurisdiction over the armies of both India and Pakistan, and heading the Supreme Headquarters (located in New Delhi), which was to ensure a proper division of military assets between India and Pakistan. Auchinleck compelled Jinnah to revise his decision, even if partially.3 Both Chaudhri Muhammad Ali (the secretary general to the Government of Pakistan during 1947–51, the ﬁ nance minister during 1951–55, and the prime minister during 1955–56), and Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan (who dominated Pakistani politics during 1958–69), have narrated this incident and indicated disapproval of Gracey’s action.4 This disapproval was far from rational. For, on Mohammad Ayub Khan’s admission, the Pakistan Army at that time was ‘badly equipped and terribly disorganized’. According to him, ‘there was no complete Muslim unit of battalion size in the British Indian Army’. In addition,

[When] Pakistan came, our men from units in India began to trickle back to Pakistan in small groups…. We had men untrained, half trained and highly trained. They came from different units and different areas and they had all to be welded into ﬁ ghting and ancillary units, divisions and corps.5

Ayub Khan has also confessed that Pakistan ‘had only thirteen tanks with about forty to ﬁ fty hours’ engine life in them’ as late as 1951.6 Chaudhri Muhammad Ali testiﬁ es that ‘shortages in the technical

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 arms, such as artillery, and in engineers, were very great, and even

3 Jaswant Singh, Defending India, Bangalore: Macmillan, 1999, pp. 157–58. 4 Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan, New York: Columbia University Press, 1967, p. 295; Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters: A Political Biography, London: Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 34. 5 Khan, Friends Not Masters, p. 20. 6 Ibid., p. 40. 116 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in the infantry the number of senior offi cers with staff and command experience was limited’.7 When, in these circumstances, Chaudhri Muhammad Ali and Mohammad Ayub Khan criticise the aforesaid action of Gracey, they reveal an attitude of strong irrationality that tends to dominate the thinking of the Pakistani elite (civil as well as military) on India. Probably, Gracey’s action was somewhat irrelevant; after all, Pakistani leaders could not call off the hectic preparations for invasion, which had begun before Gracey became Acting C-in-C. Pakistani military offi cers, who planned this invasion, located their headquarters in the same building in which C-in-C Messervy too had his headquarters.8 The invasion was planned on such a scale that it could not have escaped Messervy’s attention. More than 3,000 Pakistani personnel (including a number of offi cers) were registered to be on leave, although they were actually enlisted as members of the invasion force, which also included more than 15,000 tribesmen from beyond the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).9 If Messervy appeared to acquiesce to the aggression on J&K being planned by his own subordinates, so did George Cunningham, the Governor of Pakistan’s NWFP.10 Cunningham witnessed the rare spectacle of arming and training of a large number of tribesmen brought to Peshawar from beyond the Durand Line in gross violation of a well-established government policy of keeping tribesmen far away from population centres. General Rob Lockhart, the C-in-C of the Indian Army, was Cunningham’s predecessor at the NWFP. It was unlikely that Cunningham did not share with his old friend, Lockhart, the open secret of preparation for a Pakistani assault on J&K. It was even more unlikely that, in course of his daily communications (over the telephone or otherwise) with Messervy, Lockhart failed to collect information about these preparations by Pakistan. Nevertheless, Lockhart did not care to 11

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 alert the Government of India.

7 Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan, p. 376. 8 Sen, Slender was the Thread, p. 21. 9 B. M. Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p. 5. Also see, Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, pp. 43–44; Singh, Defending India, p. 158. 10 Sen, Slender was the Thread, pp. 20–21. 11 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, p. 52. Relations with Pakistan 117

If all these signalled British complicity in Pakistan’s aggressive designs, they also appeared to be a sort of continuation of the British colonial policy of divide-and-rule, which, by locking up India and Pakistan in a confl ict, could yield not merely political infl uence for Britain, but also tangible fi nancial gains by way of arms sales, especially if the British C-in-Cs of the two countries could prolong the confl ict indefi nitely—for example, by restraining the Indian Armed Forces (which were incomparably superior to the Pakistani forces) from driving out Pakistani raiders from the whole of J&K. Moreover, in the British view, ‘Pakistan was a more promising prospect as a military ally’ and ‘Pakistan was deemed to be potentially infl uential’ among the Muslim countries in West Asia (the Middle East).12 Perhaps the most important reason why Great Britain’s pro- Pakistan manoeuvres could eventually succeed was that the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, suffered from deep confusions and misperceptions which spelled dangerous incompetence in managing the affairs of the state. This is evident from the memoirs of Major General A.A. Rudra, former military secretary and adviser to both Auchinleck and the Indian defence minister, Baldev Singh.13 After India became independent, the Chiefs of Staff drafted a paper which dealt with threats to India’s security, recommended measures to counteract these threats, and requested the government for a defence policy directive. The Chiefs were merely pursuing a usual path in national interest. Lockhart took the paper to Nehru, who angrily retorted: ‘Rubbish! Total rubbish! We don’t need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the Army! The police are good enough to meet our security needs’.14 It was only to be expected that Lockhart would convey this outlandish experience to his Pakistani counterpart, and that the latter would transmit the message to his Pakistani colleagues, whose aggressiveness received a big boost, despite severe

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 weaknesses of their armed forces as attested by Ayub Khan himself and noted above. If, subsequently, the British C-in-Cs of India and Pakistan decided to serve the national interests of Britain and

12 Ibid., p. 53. 13 Major General D.K. Palit, Major General A.A. Rudra: His Service in Three Armies and Two World Wars, New Delhi: Reliance, 1997, pp. 320–21. 14 Ibid. 118 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Pakistan by prolonging a stalemate over the war in J&K launched by Pakistan—and preventing India from driving out invaders from the whole of J&K—they could hardly be blamed. The J&K war of 1947–48 undoubtedly demonstrated that Nehru’s above-mentioned pacifi sm was not only outrageous but also suicidal. British offi cers must have been amazed by, and resolved to exploit, the apathy of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru towards safeguarding India’s national interest, especially when there were several other such instances of apathy. Probably the most astonishing of them was the appointment of Lord Louis Mountbatten as the first Governor General of independent India. Prime Minister Attlee, as also Mountbatten himself, wanted that Mountbatten should become the fi rst Governor General of both India and Pakistan. This would facilitate suffi cient British control over the affairs of both the newly independent countries. However, Pakistan made Jinnah the Governor General without caring for what the British wanted.15 What India subsequently did was stupefying and demeaning for Indians. In about three weeks from the date of transfer of power on 6 September 1947, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel met Lord Mountbatten, who was then holidaying in Simla (Shimla). They pleaded with Mountbatten to return to New Delhi and hold the reins of administration (as Governor General), as they had spent years in British prisons, and had some experience of agitation but not administration, especially in the abnormal circumstances after Partition. These Indian leaders were certainly interested in camoufl aging their lack of administrative capabilities and self-confi dence, and, therefore, endorsed everything that Mountbatten suggested.16 Mountbatten suggested an Emergency Committee of the Cabinet. Members of this committee were to be nominated by Mountbatten, as its chairman, and comprise key offi cials in the railways, civil

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 aviation, medical services, etc., but no Cabinet ministers except Nehru and Patel. A British General was to be chosen by Mountbatten to become secretary of this committee, and British typists were to prepare the minutes. At the committee meetings, Nehru was to sit

15 Sen, Slender was the Thread, pp. 19–20. 16 Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, New Delhi: Vikas, 2007, pp. 396–98. Relations with Pakistan 119

on the right side of the Governor General, and Patel on the left side. In order to avoid delays, the Governor General would pretend to consult Nehru and Patel. It was suggested that Nehru and Patel play along with the pretence and reply in the affi rmative to any suggestions without argument. All these suggestions of Mountbatten were accepted by Nehru and Patel. Thus, a British Governor General began to administer India, at least for some months.17 Another amazing instance of apathy of top-ranking leaders like Nehru to India’s vital interests was the appointment of a British C-in-C of the Indian Army. There was no dearth of capable Indian military offi cers who could occupy this post. As early as 1946, one of the greatest Generals in British history, Auchinleck, recommended Thakur Nathu Singh for this post. Nathu Singh, however, did not wish to supersede K.M. Cariappa and Rajendrasinghji who were senior to him. But, instead of acceding to the suggestion of such an honest and honourable Indian offi cer, the Indian prime minister stuck to his policy of preferring a British C-in-C for the Indian Army. Nehru succumbed to a ‘false, malicious and subtle move on the part of the British to keep the leaders and senior Indians of the army apart’, and believed that there was ‘an element among the Indian offi cers… interested in preparing for a coup d’etat’.18 The evil effects of appointing a British C-in-C for the Indian Army became apparent soon after Partition, and even more so around the time of the Pakistani invasion of J&K on 20–21 October 1947. These effects were aggravated by another decision of Nehru (and whomsoever he might have consulted), which signalled a degrading confession of lack of self-confi dence and administrative capacity: Mountbatten was made the chairman of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet. Therefore, ‘all important questions relating to Kashmir were decided not in the Cabinet but in meetings of its Defence Committee. This allowed Mountbatten to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 play a role which far exceeded that of a constitutional ﬁ gurehead’, writes C. Dasgupta.19

17 Ibid. Also see, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Mountbatten and Independent India, New Delhi: Vikas, 1984, pp. 30–34. 18 Lieutenant General Thakur Nathu Singh talks to Bachi J. Karkaria, The Statesman, 29 July 1984. Also see, Palit, Major General A.A. Rudra, pp. 293–94. 19 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, p. 41. 120 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

How the British Governor General and C-in-C of the Indian Army sabotaged India’s vital interests during 1947–48 is elucidated ahead. Of course, this capacity for sabotage was enhanced by the almost inexhaustible ineptitude of leaders like Nehru. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) of a country plays a very important part in the management of its internal as well as external security. On 2 September 1946, Nehru became the vice-president of the viceroy’s Executive Council (also known as the Interim Government). He was fully aware that in a few months he was to become the prime minister of post-Partition India. Therefore, there was no reason why he should not pay adequate attention to the IB. In reality, he did not, nor did he instruct any of his colleagues to do so. As a result, when Pakistan invaded J&K in October 1947, India’s IB was in disarray.

[The IB was] in a tragic-comic state of helplessness. The Director of the Intelligence Bureau of undivided India, during the months preceding 15 August 1947, was an offi cer who was about to opt for Pakistani citizenship. This individual, who was earmarked for appointment as Director of the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau, took full advantage of his position to transfer across to Pakistan every fi le of importance dealing with Intelligence, leaving behind for his counterparts in India the offi ce furniture, empty racks and cupboards, and a few innocuous fi les dealing with offi ce routine.20

The Indian Independence Act prescribed the accession of the princely states of India or Pakistan on the basis of geographical propinquity. The decision for accession was the prerogative of the ruler of a princely state, as insisted by Jinnah, and there was no obligation to ascertain the wishes of the people.21 Bahawalpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, J&K, Jodhpur, and Kutch were contiguous to both India and Pakistan. Of these states, only Bahawalpur acceded to Pakistan. When the Pakistani invasion started on 20–21 October 1947, J&K was yet to accede to India. Even before the full-scale Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 invasion, Pakistan had started raids into J&K territory, which prompted the Maharaja of J&K, Hari Singh, to appeal to India for military assistance. As early as 7 October 1947, Patel wrote to then

20 Sen, Slender was the Thread, p. 19. 21 D.N. Dhar, Dynamics of Political Change in Kashmir, New Delhi: Kanishka, 2001, p. 97. Relations with Pakistan 121

defence minister, Baldev Singh, that arms and ammunition should be immediately supplied to J&K by train. However, ‘the decision that arms should be supplied to Kashmir on top-priority basis was simply derailed by the Commander-in-Chief, General Lockhart, acting in collusion with Field Marshal Auchinleck’.22 They trumped up all sorts of excuses for inaction, without caring for India’s vital interests— economic, geographical, and strategic—in keeping J&K free from Pakistan’s military control. Lockhart pleaded lack of availability of arms in the Delhi depot. As to supply of arms from depots in other parts of the country, Auchinleck’s Supreme Headquarters raised the question (which was beyond their competence) of whether weapons could be provided to J&K, which had not acceded till then to either India or Pakistan. Lockhart and Auchinleck’s strategy was such a success that, until the large-scale Pakistani invasion, the Indian Army ‘despite increasingly urgent appeals from the Kashmir state authorities’ supplied no weapons.23 J&K forwarded another grave petition for military aid on 24 October 1947. The Defence Committee of the Cabinet met on 25 October 1947. Despite Lockhart’s manipulations, at the insistence of Nehru and Patel, ‘the Cabinet Defence Committee decided that Army Headquarters should depute offi cers that very day to pick up arms from the various depots and supply them to Kashmir’.24 However, Mountbatten created a problem by arguing that a temporary accession by J&K to India should precede the dispatch of military help. Patel opposed this precondition to military aid, and Nehru supported him. But Nehru supported Mountbatten on the matter of accession (when it took place) being temporary, and argued that accession should be fi nalised after ascertaining the wishes of the people of J&K during the period of initial or provisional accession.25 Irrespective of how Mountbatten infl uenced Nehru on this issue, one could indisputably argue that Nehru lacked political foresight,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and was not aware of how his suggestion could create a long-term and intractable problem for India. After all, in terms of the Instrument of Accession, signed by the rulers of hundreds of princely states,

22 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, p. 42. 23 Ibid., p. 43. 24 Ibid., p. 44. 25 Ibid., p. 45. 122 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the accession was fi nal, irrevocable, and unconditional. Maharaja Hari Singh had no option but to sign it at a time when Srinagar was about to be overrun by hostile forces. In the aforementioned meeting of the Defence Committee on 25 October, Lockhart adopted dilatory tactics as he pointed out that he would have to examine the question of how to expedite the dispatch of military aid to J&K. Mountbatten adopted the same tactics as he overruled Nehru’s suggestion of the deployment of the Air Force for the purpose of reconnaissance and a show of force. Mountbatten pleaded for more information and against immediate action. V.P. Menon, the secretary to the Ministry of States, was sent to Srinagar on 25 October. At the meeting of the Defence Com- mittee of the Cabinet on 26 October 1947, V.P. Menon reported that immediate military aid should be arranged to avert the fall of Srinagar, as the raiders were only 35 miles away. Evidently, troops had to be airlifted to Srinagar. Nevertheless, true to the spirit of obstructionism, Mountbatten and the Chiefs of the Army, Air Force, and Navy opposed the airlift on the extraordinary plea that it would be risky and dangerous. Nehru and V.P. Menon disagreed. At one stage of the 26 October meeting, Lockhart had the temerity to raise the question of whether Kashmir was vitally important to India, while Nehru and Patel replied in the affi rmative. This meeting decided that the accession of J&K to India would coincide with the installation of the leader of the most infl uential political party (National Conference), Sheikh Abdullah, as the head of an interim government in Srinagar. Mountbatten endorsed accession (on 26 October 1947) with the rider that the people of J&K would be consulted following the restoration of law and order.26 Mountbatten actually told Nehru that he would not sign the Instrument of Accession (already signed by Hari Singh) unless Nehru agreed to a plebiscite. After all, Mountbatten personally preferred J&K’s 27

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 accession to Pakistan. Despite all the hurdles created by Mountbatten and the British military ofﬁ cers in the Armed Forces, the airlift to Srinagar was carried out successfully. A battalion reached Srinagar airport in the

26 Ibid., pp. 47–48. Also see, P.N. Chopra, The Sardar of India, New Delhi: Allied, 1995, p. 111. 27 Collins and Lapierre, Mountbatten and Independent India, p. 39. Relations with Pakistan 123

morning of 27 October, saving it from occupation by invaders. The airstrip in Srinagar was ﬁ t to receive only the tiny personal aircraft of Hari Singh. Some civil volunteers made valiant efforts with crude implements to improve this airstrip. But the use of this airstrip, in the absence of landing or navigational aids, remained extraordinarily difﬁ cult. Good luck, however, appeared to reward the brave.

Mountbatten himself was surprised by the unqualiﬁ ed success of the airlift…. But when the success of the airlift was ﬁ nally established, he paid a fulsome tribute. Mountbatten, who was the Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia during World War II, said that in all his war experience he had never come across an airlift of this order being undertaken successfully at such short notice.28

The inestimable bravery of India’s Armed Forces saved Srinagar from three opponents: the Pakistani invaders, the incompetence of the Indian political leaders and British manoeuvres. It was not diffi cult to guess that the British would multiply their efforts to prevent India from driving out Pakistani soldiers from the whole of J&K. However, the Indian political leaders—as is noted ahead—failed to counteract or forestall these manoeuvres of the British. Britain’s pro-Pakistan manoeuvres were amply demonstrated on 31 October 1947, when the British Commandant of the Gilgit Scouts revolted against Maharaja Hari Singh, who was the ruler of Gilgit, a part of J&K. On 4 November, the British Commandant proclaimed his readiness to hand over Gilgit to Pakistan by hoisting the Pakistani fl ag. On 21 November 1947, British offi cers of the Gilgit Scouts installed a Pakistani Political Agent in Gilgit. Evidently, Britain wanted to use Pakistan’s services vis-à-vis Gilgit’s great strategic importance in any contest with the Soviet Union.29 Britain’s persistent pro-Pakistan and anti-Indian manoeuvres lasted throughout the India–Pakistan confl ict of 1947–48, and after-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 wards. These efforts completely favoured Pakistan at the expense of India. When Mountbatten and the British Chiefs of the Armed Forces in India failed to make a gift of Srinagar to Pakistan, they began to thwart the next principal task of the Indian troops, viz.

28 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, pp. 49–50. Also see, Sen, Slender was the Thread, p. 31. 29 Ibid., pp. 22–23. 124 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

clearing the entire J&K territory of invaders. This can be proved, for instance, from the experiences of the 161 Infantry Brigade of the Indian Army (commanded by Lt. Gen. L.P. Sen). But for the startling performance of this Brigade, in October 1947, Srinagar and Leh might have followed Muzaffarabad, Baramula and Domel in being captured by Pakistani invaders. Yet, when this Brigade tried to pursue the ﬂ eeing enemy, to carry forward its victorious march from the east to the west, and recapture an important place like Domel, British bosses in New Delhi halted its advance. On 7 November 1947, this Brigade defeated the enemy at the battle of Shalateng. On 8 November 1947, it recovered Baramula from the hands of the enemy, and advanced towards Uri. Evidently, this alarmed Pakistan’s patrons among the British decision makers in New Delhi, who tried their best to stop the advance of the 161 Infantry Brigade towards Uri. They did not provide any relief, but arbitrarily withdrew one battalion from this Brigade. In spite of this, the Brigade, inspired by its successes and patriotism, recaptured Uri. Pakistan’s British benefactors in New Delhi, therefore, adopted a stratagem to halt the apparently unstoppable march of this Brigade to its next target, viz. the retaking of Domel: they ordered a change of the axis of operation of this Brigade. This enabled the enemy to stop its ﬂ ight, reinforce its strength, and convert the triumphant onslaughts of the 161 Infantry Brigade into a stalemate. Thus, the Brigade, deprived of its essential reinforcement of units, found itself virtually abandoned in the winter months of 1947–48.30 L.P. Sen’s account, presented in the preceding paragraph, would be unbelievably shocking for any patriotic Indian. Much more devastating is the account constructed painstakingly from British archives by C. Dasgupta. The book by Dasgupta presents a horrifying account of how Prime Minister Attlee, Lord Mountbatten and the British military Chiefs in India were in constant collusion to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 prevent India from occupying all of J&K. Nehru failed, not because he did not understand and try to drive out the Pakistani invaders from J&K, but because he eventually succumbed to the manoeuvres of the British manipulators, whom he himself had placed in positions of supreme power. Mountbatten went so far as to assert that Nehru and his Cabinet colleagues could only provide a broad policy directive,

30 Ibid., see Chapters 8,9, 10 and pp. 293–95. Relations with Pakistan 125

but the details of the military operations, including the use of the Air Force, had to be left to the British military Chiefs.31 By the end of 1947, Nehru found it impossible to overlook the glaringly pro-Pakistan and anti-India role played by Lockhart. After he completed a little more than six months of his four-year tenure (commencing in August 1947), Lockhart had to resign.32 Still, Nehru did not learn the necessary lesson. He did not appoint any Indian (for example, Lt. Gen. K.M. Cariappa) as Lockhart’s successor. He committed the blunder of appointing General Roy Bucher, who simply mirrored Lockhart’s pro-Pakistan and anti-India standpoint. Actually, Bucher ‘was not an operational soldier, and he was a self- seeker and intriguer’.33 Bucher imitated Lockhart, as he frustrated the attempts of the Indian Army’s Sri Division towards pushing the invaders out of J&K. Whenever this division launched these attempts by movements from the east to the west, it was denied the essential number of formations. But there was no dearth of supply of additional formations whenever operations were conducted in another (viz. south-to-north) direction, because such operations were destined to lead to a stalemate, and not to an eviction of aggressors from J&K.34 On one occasion, Major General K.S. Thimayya recommended an air strike against a large concentration of invaders. Bucher rejected it, although it could only help Pakistan at India’s expense.35 On another occasion, when it was essential to rush troops to J&K, Bucher pleaded, rather absurdly, at a meeting in New Delhi, a lack of adequate resources. However, Patel was determined, and overruled Bucher.36 It is not fair to blame Lockhart and Bucher for anti-India activities. If one studies the British archives thoroughly, as C. Dasgupta has done, the blame has to be squarely placed on Nehru (although Dasgupta, a career diplomat, refrains from doing so). Nehru was both the prime minister and external affairs minister of India. Yet he

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 placed Mountbatten, Lockhart and Bucher in crucial positions, and failed to control their activities in order to advance India’s interests.

31 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, especially pp. 81–85, 88–96. 32 Ibid., p. 133; Sen, Slender was the Thread, p. 295. 33 Palit, Major General A.A. Rudra, p. 325. 34 Sen, Slender was the Thread, especially pp. 242–43, 279–88, 295. 35 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 7. 36 Chopra, The Sardar of India, pp. 111–12. 126 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Men like Lockhart or Bucher usually took their orders from the British High Commissioner in New Delhi, Governor General Mountbatten (till 18 June 1948), Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Philip Noel Baker, and Prime Minister Attlee. Nehru himself chose to write to Attlee on crucial occasions, and Attlee’s response had an adverse effect on India’s military operations. The singular and inescapable impression that emerges from all this is that Nehru involuntarily slid into a position where, against his own desire and judgement, he eroded (if not surrendered) the sovereignty of India in J&K affairs in 1947–48. He did not want to refer the J&K issue to the UN before evicting Pakistani aggressors, but he yielded to Mountbatten, who thought that it a good way to curb India’s military operations against (at that time) a thoroughly weak adversary, Pakistan. For him, as also for Noel Baker or Attlee, Pakistan’s alienation (due to an inevitable and disastrous defeat at the hands of a much superior Indian Army) would lead to the alienation of the Muslim world. At one stage, Pakistan’s prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, even held out the offer of a military alliance with Britain. Nehru’s repeated pleas for decisive strikes against bases and sanctuaries of invaders inside Pakistani territories were craftily checkmated by Mountbatten (till mid-1948 when he returned to London), by the British High Commissioner in New Delhi, and by Bucher and his British colleagues. Bucher went so far as to hold secret parleys with his Pakistani counterpart, Gracey (successor to Messervy). London even permitted British ofﬁ cers to lead Pakistani invaders in J&K, despite Nehru’s objections.37 At the UN, the British presented J&K as disputed territory, whereas the United States was under the impression that after its accession J&K had become an integral part of India. However, India failed to use the services of the United States in 1948. The United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) passed an

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 important three-part resolution on 13 August 1948, which created an opportunity for the eviction of the aggressors from J&K. Part I stipulated a ceaseﬁ re, and Part II a truce agreement. Part II imposed upon Pakistan an unconditional obligation to withdraw all its soldiers and nationals, as also its tribesmen, from J&K, although the Indian troops were to stay on in J&K in order to

37 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, especially, pp. 97–109, 137–42, 150–60, 171–89. Also see, Collins and Lapierre, Mountbatten and Independent India, pp. 154, 162. Relations with Pakistan 127

safeguard defence, and law and order. Part III prescribed a discussion on how to ascertain the wishes of the people of J&K, provided Parts I and II were carried out. India accepted this resolution, including the ceasefi re. Pakistan did not, because it tried, with British connivance, to improve its position in J&K. Despite dirty tricks by Bucher (and his British patrons), Indian forces were scoring successes, as Indian commanders were sometimes deviating form Bucher’s anti-Indian directives. Pakistan, therefore, was inclined to a ceasefi re by the end of December 1948. Nehru did not have the nerve to launch a decisive counter-attack on Pakistani territory in violation of the British C-in-C’s instructions (although he nursed an intense desire to do so since December 1947). Nehru succumbed to British manipulations, and agreed to an untimely ceasefi re. This was on 30 December 1948, when the Pakistanis were largely on the retreat. New Delhi was so incompetent that it did not bother to prepare a map to depict the ceasefi re line.38 Candour commands that when we denounce a Briton like Bucher for anti-Indian activities, we must not hesitate to spare some of his Indian subordinates.

Brig. J.N. Chaudhuri, Director of Military Operations, and Lt. Col. S.H.F.J. Manekshaw, his G.S.O.I, were Bucher’s protégés. Both served their master well in key appointments at Army Headquarters, running the Kashmir war between them. Bucher was Manekshaw’s guest in the Chief of Army Staff’s House in Delhi for quite some time (with government permission) early in 1970.39

According to a former Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, General K.V. Krishna Rao, ‘if the ceaseﬁ re in Jammu and Kashmir had not been prematurely accepted on 31 December 1948, the whole of Kashmir could perhaps have been cleared of the enemy’.40 Moreover, it was a sordid betrayal of the sacriﬁ ces committed by the ‘solid mass 41 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of honest, courageous, human and tough soldiery’.

38 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, especially, pp. 121–23, 161–66, 190, 191–97; Sen, Slender was the Thread, especially, pp. 288–92, 296. 39 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 7. A GSO is a General Staff Ofﬁ cer. 40 K.V. Krishna Rao, In the Service of the Nation: Reminiscences, New Delhi: Viking/Penguin, 2001, p. 259. 41 Lt. Gen. E.A. Vas, Without Baggage: A Personal Account of the Jammu & Kashmir Operations October 1947–January 1949, Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 1987, p. 155. 128 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Writers have not paid adequate attention to the long-term, adverse impact of India’s foreign policy debacle vis-à-vis Pakistan during 1947–48. India threw away the opportunity to use force to occupy lawfully the whole of J&K. It thus failed to create an image of power, which could have demoralised Pakistan, and subsequently restrained it from trying to achieve military parity with India by means of assistance from foreign countries (especially the United States and China). Had Pakistan been discouraged to develop the scenario further, the United States too would have been less tempted to use Pakistan as a counterweight against India. Instead, with Pakistan successfully canvassing Western support on the Kashmir case at the UN, India was forced into an unenviable position of being dependent upon the Soviet Union for checkmating Pakistani moves. If J&K had been in India’s possession, China would not have posed a threat to India by constructing a road across POK, an act that has substantially altered the centuries-old strategic map of the region. Above all, with no ceaseﬁ re and with Pakistan vanquished in the J&K campaigns of 1947–48, India could have avoided the arms race with Pakistan, which has undoubtedly hindered India’s economic development.

The J&K Issue at the UN The ceasefi re came into force on 1 January 1949. At the time, India was registering military successes in several important sectors.42 It was, therefore, diplomatically and militarily unwise for India to accept Pakistan’s offer of a ceasefi re. The dominance of pro-Pakistan forces in the upper reaches of the decision-making machinery in India became transparent. The failure of Nehru’s leadership too became glaring.43 Subsequently, the ceasefi re line ‘followed no

42 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 9. ‘To pulverize the adversary’s Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 capacity to strike again was not spelt out as a military task’, writes Jaswant Singh in Defending India, p. 160. Also see, Rao, Reminiscences, p. 25. For numerous details, see Ashok Krishna, India’s Armed Forces: Fifty Years of War and Peace, New Delhi: Lancer, 1998, and K.V. Krishna Rao, Prepare or Perish: A Study of National Security, New Delhi: Lancer, 1991. 43 ‘When the Indian army went to war with Pakistan in 1947–48 the country had a prime minister in Nehru who neither had any clue about warfare nor was interested in exploiting a politico military advantage when the army was poised for victory; the government ordered a ceaseﬁ re’. See J.K. Dutt (a retired colonel of the Indian Army), The Telegraph, 15 September 1992. Relations with Pakistan 129

military logic, not even convenience, and displayed no strategic sense of geography either’. It, moreover, made little ‘tactical sense’.44 Pakistan thus saved itself militarily, and then proceeded to impose a diplomatic defeat upon India. Pakistan refused to comply with Part II of the 13 August 1948 resolution, and yet harped on the necessity for a plebiscite in terms of Part III of this resolution. Pakistan was aware that if a plebiscite was held in 1948 or 1949, its result could not refl ect any support for Pakistan, because the people of J&K could not forget so quickly the atrocities committed by the Pakistani marauders, viz. loot, arson, and molestation of women.45 The licence to loot was so exercised that even the gold fi llings in the teeth of many victims were forcibly extracted. It was easy for Pakistan to assume that India could not allow a plebiscite until Pakistan carried out Part II of the aforementioned resolution, and removed all its military and para-military forces from J&K. Not to speak of removing its forces, Pakistan took determined steps to consolidate its authority over such northern areas as Gilgit. The Government of India, however, stuck to its habitual counterproductive policy. Instead of combating, militarily, Pakistan’s attempts to consolidate its position in the northern areas, in gross violation of the aforesaid UNCIP resolution,46 India merely complained to the UN, whose indifference and ineffectiveness were already quite manifest. The ability of pro-Pakistan forces to vitiate India’s foreign policy was confi rmed. Moreover, Indian diplomacy failed to create enough international pressure to compel Pakistan to comply with Part II of the 13 August 1948 UNCIP resolution as the precondition for a plebiscite. In contrast, Pakistani diplomacy successfully caused India deep embarrassment in its refusal to work for a plebiscite without the fulfi lment of the precondition. In these circumstances, UN efforts towards mediation were destined to fail. Owen Dixon became the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 UN representative for India and Pakistan in 1950. His report of

44 Singh, Defending India, p. 160. 45 B.N. Mullik, My Years with Nehru: Kashmir, Bombay: Allied, 1971a, p. 7. Also see, Sen, Slender was the Thread, p. 36; Y.D. Gundevia, The Testament of Sheikh Abdullah: With a Monograph by Y. D. Gundevia, New Delhi: Palit & Palit, 1974, p. 101. 46 Gundevia, The Testament of Sheikh Abdullah, p. 99. 130 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

15 September 1950 underlined his failure to resolve India–Pakistan differences. Following is a signiﬁ cant observation in this report:

I was prepared to adopt the view that when the frontier of the State of Jammu and Kashmir was crossed, on, I believe, 20 October 1947, by hostile elements, it was contrary to international law, and that when, in May 1948, as I believe, units of the regular Pakistan forces moved into the territory of the State that too was inconsistent with international law.47

This was diplomatic double talk, which suffered from a lack of ability to record the elementary fact of direct Pakistani participation in military operations right from 20 October 1947. Nevertheless, the aforementioned observation was an indirect admission of the validity of India’s complaint that Pakistan was an aggressor. Frank Graham became the UN representative for India and Pakistan in 1951. He submitted ﬁ ve reports from 15 October 1951 to 27 March 1953. He could achieve nothing in resolving the deadlock between India and Pakistan. He, like his predecessor, Dixon, recommended direct negotiations between India and Pakistan. Following the failure of Graham’s efforts, there were some direct India–Pakistan negotiations, which did not succeed largely because Pakistan refused to comply with Part II of the 13 August 1948 resolution. When Pakistan found that India would not favour any measure that could lead to a surrender of J&K to Pakistan, and that the balance of power in the subcontinent was, largely and inescapably, in favour of India, and this was bound to remain so in the foreseeable future, Pakistan tried to borrow strength from outsiders. It wanted to achieve some sort of military parity with India in the hope of speaking to India from a position of strength. Pakistan succeeded in signing a military aid pact with the United States in May 1954. This military alliance was consolidated by

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Pakistan’s participation in the South East Asia Treaty Organisation

47 ‘Particularly harmful to Pakistan’s case was the fact that Dixon had been the ﬁ rst UN representative to state categorically that the troop movements in Kashmir from Pakistan were violations of international law.’ See Charles H. Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, A Diplomatic History of Modern India, New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1971, p. 157. Also see, H.S. Gururaj Rao, Legal Aspects of the Kashmir Problem, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1967, p. 242. Relations with Pakistan 131

(SEATO) and the Baghdad Pact (later the CENTO, that is, the Central Treaty Organisation). Ostensibly, Pakistan was interested in joining the worldwide anti-communist alliance system. Actually, Pakistan used the banner of anti-communism to counteract the natural military superiority of India. Not to speak of extensive and candid non-offi cial media reports in Pakistan as well as the United States, even the guarded statements of Pakistani offi cials before the conclusion of the military aid pact with the United States could not conceal their real intentions.48 Thus, in an interview to an infl uential American periodical, Mohammed Ali (of Bogra), the prime minister of Pakistan, affi rmed that the Kashmir problem could not be settled because India’s military superiority made Nehru uninterested in a settlement, and that the chance of a settlement would increase in case of a power parity between India and Pakistan.49 It was understood that Pakistan’s military alliance with the United States would vitally contribute to the attainment of this power parity. India showed diplomatic skill in anticipating and emphasising the far-reaching implications of the United States-Pakistan military pact. Even when negotiations for the pact were on, Nehru wrote to the Pakistan prime minister on 9 December 1953:

… the mere fact that large scale rearmament and military expansion takes place in Pakistan must necessarily have repercussions in India…. Inevitably, it will affect the major questions we are considering and, more especially, the Kashmir issue. We have been discussing for a long time past the question of demilitarization in the Kashmir state… it becomes rather absurd to talk of demilitarization if Pakistan proceeds in the reverse direction with the help of the United States.50

48 See, for example, Editorials of Dawn, Karachi, 9 December 1953,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and of Morning News, Karachi, 20 November and 13 December 1953. For a conﬁ rmation by foreign observers, see John P. Callahan, The New York Times, 21 November 1953; The Times, London, 19 April 1954; Wilson Clark, ‘Pakistan–Turkey Pact: Many Bricks, Little Mortar’, The Reporter, New York, 8 June 1954, pp. 25–26; Norman D. Palmer, ‘The United States and Pakistan’, Current History, Philadelphia, vol. 34, March 1958, p. 144. 49 U.S. News & World Report, Washington DC, 15 January 1954, p. 34. 50 Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 24, 1 October 1953 to 31 January 1954, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 1999, p. 436. 132 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

On 21 December 1953, Nehru further wrote to the Pakistan prime minister.

[This] new situation does not depend so much on the quantity of military aid received but more so on the fact of such free aid coming to Pakistan. This produces a qualitative change in the existing situation and, therefore, it affects Indo-Pakistani relations, and, more especially, the Kashmir problem.51

On 1 March 1954, with reference to this and related problems, Nehru told the Indian Parliament: ‘The military aid being given by the United States to Pakistan is a form of intervention in these problems which is likely to have more far reaching results than the previous types of intervention.’52 Such statements by the Indian prime minister were academically signifi cant but practically useless. They could not prevent the signing of the US–Pakistan pact in May 1954. Military pacts were concluded not only by Western powers but also by the Communist countries. However, it seems that India turned a blind eye to the military pacts binding the Communist states—for example, the Warsaw Pact—while it regularly condemned Western-sponsored military pacts such as SEATO or NATO. It would be a reasonable conjecture that India thus hoped to gain Soviet support in the Security Council, and counteract the efforts of Pakistan’s Western allies in the Security Council, which might undermine India’s position in J&K. Take, for instance, Nehru’s long speech in the Lok Sabha on 29 September 1954, in the course of an important foreign affairs debate, wherein he reiterated India’s opposition to military pacts and roundly condemned NATO as also the recently established SEATO. He did not utter a single word in this speech against the military pacts engineered by the Communist countries. Particularly signifi cant, and quite apparent, was Nehru’s fear that SEATO might create diffi culties for India on J&K.53

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 This could partially explain how India achieved a diplomatic victory in December 1955, when Nikolai A. Bulganin, the Soviet premier, and Nikita S. Khrushchev, Soviet Communist party

51 Ibid., p. 446. 52 Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 25, 1 February 1954–31 to May 1954, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 1999. 53 Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 90. Relations with Pakistan 133

ﬁ rst secretary, toured India. They declared the Kashmiris to be Indians and Kashmir (the frequently used short form for Jammu and Kashmir) an integral part of India. This was a rare diplomatic success for India. Bulganin and Khrushchev seemed to generate the impression that Pakistan had incurred their displeasure by aligning itself with the United States, and that, as a sort of reprisal, they were declaring Kashmir to be irrevocably a part of India. One inevitable reaction on the part of the Pakistanis to Soviet pressure was to expect similarly outspoken support from the United States and other Western powers on the Kashmir issue. The Pakistanis felt depressed despite the Western support, which even though signiﬁ cant fell short of the support extended to India by Bulganin and Khrushchev.54 In January 1957, Pakistan revived the Kashmir issue at the UN Security Council. Pakistan was in a highly advantageous position on account of its alliance with the Western powers. Among the newly elected non-permanent members of the Security Council were Iraq and Turkey, Pakistan’s allies in the Baghdad Pact. Pakistan’s role in the Suez and Hungarian crises of late 1956 made it a favourite of the Western powers. Thus, in the Suez crisis, Pakistan took a line in consonance with the Western view. While India’s emphasis was on the sovereign rights of Egypt, Pakistan stressed the international character of the Suez Canal.55 On the issue of Hungary, Pakistan was totally in favour of the Western view, which required the holding of elections in Hungary under UN supervision, and ran counter to the sovereign rights of Hungary. On the other hand, India, even though unhappy about the Soviet military action in Hungary, could not support the UN-supervised election in Hungary for the obvious apprehension that this could subsequently, and in gross violation of the UNCIP resolution of 13 August I948, be used as a wrong precedent in the case of J&K.56 On 14 February 1957, Australia,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Cuba, Britain, and America submitted at the Security Council a draft resolution, which by and large upheld the Pakistani standpoint.

54 For details, see The Pakistan Times, Lahore, 10, 11 and 12 December 1955; Times of Karachi, 11 December 1955; Morning News, 11 December 1955; The New York Times, 28 December 1955. 55 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, pp. 278–79, 290. 56 Ibid., p. 295. 134 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

This resolution noted Pakistan’s proposal for the use of a temporary UN force in connection with demilitarisation as a preparatory step towards the holding of a plebiscite in J&K, and stated that this force deserved consideration. Among other matters, this resolution asked Gunnar Jarring, the Swedish delegate and president of the Security Council, to visit the subcontinent, and discuss proposals for a settlement with India and Pakistan. The draft resolution received nine votes in favour; Sweden abstained. Nevertheless, the resolution was vetoed by the Soviet Union.57 With this perspective one realises how friendless India was (despite the much-publicised policy of non-alignment), and why India’s voting on the Hungarian issue at the UN a few weeks earlier could not have been different. On 21 February 1957, the Security Council adopted a resolution, sponsored by Australia, Britain, and America, by 10 votes to 0, the Soviet Union abstaining. This resolution asked Jarring to examine with the Governments of India and Pakistan any proposal for the settlement of the Kashmir issue. Jarring submitted a report on 21 April 1957, although he failed to achieve anything tangible. Some aspects of the Jarring Report were signifi cant in terms of providing indirect support to the Indian standpoint. To Jarring, J&K’s ‘accession to India and aggression by Pakistan were…the essential facts and he could fi nd no international commitment made by India which she had violated or not fulfi lled’.58 Jarring also affi rmed the following in his report:

[That he]… could not fail to take note of the concern expressed in connection with the changing political, economic, and strategic factors surrounding the whole of the Kashmir question, together with the changing pattern of power relations in West and South Asia.59

He warned that the implementation of international agreements of an ad hoc character might be progressively more difﬁ cult, if not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 achieved quickly, ‘because the situation with which they were to cope has tended to change’.60

57 Ibid., p. 48. 58 S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, 1956–1964, vol. 3, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989b, p. 49. 59 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, p. 165. 60 Ibid. Relations with Pakistan 135

On 2 December 1957, the Security Council adopted a resolution by 10 votes to 0, while the Soviet Union abstained. This resolution asked Frank Graham, the UN representative for India and Pakistan, to recommend appropriate measures by India and Pakistan towards a settlement of the Kashmir question. Graham submitted a report on 28 March 1958. It followed its forerunners by achieving nothing.61 By 1961, Pakistan became acutely conscious that it was essential to modify the policy of alignment drastically.62 Pakistan’s ally-value declined in the era of long-range missiles ﬁ tted with thermonuclear warheads. The necessity on the part of Pakistan’s allies to use that country as a military base lost much of its former importance. The newly installed Kennedy administration in the United States, moreover, was far less allergic to India’s non-alignment than its predecessor, the Eisenhower administration. Above all, Pakistanis could no longer reconcile themselves to the fact that the Security Council could not take any decisive move to settle the Kashmir issue on account of the Soviet veto operating in India’s favour, and that Soviet antagonism to Pakistan stemmed clearly from Pakistan’s policy of alignment with the West. In addition, in order to take advantage of an evident deterioration in India–China relations, Pakistan resolved to combine with China to intimidate India. It became apparent in 1961 that Pakistan’s overtures to the Soviet Union and China were successful. The Soviet Union agreed to provide economic aid for the exploration of oil in Pakistan. Moreover, Pakistan started negotiations with China for the demarcation of borders—even though India claimed these border areas—because these were parts of POK. In December 1961, Pakistan took a drastic step to convey a strong signal to the United States that Pakistan was ready to risk a serious affront to American sensitivities in order to appease China: Pakistan voted in favour of granting United Nations

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 membership to the People’s Republic of China. The governments of China and Pakistan announced on 31 May 1962 that they agreed to demarcate their common borders. An important reason why Pakistan was determined to placate China in all possible ways was

61 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, p. 85. 62 B.N. Goswami, Pakistan and China, Bombay: Allied, 1971, p. 73. 136 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

its failure to bring about any change in the Soviet Union’s viewpoint on the issue of J&K. For instance, on 22 June 1962, the Soviet Union vetoed a Security Council attempt—inspired by Pakistan and backed up by the Western powers—to arrange further India– Pakistan negotiations on the Kashmir issue.63 The India–China hostilities of 1962 opened a new opportunity for Pakistan to use its Western allies to put pressure upon India on the Kashmir issue. America and Britain generated the impression that India would be eligible for large-scale military aid from them if India agreed to settle the Kashmir issue on such terms as would satisfy Pakistan. But the Government of India stood ﬁ rm, and

Pakistani manoeuvres, rather overstretched as noted ahead, did not succeed.64 From 27 December 1962 to 16 May 1963, the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, Swaran Singh and Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto, held six rounds of talks. According to a Pakistani White Paper of 15 January 1977, India suggested a ‘political settlement’ by means of an outright partition of J&K, which might require a rectifi cation of the ceasefi re line by means of minor adjustments.65 Nevertheless, as B.N. Mullik has recorded, Pakistan pitched its demands too high. Pakistan left only three south-eastern districts of Jammu for India, and wanted for itself not only the Kashmir valley but also the bulk of Jammu.66 Since it was impossible for India to accede to such Pakistani demands, the Swaran-Bhutto talks remained a failure. The Soviet Union offered unqualifi ed support to India in the matter of treating the whole of Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India. Therefore, it was not unexpected that the Soviet Union did not appreciate the reported Indian move—during the aforementioned Swaran-Bhutto talks—to give away a large chunk of J&K to Pakistan and settle for a permanent international boundary along the existing ceasefi re line with some minor and mutually 67

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 accepted modiﬁ cations. If India could be so ﬂ exible in dealing with

63 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, p. 170. 64 Mullik, My Years with Nehru, pp. 180–81. 65 For some vital information on the secret deliberations, see Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, pp. 173–74. 66 Mullik, My Years with Nehru, p. 181. 67 Kuldip Nayar, India: The Critical Years, Delhi: Vikas, 1971, p. 159. Relations with Pakistan 137

Pakistan, the Soviet Union too could reconsider its policy towards Pakistan, and display greater accommodation towards Pakistan. The tendency towards such reconsideration could derive additional impetus from Pakistan’s manifest success in winning the friendship of both China and America. All this might explain why, in the early part of 1965, the Soviet Union extended an invitation to President Ayub Khan of Pakistan for a visit to Moscow, although, in the past, Khan’s efforts towards procuring such an invitation were unsuccessful. Pakistan probably interpreted Moscow’s friendly gesture as a signal that in any future India–Pakistan war, Pakistan would not have to confront Soviet antagonism. In this new diplomatic environment, Pakistani aggressiveness vis-à-vis India tended to rise. The memory of the Swaran-Bhutto talks in 1962–63, when India appeared to be ready to barter away a large slice of J&K’s territory in order to propitiate Pakistan, could have provided an additional impulse to such aggressiveness. For, Pakistan tended to equate with sheer cowardice any attempt on the part of India to forge a compromise with Pakistan.

Confl icts in 1965 By 1965, Pakistan’s policy of multiple and fl exible alignment appeared to pay a high dividend. Pakistan became ‘friendly with the USA, the USSR and China, and … received military and economic assistance from all’.68 In April 1965, Pakistani troops invaded the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, established two posts, and fought the Indian police. Pakistan, with an airport near the border, enjoyed logistical advantages. The F-86 fi ghter bombers, donated by the United States, were kept at this airport. The Patton tanks, also gifts from the United States, were used by Pakistan in Kutch, even though President Eisenhower offered a public pledge prohibiting the use of such United States weapons against India, and restrict- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ing their use to actions against communist countries in terms of the America–Pakistan military aid pact of 1954. India protested, and submitted before the United States not only photographs of Patton tanks but also the used shells of these tanks. American observers, permitted by Ayub Khan to visit Kutch, duly noted the

68 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 13. 138 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

deployment of gifted American equipment by Pakistan. But the United States Government refrained from taking any action against Pakistan.69 (This lack of ﬁ rmness on the part of the United States could not but embolden Pakistan to use donated American weapons in order to launch a large-scale military adventure in Kashmir on 1 September 1965.) Pakistan persisted in using gifted American weapons in Kutch, and consolidated its hold on some strategically advantageous grounds. It was essential to drive out the Pakistani intruders, and safeguard national security as well as prestige. But swift punishment could not be meted out to the intruders, because there was a shameful repetition of the 1947–48 Kashmir scenario. Where in 1947–48, pro-British forces were in collusion with pro-Pakistan forces to thwart India’s vital interests, in 1965, collusion between pro-American and pro-Pakistan forces hurt India. With General J.N. Chaudhuri as the Chief of Army Staff, the Army Headquarters persisted with unsavoury tactics, which attested to this collusion. One, the Army Headquarters prevented local commanders from taking decisive action to retrieve areas lost to Pakistan. Two, the Army Headquarters chose to hold separate brieﬁ ngs for Indian and foreign newspapermen. The Army spokespersons told the Indian pressmen that, but for the opposition from politicians, they would have stepped up their campaign to recapture areas occupied by Pakistan. To the foreign correspondents, however, the Army headquarters said they were restraining politicians in order to avoid a war. Three, when the apparent paralysis at the Army Headquarters provoked politicians to demand swift retaliatory action, the Army authorities tried to mislead—if not hoodwink—the politicians by asking whether they would be allowed to strike at Pakistan in areas other than Kutch. When they were granted the permission to do so, the Army authorities raised the spectre of a total war. All this

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 merely sanctiﬁ ed inaction, and helped Pakistan—not to speak of the possibility that timely and decisive actions in Kutch would not

69 The United States probably expressed displeasure when ‘President Johnson abruptly cancelled a scheduled meeting with Ayub in April 1965’. See Stanley Wolpert, Zulﬁ Bhutto of Pakistan: His Life and Times, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 89. Relations with Pakistan 139

necessarily have led to a wider war.70 In this context, one cannot but be curious about a probable linkage between such inaction and the acquisition of a post-retirement visiting professorship at an American university by the then Indian Army Chief. This negative attitude of the Indian Army staff was likely to weaken the will of the politicians, who, therefore, were impelled to repeat the previous mistake in Kashmir: before expelling the Pakistani invaders, they accepted the British suggestion of a ceasefi re on 1 July 1965. On the Kutch issue, the Government of India repeated again another mistake about the Kashmir problem: it yielded to the British, especially Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and agreed to refer the Kutch issue to an international authority; not to the United Nations as in the case of Kashmir, but to an international arbitration tribunal. India was much more powerful than Pakistan. It was certainly unusual, and humiliating, for India to treat the Rann of Kutch as a disputed territory, and solicit a third party award. On 19 February 1968, an international tribunal announced the award, which allotted to Pakistan 350 square miles, out of a total of 3,500, square miles in the Rann of Kutch. Pakistan gained, and India lost, because the new Kutch border enabled Pakistan to secure a number of high grounds, whereas Indian areas were mostly swampy and low lying. India found it diffi cult to patrol such areas. Just as India in the past had infl icted injury upon itself by referring the Kashmir issue to the UN, in the Kutch case too, it hurt itself by referring to an international tribunal.71 India, however, committed other mistakes in the wake of the Kutch ceasefi re on 1 July 1965. When India exhibited a lack of determination to fi ght Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch, Pakistan concluded that India was afraid of a military showdown with Pakistan. This conclusion took root when, following the Kutch ceasefi re, India withdrew from several posts in Kashmir, which were important for 72

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India’s military communications. India had occupied these posts because, before the Kutch ceaseﬁ re, in May–June 1965, Pakistan had launched some aggressive moves in Kashmir. Such withdrawal

70 Ramesh Thapar, Economic and Political Weekly, Bombay, 15 May 1965. Also see Nayar, India, p. 169. 71 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 20. Also see, Nayar, India, p. 169. 72 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 22. 140 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

from strategic posts underlined India’s indifference to military requirements. This was coupled with complacency about the compelling need for military preparations against another (probably bigger) offensive by Pakistan in the immediate future, despite a remarkable rise in the number of incidents on the Kashmir border soon after the Kutch ceasefi re of 1 July 1965. Some intelligence reports about Pakistan training and arming infi ltrators for actions inside Kashmir were also available. In spite of all this evidence about a probably imminent Pakistani attack in the Kashmir area, at a meeting on 2 August 1965 in Srinagar, the Indian Army Chief and other top ranking military offi cials reached the amazing conclusion that there was no immediate threat from Pakistan.73 Ironically, on 4 August 1965, military authorities received alarming evidence of an attempted Pakistani infi ltration on a vast scale. The Pakistani offensive in Kashmir commenced on 5 August 1965, with the infi l- tration of approximately 10,000 Pakistani soldiers masquerading as civilians (and culminated in a full-scale conventional military invasion on 1 September 1965). That such a large number of armed infi ltrators could cross the 470-mile-long ceasefi re line underlined gross defi ciencies in the formulation and implementation of India’s policy towards Pakistan in general, as also in the security/intelligence apparatus in particular.74 India complained to the UN Secretary General about this Pakistani infi ltration. The Secretary General did not appear to treat this problem with the seriousness it deserved. He merely summoned Lieutenant General R.H. Nimmo, the Chief of the UN Military Observers Group in Kashmir, for consultations. Nimmo’s report admitted that armed infi ltrators from Pakistan had crossed the ceasefi re line. However, Nimmo offered a biased interpretation of this infi ltration, which favoured Pakistan. He argued that the ceasefi re agreement did not apply to civilians, irrespective of whether they

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were armed or not, and that the ceasefi re agreement was applicable only to soldiers. In this way, Nimmo glossed over the incontestable fact that the armed Pakistani infi ltrators were actually soldiers in civilian dress.75 The infi ltrators, however, failed to achieve their

73 Nayar, India, p. 171. 74 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 24. 75 Nayar, India, p. 175. Relations with Pakistan 141

objective of inciting Kashmiris to a full-scale rebellion, even though persistent fi ring by Pakistan across the ceasefi re line on 8–9 August 1965 was a sure signal of strong support for potential rebels.76 True, in certain areas, some Kashmiris, including civil offi cials, provided support to the infi ltrators. On the contrary, many of the locals informed the Indian police and military of the whereabouts of the Pakistani infi ltrators, and some of them even caught the infi ltrators and handed them over to the Indian military.77 Military authorities in New Delhi, however, did not appear to be suffi ciently alert about making adequate preparations against an imminent full-scale Pakistani conventional attack in Kashmir. In addition to armed infi ltration in early August, there were other indicators of the high probability of such an attack. In late August 1965, UN observers warned India against the gathering Pakistani troops in the Chhamb sector of Kashmir. On 28 August 1965, in the same sector, Indian soldiers in forward locations noticed certain movements by the Pakistani armed forces and tanks, which could not but arouse suspicion of impending aggression. The Indian military authorities overlooked these danger signals, and even withdrew soldiers from the threatened sector.78 Afterwards, they sent reinforcements when it was too late. All such lapses were inexcusable, especially since General J.N. Chaudhury, the Chief of Army Staff, had had elaborate discussions with Prime Minister Lalbahadur Shastri and Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan as early as 5 May 1965. In course of these discussions, Chaudhury had obtained advance sanctions for necessary counter-attack against Pakistan in case of any renewed Pakistani aggression in Kashmir.79 Pakistan launched a large-scale attack in Kashmir on 1 September 1965. It was indeed ironic that India appeared to allow Pakistan to seize the initiative on many vital matters, even though Pakistan was a much weaker adversary with no military-industrial base comparable

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to India, and thoroughly dependent on America for ammunition. India merely reacted to the Pakistani initiatives. Thus, Pakistan

76 Ibid., p. 173. 77 S.K. Mehra, The Statesman, 7 July 1998. Also see, Sudhir S. Bloeria, Pakistan’s Insurgency vs. India’s Security, New Delhi: Manas, 2000, pp. 78–79. 78 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 29. 79 Nayar, India, p. 169. 142 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

dispatched armed infi ltrators to Kashmir in early August, while, in response, India could occupy the strategic Haji Pir Pass as late as 30 August (although, earlier in August, India had occupied a few Pakistani posts in the course of this response). The Pakistani aircraft bombed Indian airfi elds on 6 September 1965; the Indian Air Force (IAF) retaliated the following day. India failed to resist the advance of the Pakistani armour in the Jaurian sector. In order to avert a loss of territory, which appeared to be inevitable as also unacceptable on account of the recent rout in Kutch, India took the decisive step of counter-attacking Pakistan in the Lahore sector.80 Even this did not take place as quickly as was practicable. Prime Minister Shastri ordered it on 3 September, but the counter-attack did not commence before 6 September.81 Moreover, the use of armour was so defi cient that the advance of the Indian Army was suicidally slow.82 Even where, as in Lahore, India surprised the enemy by moving as close as 12 miles from the city, and residents of Lahore started fl eeing, Delhi’s decision makers failed to take resolute measures that could lead to the capture of Lahore.83 After all, it was an open secret that Pakistan, in search of a quick victory over India (as the rhapsodic broadcasts over Pakistan radio attested) exhausted nearly all its ammunition (gifted by America) in just three weeks.84 That was the moment when Pakistan and India agreed to a ceasefi re. As in the case of the 1947–48 war, so in the case of the 1965 War, India made a terrible blunder by agreeing to a ceasefi re at a thoroughly inappropriate time. In the 1965 War, India should have carried on the war and occupied some important places like Lahore or Sialkot, which later could have been bartered away against the evacuation of POK. Once Pakistan was brought to its knees, there

80 Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, pp. 26–27. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 81 Nayar, India, pp. 176–77. 82 J.K. Dutt, The Statesman, 18 July 1997. 83 The ‘strategic surprise’ achieved by India was of no avail. ‘It was a lack of prepared contingency planning, an absence of the spirit to exploit success, and a lack of vigorous execution of plans, that resulted in converting what would have been a signiﬁ cant military victory into what became almost a disorderly withdrawal and then simply a slugging match of attrition.’ See, Singh, Defending India, pp. 176–77. Also see, Kaul, Confrontation with Pakistan, p. 67; Nayar, India, pp. 181, 186–88, 191–92. 84 Singh, Defending India, p. 178; Wolpert, Zulﬁ Bhutto, p. 93. Relations with Pakistan 143

could have been half a chance of stopping the India–Pakistan arms race, and concentrating on economic development. However, along with losing this chance, the dangerous Pakistani view, that Indians (Hindus) were cowards, persisted. It should be remembered that, on 29 August 1965, before launching large-scale hostilities in Kashmir, codenamed Operation Grand Slam, Ayub Khan issued a ‘top secret order’ to General Mohammad Musa, the C-in-C of the Pakistan Army, which included the following observation: ‘As a general rule, Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place.’85 General Mohammad Musa headed the Pakistan Army during the 1965 War. Remarkably, he pleaded for the nurturing of a ‘spirit of Jihad’ in Pakistani soldiers. He wrote:

In the war, the real motivating force for the superb performance of the armed forces was their spirit of Jihad. In the ﬁ nal analysis, Islam and the concept of ‘Ghazi’ or ‘Shaheed’ provides the motivation, the espirit de corps, the élan and the ﬁ ghting spirit for the Pakistani soldier and this concept must be nurtured and preserved.86

No wonder that a young Pakistani offi cer, wounded in the 1965 War and captured by India, rejected the offer of blood transfusion for normal medical treatment, because he preferred death to donation of blood by an infi del.87 It was indeed extraordinarily diffi cult to negotiate for peace with an enemy country that indoctrinated its soldiers and offi cers with such Jihadi bigotry. Despite repeated pleas by Foreign Minister Bhutto and President Ayub—amusing as also disgusting to an Indian reader but humiliating to a Pakistani reader—after the outbreak of the 1965 War, the United States confi ned itself to urging an immediate ceasefi re. The United States refused to alter its decision to suspend arms shipments to Pakistan and India, despite Pakistan’s desperate entreaty that in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 its war against India (which was far more developed than Pakistan in industrial-military technology and production) Pakistan would soon be reduced to ﬁ ghting with sticks, stones and hands unless

85 Ibid., p. 90. 86 General Mohammad Musa, My Version: India–Pakistan War 1965, New Delhi: ABC Publishing House, 1983, p. 111. 87 Nayar, India, p. 186. 144 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

America acted as its ally, and resumed arms aid to Pakistan. America, however, proved unyielding, and declined to accept the Pakistani interpretation that its alliance with America obliged America to come to Pakistan’s aid not merely in conﬂ icts with communist countries but also with India. On 9 September 1965, Bhutto went to the extent of telling the American ambassador to Pakistan that America’s decision to suspend military aid shipments to Pakistan was ‘an act not of an ally and not even that of a neutral’. Evidently, American policy was inﬂ uenced by the assessments of the American ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, and secretary of state, Dean Rusk, about the relative importance of Pakistan and India. On 21 May 1965, Bowles clearly stated: ‘Our military alliance with Pakistan has become irrelevant in the present situation in Asia’. On 9 September 1965, Rusk observed:

If at the end of the day we were forced to choose between them, India with its much larger population, industrial base, rudimentary democracy, and other potentials would probably be a better bet. …The best protection of American interest rests in maintaining adequate, though probably not intimate, links with both.88

Although India lost billions of rupees in terms of combat and non-combat damages in the course of the three-week war in 1965, Pakistan failed to achieve its objective of earning a quick victory in Kashmir because of one uncharacteristically bold decision by India to open a second front in the Lahore sector, and not to confi ne itself to the Kashmir sector. This was contrary to what Bhutto had fondly expected, when he overruled General Gul Hasan’s advice to Ayub Khan that in a situation where Kashmiris did not do well in their fi ght against India, an escalation of hostilities was not proper.89 The Tashkent Declaration of 1966 brought to a close the Pakistan–India War of 1965, whereas the ceasefi re had taken place

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 on 23 September 1965. It was one more instance of the Indian Armed Forces sacriﬁ cing their lives, without advancing the country’s

88 Both quotes by Bowles and Rusk are from Roedad Khan, The American Papers: Secret and Conﬁ dential Indian-Pakistan-Bangladesh Documents 1965–1973, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 13, 54. 89 Wolpert, Zulﬁ Bhutto, p. 93. Relations with Pakistan 145

national interests, mainly because of indolence on the part of New Delhi’s decision makers, and/or subservience to the pro-Pakistan lobby inside India. Much to the annoyance of many Pakistanis, however, the Tashkent Declaration did not contain any reference to Kashmir as a ‘dispute’, or an ‘issue’, or even a ‘problem’.90

The 1971 Confl ict The India–Pakistan crisis of 1971, also known as the Bangladesh crisis, led to the third full-scale confl ict between the two countries. The Bangladesh crisis of 1971 saw the United States disavowing the goal of anti-communism and thereby destroying the foundation of its alliance with Pakistan. At the height of the crisis, the United States dispatched to the Bay of Bengal a task force headed by the Enterprise, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.91 Military intervention against India was a probable aim of this venture. This could have led to a Vietnam-type confl ict in South Asia, and extinguished Indian democracy, perhaps the most successful democracy among the less developed non-communist countries of the world. Thanks perhaps to the American involvement in Vietnam, the unthinkable potentialities of threatened military intervention by America in 1971 in the South Asian subcontinent did not materialise.92 It may be useful to remember that years before the outbreak of the 1971 crisis, Pakistan had become increasingly vocal and insistent upon using the alliance with America against India, rather than against China or Russia. ‘Ayub’s compulsively repeated statement that he will use American arms against India’ was a problem for John Kenneth Galbraith, the American ambassador to India from 1961

90 Salman Taheer, Bhutto: A Political Biography, New Delhi: Vikas, 1980, p. 69. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 91 To adapt Yehezkel Dror’s phraseology, Pakistan possibly became a ‘crazy state’ and got its ally, the United States, embroiled on its side. See Dror, Crazy States: A Counter Conventional Strategic Problem, Lexington: Health Lexington Books, 1971, p. 98. 92 Vinod Gupta, Anderson Papers: A Study of Nixon’s Blackmail of India, New Delhi: Indian School Supply Depot Publications, 1972, pp. 120–23. See also, Jack Anderson and George Clifford, The Anderson Papers, New York: Random House, 1973, p. 320. Anderson and Clifford (p. 326) write: ‘The United States blundered its way into a situation that could have developed into a war of incredible magnitude’. 146 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to mid-1963.93 During this period, especially after the India–China confl ict of 1962, it became increasingly diffi cult to justify the America–Pakistan alliance in terms of response to communist threats. For, while India was trying to ward off communist invaders, Pakistan was moving closer to China; for example, discussing a no aggression pact with China, and a border treaty affecting India.94 On 10 April 1963, Zhou En-Lai, the Chinese premier, told the Associated Press of Pakistan that as early as 1954 (that is when Pakistan entered into an anti-communist alliance with the United States and the West) China was assured by Pakistan that Pakistan had no other motive in joining this alliance than to gain political and military advantage over India.95 After the Bandung Conference of 1955, when apparently India–China friendship was at its highest, Pakistan received a private communication from China. This communication stressed that friendly relations between China and Pakistan (an important member of the United States-sponsored anti-communist alliance system in West, South and Southeast Asia) did not stand any chance of corrosion because no confl ict of interests between the two countries was conceivable. However, the secret message added, so far as India–China relations were concerned, such a confl ict could be anticipated ‘in the near future’.96 Pakistan’s secret intimacy with China, through the years of its public alignment with the United States and the West, became strikingly clear when Zhou went so far as to declare openly that ‘China will defend Pakistan throughout the world as Pakistan defended China in SEATO and CENTO’.97 One suggestion about why America maintained its military alliance with Pakistan—even after Pakistan convincingly demonstrated its determination to use the alliance against India and not against communist countries—is that ‘Pakistan might have gone to much further extremes, and much sooner, in its anti-Indian policy had Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

93 John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, New York: Signet, 1969, p. 331. 94 Ibid., pp. 405, 431, 476. 95 Radha Kamal Ghosh, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17 September 1963. (Radha Kamal Ghosh is a pseudonym.) 96 L.F. Rushbrook Williams, The State of Pakistan, London: Faber and Faber, 1962, pp. 120–21. 97 Radha Kamal Ghosh, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 17 September 1963, p. 197. Relations with Pakistan 147

it been non-aligned’.98 This suggestion loses much of its weight if one keeps in view the fact that Pakistan would not have been able to secure as gifts military hardware and related materials worth about $1.5 billion from any country except the United States. Other countries would have probably found it economically unmanageable to donate to Pakistan such an enormous quantity of armaments. This huge amount of military supplies could not but generate in Pakistan a disposition ‘to settle the Kashmir dispute by force’.99 The 1965 War between Pakistan and India was ‘begun by Pakistan’s inﬁ ltration of Kashmir’.100 The Indian view that Pakistan attacked Kashmir was, in the words of Russell Brines, ‘conﬁ rmed by impartial foreign sources and partly by the United Nations’.101 In the 1965 War, Pakistan made large-scale use of modern American equipment against India. India had obtained in 1959 an American guarantee that America would not allow Pakistan to use against India the arms Pakistan received from America as military aid. ‘Washington had not even taken a strong and immediate verbal stand against Pakistan’s extensive use of sophisticated’ American arms in the 1965 War, ‘though such an outright violation of the aid agreement left America’s 1959 guarantee to India in shambles’.102 The Bangladesh crisis of March–December 1971, however, brought to an apparent climax the anti-Indian orientation of the America–Pakistan alliance. This crisis also highlighted the anti- democratic and anti-humanitarian impact of American alliance policy. The basic policy of the United States government towards the emergent state of Bangladesh was governed by the desire to

98 Fred Greene, U.S. Policy and the Security of Asia, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968, p. 123. 99 Ibid., p. 142. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 100 Ibid., p. 138. Senator Fulbright asserted: ‘Former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith believes that American military aid to Pakistan actually caused the war between India and Pakistan in 1965, simply because, quite apart from the merits of the Kashmir dispute, if the United States had not provided the arms, Pakistan would not have been able to seek a military solution.’ See J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970, p. 220. 101 Russell Brines, The Indo-Pakistani Conﬂ ict, London: Pall Mall Press, 1968, p. 304. See also Chester Bowles, Mission to India, Bombay: BI Publications, 1974, pp. 122–23. 102 Greene, U.S. Policy, p. 138. 148 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

preserve the territorial integrity of Pakistan ruled by General Yahya Khan and his aides, and to provide overt and covert economic and military support to Pakistan. Undoubtedly, any policy should be based on realities—both political and moral. The large deviation of American policy from these realities provoked widespread criticism in Bangladesh, India, as also in the United States.103 The means adopted by the United States administration to justify this deviation ranged from blatant untruths to sophisticated political manoeuvres. A point to be emphasised is that the administration did not blunder into any of the measures it chose to carry out its policy; these measures conformed to the general pattern of relations between the United States and Pakistan, evolving since the mid-1950s. Failures converted what was essentially cynical into something ridiculous. The United States administration could not have been unaware of Yahya Khan’s attempt to provide a military solution to the problem created by the results of the December 1970 election. The incomparable success of the civil disobedience movement launched by the Awami League in East Pakistan under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in March 1971 (which could be viewed as a reconﬁ rmation of the popular support behind this party, recorded impressively in the election results of December 1970), and the pogrom launched by the military-dominated ruling group in Pakistan on 25 March 1971, left little doubt about the legitimacy of the provisional government of Bangladesh formed in the middle of April 1971. Yahya Khan’s problem arose out of the determination of the Awami League (which secured a majority of seats in the National Assembly of Pakistan in the 1970 election) to put an end to the colonial-style exploitation of East Pakistan by the ruling circle of West Pakistani bureaucrats (civilian and military). That Yahya Khan was trying to explore an extra-parliamentary solution to the problem became obvious when he ﬁ rst put off the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 meeting of the National Assembly to 3 March 1971 without any valid reason, and then, on 1 March, indeﬁ nitely postponed the session of the Assembly. The 14,000–16,000 West Pakistani troops in East

Bengal were, soon after the postponement of the National Assembly

103 ‘The actions of the United States were reprehensible throughout the death agony of East Pakistan and the birth pangs of Bangladesh.’ See, Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, p. 326. Relations with Pakistan 149

session, strengthened by nearly 18,000 more.104 In fact, even before the postponement was announced, troops had started fl ying from the western wing to the east.105 Since the United States military establishment had close ties with its Pakistani counterpart, the meaning of this transfer of troops could hardly have been missed by the American administration. Pakistan’s rulers would not have resorted to the transfer of a large number of troops to the eastern wing but for a decision to wipe out the inconvenient verdict of the December 1970 election by means of ruthless military action. The same inference could be drawn from the dismissal of Vice-Admiral S.M. Ahsan (known to be sympathetic to the programmes of the Awami League) from the post of the governor of East Pakistan on 1 March, and his replacement by Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan to whom the judges of the High Court of Dhaka (Dacca) refused to administer the oath of offi ce. When the judges, including the Chief Justice, demonstrated their solidarity with the civil disobedience movement (launched by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on 4 March), Tikka Khan was appointed the Martial Law Administrator of East Pakistan (requiring no oath of offi ce) with effect from 7 March 1971. After the midnight of 25 March, there was no doubt about the intention of the Yahya regime to carry out a genocide for the purpose of destroying the verdict of the 1970 election. Thanks to the Anderson papers,106 it is now known that the United States consulate in Dhaka promptly apprised the authorities in Washington of the atrocities being committed by the West Pakistani Army in Bangladesh. But the US state department feigned ignorance and refused to offer any comment on the humanitarian aspects of the problem created by the pogrom. On political aspects, too, the US administration appeared Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

104 Harald Munthe-Kass, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 71, no. 12, 20 March 1971, p. 5. For information about the Awami League’s long-standing tussle with the central government, see Jayanta Kumar Ray, Democracy and Nationalism on Trial: A Study of East Pakistan, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1968, and Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangladesh, New Delhi: Vikas, 1971. 105 The Working People’s Daily, Rangoon, 7 March 1971. 106 The Washington Post, 5 January 1972. See also, Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, p. 266. 150 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to be deliberately partisan in viewing the Bangladesh situation as an internal matter for the Government of Pakistan despite the fact that the non-elected leaders of this government were committing genocide on the majority of Pakistanis living in the eastern wing, and that genocide does not fall within the domestic jurisdiction of a state even if it perpetrates atrocities against its own people. The US administration also ignored the fact that the problem ceased to be an internal matter for Pakistan when thousands of refugees started pouring into India. ‘The phrase internal affair is over done and this is not certainly a case of internal affair’, said the US ambassador to India, Kenneth B. Keating, at a press conference in Bombay on 15 April. Pakistan’s protest against Keating’s comment found the state department quite obliging when it replied that Keating had no authority to make a state ment on the matter. The state department repudiated Keating’s remarks and stood by its earlier position.107 As part of its rescue operation for Yahya Khan, the state department suppressed a report from the American consulate in Dhaka, which described the massacre of unarmed civilians by West Pakistani troops and observed that American silence on this issue was likely to be interpreted as tacit approval. When senators asked the state department for a copy of this message, the department did not respond. Disclosing this, Senator Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on 30 April that the state department was interested in minimising the situation in East Bengal because in their view ‘stability and support for the status quo is more to our interest than any upheaval’.108 This was probably the most charitable description of a macabre policy that came very close to being insensitive to human suffering and blind to political realities. Reports from Archer K. Blood, the American consul-general in Dhaka, giving details of the systematic killing of Bengali civilians, were condemned in Washington as

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 alarmist. When employees at the American consulate in Dhaka drafted a petition criticising the state department’s silence on the slaughter, and Blood sent the petition to Washington, the authorities found Blood’s activities as inconvenient to the execution of Washington’s policy. Early in June, Blood was transferred to Washington and his

107 National Herald, 20 April 1971. 108 Hindustan Times, 1 May 1971. Relations with Pakistan 151

Dhaka assignment was cut short by 18 months.109 The displeasure of the Government of Pakistan could be plausibly deemed as a factor linked with this premature transfer.110 During 1954–65, Pakistan received American military aid worth about $1.5 billion as gifts. American weapons—including guns, tanks and aircraft—were being used to slaughter Bengali civilians in gross violation of the America–Pakistan military aid agreement which permitted their use only against a Russian or Chinese threat.111 As early as 1 April 1971, Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Refugees, told the senate that the Americans had a special responsibility in the matter of stopping the slaughter because American weapons were being used. At a press conference in New Delhi on 7 April, Senator William Saxbe, a Republican and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed distress over the use of American weapons in East Bengal. This was the time when newspapers in Great Britain and the United States had already published a number of editorials on, and fi rst-hand accounts of, the pogrom in East Bengal,112 which entailed the use of American weapons. The state department, however, declared on 6 April that it had no fi rst-hand report confi rming the use of American weapons. This declaration amounted to a calculated denial of facts. Another example of deliberate misrepresentation of facts by the US state department related to the supply of arms. During the Indo- Pak War in 1965 the United States had put an embargo on the supply of lethal and non-lethal equipment to Pakistan (and India). In 1966, the United States decided to resume supplies of non-lethal items to Pakistan. On 13 April 1971, the US state department disclosed that the United States had been annually selling to Pakistan military items worth about $10 million since 1967. Of these, approximately $2.5 million related to ammunition, which could not certainly be Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

109 Laurence Stern, ‘Diplomacy in Face of Holocaust’, The Guardian, 7 January 1972. See Also Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, p. 267. 110 The Times of India, 7 June 1971. See also, The Guardian, 8 June 1971 and The Times of India, 24 July 1971. 111 Comments by Senator Proxmire, The Times of India, 19 April 1971. 112 The New York Times, 28 March 1971. See also, The Washington Post, 30 March 1971, The Guardian, 31 March 1971, New Statesman, 2 April 1971, pp. 451–52, and The Times, 3 April 1971. 152 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

regarded as non-lethal. Nor could the amount be dismissed as small. ‘Hitherto, the administration has insisted that only small amounts of ‘non-lethal’ military equipment have been furnished to Pakistan. They have described such supplies as military personnel carriers and com munications equipment’, commented The New York Times.113 The casualness of the state department in ignoring the distinction between lethal and non-lethal items certainly matched that of West Pakistani soldiers in killing some members of the intelli gentsia in East Bengal and driving out thousands of refugees every day. On 6 May 1971, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution calling for the suspension of all military assistance to Pakistan until the resolution of the conﬂ ict in East Bengal and the distribution of relief supplies there. The state department, however, did not want to put an embargo on military sales to Pakistan because, it argued, the embargo would prompt Pakistan to obtain military supplies from other sources.114 The US state department adopted the position that the United States military sales to Pakistan were being kept under ‘active review’, although it had imposed a ban on deliveries of military equipment to Pakistan with effect from 25 March 1971. In the course of press brieﬁ ngs on 16 April 1971, for the fourth time in a week, state department spokesman Robert McCloskey pointed out that American military sales to Pakistan were under review and that no arms were scheduled for delivery. Within two months the world learnt that ‘review’ was a euphemism for continued delivery of arms to Pakistan, which might or might not be unearthed, and, if unearthed, explained away by ingenious phrase-making. On 16 April 1971, McCloskey made several other important state ments some of which were proven untrue within about nine weeks through disclosures in The New York Times. McCloskey said that the United States had not delivered lethal arms to Pakistan

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 (including military vehicles and aircraft), the sale of which had been announced in October 1970 as a ‘one-time exception’. McCloskey assured newsmen that no arms were in the pipeline. The New York Times of 21 June disclosed that the SS Sunderbans, a Pakistani ship carrying arms for Pakistan, left New York on 8 May. The state

113 The New York Times, 14 April 1971. 114 The Times of India, 7 May 1971. Relations with Pakistan 153

department licence for this ship’s cargo mentioned ‘parts and accessories for military vehicles’. This was corroborated by the ship’s own manifest. The newspaper further reported that another Pakistani ship, the SS Padma, was to leave New York on 22 June. The dockside delivery listings indicated that the SS Padma carried eight aircraft, 113 parachutes and parts, etc.115 McCloskey further stated on 16 April—reiterating the state department’s earlier stand—that since 1967 the United States had only been supplying to Pakistan non-lethal items like medical, transport, and communications equipment. The quantity, according to him, was ‘modest’, valued at about $10 million a year. The SS Sunderbans and the SS Padma carried many items which could not be described as non-lethal. Moreover, the quantitative estimates provided by McCloskey appeared to be far short of actual supplies. For example, The New York Times noted that between 1967 and 30 April 1970, the United States Air Force alone gave commitments to Pakistan for the supply of military equip ment worth $47,944,761.76. The US Army and Navy were also likely to have made similar arms sales to Pakistan during this period.116 The United States could have displayed some humanitarian concern for the suffering of the Bangladeshi people by removing American arms from the SS Padma. Senator Frank Church wrote to the justice department and to President Nixon requesting the removal of American arms. However, the state department took refuge in technicalities in defending the shipments. Inﬂ uential American newspapers cited these shipments as ‘breach of faith’117 on the part of the United States administration, and of ‘collusion’118 with the military rulers of Pakistan. But the state department provided on 23 June 1971 an entirely unapologetic defence of military cargoes aboard the SS Sunderbans and the SS Padma. Its spokesman, Charles Bray, declared that the 25 March 1971 ban did not affect

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 transactions prior to that date, including the aforesaid cargoes. To the people of Bangladesh, who were facing a pogrom, this did not make much sense. Nor could they ﬁ nd any solace in Bray’s

115 The New York Times, 21 June 1971. 116 Ibid. 117 The New York Times, 23 June 1971. 118 The Washington Post, 24 June 1971. 154 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

observation that it was legally impossible for the United States to stop the delivery of these cargoes. According to a spokesman of the provisional government of Bangladesh, the supply of American arms to Pakistan was a ‘stern blow to the bleeding people of Bangladesh’.119 But American offi cials continued to argue120 over an arms embargo on Pakistan and how it ‘will prevent a constructive dialogue with Pakistan’. The only visible result of the ‘constructive dialogue’ was that Yahya Khan, confi dent of American support, continued the pogrom. In addition, according to Time magazine, it was ‘not likely in the foreseeable future’ that ‘about 1,500,000 terrifi ed East Pakistanis’ (who were refugees in India) would go back to their home country. Time added that ‘millions more’ would seek refuge in India. Of course, the number of refugees was then much larger than that reported by Time. Frank Church told the Senate on 10 June that the number stood at 5,000,000.121 With regard to furnishing economic aid to Pakistan, again, the United States administration appeared to be violating the very policy it had announced. On 26 June 1971, American offi cials in Washington stated that the United States would provide further economic aid to Pakistan only when it was evident that Pakistan was able to receive and utilise the aid for the purpose of improving social conditions in the country.122 Within a few days, however, the United States decided to give Pakistan a foreign exchange grant of $4.5 million for relief and rehabilitation in the cyclone-affected areas of East Bengal, and an additional sum of $1 million for the acquisition of coastal vessels. Moreover, according to the Washington Evening Star, the United States administration ‘sympathetically received’ Pakistan’s request for $70 million as loan.123 The US administration thus appeared to be fi nancing what the Washington Evening Star described as ‘the scorched earth policy, the wanton killing, the selective slaughter of Bengali leaders’, and what the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Sunday Times described as ‘crimes against justice and humanity’

119 Statesman, 24 June 1971. 120 The Times of India, 29 June 1971. 121 Time, 21 Jun 1971, pp. 13–14. See also, The Times of India, 12 June 1971. 122 Patriot, 28 June 1971. 123 The Times of India, 1 July 1971; Washington Evening Star, 21 May 1971. Relations with Pakistan 155

committed by Pakistan’s military rulers.124 A report in the Sunday Times of 20 June 1971 made it quite clear that the military government in Dhaka was carrying on ‘a campaign of terror’. It also went on to say that,

The government was hardly interested in the work of rehabilitation. The problems of return for the six million refugees [in India] seem insuperable. In Dhaka, Jessore, Rangpur, Ishurdi, Khulna and Chittagong, their houses and shops have been taken over by non-Bengalis.

In a dispatch from Dhaka on 26 June 1971, Sydney H. Schanberg, The New York Times correspondent, wrote that the city was under military occupation and was being ruled by intimidation, terror, and force, while the military rulers failed to revive an effective civil administration. Moreover, according to a report in the Washington Post, the joint mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which had visited East Bengal, got the impression that Pakistan was spending its depleted foreign exchange holdings on the procurement of military supplies from foreign countries, especially ﬁ ghter aircraft and anti-submarine weapons systems.125 The US administration continued its attempts to bail the Yahya Khan regime out of the crisis. Secretary of State Rogers attempted to secure a grant of $70 million to Pakistan. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee ‘stopped’ his attempt. Murray Kempton, an eminent television commentator, discussed this affair in a talk show on 13 July 1971 for the Columbia Broadcasting System. Kempton also referred to clandestine arms shipments, and said:

Naturally no respectable person can hope to maintain a constructive political dialogue with a murderer if he has to stop selling him guns. So the USA sneaks what it can and prays that Pakistan can soon restore the peace of the grave to East Bengal...126 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

124 Washington Evening Star, 18 April 1971. See also, The Sunday Times, 18 April 1971. 125 The Sunday Times, 20 June 1971. See also, The Washington Post, 26 June 1971 and The Hindu, 22 June 1971. 126 National Herald, 16 July 1971. 156 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In another sphere, however, the secret moves of the US administration proved successful. Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves, according to information available with the IMF, dropped from $271 million on 1 January 1971 to $108 million on 1 April 1971. Although there was no hard evidence of any rise in Pakistan’s export earnings, the foreign exchange reserves rose to $114 million during April 1971, and to $133 million in May. Informed sources attributed this to assurances from the United States government, which prompted three American exchange banks to extend to Pakistan credit facilities that they had previously suspended.127 Senator Stuart Symington accused the US administration of using ambiguous phrases to convey wrong impressions about the status of military shipments to Pakistan. ‘We have continued these shipments, not because we were powerless to stop them, but because we decided not to stop them’, said Symington. He added, ‘we have an embargo on military assistance that is not an embargo—although the executive branch continues to call it an embargo’. The embargo did not apply to the so-called non-lethal items, ammunition, and spare parts, or even to aircraft and armoured personnel carriers. ‘Nor has it covered $100 million worth of military equipment purchased under foreign military sales programmes or commercially’, Symington affi rmed. He said that $15 million worth of military equipment for Pakistan was still in the pipeline.128 On 24 July, The New York Times also wrote that according to estimates privately offered by state department offi cials, arms worth about $15 million were in the hands of Pakistani offi cials in the United States. It was reported that American grain ships, proceeding towards Chittagong, were diverted to Karachi, and were used to ferry West Pakistani soldiers to East Bengal. Senator John Tunney raised this issue in the senate.129 Congressional sources informed The New York Times ‘they had evidence that plans were being drawn to have US

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 teams to help the Pakistani army suppress Bengali resistance in East Bengal’.130 Robert Jackson, a police expert, who had earlier been

127 The Times of India, 18 July 1971. 128 For Symington’s statement, see Patriot, 24 July 1971. 129 The Times of India, 10 July 1971. 130 Patriot, 24 July 1971. Relations with Pakistan 157

associated with training missions in Vietnam dealing with counterinsurgency programmes, returned to Dacca, although he had left Dacca after the military action of 25 March 1971. It is also interesting to note how the US administration treated the fi eld-study report submitted by the 10-member team (headed by Peter Cargill) of World Bank experts who visited 12 of the 19 administrative districts of East Bengal (from 30 May to 11 June 1971). The offi cial report of the team—as distinguished from individual reports of different members of the team—was dispatched to the World Bank’s directors on 9 July. The individual reports gave graphic and authoritative accounts of army brutality. Hendrik Van der Heijden’s report on a trip to Khustia (which was regarded in knowledgeable circles to be the most important of the various fi eld reports) said that the army’s ‘punitive action’ ‘lasted 12 days and left Khustia virtually deserted and destroyed’.

The population was down from 40,000 to 5,000. Ninety percent of the houses, shops, banks and other buildings were totally destroyed. The city looked like a World War II German town having undergone strategic bombing attacks. People were sitting around dazed. When we moved around, everyone fl ed. It was like the morning after a nuclear attack. I was the fi rst foreigner to come to Khustia after the Army moved in. The people were terrifi ed and still shocked. Khustia, as someone told me, is the My Lai of the West Pakistan Army.131

The offi cial report of the team was said to have been considerably edited and sanitised compared to the original report. The aim of editing was to cause as little embarrassment to Islamabad as possible.132 Nevertheless, the offi cial report did not fail to point out that ‘it is most unlikely that any signifi cant movement in the direction of normality will occur until there is a drastic reduction in the visibility—and preferably, even the presence—of the military’.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 The report added ‘that the development effort will have to remain in a state of suspension for at least the next year or so’.133

131 Thousand My Lais: World Bank Study on Bangladesh, Dacca (Dhaka): Society for Human Rights, Dacca, 1971, pp. 10–11. 132 The Times of India, 13 and 17 July 1971. 133 Thousand My Lais, pp. 42–43. 158 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The US administration reportedly pressed the World Bank to keep this report secret. Copies of the report were circulated among the bank’s directors only after it was known that the strategy of suppression had failed and that the Washington Post had decided to publicise the story of suppression.134 The Nixon administration’s pro-Yahya Khan activities and postures persisted right through March to December 1971. They reached an ignoble climax at about the time Yahya Khan launched a full-scale attack on India. As the Anderson Papers revealed, Nixon not only wanted to favour Pakistan, but also wanted to explore ways and means of transferring American arms from third countries (for example, Jordan) to Pakistan. Warnings by some offi cials that this transfer would be contrary to American legislation did not deter either Nixon or Kissinger.135 In case the transfer could not be arranged, the Nixon-Kissinger formula dictated that no step should be taken to reduce the pressure on India by indicating that such transfers were not expected to take place.136 According to later reports, on 14 December 1971 (two days before Pakistani surrender), Jordan sent 10 F-104s to Pakistan. On 23 February 1972, American offi cials refused to confi rm or deny these reports, adding that restrictions on such transfers (imposed by the United States) were not always heeded by the recipients of American arms.137 No further hints were necessary to underline the fact that the US administration would silently tolerate such impermissible transfers. Once the Indo-Pak War began, the Nixon administration claimed sudden concern for stopping bloodshed.138 This concern could not have been based on humanitarian considerations, since the same administration had not only ignored a nine-month-old genocide that caused far heavier bloodshed, but had also supplied the weapons used in carrying out the genocide. Moreover, the claim of an interest in the stoppage of killings in the war stood contradicted by the dispatch

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of the Seventh Fleet task force with veiled orders to intervene in

134 The Times, 12 July 1971. See also, The Times of India, 12 July 1971. 135 The Guardian, 6 January 1972. 136 The Washington Post, 12 January 1972. 137 The Indian Express, 25 February 1972. 138 Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler’s statement, The Indian Express, 9 December 1971. Relations with Pakistan 159

Bangladesh.139 This claim also lay countered by the report that the US administration had delayed the transmission of the surrender message from the Pakistani authorities to the Indian authorities.140 The sending of the task force to the Bay of Bengal was discussed at the White House strategy sessions as a show of force.141 The ofﬁ cial statement linking the evacuation of American citizens in Bangladesh to the movement of the task force was patently absurd142 because all those in favour of evacuation had already been evacuated by the Bangladesh and Indian forces. Presumably, it was meant to put pressure on India, opening the possibility of diversion143 of the allied forces of Bangladesh and India from their main objective, viz. defeating the occupation army of Pakistan. The dispatch of the task force also served as an encouragement to Pakistani troops, whose morale was extremely low. The movement of the task force could thus be regarded as being designed to prolong the conﬂ ict and increase bloodshed. It is plausible to argue that Nixon eventually decided not to use the task force for outright aggression on account of the following factors. First, in an election year, he did not want to alienate American public opinion by launching hostilities opposed to the prevalent anti-war mood of the American people, and thereby injure his chances for re-election to the presidency. Second, as the determination of India and her friends indicated, another Vietnam- style adventure entailed much bigger risks than Nixon was prepared to undertake. Third, India was possibly lucky in avoiding full- scale American intervention because of the extraordinary speed with which the Indian Armed Forces carried out their tasks and achieved a victory. This might have upset American calculations for intervention. Disclosures (by Jack Anderson) of the minutes of the White House strategy sessions seriously jolted many Americans, not because they unearthed anything previously unknown but because they supplied Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

139 Jack Anderson’s address to the National Press Club, Washington, DC, The Indian Express, 24 February 1972. See also Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, pp. 321–22. 140 The Washington Post, 26 January 1972. See also Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, pp. 324–25. 141 Jack Anderson’s address, see footnote 138 above. 142 Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, p. 323. 143 International Herald Tribune, 3 January 1972. 160 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

irrefutable evidence for what the US administration had long been suspected of, viz. its determination to back the ruling circle of bureaucrats in Pakistan in spite of the latter resorting to genocide to upset the electoral verdict of 1970. The disclosures were important not because they revealed the bias of the Nixon administration—it was too glaring to be missed—but because they made it impossible for this administration to resort to any doubletalk and self-righteous extenuation on this issue.144 Moreover, many Americans must have been worried by the behaviour of what has been characteri sed as ‘the imperial Presidency’.145 The difference between the Cabinet and presidential forms of government must also have impressed them. A prime minister in a Cabinet form of govern ment would not perhaps dare to fl out public opinion (as refl ected in newspapers and the legislatures) in the way President Nixon did, and thereby risk his job in an adverse vote. In a Cabinet form of government, the veto146 of the House of Representatives on aid to Pakistan—this aid being recommended by President Nixon with extraordinary earnestness—would be regarded as an unambiguous vote of no confi dence, and the prime minister would be obliged to quit. Importantly, Nixon pricked the vanity of the Americans as freedom lovers while violating public opinion, and offered relentless support to the perpetrators of the pogrom in Bangladesh. It was argued by some of Nixon’s defenders that his tilt towards Pakistan was, in fact, a tilt towards China.147 Nixon was preoccupied

144 According to Anderson and Clifford, ‘deception and duplicity at the highest levels’, manifest in the Bangladesh crisis, ‘can only bring shame to America’s government and its people’. See, Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, p. 323. 145 Tom Wicker’s comment in The New York Times, reproduced in National Herald, 5 January 1972. That the people and the legislature of the United States have very little safeguard against a President and his aides determined to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 bluff the former, launch secret actions, gamble on decisive issues and thereby even push the country to an unwanted and unnecessary war have been amply demonstrated in the case of Vietnam. Thanks to disclosures in the Pentagon papers, the President and his aides proved this determination on such crucial matters as sabotaging the Geneva accord of 1954, bombing North Vietnam, and engaging American troops in an offensive ground combat role. See, Neil Sheehan (ed.), The Pentagon Papers, New York: Bantam Books, 1971, pp. 4–5, 244, 271, 273–76, 394–96, 478–79, 482. 146 Hindustan Times, 5 August 1971. 147 James Reston, International Herald Tribune, 13 January 1972. Relations with Pakistan 161

with cultivating good relations with China.148 Pakistan was friendly with China. To support Pakistan was to please China. Therefore, Nixon supported Pakistan. This argument drew additional strength from Pakistan being the springboard for Kissinger’s secret air dash to China in July 1971.149 Nevertheless, this argument overlooked a number of important matters. China’s interest in bettering relations with the United States hardly depended on America’s antipathy towards India or friendship with Pakistan.150 It stemmed largely from China’s perception of a threat from the Soviet Union—a threat that could be measured by the stationing of 45 Soviet divisions151 along the border with China, and by the construction of vast underground shelters in the majority of China’s large and medium cities, including Peking.152 American and Chinese representatives had 136 meetings in Geneva and Warsaw from 1965 to April 1971.153 The United States, with a large number of allies throughout the globe, could have arranged take-off points for Kissinger’s trip to China in countries other than Pakistan. It is plausible that the United States chose to locate the staging point in Pakistan because it wanted Pakistan to capture the imagination of the American public, and thus diminish the odium of the administration’s special ties with a military government responsible for a continuing genocide. Another suggestion, aimed at painting the United States policy as what it is not, stresses President Nixon’s personal preference as the key ingredient in this policy.154 Such a suggestion, perhaps

148 Phillips Talbot, ‘The Subcontinent: Menage A Trois’, Foreign Affairs, July 1972, pp. 707–8. Also see, C.L. Sulzberger, Hong Kong Standard, 16 April 1973. 149 Dawn, 29 July 1971. See also The Financial Times, 19 July 1971. 150 As an American author subsequently commented, ‘South Asia is not one of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 China’s top priorities and American hostility towards India is hardly an essential element in the Sino-American relationship’. See William J. Barnds, ‘India and America at Odds’, International Affairs, vol. 49, no. 3, July 1973, p. 382. 151 Hong Kong Standard, 31 July 1971. 152 International Herald Tribune, 10 August 1971. 153 US News and World Report, 26 April 1971, p. 17. 154 Ian McDonald, The Times, 20 December 1971. Also see, Anthony Lewis, International Herald Tribune, 11 and 12 December 1971, Joseph Kraft, International Herald Tribune, 29 December 1971, and Henry Brandon, The Sunday Times, 2 January 1972. 162 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

unwittingly, offers the most severe indictment of the American policy-making system. Compared to other countries, the United States spends by far the largest amount on research and intelligence collection geared towards policy making. To emphasise that President Nixon acted out of personal pique, out of admiration for President Yahya Khan, and coolness towards Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, is to denigrate the entire process of policy making and to portray policy makers as utterly irresponsible. Moreover, shrewd supporters of Nixon should contemplate whether it is advantageous for Nixon to be known as an admirer of Yahya Khan who has been denounced in no uncertain terms in his own country.155 To admit policy making as being infl uenced by an admiration for Yahya Khan cannot arouse much respect for one’s political judgement.156 The hard fact that commentators seeking to explain away the failures and the mindlessness of American public policy have to face is that Nixon’s personal preference had deep institutional roots. He was the chief executive of a bureaucratic establishment that had built close ties with its counterpart in Pakistan using gifts of arms and ammunition. A policy of continuous innova tion in the technology of military production, backed by a few industrial fi rms bagging enormous defence contracts every year,157 and acquiring a vested interest in this policy, leaves a gigantic surplus of obsolete or near-obsolete military hardware. Surplus military stores can be gifted or traded at a reduced price for profi ts or infl uence, or both. Bureaucrats of countries supplying and receiv ing weapons tend to develop mutually advantageous roles which can withstand the shocks caused by violent changes of circumstan ces. For instance, it was revealed in Congressional hearings that the Pentagon offi cials, in clear violation of an expressly declared state department ban on fresh arms sales to Pakistan, were offering158 new contracts to Pakistani offi cials as late as 20 July 1971. On this occasion, the state

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 department failed to coin ingenious terms to explain away the lapse

155 President Bhutto’s speech in the National Assembly of Pakistan on 14 April 1972. 156 The validity of this contention can be easily ascertained by a perusal of Khan’s utterances recorded in Newsweek, 8 November 1971, p. 19. 157 International Herald Tribune, 5 and 6 February 1972. 158 The Statesman, 8 October 1971. Also see, Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, p. 271. Relations with Pakistan 163

committed by Pentagon. This was the milieu which nurtured the American alliance policy towards Pakistan and sustained it against hostile popular and legislative criticism. In his foreign policy message of 1972, President Nixon claimed that the December 1971 war in South Asia was neither acceptable to the United States nor inevitable. This, coming from a chief executive who dropped more tonnage of bombs in Indochina than all others in human history put together, may strike one as sanctimonious. The US administration made the South Asian war both acceptable and inevitable by continuing open support to Islamabad. It signed fi ve arms agreements with the military regime of Pakistan from October 1970 to March 1971.159 According to the General Accounting Offi ce, an agency of the United States Congress, even after the administration assured Congress of a halt on arms shipments to Pakistan, in the month of July 1971 alone, the United States Air Force transported by air to Pakistan aircraft spare parts (including those for F-104 jets) worth $500,000. A report of this agency said that military items worth $3.8 million were shipped to Pakistan between 25 March and 30 September 1971. United States military depots abroad could export arms without normal export licences. Their value was not included in the sum of $3.8 million. The value of arms fl owing to Pakistan between 30 September and 8 November 1971 (when the state department banned export of arms on old but valid licences) was also excluded from this sum.160 One can only speculate on the actual measure of arms supplied to Pakistan during the pogrom in Bangladesh, especially when one considers the report of diversion of American arms from Vietnam to Pakistan.161 The US administration inspired reports of a secret pact162 with Pakistan binding America to come to the assistance of Pakistan in case of the latter’s clash with any country, communist or non-communist, without prior Congressional approval. There was a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

159 The Military Balance 1971–1972, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies 1971, p. 70. 160 International Herald Tribune, 7 February 1972. 161 Sydney Schanberg, International Herald Tribune, 17 August 1971. 162 Newscast by Bill Gill, White House Correspondent, for the American Broadcasting Co., on 18 December, in The Statesman, 19 December 1971. Also see, statement by the former American ambassador to Pakistan, Benjamin Oehlert, in The Indian Express, 5 November 1971. 164 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

report on the United States alerting Iran and Jordan163 to send arms to Pakistan and thus strengthen Pakistan in its war against India. Another report linked the CIA with the massacre of intellectuals in Dacca.164 Studying all these reports one is compelled to conclude that war became inevitable not only because the United States did not apply the right kind of pressure on Yahya Khan, but also because it gave Khan the wrong sort of encouragement. To Yahya Khan, war was both acceptable and inevitable. He launched a war-cum-genocide against his own people and continued it for nine months. This war was far crueler than a war against the armed forces of a neighbouring country.165 To suggest, therefore, that Khan did not want a war against India was simplistic. On the contrary, one could suggest that Khan was interested in inter- nationalising an internal matter by launching a war against India. That was probably a way out of the disaster he and his associates had themselves created. At best, he could receive sufﬁ cient outside aid, including armed intervention by the United States, and thus consolidate the gains of genocide, averting, even if temporarily, the formal dissolution of Pakistan. At worst, Khan would lose the war against a demonstrably superior enemy, and hide both the ignominy of the country’s dismemberment resulting from genocide and the shame of defeat by the Mukti Bahini. These considerations explain the repeated threats by Yahya Khan of war against India. The war he threatened was to be ‘total’, ‘ﬁ nal’, and ‘imminent’.166 Bhutto, too,

163 Warren Unna’s report from Washington, Statesman, 19 December 1971. In fact, the United States engaged in a secret and unlawful arms deal authorising Jordan to supply their American combat aircraft to Pakistan during the December war. See Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, pp. 304–7. 164 Address at a press conference by Amzadul Haque, Bangladesh Mission Press secretary in New Delhi, The Statesman, 8 January 1972. 165 The genocide toll stands at estimates varying between one and three million. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Ofﬁ cial sources have put Indian casualties in the war at 11,369 (including 2,473 killed) and Pakistani casualties at less than 10,009. See, The Indian Express, 2 March 1972. 166 ‘In July, Yahya Khan had told Dr. Kissinger that he was itching to go to war against India’, writes Henry Brandon. See Henry Brandon, The Retreat of American Power, New York: Doubleday, 1973, p. 258. On 30 July, speaking to newsmen in Karachi, Yahya Khan warned that a ‘total war with India is very near’, Hindustan Times, 1 August 1971. On 1 August, in an interview to BBC, Khan talked of a war with India being ‘very near’, The Hindu, 2 August 1971. In an interview to the Columbia Broadcasting Service, Khan said Pakistan Relations with Pakistan 165

did not fail to voice a threat of war against India.167 Independent observers recorded the prevalence of a war frenzy in West Pakistan and a feeling that war was inevitable.168 In contrast, there was no war hysteria in India, or even in West Bengal, which was swamped by seven million refugees, and this, too, was attested by impartial sources.169 The Nixon administration sharply criticised India for supporting the Mukti Bahini.170 It did not care to suggest any alternative course of action India might have followed in order to repel a threat to its territorial integrity caused by the inﬂ ux of millions of refugees. Britain, a rich country, resisted the entry of 200,000 Asian Africans who held British passports.171 India, a poor country, was not expected to carry the burden of 10 million refugees (a number that could eventually double) who posed a grave risk to her social, economic, and political stability. That Pakistan resorted to a novel form of aggression upon a neighbouring country, which could be characterised as demographic aggression, did not entitle it to escape retaliation by the victim of its aggression. The United States supported Pakistan’s right to territorial integrity and ignored the right to fundamental human freedoms for the people of Bangladesh. It also ignored India’s right to territorial

and India ‘were very close to war’, The Indian Express, 11 August 1971. On 1 September, in an interview to Le Figaro, Yahya threatened ‘a total war’ with India. In an interview to the Daily Mail on 1 November, Khan said that war with India is ‘imminent’, The Pakistan Observer, 2 November 1971. In an interview to Newsweek, Khan repeated the threat of an ‘imminent’ war, Newsweek, 8 November 1971, p. 19. Khan promised to fi ght a war against India in 10 days. See The Statesman, 27 November 1971. On 4 December, Yahya Khan declared his ‘fi nal’ war against India, Hindustan Times, 5 December 1971. 167 Dawn, 12 August 1971. 168 Lee Lescaze, The Guardian, 3 September 1971. Also see, Newsweek, 8 November 1971, p. 18. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 169 Gavin Young, The Observer, 21 November 1971. Also see, Harold Jackson, The Guardian, 22 November 1971. 170 Hindustan Times, 10 February 1972. See also President Nixon’s Foreign Policy Report sent to Congress on 9 February 1972, Offi cial Text, USIS, New Delhi, p. 4, and the section on Near East and South Asia (Introduction in Secretary of State Rogers’ 1971 Foreign Policy Report, Offi cial Text, USIS, New Delhi, pp. 1–2). Matt Franjola reports: ‘Most guerrilla bases are inside East Pakistan, a few groups operate from the Indian side of the border’. See, Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. LXXIII.I, 25 September 1971, p. 9. 171 John Grigg, The Sunday Times, 5 December 1971. 166 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

integrity. India defended its territorial integrity, without committing outright aggression upon Pakistan by aiding the Mukti Bahini. If sticklers for legal principles condemn this support of Mukti Bahini as concealed aggression on the part of India, it can be justifi ed by the prior act of Pakistani aggression. Moreover, unlike the United States, India proved its respect for human freedom in Bangladesh by offering the Bangladeshi refugees shelter. When Yahya Khan lived up to his promise and launched a pre-emptive air strike on India on 3 December 1971,172 India could openly fi ght back the Pakistani aggression which had begun as early as March 1971. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, the Chief of the Pakistani Forces in Bangladesh, had not only expressed his readiness to enter Indian territory173 in pursuit of guerrillas, but actually did so, and, furthermore, admitted sending saboteurs174 to India. The full- scale Pakistani aggression of 3 December merely removed the thin camoufl age from the variety of acts of aggression Pakistan had committed on India since March. ‘The Soviet Union assisted India in dismembering Pakistan’, writes Anwar H. Syed.175 Such a statement is apt to please the Pakistanis and nurse their wounded ego, especially when Syed does not make any attempt to clarify the compulsions (for example, the mounting burden of refugees and the resultant threat of economic-political- social dislocation to eastern India, or the fear of Chinese intervention in support of Pakistan) which probably drove India to conclude a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in August 1971. It is possible, of course, to locate an American source appropriately ac- knowledging the importance of such compulsions—and thus soothe the Indian ego. According to Harold R. Isaacs,

In New Delhi, while enroute to Pakistan and Peking, Kissinger had warned the Indians that they could not count on American aid if

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 they went to war against Pakistan and China came to Pakistan’s aid.

172 Anthony Mascarenhas, The Sunday Times, 5 December 1971. 173 The Bangkok Post, 11 October 1971. 174 Interview to Henry Bradsher, Washington Evening Star, reproduced in The Indian Express, 15 November 1971. 175 Anwar H. Syed, ‘Pakistan’s Security Problem: A Bill of Constraints’, Orbis, vol. 16, no. 4, Winter 1973, p. 968. Relations with Pakistan 167

The Indians took the cue. In August, a few weeks after Kissinger’s trip to Peking, they signed a 20-year treaty with Russia.176

The United States wove a fantasy that Indian military action torpedoed a political settlement being brought about by American initiative.177 The fact is, no substantial step towards a worthwhile political settlement was taken by the United States—at least, there was no visible evidence in this respect. Next, a word about the US administration’s frankly expressed chagrin over Indian military action successfully countering Pakistani aggression and lending a helping hand to the liberation of Bangladesh.178 Perhaps for the ﬁ rst time India made a decisive move, consistent with its resources and principles, which reshaped the regional power structure in South Asia, and held out promises of lesser tension and hostilities in the region, and of spreading the ideals of socialism, secularism and democracy.179 India thus pricked the balloon of American guardianship over this region—a role that the United States unsuccessfully sought to arrogate to itself.180

176 Harold R. Isaacs, Images of Asia: American Views of China and India, New York: Harper & Row, 1972. See also, Talbot, ‘The Subcontinent’, p. 707. 177 ‘Sincerity must be assumed, but it would really be worrisome if a serious man believed such fantasy as the idea of an imminent political agreement being aborted by India’. See, Anthony Lewis, International Herald Tribune, 11 and 12 December 1971. It is signiﬁ cant that the annual foreign policy report of the secretary of state only mentions ‘proposals’ made by the United States to Yahya Khan, and does not indicate what the proposals were and how Khan responded to them. See The Indian Express, 8 March 1972. One is, therefore, reminded of the observation, ‘There were lies at almost every turn in the convoluted U.S. policy on the Indo-Pakistan War’. See, Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, pp. 270–71, 291. 178 In 1974, in contrast, when Turkey invaded and occupied a large part of Cyprus, Washington did not accuse Turkey, an ally, of dismembering a sovereign country. Presumably, in Washington’s eyes, Cyprus, a non-aligned country, was Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 at fault. See M.V. Kamath, The Times of India, 29 August 1974. 179 For a different view, see Norman D. Palmer, ‘South Asia and the Great Powers’, Orbis, vol. XVII, no. 3, Fall 1973, pp. 989–1009, reproduced in Strategic Digest, New Delhi, July 1974, p. 16. 180 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Newsweek, 3 January 1972, p. 48. See also, M. Ayoob and K. Subrahmanyam, The Liberation War, Delhi: S. Chand, 1972, p. 238; David H. Bayley, ‘India: War and Political Assertion’, Asian Survey, vol. 12, no. 2, February 1972, p. 96; Sisir Gupta, ‘The Great Powers and the Subcontinent’, Journal of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1972, p. 459. 168 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The bitterness of the US administration towards India’s success might have intensifi ed because of the inevitable comparison with America’s lack of success in Vietnam. While India, a much less powerful country than the United States, realised in a year its objectives in Bangladesh (including the withdrawal of Indian troops after liberation), none could be sure at that stage, that is in early 1972, whether the United States would be able to accomplish any of its objectives in Vietnam, despite seven years of intense military endeavour. It was time for the richest country in the world to ponder over whether its failure was not to be attributed to a divorce of principles from the exercise of military power.181 The 1971 Bangladesh crisis brought into a sharp focus the anti-Indian, anti-democratic, and anti-humanitarian (but not anti- communist) potentialities of American alliance policy. Special relations between the bureaucratic establishments of America and Pakistan, mutually benefi ting from the existence of the US–Pakistan alliance, nearly led to military intervention by a task force of the US Seventh Fleet against India. It is not easy to answer why South Asia was eventually spared a full-scale American intervention and the consequent holocaust. Possibly, the harsh lessons of intervention in Vietnam, arising out of America’s alliance with the thoroughly undemocratic Saigon regime, were too fresh to permit an intervention in South Asia. The year 1971 was a bad year for interventionist bureaucrats in the United States. The publication of The Pentagon Papers in that year drew public attention to the gruesome details of how American bureaucrats preserved an alliance despite its catastrophic consequences. This publication could not but make American bureaucrats cautious of using alliances—keeping in mind the resultant tensions and confl icts—to resort to intervention and augment or preserve their sources of power and profi ts. This may have been the most potent reason why the Seventh Fleet task

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 force did not escalate its December 1971 operations in the Bay of Bengal into a full-scale military interven tion in the South Asian subcontinent.

181 According to Chester Bowles: ‘We [Americans] with all our wealth and might failed in Vietnam because we offered the people nothing to believe in.’ See Bowles, Mission to India, p. 232. Relations with Pakistan 169

The US alliance policy contributed to a change in the balance of political power182 in Pakistan in favour of civilian and military bureaucrats, so much so that the country could not peacefully adjust itself to the political changes dictated by the democratic demands of the people of East Pakistan (Bangladesh). In fact, Pakistani bureaucrats seemed ready to risk the dismemberment of their country (as they did in 1971) rather than surrender to popular representatives of the political control they had consolidated since the 1958 coup.183 American policy makers could not have been unaware of how their actions helped the emergence in Pakistan of a luxury-loving military elite, with entrenched interests in social and political conservatism. 184 The standard of living of this elite was disproportio nately higher than that of the average Pakistani. This in itself could have spurred rebellious activities but for the successful manipulation of the so- called threat from India by the Pakistani bureau cratic establishment, which had near-complete control over the com munication media. The establishment of Bangladesh would have brought abiding infamy to the ruling Pakistani bureaucrats, and turned the resentful attention of dissidents towards their privileged existence. The ruling bureaucrats, however, forestalled this danger by continuing to manipulate efﬁ ciently the threat from India by the adroit use of

182 ‘One result of our [America’s] extensive military aid is the building, equipping and ﬁ nancing of armies in underdeveloped lands to such an extent that they often become the most powerful force in the life of their countries. Because of this power which we have created and continue to support, the armies either tend to become elite groups who manipulate the civilian rulers, in their countries, or they tend openly to usurp and establish military dictatorships.’ See, John M. Swomley, Jr., The Military Establishment, Boston: Beacon Press, 1964, p. 145. 183 For some details, see Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘Political Development in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Pakistan 1947–71: Role of the Bureaucracy’, Journal of Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, vol. 6, no. 1, July 1973, pp. 92–124. 184 A publication run by some Pakistani students in London observed: ‘In the long run, the worst aspect of military aid lies in the complete change it produces in the balance of social and political forces in favour of conservatism and established vested interests. The dragon seeds sown by military aid have produced a fearful crop of military ofﬁ cers with their social roots in the most conservative section of our society, who have learnt to sit in judgment on our people.’ Quoted in Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970, p. 203. 170 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the media. Thus, possibly, they kept the potential rebels confused about their misdeeds, which paved the way to the dismemberment of the country in 1971. The United States claimed that its opposition to Indian military action in December 1971185 prevented India from breaking up West Pakistan. While India denied any intention of dismembering West Pakistan,186 bureaucrats in Pakistan derived comfort from the American contention and justifi ed the alliance with America. While India responded to joint Soviet-American pressures on the assurance that in the western sector it would resort to a unilateral ceasefi re but continue the military engagement in the eastern sector to liberate Bangladesh, the American Seventh Fleet left the Bay of Bengal by 15 December 1971.187 The preceding discussion on the 1971 India–Pakistan crisis attaches a great deal of importance to lapses in American policy, taking advantage of an evident abundance of authentic materials on this theme. Despite the relative lack of such abundance of data on Indian policy, it is essential to draw attention to a number of serious lapses on the part of Indian decision makers trying to cope with the aforementioned crisis. First, there was an enormous delay in forging a decisive response to the crisis, a delay of nearly nine months. Initially, the Border Security Force (BSF) was entrusted with operations in Bangladesh. In May 1971, the Indian Army took over control of these operations. General (later Field Marshal) S.H.F.J. Manekshaw has been credited with resisting the request of the Indian prime minister for early intervention. One wonders whether this was creditworthy. After all, soon after the announcement of the results of the December 1970 (fi rst ever) general election in Pakistan, it was transparent even to laymen that authorities in Islamabad were not in a mood to honour the electoral verdict. Over the next few weeks, this was Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

185 ‘US Foreign Policy for the 1970’s: The Emerging Structure of Peace’, A Report to the Congress by Richard Nixon, President of the United States, Washington D.C., 1972, p. 50. For a refutation of the American contention, see Anderson and Clifford, The Anderson Papers, pp. 287–89. 186 Government of India, Report 1971–72, New Delhi: Ministry of External Affairs, 1972, pp. 24–26, 76–77. 187 J.N. Dixit, India Pakistan in War & Peace, New Delhi: Book Today, 2002, pp. 221–22. Relations with Pakistan 171

increasingly transparent, and by the fi rst week of March even a blind person could perceive the imminence of Pakistani military action to overturn the verdict of the December 1970 election.188 On 25 March 1971, the Pakistan Army started its full-scale genocide in East Pakistan. Was there no contingency plan? How many weeks were required by India to put such a plan into operation? Was it fair for an Army Chief to argue that the mighty Indian Army was thoroughly unprepared? In March 1971, Pakistani forces in Bangladesh were small, disorganised, and easy prey. A large number of their troops and heavy weapons were still arriving in the port of Chittagong, or on their way to cantonments. The refugee exodus had not yet assumed unmanageable proportions. The Himalayan passes were snowbound. China was not able (even if one entertained the doubtful assumption about China’s intention) to intervene. The war in East Pakistan might not have lasted more than three days. All this points to other disturbing queries, especially if one remembers what happened in 1947–48 and 1965. Were the military authorities in New Delhi succumbing to the machinations of pro-Pakistan and pro-American lobbies? Were they unwilling to stage a decisive military intervention in defence of India’s vital interests? This appeared to be highly plausible when a retired Army Chief, whose role in the 1947–48 and 1965 confl icts with Pakistan was far from satisfactory and who came to New Delhi after a visit to the United States, went about arguing in various places (including the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses or IDSA) that India should not bother about the burden of 10 million refugees, but rather treat it as a sort of natural population increase, and refrain from full-scale armed intervention in East Pakistan. A related question is whether the lack of necessary inputs from Indian diplomats in Pakistan explained the lack of preparedness of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 188 ‘I heard Generals talk of starving East Pakistan into submission, cleansing it of the non-Muslim population, or injecting some good Muslim blood into East Pakistanis as solutions to the problem. Most of them were for the military solution, oblivious of the Indian factor’, records one Pakistani diplomat. For this and other relevant materials, see Sultan M. Khan, Memories and Refl ections of a Pakistani Diplomat, London: The London Centre for Pakistani Studies, 1997. For revealing details about the perverse mindsets of the Pakistani generals, see Muntassir Mamoon, The Vanquished Generals and the Liberation War of Bangladesh, Dhaka: Somoy, 2000a, esp. pp. 14–36. 172 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the Indian Army in March 1971. This defi ciency of Indian diplomats, however, is unpardonable. For, in 1969, the British deputy high commissioner in Dhaka could visualise a chain reaction of events, following elections in 1970 (as proposed by Yahya Khan), which would witness the emergence of East Bengal as an independent country. The scenario did not exactly match what actually happened in 1970–71, but his assessments refl ected a capacity for profound perception and anticipation. A comparable capacity in Indian diplomats in Pakistan, if translated into appropriate recommendations to New Delhi, would have ruled out the lack of preparedness of the Indian Army in March 1971. The United States embassy in Pakistan, too, revealed a similar capacity for discernment as early as February 1970, when it informed Washington, D.C. that ‘we see little from our vantage point to encourage belief Pakistan will survive as an entity through election and constitution-making process’. It is, therefore, extremely painful for an Indian writer to presume that Indian diplomats in Pakistan failed to construct, and transmit to New Delhi, at least a partially correct preview of the circumstances leading to the confl ict in 1971, so that the Indian Army would have no excuse in March 1971 for postponing military action in East Pakistan.189 It is possible to contemplate a number of uncontrollable circumstances which could have compelled India to face cataclysmic consequences on account of an extraordinary delay in shaping a determined response to the Bangladesh crisis of 1971. Nothing succeeds like success. However, future decision makers must not overlook the penumbra of the danger-laden risks behind India’s success in 1971. Just imagine, instead of General Yahya Khan (who was far from normal at most of his waking moments), an exceptionally clever person like Z.A. Bhutto at the helm of affairs in Pakistan in 1971. He could have easily planned a well thought out strategy outwitting India. For instance, Bhutto might have prevailed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 upon the United States to station an aircraft carrier at the port of Chittagong in the month of August or September. This would have messed up the Indian strategy, throttled Indian military intervention, kept the refugees on Indian soil forever, and inﬂ icted unacceptable

189 Khan, The American Papers, pp. 274–75, 345. Also see, I.A. Rehman, ‘The Secret Files’, Newsline (Karachi), December 1999, reproduced in Strategic Digest, March 2000, pp. 312–13. Relations with Pakistan 173

damage in terms of socio-economic-political dislocation in the whole of India’s eastern and northeastern region. Such a scenario derives substantial support from recently published archival materials which reveal Henry A. Kissinger to be virtually provoking China to intervene militarily in the East Pakistan confl ict, even though China refused to oblige. An auxiliary argument in defence of the inordinate delay in a decisive military response on the part of India to the Bangladesh crisis was that India was taking time to infl uence world opinion in favour of such a response. No argument could be more fatuous. Even on issues far less controversial than the issues thrown up by the Bangladesh crisis, it was (and always will be) nearly impossible to nurture world public opinion in a way compatible with the interests of India and Bangladesh. As long as India hesitated to embark upon a decisive military move, and groaned under the burden of millions of refugees, world public opinion (as presumably refl ected, for instance, in British newspapers) appeared to be sympathetic to India. But India could not forever live on such sympathies. The moment India took a fi rm measure to solve the nagging problem, sympathies evaporated. The British press, for example, turned hostile. Subsequently, there was a humiliating demonstration of how adverse world public opinion remained despite nine months of publicity campaigns by India. At the UN General Assembly, on 7 December 1971, 104 countries voted in favour of a resolution for ceasefi re (supported by Pakistan, but opposed by India), whereas 11 voted against and 10 abstained.190 India could somehow scrape through the consequences of the fi rst serious lapse of delay in coping resolutely with the 1971 Bangladesh crisis. However, India signally failed to do so in the case of the second serious lapse, viz. the counterproductive diplomacy in the period following the surrender of Pakistani forces in Dhaka on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 16 December 1971, and leading to the Shimla Pact of 2 July 1972 between India and Pakistan. The Indira Gandhi-Z.A. Bhutto summit meeting at Shimla should have been thoroughly planned. The Nixon-Brezhnev summit of the same year provided a laudable model: nearly every detail was taken care of in advance, the summit

190 Murthy, India’s Diplomacy, pp. 63–64. Also see, Dixit, India Pakistan, p. 200. 174 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

remaining restricted to ceremonies of signature, etc. The Indira Gandhi-Z.A. Bhutto summit provided just the reverse of this model: there were numerous hitches and inconclusive bargaining at the summit. The collapse of the summit meeting was taken for granted by Pakistan, which sent away a number of diplomats, who, along with the Pakistani offi cial seal, were on the road to Chandigarh. At that moment, in a post-dinner meeting, a pact was hammered out. An extraordinarily resourceful diplomat, Z.A. Bhutto, converted Pakistan’s utter defeat on the battlefi eld into a great victory at the conference table. India agreed to hand over nearly 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war, and 5,000 square miles of fertile West Pakistani land occupied by Indian troops, without gaining anything in return— not even the evacuation of that portion of J&K which was under Pakistani occupation.191 Above all, at the Shimla conference, India committed the grievous blunder of formally recognising J&K as disputed territory and being open to bilateral talks on the issue. Oddly enough, in the past (as also subsequently in 1995 or 1998, for example) offi cial declarations referred to J&K as an integral part of India.192 The unholy infl uence of the pro-Pakistan lobby inside India on decision making at the highest level was too obvious to be overlooked. Moreover, there was a highly adverse impact upon civil-military ties in India, even though it went unnoticed on account of India’s glorious military discipline and tradition. For, ‘the three Indo-Pak confl icts explicitly showed one distasteful side of civil- military relations, namely, the fruits obtained by our servicemen through their untold sacrifi ces were thrown to the winds by our politicians at all post-ceasefi re negotiations’.193 In this context, one has also to draw a sharp contrast between the tendency of Indians to look upon Pakistanis as lost brothers, to practise sentimentalism and compromise rather than pragmatism, and the tendency of Pakistanis to do just the reverse.194 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

191 J.K. Dutt, The Statesman, 19 July 1997. Also see, Bloeria, Pakistan’s Insurgency, p. 93; Singh, Defending India, p. 186; and, Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, Surrender at Dacca: Birth of a Nation, New Delhi: Manohar, 1979, p. 10. 192 Sourin Guha, The Statesman, 27 July 1998. 193 J.K. Dutt, The Statesman, 18 July 1997. 194 Hear, for instance, the echoes of such Indian sentimentalism, even in the dark days of the relentless proxy war by Pakistan, from Amitabh Mattoo and Happymon Jacob, The Hindu, 25 February 2009. Relations with Pakistan 175

Post-1971 Developments It is to the credit of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that unlike his grandfather or mother, he refused to offer concessions detrimental to India’s interests to Pakistan. Rajiv Gandhi conveyed to Pakistan’s Zia-ul Haq and Benazir Bhutto some suggestions designed to reduce risks and build confi dence. However, the ‘Pakistani responses to his suggestions had been sceptical and unsatisfactory’. Moreover, Rajiv Gandhi ‘was also clear in his mind that there was no question of India compromising on its interests, Kashmir and Siachen, non- proliferation and arms control, and structuring the military balances on the subcontinent’.195 Nevertheless, Rajiv Gandhi signed three agreements with Benazir Bhutto. These provided for renunciation of attacks on each other’s nuclear installations, for cultural cooperation, and for avoidance of double taxation on some specifi ed items.196 Prime Minister V.P. Singh replaced Rajiv Gandhi in 1989. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became the home minister. ‘The so-called kidnapping of Rubiya Sayeed, daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, by militants and the V.P. Singh Government succumbing to the demands of the terrorists to get her released, was a watershed.’197 Following the lapse of two hours after the release of fi ve militant leaders, Rubiya Sayeed was set free. ‘This was a political blunder of gigantic proportion sending wrong signal to the militants.’198 This gave a big impetus to infi ltration by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in J&K. Stanley Wolpert has written a book on Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto, consulting extensively the papers of Zulfi qar Bhutto himself, with the permission of his daughter, Benazir Bhutto. This book contains valuable information about the well-entrenched Pakistani policy of pouring armed infi ltrators into India-held Kashmir, a policy for which Zulfi qar Bhutto was a pioneer as also a relentless promoter.199 It is crystal clear from Wolpert’s book that insurgency in Kashmir in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the early 1990s had deep roots in the decades-old Pakistani policy of

195 Dixit, India Pakistan, p. 272. 196 Ibid., p. 268. 197 Ibid., p. 272. 198 J.B. Das Gupta, Islamic Fundamentalism and India, Gurgaon: Hope India, 2002, p. 177. 199 Wolpert, Zulﬁ Bhutto, pp. 85, 88–90. 176 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

sending armed infi ltrators into India. Ceaseless armed infi ltration, however, could not have developed into insurgency but for the massive injection of American money and arms into Pakistan during the Afghan War of the 1980s. The question that an impartial observer can raise is whether this insurgency—and related developments—can really serve the vital interests of the Pakistani people, or whether this is a case of Pakistan cutting its nose to spite India’s face, precedents for which are not at all lacking. In this context, what the people of J&K should remind themselves is that, in contrast to large parts of other states in India—for example, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh or Orissa—Kashmir does not really suffer from poverty. One major reason for that is Kashmir being the ‘most pampered State’ in the whole of India.200 The per capita expenditure in Kashmir has been 2.25 times higher than the national average, and the per capita central plan assistance 6.6 times higher. Other states receive only 30 per cent of central assistance as grants, whereas Kashmir receives as much as 90 per cent. Despite the boundless greed and corruption of the Kashmiri ruling circle, the impact of this exceptional fi nancial input upon poverty alleviation in Kashmir is signifi cant. In fact, this impact is so noticeable that it is also a source of envy to visitors from other states. Moreover, a point frequently missed by observers201 is that in 1947 British India was partitioned on the basis of religion. But there was no policy to apply this religious criterion to the princely states for any decision on their future political status.202 Yet, the religious criterion was manipulated to earn a special status for Kashmir by means of a temporary provision (Article 370) of the Indian Constitution. Although India’s law minister, B.R. Ambedkar, considered it ‘a betrayal of national interests’, since it gave ‘Kashmiris equal rights all over India’ while denying ‘Indians all rights in Kashmir’, he failed to prevent its incorporation into the Constitution.203 Actually, the greatest practical signifi cance Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

200 For elucidation, see Tavleen Singh, Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors, New Delhi: Viking, 1995. 201 See, for example, the article by N.B. Grant, The Statesman, 16 July 1998. 202 Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself accepted the right of the ruler of a princely state to decide upon accession to India or Pakistan. See Z.H. Zaidi (ed.), Jinnah Papers: On the Threshold of Pakistan, 1–25 July 1947, First Series, Vol. 3, Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1996. 203 Balraj Madhok, The Statesman, 16 April 1992. Relations with Pakistan 177

of Article 370 has been the allotment of a licence for loot to the Kashmiri ruling circle.204 In the writings of scholars and journalists, there has been an incessant ﬂ ow of loose talk about a plebiscite in J&K. The provision for a plebiscite in the 13 August 1948 UNCIP resolution was rendered obsolete years ago on account of Pakistan’s unashamed refusal to comply with Parts I and II of the same resolution, which, among other things, dictated the evacuation of J&K territory under Pakistani occupation. The march of time and circumstances has rendered the very suggestion of a plebiscite increasingly anomalous, irrelevant, and obsolete. POK has been divided into two parts: Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan), and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Muzaffarabad and Mirpur). President Zia-ul Haq of Pakistan clearly stated on record that he did not recognise the Northern Areas to be a part of J&K, whereas, in May 1982, Sheikh Abdullah’s government at Srinagar issued a White Paper containing incontrovertibly authentic data about these so called Northern Areas being always a part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.205 These Northern Areas were under the direct rule of Islamabad. But, on 8 March 1993, three judges of the High Court of POK gave the unanimous ruling that the Northern Areas formed a part of J&K, and that they should be administered by the Azad Jammu and Kashmir authorities.206 In order to complete the tale of anomaly, confusion, and irrelevance of the notion of plebiscite for J&K, one should add that Pakistan has prohibited any demand or slogan for plebiscite/independence/ self-determination in POK.207 It may be reiterated here that even the notion of Kashmiriyat cannot lend support to the demand for plebiscite in J&K. ‘Across both sides of Kashmir, the language of the Valley is in disrepair. It’s not the ofﬁ cial language, nor used in schools; there are no daily papers in Kashmiri, and even the most enthusiastic champions of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Kashmiri poetry and culture prefer their children to be proﬁ cient in Urdu.’208

204 J.K. Dutt, The Statesman, 16 July 1998. 205 A.G. Noorani, The Frontier, 22 October 1993, p. 100. 206 Ibid., p. 96. 207 A.G. Noorani, The Statesman, 11 February 1994. 208 Andrew Whitehead, reporting for BBC Radio’s ‘The World Today’, in Outlook, 30 April 2001, p. 10. 178 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

It is thus easy to demonstrate that the Pakistani demand for a plebiscite in J&K is wholly illogical and obsolete.209 Nevertheless, Pakistan persists (often in collusion with pro-Pakistan forces inside India) in raising this demand as a ploy for third party or UN intervention. Evidently, Pakistani leaders are still under the magic spell of their unique achievement in the 1940s, when M.A. Jinnah, without spending a single day in jail or even street demonstrations, could get away with carving out a new state largely due to unstinted assistance from a third party, that is Britain, which remained the mediator between the Gandhi-led Indian National Congress and the Jinnah-led Muslim League. The plea for third party intervention in J&K is prima facie absurd, especially in a world where even Tibet—which has been forcibly annexed by China even though it has no cultural-legal-historical claim upon Tibet—did not witness any intervention.210 In the wake of nuclear testing by India and Pakistan in May 1998, Pakistan stepped up its campaign for third party intervention in J&K, going so far as to raise the spectre of nuclear war over the state.211 The point that is likely to be missed by many observers here is that, long before the nuclear explosions of May 1998, Pakistan had been trying this unique form of nuclear blackmail. For example, on 8 January 1994, Assef Ahmad Ali, the Pakistani foreign minister, issued an unequivocal threat of a nuclear war in the absence of a settlement over the dispute on J&K.212 Linked to this is the incurable tendency on the part of Pakistan’s decision makers and opinion makers to equate Pakistan–India relations to Muslim–Hindu relations. In 1998, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Gohar Ayub, followed his illustrious father, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, in endorsing this equation.213

209 ‘If Nehru made the mistake of offering plebiscite, there is no reason why

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 subsequent generations should perpetuate it, particularly when Pakistan’s violation of the UN resolution of 13 August 1948, and its two blatant attempts to take Jammu and Kashmir by force in 1965 and 1971 has absolved India of moral or legal obligation that she might have acquired on account of Nehru’s promise.’ See, Jagmohan, The Statesman, 4 August 1998. 210 For relevant details on this vast subject see, S.P. Gupta and K.S. Ramchandran, History of Tibet, New Delhi: Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre, 1997. 211 The Statesman, 29 June 1998. 212 The Statesman, 9 January 1994. 213 The Statesman, 29 June 1998. Relations with Pakistan 179

Pakistan’s media persons, too, appear to be inclined to accept the same equation. In doing this, Ahmed Rashid214 goes to the ridiculous extent of arguing that India’s Prithvi missile has been named after Prithviraj Chauhan, who was defeated by Shahabuddin Ghauri in the 12th century. (And Pakistan boasts of its Ghauri missiles!) Actually, the Indian missile Prithvi, meaning ‘the earth’, only signifi es that it is a surface-launched missile. Thus, as can be seen, there is an acute difference in the mindset of many (not hopefully all) infl uential Pakistanis, and this cannot but mar the prospects for genuine improvement in India–Pakistan relations in the immediate future. At a meeting in London, organised by the Pakistan National Forum, General Hamid Gul, a former chief of Pakistan’s ISI, made the confi dent announcement that Allah’s will, nuclear weapons, the experiences of the Afghan War, and the determination of the Mujahideen dedicated to the Islamic cause, would soon enable Pakistan not only to liberate the Muslims of India, but also achieve pan-Islamic unity in Central and South Asia.215 Some of the weapons supplied by the ISI to Pakistan-backed terrorists in India- held Kashmir are more sophisticated than even those in possession of the Indian Army.216 Pakistan’s expansionist ambitions, cloaked in Islam, did not remain confi ned to J&K, or even India for that matter. They became boundless, especially after its success in raising the Taliban in the course of the Afghan War, and establishing control over the major part of Afghanistan through the Taliban. In addition to the Taliban, Pakistan also trained a large number of Islamic militants who, at various points of time, were in action in far fl ung corners of the world, for example, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang, etc.217 In the foreseeable future, Pakistan may not be able to renounce totally its self-imposed leadership in the task of bringing ever-larger areas of the globe under Islamic domination or terrorism. Yet, India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 should, without letting down its guard, continue to try and improve relations with Pakistan, in the hope of distant success.

214 The Nation (Islamabad), 14 April 1998. 215 Hindustan Times, 20 March 1998. 216 The Times of India, 16 July 1998. 217 For example, see, P.B. Sinha, ‘Pakistan: The Chief Patron Promoter of Islamic Militancy and Terrorism’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 21, no. 7, October 1997, pp. 1015–29. 180 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

It is extremely difﬁ cult to carry out this improvement, because peaceful relations with India are not in the interests of the Pakistan military. The military can try to justify its size and privileges, and claim a disproportionately large slice of the annual budget, by con-stantly publicising confrontation with India, and portraying J&K as the essential component in this confrontation. Moreover, especially in the days of General Zia-ul Haq, the Pakistan military enhanced its Jihadi mindset without harming the economic interests of the military, that is without subjecting the economy to Islamisation (for example, by abolishing interest earnings on bank deposits).218 Success in training and aiding the Taliban in course of the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, and enabling the Taliban to capture nearly the whole of Afghanistan, strengthened this mindset. General Pervez Musharraf, who became Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff in October 1998, himself subscribed to this Jihadi mindset. The motivation for Jihad in the Pakistan military was reinforced by that for revenge. The military in Pakistan had not yet reconciled itself to the reality that the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 was mainly due to its mistaken policies and actions, which made Indian intervention not only inevitable but also successful.219 Pakistan remained bent upon taking revenge against India for its role in the transformation of East Pakistan into the independent state of Bangladesh. Subsequently, the revenge mania of the military in Pakistan was aggravated when it failed to encroach upon the Siachen territory rightfully belonging to India in accordance with the cease- ﬁ re line (CFL) of 1949 (converted into the LOC in 1972), whereas India consolidated its position on the Saltoro Ridge dominating the Siachen sector.220 In these circumstances, the visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Lahore on 22 February 1999, at the invitation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, was not likely to bear fruit,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 although nuclear tests by both the countries in May 1998 could contribute to a sort of nuclear stability. Signiﬁ cantly, on the morning of

218 Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 323–24. 219 See, for example, Mamoon, The Vanquished Generals, pp. 86–87. 220 For details see, Jasjit Singh, ‘Battle for Siachen’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1999, pp. 81–87. Relations with Pakistan 181

22 February 1999, Pakistan-backed terrorists slaughtered a number of civilians in J&K. This did not deter Vajpayee from proceeding to Lahore. The distinction between Indian sentimentalism and Pakistani cynicism about improving Indo-Pak relations became evident during Vajpayee’s Lahore trip. The Pakistani media, for instance, did not even try to match the enthusiasm of their Indian counterparts. Although the Lahore Declaration upheld the need for normalisation of relations, and a Memorandum of Understanding advocated restraint in the nuclear domain, there was an ominous signal coming from the Chiefs of the Armed Forces of Pakistan. Contrary to normal international practice, no one was present to receive Vajpayee.221 Probably, Pakistan’s Army Chief, Pervez Musharraf, had other ideas conforming to continuing Jihad against India. A.K. Ray, a former secretary to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, had this to say:

How many of us care to recall that while Ayub Khan was signing the Tashkent document, agents of Jamat-e-Islami, inﬁ ltrated into the valley by Pakistan, had already commenced the setting up of subversive cells aided by quite a few of the local teachers of the Quran in the madrassas? Over 200 such cells were detected and smashed in 1970.222

Musharraf, too, was probably planning an offensive operation against India, while the Indo-Pak talks were going on in Lahore.

The 1999 Conﬂ ict In May 1999, Musharraf launched the Kargil operation, although highly trained inﬁ ltrators capable of suicide missions, and the Pakistan Army, had commenced intrusions in mid-April 1999. Pakistan acted upon its long-held belief that the Indian political leaders were weak

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and would vacillate and even fail to retaliate against a daring military strike by the Pakistanis. Moreover, Pakistan was probably aware that delays in modernisation, partly due to decrease in defence budgets in the 1990s, had produced deﬁ ciencies in India’s inventory of arms and

221 Dixit, India Pakistan, p. 303. 222 A.K. Ray, ‘Kargil and Beyond’, Himalayan and Central Asian Studies, vol. 3, no. 3–4, July–December 1999, p. 117. 182 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

equipment. Yet, by the third week of June 1999, the Indian military lived up to its reputation of saving the country against enormous odds, and put the Pakistani intruders at a decisive disadvantage. By the third week of July 1999, despite the initial intelligence failure, and the unavailability of advanced surveillance systems, the intruders were driven out from all areas.223 Pakistan’s Kargil adventure of 1999, frustrated by India’s Oper- ation Vijay, probably refl ected a sense of desperation. Ten years of proxy war in J&K had failed to destabilise India. The people of J&K largely preferred a life of normalcy to militancy.224 Therefore, Pakistan sought to revive Jihad in J&K, publicising the pretence that the intruders in Kargil were local people. Actually, the local people reported the intrusions to a unit of the Indian Army. Although Pakistan did surprise, it could not override the bravery of the Indian soldiers (backed by the Indian Air Force). They successfully negotiated ‘an arduous climb over 70 to 80 degree steep, tree-less slopes over thousands of feet of rugged mountainous terrain at heights above 15,000 feet, under accurate artillery and machine gun fi re’.225 Although Pakistan’s Kargil operation failed to instigate Jihad in J&K, Pakistan’s military offi cers remained committed to Jihad. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interviewed a middle- ranking Pakistani Army offi cer in the war zone. The offi cer said that he was a Mujahid engaged in Jihad, and that all other Pakistani offi cers and soldiers had the same mindset. When the BBC interviewed offi cers of the Indian Army on the other side of the LOC in J&K, they pointed out that India’s defence was their professional obligation. ‘What the BBC interview revealed was not the individual zealotry of one, but a psychopathic state that has gripped Pakistan and will not let go’, commented A.K. Ray.226 Despite India’s awareness of the acute Jihadi affl iction of Pakistan’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ruling circle, Prime Minister Vajpayee thought he should try to

223 Brigadier Vinod Anand, ‘Politico-Military Dimensions of Operation Vijay’, Himalayan and Central Asian Studies, vol. 3, no. 3–4, July–December 1999, esp. pp. 6–7, 11–12, 14–15. 224 See, for example, Rao, Reminiscences, p. 548. 225 Gurmeet Kanwal, ‘Pakistan’s Military Defeat’, in Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, p. 153. 226 Ray, ‘Kargil and Beyond’, p. 119. Relations with Pakistan 183

improve relations with Pakistan by inviting Musharraf to summit parleys, which took place at Agra in mid-July 2001. Musharraf accepted the invitation. He was probably waiting for an opportunity to repeat Z.A. Bhutto’s performance at the 1972 Shimla summit, and cover up the military defeat in Kargil by a diplomatic victory in a summit conference with India. When Vajpayee invited Musharraf to a summit meeting in Agra, and followed the invitation by announcing a number of confi dence building measures (CBMs) in the sphere of trade, fi shing, travel, and cultural exchanges, Musharraf wrongly concluded that he now possessed the desired opportunity to extort concessions from India. Musharraf imagined India’s military men to be so tired of combating Pakistan’s proxy war that Vajpayee, for lack of any other option, was forced to launch the Agra initiative. What excited Musharraf’s imagination was the fact that Vajpayee was not deterred by the failure of another conciliatory move by India before the Agra initiative: from November 2000 to May 2001, the Indian Armed Forces had ceased initiation of military strikes against terrorists inside J&K. This thinking could account for Musharraf’s aggressive behaviour in Delhi and Agra, his abuse of Indian hospitality and discarding of all diplomatic norms, whether in the matter of holding secret parleys with Hurriyat leaders (who were incapable of winning elections in J&K) or of formally publicising a monologue with Indian journalists in violation of his pledge to hold an informal session. Nevertheless, Musharraf’s bullying tactics did not succeed. Indian decision makers stood fi rm (although they had repeated the sin of 1972 Shimla summit by convening the Agra summit without essential preparation at the lower levels). Musharraf could not extract any concession from India, except evanescent publicity.227

Pakistan Continues Jihad Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 M. Asghar Khan, a former Pakistan Air Force Chief, has written a book titled We’ve Learnt Nothing from History: Pakistan: Politics and Military Power.228 This book provokes one to think about whether

227 For details, see Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘The Agra Summit’, India Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2, April–June 2001, pp. 17–28. 228 M. Asghar Khan, We’ve Learnt Nothing from History: Pakistan: Politics and Military Power, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2006. 184 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India’s civilian rulers have learnt anything from their history about Pakistan, especially the role of Pakistan’s ISI in polluting domestic and international politics by consistently supporting Jihadis, including the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. If not, it is nearly impossible to explain why, after describing Pakistan realistically as the planner and instigator of terrorism for decades, in September 2006, India depicted Pakistan as a fellow-victim of terrorism—and that too within a few days of the Mumbai train blasts of 11 July 2006, which, as New Delhi stressed, were masterminded by the ISI.229 It would be correct to suggest that Pakistan is the victim of its own Frankenstein— the terrorist networks it has itself nurtured—or that Pakistan is being paid back in its own coin. It is also correct to express sympathy for the innocent Pakistanis killed or maimed by terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. However, to propagate solidarity with Pakistan as a victim of terrorism is to negate India’s long-standing (and correct) policy of portraying Pakistan as the fountainhead of terrorism. This would imply a complete ignorance of the ISI’s evolution since the late 1950s, its links with fanatical religious groups in Pakistan, or its support to the Taliban in the 1980s for establishing control over Afghanistan.230 This would further imply that India’s decision makers were less alert to President Pervez Musharraf’s tactics than some Pakistani scholars and journalists. For instance, Zahid Hussain, a Pakistani journalist, clearly wrote231 that Musharraf fully approved the links between the Jihadis and the ISI. Zahid further contended that Musharraf used his ostensible support for the United States-led war on terror as tactics which could not hide his commitment to the ISI and the Jihadis, although he had to take some anti-terrorist actions as a result of pressures by the international community, especially the United States. It is amazing how Musharraf hoodwinked the American government since December 2001, when America-led

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 forces drove out the Taliban from Afghanistan. From time to time, Pakistan arrested middle-ranking Al-Qaeda terrorists, while arranging sanctuary for the Taliban.232 By 2006–7, this double-dealing

229 Sumer Kaul, The Statesman, 9 February 2007. 230 Khan, We’ve Learnt Nothing from History, pp. 195–201. 231 For interesting details, see Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 232 G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 8 March 2007. Relations with Pakistan 185

on the part of Musharraf virtually boomeranged. The Taliban not only consolidated its position, but also used Pakistani volunteers for suicide attacks on American, British, or Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan using improvised explosive devices. There were 2,000 suicide bombers ready for deployment, as the Taliban claimed, and others were being trained. In 2005, there were 21 suicide attacks in Afghanistan, whereas in 2006, the number rose to 139.233 Consequently, America applied tremendous pressure on Musharraf to punish the terrorists ﬂ ourishing on Pakistani soil. There was little Musharraf could do, except ensnare India. In March 2005, Musharraf forged a deal with tribal leaders in South Waziristan by which Pakistani forces stopped all operations against the Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the local tribals in exchange for a pledge from the tribal leaders that they would not permit the Al-Qaeda or the Taliban to sneak into Afghanistan and stage assaults on America-led NATO forces. In September 2006, Musharraf entered into a similar pact with the tribal leaders in North Waziristan. But neither in South nor North Waziristan (nominally under Islamabad’s control) did the tribal leaders honour their promise. In addition to pre-existing Taliban training camps, new Al-Qaeda training camps came into existence as a result of suspension of Pakistani military operations. Cadres trained in these camps were to operate not only in Afghanistan but also in such other places as Somalia. If the places of future territorial operations were many, so were the homelands of the trainers, viz. Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, or Uzbekistan.234 The Indian government should have been aware of all this. Still, it chose to denigrate itself, and honour Pakistan as a co-victim of terrorism. In fact, India went further and swallowed Musharraf’s bait of conducting diplomacy through the media. An Indian television channel broadcast a four-point package of proposals on J&K.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 According to some Indian journalists, this package was a product of months of backroom negotiations between Indian and Pakistani ofﬁ cials.235 It is bad enough if an Indian television channel obediently

233 S. Rajagopalan, The Pioneer, 6 March 2007. 234 B. Raman, The Pioneer, 28 February 2007. Also see, Wilson John, The Pioneer, 14 March 2007. 235 C. Raja Mohan, The Indian Express, 6 December 2006. 186 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

publicises Musharraf’s proposals, which (as even his most steadfast ally, America, has discovered) can never be accepted at face value. It is much worse if Musharraf’s package carries the secret endorsement of Indian offi cials. For, this will mean another attempt at counterproductive appeasement in a long series of such attempts since 1947–48. The package proposed that the Line of Control (LOC) in J&K should cease to be relevant, that all troops should be withdrawn, and that the people should gain self-governance and establish a state under the joint supervision of India and Pakistan. The absurdity of the package need not be elucidated further. There is vast asymmetry between the nature of self-rule in POK and in the J&K of the Indian Union. New Delhi has no right to challenge the legal and popular foundation of its J&K state, where 70 per cent of voters turned out in the last election. Moreover, in a recent opinion survey in this state, conducted by a British non-government organisation, only 6 per cent opted for Pakistan, 33 per cent could not decide, whereas 61 per cent chose to stick with the Indian Union. In these circumstances, to consider seriously Musharraf’s four-point package is to forget the lessons of history, of Pakistan’s perfi dy towards India, to remove the legitimately elected government in Srinagar, to welcome the Jihadis, and eventually detach J&K from the Indian Union.236 New Delhi’s reported readiness to consider Musharraf’s four- point package points to a mindset that defi es rational analysis. While it is entirely laudable to keep alive a peace process with Pakistan, it is dangerous to become, in pursuit of this process, delusional about Pakistan’s intentions and actions. These intentions and actions are steadfast. Negotiations are a façade behind which Jihadi terrorism not only continues, but also spreads its network inside India. In 2006, Pakistan-sponsored terrorists killed 1,116 persons in India’s J&K state, and 270 persons in other states. On 30 November 2006, the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 home ministry of the Government of India published a Status Paper on Internal Security Situations. According to this document, terrorist agencies based in Pakistan and backed by the ISI—for example, Al Badr, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM),

236 Sumer Kaul, The Statesman, 9 February 2007; Kanchan Laxman, The Pioneer, 10 February 2007. Relations with Pakistan 187

Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT), etc.—are freely using the infrastructure in Pakistan as also in POK. Apparently, New Delhi’s ruling circle does not treat the home ministry’s Status Paper with the seriousness it deserves. Musharraf’s four-point formula has the transparent aim of strengthening Jihad and destabilising India.237 Therefore, the reported move of New Delhi to pay attention to this formula is thoroughly pernicious, unless Indian diplomats are able to match Musharraf’s ruse. Pakistan has been playing tricks upon India, Afghanistan, and also America, although it is extremely difﬁ cult to assess which of these three countries has been tricked the most. Whatever the com- plexion of the government in New Delhi—the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or United Progressive Alliance (UPA)—India’s faith in the peace process with Pakistan is unwavering, although if one takes into account the period of the UPA government, three persons have been killed by terrorists daily, on an average, in J&K. Yet, from time to time, there are ominous reports about Pakistan inducing India to offer it concessions that could severely damage India’s security. K.P. Nayar writes,

The Manmohan Singh government would have already ﬁ nalized a settlement of the Siachen dispute with Pakistan if the army and the air force had not taken the rare step late last year of expressing themselves ﬁ rmly but clearly against bartering away India’s strategic advantage on the glacier for the cosmetic advantage of ticking one item off the list of bilateral disputes between New Delhi and Islamabad.238

It is a matter of profound solace that the Indian Army is to run a mountaineering school in Siachen called the Army Mountaineering Institute, Siachen (AMIS). The institute, it is expected, will preserve and promote the skills of mountain warfare acquired from hard experiences over a period of 23 years.239

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, has repeatedly complained that Pakistan has been masterminding terrorist activities inside Afghanistan, and that these activities will continue as long

237 Kanchan Laxman, The Pioneer, 10 February 2007. 238 The Telegraph, 21 February 2007. Also see, G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 22 March 2007. 239 Editorial, The Statesman, 6 March 2007. 188 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

as the war against terrorists is not directed against the source of terrorism, that is Pakistani territory. A resolution passed by the United States senate in February 2007 has conﬁ rmed what is known for years and what Karzai periodically but ineffectively alleges. This resolution unambiguously states that the sanctuaries provided by Pakistan enable the Taliban and Al-Qaeda not only to run their terrorist operations throughout the world, but also launch attacks against the International Security Assistance Force inside Afghanistan. The US senate resolution makes American assistance to Pakistan conditional upon such measures by Pakistan as elimination of training camps for terrorists inside Pakistan, prevention of recruitment to, and attacks in Afghanistan by, the Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other terrorist outﬁ ts. This of course does not mean that the American administration will immediately suspend aid to Pakistan.240 What usually happens is that Pakistan tries to catch India on the wrong foot whenever it faces adverse comments from the US legislature, the European Parliament, or even the BBC, televising in detail the terrorist training camps in Pakistan, which largely account for the resurgence of the Taliban inside Afghanistan. ‘Could it be an accident’, observes K.P. Nayar, ‘that the attack on Samjhauta Express, which now has the effect of painting Pakistan as a victim of terrorism, occurred within days of the BBC’ televising the aforementioned terrorist training camps in Pakistan?241 Thus, India’s relations with Pakistan bring to the fore an extraordinary situation: while India’s faith in the peace process is irreversible, equally strong is Pakistan’s resolve of launching terrorist strikes against India from bases not only in Pakistan or POK, but from hundreds of cells set up by the ISI throughout India. Evidently, these cells cannot survive without support from ruling politicians (the kind who succumb to the narrow and transient calculations of election politics) in a number of Indian states. In January 2004, by

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 means of a joint India–Pakistan statement, Pakistan promised not to permit any part of Pakistani territory (and POK) to be used for cross-border terrorism against India. Pakistan never fulﬁ lled this promise. Still, it was rewarded by India by means of another joint

240 S. Rajagopalan, The Pioneer, 17 March 2007. 241 The Telegraph, 21 February 2007. Relations with Pakistan 189

India–Pakistan statement of April 2005, which obliged India to concede that terrorism would not be allowed to hinder the peace process. So, Pakistan’s ISI can now use Indian territory for terrorist activities (whether in a Mumbai train or the Samjhauta Express), but India cannot retaliate by suspending the dialogue process.242 The Union defence ministry’s annual report (2006–7), published in New Delhi on 20 March 2007, makes it abundantly clear that infi ltration of terrorists from Pakistan has not ceased, that Pakistan has not dismantled the terrorist infrastructure which shelters and trains these infi ltrators, and that Pakistani terrorist organisations like the LeT have been expanding their operational reach.243 More- over, the Al-Qaeda, facing no diffi culty in recruiting new cadres, has been consolidating and expanding its activities, while preserving the nerve centre in Pakistan’s tribal areas.244 Actually, Al-Qaeda virtually operates as a transnational corporation, setting up multinational teams of leaders in various countries.245 In this situation, one wonders how, in its relations with Pakistan, India can save itself from its own contradictions. Perhaps only America can rescue India, provided America takes decisive steps to resolve its own malignant contradictions. The fundamental (though obvious) fl aw in American policy was to treat the creator of terrorism as the potential destroyer. It was possible to enlist the cooperation of the biggest victim of terrorism, India, and take on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Instead, America short-sightedly relied upon Musharraf, who deceitfully exploited the American patron to attract a huge amount of arms and money to strengthen the military-Jihadi-feudal combine in Pakistan. The failure of American policy—and the success of Musharraf’s game of deception—can have no greater demonstration than the fact that in contrast to 2001, when American soldiers stormed into Pakistan, the infl uence of Jihadi forces upon Pakistan is now inestimably more pervasive.246 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

242 Arun Shourie, The Indian Express, 2 August 2006; Ajai Sahni, ‘Foreword’, Faultlines, vol. 18, January 2007, pp. ii–iii. 243 The Pioneer, 21 March 2007. 244 James Kitﬁ eld, ‘Al Qaeda’s Pandemic’, National Journal, vol. 38, no. 35, 2 September 2006, pp. 20–27. Also, The New York Times, 2 April 2007. 245 Jason Burke, The Hindu, 12 March 2007. 246 Shobori Ganguli, The Pioneer, 20 March 2007. 190 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

It is astonishing how myopic American policy can be towards the war on terror, in general, and towards Pakistan, in particular. In order to sustain the pretence of being a moderate Islamist bent upon taming Jihadi groups, Musharraf would announce, from time to time, a ban on terrorist outﬁ ts, although the ban would remain on paper only, for Musharraf did not have the capacity to enforce it. For the same reason, Musharraf talked of reforming madrassa education, which deeply impressed the Americans. What America fails to understand is that if, to regular madrassa curriculum (preaching hatred and violence towards non-Muslims), one adds English, Mathematics, Computer Science, etc., the capability of madrassa- trained Jihadis will multiply manifold. Modern communication skills will add substantially to the operational reach of these Jihadis who currently may not move beyond South Asia. With the knowledge of English, and such other subjects as Computer Science or Mathematics, they will have greater conﬁ dence to act in Europe or North America. Thus, a half-hearted reform of madrassa education (as promised by Musharraf to mislead Americans) can be counterproductive. Unfortunately, Americans sometimes lose sight of the long-term implications of certain policies and actions when paraded by Pakistan in a deceptive manner.247 Occasionally, there may be mild assurances by American decision makers switching over to a pragmatic mode. The senate may express its desire to link American aid to Pakistan using credible evidence of the effective role played by Pakistan in combating terror. The Washington administration has ways and means to continue helping its client state without openly causing any offence to the will of the senate. In a gesture of respect for the American legislators’ expression of disenchantment with Pakistan, the Washington administration sometimes even defers pre-scheduled strategic talks with Pakistan.248 Americans have been so merciful towards Musharraf’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 sins (domestic and foreign) that they ignored for a long time the retardation of democracy in Pakistan due to the Musharraf brand of military domination over politics. The United States state department did not even issue any guarded reprimand against Musharraf until

247 Ajai Sahni, ‘The War on Terror: Assessing US Policy Alternatives on Pakistan’, Faultlines, vol. 18, pp. 10–11. 248 PTI report, The Pioneer, 15 March 2007. Relations with Pakistan 191

15 March 2007, when Musharraf shocked Pakistanis (and the world) by trying arbitrarily to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, who had alienated Musharraf by attempting to safeguard the human rights of the Pakistanis, especially Musharraf’s political opponents, some of whom, being kidnapped by security forces, had simply disappeared.249 It is unfair and unrealistic to look upon General Pervez Musharraf as the root of all evil. However, as long as he remained the president and the Army Chief, it was unavoidable (at any rate, for the sake of brevity) to fi x the principal responsibility upon him for sponsoring terrorism in Afghanistan or India (and many other places in the world), while convincing (or bluffi ng) the Americans about his contributions to the war on terror. It was an intricate exercise, bristling with contradictions. If Musharraf ordered the bombing of tribal areas (infested with terrorists), he pleased the Americans but enraged the militant Islamists who could (with or without the support of some army offi cers) try to assassinate him. Yet, in terms of continuously raising the price (for India, Afghanistan, or America) of toleration of Pakistan as the chief patron of international Islamic terrorism, General Musharraf remained the logical target of principal criticism. He remained the most important fi gure in the feudal-fundamentalist-military-ISI combine, which perpetuates this terrorism. In any human/social situation, as in the case of this mighty combine, there are stresses and strains, but that does not detract much from the adverse impact of the policies and actions of this combine upon Afghanistan, India, or America. If America is indeed serious about stamping out Islamist terror, it has to serve that sort of ultimatum upon Pakistan, which it did following 9/11. That ultimatum changed overnight the pro-Taliban policy of Pakistan. Now it is time for another ultimatum to the Pakistani government for a total withdrawal of support from the feudal-fundamentalist-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 military-ISI combine that promotes Islamist terrorism. It does not matter who the head of the government may be and whether they can act faithfully upon this ultimatum. Nor does it matter that this may create ripples in Pakistan. After all, the situation has to get worse before it can get better. For years since 9/11, America has

249 S. Rajagopalan, The Pioneer, 17 March 2007; The Statesman, 17 March 2007; Wilson John, The Pioneer, 28 March 2007 and 11 April 2007. 192 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

taken unmanageable risks with Pakistan’s double-dealing. Now it has to incur manageable risks in cooperation with Afghanistan and India (discarding the decades-old anachronism of maintaining a parity between Pakistan and India).250 In case America is compelled to serve a fresh ultimatum upon Pakistan, India too will face a lot of internal trouble. ISI modules in different parts of India—in league with a number of infl uential politicians—will try to destabilise India. This will indeed be a test for New Delhi’s leadership to prove itself. It has to succeed in order to survive; it cannot afford the same gross mismanagement of relations with Pakistan as in the previous decades. It may be counterproductive to strike a moral high ground and argue that India has a vision of mutually benefi cial India–Pakistan relations in the long run, that is broader than that of Pakistan.251 If Pakistan suffers from a defi cit of vision, India is a victim of a defi cit of pragmatism, which is far more risky. A variant of the aforementioned ultimatum was served by American President Barack Obama upon Musharraf’s successor, President Asif Ali Zardari. ‘Perhaps it was no coincidence that the latest Pakistan Army operation in Swat began the day President Zardari along with DGISI and DGMO in tow arrived in Washington D.C.’252 The Obama administration must be credited with infusing greater clarity and realism in the prosecution of the war on terror by linking Pakistan with Afghanistan, and by converting the Afghanistan policy into the Af-Pak policy, emphasising Pakistan’s connections with terrorists in Afghanistan. After all, for decades now, Pakistan’s ISI and Army have been reigning supreme over the civilian population. The Pakistani military and the ISI enjoy real autonomy, which can,

250 Sumer Kaul, The Statesman, 23 March 2007; Ajay Sahni, Faultlines, vol. 18, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 pp. 3–7; Anuradha Dutt, The Pioneer, 19 March 2007; Udayan Namboodiri and Mohammad Farquan, The Pioneer, 17 March 2007; Editorial, The Statesman, 19 March 2007. 251 See, for example, a seminar speech by foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, in New Delhi on 11 April 2007; in The Pioneer, 12 April 2007. 252 Indranil Banerjie, ‘Af-Pak Strategy: Hobson’s Choice’, Dialogue, July– September 2009, p. 37. (DG stands for Director General and DGMO for Director General of Military Operations.) Both the DGISI (Director General, Inter Services Intelligence) and DGMO had no option but to commence military operations in Swat in 2009. Relations with Pakistan 193

for example, reduce negotiations between Indian and Pakistani offi cials and political leaders to near-insignifi cance.253 It is an open secret that Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments manoeuvred safe passage for a large number of Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan in 2002, when the America- led invasion force captured Kabul.254 In October 2009, the United States commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal, unambiguously reported that Pakistan provided a sanctuary to powerful leaders of insurgent outfi ts in Afghanistan.255 But, as Anne Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan, commented in early October 2009, it was not possible to nurse a viper in the bosom and escape its bite.256 The viper struck at India a number of times; for example, in the Taj Mahal hotel of Mumbai on 26 November 2008, or subsequently, at the Indian embassy in Kabul. After the Mumbai massacre, the top leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, declared that if India retaliated and attacked Pakistan, he would deploy his Jihadi troops to invade India.257 Following the military intervention in Swat, and, especially after the death of Baitullah Mehsud from the attack by an American pilotless plane on 5 August 2009, the Pakistan Taliban appeared to be shaky and disorganised. However, it quickly recovered under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud’s son, Hakimullah. Between August and September 2009, American drones killed four other high-ranking Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders.258 For quite some time, American offi cials, in order to placate Pakistan (the creator and patron of Taliban), tried to keep alive the pretence that the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban should be treated differently.259 But, during August–September 2009, this pretence seemed to peter out. The contrary assessment—for example, of General Jack Keane, a retired vice chief of staff of the United States Army, as propounded before a hearing at the Armed Services Committee of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the House of Representatives on 14 October 2009—came to prevail.

253 Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 14 October 2009. 254 Malladi Rama Rao, The Pioneer, 10 October 2009. 255 Samuel Baid, The Pioneer, 10 October 2009. 256 Chidanand Rajghatta, The Times of India, 11 October 2009. 257 TNN, The Times of India, 16 October 2009. 258 Malladi Rama Rao, The Pioneer, 10 October 2009. 259 Swarn Kumar Anand, The Pioneer, 10 October 2009. 194 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The assessment was that it was not possible to separate the Taliban from the Al-Qaeda.260 This assessment eventually prevailed. During 2001–9, Pakistan, and not Afghanistan, was the source of strikes against Western targets.261 As America treats Pakistan as the principal zone of operations in the war on terror, the viper in the bosom of the Pakistani military and ISI bites repeatedly and severely. In the past, the Pashtuns were usually associated with the Taliban. But, during 2008–9, Punjabi militants, belonging to such agencies as Lashkar-e-Jhangir (LeJ) and Maulana Masood Azhar’s JEM, have been responsible for a large number of strikes in different parts of Punjab, including Lahore, the cultural and political centre of Pakistan. Remarkably, LeJ has forged powerful connections with both the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.262 On 10 October 2009, terrorists wearing army uniforms attacked the Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. The Tehreek-e-Taliban (TeT) took responsibility for this assault.263 On 15 October 2009, Taliban terrorists struck at fi ve places in Punjab and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). One remarkable feature of the recent terrorist attacks is the ability of militants to combine suicide bombings with guerrilla style operations.264 Another is the participation of ex-army men in such attacks—not only in Rawalpindi, but also in Mumbai.265 Interestingly, if the city of Karachi is relatively free from Taliban assaults, it is not because of any dearth of terrorists in this fi nancial nucleus of Pakistan, but because this city is used as a fi nancial hub by the Taliban, with them concentrating on such activities as bank robberies and kidnapping for extortion there.266 Under these circumstances, America may repent its acquiescence in General Pervez Musharraf’s decision (after he staged a coup in 1999) to suspend operations by CIA-trained Pakistani Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

260 PTI report, The Statesman, 16 October 2009. Also see, Farid Zakaria, in Newsweek, reproduced in The Indian Express, 13 October 2009. 261 Ibid. 262 Omer Farooq Khan, The Times of India, 16 October 2009. 263 Ejaz Haider, Editor, The Daily Times, Lahore, in The Indian Express, 13 October 2009. 264 Omer Farooq Khan, The Times of India, 16 October 2009. 265 Chidanand Rajghatta, The Times of India, 14 October 2009. 266 Sabrina Tavernise, The Times of India, 30 August 2009. Relations with Pakistan 195

commandos to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden.267 If Bin Laden had been eliminated, the situation in Pakistan today would have been far less degraded. Presently, America faces a perilous situation in Pakistan in which the greater the deterioration the bigger grows the American ﬁ nancial burden. On 15 October 2009, President Obama signed the Kerry-Lugar Pakistan Aid Bill. It will provide US$7.5 billion to Pakistan over a period of ﬁ ve years. In the past, such aid to Pakistan was used on a large scale by Pakistani military and intelligence establishments to support terrorist operations against the governments of India and Afghanistan. The Kerry- Lugar Bill, therefore, contains certain safeguards, which, again, have alienated General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (Chief of the Pakistan Army). These safeguards require Pakistan to correct its course, for example, by the withdrawal of support to terrorists, by promotion of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, as also advancement of democracy, economic development, and rule of law. All these imply the establishment of a minimum of civilian control over the military, which Kayani resents but Zardari revels in.268 It is not easy to predict the outcome of the great American enterprise in Pakistan. It is quite likely that Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments will not correct their course. Consequently, Pakistan may continue to try to destabilise India and Afghanistan with American money and arms, and even destroy itself in this process. Those who live by terrorism may perish by terrorism. Pakistan’s internal problems are so acute that India (and America) may not have been able to comprehend them (and their impact on foreign relations) with reasonable accuracy. Take, for instance, Gwadar. In 2005, following an invitation by General Musharraf (in 2000), China built the Gwadar port on schedule. In 2007, PSA International of Singapore obtained a 40-year contract from Pakistan to run the port of Gwadar. There is optimistic speculation that

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Gwadar will be able to compete with Dubai. However, land deals in Gwadar have alienated the Balochis (who have been discriminated against by Islamabad for decades). For, the Punjabi members

267 Jonathan Power, The Statesman, 28 August 2009. 268 G. Parthasarathy, The Times of India, 14 October 2009, and The Pioneer, 15 October 2009. Also see, Chidanand Rajghatta, The Times of India, 16 October 2009. 196 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of the Pakistan Army have transformed themselves into a sort of maﬁ a. They falsify records and grab lands. The locals cannot enjoy the fruits of Gwadar’s development. They are ready to sabotage its growth. This chapter can probably be best concluded with the following quotation:

Whether Gwadar becomes a new silk-route nexus or not is tied to Pakistan’s own struggle against becoming a failed state. Pakistan, with its ‘Islamic’ nuclear bomb, Taliban-and-Al-Qaeda infested northwestern borderlands, dysfunctional cities, and territorially based ethnic groups for whom Islam could never provide adequate glue, is commonly referred to as the most dangerous country in the world, a nuclear Yugoslavia-in-the-making.269

One wonders whether India (and America) are sufficiently forewarned. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

269 Robert D. Kaplan, ‘Pakistan’s Fatal Shore’, The Atlantic, May 2009, p. 6 of 10. Also see, Stephen Blank, ‘India and Central Asia’, in Harsh V. Pant (ed.), Indian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World, New Delhi: Routledge, 2009, p. 292; and, for elaboration of related points, see P.K. Upadhyay, ‘Islamization versus Talibanization: Is Pakistan Drifting Towards “Lebanization”?’ Strategic Analysis, November 2009, pp. 205–8. 5 Relations with China

Any study of India–China relations may appropriately commence with an examination of controversies surrounding the boundary between these two countries. It is analytically convenient to divide this examination into two major sectors: the eastern sector and the western sector. The eastern sector is commonly identiﬁ ed with the McMahon Line, and is also known as the Arunachal Pradesh (formerly the North East Frontier Agency or NEFA) sector. The western sector is regarded as the Jammu and Kashmir sector, or, brieﬂ y, the Kashmir sector. During 1947–52, the Survey of India published maps showing the NEFA sector boundary as ‘undemarcated’.1 In March-April 1947, the Government of India organised the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi. A map displayed at that conference depicted Tibet as lying outside the boundaries of China. The delegate from the Republic of China (headed by General Chiang Kai-Shek) protested. The map was withdrawn. This was not unpredictable. For, as early as January 1947, the Chiang Kai-Shek government had sent a note to the British embassy in China, protesting against the encroachment by the British Indian government on the territory situated south of the ‘so-called McMahon Line’ but claimed by China. In February 1947, the Indian embassy in China too received the same note of protest. Even earlier—in July, September, and November 1946—the British embassy in China had received such a note.2 About two months after India became independent—on 16

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 October 1947—the Government of Tibet sent a cable to the Govern- ment of India. This cable demanded the return of Tibetan territories covering a vast region from Assam to Ladakh. These territories included Sikkim, Darjeeling, and Bhutan. On 18 November 1949,

1 Karunakar Gupta, Spotlight on Sino-Indian Frontiers, Calcutta: Friendship Publications, 1982, p. 39. 2 Ibid., p. 40. 198 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

a few days before the collapse of the Kuomintang government in China, its ambassador to India presented a note to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. This note repudiated the Simla Convention of 1914. The Government of India used this convention to justify its claim that China, Tibet, and India had agreed to ﬁ x the India–Tibet boundary along the McMahon Line, which is basically the Himalayan crest line.3 Geographically, the McMahon Line may be regarded as a valid boundary, because it roughly follows the watershed principle. But it is far from easy to endow this Line with legal-historical legitimacy. At the heart of the matter lies the status of Tibet and the validity of the Simla Convention.

Status of Tibet Any consideration of the status of Tibet must accurately focus on China–Tibet relations, which are chequered to say the least. In order to assess properly India’s diplomacy towards China and Tibet, it is thus essential to devote attention to China–Tibet relations, with inescapably long excursions into history. More so because many writers have tended to misinterpret India–China relations mainly due to a lack of familiarity with Tibet’s history. Tibet asserted itself as an independent state in the 7th century. King Songtsen Gampo ruled Tibet during A.D. 629–649. He was the 33rd king of the Yarlung dynasty, a dynasty which originated in Tibet in 127 B.C., and introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the 5th century A.D. He built a large empire—the largest in Asia at that time. Even though China and Mongolia were powerful states, Tibet took military action against them on a number of occasions in the 7th century. Songtsen Gampo was uneducated and hence looked down upon by the rulers of China and Nepal. Yet, so powerful was this Tibetan king that China and Nepal agreed to his proposals Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 for marriage. Despite having a number of wives, Songtsen Gampo married a princess from Nepal and, subsequently, a princess from China. Songtsen Gampo became an admirer of Buddhism, and assigned to Buddhism a prominent place in his state. In the course of the 7th century, Tibetan culture developed a close relationship

3 Ibid., p. 41. Relations with China 199

with Indian culture. Tibet discarded ideograms in favour of a phonetic script. Tibet thus divorced itself from such schools of Chinese philosophy as Confucianism and Taoism. In the last decade of the 8th century, Tibetan scholars deliberately bade farewell to Chinese schools of philosophy, and embraced the Indian Buddhist schools of philosophy. All this underlined a cultural-political divergence between Tibet and China, which persisted for centuries till the military conquest of Tibet by China in the 1950s.4 Tibetans and Chinese have been traditional adversaries. In the 7th and 8th centuries, for example, under the Yarlung dynasty, Tibetans grabbed large tracts of territory from China (and also Mongolia), even though, sometimes, the contested territories changed hands. In 763, the Tibetans briefl y captured even Changan, the Chinese capital. Frequent fi ghting caused (or even resulted from) complex and changing inter-state alignments. For instance, if, on one occasion, the Chinese took the help of the Mongols to fi ght the Tibetans, on another occasion, the Chinese would secure the help of the Tibetans to challenge the Mongols. Tisong Detsen, the 37th king of the Yarlung dynasty, ruled from 754 to 797. He was the greatest empire builder of his dynasty, with his empire stretching from the Altai mountains in Central Asia to Bengal, and from the western provinces of China to Afghanistan. He made Buddhism the state religion. A number of treaties were signed between Tibet and China in the 8th and early 9th centuries, the most notable being that of 822. Chinese chroniclers, however, had the extraordinary notion of missions from others as evidence of submission, or tribute exacted from others. That was utterly wrong, because the initiative for negotiations would sometimes be taken by the Chinese themselves, and also because, even at the time of some of these negotiations, the Tibetans would carry on extensive attacks against Chinese territories. Obviously, the strength or weakness of the central

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 government in China or Tibet often determined the outcomes of

4 Claude Arpi, The Fate of Tibet, New Delhi: Har Anand, 2001, pp. 25–28; Charles Bell, Tibet: Past and Present, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 2000, p. 23; Fosco Maraini, Secret Tibet, London: Harvill Press, 2000, p. 380; H.M. Richardson, Tibet and its History, Boulder: Shambala Publications, 1984, p. 30; Tatiana Shaumian, Tibet: The Great Game and Tsarist Russia, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 3–4; Warren W. Smith, Jr., Tibetan Nation, New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1997, pp. 62–63. 200 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

specifi c campaigns over two centuries of the Tibet–China confl ict, climaxed by the treaty of 822. This treaty registered Tibet’s territorial acquisitions all through its frontier with China; treated China and Tibet as independent and equal; enjoined both to stop fi ghting and respect each other’s territory; and spoke of laying the foundation of permanent peace by portraying rhetorically China–Tibet relations to be as close as that of uncle and nephew. The fact that Chinese chroniclers tended to distort the meaning of the uncle–nephew relationship as something signifying Chinese predominance was irrelevant, because the entire treaty underlined Tibet’s independence as also equality with China.5 With the collapse of the Yarlung dynasty of Tibet in 842, as also of the Tang dynasty in China in 907, the border areas of Tibet and China passed under the sway of small states, which fought one another but did not have to pay allegiance to any central authority in either Tibet or China. For about 400 years, from the middle of the 9th century, there was no signifi cant contact between Tibet and China because neither had any duly constituted central authority. Therefore, the question of Tibet remaining a vassal of China during this period simply did not arise. But the idea of a Tibetan nation— different from a Chinese nation in terms of culture, ethnicity, language, religion, and territory—survived obviously because of the experiences of the 200-year rule of the Yarlung dynasty.6 The Mongols (who are certainly not Han Chinese, the current rulers of Communist China) took about 60 years (1215–76) to conquer all of China. The Mongol rule over China lasted till 1368. In 1271, the Mongol ruler, Khublai Khan, whose empire comprised China, Korea, Iran, and southern Russia, adopted Yuan as his dynastic name. There was, however, little evidence of a comprehensive conquest of the Tibetans by the Mongols, whose domination over Tibet’s border areas was at best unstable because of repeated

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 rebellions or invasions by the warlike Tibetans. Beyond these

5 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 29–32; Bell, Tibet, pp. 28–29; Maraini, Secret Tibet, p. 338; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 3–4; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 66–74. Also see, S.P. Gupta and K.S. Ramachandran, History of Tibet, New Delhi: Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre, 1997, pp. 17–27; Thubten Jigme Norbu, Tibet: The Issue is Independence, New Delhi: Full Circle, 1998, p. 3. 6 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, p. 35; Bell, Tibet, p. 30; Gupta and Ramachandran, History of Tibet, p. 29; Shaumian, Tibet, p. 4.; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 75, 77, 81. Relations with China 201

turbulent borderlands, most of Tibet’s heartland eluded direct control by China’s Mongol rulers. Moreover, the Mongol rulers developed a sort of patron-priest relationship with the infl uential Tibetan Lamas. In 1244, Goden Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, invited Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen, an eminent Tibetan Lama, to become the imperial preceptor, so that Goden could make adequate spiritual preparations for the next life. The patron-priest relationship between the Mongol ruler of China, and one of the chief Lamas of Tibet, persisted during the reign of Khublai Khan (Khubitai Khaghan), who converted himself to Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism) in 1270. Spiritual service by Tibetans was exchanged for political support from Mongols, bereft of any connotation of sovereignty.7 ‘Dalai’ was the English version of the Mongolian ‘Talai’. Conferment of the title of ‘Talai’ (Dalai) upon a person signifi ed that the person embodied an ‘ocean of wisdom’. Gedun Dupa was the fi rst Lama, who received the Dalai title from the Mongol ruler of China. The Mongols continued the tradition of offering presents and titles to Tibetan clerics even after they lost their domination over China but maintained sway over neighbouring territories. The Ming dynasty ruled China from 1368 to 1644. In the 16th century, Sonam Gyatso, the third Dalai Lama, imparted teaching in Buddhist philosophy to Altan Khan, and received the title ‘Holder of the Thunderbolt’ (Dorje Chang) from Altan Khan, who, in turn, received the title ‘Religious King, Brahma, Lord of the Devas’ from Sonam Gyatso. The Ming rulers of China, unlike the Mongols, were indigenous Chinese. They too followed the tradition of offering presents and titles to Tibetan religious teachers. Sonam Gyatso received the title ‘Vajradhara’ (Dorje Chang) from the Ming emperor, who thus followed Altan Khan. Nevertheless, some Tibetan clerics refused to accept titles from the ruler of China, whereas others were ready to visit Peking (even without any invitation) not merely to accept

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 titles, which had no signiﬁ cance, but to pick up presents which were indeed costly. The Ming emperors, however, had no interest

7 See Herbert Franke, China Under Mongol Rule, Aldershot: Variorum, 1994, section IV, pp. 7–8, section VII, p. 70, section VIII, pp. 297–302. Also see, Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 59–61, 66–67; Bell, Tibet, pp. 31–32; Gupta and Ramachandran, History of Tibet, pp. 30–31; Norbu, Tibet, pp. 3–4; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 83, 86–87. 202 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in establishing any control over Tibet. Nevertheless, they tried to maintain good relations with Tibet so that the Mongols would not align themselves with the Tibetans to threaten the Chinese. The Ming emperors also tried to use the spiritual infl uence of the Tibetans over the Mongols in order to restrain their aggressiveness. When the Mongols became weak, the interest of the (later) Ming emperors in Tibet declined further.8 In 1644, once again, a foreign ruler belonging to the Manchu (Qing) dynasty overthrew the indigenous (Han) Ming dynasty. The Qing (Manchu) dynasty lasted till 1911, when Sun Yat Sen staged a revolution. While the Mongol princes continued to receive religious instructions from the Tibetan preceptors, in 1639 (a few years before the Manchus supplanted the Mings in China), the Manchu emperor invited the fi fth Dalai Lama to the then capital city of Mukden (presently Shenyang). The Dalai Lama declined the invitation, but sent one of his disciples instead. The Manchu emperor treated the Dalai Lama’s disciple with exemplary honour. He thus reset the tradition of patron-priest relationship between China and Tibet, which lasted till the collapse of the Manchu (Qing) dynasty in the 20th century. The Manchu rulers realised that they needed unity to preserve the largest empire in Chinese history. That is why the fi rst Manchu emperor accepted Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism) as the national religion, and his successors followed him. The Dalai Lama exercised unique spiritual leadership over, and enjoyed great popularity in, three fourths of Manchu territory; Manchu rulers, thus, benefi ted enormously by maintaining good relations with Tibet. In particular, they depended on Tibet’s goodwill to preserve peace in the border areas. Moreover, the Manchu rulers wanted to compete with the Mongols, who continued to preserve special religious relations with Tibet. After ignoring several invitations, the fi fth Dalai Lama visited China in 1653. He received all the respect

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 normally accorded to the independent ruler of a sovereign country. The ﬁ fth Dalai Lama received the title Vajradhara. This did not mean any political submission on the part of Tibet to China. For, the ﬁ fth Dalai Lama too awarded a title to the Manchu emperor. After all, earlier, in 1615, the fourth Dalai Lama had conferred the

8 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 67, 72–76; Gupta and Ramachandran, History of Tibet, pp. 36–37; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 93, 101–5. Relations with China 203

title ‘Manjushri’ (the Buddhist deity) on Nurachi, who acquired great authority by unifying the Manchu tribes. Interestingly, the word ‘Manchu’ itself is derived from Manjushri. Such conferment of titles was an exhibition of diplomatic courtesy and convention, but not of political authority.9 The relations between the Tibetans, Mongols and Manchu kings were extraordinarily complicated and rapidly shifting. Occasionally, the Tibetans would mediate between the Mongol princes, or between the Mongols and the Manchu ruler. Sometimes, again, a Mongol prince would impose his domination upon Tibet without upsetting the traditional patron-priest relationship. Such important factors as weaknesses born of factionalism and political rivalries in Tibet and China, wars with foreign countries, and, above all, the virtual partition of China by European powers in the 19th century, had a varying impact upon relations between Tibet and the Manchu rulers of China. The excessively brief longevity of some Dalai Lamas (resulting sometimes from intrigues by Mongols, Tibetans and the representatives (Ambans) of the Manchus in Lhasa) weakened Tibet at certain periods of time. The ninth Dalai Lama, for instance, died at the age of 11 in 1815; the 10th Dalai Lama lived till the age of 23; the 11th Dalai Lama till 17, and the 12th Dalai Lama till 20. In spite of such political uncertainties in the 19th century—one Dalai Lama surviving not more than 20 years on an average—Tibet once drove out the Nepalis who had encroached upon Sikkim, which was governed by Tibet. Some European travellers wrote that, in the 19th century, the status of the Chinese representative (Amban) in Lhasa was largely comparable to that of the Austrian ambassador to the Pope, enjoying dignity without power. This was truly the case. In 1792, Manchu troops performed the role of the patron, and, at Tibet’s request, sent troops to expel the invading Gurkhas from Nepal, and, in 1793, the Manchus issued some adminis-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 trative guidelines for Tibet. There were 29 points in those guidelines which were advisory and not mandatory. The Tibetans chose to carry out whatever was useful to them. Moreover, in the 19th century, the power of the Manchus was declining, and the Tibetans did

9 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 70–80; Bell, Tibet, p. 37; Gupta and Ramachandran, History of Tibet, pp. 38–39; Shaumian, Tibet, p. 5; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 108–13. 204 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

not receive the support of their Manchu patron when they fought the Dogras of Jammu in 1841–42, the Gurkhas in 1855–56, and the British in 1903–4. Furthermore, in 1856, the Manchus could do nothing when Nepal and Tibet signed a treaty, which enabled Nepal to gain some extraterritorial rights in Tibet, and promised that Nepal could come to Tibet’s rescue in case of a foreign invasion in Tibet. Afterwards, in 1890, the British imposed a convention on China, which snatched Sikkim from Tibet, and made Sikkim a British protectorate. In 1893, the British imposed on China some Regulations on Trade, Communication, and Pasturage in Tibet. Neither China nor Britain consulted Tibet while preparing the agreements of 1890 and 1893. It was convenient to Britain, and comforting for China (ravaged by European powers), to pretend that China exercised some authority over Tibet. Actually, China did not. Tibet too did not bother to comply with the provisions of the 1890/1893 pacts between Britain and China. That was a major reason why the British had to dispatch troops to Tibet in the early years of the 20th century.10 The Tibetans did not welcome the intrusion of British authority, inﬂ uence, or even presence in their country. They exhibited contempt towards British overtures to Tibet for the promotion of trade. They humiliated the Indian (British Indian or Anglo-Indian) viceroy, Lord Curzon, by returning, without any reply, three letters written by Curzon to the Dalai Lama in 1900 and 1901. In contrast, Tibet had some respect for Russia, which had extended great religious freedom to several hundred thousand practitioners of Lamaism inside its territory. From 1899 to 1901, a Lhasa monk of Russian origin led several missions to Russia, and placed the Dalai Lama’s letters before the Russian authorities. The Russian press elaborately reported the activities of the Tibetan missions. British ofﬁ cials in India, reminded of the fate of Curzon’s letters to the Dalai Lama,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 felt offended, although the Tibetan missions to Russia had an essentially religious rather than a political character. The sense of offence turned into anxiety—at least a pretence to perturbation when there were rumours of a deal between Tibet, China and Russia,

10 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 83–84, 96, 98, 101, 108–9, 117–18, 121; Bell, Tibet, pp. 45–47; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 11–13; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 116–26, 137–49. Relations with China 205

signifying Russian penetration into Tibet, which presumably wanted to replace a weak patron, China, by a powerful Patron, Russia, which was known to be a protector of Lamaism in its own land. These rumours were baseless, although British authorities in India seized the opportunity provided by these rumours to stir up the bogey of Russian advances into Tibet, and to send a military expedition to Tibet in 1903 and 1904. There was a distance of 1,500 kilometres between Lhasa and the nearest Russian territory. The Russian rulers did not perceive Tibet to be an area of vital interest, although they were willing to establish a consulate in Lhasa. But the Tibetans, addicted to a closed-door policy, failed to avail of this opportunity to break out of short-sighted and self-imposed diplomatic isolation. Thus, they lost the chance to author a chain reaction of events ensuring the diplomatic presence of a number of European powers in Lhasa, and eventually to counteract the sort of domination upon Tibetans practised by China from 1950.11 The Tibetans made other mistakes, and forfeited the chance to avert the full-ﬂ edged and permanent domination (as opposed to centuries of shadowy and volatile suzerainty) exercised by China from 1950. They dealt ineptly with the British trade mission led by Francis Younghusband in 1903/1904. In fact, the ignorance of the Tibetans vis-à-vis modern diplomacy and warfare was only compounded by their arrogance and obstinacy. By their deﬁ ance of the Anglo-Chinese Treaty/Regulations of 1890/1893, the Tibetans exposed the hollowness of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. They destroyed the Tibet-Sikkim boundary pillars erected by the British, and successfully resisted the establishment of trade marts inside Tibet. Therefore, when the Younghusband mission disregarded China’s suzerainty and wanted to deal directly with Tibet, the Tibetans should have welcomed the offer, and made preparations to give a burial to China’s suzerainty over Tibet. Instead, they resisted

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Younghusband’s overtures for negotiations, using (somewhat suicidally) the pretext to secure China’s participation in contacts with foreigners like the British, as also inventing the historically evolved

11 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 122–31; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 14–38; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 151–55. Also see, Sir Francis Younghusband, India and Tibet, New Delhi: D.K. Publishers, 1994, pp. 66–76, 147, 165. 206 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

cultural fi xation upon the need to hold negotiations with foreigners in places far away from Lhasa, preferably outside or near the border of Tibet. At the same time, the Tibetans reserved the right to spoil negotiations at these localities by not appointing suitably empowered Tibetan representatives, as also by pleading disingenuously the lack of instructions from far-off Lhasa. Peking, too, took an inordinately long time, over a year, to send its representative (Resident/Amban), who was to join the conference with Younghusband. Moreover, the Tibetans obstructed the journey of this Amban by refusing to arrange necessary transport facilities at a crucial stage, another evidence of the nominal or fi ctional character of China’s suzerainty over Tibet. This prompted the British to transform Younghusband’s trade mission (with a small military escort) into a military expedition. But, the Tibetans failed to cope with this move by capitalising on contacts with a technologically advanced country like Britain to extinguish forever the notion of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. The British, too, played with the notion of China’s suzerainty over Tibet, and did not settle for annexation of, or a protectorate over, Tibet, which would have been a logical extension of their domination over Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim. The British did not do so, not out of any ethical concern or political-military weariness, but because they did not want to rouse Russian hostility by such a settlement.12 Younghusband was indeed patient in trying to negotiate with the Tibetans. But the persistently unimaginative obstructionism on the part of the Tibetans ensured the degeneration of patience into exasperation, and the conversion of a trade mission into a military expedition. Paradoxically, the British had to demonstrate their capacity for successful combat in order to be able to negotiate effectively. They had to obtain reinforcements, and, in 1904, they had to fi ght their way up to Lhasa, where alone they could have fruitful negotiations. At certain stages of this campaign, even with

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 their antiquated weapons and poor military training, the Tibetans may have been able to halt the British advance on the highest battlegrounds of the world in the peak of winter. However, the warlike Tibetans of the days of the Yarlung dynasty were by then

12 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 128–37; Bell, Tibet, pp. 60–66; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 59–63; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 156–57; Younghusband, India and Tibet, esp. pp. 119–57, 162–72. Relations with China 207

long gone. What with the pacifying impact of Buddhism, or with the incompetence of priestly (Lama) administration in Lhasa, coupled with a belief in ordinary Tibetan soldiers that the Dalai Lama’s magical powers could immobilise foreign forces without much of fi ghting, Younghusband suffered negligible casualties while he gradually advanced up to Lhasa. Losses on the Tibetan side, however, were considerable, mainly because of lack of familiarity with either diplomacy or warfare. The Nepalis did offer sound diplomatic advice to the Tibetans. This advice was based upon their benign experience of being a sort of British protectorate. According to the Nepalis, the British, even though they could have, did not rob them of administrative-political autonomy, and respected the sanctity of Nepal’s social-cultural traditions. This was due to the fact that Britain had a constitutional and not despotic government, so argued Nepali diplomats with their Tibetan counterparts. The policy option to Tibetans was clear: they could exchange the shadowy suzerainty of a despotic China for a sort of worthwhile protectorate by a democratic Britain. Actually, while advancing to Lhasa in 1904, the British respected the religious-cultural practices of the Tibetans, and refrained from destroying their monasteries, although the soldiers (including a vast majority of Indians) did not resist the temptation to snatch invaluable treasures from Tibetan monasteries.13 In course of the long march to Lhasa, several months, the British were subjected by Tibetans to thoughtless and unplanned attacks. The consequences were expected: disaster for the Tibetans. As for the Dalai Lama, he humiliated himself, and lost a clear chance of vigorous affi rmation by way of direct negotiations with the British of the independence of Tibet, as also of the utter irrelevance of the notion of China’s suzerainty over Tibet.While Younghusband entered Lhasa on 3 August 1904, the Dalai Lama left Lhasa on 30 July 1904 to fl ee to Mongolia. The Regent was to represent the Dalai Lama

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in negotiations with the British. Younghusband refused to accept the offer of mediation by the Chinese Amban. He preferred direct negotiations with the Tibetans. On 7 September 1904, a convention between the United Kingdom and Tibet was signed by Young

13 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 137–40; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 76–77; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 157–58; Younghusband, India and Tibet, esp. pp. 55–81, 133–40, 203–7. 208 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

husband and Ganden Tri Rinpoche (the Regent). The seal of the Dalai Lama (left with the Regent), affi xed on this convention, was reinforced by the seals of the members of the Tibetan National Assembly and Council of Ministers, as also of the heads of three principal monasteries at Ganden, Drepung and Sera, all witnesses to the signing ceremony. Other distinguished personalities present at this ceremony (none of whom signed the convention) were Bhutani and Nepali offi cials, in addition to the Manchu Amban. Circumstances leading to the birth of this Anglo-Tibetan Convention of 1904 proved that the British virtually recognised the independence of Tibet, although, for fear of offending Russia and thereby creating diffi culties for Britain in Europe, the British continued to harp on China’s suzerainty over Tibet. The Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1890 signifi ed the acceptance by China of British overlordship on Sikkim, whereas the Lhasa (Anglo-Tibetan) Convention of 1904 signalled the acceptance of the same by Tibet.14 China issued a proclamation deposing the Dalai Lama after he left Lhasa for Urga, the principal town of Mongolia. This served to bring out sharply the fi ctional status of China’s suzerainty over Tibet. For, the Tibetans treated this proclamation with the contempt it deserved, even sprinkling it with dirt, while persisting on all important matters in soliciting the advice of the self-exiled Dalai Lama. China tried desperately to use the services of its Amban in Lhasa to substitute the Panchen Lama (the head of the Tashilhunpo monastery and hence designated by some as Tashi Lama) for the Dalai Lama as the signatory to the Lhasa Convention of 1904. But the Panchen Lama did not even take part in the pre-Convention negotiations at Lhasa, not to speak of signing the Convention. This Convention went much beyond merely safeguarding Britain’s trading interest in Tibet. It was obligatory for Tibet to consult Britain if it wanted to cede, sell, lease, mortgage, or otherwise provide to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 any Foreign Power, for occupation, any portion of Tibetan territory. It was further agreed that Tibet would not allow any Power to interfere in Tibet’s internal affairs, that Tibet would not admit any Representative or Agent of any Foreign power, and that Tibet would not offer to any Foreign Power such economic rights as

14 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 141–44; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 79–81; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 158–59; Younghusband, India and Tibet, pp. 292–306. Relations with China 209

concessions for railways, roads, telegraphs, mining or other rights. Britain thus made mincemeat of China’s suzerainty over Tibet, while continuing diplomatically (or hypocritically) to endorse it.15 The British, however, proceeded to dismantle the Lhasa Conven- tion with disgraceful swiftness. They created a grand opportunity for the grant of international recognition to Tibet’s virtual (and, eventually, by 1912, complete) independence by means of the Lhasa Convention. If Younghusband did not go to Lhasa and demonstrate anew that China’s suzerainty over Tibet was practically non-existent, the Manchu rulers of China might not have bothered about reassessing the nature of their suzerain rights in Tibet. But, by pushing the Manchu suzerainty over Tibet to a vanishing point in 1904, Britain provoked China to reassert its authority over Tibet. The British tamely acquiesced in this process of China’s reassertion of rights in Tibet, bringing deep discomfi ture to Tibet, and even to Britain itself. The only conceivable justifi cation for this British retreat was ignominious because it rested on an imaginary threat to Tibet from a distant Russia. After all, Russia was already weakened by defeats in the war with Japan, and the 1905 revolution inside Russia. The 1906 Anglo-Chinese Convention (signed in Peking) wiped out the benefi ts of the 1904 Lhasa Convention to Tibet, as also to Britain. The 1906 Peking Convention modifi ed the Lhasa Convention of 1904 to deprive Tibet of the status of an almost completely independent country with the right to treat China as a Foreign Power. China gained from the Peking Convention the right of concessions for railways, etc., in Tibet, and Britain lost the right to have a veto on the exercise of such rights by any Foreign Power in Tibet. China, thus, secured access to certain suzerain rights in Tibet to which it was not entitled. In the matter of trade, again, Chinese offi cers began to curtail severely the rights accruing to Britain from the Lhasa Convention. Tibet was not allowed to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 participate in the negotiations leading to the 1906 Convention. It was not even informed.16

15 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 143–45; Bell, Tibet, pp. 68–69; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 81–84; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 159–60; Younghusband, India and Tibet, pp. 289–306. 16 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 152–54; Bell, Tibet, pp. 88–89; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 82–87; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 160–62; Younghusband, India and Tibet, pp. 342–50. 210 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In 1907, the British aggravated the injury caused to the Tibetans by the Peking Convention of 1906. The Anglo-Russian Convention, signed at St. Petersburg in 1907, recognised China’s suzerain rights in Tibet, and pledged that any negotiation with the Tibetans could take place only through China. One provision in this Convention was rather ironical: Britain and Russia promised to respect Tibet’s territorial integrity and refrain from interference in Tibet’s internal affairs. But the Peking and St. Petersburg Conventions of 1906 and 1907, respectively, exposed Tibet’s territorial integrity to threats from China. By the 1907 Convention, Britain and Russia agreed to abstain from securing concessions for the railways, etc., in Tibet. This Convention claimed to forestall misunderstandings between Britain and Russia, presumably by the sanction for Russia to pursue its interests freely in Mongolia in exchange for the same for Britain in Afghanistan. As in the case of the Peking Convention of 1906, so in the case of the St. Petersburg Convention of 1907, the Tibetans were neither consulted nor informed. If all this reversal of their 1904 stand on Tibet stirred the conscience of some British offi cers, they may have subsequently soothed it by refl ecting on the benefi ts of cooperating with Russia during the First World War (1914–18).17 The British seemed determined to retreat further and further away from the 1904 Convention at the expense of Tibet (as also India). They signed with the Chinese the new Trade Regulations for Tibet in 1908 (supplanting those of 1893). The 1908 Regulations, for instance, debarred the British (as also the Indians) from journeying beyond Gyantse inside Tibet. As a result of this restriction—something unique in the entire history of Tibet—pilgrimages by Indians to the holy site of Mansarovar (taking place since time immemorial) became illegal. Tibetans were unhappy, because the 1908 Regulations robbed them of the benefi ts of the 1904 Convention, and placed them under the domination of Chinese offi cers in various trade

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 matters. Moreover, subsequently, the Chinese contravened the 1908 Regulations, and prohibited the export of silver from India to Tibet, and even the use of some traditional trade routes between Sikkim and Tibet. The Chinese went to such an extreme that, at Gyantse, Tibetan ofﬁ cers had to obtain the permission of Manchu

17 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 154–57; Bell, Tibet, p. 90; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 136–38; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 162–63; Younghusband, India and Tibet, pp. 378–80. Relations with China 211

offi cials before accepting invitations for lunch from British offi cers! All these were precursors to the next phase of China’s Forward Policy in Tibet: dispatch of troops to Lhasa and the attempt to establish control over Tibet’s internal administration in pursuit of the Anglo- Chinese Convention of 1906. General Chao (Zhao) Erh Feng, a Manchu warlord and acting viceroy of Szechwan, was appointed as the Resident (Amban) in Lhasa in the spring of 1908. Chao began his campaign of pacifi cation of Tibet (and the eventual incorporation of Tibet into the Manchu empire by destroying monasteries in the eastern parts of Tibet, and beheading thousands of monks). His troops even used Buddhist scriptures as soles of their footwear. The Dalai Lama, who left Lhasa in 1904, came back to Lhasa in December 1909. Chinese troops were about to enter into Lhasa in February 1910. Warlord Chao, taking lessons from the history of China, became very aggressive when the Manchu emperor, as also the empress, died on 21 and 22 November 1908, respectively, and the central government in Peking ceased to wield much authority over warlords operating in the distant border areas of China. The Dalai Lama’s appeals to Britain, France, Japan, and Russia to prevail upon the Manchu ruler to stop military invasion by China were useless. Therefore, the Dalai Lama fl ed to India on 13 February 1910.18 In India, the British accorded to the Dalai Lama all the respect befi tting a head of state. The Dalai Lama tried to impress upon the British the facts, that there was no documentary evidence of Tibet ever agreeing to be an internal part of China, that the patron-priest relationship between China and Tibet implied that Tibet could sometimes avail of military assistance from China, and that Tibet sometimes procured such assistance from Mongolia too. The Dalai Lama tried to persuade the British that, with the disappearance of the traditional patron-priest relationship between China and Tibet in the wake of a full-fl edged military invasion into Tibet

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and systematic oppression of Tibetans by General Chao (who earned the nickname ‘Butcher Chao’), Tibet wanted Anglo-Tibetan relations to be akin to father-child relations. More speciﬁ cally, the Dalai Lama pleaded that Anglo-Tibetan relations be modelled on Anglo-Nepali relations. However, thanks to the rigid conviction of

18 Bell, Tibet, pp. 159–65; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 165–74; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 145–53; Younghusband, India and Tibet, pp. 360–65, 370–76. 212 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the secretary of state for India, Lord Morley, about avoiding any offence to Peking, the Dalai Lama could merely evoke the passive sympathy of the British ofﬁ cers in India and Tibet. The British remained blind to the fact that the sufferings of the Tibetans at the hands of the Manchu warlord in the ﬁ rst decade of the 20th century were almost solely due to the Chinese desire to avenge the perceived humiliation of the Anglo-Tibetan Convention of 1904, and to upset the traditional patron-priest relationship with Tibet. In the words of Francis Younghusband (p. 396),

When the Tibetans did not want us we fought our way to Lhasa to insist upon their having us; when they did want us, and had come all the way from Lhasa to get us, we turned the most frigid of shoulders.

The British refused to interfere in Tibet–China relations, even though, as the Dalai Lama had warned, the British appeasement of Chinese aggression in Tibet would whet China’s appetite, and prompt China to treat Bhutan and Nepal also as China’s feudatories. Actually, China made this attempt vis-à-vis Bhutan and Nepal, and got a smart rebuff from Britain, which stressed the independence of Nepal and Bhutan vis-à-vis China. China deceitfully assured Britain on 5 March 1910 that it would not violate the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906, and, therefore, would not convert Tibet into a province of China (an acknowledgement that China did not have sovereign rights over Tibet). However, the Manchu warlord, Chao Erh Feng, went on contravening this assurance. Chao’s cruelties towards the Tibetans were certainly aggravated, more so when the landowners and rich merchants of Tibet sent their taxes to the Dalai Lama in India. Probably, the Dalai Lama was right in leaving Lhasa and moving to India. If he had stayed on, he might have been beheaded, or, at least imprisoned, and the Tibetans would not have the moral courage to resist Chinese forces by refusing taxes. Moreover, as the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Dalai Lama himself stressed, if he continued to reside in Lhasa, the Chinese would repeat what the Muslim invaders had done in India, and destroy Tibet’s religious institutions.19

19 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 166–70; Bell, Tibet, pp. 109–18; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 160–64; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 168–76; Younghusband, India and Tibet, pp. 390–406, 415–17, 422–28. Relations with China 213

Despite severe repression, however, the Chinese failed to establish the intended administrative control over Tibet. Even their military presence in Tibet was largely due to the Dalai Lama’s order that Tibetan troops should not fi ght Chinese soldiers. In view of his paramount position as a Buddhist monk and preceptor of the Manchu emperor, the Dalai Lama could not ethically issue any order to fi ght the Chinese. Moreover, such an order would have completely demolished the delicate patron-priest relationship between China and Tibet, forged through a chequered history. Otherwise, even though the Tibetan soldiers were relatively ill-equipped and ill-trained in comparison to their Chinese counterparts, the Tibetans were large in number, and also possessed knowledge of the terrain. Thus, with an order from the Dalai Lama calling for military action, the Chinese troops Tibetans could liquidate. Probably, the Chinese did not appreciate all this, and tried to impose their administrative control over Tibet with a heavy hand. But they suffered from shortage of funds, and fi rm resistance from the local people. For instance, when, with a view to eventually replace the self-exiled Dalai Lama by the Panchen Lama, the Manchu Amban and the Panchen Lama once participated in a street parade ceremony, they were treated by the people of Lhasa with a shower of old socks and mud. Afterwards, the Panchen Lama refused to usurp the position of the Dalai Lama. In September 1910, the Manchu Amban invited the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet. The Dalai Lama rejected the invitation because he no longer trusted the Chinese who had destroyed the sanctity of the centuries-old patron-client relationship between China and Tibet. In his response to the Chinese invitation, the Dalai Lama talked of a Tripartite Conference in which Britain, China and Tibet would participate. The Manchu Amban did not reply. In a few months, any such exchange of messages became irrelevant. In October 1911, the anti-Manchu revolution started in China, leading to the abdication

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of the Manchu emperor in February 1912. Meanwhile, General Chao Erh Feng, who became the Viceroy of Szechwan in January 1911, was killed by anti-Manchu revolutionaries. In Lhasa, ill-paid Chinese troops resented irregular disbursements, and mutinied. The Chinese military situation in Lhasa became all the more unstable because of factional fi ghts between offi cers and men belonging to diverse regions of the vast Manchu empire. This time, unlike in 1910, instead of asking Tibetan soldiers to refrain from fi ghting, the Dalai Lama actively encouraged them to take on the Chinese troops. 214 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The outcome was the complete expulsion of the Chinese in 1912, and the Dalai Lama returning to Tibet in July 1912.20 On 21 April 1912, Yuan Shih Kai, the president of the Republic of China (which replaced the Manchu monarchy), issued a proclamation placing Tibet on the same status as that of provinces in China proper. This was a fl agrant violation of treaties and understandings between Britain and China. In the words of Charles Bell, ‘It is not often that treaties are so frankly and fully broken.’ In the summer of 1912, the provincial government of Szechwan tried to browbeat Tibet by dispatching troops. The British then clearly warned the Chinese that they did not recognise China’s right to interfere in Tibet’s internal affairs. China refused to yield to the British demand for a written pledge on this matter, although it agreed to discuss the matter at a conference (which eventually began in October 1913 at Simla). Meanwhile, there were a number of developments, which sustained British interest in such a conference. In October 1912, Tibet sent a letter to the then British viceroy in India. This letter stressed that Britain help in the withdrawal of all Chinese offi cers and soldiers from Tibet, that it was no longer feasible to preserve the past relationships between Tibet and China, and that Tibet had decided upon a complete dissociation from China. In January 1913, Tibet and Mongolia signed a treaty at Urga. By this treaty, Mongolia and Tibet proposed to strengthen their ancient friendship rooted in adherence to a common religion. The two countries further affi rmed that they had become independent states by liberating themselves from the Manchus, and separating themselves from China. In February 1913, the Dalai Lama issued an important proclamation, which was distributed in all areas of Tibet. According to this proclamation, Tibet was an independent state, although it cooperated with China on the basis of a patron-priest relationship developed through many centuries, from the time of Genghis Khan

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and Altan Khan of the Mongols, through that of the Ming dynasty of the Chinese, to that of the Qing dynasty of the Manchus.21

20 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 169–71; Bell, Tibet, pp. 119–22; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 164–68; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 178–81. 21 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 171–74; Bell, Tibet, pp. 148–51; Shaumian, Tibet, pp. 177–87; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 182–88. Also see, Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1989, pp. 58–68. Relations with China 215

This was the moment Britain could have seized to make Tibet’s independence as real as possible by providing it with large-scale economic, diplomatic, and military support, as might eventually (and hopefully) insure Tibet against the sort of invasion launched by China in 1950. But Britain did not do so. It did not even take lessons from what Russia was doing vis-à-vis Mongolia. Russian aims in Mongolia were not much different from those of Britain in Tibet. Both wanted to maximise special privileges (in Mongolia and Tibet respectively) without the entanglement of international responsibilities that had the potential of aggravating competition with any European power. But while Russia acted effectively in Mongolia in fulﬁ lment of its aims, Britain failed to do so in Tibet. Thus, on 3 November 1912, Russia entered into a convention with Mongolia. Russian subjects gained from this convention such privileges as those of conducting duty-free trade, opening banks, buying/leasing lands, and obtaining concessions for mines, etc., in Mongolia. In return, Russia would help Mongolia in preserving its autonomy. On 5 November 1913, Russia and China signed a convention, which virtually reinforced (not perhaps without a touch of contradiction permissible in diplomacy) the Convention of 1912 between Russia and Mongolia. The Russia–China Convention of 1913 acknowledged China’s suzerainty over Mongolia subject to Chinese recognition of Mongolia’s autonomy, and China’s pledge to abstain from colonising or occupying Mongolia. Eventually, in 1921, the Soviet Union supported the Mongol revolutionaries, and recognised Mongolia as an independent state, without bothering to pay any heed to China’s rights in Mongolia. Similarly, before the Second World War, when China was in the throes of a civil war as also a war with Japan, Britain could have ensured the emergence of Tibet as a completely independent state, gaining the status of a sort of British protectorate, that could contribute to Tibet’s political, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 economic and military modernisation. But Britain chose to pursue a policy of unenlightened self-interest in Tibet.22

22 Bell, Tibet, pp. 150–51; Shaumian, Tibet, p. 180; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 184–88. Also see, A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 62–64. 216 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Simla Conference 1913–14 The Simla (now spelled as Shimla) Conference commenced in October 1913. Signiﬁ cantly, Britain overcame China’s tactics to delay the conference by using the threat that Britain might be constrained to hold a bilateral conference with Tibet even if China remained absent. At this tripartite conference, Lonchen Shatra, the Tibetan Plenipotentiary, submitted a mass of documentary evidence, including tax records and census data traversing centuries— not to speak of the Tibet-China treaty of 822—which substantiated Lhasa’s claims to authority over vast areas inhabited by Tibetan- speaking people. Some of these areas (especially in eastern Tibet) had been under China’s occupation for varying periods. In the words of Warren W. Smith, Jr.: ‘The Tibetan claims came as something of a surprise to the British, who had previously negotiated with China over Tibet on the assumption that China actually exercised substantial authority over Tibet, an assumption that the Tibetan claims refuted.’ Chen I Fan, the Chinese Plenipotentiary, could produce virtually little to contest Lonchen Shatra’s claims. The depth of British ignorance about Tibetan affairs was revealed at the Simla conference. So was the hollowness of China’s claim to authority over Tibet. But this did not debar China from staking a maximalist territorial claim, using even the conquest of warlord Chao Erh Feng around 1912. The British then suggested a compromise by way of dividing Tibet into an Inner and Outer Tibet, and improvised a differentiation of China’s authority over these two tracts of Tibet. China could exercise control over Inner Tibet (bordering China), although Lhasa would have the right to regulate monastic affairs in Inner Tibet, and appoint chiefs and local ofﬁ cers in Inner Tibet for the collection of customary taxes and rents. Over Outer Tibet (bordering India), Lhasa would retain historic autonomy. China would enjoy suzerainty, but not sovereignty, over the whole of Tibet Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 (Inner and Outer). Tibet would not have any representation in the Chinese Parliament. Neither Britain nor China would interfere in the administration of Outer Tibet. Moreover, with regard to Tibet, neither China nor Tibet would engage in negotiations, or arrive at agreements, with each other, or with any other power except Britain. Nevertheless, the description of China as a ‘Foreign Power’ (in the 1904 Lhasa Convention) was to be rescinded. China’s presence in Outer Tibet would be restricted to an Amban and a military escort with a maximum strength of 300. The Tibetans did not like the Relations with China 217

boundaries of Inner and Outer Tibet (as devised by the British) because it left a large number of Tibetan-speaking people under China’s control. The Chinese were unhappy, because they wanted to dominate a much larger territory inhabited by the Tibetans. China’s vanity was assuaged by a provision, in a note appended to the Simla Convention, that Tibet formed a part of Chinese territory. But the Convention clearly stated that the integrity of Tibet as a political and geographical entity must not be violated in any way in the course of the implementation of the Convention. The British pledged not to annex any part of Tibet, which was matched by the Chinese pledge that it would not convert Tibet into a province of China. While the British and the Tibetan Plenipotentiaries were prepared to sign the Simla Convention in April 1914, the Chinese Plenipotentiary was not ready to sign it. Chen I Fan argued that he would only initial the Simla Convention after obtaining the Chinese government’s approval. All the three Plenipotentiaries signed the Simla Convention on 27 April 1914. In view of the pictorial character of the Chinese language, it was indeed awkward to talk of a distinction between signing and initialling a document. Nevertheless, the government of China repudiated the Simla Convention on 29 April 1914.23 Negotiations in Simla dragged on for months mainly because of China’s delaying tactics. Negotiations with China broke down because of differences over the Tibet–China boundary, and not on any other issue. While vainly waiting for China’s consent to a tripartite agreement in Simla, Tibet and Britain had ample time to discuss the conﬁ guration of the Tibet–India border from Bhutan right up to the Burma–India–Tibet trijunction. Tibet, China, and Britain had equal status in Simla. China had not raised any dispute about the Tibet–India border. The British Indian foreign secretary, Sir Henry McMahon (the British Plenipotentiary at the Simla talks) and Lonchen Shatra did not invite Chen I Fan to discuss the Tibet-India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 boundary running through more than 850 miles. They did not solicit Chen I Fan’s endorsement of this boundary, depicted as a thick red line on a map that carried the approval of not only McMahon but also of the authorities in Lhasa. This line, subsequently known as the McMahon Line, moved along the watershed between Tibet and India, and pushed the British Indian frontier from the foothills of

23 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 177–83; Bell, Tibet, pp. 152–57; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 190–99, esp. p. 191; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 66–75. 218 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the Himalayan range to its crestline. The British thus secured for India 2,000 square miles of Tibetan territory. The British named this territory the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA); independent India went on to rename it Arunachal Pradesh. At the Simla conference, in addition to this agreement on the border, Britain and Tibet signed another agreement on trade, which endowed the British with extraterritorial powers over the trade marts in Tibet, as also total control over communication lines between the Indian border and the trade marts. This 1914 agreement on trade guaranteed British traders access to all parts of Tibet. It prohibited Tibet from imposing any restriction upon British merchants, as also from instituting any commercial monopoly. Moreover, the Anglo-Tibetan Trade Regulations, signed on 3 July 1914, obliged Tibet to comply with that provision of the 1904 Lhasa Convention which restrained Tibet from levying any dues or tariffs without British permission.24 The British thus secured numerous and tangible advantages from the Simla Conference of 1913–14. Tibet made a tremendous sacrifi ce by upholding the grotesque distinction between Inner and Outer Tibet. Still, China was not satisfi ed with the Tibet–China boundary designed at Simla. Britain informed China that, in the event of China not agreeing to sign the 1914 Simla Convention, Britain and Tibet would have no option but to make it a bilateral treaty. On 3 July 1914, Tibet and Britain signed the Simla Convention. They also took care to sign an important declaration that debarred China from enjoying the privileges arising out of the Simla Convention as long as it did not sign this Convention. This declaration further made it obligatory for Britain and Tibet to abide by the Simla Convention. Since China never signed the Simla Convention, it deprived itself of a number of important benefi ts accruing to it from the Convention. Tibet ceased to be a formal part of Chinese territory, as mentioned in a note appended to the Simla Convention. Chinese suzerainty

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 over Tibet was derecognised. Thus, China continued to remain a ‘Foreign Power’ for Tibet, in accordance with the Lhasa Convention of 1904. Furthermore, China lost the right to post in Lhasa an Amban and 300 soldiers. The stage was thus set for Britain to pave the way to substantive Tibetan independence in substitution of

24 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 179–83; Bell, Tibet, pp. 155–57; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 200–1; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 75–76. Relations with China 219

shadowy Chinese suzerainty. More so because, even at the time of negotiations in Simla, the Chinese and the Tibetans were fi ghting a war in eastern Tibet (Kham), which eventually led to retreat and surrender by the Chinese, and an appeal from China to Britain for mediation, so that the advance of Tibetan troops through Yunnan could be halted. British mediation restored peace in August 1918, while this peace pact in 1918 reinforced Tibet’s status as an equal of China in international negotiations (as in the negotiations at Simla in 1913–14). It was a good time for Lhasa to expect British activism in favour of securing a status of complete independence for Tibet. It was a bad time for Peking because, in 1916 for instance, the warlords of Yunnan and Szechwan had declared independence of China’s central government. However, as is explained ahead, Britain continued to follow a policy towards Tibet that was little short of reprehensible. It maximised economic-political gains for itself, but minimised the same for Tibet.25 The Tibetans developed an admiration and trust for the British who they believed were a religious people respecting Tibet’s religion. The Chinese had no religion, and, therefore, no love for Tibet’s religion. The belief of the Manchu emperors in Lamaism sustained a special political affi nity with Tibet. The religious-political relationship between China and Tibet disappeared with the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. In 1920, a Chinese Mission to Lhasa had to wait for four and a half months for two meetings with the Dalai Lama. The mistrust for the Chinese was so deep-rooted that these meetings were preceded by a humiliatingly thorough search of the bodies of the Chinese visitors, so that they would not be able to carry secretly concealed arms or weapons. In contrast, when the British offi cer, Charles Bell, took his Mission to Lhasa in 1921, he had frequent interviews with the Dalai Lama, and experienced profound courtesy and cordiality. Tibet needed funds for modern arms and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ammunition, as also Western education, to safeguard its de facto independence. This independence was, for instance, demonstrated in 1912, when Tibetan soldiers fought and expelled Chinese soldiers from central Tibet, and, again in 1918, when Tibetan troops drove out their Chinese opponents from eastern Tibet. Above all, there

25 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 181–88; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 76–77; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 200–8. 220 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

was never any treaty sanctioning China’s overlordship in Tibet. But Tibet required money to support a well-equipped army. One consignment of arms and ammunition from Britain, received in 1914, was effectively used by the Tibetans to overpower Chinese forces in various battles during 1914–18. Tibet, however, needed much more. It wanted also to develop its mines with the help of British and Indian engineers, as this could provide them with a rich source of funds for reorganising the military at a time when Britain prevented Tibet from levying export-import duties. Adequate military strength would have enabled Lhasa to counteract potential Chinese military assaults, as also Chinese intrigues, likely to foment internal disorder in Tibet, especially those intrigues which sought to create a rift between the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lamas. British ofﬁ cials in India and Tibet, concerned with Tibet at the ﬁ eld level, were inclined to sell arms and ammunition to Lhasa, or at least permit Lhasa to procure them from other sources. But authorities in London objected. The outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914 provided more of a lame excuse than a legitimate opportunity for British authorities, especially in London, to remain indifferent to Tibet’s economic-military needs. Britain, however, was not indifferent to the pursuit of its narrow self-interest in Tibet. If it permitted other European powers a share in economic contacts with Tibet, the government in Lhasa could have enhanced its economic-military resources by the development of mines, etc. However, Britain appeared to follow a classic dog-in-the-manger policy, did little to develop Tibet’s economic-military potentials, and failed to honour the trust of Tibet, which had no option but to wait fruitlessly for Britain’s attempts to secure China’s endorsement for the 1914 Simla Convention. The march of time and circumstances rendered China’s support for the 1914 Simla Convention totally irrelevant. But Britain stuck to this irrelevance in order to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 prevent Tibet from developing economic-military-political ties with other European powers, and to monopolise shamefully the beneﬁ ts of its inﬂ uence over Tibet.26

26 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 189, 194–204; Bell, Tibet, pp. 158–59, 209–19, 257, 270; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 82–88; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 210–15. For some interesting details on the British policy towards Tibet, see Phanindra Nath Chakrabarti, Trans-Himalayan Trade: A Retrospect (1774–1914): In Quest of Tibet’s Identity, Delhi: Classics India Publication, 1990, esp. pp. 105–21. Relations with China 221

The Tibetans too were at fault. They did not assert much to convert their de facto independence into de jure independence. Nor did they carry out internal reforms essential to the sustenance of a modern economy and army, and to effectively resist Chinese tactics aggravating the discords between Tashilunhpo and Lhasa, between the Panchen and the Dalai Lamas. In 1921, Lord Curzon, the then British foreign secretary, reiterated the British policy of supporting Tibet’s autonomy under nominal Chinese suzerainty. So did Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, in 1943. Therefore, Tibet should have utilised the opportunity held out by the British in 1944 and 1945, when British offi cers negotiated with the authorities in Lhasa to rationalise the Tibet-India border mapped out at the Simla Convention. In 1914, Tibet agreed to the cession of even those areas of Tawang which lay north of the Sela Pass, where the Sela Pass stood on the watershed. In 1944 and 1945, British offi cers attempted to amend this border in favour of Tibet. True, the British did not attempt to do this for nearly three decades, until 1944 to take administrative actions in following up the Simla decisions on the ground. It is also true that Tibet resented the British decision to not allow Tibet to participate in the peace talks following the Second World War. It was, furthermore, true that Britain was preparing to grant independence to India, and, therefore, could be less concerned about Tibetan territory. Still, undoubtedly, Tibet should have grabbed the diplomatic opportunity, held out by the British in 1944/1945, to streamline the Simla dispensation, and asserted its independence. Especially so, because Britain even demonstrated such political fl exibility as to permit the fl ow of religious contributions from British-controlled territories south of the Sela Pass to the Tibetan monasteries. However, the Tibetans, partly because they did not have the requisite experience in international diplomacy, postponed the settlement of the revised

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 McMahon Line. They could have been subsequently tantalised by an August 1945 statement of the head of the nationalist government in China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, that he was prepared to consider even the enjoyment of independence by Tibet, provided Tibet could meet the requirements of economic viability. However, sometimes, British diplomatic ineptitude appeared to be worse than that of the Tibetans. In 1946, when the Tibetans were to take a Goodwill Mission to China, the British tried questionable though abortive means to delay the departure of the Tibetans, so that 222 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the Tibetans would not have to join the deliberations of China’s National Assembly. Since Britain was not interested in promoting meaningfully the independent status of Tibet, they should not have used dubious means which merely aroused misgivings in Tibetans without offering any substantial help. Eventually, after the Tibetan delegates reached China, they attended the National Assembly as observers, and avoided compliance with the Chinese Constitution describing Tibet as a province of China.27 During the Second World War the Tibetans expected the United States to come forward to lend substance to Tibet’s claims to de jure independence. At the personal request of President F.D. Roosevelt to the Dalai Lama in July 1942, two American ofﬁ cials received permission to enter into Tibet. They were members of the Ofﬁ ce of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA. The Tibetans were happy to interpret this as the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States, and a step towards the recognition of Tibet’s de jure independence. Although these two American secret service agents did not reveal their mission of exploring a route for transport of war supplies from India to China through Tibet, they warmed the hearts of the Tibetans by voicing sympathy for the cause of Tibet’s independence. They even suggested Tibet’s participation in a post-war peace conference. In February 1943, the Dalai Lama sent a message to President Roosevelt stressing that Tibet had been enjoying independence since time immemorial. This, however, could not have had much impact upon the Americans who were far less knowledgeable than the British about Tibet’s history, and could not be more assertive than Britain in safeguarding Tibet’s de facto independence. Tibet demonstrated this independence even in the matter of permitting transport of war supplies from India to China through Tibet. Permission was refused by Tibet despite pressures

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and the threat of use of force by Chiang Kai Shek because China remained non-committal about the contents of China’s suzerainty over Tibet. The Americans were more concerned about helping Chiang Kai Shek in the ﬁ ght against Japan in the Second World

27 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 203–26; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 94, 106–13, 121–22, 136–38, 406–26, 544–59; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 228–40, 247–48. Relations with China 223

War than about the Tibetans, although Chiang Kai Shek was fooling the Americans by concentrating much less on campaigns against Japan and more against Mao Tse Tung’s communist forces. Shek’s government may well have also fooled the American government with the statement that Tibet was a part of China, when in actual fact, as China deceptively added, Tibet exercised autonomy in its internal administration.28 On Tibet, in general, and the Simla Convention, in particular, the British played a game that was not ‘great’ but ‘dirty’. They had indulged in months-long substantive negotiations with the Tibetans during 1913–14 on such momentous issues as the Tibet-India border, and exclusive extraterritorial privileges for Britain over trade matters in Tibet. Authorities in New Delhi and London did not endorse these negotiations or their outcome. Volume XIV of Aitchison’s Treaties, Engagements and Sanads, published in 1929, confi rmed this lack of endorsement on the part of New Delhi and London.29 It may be argued that British reluctance to offer full support to McMahon’s efforts to achieve a strategically valuable frontier for India stemmed from the Anglo-Chinese (1906) and Anglo-Russian (1907) Conventions, which talked of China’s suzerainty over Tibet. But, from what has been already argued in this chapter (and elsewhere), this talk of undefi ned and indefi nable suzerainty of China over Tibet was entirely malafi de because it was morally wrong, politically incorrect, and historically incomprehensible. It is thus not proper to refer to the invalid Conventions of 1907/1908 to discard the validity of the 1914 Convention. Moreover, the tacit support of authorities in New Delhi and London for McMahon’s moves in Simla were evident from the fact that he was not stopped when he carried on negotiations in Simla, not for days and weeks but months. This support of McMahon could also be inferred from the facts that Britain promptly went on enjoying the benefi ts

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of the 1914 Trade Regulations, although they were late in posting a Resident in Lhasa (doing so in 1937), as also in collecting house taxes from the people residing south of the Sela Pass (in the 1940s).

28 Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 391–97; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 243–45. 29 Aitchison, Aitchison’s Treaties, Engagements and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, Volume XIV, Calcutta: Government of India, 1929. 224 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Moreover, such support was implicit in the observations on Tibet by two British foreign secretaries—Lord Curzon in 1921 and Anthony Eden in 1943. With this perspective, it was unnecessary on the part of Olaf Caroe (of India’s Foreign and Political Department) to make the ‘dirty’ British game in Tibet dirtier by fraudulently reprinting in 1938 the fourteenth volume of Aitchison’s Treaties, and endowing the Simla Convention with the offi cial stamp of support from authorities in New Delhi and London. Caroe went a step further in 1939, when, for the fi rst time, offi cial maps began to display the McMahon Line. After all, what mattered was not a publication (including a map), but the situation on the ground, and the British tenacity in using this situation for its narrow, short-term self-interest without much concern for the long-term benefi ts for Tibet. The British demonstrated this tenacity by making its ‘dirty’ game in Tibet even dirtier.30 In 1945, the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship with China. This treaty obliged China to recognise Mongolia’s independence. This was certainly in accord with the post-war anti- imperialist mood. Britain’s imperialist control over Tibet was incomparably stronger than China’s so-called suzerainty over Tibet, which smacked of imperialist motivation without real domination. Around 1945, Britain had a chance to persuade or compel China to recognise Tibet’s independence in tune with the prevalent anti- imperialist sympathies in the world. It would not have been diffi cult because Chiang Kai Shek was demonstrably weak, whereas, throughout the 1940s, Mao Tse Tung was eager to build cooperative relations with the United States. If the United States failure to extend due recognition to Mao’s overtures was unfortunate, equally so was the British failure to utilise these overtures towards building an Anglo-American initiative for securing an independent status for Tibet. Apparently, Britain was reluctant to defend the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 anti-imperialist cause, and sustain Tibet’s claim to independence. Britain made a virtue of its unpardonably selﬁ sh reluctance, and cunningly satisﬁ ed its conscience with the convenient belief that it had no strength to resist the Chinese onslaught on Tibet, and that

30 Grunfeld, Modern Tibet, pp. 64–66; Gupta, The Statesman, 21 October 1978. Relations with China 225

any British move to assist Tibet in asserting its independence would provoke China to commence its onslaught.31

Developments during 1945–50 During the period from the end of the Second World War to the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, all the four countries—India, Britain, the United States, and Tibet—made complementary errors leading to the complete loss of Tibetan independence. At the non- offi cial Asian Relations Conference of March-April 1947, held in New Delhi even before India attained formal independence, India extended representation to Tibet as a separate and independent country, disregarding protests by Chiang Kai Shek’s government against such representation. Tibetan representatives, too, refused to yield to Shek’s offer of ill-camoufl aged bribes for cancelling this representation. Tibet, as an equal with China, fl ew its national fl ag on a separate conference table.32 However, before or after the Asian Relations Conference of 1947, India, Tibet, Britain, and the United States failed to chalk out a unifi ed or symbiotic policy that could safeguard Tibet’s independence. Britain continued to talk of Tibet’s autonomy, but did not want to say or do anything to provoke China to transform by force its suzerainty over Tibet into sovereignty. Some American offi cials thought that, in view of the impending communist takeover of China, an independent Tibet should be provided with full support and converted into a bulwark against communism. However, this viewpoint could not override the traditional offi cial American view (rooted in patent ignorance of Tibet’s history) that China possessed de jure sovereignty over Tibet (or suzerainty, as Americans misperceived it) in spite of America’s knowledge and admission of China’s failure to exercise de facto sovereignty over Tibet. Britain and the United States, however, supplied an insignifi cant quantity of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 arms and a few radio transmitters to Tibet via India, which deviated from their fundamental policy of causing no offence to China. In view of the post-1945 Cold War turning into a hot war in Korea,

31 Grunfeld, Modern Tibet, pp. 99–100; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 246–48. 32 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 226–31; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 561–63; Smith, Tibetan Nation, p. 255. 226 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

these supplies to Tibet, however negligible the quantity, could not but provoke China.33 India wanted to acquire Britain’s rights in Tibet, especially those accruing from the 1914 Simla Convention. The best way to do so was to recognise Tibet’s independence, and sanctify the Simla Convention. However, the Indian policy was self-contradictory: grab the benefi ts of the 1914 Simla Convention, but reject the concept of Tibet’s independence. A similar contradiction permeated Tibet’s policy too. Tibet wanted the badge of independence, but repudiated the Simla Convention which offered this badge. Tibet wanted to regain those territories which it had lost to India (under Britain) in course of the past century and a half. India wanted to collaborate with China in exercising leadership in Asia with anti-imperialism as a banner. Paradoxically, therefore, India was prepared to acquiesce to Chinese imperial rule over Tibet, and sustain its imagined collaboration with China. One can only wonder whether India would have avoided such acquiescence if Tibet had honoured independent India’s fi rst diplomatic communication, ratifi ed the Simla Convention, and thereby confi rmed its status as an independent country.34 The Government of Tibet tried to acquire some symbols of a sovereign independent country by, for example, issuing passports to members of its trade mission visiting India during 1947–48. But Tibetans lacked appropriate management skills to conduct diplomacy in the complex post-Second World War world. They even forgot that time was precious. Reaching India (Kalimpong) in November 1947, they reached New Delhi as late as January 1948. They also failed to anticipate that India might decline to talk about trade till it was recognised by Tibet as the successor of British India, inheriting the treaties, rights, and obligations of British India. This failure became all the more glaring in June 1948, when Tibet fi nally

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 extended this recognition to India. Meanwhile, Tibet committed a few more acts of misjudgement. Despite the refusal of India to discuss trade in January 1948, members of the Tibetan Trade

33 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 250–51; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 257–63; Grunfeld, Modern Tibet, pp. 77, 84–88. 34 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 237–39, 247; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 564–74. Relations with China 227

Mission wasted time by prolonging their stay in India by nearly eight weeks. Then they committed a real blunder. They left for China with Chinese passports in their possession. True, British and American ofﬁ cials were short-sighted (if not dirty) in insisting that the Tibetan Trade Mission could visit Britain and America only after they went to China, and applied for visas to British and American diplomatic establishments in China. Arguably, with the beneﬁ t of hindsight, this was a safe time for the Tibetans to pause, ascertain the real extent of international support for Tibet’s independence, and ponder over an appropriate diplomatic strategy that would prompt China to minimise atrocities in the course of an invasion and occupation of Tibet. However, the Tibetans did not possess such diplomatic maturity. Hence, while in China in 1948, the Tibetan Trade Mission got entrapped in the requirement that Americans would provide entry visas only after the Chinese government had stamped the exit visa on the same passport. The Tibetans did not want to use Chinese passports for American visas. They deceived the Chinese saying they would return to India via Hong Kong, and received the Chinese exit visas. In Hong Kong, the British secretly (and mischievously) helped the Tibetans by recording the entry visas on Tibetan passports. This enabled the Tibetan Trade Mission to visit Britain and the United States with Tibetan passports. But they failed to elicit any clear assurance of support for Tibetan independence from these two great powers—US and Britain hesitated to offend China—and instead, devoid of power and tact, aroused China’s hostility by their visits to Britain and America.35 Returning to India in January 1949, the Tibetan Trade Mission had some fruitful negotiations with the Indians, which indicated that the Indians valued the friendship between the people of India and the people of Tibet. India was in favour of a separate country and government for Tibet. This was apparent from India’s willingness to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 send Indian experts to Tibet for a survey of Tibet’s mineral resources as also for providing advice on the establishment of cottage and small-scale industries. In May 1949, following a dispute between India and Tibet on Tibet’s priorities for purchase, India agreed to release hard currency worth US$250,000 for Tibet, so that Tibet

35 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 245–52; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 570–605; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 257–61. 228 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

could purchase American gold as back-up for its paper currency. In July 1949, Tibet expelled all the Chinese working not only in the Chinese Mission but also in hospitals and schools. India complied with Tibet’s request to freeze the bank accounts of the Chinese in India. That the Government of Tibet was the best judge of its interests is what India was thinking at the time. In addition to all these developments in 1949, India sold a small quantity of arms and ammunition to Tibet during 1947–48. It can be concluded that by mid-1949 India recognised Tibet to be (in Claude Arpi’s words) ‘a more or less independent country’. However, the Indian leaders did not seem to have the will and/or foresight to recognise that in order to defend India’s vital territorial interests India should have pressed for international recognition of Tibet’s independent status. In June 1948, when Tibet explicitly recognised India as the successor state of British India, Tibet also gave up implicitly its claims to certain territories that were under direct or indirect control of British India. If Tibet was to come under Chinese occupation, China could stake its claims to such former Tibetan territories as NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh).36 Probably, India did not view China as a potential enemy. The Indian prime minister (who was also the external affairs minister) seemed to be under the spell of his 1927 paper on India’s foreign policy, which was prepared for the Indian National Congress. For, on 22 March 1949, echoing the 1927 paper, the Indian prime minister observed (oblivious of even the continuing conﬂ ict with Pakistan) that there was no country in the world with which India had hostile relations. If this was unrealistic, no less so was his comment, recorded in a letter to one of his Cabinet colleagues on 10 September 1949, that he was not afraid of the prospect of China’s presence at the Indian border as a result of a likely and successful Chinese invasion of Tibet. India’s leaders were probably dreaming of cordial relations

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 with China. But all available evidence in September-October 1949 pointed to serious (if not intractable) difﬁ culties in fulﬁ lling this dream. For, the Chinese rulers not only proclaimed their intention to liberate Tibet, but also India, in pursuit of their goal of a socialist world. The Chinese rulers described Nehru as an imperialist hireling

36 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 240–44, 253–54; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 605–6. Relations with China 229

(comparable to Chiang Kai Shek), and proposed to use the services of the Communist Party of India to free India from imperialist clutches. Soon after the birth of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949, India extended formal recognition to China, but did not, as the successor to British India, take this opportunity to highlight the status of Tibet as an independent or quasi-independent country. In August 1950, the Chinese rulers informed the Indian ambassador to China that liberation (occupation) of Tibet by China was a sacred task. From June 1948, when Tibet recognised India to be a successor of British India, to August 1950, there was ample time to enlist British and American support to equip and train a powerful Tibetan army that could pre-empt or counteract any potential Chinese assault. India did not have the intention or capacity to stage a direct military intervention in Tibet. But it could facilitate an adequate fl ow of Anglo-American military support to Tibet. After all, India’s vital interests would be threatened by a takeover of Tibet by China. However, India’s unrealistic detachment discouraged Britain and America from initiating effective steps to safeguard Tibet’s territorial integrity. India was not even prepared to support Tibet’s plea for admission to the UN, lest this provoked China to expedite the invasion of Tibet. While all this signifi ed India’s readiness to succumb to China’s imperialist adventure in Tibet, India cherished the strange ambition to lead the anti-imperialist struggle in Asia. In 1949, New Delhi organised a conference that opposed Dutch imperialism in Indonesia. But Tibet was expendable. Signifi cantly, China treated the 1949 conference on Indonesia, held in New Delhi, as another example of Nehru acting as a lackey of Anglo-American imperialism.37 On 31 December 1949, India extended diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China. On 1 January 1950, China announced that the liberation of Tibet was an urgent task. Actually,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 towards the end of 1949, eastern Tibet began to suffer from incursions by the Chinese Army, although there was no full-ﬂ edged invasion. On 2 January 1950, when Mao Tse Tung was in Moscow, he asked Deng Xiaoping to assume all responsibility of preparations for an attack upon Tibet. On 10 January 1950, Mao instructed

37 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 256–63, 268–88; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 619–37; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 265–70. 230 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Deng to expedite preparations for this attack. On 22 January 1950, while Mao was still in Moscow, he appealed to Joseph Stalin for help in transporting provisions by air to the Chinese soldiers poised for an assault upon Tibet. Simultaneously, China scheduled negotiations with Tibet for the spring of 1950. For this purpose, Tibetan delegates arrived in India on 6 March. Then began some sordid moves by India and Britain, which revealed their moral and political bankruptcy. They did not show any respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Tibetans. While Britain could rightly expect that India would have to take care of its vital political interests vis-à-vis Tibet and China, India exhibited a squalid amalgam of vague ambitions, impotent desires, and mean obstructionism. Article V of the Simla Convention prohibited Tibet and China from entering into any negotiations or agreements about Tibet with each other or with any other power, excepting those between Tibet and Great Britain. And India was the successor state of British India. Moreover, India wanted to be a party to any new treaty between Tibet and China. At least, it wanted to be consulted. Negotiations between China and Tibet, as India desired, were to have taken place in New Delhi. However, India did not take the initiative towards fulﬁ lling these desires. Any such initiative would have smacked of an attempt by India to exercise domination over Tibet and China and Prime Minister Nehru did not want India to be stigmatised in this fashion. China suggested Hong Kong as the venue of negotiations with Tibet. But Britain and India adopted reprehensible means to obstruct the visit of the Tibetan delegates to Hong Kong. The British insensitively debated over whether to provide ordinary or diplomatic visas to the Tibetans, and whether the visas should be stamped on Tibetan passports or some other travel documents. Moreover, the Indian diplomats conveyed to the British diplomats the impression that the Indians would be happy Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 if the Tibetans failed to obtain British visas for Hong Kong. Subsequently, India revised its views, and decided not to obstruct the journey of the Tibetans to Hong Kong. On 4 June 1950, the Tibetans went to the airport with tickets for Hong Kong, but they were not allowed to board the plane. For, meanwhile, the British, not quite responsibly, decided that New Delhi, rather than Hong Kong, should be the venue of the China–Tibet negotiations, especially since Britain did not extend diplomatic recognition to Relations with China 231

Communist China, whereas the arrival of the Chinese ambassador to India was imminent.38 The Tibetans then prepared for a meeting with the new Chinese ambassador to India, who was to reach New Delhi in early September. On 5 September 1950, the Tibetans received information from the Ministry of External Affairs that the Indian ambassador to China had been instructed to protest against the movement of about 20,000 Chinese troops into eastern Tibet. On 16 September, Yuan Chung Hsien, the new Chinese ambassador to India, met the Tibetans and warned them that war was inevitable, unless Tibet accepted the three following points. One, Tibet was a part of China. Two, China would handle the defence of Tibet. Three, China was to conduct Tibet’s trade and political relations with foreign countries. It was evidently impossible for Tibet to accept these three points, negating centuries of Tibetan experience and especially its political status since 1912. The Tibetan National Assembly, therefore, sent messages asking Tibetan representatives in India to delay negotiations with the plea that they had to wait for instructions from Lhasa. Procrastination did not help. China launched a full-scale invasion of Tibet on 5 October, and destroyed in two weeks the Tibetan Army, which was deﬁ cient in manpower, equipment, as also training in modern warfare. Meanwhile, during June–October 1950, the Tibetans held talks with the British, the Americans, and the Indians, including two meetings with the Indian prime minister, on how to resist a probable Chinese invasion. The British harped on their past interests in, and responsibilities for, Tibet devolving to India. They argued that they were not in a position to supply troops to Tibet, assuring, however, that Tibet required arms rather than troops from other countries, especially because they could use their terrain to wage a guerrilla war against China. Moreover, Britain would not do anything to violate Indian concerns on this matter. The Americans were ready

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to supply arms, but they needed India’s help to transport them to Tibet on mules. The Tibetans suggested airlifting the arms from both wings (East and West) of Pakistan to airports to be prepared in Tibet, but received no encouragement. India provided to Tibet a small quantity of arms and ammunition in 1950, although it asked

38 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 290–99; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 638, 645–57; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 271–73. 232 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the Tibetans not to press for such supplies which would provoke China. India was not ready to facilitate the passage of Western arms through India to Tibet because India did not want to help Tibet militarily against China. The Tibetan argument that in the event of Chinese occupation of Tibet India would have to deploy hundreds of thousands of soldiers along the border (where in 1950 it could make do with only 75 soldiers for the protection of trade marts in Tibet) could not sway India. India gave priority to its imagined to-be- good relations with China. Following the all-out Chinese attack on Tibet in October 1950, India advised America not to say or do anything about Tibet that might be perceived by China as a conspiracy by the great powers, and which also could inﬂ uence the Chinese view of India. In short, India proposed to surrender abjectly to China’s imperialist intrigue in Tibet. India’s non-alignment was alignment with China for crushing Tibet. As to America (and other Western powers), they intervened militarily to defend South Korea (which was attacked by North Korea on 25 June 1950), but not Tibet.39 It is incredible how Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru became a prisoner of illogical thoughts and wild imagination when he forged his China policy, and allowed Tibet to vanish from his consciousness, thereby violating all canons of ethics and realism. He pursued a mythical ‘world policy’ for India, which was to build friendly relations between India and China, between China and other countries, prevent a world war, and preserve world peace. Through his ambassador to China, K.M. Panikkar, he offered ‘friendly and disinterested advice’ to China who did not at all care for it, and instead interpreted it as a part of imperialist conspiracy against Tibet and China. In his cable to Panikkar on 19 October 1950, Nehru made it very clear that in offering unsolicited advice to China he had not bothered about Tibet’s status and its relations with China. He worried about the impact of the Chinese military

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 invasion into Tibet (which began nearly two weeks earlier) upon the UN. Nehru descended into the nadir of cynicism and ignorance as he told Panikkar that China ought to learn from India’s policy towards Goa and Pondicherry; India preferred to wait for an opportune time to take over these two territories, so as to minimise international

39 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 299–303; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 660–704; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 275–79. Relations with China 233

repercussions. According to Nehru, China should similarly have waited to take over Tibet at a later date, so that the UN would not be alienated. A number of Indians look upon Nehru as a great historian and philosopher. They may revise their views once they study the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, and come across his shameless attempt to equate the status of Goa and Pondicherry vis-à-vis India to that of Tibet vis-à-vis China.40 Tibet wanted to appeal to the UN for help against Chinese aggression, especially at a time when the UN had come to the rescue of South Korea, a victim of aggression by North Korea. India discouraged Tibet from appealing to the UN, as such an appeal would provoke China. When Indian dissuasion did not work, and Tibet prepared itself to appeal to the UN against China, India afﬁ rmed that its support for the Tibetan appeal would be based on China’s failure to continue peaceful negotiations, and the use of force by China. India thus proved itself to be thoroughly unworthy of the rights and obligations under the Simla Convention, although, as already stated in this writing, India had not hesitated to expect from Tibet a formal recognition of this inheritance of 1914. It was a sad reﬂ ection of an unredeemed ethical and political failure of India and the Western world that the Tibetan appeal, reaching the UN on 13 November 1950, could have only one supporter, viz. El Salvador. The Tibetan appeal gave an excellent review of China–Tibet relations before and after 1911. It is important to quote a few portions of this memorable appeal. According to it, ‘the Chinese revolution in 1911 which dethroned the last Manchurian emperor snapped the last of the sentimental and religious bonds that Tibet had with China’.

[Tibet] continued to maintain neighbourly goodwill and friendship with the people of China but never acceded to the Chinese claim of suzerainty in 1914. It was British persuasion which led Tibet to sign a treaty which superimposed on her the nominal (non-interfering)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 suzerainty of China and by which the Chinese were accorded the right to maintain a mission in Lhasa though they were strictly forbidden to needle in the internal affairs of Tibet. Apart from that fact even the nominal suzerainty which Tibet conceded to China is not enforceable because of the non-signature of the treaty of 1914

40 Arun Shourie, Are We Deceiving Ourselves Again? New Delhi: ASA/Rupa, 2008, pp. 31–34. 234 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

by the Chinese. It will be seen that Tibet maintained independent relations with other neighbouring countries like India and Nepal. Furthermore, despite friendly British overtures, she did not compromise her position by throwing in her forces in World War II on the side of China. Thus she asserted and maintained her complete independence.

The Chinese invasion of Tibet was ‘largely the outcome of un- thwarted Chinese ambition to bring weaker nations in her periphery within her active domination’. The Tibetan appeal to the UN contained a number of terse observations. For example: ‘The Problem is simple. The Chinese claim Tibet as part of China. Tibetans feel that, racially, culturally, and geographically, they are far apart from the Chinese.’ Perhaps the most poignant observation was recorded at the beginning of the appeal: ‘The attention of the world is riveted on Korea where aggression is being resisted by an international force. Similar happenings in remote Tibet are passing without notice.’41 The British Foreign Offi ce deliberated on what stand to take on the status of Tibet at the UN at the time of consideration of Tibet’s appeal. Legal experts of the British Foreign Offi ce concluded that there was no bar to the recognition of Tibet’s separate ‘own international identity’ because of the thoroughly ‘amorphous and symbolic’ character of China’s suzerainty over Tibet. Nevertheless, the British Foreign Offi ce preferred to rely on India’s initiative because India’s interests were preponderant on this matter. The British delegation to the UN did not agree with the British Foreign Offi ce on Tibet’s international status. Consequently, the British Foreign Offi ce shifted its attention to acquiring a clear view of India’s response to the Tibetan appeal to the UN.42 The conduct of India’s foreign policy on the issue of China’s aggression upon Tibet not only suffered from moral and political

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 insensitivities, it was simply shabby and totally humiliating to a great country like India and its people. This will be clear from a study of

41 Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 707–14. Also see, Arpi, Fate of Tibet, 330–34. 42 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 336–37; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 714–19. Relations with China 235

three communications from India to China on 21 and 31 October 1950, and the notes from China to India on 30 October and 16 November. India claimed that it was trying to offer to China ‘friendly and disinterested’ advice or what was ‘well meant advice by a friendly government’. Diplomatic exchanges between the two countries, argued India, led India to believe that China would resolve the Tibetan issue by peaceful means so as to reconcile Tibet’s autonomy with China’s suzerainty. Chinese military action in Tibet, therefore, was ‘surprising and regrettable’ according to the Indian note of 26 October. But this was far from surprising because in the past China had repeatedly announced its intention to liberate Tibet, although it was only as late as 25 October that China publicly admitted that the Chinese troops had entered Tibet. What was really surprising was that the Indian note of 16 October did not refer to the 1914 Simla accord, and did not question the right of China to invade Tibet because the matter of Tibet was within China’s ‘own sphere’. What was even more surprising was that the major emphasis of India’s 21 October note was on China’s admission to the UN, on how actively concerned India was about it, and on how China’s military action in Tibet could adversely affect China’s entry into the UN. One of the most preposterous statements in the Indian note of 16 October was that opponents of China’s entry into the UN could use China’s military action in Tibet to ‘misrepresent China’s peaceful aims’. Was there any magic to represent China’s invasion of Tibet as peaceful? When the Chinese note of 28 October denounced the Indian viewpoint as ‘deplorable’ because it was ‘affected by foreign inﬂ uences hostile to China in Tibet’, Indian diplomats gave a stellar performance. They responded saying that although India did not seek any ‘novel or privileged position’ in Tibet, India enjoyed some rights born of ‘usage and agreements’. The Indian note (in response to the Chinese note of 28 October)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 catalogued India’s rights in Tibet, for example, a mission in Lhasa, trade agencies in Gyantse and Yatung, post and telegraph ofﬁ ces along the trade route, and a ‘small military escort’ at Gyantse for protection of this trade route. India claimed that these rights, mutually advantageous to India and Tibet, were not incompatible with China’s suzerain rights in Tibet. The Indian diplomatic establishment must have suffered from a severe lapse of memory, for such claims were absurd in view of India’s aide memoir to China, 236 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

dated 26 August 1950, which recognised Tibetan autonomy to be ‘within the confi nes of Chinese sovereignty’, and not suzerainty!43 The Indian diplomatic establishment got busy with inventing an alibi for inaction on Tibet’s appeal to the UN. Its profi ciency in this business was indeed stunning, because it applied queer logic (or perverse imagination) to interpret the Chinese note of 16 November in such a way as to give China the benefi t of doubt on two vital points. India imagined that China was not opposed to (a) India’s commercial rights in Tibet, and (b) peaceful negotiations for resolving the Tibetan issue. There were supplementary alibis for inaction too. One, India should not say or do anything to harm India–China relations. Two, any condemnation of the Chinese action in Tibet could cause a lot of damage by worsening the situation. Three, the entire diplomatic establishment of India, including the prime minister and the Indian ambassador to China, was much more concerned about Korea than about Tibet because the Indian prime minister was eager to play the part of a mediator in Korea. Thus, if China (and the Soviet Union) were to be appeased, for the advancement of India’s mediatorial aspirations in Korea, Tibet could be sacrifi ced.44 Four, India was anxious to disprove a non- fact, that is the Chinese charge that the Indian policy on Tibet was infl uenced by the Western powers, which were resorting to intrigues in Tibet for self-aggrandisement. The world community behaved in the most shameless manner in dealing with Tibet’s appeal. No great power would sponsor the appeal on the convenient plea that the most concerned and interested country, India, was not ready to sponsor it. A small country, El Salvador, became the sponsor, but faced heinous obstructionism from the UN Secretariat. El Salvador proposed that the General Assembly should condemn the unprovoked aggression by China upon Tibet, and that the General Assembly should appoint a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 committee to explore ‘appropriate measures’ to be adopted by itself. However, the UN bureaucracy helped the aggressors in Tibet by delaying action, and insisting that the Tibetan problem should

43 Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 719–26. Also, Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 321–29. 44 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, 338–39, 342–43; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, 726–29. Relations with China 237

fi rst be placed before the General Committee for a decision on whether the problem should be referred to the General Assembly. Moreover, the UN Secretariat even ignored El Salvador’s legitimate request for circulation of the copies of the Tibetan appeal among delegates to the General Assembly. At the time of the debate on 24 November 1950, Britain and India played a part that can only be characterised as reprehensible because it lacked the minimum of ethical and political foundation. The British representative violated the instructions of his Foreign Offi ce when he refrained from deploring the unprovoked use of force by China in Tibet. He seemed to distort Anglo-Tibetan relations as well as Tibet’s history when he complained of a lack of knowledge about events in Tibet, as also of a lack of clarity about Tibet’s legal status. He advocated what was avidly reaffi rmed by India—the postponement of any decision on Tibet’s appeal to the UN. The Indian delegate pointed out that his country had the closest connection with Tibetan affairs, which was true. He then argued that the UN could contribute to a peaceful settlement of the Tibetan issue by avoiding a discussion on Tibet’s appeal, which was untrue and strange. Other countries like Australia and the United States practised unholy opportunism when they stood by what India—the country with the maximum of interests in Tibet—argued, and supported the exclusion of Tibet’s appeal from the General Assembly agenda. Despite valiant efforts by El Salvador in an unjust world, Tibet’s appeal to the UN remained still-born.45 As the Korean War dragged on and the UN forces (mostly United States) marched into North Korea, China intervened on 14 October. China thus demonstrated the will to take military action in Korea, as also in Tibet simultaneously, while the Western powers did not. The United States was ready to help Tibet militarily, but only in collaboration with India because of obvious geographical and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 historical circumstances. It was indeed awkward that the Western powers could move the UN to take diplomatic action against the Dutch colonial rulers in Indonesia, and military action against North Korea, but refused even to consider Tibet’s appeal to the UN. Evidently, the crucial factor behind Western inaction on Tibet was

45 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 340, 343–44; Goldstein, History of Modern Tibet, pp. 726–36. 238 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the Indian decision to virtually foreclose diplomatic as well as military options. Promotion of friendly relations with China was an important reason behind this Indian decision. But the reasoning was faulty. First, as the unanswered letter of 7 November 1950 from Sardar Patel to Jawaharlal Nehru argued, the exchange of notes between India and China indicated clearly that the Indians regarded themselves as friends of China, but the Chinese did not look upon Indians as their friends. Second, in 1962, while India had to take Western assistance to counteract China’s military moves against India, in 1950, Indian collaboration with Western powers for military action against China in Tibet would have perhaps been far more defensible morally and politically, and much more feasible militarily. This point is worth a serious consideration by academics and diplomats.46 Independent India’s foreign policy makers appeared to specialise in committing blunders. The ﬁ rst major blunder was to permit Pakistan to snatch about one third of Jammu and Kashmir. The persons mainly responsible for this debacle were Jawaharlal Nehru and Lord Mountbatten. The second major blunder of India’s foreign policy makers was to make a gift of Tibet to China. Jawaharlal Nehru and K.M. Panikkar were the principal personalities responsible for this debacle. Both had a talent for making statements and taking positions that were immature, self-contradictory, and/or illogical, but also endangered India’s vital interests. On 22 November 1948, when Panikkar was the ambassador to nationalist China, he prepared a conﬁ dential note in which he stressed that India should recognise Tibet’s independence, and thereby safeguard its national interests. He was right because if Tibet passed under China’s sovereignty, China could lay claim to large chunks of Indian territories, which had been taken over from Tibet by British India. On 26 August 1950, Panikkar (still the Indian ambassador to China) sent an aide memoir to the Chinese government, which converted Chinese suzerainty over

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Tibet into sovereignty. He developed such a deep devotion towards the Chinese rulers that he did not bother to consult his boss in the external affairs ministry, Secretary General G.S. Bajpai, on such important matters. As late as 1 November 1950, despite Panikkar’s reluctance, a Government of India note tried to rectify the conversion of suzerainty into sovereignty. But China did not bother about this

46 Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 347–52; Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 278, 289–90, 292. Relations with China 239

rectifi cation, tracing the same to foreign infl uences hostile to China. Panikkar exercised an uncanny infl uence over Nehru. However, in a telegram on 25 October 1950, even Nehru complained that Panikkar’s response to China’s military advance into Tibet was ‘weak and apologetic’, and that it was ‘embarrassing’ for Nehru to receive information on this from the British high commissioner, but not from Panikkar.47 As to Ambassador Panikkar’s mentor Prime Minister Nehru, one is simply amazed by his views while reviewing his speeches in Parliament and telegrams to Panikkar. In the piece on India–Pakistan relations in this study, Nehru’s preference for non-violence and scrapping the army are noted, even though his ideas (or illusions) were shattered by the Pakistani invasion of J&K. A person prone to such illusions could easily have misread the mindsets of the rulers in Communist China. The Chinese did not come to power by non-violence, and they must have been amused by Nehru’s faith in China’s willingness to resolve the Tibetan issue through peaceful negotiations, even after China initiated military measures. Nehru suffered from the delusion that China would be ready to cooperate with India in preserving peace in Asia, whereas China never even pretended to express such readiness. Nehru was always anxious to avoid saying or doing anything to embarrass/upset/provoke China, and thus spoil China’s friendship with India, as also aggravate Tibet’s sufferings. Nehru persisted with this attitude even after he realised that the Chinese did not trust him, and that India could not save Tibet in this fashion. The Chinese called Nehru an agent of Anglo- American imperialism. Nehru, always aspiring to save people from imperialist oppression, reconciled himself to the situation in which China would control the whole of Tibet, and deprive Tibet of that ‘autonomy, verging on independence’ which she had enjoyed for, at the very least, about four decades prior to the Chinese invasion of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1950. In December 1950, J.B. Kripalani told the Indian Parliament that it was ‘ridiculous’ for India to sponsor China’s case in the UN at a time when the Chinese soldiers were advancing in Tibet to suppress Tibet’s freedom. In the Indian Parliament, Professor Ranga warned

47 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, p. 107. Also, Arpi, Fate of Tibet, pp. 359–72. It is signiﬁ cant that S. Gopal omits some important portions of the telegram from Nehru to Panikkar, whereas Arpi does not. 240 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

against Chinese military action saying that if China could cause an ‘avalanche’ of troops into Korea, it could well do the same to ‘India too under the same pressure of ideological and imperialistic urges’. However, Nehru chose to fl oat in the confusions of his own mind. He affi rmed in the Indian Parliament on 6 December 1950 that China would ‘very much like to settle the question peacefully but they were, in any event, going to liberate Tibet’. At the same time, Nehru wondered: ‘From whom they were going to liberate Tibet is, however, not quite clear.’ To dispassionate observers, however, it was clear that Nehru was not acting as a statesman when he assigned a higher priority to China’s representation in the UN than to Tibet’s freedom, and a far greater importance to such debatably ‘larger’ issues as Korea than India’s security and territorial integrity. There could not be any justifi cation of pursuing the mirage of friendship with China, whatever the expense.48

Towards the 1954 India–China Agreement Indian diplomacy vis-à-vis China continued to display a sort of lack of logic and maturity. For instance, in Parliament on 20 November 1950, Nehru said:

The frontier from Bhutan eastwards has been clearly deﬁ ned by the McMahon line which was ﬁ xed by the Simla Convention of 1914…. Our maps show that the McMahon line is our boundary and that is our boundary—map or no map.

Meanwhile, India had virtually derecognised Tibetan independence and the Simla Convention in quest of a policy of friendship with China, which amounted to placating China and sacriﬁ cing Tibet. Moreover, this statement of Nehru implied that the McMahon Line was clearly delineated. Actually, it was not. If, again, Nehru was not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 averse to sharing Panikkar’s notions about India’s commercial rights in Tibet (derived from the Simla Convention) as extraterritorial and as a hangover from the era of British imperialism, India should have withdrawn its soldiers from Gyantse and Yatung soon after. India, even at the UN, publicly and openly acquiesced in the Chinese

48 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 2, pp. 105–9. Also, Arpi, Fate of Tibet, 353–58, 374–82, 387–90. Relations with China 241

invasion of Tibet. However, India did not take this logical step. Consequently, in July-August 1952, squabbles erupted between India and China since India wanted to replace its troops at Gyantse and Yatung because the Chinese had forcibly taken away the wireless set belonging to the Indian trade agent at Gartok, and had insisted that they would not permit India’s Political Ofﬁ cer to visit Lhasa unless he procured a Chinese visa. India failed to preserve that spirit of friendship with China for the sake of which India had overlooked the invasion of Tibet by China.49 On the vital matter of India’s territorial integrity focussed on the border with China, Panikkar preferred make-believe to reality. He continued to mislead Nehru, and India failed even to talk to China in a forthright fashion in 1952–53. In his conversations with the Chinese foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, Panikkar repeatedly failed to bring up the frontier issue, despite the fact that in one such conversation Zhou Enlai talked ominously about the ‘stabilisation of the Tibetan frontier’. The Chinese foreign minister concentrated on such innocuous matters as trade and cultural relations, whereas Panikkar even violated Nehru’s instructions when he did not discuss the frontier issue with Zhou. Panikkar himself subscribed to, and succeeded in infecting Nehru with, the illusion that Zhou was aware of India’s position on the frontier, and, therefore, Zhou’s disinclination to discuss the subject indicated his acquiescence in the Indian position. Even illiterate adolescents would have shied away from such logic, but the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru (widely rated as a great intellectual), could submit to this weird Panikkarian logic. Without (hopefully) being aware of this logic, Zhou and Mao occasionally threw some crumbs of placatory sentences at India—for example, about there being no difference of views or territorial dispute between India and China, and about the two countries having nothing to fear from 50

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 each other—and sustained Panikkar’s logic. Such lack of pragmatism in India’s decision makers was all the more inexcusable because of two developments in May 1951 and January 1952. In May 1951, China exercised its unique capacity to

49 B.N. Mullik, My Years with Nehru: The Chinese Betrayal, New Delhi: Allied, 1971b, pp. 147–50. Also, Arpi, Fate of Tibet, p. 354; Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 2, p. 176–77. 50 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, pp. 177–79. 242 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

shroud by propaganda the use of plain coercion upon Tibet, compel Tibet’s representatives in Beijing to submit to the Seventeen Point Agreement with China, and parade it as an example of the process of peaceful liberation of Tibet. The drafting of this agreement was such that it failed to suppress the truth that Tibet and China were separate states. The agreement was self-contradictory. It promised not to alter the political-religious system of Tibet, whereas it placed Tibet under a ‘Military Area Headquarters’ and a ‘Military and Administrative committee’. Immediately after the conclusion of the Seventeen Point Agreement, Beijing Radio announced, signiﬁ cantly, that ‘Tibet agreed to allow China to station troops on the frontiers of Burma, Pakistan and India.’ India thus suffered from the demolition of the age-old defensive barrier of the Himalayas. Tibet ceased to exist as a buffer zone between India and China. In the perspective of the fate of their appeal to the UN, Lhasa authorities failed to reject formally the Seventeen Point Agreement, ignoring deceptive incitement by the United States. In January 1952, China made an attempt to ‘liberate’ (conquer) another neighbouring country. Its agents in the Communist Party of Nepal, strengthened by inﬁ ltrators from Tibet, tried to capture power. They failed.51 Despite the aforementioned moves by China and other reports of Chinese troop movements in the Ladakh region which were ominous, to say the least, Nehru insisted (on 3 November 1951 and 28 February 1952) that there were no Chinese troops in Tibet, that India faced no border trouble, and that it was not necessary to demarcate India–China (Tibet) boundaries. Former defence secretary of India, P.V.R. Rao points out the following:

[Nehru] was not prepared mentally to face unpleasant realities. His idealism so blunted his sense of history that he refused to make adequate allowances for human and national ambitions. He could not accept that countries like China and Indonesia, which had, for over a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 century, suffered degradation and humiliation at the hands of the Western Imperialists, thanks to their own inability to unite, would, within a short time, develop imperialist ambitions themselves.52

51 Smith, Tibetan Nation, pp. 294–319. Also, B.K. Desai, ‘Sino-Indian Relations’, in V.B. Karnik (ed.), Chinese Invasion: Background and Sequel, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1966, pp. 113–15; P.V.R. Rao, Defence Without Drift, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1970, p. 8. 52 Rao, Defence Without Drift, pp. 8–11. Relations with China 243

The mystery about Nehru’s decision making on China, however, deepens when one consults a former intelligence chief of India, B.N. Mullik, to whom Nehru conﬁ ded the following:

… all through history China had been an aggressive country. Now it had acquired an aggressive political philosophy and was being governed by very aggressive leaders who had waged an unceasing war during the previous twenty years and had ultimately succeeded in establishing their hegemony over a vast country of 650 million people. China did not believe in treating other countries on equal terms. Therefore, as soon as she succeeded in achieving a certain amount of economic and political stability, she would try to extend her infl uence and leadership, if not political suzerainty, over Asia. In this struggle for supremacy in Asia, her biggest obstacle would be India…. Indian and Chinese cultures had been contesting for supremacy for hundreds of years in Central Asia, Tibet, Burma and the countries of South-East Asia. In these areas, where the Indian infl uence had been supreme during the time of the Hindu and the Buddhist rulers, the Chinese extended their infl uence and began injecting Chinese culture when India became weak and came under Muslim rulers who were not interested in extending Indian culture. In the absence of any support from the mother country, Indian culture withered, making way for Chinese culture which was then backed by a mighty empire. But this unseen war was not over and would go on for a long time and no one could foretell what would be the fi nal outcome…. China was a part of the International Communist World but communism or internationalism for the Chinese was only a cloak for furthering their own national interest…. To that extent, the Chinese, as soon as they were in a position to do so, might even give largescale assistance to the Communist Party of India and thereby try to build up a strong Chinese lobby in the country supporting China in any dispute with China.53

In view of Nehru’s realistic assessment of China, as noted in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 previous paragraph, it may not be entirely proper to argue, as P.V.R. Rao does, that on China policy, ‘Nehru’s idealism clouded his sense of historical perspective and induced him to gamble with the country’s security’. It may be proper to suggest that Panikkar

53 B.N. Mullik, My Years With Nehru 1948–64, Bombay: Allied, 1972, pp. 78–79. Also, Neville Maxwell, India’s China War, Bombay: Jaico, 1971, p. 76. 244 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

wielded such an uncanny infl uence upon Nehru that Nehru (and the entire Ministry of External Affairs) became victim to the confusion created by Panikkar, and Indian delegates received the most unrealistic and self-contradictory guidelines before they set out for Beijing to attend a conference beginning on 31 December 1953, the initiative for which (it should be stressed) came from China in July 1952. India should have persuaded China to agree that the agreement, born of this conference, settled all the outstanding issues between India and China. Yet, the Indian negotiators were to restrict themselves to talks on trade and cultural interaction. The Indian delegates were asked not to raise the border question or express any doubts related to the issue. In case China raised the issue, the Indians were to insist that history, geography, tradition, treaties, etc., defi ned the border, and that there was no scope for negotiations on the border. Panikkar took an extreme position, and advised that Indians stop negotiations in case the Chinese wanted to discuss the frontier, for, in the convoluted logic of Panikkar, to agree to a discussion was to concede that a discussion was necessary.54 The outcome of these deliberately constricted discussions was the India–China Agreement of 29 April 1954 on ‘trade and inter- course between the Tibet region of China and India’. This title of the agreement was deceptively simple. It hardly indicated that India had surrendered all the rights and privileges she had inherited from Britain. Nor did it refl ect the undercurrent of tensions in negotiations on the frontier question, despite an evident determination to paper over the cracks. India offi cially recognised China’s sovereignty over Tibet by this agreement. India renounced the rights to maintain: (i) trade agencies at Gyantse, Gartok and Yatung; (ii) post and telegraph installations along the trade route up to Gyantse; and (iii) military escorts at Yatung and Gyantse (meant for protection of the aforementioned trade routes and trade agencies. India gave up

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the right to station its political agent at Lhasa, replacing the political agency by a consulate general. The boundary issue raised its ugly head during the negotiations on enabling traders and pilgrims to use six designated mountain passes. India disagreed with the Chinese formulation that China agreed to ‘open’ these passes, for

54 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 2, p. 180; Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, p. 99; Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 10. Relations with China 245

it implied China’s ownership of these passes, whereas India looked upon these passes as boundary features in accordance with the watershed principle. Eventually, evading the boundary controversy, the 1954 agreement stated that traders and pilgrims would ‘travel’ by the designated passes. China obtained India-owned communications equipment in Tibet without paying or compensation. It was an act of ‘misplaced and onesided generosity’, wrote B.K. Desai. A much more serious shortcoming of the 1954 agreement was, in the words of S. Gopal, ‘the Chinese had secured all they wanted and given away little’, and ‘the chance of securing a clear and explicit recognition of India’s frontier at a time when India had something to offer in return had been lost’. Offi cial commentators have long proclaimed the incorporation of Panchsheel in the 1954 agreement as a testimony to the India–China friendship. Actually, China opposed this incorporation, although it fi nally condescended to accept. After all, the value of the Five Principles—mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefi t, and peaceful co-existence—was worn out, even as a piece of friendly rhetoric. Despite the attempts by India, therefore, to practise peaceful co-existence in the matter of trade with Tibet by signing a 25-year agreement, China refused to go beyond an eight- year duration for the 1954 agreement.55

Towards the 1962 Confl ict Nehru became suspicious of China’s intentions, when China restricted the duration of the 1954 agreement to the brief period of eight years: This may explain why, as early as July 1954, Nehru issued on extraordinarily vital (though confi dential) memorandum to the Union ministries of defence, home and external affairs, as also to various state governments in India. This memorandum stressed Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 that the northern frontier of India ‘should be considered a fi rm and defi nite one, which is not open to discussion with anybody’. This recommendation was not based on any new historical-legal

55 Desai, ‘Sino-Indian Relations’, p. 132; Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 2, pp. 180–81; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 78–80. Also, S.S. Khera, India’s Defence Problem, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1968, p. 155. 246 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

evidence. As Nehru affi rmed, it was, a product of India’s policy and the India–China agreement of 1954. The reasoning was queer. But Nehru’s memorandum went ahead with the instruction that check posts should be established along the entire northern frontier, especially ‘in such places as might be considered disputed areas’. Nehru further recommended the extension of India’s administrative presence in, and the economic development of, border areas, as also the strengthening of communication and intelligence networks in these areas. ‘The impact of government would have to make up for remiss diplomacy’, wrote S. Gopal.56 Thus, Panchsheel or no Panchsheel, at the time of the April 1954 India–China Agreement, India’s diplomacy on Tibet/China left the eastern sector of the India–China frontier entirely unsettled, despite the geographically valid watershed principle underlying the McMahon Line. In the western sector of this frontier, the situation was less complex than in the eastern sector, because a number of treaties supported India’s claim of a traditional/customary boundary between India (Ladakh/Kashmir) and China (Xinjiang/Tibet). This boundary, understood distinctly since ancient days, was acknowledged by a treaty between Ladakh and Tibet in 1684. This was confi rmed by a treaty of 1842 signed by representatives of the ruler of Kashmir and representatives of the Dalai Lama as also the Emperor of China. In 1847, the Chinese government not only endorsed the ‘ancient arrangement’, which ‘suffi ciently and distinctly fi xed’ the Ladakh-Tibet frontier, but affi rmed that ‘it was needless to establish any other’ frontier, and that it was ‘convenient to abstain from any additional measures for fi xing’ the frontier territories. No wonder, therefore, that in 1899, when the British government proposed that the boundary should be formally delimited, the Chinese government did not object to the proposed boundary but remained inactive, although a Chinese map of 1893 depicted the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ancient/traditional boundary, and supported the Indian claim to a customary boundary. Signiﬁ cantly, the British boundary proposal of 1899, referring to the frontier between Ladakh/Kashmir and Sinkiang, took the Kuenlun range as the divider, and thereby placed, for instance, the whole of the disputed Aksai Chin territory within

56 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 2, p. 181. Also, Khera, India’s Defence Problem, p. 155; Maxwell, India’s China War, p. 80. Relations with China 247

India. A number of countries of the world have been publishing maps which recognise the customary boundary respected by India. The same has been recognised by unoffi cial Chinese maps from the ancient days to the present, as also by offi cial Chinese maps in the 19th and 20th centuries till the late 1920s. These maps corro- borate the validity of the traditional boundary alignment along the entire northern boundary of India (including the western and the eastern sectors), as claimed by India. Since the late 1920s, however, Chinese offi cial maps have used the Karakoram Range as the frontier in India’s western sector. The British government did not protest against these maps. Moreover, the Report of the Indian Statutory Commission of 1930 accepted the Karakoram Range as the frontier in the western sector of the India–China border.57 In this perspective, one can appreciate the importance of Nehru’s confi dential directive of July 1954, which stressed the need to establish the Indian presence throughout the northern border. It was only logical that Indian cartographers (the Survey of India) should follow up Nehru’s directive by issuing new maps in 1954. The old maps indicated using a broken line that the McMahon Line was not demarcated. The new maps removed this impression of lack of demarcation, and presented the McMahon Line as a clear international boundary. In the western sector, cartographers were confused in the application of the watershed principle to the delineation of the customary or ancient boundary. While the old maps used a colour wash, with the words ‘boundary undefi ned’ inscribed at the edge, as a proxy for the boundary, the new maps substituted the colour wash with a clear international boundary, using partly the Karakoram Line and partly the Kuenlun Line as the watershed. Signifi cantly, one of the major areas of dispute between India and China—Aksai Chin—remained on the Indian side of the boundary. In some cases, for example, in the case of Bhutan, cartographers

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 overreacted for Bhutan was placed inside India. Assuming that the 1954 maps secured clearance from the highest political authorities, one could afﬁ rm that these maps represented a misreading of the Chinese reaction to the takeover of Tawang by India on 2 February 1951. For Tibetans, Tawang was an important centre of culture

57 Ram Gopal, India–China–Tibet Triangle, Bombay: Jaico, 1966, pp. 202–15; Karunakar Gupta, The Statesman, 28 November 1978. 248 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and administration. China did not protest against the occupation of Tawang by India, which thus established its presence almost on the Himalayan crestline (around the McMahon Line approximately). An important reason why China did not protest was its preoccupation with the Korean War. China might not even be aware of the Indian move at that time. Moreover, remarkably, on 1 February 1951 (a day before the occupation of Tawang), China noticed that only two non-Communist countries—India and Burma (Myanmar)—contested the UN General Assembly resolution (sponsored by the United States), which declared China to be an aggressor in Korea. Neville Maxwell may not be wrong when he argues that ‘Chinese acquiescence in the 1951 Indian takeover of Tawang showed that Peking was not going to make an issue out of the McMahon Line’, and that ‘to extend this approach to the other sectors of the boundary must have appeared to the Indians to be a logical and necessary step’.58 The success of the Indian strategy depended on the exercise of effective control on the ground. Maps could not be the substitute for such control. Moreover, maps and the statements of the prime minister about the non-negotiable character of the India–China boundary (based on tradition, treaties, etc.) could mislead the people and their elected representatives about problems regarding the India–China boundary. The lack of information—or the supply of misleading information—could be the source of a potential crisis in a situation where the Government of India failed to suppress facts about the occupation by China of areas claimed by India. Worse, the Government of India could have been tempted to put the blame on the rigid opinion of the people and their parliamentary representatives for its own failure to devise a compromise with China without sacriﬁ cing vital national interests. This line of speculation could be tested for its validity (with allowances for hindsight) by

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 reference to the Aksai Chin area, as presented ahead. In the later part of 1950, Chinese troops moved, across the Aksai Chin area, from Sinkiang (Xinjiang) to Tibet. Afterwards, Chinese soldiers regularly used this route for moving supplies. From March 1956 to October 1957, Chinese soldiers and civilians

58 Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 80–83; Karunakar Gupta, The Statesman, 21 October and 28 November 1978. Relations with China 249

worked in highly adverse climatic conditions to construct a 12,000- kilometre long motorable road connecting Xinjiang and Tibet. The Government of India, far from establishing its own presence in this area, remained totally ignorant about the gigantic scale of activities of the Chinese, who had to build not only bridges and culverts but also tunnels through mountains in the Aksai Chin area. Subsequently, Indian offi cials placed before the Chinese offi cials numerous copies of records on revenue collection, offi cial tours/patrols/surveys, and the establishment/maintenance of trade routes (including rest houses and storage spaces) for Indian traders (offi cial and non- offi cial), which testifi ed to India’s administrative control over this area. However, the Chinese offi cials miserably failed to match the variety and numbers of the Indian records, as also documentary proof, in favour of China’s administrative jurisdiction over the Aksai Chin area. One must stress that such Chinese records were virtually non- existent. But, in the later half of the 1950s, such documents became irrelevant in view of the overwhelming evidence of Chinese administrative control in the shape of the Xinjiang-Tibet highway and Chinese frontier guards.59 It is astonishing that from 1951 to 1957 the Government of India made no attempt to investigate Chinese activities in the Aksai Chin area. At one stage, Nehru ridiculed an Army report on the construction of the Aksai Chin road by the Chinese as a product of wild imagination. On completion of the construction of this road, a Chinese newspaper depicted it in a map. The Government of China was so enamoured by the high degree of engineering skills required for the construction of this road that it invited representatives of diplomatic missions for a visit. The Indian ambassador to Beijing (Peking), R.K. Nehru (a relative of the Prime Minister Nehru), subsequently pleaded ignorance of this invitation. However, his military attaché, Brigadier S.S. Malik, attested to its authenticity. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

59 Gopal, India–China–Tibet, pp. 209–10, 219–31; Maxwell, India’s China War, p. 87; Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 11. For some samples of the quality and quantity of evidence supplied by Indian ofﬁ cials, see Government of India (GoI), Notes, Memoranda and Letters Exchanged Between The Governments of India and China September-November 1959 And A Note On The Historical Background Of The Himalayan Frontier of India, New Delhi: Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 1959, esp. pp. 34–52, 125–32. 250 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

At any rate, Ambassador Nehru remained indifferent even when he was showed an enlarged version of a small Chinese map of the Aksai Chin road.60 The Government of India stuck to what turned out to be a patently irrational policy. It was not willing to open negotiations with China on the boundary. It was also not ready to share with the Indian public and legislators, the facts about Chinese encroachments on areas claimed by India. The Government of India imagined the problem would somehow resolve itself, as Krishna Menon appeared to confess to the eminent journalist Inder Malhotra. Nehru was interested in keeping secret the news about Chinese encroachments upon Indian territories. He used to express not only annoyance but also anger at the attempt of any offi cial to seek his guidance for action about news of Chinese intrusions fl owing from diverse sources (for example, American/British). Since Nehru had reduced the Indian foreign policy bureaucracy to a ‘sycophantocracy’, information about Chinese encroachments was mostly ‘fi led’ by offi cers of the Ministry of External Affairs. When eventually the facts could not be suppressed, on account of reports appearing initially in foreign newspapers and later in Indian newspapers, Prime Minister Nehru would make peculiar statements, which did not bring any credit to him or his country. On 8 September 1959, Beijing published an offi cial map incorporating NEFA into China. On 12 September 1959, Nehru told the Lok Sabha that he became aware of Chinese intrusions in Aksai Chin around November– December 1958. He stated that the Indian Air Force could not carry out timely reconnaissance because of the diffi culties of reconnaissance in an area of high mountains, and because of the risk of being shot down. ‘It is certainly a novel theory’, wrote P.V.R. Rao, ‘that defence forces should not be exposed to dangers including probable loss, when hostile elements are reported to have encroached 61

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 into the country’.

60 Lt. Colonel (Retd.) J.S. Bindra, Letters, The Statesman, 9 April 1985; Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 12; Brigadier (Retd) S.S. Malik, Letters, The Times of India, 9 and 11 July 1968. 61 Rao, Defence Without Drift, pp. 12–13. Also, Inder Malhotra, The Statesman, 20 November 1967; Maxwell, India’s China War, p. 91; Nayar, India, pp. 122–25. Relations with China 251

‘From 1958–59 onward we were trying our best to reassert ourselves in these areas’, that is the areas under Chinese occupation, Krishna Menon informed Inder Malhotra. This reassertion was a belated pursuit of the forward policy adumbrated in the confi dential 1954 memorandum by Nehru. However, a forward policy, without adequate military preparations, could only lead to clashes between the Indian and Chinese patrols, in which the Chinese would outrival or vanquish Indians because of superiority of arms and training. In 1959, with the outbreak of the Tibetan uprising (a natural consequence of much anticipated Chinese atrocities), and the subsequent fl ight of the Dalai Lama, who took refuge in India in March 1959, the possibilities of clashes between the Indians and the Chinese rose, following the expected intensifi cation of Chinese patrolling along the McMahon Line. The Chinese wanted to counteract the outfl ow of Tibetan refugees to India, as also the tendency of Tibetan rebels to seek sanctuary in India. At Longju in the eastern sector, on 25 August 1959, there was a clash between the Indians and the Chinese, and the Indians had to abandon their post. On 21 October 1959, in an incident at the Kongka Pass (near the Xinjiang-Tibet-Ladakh Trijunction), one Chinese and seven Indians were killed, and seven Indians were taken prisoners. The strategy of Nehru and his followers to suppress the truth about India–China relations failed utterly, as news of such incidents reached the Indians. The Indian people and parliamentarians—fed for years on the slogan of everlasting India–China friendship—felt betrayed and horrifi ed. Nehru had only to blame himself if the mood of the public and Parliament became uncompromising, for Nehru had led them up the garden path by refusing to disclose the truth about India–China relations in general, and the problems of the India–China boundary in particular.62 In 1959, Nehru had the opportunity to take the people and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Parliament into conﬁ dence to reconstruct India’s foreign policy partially, and to also counteract the Chinese threat by accepting military aid from the Western powers, or from the Soviet Union, whose relationship with China was deteriorating. A deviation from

62 Inder Malhotra, The Statesman, 20 November 1967; Nayar, India, pp. 123–24; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 105–11; C.V. Ranganathan and V.C. Khanna, India and China, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2000, p. 38. 252 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

non-alignment and a modifi ed economic policy were called for. These changes in economic and foreign policies could have forestalled the humiliating military encounter with China in 1962, which forced India to carry out such changes in a more diffi cult situation. In 1962, India had to overlook non-alignment, and accept visible arms aid from the West, which compelled China to declare a ceasefi re. But, during 1959–62, Nehru and his followers were ‘unwilling to evolve a new policy’, and, in the words of P.V.R. Rao, resorted to ‘a deliberate playing down of the threat posed by China, a policy of drift with regard to defence and a complete lack of recognition of the magnitude or urgency of the danger’.63 The irrationality of this policy could be further demonstrated by the fact that India did not care to avail of options for a peaceful, negotiated, boundary settlement offered by China. The boundary settlements of the British days were regarded as an imperialist imposition by China. The Chinese viewed the McMahon Line as illegal, but they were pragmatic enough to recognise the exercise of administrative jurisdiction by India over territories south of the McMahon Line, provided India was prepared to recognise the existence of a boundary dispute, and engage in negotiations and joint surveys towards a peaceful settlement. China successfully applied this procedure to the settlement of the Sino-Burmese boundary (entailing an application of the McMahon Line), even though the question of the Sino-Burmese boundary was much more complicated than the Sino-Indian boundary because of the enjoyment of some extraterritorial rights (for example, mining) by China inside Burma, and the movements of some surviving Kuomintang soldiers in Burma. China’s interest in a similar solution of the Sino-Indian boundary problem was conveyed through broad hints and implicit suggestions in course of Zhou’s conversations with Nehru in 1954 and 1956–57, and in some diplomatic communications from 1958.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 China did so not out of any altruistic motive but sheer self-interest. China did not want to have enemies on two fronts: Formosa/America in the east, and India in the west. Moreover, by 1958, China had ful- ﬁ lled its vital strategic requirement in the Aksai Chin area by building the Xinjiang-Tibet road, as also by establishing its jurisdiction in the

63 Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 15; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 22–23, p. 51; Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, p. 102. Relations with China 253

western sector of India’s boundary with China, which was a virtual no-man’s land prior to these Chinese activities. Similarly, by 1958, India too served its essential strategic interest in the eastern sector of its boundary with China by nearly completing the unfi nished tasks of the British Indian government, and establishing its administrative control in NEFA, touching the McMahon Line. Thus, a stage was set for a near-ideal compromise: India would retain its strategic gains in the eastern sector, and China would do so in the western sector. Such an implicit bargain or barter was offered in April 1960 in New Delhi by Zhou, arriving from Rangoon, where he signed a boundary agreement with Burma in accordance with the McMahon alignment.64 By no stretch of the imagination could one design a better offer than the Zhou offer of April 1960, which conformed to ground realities, unless one forgot how India sacrifi ced Tibet in 1950, and then imagined that India had the intention and the capability to have a military showdown with China. But Nehru proved to be far less than a true statesman, and continued to embrace his illusions, masquerading them as high principles. In the words of S. Gopal, Nehru stuck to his view ‘that not only was the frontier with China not negotiable by India, but that China had accepted this and there was nothing to negotiate about’, and that ‘the frontier was a fi xed one which had been peaceful for many years’. Probably, the real reason why Nehru would not accept the realistic bargain (offered by Zhou in April 1960) was that he was not ready to pay the price of his past conduct. He had misguided the chattering class of India, an insignifi cant number of persons who read English-language newspapers, about the state of India’s relations with China, and about the problems concerning the India–China boundary. If, in 1960, Nehru was to confess to his mistakes (voluntary or involuntary), and plead for a compromise with China, the chattering

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 class and its allies in Parliament could have forced Nehru to resign from the post of prime minister. Had Nehru been a true statesman, he would have taken this risk and spared India the trouble of a continuing confrontation with China, and eventual humiliation

64 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, pp. 35–36, 136; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 89, 105–6, 124–25, 156–60; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 32–38, 43–45. 254 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in 1962. However, Nehru put his personal pride and arrogance above national interests, and sanctioned a policy of drift, that is of limited military manoeuvres in border areas without necessary preparations for such incidents as the (already noted) Kongka Pass incident of October 1959, not to speak of a full-scale war as the one in 1962.65 After the Longju incident, the Government of India vested the responsibility for the NEFA border with the Indian Army. Similarly, following the Kongka Pass incident, the Army had to assume the same responsibility in the western border. Moreover, soon after the Kongka Pass incident, Nehru addressed a secret memorandum to some Indian ambassadors in important countries. This memorandum argued that China did not care for a territorial settlement with India on the basis of traditional frontiers, that (throughout history) China never voluntarily surrendered any territory or territorial claim, and that, therefore, there was not much chance of a negotiated and reasonable settlement of the India–China border dispute. This memorandum further contended that India might have to employ force to expel Chinese soldiers from Indian territories under their occupation. In his speeches before Parliament too (in November 1959, for example), Nehru stressed that a war with China on the border issue was possible, and hinted that preparations of India’s defence forces were adequate enough for a victory over Chinese soldiers. As is noted ahead, Nehru was again misleading the public in the matter of military preparations, while he was atoning for the past sins of misguiding the people and legislators on the true state of India–China relations. Moreover, the people and their elected representatives could not be accused of limiting foreign policy choices (for example, the choice offered by Zhou in April 1960) for Nehru. In the words of Neville Maxwell, ‘Public and Parliamentary pressures did not make him do anything he was not himself inclined to do; nor 66

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 did they prevent him doing anything he really wished to do’. Nehru’s ﬁ xation for conveying a dangerously optimistic but incorrect picture of the military realities on the India–China border

65 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, pp. 39, 128, 134; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 161–62. 66 Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 129–34. Also see, Brigadier J.P. Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1969, pp. 45, 54. Relations with China 255

was astonishing. In early 1961, for example, Nehru told Parliament that developments in the military situation in the western sector were favourable to India. This was an extraordinary statement considering the Indian experience of China continuously adding areas (at India’s expense) under its control in the western sector. General S.D. Verma was then the then Corps Commander in the western sector. He was conscientious enough to write to the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) General Thapar about the wide discrepancy between ground realities and Nehru’s statement to Parliament about the western sector. General Verma, fi ghting wishful thinking, wanted his letter to be forwarded to Army headquarters. General Thapar wanted Verma to withdraw the letter, for Nehru’s statement had a political rather than a military signifi cance. Verma refused. He probably foresaw the potentially disastrous consequences of bravado. Verma paid a heavy price. He was suspended, and deprived of his due promotion to the post of General Offi cer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of the Western Command. He resigned.67 The Thapar-Verma difference was only the tip of the iceberg of problems affl icting India’s defence establishment (which eventually caused the 1962 debacle). While in 1959, following the Kongka Pass incident, Nehru’s confi dential memorandum to some selected Indian ambassadors stressed the near inevitability of a war with China, there was a continuous decline in the percentage of defence expenditure in India’s annual budgets during 1959–62. No less, and probably much more important than this, was the role of V.K. Krishna Menon, the then defence minister. Menon did everything conceivable to democratise the Armed Forces, not only by ensuring they were ill equipped, but also by carrying out promotions to important positions not on the basis of merit but of favouritism founded upon sycophancy. Nehru’s strange fascination for people like Sheikh Abdullah or Krishna Menon caused irreparable damage to India’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 vital interests. As India’s high commissioner to Britain, Menon distinguished himself by repeatedly committing extreme ﬁ nancial irregularities in purchases of defence materials. A parliamentary committee investigated the matter, and found him guilty. But Nehru shielded Menon. As early as 1954, Nehru wanted to provide Menon

67 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, p. 138; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 202–4. 256 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

with a Cabinet berth. However, because Menon lacked fi nancial rectitude, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad resisted this move stoutly. Azad was ready to resign, if Nehru circumvented Azad’s protest. Nehru waited. In 1957, following the general election in which Nehru ensured Menon’s election from a Bombay constituency, Menon managed to get into the position of defence minister. One could not have imagined a more thoughtless appointment at a time when India–China relations were sliding towards a crisis. S. Gopal has noted that Menon’s qualities ‘were not suited to the Defence Ministry’, that ‘Menon’s devious ways of functioning and his propensity to create coteries were known to Nehru’, and that ‘even in high offi ce, Menon remained a whining egoist with a talent for grievance’. Menon exploited his intimacy with Nehru to prolong unduly one of his frequent and infi nitely favourite foreign trips even at a time when, in the winter of 1959, on account of the advances of Chinese troops in the western sector, Menon should have been present in New Delhi. But Menon did not terminate his foreign tour (this time in New York) before receiving a reprimand from Nehru, and before wiring back that problems with China were less of a military and more of a political character. At that time, when Parliament and the whole country were astir with reports of China’s military activities in the western sector, Menon’s statement marked him out as not only irresponsible but as utterly lacking any aptitude for the tasks facing the defence ministry.68 At about the same time that Menon became India’s defence minister, one of the most outstanding soldiers in India (and the whole world), General Thimayya, became the CoAS. Thimayya and his colleagues in the Navy and the Air Force tried repeatedly to impress upon Menon the urgent need to re-equip and retrain the Indian military, especially in view of the deteriorating situation along the India–China border. But their communications with Menon

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 remained unproductive. Menon concentrated on winning Nehru’s heart by permitting the manufacture of such consumer items as coffee machines and pressure cookers in India’s defence factories. This enabled Menon to take pride in claiming that production in defence factories was registering an increase. Menon aimed at self-reliance in the production of military equipment. Laudable in the long run, this

68 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, pp. 224–25; also, vol. 3, pp. 129–32. Relations with China 257

aim pursued fanatically in the short run and precluding the purchase of some essential weapons from foreign countries, could not but be disastrous in a situation of rising military confrontation with China. Moreover, Menon appeared to derive a sort of perverse pleasure by treating senior military ofﬁ cers in an unwarrantedly offensive manner in the presence of subordinates. Menon cavalierly turned down important technical recommendations from top-most military ofﬁ cials. Things became so intolerable—personally for the chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and collectively for the country in terms of lack of military preparedness—that the three chiefs decided to meet the prime minister, and lodge their complaints against Menon. But Thimayya made the impulsive error of submitting his solitary letter of resignation to Nehru on 1 September 1959. It was easy for Nehru, an astute politician, to outmanoeuvre a professional soldier devoted to the doctrine of civilian supremacy over the military. Nehru deceived Thimayya by telling him he would investigate Thimayya’s grievances and persuade Menon to redress those grievances. Thimayya was simpleminded enough to withdraw his letter of resignation. Nehru then proceeded to humiliate Thimayya publicly for raising trivial matters in a moment of crisis at the India–China border. Nehru thus once again deceived the people and Parliament by suppressing the fact that Thimayya’s complaints related to deliberate attempts by Menon to ignore the country’s essential military needs in spite of a crisis along the India–China border. In the words of J.P. Dalvi:

Mr. Nehru’s biographers will have a difﬁ cult time explaining his inexplicable descent to ordinary norms of behaviour to save a colleague at the expense of jeopardising the defence of his country. Pettiness and selﬁ shness are not qualities that one would wish to associate with a man of the stature of Mr. Nehru.69

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Nehru and Menon made matters worse by showering favours on B.M. Kaul (a distant relative of Nehru), a person with no combat experience save for a background in Army Service Corps and public relations. Kaul was so skilled in public relations and manipulating his

69 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 54–56. Also see, Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 2, pp. 130–31; B.M. Kaul, The Untold Story, Bombay: Allied/Jaico, 1971, p. 207; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 190–91. 258 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

access to Nehru that, despite unredeemed weaknesses in his military career, he could earn the command of an operational infantry division, and then pleased Menon by deploying his men for building homes for soldier’s families, although this task was earmarked for civilians or the engineer corps of the military. It was a peculiar situation in which Kaul began to earn inﬂ uence by pleasing Nehru and Menon, while Menon thought that he would please Nehru by heaping undeserved promotions on Kaul. This set the stage for something unprecedented in the Indian Army, which enjoyed worldwide reputation for high professionalism. Kaul became a Lieutenant General, and occupied the post of Quartermaster General (QMG). Menon overruled Thimayya’s objection to this appointment. Subsequently, Menon again rejected Thimayya’s recommendation, and made Kaul the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), a post that was next in importance to the post of the CoAS. Simultaneously, Kaul added to his clout by ensuring that Lieutenant General Thapar succeeded Thimayya as the CoAS. The claim of Lieutenant General Thorat (a far more distinguished ofﬁ cer than Thapar), as also the recommendation of Thimayya, was ignored.70 Menon was a sick person, both mentally as well as physically. Nehru was wrong—morally and politically—in keeping Menon at the helm of the defence ministry during a crucial period. Nehru thus could not escape sharing the responsibility with Menon for paving the way for the 1962 debacle. In acquainting oneself with Menon’s style of work and behaviour, one should rely, in all fairness, upon the assessment of one of Menon’s admirers and protégés, B.M. Kaul. Kaul wrote:

Menon alienated and antagonised people by sarcasm and unkind remarks. He was quick-tempered, stubborn and always at strife with someone. …Menon was sceptical by temperament with many whims and caprices and at times suspected his friends of disloyalty without

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 any reason. It was not easy working with him…He took all sorts of sedatives and other medicines to get over his numerous ailments. …Menon often called important secretaries from various Ministries and Generals to make his meetings appear imposing. …He would call them on the pretext that some urgent matter needed immediate

70 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, p. 60; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 184–96, 218–22; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 185–93. Relations with China 259

discussion. When everyone had assembled, however, he would appear bored, as if some riff-raff were sitting around him, uninvited, and sometimes dozed off perhaps because of over-work or due to the sedatives he had taken earlier. …There was seldom any agenda or minutes of his meetings as he was allergic to both. …His routine was hectic, sleeping little at nights, dozing through many engagements during the day, making up part of his lost sleep… shouting at people, sometimes without reason. …He would send for senior Generals and civil servants on Sunday afternoons and at awkward times of other days and nights to discuss what he described as urgent problems but which were sometimes only trivialities.71

No wonder then that Menon did little to meet India’s defence requirements, and entrusting the border to the care of the Army (after the Longju Pass and Kongka Pass incidents) did not mean much. For soldiers with expertise in ﬁ ghting in the plains of Punjab were transferred to NEFA without the necessary training and equipment for mountain warfare. So, in the winter of 1959, panicky politicians in New Delhi ordered, in the words of J.P. Dalvi, ‘the deployment of the wrong troops, at the wrong place and at the wrong time’. General Thimayya retired in April 1961. In one of his farewell addresses he commented that he was probably leaving his soldiers as cannon fodder for the Chinese troops.72

At its best, it is inexperience sitting in judgment on experience, ignorance on knowledge—ignorance which, never suspecting the existence of what it does not know, is equally careless and supercilious, making light of, if not resenting, all pretensions to have a judgement better worth attending to than its own.73

This quote in John Stuart Mill’s classic treatise on representative government (written in a different though related context) is applicable to Krishna Menon’s activities which paved the way for the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 humiliation of India’s Armed Forces (one of the most respected armed forces in the world) at the hands of China in 1962. Even Menon’s

71 Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. pp. 206, 208–10, 215–16. 72 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 53–58, 61–62; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 206, 208–10, 215–16. 73 Currin V. Shields (ed.), John Stuart Mill: Considerations on Representative Government, New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958, p. 73. 260 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

favourites, B.M. Kaul and P.N. Thapar, were unable to persuade him to undertake a vigorous programme of re-equipping and re-training the Indian forces for occupying tracts on the border—the McMahon Line, for example—as also for counteracting Chinese soldiers (better equipped and trained than the Indians) who were bound to resist Indian attempts to set up posts in the snowy heights. Moreover, the Indians suffered from a tremendous disadvantage in terms of roads essential to movement of men and supplies in those tracts in the mountains. Since 1950, the Chinese built an impressive infrastructure of road networks, airports, etc., in areas near the border— the Aksai Chin or the McMahon Line. Although India decided as early as 1954 that the infrastructure of roads, etc. should be built in the border areas (of NEFA for instance), practically nothing was done to facilitate the establishment of border posts.74 As long as independent-minded and distinguished generals like Thimayya, Thorat or Verma were in positions of authority, they opposed the deployment of ill-trained, ill-equipped forces in numerous penny packets all along the border. They advocated the maintenance of a strong base area from where any large-scale Chinese action could be counteracted. When sycophants and undistinguished generals like B.M. Kaul or P.N. Thapar planted themselves in positions of supreme power (thanks to Krishna Menon), they could not oppose the thoroughly unwise policy of establishing small posts where the Indian soldiers could neither match the Chinese, nor receive help from a faraway base. A person like B.M. Kaul (fortifi ed by the support of Menon and Nehru) could play havoc with well- established lines of military hierarchy, and demoralise the military establishment. Add to it the fact that soldiers on the border lacked food, clothes, and even matches, and the reasons behind India’s setback in the 1962 confl ict with China are clear.75 It is not diffi cult to point to Krishna Menon’s far from perfect

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 physical/mental condition as the root of the circumstances leading to the disaster of 1962. But it is high time analysts rise above this

74 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 54–55, 62–63, 69; Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, New Delhi: Vikas, 1979, pp. 107, 109; Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 284; Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 16. Also see, B.K. Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, New Delhi: Penguin India/Viking, 1997, p. 344. 75 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 65–67, 70–71, 75–76, 79–81, 83–84; Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 285. Relations with China 261

Menon mania, and instead ask how much of Menon’s sickness infected Prime Minister Nehru. Otherwise, it is nearly impossible to explain the following matters. One, in October 1951, when Chester Bowles came to India as the American ambassador, his ﬁ rst meeting with Nehru did not last more than ﬁ fteen minutes, because Nehru was so tired that he went off to sleep. Two, Nehru coveted and occupied the position of India’s external affairs minister. Nevertheless, he permitted Menon to function as the de facto external affairs minister. For about a decade, until 1962, Nehru allowed Menon to lead the Indian delegation to the UN (during September-December). In these few months, Menon consistently and regularly undid whatever good work was done by the Indian embassy in the United States. Menon’s anti-Americanism assumed pathological proportions at the UN, and at numerous television appearances. In his tirades against America, Menon far surpassed Vyshinsky of the Soviet Union. What Menon did failed to serve the interests of India or the world in any way. Presumably, Menon could indulge in excessive anti-Americanism because he thought he could please Nehru in this fashion. But how could Nehru acquiesce in Menon’s jeopardising India’s vital interests in this fashion? Three, at the UN, Menon ruined India’s prestige and international standing with unnecessarily long speeches, which contained nothing new, so much so that various delegations chose to post their lowest level diplomats at the session where Menon delivered a nine-hour-long speech. So much was Menon’s hunger for publicity that he would sometimes speak on entirely irrelevant matters (‘absolute and arrant nonsense’, in the words of B.K. Nehru), while sordidly manoeuvring to receive favourable publicity in the Indian press. Nehru was certainly aware of all this. Why did he not stop it? Four, in reinforcing each other’s pro-communism, Menon and Nehru made the weird assumption—and sycophants like Kaul, in the military, and Secretary M.J. Desai in the external

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 affairs ministry, acted upon this assumption—that China would suit India’s convenience to play a sort of military chess, and restrict itself to capturing or losing some border posts without opting for large-scale conﬂ ict.76

76 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, pp. 332, 360–61, 377–79. Also, Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 66–77; Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, London: Harper Collins, 2001, pp. 141, 265; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 284–86, 326–28. 262 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

It bears reiteration that it was not open to Nehru—or anyone else—to argue that India trusted that China had peaceful intentions, and that China betrayed India by its hostile conduct. After all, China violated the Panchsheel Treaty of 1954, when it aided and trained Nagas for rebellious activities in India. Even the Soviet Union could not retain China’s friendship despite years of large-scale aid to China. It was, therefore, totally unrealistic to think that China would have peaceful inclinations towards India, especially at a time when China was jealous of India’s rising international prestige. Moreover, pro- China forces inside India could arouse false ideas in Chinese leaders that a successful military assault by China upon India would push India towards a revolution and subservience to China. All this was not unknown to Nehru, and yet Nehru’s inability to forsake his trust in China could hardly be a sign of sound mental health. As late as 1958, when his cousin B.K. Nehru was the fi nance secretary, at a meeting to discuss the defence budget, Nehru got so annoyed with the proposal to raise the allocation for defence forces, including the Air Force, that he began to shout. He referred, for instance, to India’s requirement of Canberra bombers, and, as recorded by B.K. Nehru, gave a strong rebuke: ‘Canberras, Canberras! I am sick and tried of hearing the word Canberras. Take your damned Canberras and sink them in the sea. If we have to fi ght Pakistan, we will fi ght them with our lathis. I do not need any weapon to fi ght any one’. This outburst revealed Nehru’s habitual impetuosity, and much more. He shared Menon’s preoccupation with Pakistan, and ignored the threat from China. Moreover, Nehru’s outburst could partially be accounted for by a crisis in foreign exchange, brought about by sheer laxity on the part of his government. Foreign aid, especially American aid, was a probable way out. But here again Nehru shared Menon’s deep anti-Americanism, and an investigation into the root cause of this anti-Americanism cannot but raise the question of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 whether Nehru’s mental health was sound enough to permit him to discharge the onerous responsibilities of an Indian prime minister. As he confessed to B.K. Nehru:

Maybe I am instinctively anti-American. I remember that when I was at Harrow there was one single American boy in the school. He was very rich and the rest of us disliked him for his preoccupation with money and looked down upon him for that reason. It may be that my negative reaction to America is because of that experience. Relations with China 263

Ironically, at the height of the India–China conflict of 1962, Nehru had to ask for and receive emergency military aid from the United States.77 Nehru’s readiness to fi ght a war with bamboo sticks (lathis) could indicate why, as a former defence secretary, P.V.R. Rao has attested to the fact that no serious study of border defence requirements was undertaken before 1961. This study, too, conducted in a haphazard manner, produced an interim report which had no impact. For, as P.V.R. Rao writes, ‘Krishna Menon was so busy with his extra- curricular activities in New York and elsewhere that even an interim report submitted was tucked away without decision thereon’. From November 1961 to June 1962, CoAS General Thapar sent as many as eight important letters to the then defence minister Krishna Menon. These letters underlined dangerous shortages of arms and equipment in the Indian Army, and proposed, among other things, the introduction of such an elementary weapon as a semi- automatic rifl e in place of the obsolete 303 rifl e. Forget accepting this legitimate proposal, Menon did not even bother to reply to General Thaper’s letters.78 Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director B.N. Mullik has attested that around November 1961 Prime Minister Nehru decided that the Assam Rifl es, the police or Indian Army men move up the Indian side of the frontier in order to forestall their occupation by the Chinese, even though such a movement could lead to clashes with the Chinese soldiers. In May 1962, the IB became aware that China had concentrated seven divisions of troops along the northern border of India. Mullik claims that by June 1962 the IB had received the specifi c information that the Chinese could attack India in September–October 1962. Moreover, in September 1962, the IB learnt that eight divisions of Chinese soldiers were stationed on India’s northern frontier, whereas bases in Tibet could promptly

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 dispatch reinforcements of four more divisions. General B.M. Kaul used to receive necessary information and support from Mullik. Therefore, Kaul was aware of the actual state of Chinese troop

77 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, pp. 267–68, 279–82, 287–89; Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, pp. 111–13. 78 Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 335, 341–44, 345–46; Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 16. Also, J.S. Lall, The Statesman, 3 December 1982. 264 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

deployment on India’s northern frontier. In February and July 1962, in pursuit of the prime minister’s directive, Kaul ruthlessly violated the normal lines of command, and ordered commanders to rush with setting up forward posts along the border. Kaul asked senior commanders with admirable combat record (Kaul had no combat experience) that he would not tolerate any delay in setting up forward posts. Kaul brazenly dismissed insurmountable logistical difﬁ culties as lame excuses behind any delay. There was no option before the senior commanders except to submit to Kaul’s bullying tactics, and embark on the dangerous course of setting up forward posts despite severe shortages of manpower, weapons, roads, bridges, supplies, equipment to drop supplies, and convenient dropping zones. Non-compliance meant the commanders would be subjected to disciplinary action. Kaul and CoAS General Thapar should have formally protested against the government’s (or the prime minister’s) policy that could have provoked China into retaliating, with their incomparably higher concentration of troops, weapons and infrastructural facilities (bridges, roads, shelters for troops, etc.) on the border than India. Instead, Kaul and Thapar acquiesced in implementing an unworkable policy (that could not but lead to the 1962 debacle).79 In order to comprehend the incredibly deplorable state of India’s military preparations on India’s northern frontier, one may rely on the testimony of Brigadier J.P. Dalvi, who became the Commander of the 7 Infantry Brigade in January 1962. On his way to assuming charge of the Tawang Garrison, Dalvi reached the Rangiya railway junction on 1 March 1962. He was to set up forward posts from April in pursuit of ‘Operation Onkar’. At Rangiya, Dalvi was shocked to see that the Indian soldiers (ever loyal and respect worthy) waiting for trains to their destinations had no arrangements with respect to food and bathing, not to speak of rest houses. This, despite the fact

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 that in November 1961, when CoAS Thapar and CGS Kaul visited Tawang, they must have noticed the lack of such arrangements. In the journey from the foothills to Tawang, one had to negotiate a steep ascent of 9,000 feet to Eagle’s Nest, another climb to 10,000 feet for Bomdilla, a descent to 5,500 feet for Dirang, a climb to Sela at 13,500 feet, a vertical descent to Jang at 5,000 feet, and

79 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 74–77; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 277, 324–25; Mullik, My Years With Nehru, 1948–64, pp. 215–16. Relations with China 265

the ﬁ nal ascent to 10,000 feet for Tawang. The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) started surveys in 1960, and by 1962, succeeded in constructing a dry-season, fair-weather road with a capacity to bear 1 ton of weight. This road, however, was liable to suffer from large and frequent landslides because, following an excavation, a hillside road would take about 10 years to settle down. There was a huge contradiction between New Delhi’s ﬁ xation upon the establishment of forward posts and the thoroughly inadequate progress in road building. As Dalvi writes:

I wondered if we were really serious about the possibility of war. I feared that the air of unreality might infect the rank and ﬁ le. The Junior Commissioned Ofﬁ cers had all been through World War II and had practical experience of what makes for war preparations and what measures indicate seriousness and the imminence of war. They would never believe that the Tawang Garrison was based there for any war-like activity.80

As has been noted, the IB was aware of the mobilisation of Chinese soldiers along India’s northern frontier at an alarming rate. But there are numerous illustrations to prove that (as late as March 1962) India’s military preparations for forward formations remained almost totally neglected. The Tawang Garrison witnessed the shameful spectacle of deployment of soldiers (meant for frontline battle duty) in the construction of a helipad or shelters. Bulldozers were not available for clearing a hill, and 1,200 soldiers had to spend three months constructing a helipad. They had to move down 2,500 feet, work the entire day, and then climb back to their bamboo mat hovels at Tawang (a height of 10,000 feet). Other members of the Tawang Garrison had to scale a height of 14,000 feet for the collection of wooden beams required for the construction of the shelters. Consequently, one of the most famous infantry battalions, 1

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 /9 Gorkha Rifl es, inducted at Tawang in 1960, had practically no training for as long as two years. They had to do without fi ring 1 practice. Actually, they had no fi ring range. /9 Gorkha Rifl es was a component of the 7 Infantry Brigade commanded by J.P. Dalvi. 1 Members of /9 Gorkha Rifl es had an excellent record in the Second World War in Italy, as also in the J&K war of 1948. Sadly, Dalvi

80 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 105–13. 266 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

notes, ‘In March 1962 they were a tired and listless unit which had suffered incredible hardships for two years’.81 The IB, as pointed out earlier, had deﬁ nite information about China concentrating a large number of their military divisions on India’s northern frontier in 1961–62. Apparently, the IB did not transmit adequate intelligence to Army Headquarters, and the latter failed to provide proper intelligence to forward formations.

Lacking intelligence, we kept on basing our actions on what we were able to do, and not to counter the worst the Chinese could do. We were like bad chess players who make moves without anticipating the opponent’s moves, or expecting him to counter our moves.82

As of March 1962—not to mention the crisis in September–October 1962—there was no arrangement for supply and stocking of stores even for daily needs. Sometimes, the soldiers were pushed to near- starvation. There was no rational operational plan. More accurately, there was hardly any operational plan. New Delhi ﬁ xed the size of a garrison at a forward area not on the basis of an estimated strength of the adversary but on the capability of the Air Force to lift supplies. New Delhi’s military planners assumed unwarrantedly (and in contravention of the information available with the IB) that the Chinese were not in a position to deploy more than one regiment (equivalent to one Indian brigade). Actually, at NEFA, in September-October 1962, two Chinese divisions got into action. ‘Now what was the basis for the categorical assumption that the Chinese were limited to just one regiment?’ inquired J.P. Dalvi.

The answer is very simple. Since our air-lift would not permit us to deploy more than one brigade, then it was automatic that the Chinese also should not exceed our strength, or how else would senior commanders answer awkward questions from forward troops and commanders?83 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Abandoning the normal and time-tested military planning on the basis of the worst case scenario, New Delhi estimated China’s military capability at such a low level as to match India’s (dis)ability.84

81 Ibid., pp. 114–16. 82 Ibid., p. 119. 83 Ibid., p. 118. 84 Ibid., pp. 114–6, 118–19. Also see, Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 205, 233, 253–55. Relations with China 267

In a situation where the defence forces suffered from unpardonable shortages of obsolete as also modern equipment (for example, rifl es), and snow boots, parachutes, canned rations, mountain clothes, etc., political leaders felt free to mislead the people and Parliament by parading plans to manufacture combat aircraft and battle tanks. Politicians of the ruling party attracted praise by advertising the laudable goal of self-suffi ciency in defence production. But they ignored the unavoidable need to import essential equipment for coping with the immediate crisis. On account of his infl uence over Prime Minister Nehru and CoAS Thaper, CGS Kaul emerged as the most powerful military planner in New Delhi, and he was fully aware that in order to tide over the crisis along India’s northern frontier imports of some arms and equipment (for example, from the United States) were unavoidable (as graphically demonstrated in the aftermath of the 1962 debacle). But, as Kaul lamented,

So far as defence was concerned, neither Nehru nor any of his Ministers evolved a comprehensive defence policy, e.g. who were our potential enemies, what were their relative strengths vis-à-vis ourselves and what military and diplomatic moves and steps were necessary on our part to ensure that we did not remain at a disadvantage. In fact, we approached the question of war, which loomed large in front of us, in a haphazard manner.85

In his book, The Untold Story, Kaul gives the impression that when Nehru received an invitation to visit the United States, around November 1961, Kaul had had an elaborate discussion with B.K. Nehru, India’s ambassador to the United States. Kaul and B.K. Nehru agreed that, in order to overcome the crisis in India’s northern frontier, and in order to opt for life rather than death, India should import some vital arms/equipment from the United States because the United States was ready to cooperate. B.K. Nehru

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and Kaul met Prime Minister Nehru and discussed the matter. But Nehru did not heed their advice. Nehru (like Defence Minister Menon) remained utterly confused between the short-term need for emergency imports and the long-term goal of self-reliance in defence production.86

85 Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 337. 86 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, p. 99; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 325–27, 337. 268 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In February 1962, at a conference in Guwahati, Kaul virtually forced commanders in NEFA to adopt the policy of setting up posts along the border despite severe problems of access, shortages of manpower, and of equipment to drop supplies. In March 1962, Kaul had the opportunity to meet the special representative of President J.F. Kennedy (and a former American ambassador to India), Chester Bowles. At this meeting in New Delhi, Kaul expressed apprehension that in the summer or autumn of 1962, China may decide upon a collision with India. Kaul discussed with Bowles as to how, with American cooperation, India could counteract Chinese military superiority. Afterwards, Chester Bowles wrote to Kaul that he was ready to do his bit to facilitate such cooperation. ‘No suitable action was, however, taken by anyone, to strengthen our Forces suffi ciently’, Kaul deplored. Evidently, Menon’s and Nehru’s deep-seated anti- Americanism was largely responsible for such inaction. Thus, when Kaul discussed with Menon the possibility of the aforesaid meeting with Chester Bowles in March 1962, Menon sarcastically advised Kaul to apply for American citizenship. Undoubtedly, this advice was totally irrelevant and irrational.87 But Kaul, who remained the most powerful military offi cer in India in 1962, cannot get away by the pseudo-philosophical assertion that no suitable action was taken by anyone to strengthen our forces suffi ciently. Kaul, Thapar, Menon, and Nehru had to be squarely blamed for India’s failure to avert a war with China in September– October–November 1962, which unnecessarily killed valiant Indian soldiers, who did not revolt but fought in the high Himalayas with scanty rations, summer uniforms, and pouch ammunition, severely outnumbered and outgunned by the Chinese. In his book, My years with Nehru 1948–1964, IB director B.N. Mullik made it very clear that the prime minister as well as the defence minister had been fully apprised by the IB of the massive military build-up by the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Chinese along India’s northern frontier. If, in spite of this information, Nehru and Menon stuck to their belief that China would not engage in a full-scale war with India, one can sorrowfully conclude that they were unworthy of the high positions they occupied. If this belief drew sustenance from any vague assurance from Moscow or a stray utterance by the Chinese foreign minister—and ignored the hard

87 B.M. Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 325, 347–49; Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 133–34. Relations with China 269

reality of Chinese troop mobilisation on India’s frontier—Nehru and Menon had only themselves to blame. There were many glaring instances of disparity in the level of military preparedness of India and China at a time when India was in a hurry to set up posts in the Himalayas. On 10 July 1962, for example, the Chinese laid a siege upon the Indian post at Galwan Valley. The Indian post had 40 soldiers, who confronted 300 Chinese troops. The Chinese, however, resorted not to violence but to propaganda broadcasts in order to induce the Indians to surrender. The Indians were brave. They did not surrender. (Eventually, in October 1962, China overran the Indian post at Galwan.) So demented were the few highest level decision makers in India that they drew the wrong lesson from the prolonged siege of India’s Galwan Valley post. They imagined, without any reason whatsoever, that the Chinese were not interested in launching a full-scale war against India. Nehru, in particular, could indulge in the wishful thinking that an India–China war would not take place, because it would be harmful not only to India and China, but to the entire world.88 The depth of the mental imbalance afﬂ icting the few top-most decision makers in New Delhi became increasingly apparent following the Galwan Valley incident of July 1962, and around the time of incursion of Chinese soldiers at Dhola, near the Thagla ridge, on 8 September 1962. In March 1962, in course of his conversations with Chester Bowles, Kaul predicted that China would instigate a conﬂ ict with India in the summer or autumn of 1962. Yet, on 3 September 1962, Kaul went on two month’s leave (even thought it was cut short by a month in the aftermath of the Dhola incursion). The Chinese surrounded the Indian post at Dhola, where they enjoyed enormous logistic-administrative advantages over the Indians. In reality, but for New Delhi’s unrealistic insistence, the post at Dhola (near the India–Bhutan–Tibet junction) would never have been set up for

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 sheer tactical reasons. Tawang, the nearest road head for Dhola, was situated 60 miles away, whereas the nearest Chinese road head was only 10 miles afar. The Chinese had heavy troop concentration in the area to the north of Thagla, which was ﬂ atter than the area south of Thagla, and India would take a long period to match the

88 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 200–2, 132–33, 139–41; Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, pp. 213–14; Mullik, My Years With Nehru, pp. 215–16; Nayar, India, pp. 131–32. 270 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

strength of the Chinese troops in that area. Prime Minister Nehru was attending the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London when the Chinese staged the Dhola incident. Menon failed to grasp the signifi cance of this incident. He did not advise Nehru to return to India. Nehru moved from London to Lagos, and returned to New Delhi on 2 October, whereas Kaul resumed duty on 3 October. ‘It has been said’, writes J.P. Dalvi, that Menon ‘deliberately underplayed the whole Thagla affair to avoid being asked to stay back in Delhi in the absence of the Prime Minister’, and that Menon was ‘preoccupied with his forthcoming visit to the U.N. for the Annual General Assembly meeting, in mid-September’. As to Nehru, while in Europe, he brushed aside the Chinese incursions in the Thagla area as ‘a number of petty confl icts between patrols’.89 This chronic blindness among New Delhi’s decision makers, towards the looming crisis in India’s northern frontier, persisted. So did casual decision making and public announcements of important decisions, raising questions about the physical/mental fi tness as also basic competence of the occupants of the highest offi ces in India. Worse still, such blindness infected the military too, for example, at the crucial level of General Offi cer Commanding in Chief (GOC-in-C), Eastern Command, Lieutenant General L.P. Sen. On 11 September 1962, there was a meeting in Menon’s offi ce. Lt. Gen. Sen was present at this meeting. The next day, 12 September, Sen conveyed to the Commander of 33 Corps, Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh, and the Commander of 4 Division, Major General Niranjan Prasad, the momentous decision of New Delhi to evict the Chinese from the Dhola area. According to J.P. Dalvi (who then happened to be the Commander of the 7 Brigade under Maj. Gen. Prasad), this decision was transmitted in the form of a ‘slogan’, and not in the form of a formal order containing paragraphs on (1) Information, (2) Intention, (3) Method, (4) Administration,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and (5) Communications. Evidently, ground realities were such that this decision could only reﬂ ect an intention without any logical relationship with the four other components of a formal order. As is now well known, this decision was fraught with disastrous consequences. On 9 September 1962, Dalvi prepared an appreciation of the ground realities, and recommended that without thorough

89 Frank, Indira, p. 265; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 361–62; Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 133, 143–45. Relations with China 271

preparation (in terms of concentration of arms, equipment, troops, porters, defence stores, rations, clothes, etc., erection of dropping zones, and choice of opportune time and space) no decision should be taken to hasten contact with the incomparably superior Chinese forces, for it could lead to ruinous consequences. Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh and Maj. Gen. Prasad had no reason to differ from Brigadier Dalvi’s appreciation of the prevalent military situation. Under the domination of the Nehru-Menon-Thaper-Kaul quartet, honesty, truthfulness, and professionalism had become rare commodities in the higher echelons of the Army (comparable to what normally happens in the civil bureaucracy almost all the time). Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh, on the other hand, displayed these qualities, and wrote a formal letter to Sen, opposing the rash decision to expel the Chinese from Dhola, and pointing to the unacceptable risk of losing in this way the far more important ground of Tawang.90 Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh’s warnings (subsequently proved to be absolutely correct) fell on deaf ears. In addition to the inability to see reality clearly, there appeared to be a death wish amongst New Delhi’s top decision makers. On 14 September 1962, at a meeting where Menon and Thapar were present, Lt. Gen. Daulat Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command, candidly afﬁ rmed that Indian forces in Ladakh would face annihilation if attacked by the Chinese. Lt. Gen. Sen concurred that this might happen in NEFA too if the Chinese launched a large-scale attack. Despite these warnings, New Delhi decided (in B.M. Kaul’s words) that ‘we [India] could no longer tolerate their [Chinese] encroachments on our territory and had to draw a line somewhere’, and, therefore, ‘irrespective of the consequences, time had come when we should give—or appear to give—the Chinese a crack at least in one place’. (Consequences turned out to be catastrophic indeed!) On 15 September, the Eastern Command received an order from Army Headquarters

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 that the 9 Punjab Battalion should attack the Chinese post which was 1,000 yards away to the northeast of Dhola. But the 4 Division ruled out this attack because of growing Chinese strength, and, accordingly, informed the 33 Corps as also Army Headquarters. A sort of insensitivity bordering on insanity appeared to possess New Delhi as on 17 September, following a conference in Menon’s

90 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 156–74; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 363–65. 272 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

room, Army Headquarters directly instructed Lt. Col. Misra of the 9 Punjab Battalion to capture by 19 September not only Thagla but also some neighbouring areas. This order, not routed through the normal channels of the 33 Corps, 4 Division and 7 Brigade, was not only a gross violation of military procedures but exhibited a total ignorance of the situation in which men of the 9 Punjab Battalion were hardly in a position to fi ght because they were defi cient in ammunition, labourers, and mules. Above all, they were not getting proper meals, and were going without proper nourishment for as long as six days. Brigadier Dalvi and Maj. Gen. Prasad protested against the order from New Delhi, and Dalvi had to instruct Lt. Col. Misra to postpone action on the order from New Delhi. On 18 September, in a quixotic repetition of the defence minister’s order of 14 September, a senior civil servant addressed a press conference in New Delhi to announce that the Indian Army had been asked to push out the Chinese forces from NEFA.91 The insanity that appeared to grip New Delhi’s decision makers did not abate. On 22 September, when both Nehru and Menon were abroad, Raghuramaiah, the offi ciating defence minister, presided over an important meeting which decided (following an overseas direction from Menon via telephone) that there was no alternative to the policy of expelling the Chinese from Dhola. On 14 September, Thapar did not have the guts to ask for a written government order and provoke the wrath of an ever-abrasive Menon. On 22 September, however, Thapar, who was not impressed by Raghuramaiah, asked for a written government directive for the eviction of the Chinese from Dhola. This written directive was issued by a joint secretary on behalf of the government, despite Thapar’s warning that retaliation by the Chinese could prove to be unmanageable. Thapar behaved like an ordinary civil offi cer procuring (for his administrative safety) an order from the superior authority to fi re upon a rioting crowd.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 But Thapar’s patriotism and professionalism should have prompted him to do much more—even resign—in order to make the top civilian decision makers in New Delhi see reason, and prevent the abject misuse of the principle of civilian supremacy over the military.92

91 Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 366–68. Also, Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 179–81, 189–92. 92 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 203–4; Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 370. Relations with China 273

When civilians, utterly ignorant of military matters, try to impose decisions on the military, their follies persist, masquerading as tokens of determination. During 22–29 September 1962, the Indians and the Chinese engaged in a limited exchange of ﬁ re. On 30 September 1962, returning from New York to New Delhi, Menon impressed upon Thapar, at a meeting in his room, the government’s policy to produce an impact upon China before the winter set in. Neither Menon nor Thapar cared to analyse in military terms the ways and means of producing a strong effect on the Chinese. Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh, however, had the moral strength to write again to Lt. Gen. Sen about how suicidal it would be to carry out forward operations and attack the Thagla Pass considering the great difﬁ culties of terrain posed by the Namkachu River, the steep slopes and thick forests in the Namkachu Valley, the continuing shortages of civilian porters, ammunition, and defence stores, etc. In the words of J.P. Dalvi, Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh ‘was one of the few senior actors in the Thagla drama who had the moral courage to record his views in writing’. Umrao Singh thus made himself eminently eligible for arbitrary replacement, because he spoke the truth. On 29 September, a patrol moved to Tsangley, north of the Namkachu River. The patrol report noted that the Chinese were absent from Tsangley. On 2 October, Menon wanted to know why Tsangley was not occupied. New Delhi ordered Brigadier Dalvi to take over Tsangley, although New Delhi did not justify the action. Lt. Gen. Umrao Singh protested against this order, as it was tactically unsound to hold Tsangley. Umrao Singh was overruled. Nehru returned from abroad to New Delhi on 2 October. Thapar and Sen met him, and pointed out that the application of force against the Chinese might unleash serious consequences. But Nehru reiterated his belief that he did not foresee any powerful retaliation by China against India.93 On 3 October 1962, Kaul terminated his period of leave, and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 resumed duty as CGS. Umrao Singh was relieved of his responsibility to cope with the threat from China, although his 33 Corps had other missions. Kaul met Thapar on 3 October, and was informed late in the evening of his appointment as Commander of a new 4 Corps to deal with the Chinese threat. Kaul had a sort of phantom

93 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 218–19; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 371–73; Singh, Defending India, p. 165. 274 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Corps with two Infantry Brigades (plus a promised third), whereas a normal Corps would consist of six to 12 Infantry Brigades. In addition, a Corps must have substantial resources in terms of artillery, communications, engineers, supplies, staff, and transport. It would take six to 12 months to form and train a Corps, and the same amount of time to make the Corps ﬁ t for battles. Kaul’s Corps and headquarters were yet to come into existence. Yet, he was assigned the task to expel the Chinese from the Dhola-Thagla area. As Kaul confesses, ‘I was, thus, expected to perform a miracle and begin to operate immediately’. Kaul met Menon and Nehru on the evening of 3 October. Menon assured Kaul of complete conﬁ dence. Nehru told Kaul that India had to take a tough stand towards China— ‘irrespective of consequences’—because India had borne Chinese intrusions for far too long. Nehru added that India had no option but to evict the Chinese from the Indian territory, or at least make an attempt to do so as much as India was able to. This was a climactic instance of how Nehru permitted his ignorance about ground realities to dictate a totally unrealistic military decision. But Kaul, too, could not but be blamed for submitting to Nehru’s short-sighted mandate. In Dalvi’s words, ‘The impossible task, blithely offered to Kaul, was merrily accepted by him’.94 Army Commander Sen, GOC-in-C Eastern Command, violated well-established military protocol when he received Kaul at Tejpur on 4 October. Sen thereby respected Kaul’s clout, derived from his proximity to Nehru. Moreover, he felt relieved that Kaul was now to deal with the unmanageable task of evicting the Chinese from the Dhola/Thagla region. After all, Kaul was not the man to stick to military discipline while taking vital decisions. Kaul could disregard the formality of seeking advice from superiors or suggestions from subordinates in order to forge vital military moves. Kaul claimed that the highest political authority in New Delhi directed him to evict

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the Chinese from the Dhola/Thagla region by 10 October. There was nobody in NEFA to question his claim, even if there were no evidence to substantiate this claim in future. Therefore, without consulting Prasad (the Commander of the 4 Division), or Dalvi (the Commander of the 7 Brigade), he ordered the Major of the 7 Brigade to rush to the Dhola area, completing the concentration

94 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 219–24; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 373–76. Relations with China 275

of the brigade there by 7 October. This was a gross violation of elementary military protocol and prudence, for there was no operational plan or defi nite administrative order, forget strategic concept. When Major Kharbanda of the the 7 Brigade pleaded the absence of an executive order, as also the vital shortages of porters, ammunition, rations, etc., he was threatened with dismissal. So, the 7 Brigade lost its headquarters at Lumpu (15 miles to the west of Dhola), and moved towards Namkachu (and Nemesis), without mortars, rocket launchers, ammunition, winter clothes, and with three days of rations that they themselves carried. Soldiers, carrying a load of 80 lbs, had to move through 16,000-feet high mountain passes. Kaul, without any battlefi eld experience, was trying to challenge the largest land army of the world, which had already concentrated a full-fl edged brigade on the Thagla ridge (and with ample manpower, arms, ammunition, and equipment), and set in motion the dispatch of an entire division into the Thagla region. Unbelievably, on 7 October, amidst many reports of chilblain, frostbite, and pulmonary disorders affl icting/killing the ill-clad, ill-fed soldiers, Kaul sent a realistic message to the Eastern Command HQ, listing all the defi ciencies in India’s military preparations, which made it inevitable that the Chinese could expel Indians from any position initially occupied by Indians, and yet refrained from drawing the necessary conclusion that any move to dislodge the Chinese should be postponed. On the contrary, on 8 and 9 October, Kaul ordered 2 Rajput and 1/9 Gorkha to proceed to Dhola. Moreover, on 9 October, Kaul ordered 2 Rajput to move on 10 October to Yumstola, which lay behind the Chinese lines.95 Kaul passed these totally unrealistic orders when his 4 Corps had no headquarters to provide him with the minimum of staff assistance for drawing up an effective operational plan. These orders were all the more questionable because, on the nights of 7, 8 and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 9 October, Kaul sent messages to the highest political authority in the country, which reported critical shortages and reﬂ ected on potentially disastrous consequences confronting the Indian Army. Yet, such messages would invariably conclude with the smug assurance that Kaul would do everything to fulﬁ l the task entrusted to him. In the words of J.P. Dalvi, one of the scribes who took down

95 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 225–44; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 378–89. 276 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Kaul’s elaborate messages in longhand: ‘I was quite bewildered at this apparent contradiction between the facts stated and his naive optimism’. The only way to resolve the contradiction is to suggest that Kaul wanted to attain military glory cheap, and outlive his reputation as a commander without any combat experience. He nursed the illusion fostered by his mentor, Nehru, that China would not retaliate massively against India’s military pinpricks. This is why Kaul could announce on 9 October that some military action had to be taken on 10 October, and national interest must be served by evicting the Chinese, even if that required sacriﬁ cing 20,000 lives!96 When Kaul ordered the movement of 2 Rajput to Yumstola (as noted above) without any reconnaissance, plan, and elaborate ground-level orders, his subordinates could not but view this order as insane, More so, because at the Thagla Ridge (16,000 feet high), the Chinese garrison commanded overwhelming strength in terms of manpower, weapons, modern artillery and mortars, defence stores, access to roads to their nearby base, and the capacity to observe every movement of Indian forces on the lower ground. There was not the slightest doubt that any military move (which had even the most shadowy appearance of an attempt to dislodge the Chinese from Thagla) would produce an overwhelming retaliation by the Chinese as also the decimation of the incomparably disadvantaged Indian forces. For, according to the Chinese, even in accordance with the McMahon Line, Thagla belonged to them. Moreover, following headlines and stories in the Indian newspapers of 6 October publicising the appointment of a new task force under Kaul to attack the Chinese, the collected Chinese troops would nip in the bud any Indian military move that would challenge their position. The Chinese, again, were under no compulsion to respond with restraint to an Indian move because they could hardly imagine

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the near-absolute lack of military preparations on the Indian side. ‘We could not subscribe’, writes Brigadier Dalvi, ‘to the curious assumption that by ignoring realities, the realities themselves will disappear. In sheer desperation I asked Kaul to have a patrol sent before committing the whole battalion’. So, on 9 October, about

96 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 247–49. Relations with China 277

50 men of 9 Punjab went across the Namkachu River (the de facto boundary), and reached Tseng-Jong on the north bank of this river, which was only a herder’s hut. In the early morning of 10 October, about 800 Chinese soldiers attacked the platoon of 9 Punjab, using heavy mortars. The Indians fought a thoroughly unequal battle with exemplary gallantry, inﬂ icted heavy casualties on the adversary, but, eventually, could not avoid being overpowered. Kaul reacted to this with characteristic incredulity. He told Dalvi: ‘My God, you are right, they mean business.’97 Nevertheless, the bitter experience of the Tseng-Jong battle failed to outwit B.M. Kaul, who, in his book The Untold Story, subsequently spun out an extraordinary analysis of which country (India or China) started the 1962 war. Actually, in view of complex and numerous moves and countermoves over months and years, the debate about which country started the war became somewhat erroneous. But Kaul, prone to oversimplification, insisted on blaming China, as he referred to the Tseng-Jong encounter: ‘This was the battle with us in the real sense. In the past, there had only been spasmodic skirmishes between us. It was therefore, not India but China who started the war.’ In order to comprehend how untoward such self-justifying assessments can turn out to be, one may refer to T.N. Kaul’s book Diplomacy in Peace and War, wherein T.N. Kaul has attempted to cover up Nehru’s reaction to the Chinese incursion in the Thagla area on 8 September 1962 (which could be regarded by some as a prelude to the Indian move on 9 October). T.N. Kaul wrote:

Nehru tried to defuse the situation by treating it as a local incident and made the statement that the Chinese would be driven out (from this area). But, when Chinese troops advanced further on a massive scale, it could no longer be treated as a mere local incident.98

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 More than the harrowing experience of the skirmish on 10 October, it was probably Kaul’s ill health—chest pain, breathing difﬁ culty, and fever—that compelled him to leave for New Delhi on 11 October,

97 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 246–55; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 390–91; Nayar, India, pp. 133–34. 98 Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, p. 115; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 391–92. 278 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and brought back some degree of sanity to his military moves. On the night of 11 October, there was a meeting in Nehru’s house. Kaul narrated India’s shortages and China’s advantages in the Thagla area, where one Indian brigade was pitted against one Chinese division. It was decided that the previous order of an attack upon the Chinese stood cancelled. Coupled with this rational decision was an irrational one. The Indians were to hold their existing positions, even though these were indefensible—geographically as also in terms of deployment of minimum military resources. But Menon seemed determined to create trouble over the cancelled order of eviction. When, at the meeting of 11 October, Thapar asked Nehru specifi cally whether this order was cancelled, Nehru asked Thapar to discuss the matter with Menon. But Thapar repeated his plea for instructions from the prime minister, who stressed that, since the Chinese were too powerful, it would be useless to get Indian soldiers killed. As to the timetable for eviction of the Chinese, Nehru assured Thapar he had not stipulated any defi nite date. Yet, on 12 October 1962, at the New Delhi airport, on the eve of his departure for Colombo, Nehru told the press that he had ordered the Army to push the Chinese out of Indian territory. In his book, The Untold Story, Kaul tries awkwardly to play down this blunder by Nehru: ‘It is my surmise that Nehru took up a posture of “courage” when he knew that we were militarily weak, in the hope that with this bold (though contradictory) statement, the Chinese might be deterred from attacking India’. Menon magnifi ed the madness of the 12 October press statement by Nehru (and precipitated the full-scale Chinese invasion of 20 October) by setting 1 November as the fi nal date for dislodging the Chinese. Hence, on 16 October, Prasad asked Dalvi about his requirements for discharging this task. This, as Dalvi has aptly commented in his book, Himalayan Blunder, indicated a complete loss of sanity as also prevalence of lunacy at the highest level, for,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Dalvi’s brigade ‘was pratically without clothes, without rations and without artillery’, not to mention the insurmountable obstacles to the movement of troops and equipment in the mountainous terrain. Meanwhile, on 15 October in Colombo, Nehru compounded his folly by afﬁ rming before journalists (at an inappropriate time) that China could not be allowed to seize Indian territory, and use it for bargaining in subsequent negotiations. But Nehru is lucky. His biographer, S. Gopal, ﬁ nds no fault with his statement of 12 October. Gopal opines, ‘in fact, it was a wholly unobjectionable statement. Relations with China 279

The policy of, at some time or other, evicting the Chinese from Indian territory was not a new one’.99 At a meeting in Tezpur on 17 October, where Menon, Thapar and Sen were present, Kaul was asked to hold on to Tsangley, lying north of the Namkachu River, where an Indian patrol noticed the absence of Chinese forces, and, therefore, India set up a tiny post on 4 October. But, militarily, on account of insurmountable logistic and topographical diffi culties, it was impossible to maintain a company (of Gorkhas) at the herder’s hut called Tsangley, which lay at an altitude of 15,500 feet, across a slippery and snowy ascent. Menon’s insistence on holding on to Tsangley, despite Kaul’s assertion that the task was militarily impossible, signifi ed a perverse way of establishing civilian supremacy over the military, especially at a time when it was visible to the Indian forces that the Chinese were mobilising men and resources in the Namkachu zone in a frenzied fashion, evidently for an invasion. Since Tsangley was located near the India–Bhutan–Tibetan trijunction, Indian occupation of this herder’s hut could establish (in however illusory a fashion) Indian presence on the Thagla ridge. This points to the more profound question of the validity of Indian efforts to preserve the McMahon Line as the boundary. In the absence of joint India–China surveys, it was logical and legal to accept the boundary depicted on the maps for the Anglo-Tibetan treaty (of 24 March 1914), as drawn up by McMahon. Indian offi cials did not bother to note that this map placed India’s post Dhola and the Thagla ridge to the north of the McMahon Line, that is inside the territory of China (Tibet). There was thus an urgent need for comprehensive India–China consultations and surveys to adapt the complex topographical features to mutually convenient territorial demarcations. Amazingly, at the time of the India–China confrontation around India’s Dhola post, the Chinese

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 suggested a local level conference to settle the boundary. This suggestion, eventually placed before the Indian prime minister, was rejected. The Indian policy of forward operations underwent a gradual but radical transformation. In this process, India continued

99 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, p. 220. Also, Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 262–64, 284–86; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 393–97; Nayar, India, pp. 134–35. 280 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to delude herself over the risk of retaliation by China. India persisted in calculating this risk as non-existent, while being the ﬁ rst to send patrols into territories under Chinese occupation (for example, the Galwan Valley in the western sector); establishing posts to cut off Chinese posts, in the hope of securing Chinese withdrawal; and, ﬁ nally, as in the eastern sector, to take military action to push the Chinese out of the territory occupied by them. Plain delusion about the zero possibility of retaliation by China against all such forward moves could hardly be a deterrent to the full-scale Chinese invasion (on 20 October).100 On 17 October, Kaul fell ill while at Tezpur. On 18 October, Menon and Thapar sent a doctor to Tezpur in a special plane to examine Kaul. The doctor took Kaul to New Delhi on the same date. Suffering from a serious enlargement of the heart and accumulation of water in both lungs, Kaul would return to Tezpur on 29 October. Meanwhile, the ill-fated 7 Brigade was compelled to stick to its indefensible positions at Namkachu—without even minimum artillery, clothes, and rations. Alarming reports of Chinese military build-up—evidently in preparation for a full-scale invasion—were not being analysed correctly by Prasad of the 4 Division, by the HQ 4 Corps and Kaul, or by the Army HQ (HQ Eastern Command being reduced to a cipher following the arrival of Kaul as 4 Corps Commander). On 17 October, Dalvi told Prasad that it was impossible to keep soldiers at Namkachu. In response to this, Dalvi was informed of the decision by the highest authority to keep one infantry company at Tsangle (herder’s hut) throughout the winter. Helicopters were to be used to drop supplies at Tsangle. This decision was totally unrealistic, although it was no longer considered shocking, for, after all, it emanated from the highest level in the country! Decisions or non-decisions continued to pour down from this level, which had the supreme advantage of staying far away

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 from NEFA and indulging in irrational thinking. On 18 October, Dalvi informed 4 Division of the evidence of the Chinese preparing an advance through the night and attack at dawn. Dalvi and his men could watch the movements of Chinese marking parties and guides. There was no reaction to this message from the beleaguered

100 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 282–85; Kaul, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 398–400; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 297–300. Relations with China 281

7 Brigade. ‘Everyone seemed to be deaf, dumb and blinkered’, writes Dalvi. ‘The outward composure of the High Command was clearly due to a failure of imagination. There was an air of unreality and doom during the last critical days at moments of the Chinese build-up’, he added. Throughout the day of 19 October, men of the 7 Brigade watched Chinese troops moving into those battle positions for which they had carried out reconnaissance during 16–18 October. All these reports (and the memory of the devastating consequences of the Tseng Jong operation on 10 October) failed to perturb the highest authorities. Dalvi told Prasad on 19 October that the current situation was ‘no longer a case of trying to bluff the Chinese by sitting under their noses’. Prasad agreed with Dalvi that the 7 Brigade should withdraw to a safer place to avoid a massacre. But Prasad could not cancel Kaul’s previous order of sticking to the position at Namkachu. The inevitable happened on 20 October 1962. The Chinese crossed the Namkachu River at a number of points and vanquished the 7 Brigade in about three hours. Dalvi became a prisoner of the Chinese. For a classic case of deception and self-justifi cation in writing, the following from Kaul’s The Untold Story is incomparable: ‘I was told later (when I got back to Tezpur after my illness on 29 October) that the Chinese were observed to build up furiously in the Thagla area during the period 15–19 October.’101 ‘Namkachu was no military battle’, writes Brigadier (Retd) Darshan Khullar. He adds: ‘It was a gross miscarriage of a limited political aim set by Prime Minister Nehru and a mindless coterie of consultants’, including top-ranking military offi cials, who suffered from ‘false overconfi dence and military naiveté’. In contrast, the Chinese never underestimated the strength of the Indian Army, probably because of the extraordinary reputation it had earned in the Second World War. This is revealed in The Snows of the Himalayas: The True History of China India War by Sun Xiao and Chen Zhibin.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Lengthy excerpts from this book are available in When Generals Failed: The Chinese Invasion by Darshan Khullar. This study, published in the 1990s, cannot but strike one as highly pragmatic, even though it is sponsored by the victorious Chinese government. In 1962, China suffered severe domestic problems, including famines in large parts

101 Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 398–402. Also see, Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 287–98, 305, 308; M.L. Sali, India–China Border Dispute: A Case Study of the Eastern Sector, New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 1998, pp. 89–90. 282 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of the country. According to the above-mentioned Sun-Chen study, China was aware of Nehru’s domestic compulsions, and of India’s ability to attract Anglo-American military support in a conﬂ ict. Mao, according to this study, was an admirer of India’s ancient civilisation, and stressed India’s role in enhancing China’s international status. Mao, therefore, preferred to stick to negotiations towards mutual adjustment of boundaries, and avoid a bloody conﬂ ict. But he took seriously Nehru’s public order to Kaul for the eviction of Chinese troops, and if China failed to avoid a war, Mao desired that China should exercise its might in such a way as to ensure peace for three decades. The Sun-Chen study makes it clear that China had great respect for India’s 7 Brigade. But the Chinese troops did observe that the 7 Brigade had practically no cutting tools and sand bags for entrenchment. Therefore, when at a meeting of 80 Chinese commanders on 18 October, one Chinese commander boasted that he would capture Brigadier Dalvi alive (and subsequently this capture became a reality), he was not exaggerating, for the Chinese had watched the Indians dispersing their troops in such a manner as to demoralise these troops.102 Dalvi could easily predict what happened on 20 October in the course of his conversations with Prasad in the evening of 19 October. In a crisis situation—with Kaul the Corps Commander sick, absent, and resting in faraway New Delhi—the views of commanders (like Dalvi) in forward locations should prevail. But this did not happen. Dalvi told Prasad that he ‘had hitherto relied on my Superiors, mostly against my own judgement and they had let down my troops’. Dalvi further said:

[He] questioned the physical courage of all those who were willing to come and watch a tamasha, but who were conspicuous by their absence since the Chinese attack. Not one single general ofﬁ cer had visited me after 10th October. They all seemed to have time for futile

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 conferences at Delhi and Tezpur, but no time to visit the battleﬁ eld which had now been set up as a butchery by the Chinese.103

On 20 October, as ﬂ awlessly forecast by Dalvi, Chinese troops massacred the 7 Brigade in the inaccessible Namkachu Valley. This

102 Brigadier Darshan Khullar (Retd), When Generals Failed: The Chinese Invasion, New Delhi: Manas, 1999, pp. 53–73, 78–79. 103 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 296–97. Relations with China 283

massacre could have been avoided if the GOCs at the Division, Corps, and Army level (viz., Prasad, Kaul and Sen) had taken timely and proper tactical decisions, or allowed others (for example, Brigade Commander Dalvi) to take such decisions, which became obvious in the second week of October. But this was not done on account of deep-seated vice in the system. As Dalvi writes:

The Army command chain had surrendered its authority. Here again, the years of domination and denigration of the Ofﬁ cer Corps, was being paid for in this desolate valley. If the Civil Authority desired obedient hacks then this is all that they can expect in a national crisis, when forthrightness and professional integrity are called for. Government lived to rue the day for eliminating its best military talent and for meddling with Army promotions and appointments.104

The highest civilian authority was squarely responsible for the deep national humiliation suffered by India on 20 October. In spite of this, it was India’s misfortune that the country’s highest civilian authority—far from being chastised by this humiliation—persisted in its dangerous conduct in the matter of choosing (foisting) the 4 Corps Commander. On 24 October, New Delhi took an unexpectedly rational (though short-lived) step: Lt. Gen. Harbaksh Singh, a highly respected soldier, was appointed the Commander of the 4 Corps. In a few days, moving among the soldiers in NEFA, Harbaksh Singh substantially restored their morale. But the highest civilian authorities in New Delhi failed to get over their incorrigible habit of taking wrong decisions, and, on 29 October, despite Sen’s opposition, replaced Harbaksh Singh by B.M. Kaul as the 4 Corps Commander. Kaul was not able to withstand the climate of NEFA for 13 days, and had a serious lung disorder. But, thanks to the magic of his political inﬂ uence at the highest level, Kaul could do away with compulsory periods of convalescence and sick leave, and resume the command of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 4 Corps. Evidently, even after the experience of 20 October, Nehru, Menon and Kaul failed to take the situation seriously, and plan to rebuff the Chinese on a suitable ground. As before, when, as Quarter- Master General of the Army, and a permanent member of the Border Restoration Committee (BRC), he did not properly fulﬁ l his duties of ensuring the preparation of necessary roads on the border, or the

104 Ibid., p. 297. 284 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

procurement of mules fi t to operate in the mountains, on 29 October 1962, too, Kaul failed to realise the gravity of his responsibilities as 4 Corps Commander. He and his political patrons believed that Kaul should have a chance to brighten his image as a soldier (which lay badly tarnished). It did not matter if this venture produced further humiliations for India, deeper than those on 20 October.105 Kaul, being neither physically nor mentally fi t to bear the burden of leadership of the 4 Corps, India lost the chance to restore its prestige by beating back the Chinese at Sela, where the Indians dominated with well-prepared defences, and enjoyed superiority in numbers as also fi repower. On 17 November, the Indian forces repulsed as many as four attacks by the Chinese. Junior offi cers and men were ready to fi ght to the last. But, as Lt. Col. (Retd) J.R. Saigal writes in his book, The Unfought War of 1962, they were virtually stabbed in the back because of the decision of the higher authority to abandon Sela. In his book, Unsung Battles of 1962, Lt. Col. (Retd) Gurdip Singh Kher clearly blames Kaul for betraying the young offi cers and abandoning Sela. At Bomdila, too, the Indian forces could have repulsed the Chinese attack, and restored India’s military honour, but for the senseless orders issued by Corps Commander Kaul on 17–18 November. By the morning of 20 November, as Neville Maxwell observes, ‘Militarily the Chinese victory was complete, the Indian defeat absolute’.106 There is no doubt that, as in the case of America’s Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s, in the military fi asco of 1962 in NEFA too, the fundamental responsibility rested with the ignorance and misjudgement of civilian leadership at the highest level, whereas the Armed Forces had to carry undeservedly the burden of death and disrepute. On 7 November, Nehru accepted the resignation of Menon from the Cabinet, for even the Congress Party did not like Nehru’s manoeuvre to shift Menon from the position of defence Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

105 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, pp. 300, 307; Kaul, The Untold Story, pp. 400–8; Khullar, When Generals Failed, p. 119; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 388–89. 106 Lt. Col. (Retd) Gurdip Singh Kher, Unsung Battles of 1962, New Delhi: Lancer, 1995; Lt. Col. (Retd) J.R. Saigal, The Unfought War of 1962, New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1979. Also, Khullar, When Generals Failed, pp. 186–87, 216–17, 243–46; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 402–4, 408, 413–14. Also see, Bronwen Maddox, The Times, London, reprinted in The Statesman, 14 August 2002. Relations with China 285

minister to that of the minister for defence production. Amazingly for others, but characteristically for Nehru, as S. Gopal writes, Nehru ‘believed that Menon was guiltless of responsibility for the debacle’ of 1962. Such an irrational belief in Nehru again resurfaced on 19 November when CoAS Thapar resigned. Nehru tried to make Kaul the CoAS. Nehru’s failure to take even the elementary lesson from the reverses in NEFA and retain faith in the non-existent military abilities of Kaul could only conﬁ rm that either Nehru was terribly sick or prone to incurable partisanship.107 Around 23 October, when Kaul was on his sick bed in New Delhi, Nehru and Menon paid him a visit. Kaul offered them three suggestions for ejecting the Chinese from Indian territories. These were: (i) a reorganisation of the command and control system of the Indian Army; (ii) a speedy accretion to the number of forces on an appreciable scale; and (iii) foreign military aid. On 26 October, Menon visited Kaul again, and asked him to put forward his suggestions in the form of a paper. Cabinet Secretary S.S. Khera later collected this paper. Kaul reminisces:

Government did expand our Army and also asked for foreign military aid but only when it was too late. If Nehru, Menon and some others acted in time, as represented by the Army repeatedly earlier, there might have been a different story to tell.108

At this stage it is important to refer to B.M. Kaul’s meeting with Chester Bowles at New Delhi in March 1962. The account of the antecedents and outcome of this meeting, as provided in The Untold Story by Kaul, have been narrated here. What is amazing is Kaul’s ‘inﬁ nite capacity’ for misrepresenting reality. Kaul claimed that Bowles was the one to propose a meeting with Kaul, and that Kaul obtained permission from Nehru and Menon to attend it where he discussed the probability of a Chinese attack between July and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 October 1962. In his book Mission to India, Chester Bowles points out that it was Kaul who had requested a meeting with Bowles, and that it was Kaul who told Bowles that he had not informed Nehru of imminent Chinese military action against India. It may be impossible

107 Nayar, India, pp. 140–41; Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, p. 227. 108 Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 407. 286 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to come across anyone who is inclined to believe B.M. Kaul rather than Chester Bowles on this matter.109 In the wake of the military reversal on 20 October, Nehru, according to B.M. Kaul, appealed to all countries of the world for military aid. Obviously, Nehru was completely demoralised. Otherwise, he would not have sent the appeal to so many countries, which, unbelievably, included Pakistan. About 75 countries (as Kaul estimated inaccurately) extended moral support to India, whereas a few countries—notably America, Britain, Canada, and Australia— promised military assistance. The Western countries, especially Britain and America, offered full support to India. In contrast, the reaction of the non-aligned countries, whose leadership Nehru craved and on whose behalf Nehru and Menon would criticise the Western world, was, in the words of Neville Maxwell, ‘reserved and wary—in a word, nonaligned’. No government, newspaper, political leader or party, in an Arab country could go as far as even to express sympathy for India. Most African leaders too honoured the spirit of non-alignment, and preferred a non-committal stance. Nkrumah of Ghana was an exception. He sent a word of reprimand to London for a quick offer of arms aid to India. Of all those countries that had participated in the 1961 summit conference of non-aligned countries at Belgrade, only Cyprus and Ethiopia provided open support to India. Others appeared to pay India back in its own coin. For years India had offered unsolicited advice to many countries on nearly all conceivable issues. The gist of such advice was the need for exercise of patience and restraint, and a hint at India’s mediatory service. Some recipients of such advice may have concluded that India was ignorant of their problems and, therefore, offered advice that lacked understanding. Most participants in the 1961 non-alignment summit now found it convenient to offer such advice to India in its conﬂ ict with China. Nehru was rattled as these non-aligned countries took

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a leaf from India’s book. Nehru was so deeply disappointed that, at Parliament, he showered the ultimate abuse on these countries, referring to them as the ‘so-called nonaligned countries’, and also accusing them of confusion. No less disappointing was the response of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev’s letter to Nehru (of 20 October) warned that India may be following ‘a very dangerous

109 Ibid., pp. 347–49, 406–7. Also, Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 85–86. Relations with China 287

path’ if it wanted to settle the border dispute with China by military means. Moscow advised Nehru to accept the Chinese proposal for negotiations without preconditions. On 24 October, China proposed ceasefi re, disengagement and negotiations. Pravda fully endorsed it, and hurt the Indian government. Moreover, the Soviet Union informed the Indian embassy in Moscow that it was not in a position to stand by its pledge to supply MIG combat aircraft to India. One could argue that the Cuban missile crisis—commencing with the detection by America of Soviet missiles in Cuba on 14 October, intensifying with the American blockade of Cuba on 22 October, and terminating with Khrushchev’s announcement about withdrawal of missiles from Cuba on 28 October—explained why, despite the growing rift with Beijing, Moscow took a stance vis-à-vis India that would placate China. But it was a small consolation.110 Soon after the Thagla tragedy, in response to Nehru’s appeal, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Britain sent a most touching message. As the American ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith records in his diary of 24 October that the British high commissioner to India, Paul Gore-Booth, had told him that Nehru ‘had been almost tearfully thankful for the warm words of support he had from Macmillan’. Nevertheless, the prompt and large-scale support that America extended to India in an hour of crisis was highly remarkable. For, America had to forget all the numerous homilies from Nehru about the virtues of non-alignment, vices of military alignment, and the inadvisability of use of force even in defence of vital national interests (violated by India itself in 1961 in the takeover of Goa). But overwhelming diffi culty about the fl ow of American military aid to India arose out of something else—an almost impassable barrier called the Menon factor. It was far from easy to write off the thoroughly senseless and unnecessary attacks upon America by Menon at the UN, and over the American

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 television (and Menon remained India’s defence minister, and, subsequently, minister for defence production, till 7 November 1962). The insufferable blows delivered illogically to America by Menon became apparent, for instance, at the time of presentation of

110 Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 407; Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 364–67; Nayar, India, pp. 141–42, 144. 288 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

credentials to President John F. Kennedy by the Indian ambassador to America, B.K. Nehru. As soon as he entered the American president’s Oval Offi ce (in mid-September 1961), Kennedy asked B.K. Nehru who was Menon’s scientifi c adviser. The reason was the recent resumption by the Soviet Union of nuclear tests, and Menon’s totally unscientifi c support of the same. Both America and Russia had suspended these atmospheric tests for some time, and the unexpected, unannounced, and inexplicable action by Russia had provoked widespread denunciation. However, as B.K. Nehru writes, Menon’s ‘pathological anti-Americanism’ prompted him to tell a European interviewer that ‘testing in the atmosphere was cleaner and caused less pollution than testing underground which the Americans were continuing to do’. This statement of Menon provided the background to Kennedy’s query to B.K. Nehru, which could only be evaded but not answered.111 One measure of Nehru’s demoralised state (and loss of sense of proportion), following the fi asco of 20 October 1962, was that he sent the same letter of appeal to scores of countries. He failed to observe a distinction between those who could provide effective military help and those who could not. Evidently, the letters sent to America, Britain or Russia should have been different from those dispatched to numerous other countries, which, by no stretch of imagination, could be expected to supply military aid to India. When Kennedy received a long plaintive message from Nehru, he was greatly enthused. But the subsequent knowledge that the same message had been transmitted to scores of other heads of state caused some disappointment. This was heightened by the continuing presence of Menon in the Indian Cabinet, despite the Namkachu/Thagla denouement! It is to the lasting credit of American decision makers that, in spite of such disappointments and the outbreak of the Cuban missile crisis, they paid adequate attention to Ambassador B.K. Nehru, who carried

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Prime Minister Nehru’s message. In fact, when delivering this message, B.K. Nehru found Kennedy studying an Indian map,

111 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 380; Nayar, India, p. 139; Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, pp. 347–48. Here is a sample of how insensate Nehru’s defence of Menon was. Nehru said to H.V. Kamath, a Lok Sabha member: ‘I send Krishna Menon to the United Nations, not to the United States. How can I help it if the U.N.O. functions on American soil?’ See H.V. Kamath, The Last Days of Jawaharlal Nehru, Calcutta: Jayasree Prakashan, 1977, p. 22. Relations with China 289

especially the NEFA terrain, with the help of Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The American secretary of state advised India not to hesitate to move tanks from West Bengal through East Pakistan in order to stop the Chinese advance. While this American reaction to the Chinese invasion of India was reassuring, the Indian reaction was far from digniﬁ ed. In B.K. Nehru’s words: ‘Our reaction to this invasion as it affected our much vaunted policy of nonalignment and our supercilious attitude towards the Americans was, I fear, the most humiliating episode in Indo-American relations that I had the misfortune to handle.’112 At the other end, the American ambassador to India, J.K. Galbraith, too did not face an entirely comfortable situation. He was fully sympathetic towards the Indians, but could not but ‘have decently in mind the pounding we have been taking from Krishna Menon’. M.J. Desai, the Indian foreign secretary, informed Galbraith on 23 October that the Indians were about to request large-scale military assistance from America, which was natural. What was somewhat unnatural and immature was Desai expressing the hope that the Americans would not coerce the Indians into an alliance. While Galbraith assured Desai that this problem would not arise, he did not fail to remind Desai of the ‘serious problems’ on account of ‘the way in which Krishna Menon had alienated American opinion’. On 28 October, Kaul met Galbraith and talked of the urgent need for American arms. On 29 October, when Galbraith ‘got to the ofﬁ ce around nine, Menon was on the phone’, Galbraith writes. Menon wanted to see Galbraith or ‘come over to the Chancery’. However, Galbraith adds,

Protocol never allows a minister to call on an ambassador; Menon, to his credit, is not scrupulous about such matters. The decision had been made to request American arms. Menon wished to show that he was persona grata with the Americans and get the credit.113 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Of course, Galbraith was determined not to endow Menon with this credit, even though President Kennedy was broadminded enough to instruct that Galbraith ‘should in general do business with Menon’. Galbraith told Menon that he had to see Nehru

112 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 404. Also, Nayar, India, pp. 138–39. 113 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 389. 290 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

before seeing Menon, as he had to deliver a letter from Kennedy to Nehru. Menon pleaded saying he would ensure that Galbraith’s meeting with the prime minister was deferred. Galbraith, however, did not miss this opportunity to put Menon in place: ‘In a series of telephone exchanges too numerous and oriental to record in detail’, Galbraith records, ‘I got through to him the idea that I knew he was going to ask for aid and felt that the request should come ﬁ rst from the Prime Minister. Then I agreed to see him after I had seen the Prime Minister’. The principal reason why Galbraith was bent upon depriving Menon of the slightest opportunity to earn credit for securing American military assistance was a merely natural feeling of hatred towards Menon, who, in Galbraith’s words, should not be permitted to ‘present himself as a transcendent ﬁ gure who was respected by the Americans as by all others’. Galbraith was deeply worried that the acquisition of such an image by Menon ‘would cause great trouble in Washington and great trouble for the Indians in getting further military help, should there be a long period of hostility’.114 Galbraith held meetings with Nehru, Menon, and M.J. Desai in quick succession on 29 October. Nehru was grateful to receive a friendly message from Kennedy. He was emphatic on the matter of India having to obtain arms aid from America. But, in order especially to pre-empt Soviet annoyance, a military alliance with America was to be avoided. It was almost a repetition of the naiveté expressed by Desai to Galbraith on 23 October. Non-alignment became not only irrelevant but counterproductive in a crisis. Yet, there was a desperate attempt to preserve the metaphor of non-alignment. The Americans, however, were wise enough not to insist on a military alliance, and Galbraith conveyed this assurance to Nehru, as he had done earlier to Desai. Galbraith then met Menon, and administered a hard though polite snub, without eliciting any retort, as Menon asked for long-range mortars, tanks, and machine guns. Menon deserved this

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 snub (recorded ahead), as in the past he had cavalierly ignored the rudimentary requirements of soldiers ﬁ ghting in the mountains, while arranging for a lot of self-publicity for his attempts to procure supersonic aircraft from the Soviet Union. Galbraith notes:

I told him that we were prepared to help him with the things the soldiers needed in the hills, including quartermaster supplies for I had

114 Ibid., pp. 376–90. Relations with China 291

heard that some were without proper clothing for the violent climate of the border. But the time for illusions was past; the Chinese were not being driven back by the supersonic aircraft so much publicised by his Department. He barely controlled his anger at this particular point; under any other circumstances, it would have produced a towering explosion.115

Galbraith next met Desai, and insisted that at the ensuing press briefi ng the Government of India ‘should make clear that their request for aid had come from the Prime Minister’. It is highly creditworthy—and Indian decision makers must take a vital lesson from this—how the American offi cials, forgetting years of supercilious advice and denunciation from Nehru and Menon, began to arrange military shipments expeditiously, without attaching much signifi cance to such important problems as those of payment, inspection, etc. In contrast, the Indians continued to be farcically fussy about preserving non-alignment. On 31 October, for instance, India’s newly appointed ambassador to Moscow, T.N. Kaul, told Galbraith candidly that, in the event of a showdown, the Soviet Union would side with China. He then asked Galbraith whether, despite the supply of military help to India, Galbraith could issue a statement signifying continued American recognition of India’s non-alignment policy. In Galbraith’s words: ‘It would seem obvious that we are not trying to recruit new military partners but evidently the point must be made’.116 In the four days following the transmission of specifi c requests, on 3 November, American transport aircraft delivered arms for the infantry as well as light artillery pieces at the Calcutta airport. On 6 November, Galbraith issued a statement declaring that America ‘accepted nonalignment in bad times as well as good’, and ‘that one of the largest recipients of our military assistance in the past had been the Soviet Union’. On 8 November, China proposed that both

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the countries should retreat 20 kilometres on their respective sides of the McMahon Line. India rejected the proposal. Indians tried to practise their version of non-alignment by dispatching requests to all Communist countries (barring Albania and China). But, as Galbraith observed, with as much astuteness as tolerance, ‘this was

115 Ibid., pp. 390–91. 116 Ibid., pp. 390–96. 292 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

for the record; they had no expectation of getting them’. Such large heartedness on the part of some American decision makers was extraordinary, and persisted even in the face of the false sense of pride engulﬁ ng the Indian decision makers, notably Nehru, which prevented them from publicising a due appreciation of American military help. In a letter to Kennedy on 13 November, Galbraith wrote the following about Nehru:

All his life he has sought to avoid being dependent upon the United States and the United Kingdom—most of his personal reluctance to ask (or thank) for aid has been based on this pride. Now nothing is so important to him, more personally than politically, than to maintain the semblance of this independence. His age no longer allows of readjustment. To a point we can, I feel, be generous on this…117

The Indian decision makers, including Nehru, failed to realise that the American decision makers were far more worried than their Indian counterparts about the end of India’s non-alignment on account of further aggression by China. As Galbraith cautioned Kennedy,

Much so-called nonalignment [has already gone] out the window … Popular opinion and our military assistance has worked a further and major impairment. The problem in face of a really serious attack would be how we would react to the prospect of a new, large and extremely expensive ally.118

This American generosity, however, failed to keep disenchantment at bay because Nehru, in order to placate the Soviet Union, persisted in underplaying American military aid, and in claiming that the policy of non-alignment was so sound (as always) that even Americans recommended it.119 But the crisis of non-alignment persisted, as did the India–China

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 confrontation. On 17 November, in the Walong area of NEFA, a few Indian battalions scored an initial success against the Chinese, only to be outnumbered and severely drubbed by them in no time. It was a major military defeat, and M.J. Desai arranged a meeting

117 Ibid., p. 413. 118 Ibid., p. 414. 119 Ibid., pp. 399, 403, 411, 413–16. Relations with China 293

with Galbraith. About what transpired in this meeting Galbraith records: ‘The Indians want us to supply them with transport aircraft. In further modiﬁ cation of the nonalignment policy, the Indians also wish pilots and crews to ﬂ y the aircraft.’ But years of (active or passive) indoctrination on non-alignment left their print on Indian pressmen who pestered Galbraith, at a New Delhi Press Club meeting on 19 November, with the hackneyed and obsolete query on where America ‘stood on India’s nonalignment policy’. Galbraith gave a smashing reply, that he was ‘very tired of the question, for it seemed to imply that there was something extremely dangerous in being helped by the United States’. Galbraith reminded the Indian pressmen that the Americans and the Indians were ‘quiet and steadfast friends’, and that for eight years America ‘hadn’t asked for any new military allies’. In a few hours following this lunchtime press meet, when Galbraith saw M.J. Desai, he realised that ‘the nonalignment I was asked about at lunch is far out of date; the Indians are pleading for military association. They want our Air Force to back them up so that they can employ theirs tactically without leaving their cities unprotected’. For, ‘new catastrophes’ had occurred during the day, and ‘the Chinese have taken over most of NEFA and with incredible speed’. On 20 November, New Delhi suffered from ‘ultimate panic’, and Galbraith ‘witnessed the disintegration of public morale’. In order to boost the public morale, Galbraith decided to expedite the arrival of American transport aircraft by doing away with the formality of elaborate ‘military calculations’. He further proposed that components of the United States Seventh Fleet be dispatched to the Bay of Bengal. Subsequently, Galbraith reminisced, ‘It is good that the Chinese cannot come by water into the Bay of Bengal.’120 Meanwhile, Galbraith’s Indian counterpart in Washington, B.K. Nehru, had a trying time. He was happy that America had supplied prompt military aid. But he was extremely unhappy at the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 collapse of the morale of the Indian leaders, including Nehru, which was evident from the telegrams he received. B.K. Nehru writes,

… as the Chinese advance continued and the rout of the Indian army was patent, the morale in Delhi deteriorated even further to the point of total disappearance. The very ﬁ rst telegram went counter to

120 Ibid., pp. 419, 423–25, 428. 294 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

our policy of nonalignment but that and those which followed were nevertheless couched in terms which, given all the circumstances, continued to be digniﬁ ed. But the last telegram which was received on 22nd November was so pathetic that as I read it I could hardly contain my sorrow and my shame…. The telegram when I read it in its entirety was so humiliating that I found it difﬁ cult to prevent myself from weeping.121

Carl Keysen, the White House staffer who received this telegram even though it was too late in the evening, added insult to injury as he read the telegram, containing a long list of arms and equipment urgently required by India, and remarked: ‘So your spirit couldn’t stand even a minor attack for two weeks. Churchill went on fi ghting single-handed without any help from anybody for two whole years; you have collapsed in fi fteen days’. B.K. Nehru felt that Carl Keysen was right, for, the spirit of Jawaharlal Nehru—his worldview, especially his faith in Asian solidarity—was crushed. The Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefi re with effect from the midnight of 20–21 November 1962. ‘Yesterday, like a thief in the night, peace arrived’, recorded Galbraith in his diary for November 22. As Neville Maxwell commented, this ceasefi re ‘rubbed salt in the wounds’ of the Indians. As B.K. Nehru observed,

The war ended, but in a short period of time it had altered the very fundamentals of our relationship with the United States. We continued to talk in terms of nonalignment but we had become in fact the allies of the United States in their confrontation at least against China.122

Nevertheless, not many Indians had B.K. Nehru’s candour to recognise that America had displayed greatness in coming to India’s rescue, despite the bitter experience of the years when India, in order to support China, had denounced America at every Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 opportunity.123

121 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 404. 122 Ibid., p. 407. 123 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 427. Also, Maxwell, India’s China War, p. 419 and Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 3, p. 225. Gopal was totally wrong when he wrote: ‘Far from being overwhelmed by the crisis, Nehru kept his nerve.’ Relations with China 295

China announced a unilateral ceasefi re and withdrawal to the north of the McMahon Line in NEFA, and the Line of Actual Control in the western sector, because it considered discretion to be the better part of valour. Jawaharlal Nehru attempted two explanations. The fi rst was romantic: China was worried about the explosive anger of the Indian people. The other was pragmatic: the prompt reaction by America. According to Galbraith’s estimation, ‘the Chinese must have some impulse to caution; they can hardly be contemplating a war which might involve the Americans with their supply lines stretched over the high Himalayas’. After all, the Chinese, added Galbraith, ‘were not magicians and could hardly hope to sustain a supply line over the whole mountain spire’. The vanity of the defeated Indian leaders ebbed and fl owed over the years in peculiar ways. On 21 November, when several American teams were being assembled to assist the Indians in conducting the war, Galbraith noticed ‘the Indians yearn for the sight of American uniforms’. Therefore, he withdrew his own ‘political objection’, and decided that he would permit the wearing of American uniforms by American offi cers by 22 November. On 19 November 1962, Nehru wrote two letters to Kennedy, and urged upon Kennedy to dispatch immediately all-weather supersonic fi ghters, as also install radar bases in India. Nehru put the minimum required number of these fi ghters at 12 squadrons, according to S. Gopal. Nehru also wanted two B-47 bomber squadrons, affi rms S. Gopal. The Washington correspondent of The Times (London) reported that Nehru asked for 15 squadrons. Chester Bowles has written that Nehru requested Kennedy to deliver 14 squadrons of fi ghters and three squadrons of bombers. One need not pay much attention to these discrepancies in numbers of American combat aircraft requested by India. What was much more important was how Nehru (with his passion for non-alignment) envisaged the actual use of the American radar installations, as also

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the ﬁ ghter and bomber squadrons in India’s war effort. On this point, in order to avoid any accusation of misrepresentation, one should quote Nehru’s biographer, S. Gopal:

American personnel would have to man these ﬁ ghters and installations and protect Indian cities from air attacks by the Chinese till Indian personnel had been trained. If possible, the United States should also send planes ﬂ own by American personnel to assist the Indian Air Force in any battles with the Chinese in Indian air space; 296 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

but aerial action by India elsewhere would be the responsibility of the Indian Air Force.124

S. Gopal adds that Nehru wanted American B-47 bombers ‘to enable India to strike at Chinese bases and air fi elds; but to learn to fl y these planes Indian pilots and technicians would be sent immediately for training in the United States’. Gopal acknowledges that ‘as an immediate response, Galbraith asked that units of the Seventh Fleet should move into the Bay of Bengal’.125 True, the sudden and unforeseen ceasefi re decision of the Chinese pre-empted the actual deployment of the American Air Force in India. Nevertheless, on this momentous matter, the magnanimity of the American leaders stood in sharp contrast to the undignifi ed response of the Indian leaders. For example, in March 1965, a Congress MP, Sudhir Ghosh, revealed facts that had been kept concealed from the Indian people and Parliament. While speaking on Vietnam, in Parliament, Ghosh asserted that he could not comprehend how India could practise non-alignment vis-à-vis the United States and China in view of the events of 1962, when Prime Minister Nehru asked President Kennedy for air cover, and Kennedy ordered the movement of an American aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal. This raised a storm of protest in Parliament. Congressmen, who were not properly informed, demanded the expulsion of Ghosh from their party. Even Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri denied that Nehru had forwarded such a request to Kennedy. Unfortunately, to quote A.G. Noorani’s terse observation,

Mr Shastri declined to qualify his denial of Dr. Ghosh’s inaccurate, inessential of the aircraft carrier by admitting the crux of his statement—India’s appeal for help and the U.S.’ ready and positive response. Dr. Ghosh’s appeals to Prime Minister Shastri to set the record straight left him unmoved. As a matter of fact, the aircraft

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 carrier was on its way to the Bay of Bengal from the Indian Ocean though it was not in the Bay itself.126

This minor deviation from the otherwise incontestably correct statement of Dr Sudhir Ghosh was caused by the abrupt Chinese

124 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, p. 229. 125 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, p. 29. Also, Bowles, Mission to India, p. 86; Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, pp. 426–27, 433. 126 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 150–51. Relations with China 297

decision for a ceasefi re, which again could be logically ascribed to China’s knowledge of American moves. Even Chester Bowles, a consistent friend of India, mentioned the movement of the United States aircraft carrier at a meeting of Indian military offi cers on 10 June 1966. A former foreign secretary of India, J.N. Dixit, clearly acknowledges the presence of the American aircraft carrier, Enterprise, in the Bay of Bengal in November 1962, confi rming Ghosh’s view. The debate on the specifi cs of the issue may still remain unresolved, but what is indisputable is the mean and ill- informed reluctance of Indian parliamentarians to acknowledge the generous offer of American assistance at an hour of crisis.127 Some writers use inadmissible evidence to brand India as the aggressor in the 1962 war with China. According lo them, India’s provocation to China, for example, in the Dhola/Namkachu/Thagla region, caused China to retaliate by equating India’s forward operations to aggression. This assessment is wrong on several counts. First, China itself was guilty of massive provocation/aggression by constructing the long Aksai Chin highway. Second, Chinese offi cial sources do not talk of provocation by India, but of a massive invasion by India which the Chinese counteracted by means of a massive general offensive. However, this accusation against India is patently untrue, as evident from the preceding discussion in this chapter. Third, India was certainly guilty of unpardonable miscalculation of the impact of its forward operations upon China. Top-ranking Indian political leaders were totally naive to think that such operations would never lead to a massive Chinese military offensive. That is why they did not hesitate to order Indian soldiers lo embark upon forward movements without the minimum supply of such elementary items like rations, clothes, footwear, and infantry weapons, including the artillery, or without even the preparation of feasible dropping zones for such items. Fourth, the massive Chinese offensive could not have been launched without months/years of preparation. Such

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 preparation could not but be the product of a grand plan, which remained in operation irrespective of India’s forward probes here and there.128

127 Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 410–11. For an elucidation, see Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, chapter twelve. Also, Dixit, Across Borders, p. 75. 128 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 144–48. Also, Margaret W. Fisher, Leo E. Rose and Robert A. Huttenback, Himalayan Battleground: Sino-Indian Rivalry in Ladakh, New York: Praeger, 1963, p. 135 and Klaus H. Pringsheim, Asian Survey, October 1963. 298 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

It is apparent from the foregoing account that responsibility for the 1962 NEFA debacle can be fi xed on Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon, General P.N. Thapar, and Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul. But, in the vast fi eld of social sciences in general, and international relations in particular, unanimity is hard to achieve on account of marked divergences in the levels of knowledge and objectivity attainable by various authors. In his book, Across Borders, J.N. Dixit writes: ‘The overconfi dence of some of India’s military commanders of the time about the superiority of the Indian armed forces over the Chinese was one of the inputs which triggered off the war’. In the light of the preceding analysis in this chapter this assessment by Dixit, a former foreign secretary of India (born in 1936), was far from accurate. What another former foreign secretary of India, T.N. Kaul, wrote on this point is quite realistic: ‘It is unfair to blame our armed forces or their commanders whose repeated requests for more and better equipment had been ignored’. But T.N. Kaul (born in 1913) is less than realistic, and virtually contradicts himself when he points to the resignations of Krishna Menon and B.M. Kaul following the NEFA disaster, and observes: ‘Both were patriots, but were treated unfairly and crudely by those who wanted to pin the blame for our defeat on a few heads’. After all, blame had to be apportioned to order to alert future decision makers to the mistakes of their predecessors, and to avoid a similar defeat. In addition, T.N. Kaul himself puts the blame on leaders without naming them. One should add that T.N. Kaul acknowledges the ‘resolute fi ght’ by the Indian soldiers, which resulted in 10,000 Chinese casualties and 4,000 on the Indian side.129 It is easy to fi x the principal responsibility for the 1962 NEFA disaster on Defence Minister Krishna Menon. But that will be extremely unfair. On this matter, there was practically very little that Menon did without the assent and/or acquiescence of Nehru.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 According to Geoffrey Tyson,

[Although Menon]… must bear a heavy share of the responsibility for the catastrophe, some of the blame undoubtedly belongs to the Prime Minister for his apparent complacency, his misreading of a situation

129 Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War, p. 115. Also, Dixit, Across Borders, p. 55. Relations with China 299

on the border that was becoming more dangerous every day, and for the failure to ensure that adequate preparations for the defence of the country were put in hand.130

Moreover, to reiterate only one of some momentous decisions by Nehru (already recorded in this chapter), on 3 October, Nehru told B.M. Kaul that India should no longer tolerate Chinese intrusions, and that India ‘must take—or appear to take—a strong stand irrespective of consequences.’ Menon may be credited with refusing to reveal anything (in other words, his side of the story) that might tarnish the image of his old friend, conﬁ dant, and benefactor, viz. Jawaharlal Nehru. As he said to Kuldip Nayar, ‘My story must die with me because I would have to lay the blame on Nehru, and I do not want to do so because of my loyalty to him’. Nehru too reciprocated this loyalty as, in B.K. Nehru’s words, ‘Krishna Menon’s hold on Jawaharlal Nehru remained unshakable even when the Defence Minister’s criminal responsibility for our national disgrace by the Chinese was evident to the rest of the country’. B.K. Nehru adds that, when Congress MPs insisted on Menon’s removal from the Cabinet, ‘the Prime Minister even threatened to resign, and that it was only when Mahavir Tyagi told him to go ahead and do so that he agreed to get rid of his favourite’. In this context, it is important to note J.P. Dalvi’s assessment:

When the inevitable disaster came Nehru did not even have the grace or courage to admit his errors or seek a fresh mandate from the people. He did not even go through the motion of resigning; he merely presented his trusted colleagues and military appointees as sacriﬁ cial offerings.131

Perhaps there is no better or more objective way to conclude the analysis of the sordid 1962 drama than to quote Nehru’s cousin, B.K. Nehru: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

Among the many good consequences of our Chinese defeat was the mortal fear that continues to live in the politician’s minds, of political interference with the internal administration of the Indian defence forces. If the Chinese had not kicked us as they did, the process of

130 Tyson, Nehru: The Years of Power, pp. 143–44. 131 Dalvi, Himalayan Blunder, p. 220. 300 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

appointing the Defence Minister’s favourites to positions of power which Krishna Menon had started would have continued and grown. The consequences would have been the destruction of the armed forces, as has happened with the civil services of the country.132

In this context, it may not be inappropriate to note B.M. Kaul’s assessment about whether the post of prime minister suited Nehru. Kaul was a relative and one of Nehru’s greatest admirers, and Nehru had in turn showered patronage on Kaul, and thereby enhanced the tendency of Krishna Menon to interfere in military appointments. According to B.M. Kaul, Nehru ‘spent his energies in many extraneous activities. He saw several people he need not have seen and attended to trivial activities which he could have ignored, amidst his profound commitments’. B.M. Kaul adds: ‘It was therefore not infrequent to see him doze off after meals in the middle of an important conversation’. B.M. Kaul had many occasions to notice this over a long period of time, from 1946 to 1962. As noted earlier, in October 1951, Chester Bowles, a great admirer of Nehru and a consistent friend of India, met the Indian prime minister for the fi rst time. But, as Bowles writes, this meeting ‘lasted no more than fi fteen minutes, during which Nehru, to my dismay, appeared to have gone to sleep’.133 For Nehru to become India’s prime minister ‘did not turn out to be an unqualifi ed success from the point of view of administration’, affi rms B.M. Kaul.

Instead of becoming the head of our Government…[Nehru]… should have been appointed the head of our State. He struggled through the former role whereas he would have excelled in the latter. He was ideally suited for being our ﬁ rst citizen and would have presented lofty image to the world as our President…134

Developments after the 1962 Conﬂ ict Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India was not in a position to ignore the 20–21 November ceaseﬁ re call by the Chinese, and launch a military offensive against China. On 1 December 1962, Chinese soldiers started to withdraw behind

132 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 381. Also see, Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 417; Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 376; Nayar, India, p. 140; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 53. 133 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 105. 134 Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 323. For earlier quotes by Kaul see pp. 320–23. Relations with China 301

the McMahon Line. Remarkably, as Neville Maxwell asserts, ‘They made it a matter of principle, or pride, that all equipment left behind by the retreating Indians should be handed back to them in as good condition as possible’. Ironically, this equipment included automatic American rifl es in yet-to-be-opened boxes. The Chinese prepared an elaborate and systematic list of all the materials they handed over to the Indians, and were careful to collect receipts from the Indians. Although China did not publicise this matter, the Indians, feeling all the more insulted, gave unnecessary publicity to it by condemning it as a Chinese propaganda trick. The Indians thus demonstrated that they could not remain graceful in defeat. India did not accept the ceasefi re formally, although informally it complied with the ceasefi re in some ways. For instance, India did not, as China desired, retreat 20 kilometres from the Line of Actual Control in the western sector. In the eastern sector, however, the Indian military and paramilitary forces refrained from stepping inside the territory lying between the McMahon Line (as marked on the 1914 map) and the Thagla ridge. On 21 January 1963, India’s civil administrators arrived in Tawang.135 It is fashionable in some circles to talk of the Chinese betrayal in 1962. This is absurd. It is a vain attempt to conceal the deeply deplorable fact of an encounter between India’s thoughtless policies/actions (sacrifi cing national interest) and China’s thoughtful policies/ actions (upholding national interest). Before the war with China in 1962, India followed a sort of doctrinaire policy of non-alignment, which sought to appease China (without serving India’s interests) and alienate America (without promoting India’s interests). For instance, Krishna Menon’s verbal outbursts against America damaged India’s interests, although they created a phoney feeling of independence. In contrast, Pakistan followed a highly flexible policy of alignment, and convinced

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 China that its policy of military alliance with America aimed at enhancing its security against India. In his autobiography, Friends Not Masters, Ayub Khan made it very clear (it was too late for Krishna Menon to get enlightened by it) that a policy of raining ruthless vituperation on other countries—to demonstrate independence— was an unaffordable luxury for Pakistan, which gave priority to

135 Maxwell, India’s China War, pp. 427–28. 302 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

safeguarding vital national interests. Pakistan’s pragmatism (and India’s lack of it) was clearly demonstrated, for example, in October 1960 at the UN. Despite the marked deterioration in relations with China over the border issue, India failed to muster adequate resilience to put diplomatic pressure upon China on the issue of Tibet. India voted against the inclusion of the Tibetan question on the agenda of the UN. But Pakistan voted for its inclusion, and yet retained China’s good will. Pakistan took advantage of the India–China border dispute, and in late 1959, made an overture to China for border demarcation. By September 1960, when the Indian prime minister visited Pakistan to sign a treaty on sharing the waters of the Indus, Pakistan and China set up teams of experts to examine the border question. On 15 January 1961, it was announced that Pakistan had reached with China an agreement ‘in principle’ to demarcate the border. Pakistan thus used China’s hostility vis-à-vis India to further its national interests. In contrast, India failed to utilise American hostility vis-à-vis China to advance its vital interests, at least not before the Chinese soldiers gave India a severe drubbing in October/November 1962. Meanwhile, during the India–China confl ict of 1962, the Pakistan government made pro-China statements, although it remained a military ally of America in the worldwide struggle against aggression by communist countries!136 Despite the war with India in 1962, and despite the growing entente with Pakistan, China remained studiedly pragmatic in concluding a border agreement with Pakistan. This agreement, signed on 2 March 1962—like its precursor, the agreement ‘in principle’ of March 1961—incorporated specifi cally the clarifi cation that, following any future settlement on the issue of sovereignty over Kashmir between Pakistan and India, the China–Pakistan boundary agreement would need renegotiation. This was done at China’s insistence, whereas Pakistan felt free to gift to China 2,700

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 square miles of territory belonging to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. India was naturally resentful. But one wonders whether India could derive any lesson from China’s pragmatism and Pakistan’s opportunism.137

136 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 84; Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, pp. 383, 415; Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 93–94, 103–4. 137 Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 136–37. Relations with China 303

During the 1965 India–Pakistan war, China sustained its relationship with Pakistan through a gesture of support that was bellicose but not quite productive. On 16 September 1965, China issued an ultimatum to India. China demanded that, within 72 hours, India demolish 56 military installations set up illegally in Tibet, and also return several hundred Tibetan yaks stolen by India. If India did not comply with this ultimatum, China warned, then China would be compelled to take suitable action, and India would face serious consequences, for which India would remain fully responsible. While India declared that it was ready for an investigation of Chinese accusations by a neutral or joint India–China team, China extended the deadline of the ultimatum from 18 September to 22 September. Britain and America offered unambiguous support to India in case of a Chinese military attack. They considered plans to extend air protection to India, so that the Indian Air Force could exercise freedom to pound Chinese targets. Any Indian military move against East Pakistan could have provoked China, but India avoided it. India observed utmost restraint (unlike in 1962), and did not fi re back in spite of shots fi red by China in the eastern and western sectors. India of course did not offer the apology that the Chinese ultimatum asked for. The Chinese ultimatum died a silent death, although none could be sure of whether China deliberately confi ned its support for Pakistan to a rhetorical level, or whether the prompt offer of support for India by America and Britain compelled China to do so.138 In 1971, Pakistan confronted a much bigger crisis in its relations with India than in 1965. A war with India looked imminent as atrocities by the Pakistan Army led to a struggle for independence in East Pakistan (Bangladesh). For, millions of refugees fl ed from East Pakistan to India, and India extended support to freedom fi ghters in East Pakistan (Bangladesh). In reaction to the emergence

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of a Pakistan–America–China alliance, India signed a treaty of Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union on 9 August 1971. In 1971, Bhutto visited China, and (despite the existence of an anti- communist military pact with America!) tried but failed to coax

138 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 124; Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 82–83; Krishnan, Chavan and the Troubled Decade, p. 102; Nayar, India, pp. 192–93; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 138. 304 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

China into signing a military pact with Pakistan. On his return to Pakistan, Bhutto made such exaggerated claims about the possibility of Chinese military support in case of a war with India, that President Yahya Khan stuck to this belief almost till the end of the December war with India, that China would militarily intervene in this war on the Pakistani side. Henry A. Kissinger, too, incited China to stage this intervention with the assurance that the United States would provide the insurance against any possible Soviet retaliation. But China’s pragmatism did not permit it to step beyond a fi rm verbal support for Pakistan in the gravest crisis in its history. China presumably did not want to lose sight of the long-term goal of an India–China reconciliation, especially when, in the recent past, in pursuit of the same goal, India refused to support containment of China by means of a much-publicised Soviet plan for Asian collective security.139 The internal political turmoil in China (caused by the Cultural Revolution) could have been one of the factors which prompted China to refrain from intervening in the India–Pakistan war of 1971, although, it exercised an unfavourable infl uence on relations with India. The decade-long Cultural Revolution in China (1966–76) brought to the fore the ubiquitous Red Guards who believed in hatred and terror. They committed excesses on the Chinese, as also foreigners, including diplomats. The Red Guards violated all canons of international law, and assaulted diplomats of various countries, viz. Britain, India, Indonesia, and the Soviet Union. Signifi cantly, the Red Guards did not disturb Pakistani diplomats. In June 1967, the Red Guards, who were not disciplined but encouraged by the Chinese government, needlessly persecuted two Indian diplomats. In 1967, the Naxalite movement started in India’s West Bengal state, and China openly supported the Naxalites. The Naxalites planned armed rebellions to overthrow democratically elected governments Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 139 Arun Kumar Banerji, ‘India–China Relations: Retrospect and Prospect’, in Arun Kumar Banerji and Purusottam Bhattacharya (eds), Peoples Republic of China at Fifty, New Delhi: Lancer, 2001, p. 40. Also see, Dixit, Across Borders, p. 108; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 138–39. For some interesting observations on this issue, see Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto, The Myth of Independence, London: Oxford University Press, 1969, Chapters 12, 18, 19. For some shocking details on the issue, see William Burr (ed.), The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow, New York: The New Press, 1998. Relations with China 305

in West Bengal as also the other states of India. China extended appreciable assistance to violent movements in India’s northeast region, clamouring for secession from India. C.V. Ranganathan and Vinod C. Khanna inform us: ‘In 1968, the Ministry of External Affairs gave a protest note to the Chinese, listing out the assistance given by them to leading persons from such movements, who made their way to China in search of Chinese support’.140 In 1961, even before the outbreak of the 1962 war, India withdrew its ambassador from Beijing. For about a decade and a half, the two countries maintained their diplomatic representation at the level of Charge d’Affaires. However, good sense did prevail, and the two countries did not stoop so low as to snap diplomatic relations altogether. When, at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, Indian diplomats were manhandled in China, the then external affairs minister, M.C. Chagla, wisely resisted the clamour in Parliament for severing diplomatic relations with China. At a press conference on 1 January 1969, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi observed that India was ready to resolve differences with China by means of negotiations without preconditions. This was indeed an assertion of the line favoured by M.C. Chagla during his brief tenure as India’s external affairs minister. In July 1976, in the context of encouraging signals from Mao Zedong (on 1 May 1970), and from the vice foreign minister, Han Nianlong (on 26 January 1976), India appointed its ambassador to China. Soon, China reciprocated. That China ignored its differences with India on the vital issue of Sikkim’s merger into India was a sign of pragmatism that presaged an improvement in India–China relations.141 In 1977, following the defeat of Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party in a general election, Morarji Desai became prime minister of a new government. This government professed non-alignment as the major plank of its foreign policy. But it wanted to practise

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 non-alignment in a genuine fashion, the suggestion being that its predecessor pursued non-alignment with a pronounced pro-Soviet tilt. The Morarji government was interested in reconstructing

140 Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 55. 141 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, p. 40; Chagla, Roses in December, pp. 415, 433–34; Dixit, Across Borders, p. 131; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 56–57. 306 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India–China relations. Its external affairs minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, affi rmed at a press conference that he would be willing to visit China if he received an invitation. China responded affi rmatively and promptly and Vajpayee went to China in 1979. There he had extensive talks with Huang Hua, the foreign minister, and Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor. Talks were candid, wide ranging, and productive. They had to be cut short abruptly because of China’s expedition against Vietnam. Although the battle-hardened Vietnamese were more than a match for the Chinese (who had not fought since 1962), Deng Xiaoping claimed that China had to teach Vietnam a lesson, in a manner comparable to what it did to India in 1962. This, and the timing of the Chinese military action against Vietnam (even if it was accidental), caused deep embarrassment to New Delhi. Nonetheless, this must not be allowed to shroud the long-term and signifi cant impact of Vajpayee’s China visit upon India–China relations. During this visit, the two countries reached a consensus on some vital matters (which was of help to Indira Gandhi coming back to power in January 1980), as also to Rajiv Gandhi who succeeded his mother in 1984. The facts that China suspended assistance to rebels in northeast India, and that for about a decade not a single person lost his life due to cross-border fi ring, certainly contributed to the forging of this consensus in the course of the discussions between Vajpayee and his hosts. It was agreed that the border issue was too complex to be resolved in the absence of a high level of mutual confi dence, that such confi dence could be built over a period of time by mutually benefi cial exchanges in other spheres, and that the settlement of the border issue could be facilitated by the preservation of peace and tranquillity along the border. Moreover, Deng Xiaoping revived the Zhou Enlai formula of 1960, with appropriate modifi cations in consistency with ground realities, as a pragmatic basis for the resolution of the border confl ict.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 China thus provided another chance to India for a rational and honourable settlement of the border problem.142 Presumably, the Nehru-Menon legacy with regard to India’s foreign policy establishment had yet to be overcome. Therefore, the Deng formula of 1979 could not be accepted by the Government

142 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, p. 41; Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 130–31; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 57–58. Relations with China 307

of India. After all, to accept the Deng formula was to admit the blunder of rejecting the Zhou Enlai recipe of 1960. Public opinion remained a convenient scapegoat, and no serious attempt was made to educate the people and Parliament on the truths about the India–China border, which, along with the accomplishment of actual administrative control in relevant border areas, could easily facilitate the acceptance of the Zhou-Deng line of an eminently practicable and respectable compromise. Nevertheless, the Indira Gandhi government (coming to power in 1980) stuck to the consensus evolved during Vajpayee’s visit to China of 1979. It chose to concentrate on the preservation of peace and tranquillity along the border, and promotion of interaction in such other areas as culture and trade, pending the settlement of the border controversy. In 1981, Huang Hua, the Chinese foreign minister, visited India. It was decided that annual dialogues would be conducted at the level of the vice (deputy) minister. These dialogues facilitated academic-cultural exchanges, augmented mutual confi dence, and thereby contributed to the maintenance of peace and tranquillity on the border. In 1984, a trade agreement was signed. From December 1981 to September 1984, fi ve rounds of discussions on the border issue took place in Beijing and New Delhi alternately. The Zhou-Deng proposal was formally reiterated in 1982. It was an equitable package deal in view of the realities of power and complexities of history. If India accepted the status quo in the western sector, China would uphold the status quo in the eastern sector. But, thanks to the hangover of the Nehru-Menon years, and the resultant reluctance to rectify the blunders of the past, India’s diplomatic infl exibility asserted itself in such a way at the fourth round of talks in 1983, that progress towards acceptance of the only available and viable compromise formula was averted. The asymmetry in the negotiating stances of the two countries was hard to resolve. India preferred a sector-by-sector

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 approach, whereas China, endorsing a package deal, was prepared to consider a sectoral approach only as part of a comprehensive settlement. India’s inﬂ exibility prompted China to alter its bargaining strategy and claim, in 1985, that India was occupying 90,000 square kilometres of Chinese territory in the eastern sector, and that this sector remained the principal area of discord.143

143 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, pp. 41–42; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 58–59, 167. 308 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The Chinese on their part made matters diffi cult by emphasising the importance of the Line of Actual Control, and yet deliberately keeping this line unspecifi ed. Thus, by the mid-1980s the border talks faced a stalemate. In 1986, the Sumdorong Chu valley, located in the district of Tawang, became a source of tension in India–China relations. While India complained of Chinese intrusion in the valley, China claimed it to be a part of its own territory. The complexity of the situation can be gauged from the fact that sections of the Sumdorong Chu valley lie on both sides of the McMahon Line, and that maps of Tawang did not appear to incorporate this valley clearly. During 1986–87, two other developments strained India–China relations: the recognition of Arunachal Pradesh (NEFA) as a state of the Indian Union, and massive military exercises by India along the India–China border. China, moreover, persisted in complaining about India’s support for the Dalai Lama of Tibet. In the 1980s, again, as the Chinese engaged in a forward movement of their border posts, India did the same. But both the countries seemed to be determined to keep alive the prospects for normalisation of relations when, in 1987, offi cially and independently of each other, they rejected the wildly imaginary reports in the Western and Indian media about large-scale military duels in the Sumdorong Chu valley. An important reason why hopes of normalisation of India–China relations were not abandoned (the eighth round of talks being held in New Delhi in November 1987) was that India could discard one dogma of the Nehru-Menon years. As Ranganathan and Khanna put it, ‘the old Indian stand that no negotiations were necessary because the boundary was well known, or that there could be no talks without prior vacation of Chinese troops from Ladakh, was buried quietly’. Another important reason why both the countries did not have to give up their search for normalisation was that they stuck to the consensus that had emerged at the time of Vajpayee’s visit to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 China, about keeping aside the border issue, and upgrading mutually beneﬁ cial relations in other matters, so that the trust necessary for a settlement of the border issue could be created.144 In the late 1980s, a constellation of circumstances favoured some political initiative by India to improve India–China relations.

144 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, pp. 42–44; Dixit, Across Borders, p. 182; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 167–68. Relations with China 309

At the time, the Chinese programme of economic liberalisation and globalisation (although initiated in the late 1970s) appeared to be irreversible, and made it logical for China to stress cooperation with India. The gradual winding down of the Cold War, and the growth in Soviet-American as also Soviet-Chinese reconciliation, made it imperative for India to build upon the existing cultural- economic contacts with China and promote political relations with China. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi seized the opportunity created by China’s domestic developments and profound changes in international relations. He utilised the services of senior diplomats to establish confi dential though high-level contacts in China, which paved the way to an invitation to Rajiv Gandhi for a visit to China. This visit, in December 1988, was the fi rst by an Indian prime minister after an interval of 25 years. This visit was of far-reaching signifi cance. Deng’s candour and pragmatism went a long way towards ensuring the success of Gandhi’s visit to China. Deng argued that both China and India should learn from the mistakes committed in the past, and concentrate on elevating the living condition of their people. He stressed that bilateral relations should be expanded in all areas, and that experts should engage in discussions to settle the boundary issue. The most important result of Rajiv Gandhi’s visit was an agreement to set up a joint working group (JWG) headed by the deputy foreign minister of China and the foreign secretary of India. The JWG was set up to resolve the border dispute by examining all relevant matters. The JWG was entrusted with the preservation of peace and tranquillity on the border. India and China signed a number of agreements (in course of Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China) on cooperation in cultural exchange, science and technology, and air services. But, as in 1954, so in 1988, China took away much more from India than what it gave. As the Joint Press Communiqué of 23 December 1988 noted, India reaffi rmed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 its policy of treating Tibet as an autonomous region of China as also of refusing permission to Tibetans in India for launching political activities directed against China. In return, China could, but did not, recognise Indian authority over India’s northeast region, for example, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim.145

145 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, pp. 44–45; Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 181–82; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 176. 310 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Despite the natural persistence of differences over the question of boundary and the supply of aid from China towards Pakistan’s nuclearisation, India and China showed remarkable resilience in making progress (even if slow) towards normalisation of relations in the 1990s. Li Peng, the Prime Minister of China, visited India in December 1991. In a few months, in July 1992, Sharad Pawar, India’s defence minister, visited China. While Pawar carried forward the process of exploration of reducing troop deployment along the border, Li Peng’s visit to India, the ﬁ rst by a Chinese prime minister since 1960, was adjudged to be successful in several ways. The two countries demonstrated their determination to enlarge the area of cooperation by signing agreements on economic cooperation (including border trade), on the establishment of consulates in Mumbai and Shanghai, and on cooperation in space research and technology. The two countries further announced their agreement on the JWG intensifying its work to expedite the resolution of the border problem. It may not be inappropriate, however, to point to some domestic/international developments, which might have impelled Li Peng to enhance cooperation with India. First, China was suffering from a sense of diplomatic isolation (even if temporarily), following the massacre of students at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. Second, the gradual dismantling of the Soviet Union led to a lowering of China’s weight on America’s strategic scales.146 During the visit of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, to China, the two countries consolidated the results of Li Peng’s visit to India in 1991, and signed, on 7 September 1993, an ‘Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control in the India–China border areas’. By this Agreement, both the countries pledged not to resort to force or threat of force, and, instead, rely on mutual consultation towards an amicable settlement of the boundary problem. Pending such a settlement, the two

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 countries agreed to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC), to caution each other for a pullback in case of any deviation, and carry out joint inspections to resolve divergences in perceptions about

146 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, pp. 46–47; Dixit, Across Borders, p. 220. Also see, Alexander Gordon, ‘India’s Security Policy’, in Chandran Jeshurun (ed.), China, India, Japan and the Security of Southeast Asia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1995, pp. 61–62. Relations with China 311

the LAC alignment, wherever necessary. In order to preserve equal and mutual security, as also friendly relations, the two sides decided to engage in consultations for a reduction of military deployment along the LAC to a mutually acceptable minimum level. The 1993 Agreement stipulated, furthermore, the reliance on consultations to identify Confi dence Building Measures (CBMs). The Agreement required the two sides to confi ne military exercises to mutually selected zones. The Agreement ordained consultations by border security personnel to sort out various problems, as also consultations for verifi cation/supervision of troops reduction at the border to agreed levels, and for endowing the JWG with diplomatic/military experts in order to enhance the capability of the JWG with regard to implementation of the Agreement. The Agreement took care to sustain mutual confi dence by ensuring that, while referring to the LAC, it did not prejudice the substantive contention of the two countries on the boundary issue.147 It is a curious commentary on the expertise of India’s diplomatic establishment that till September 1993 they did not recognise, in spite of Chinese evidence dating from 1954, that the map attached by McMahon to his descriptive note on the frontier did not match the note. India’s unduly belated admission of a blunder certainly improved relations between Indian and Chinese diplomats, so much so that, off the record, one Chinese diplomat, despite lingering irritation on this score, told an Indian diplomat, just before the signing of the 1993 accord in Beijing, that he would be ready to sign the accord blindly, provided it excluded the name McMahon. That in the 1990s India–China relations were ascending higher levels of mutual trust is evident from two other developments. First, the offi ce of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India was providing advisory services to the Chinese audit service. Second, the Union Public Service Commission of India too was offering advice to the 148

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Chinese civil service.

147 Banerji, ‘India–China Relations’, p. 48; Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 220, 358; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 171. Also see, Editorial, The Statesman, 10 September 1993. 148 Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 355–57. C.V. Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 174. Also see, Business World, 22 February 1994, p. 12; and, J.N. Dixit’s interview, Business World, 26 January–8 February 1994, p. 27. 312 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Under these auspicious circumstances, one more step towards additional CBMs could be taken in 1996, when President Jiang Zemin visited India. The two countries signed an ‘Agreement on Conﬁ dence Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control in the India–China border areas’. This Agreement, recalling the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, enjoined that no country would use its military strength against the other, that the border defence forces of either country would not launch an attack or any military operation threatening peace, tranquillity, and stability along the border. This Agreement dealt elaborately with ceilings on armed forces and armaments to be deployed in agreed geographical zones with due regard for the principle of equal and mutual security, as also for such matters as terrain, road communications, and time required to induct or deinduct soldiers/armaments, etc. The 1996 Agreement wisely stipulated an exchange of maps, so that divergence on intersections of the LAC alignment could be clariﬁ ed, and an eventual agreement on this alignment could be achieved.149 On 1 December 1996 at Islamabad, a Chinese spokesman declared categorically that the Kashmir issue be settled bilaterally by Pakistan and India. China thus fully endorsed the Indian view on the subject, and India had reason to be happy. But when the Chinese spokesman denied the transfer of nuclear and missile technology from China to Pakistan, India did not experience the slightest relief. While China explored the designing of CBMs with India, it never relaxed its determination to equip Pakistan with nuclear and missile technologies. Elaborate and systematic studies have been conducted by US intelligence agencies, as also by celebrated research institutes, on this subject, and these have been widely reported in the press. According to these authoritative studies (some as early as 1983), China supplied to Pakistan a complete nuclear weapon design and adequate weapons grade uranium for manufacturing

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 two nuclear weapons. In 1986, China signed with Pakistan a pact for comprehensive cooperation in nuclear technology. Pakistan began to receive from China assistance towards enriching uranium into weapons grade uranium. In 1989, China associated Pakistani scientists with a site in Lop Nor. During 1994–96, China supplied

149 Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 172. Also, The Statesman, 30 November 1996. Relations with China 313

to Pakistan various equipment, including thousands of ring magnets and a special industrial furnace for use in the production of weapons grade uranium as also core components of nuclear bombs. Moreover, in the 1990s, China exported to Pakistan not only missiles but missile technologies and launchers. Interestingly, America’s pragmatism impelled it to respect American business aims in China much more than the aims of non-proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies. Therefore, the Americans did not slam any effective sanction upon China for deliberate and prolonged commission of the sin of proliferation. So overriding were the compulsions of American business interests in China that America ignored in 1998 a 700-page report on how espionage by China resulted in pil- ferage from American laboratories of valuable nuclear and missile technologies. India, however, could not ignore the large-scale transfer of missile and nuclear technologies from China to Pakistan. This was, probably, the most important determinant of India’s decision to conduct a series of nuclear tests in 1998, as a demonstration (to deter Pakistan), and also for refi nement of its capabilities.150 Nevertheless, India made a crucial error of judgement in justifying its 1998 nuclear tests to the international community. India should have underlined the threat from Pakistan, boosted by abundant Chinese patronage. Instead, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Defence Minister George Fernandes stressed the threat from China. This naturally irritated the Chinese. But the consequent setback to the process of improvement of India–China relations was temporary. In June 1999, when External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh visited China, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji clearly affi rmed (with Singh’s endorsement) that China and India did not look upon each other as threats to security. A mechanism on security dialogue was set up. In March 2000, at the fi rst round of the security dialogue, China did not miss the opportunity to refer to the UN Security Council Resolution

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1172 (following the Indian nuclear tests of 1998) that urged India to roll back its nuclear programme. On its part, India could not but express deep misgivings about China’s continuous support to the nuclear and missile programmes of Pakistan. This policy of China

150 The Statesman, 2 December 1996 and 6 September 2000. Editorials, The Statesman, 5 February 1998 and 6 September 2000. 314 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

has supplied legitimacy to the American policy of development of a National Missile Defence (NMD). While China opposes the NMD, India supports the same, and thereby puts some diplomatic pressure upon China inducing it to respect India’s concerns about Pakistan benefi ting from the Chinese policy of proliferation, and sponsoring cross-border terrorism against India. India’s support for the NMD was also a reminder to China that India was fully aware of the capability of China’s missiles hitting every major Indian city, and that the development of NMD had the potentials of providing an insurance against such Chinese capability. It was fi t and proper that in such an intricately evolving international milieu, Li Peng would visit India in January 2001, and engage in candid and wide-ranging discussions on common security problems. After all, international terrorism, tinged with religious extremism originating from Pakistan, threatened both China and India (although in varying degrees). During his nine-day visit to India, Li Peng unequivocally asserted that China was determined ‘to oppose and condemn international terrorism of all descriptions, and oppose fulfi lling political or other agendas through international terrorist means and violent terrorist activities by any country, institution, organisation or individual’. Affi rming that China never looked upon India as a threat, and that China did not want to threaten India, Li Peng urged upon India to extinguish the notion about China being a principal threat to India. Li Peng further assured that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence should be the guiding spirit behind any settlement of the border issue. At the global level, both India and China recognised the challenge of globalisation coupled with the dominance of Western powers, and developed a consensus during Li Peng’s visit to India, that both the countries had the capacity and the duty to contribute effectively to the functioning of the international system.151 The international security environment, confronting both China

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and India, got vastly more complicated following the attack upon America by Islamic terrorists on 11 September 2001. If India’s

151 The Statesman, 16 June 1999, 9 March 2000, 1 June 2001; Editorial, The Times of India, 12 January 2001. Speech by Zhou Gang, Ambassador of China to India, in Calcutta on 25 October 1999 in C. Uday Bhaskar, The Times of India, 17 January 2001. Also see, Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, p. 176; Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 408–9. Relations with China 315

support for America’s NMD could be reckoned as the principal motivator of Li Peng’s visit to India in January 2001, India’s open offer of comprehensive cooperation with America following the 11 September phenomenon could be considered as the main driving force behind Prime Minister Zhu Rongji’s six-day visit to India in January 2002. China was worried, as this Indian offer to America was a challenge to the Chinese habit of treating India as a state that seldom asserted itself in the practice of realpolitik. For example, India repeatedly appeased China by declaring Tibet to be an autonomous region of China, but never demanded a legitimate quid pro quo in terms of Chinese recognition of India’s stakes in Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim, not to speak of Kashmir. China could not but feel concerned about India’s growing ability to practise realpolitik. There was a time, in the 1950s for instance, when India sacriﬁ ced its vital interests by supporting China in such a way as to alienate America. In the 21st century, however, India can pursue a policy of constructive engagement with both China and America, and prepare to move closer to America. China continued to export shiploads of armaments to Pakistan, but Zhu Rongji and his colleagues could not fail to miss the signiﬁ cance of India’s success and China’s failure in obtaining America’s permission for the purchase of Israel’s Phalcon Airborne Early Warning Command and Control System (AWACS). Nevertheless, Zhu Rongji’s visit to India certainly symbolised the persistent efforts of the two countries towards achieving normalisation, and the prospects for cooperation in such areas as information technology (which could explain the visit of the Chinese prime minister to Bangalore, India’s information technology capital).152 Economic relationships, maintaining a sort of balance between diverging and converging interests, sustained, to a large extent, the sense of growing normalisation of India–China relations. The total `

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 turnover in India–China trade rose from 25.6 million in 1977–78 to `1,688 million rupees in 1991–92. Again, in a decade from 1988, about 25 Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) or Agreements

152 Swagato Ganguly, The Statesman, 28 January 2002; Salman Haidar, The Statesman, 29 January 2002. Salman Haidar was a former foreign secretary of India. 316 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

on economic-technological cooperation were concluded by the two countries. To supply another quantitative indicator of growing India–China economic collaboration, two-way India–China trade rose from US$265 million in 1991 to US$1.9 billion in 1998. Trade undoubtedly suffered during the three/four months following India’s nuclear experiments in May 1998. Yet, remarkably, taking into account the growth rate of trade for 1998 as a whole, and the average annual growth rate for six preceding years, there was only a decline from 9 per cent to 5.02 per cent. Moreover, even in the uncongenial summer months of 1998, India and China signed fi ve joint venture agreements. This was followed by six joint venture agreements in 1999. Potentialities in India–China trade, however, far exceed the actualities. According to one estimate, the value of India’s trade with China in a year may sometimes account for only 0.18 per cent of the total value of its annual foreign trade; for China, the fi gure may be as low as 0.03 per cent. Signifi cantly, with the passage of years, the non-traditional components in trade (for example, machinery) have increased, and so have Indian investments in China as well as Chinese investments in India. In this context, India may be well advised to learn from China how to attract foreign direct investment and joint ventures. To take a few telling estimates, in 1996, South Asia as a whole (including India) received FDI worth US$2.6 billion, whereas China alone procured FDI worth US$42 billion. During 1978–98, China secured FDI worth a total of US$270 billion. As a result, about 120,000 joint ventures or foreign enterprises were operating in China, employing around 17 million people, and supplying 34 per cent of China’s industrial output. This, again, attests to the potentialities of India–China joint ventures in diverse fi elds. Currently, Chinese investments in India cover such areas as electrical/electronic goods, machine tools, iron/steel manufacturing at small/medium scales, information Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 technology, etc., whereas Indian investments in China include education in information technology, laminated toothpaste tubes, pharmaceuticals, refractories, etc. Indian investors, however, have to remain vigilant about non-tariff barriers as also abrupt policy changes in China. Compared to manufacturers in the West, Indian and Chinese manufacturers can provide goods of comparable quality at a lower cost, which are attractive to consumers in the two countries. If, again, border trade through the Nathu La Pass in Sikkim can be Relations with China 317

arranged, the people in Bhutan, Nepal, and a few regions of China and India can benefi t substantially.153 Economic interaction can sustain, but not substitute, political reconciliation. Despite the landmark agreements of 1993 and 1996, and a number of visits by leaders at the highest level, the two countries took fi ve years to exchange maps. Consequently, there persists a sort of stagnation in efforts towards LAC delineation, and balanced troops reduction. Russia and China have achieved such mutual reduction at the border, but not India and China. The two countries are taking a long time to repair the mistake committed by Nehru and his advisers in 1960, when they turned down Zhou Enlai’s eminently sensible and practicable formula for a border settlement. A recent publication of secret documents of the Communist Party of China, as analysed by V.V. Paranjpe, reveals that, while Mao preferred a military confrontation with India, Zhou wanted peace, and he took the initiative to visit India in 1960, and propose a solution to the India–China border. Despite the lapse of more than four decades, it is possible to refi ne Zhou’s proposal, to apply the latest cartographical techniques (including satellite photography), to keep in view the dominant economic-strategic concerns of the two countries, and devise a solution to the boundary question, which can buttress a wholesome normalisation of India–China relations. Such normalisation, however, has to co-exist with changing degrees of healthy competition, planned cooperation and cautious discords on diverse regional/global issues. In the wake of 9/11, for example, and the American military intervention/presence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of Central Asia, India, on the one hand, has to sustain a comprehensive concord with America, while offsetting an America–Pakistan as also China–Pakistan military collusion. On the other hand, India has to try to counteract American hegemony Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

153 Shri Prakash, ‘Economic Dimensions of Sino-Indian Relations’, China Report, vol. 30, no. 2, 1994, pp. 242–50; Ranganathan and Khanna, India and China, pp. 174–75; Swaran Singh, ‘China–India: Expanding Economic Engagement’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 24, no. 10, January 2001, pp. 1813–31. Also see, Amit Roy Choudhury, The Statesman, 26 April 1997; Latha Jishnu, Business World, 7–21 November 1998, pp. 108–12; Brij Khindaria, Business India, 29 November–12 December 1999, p. 43; Editorial, The Statesman, 30 November 2000; The Statesman, 18 February 2001; Sonia Trikha, The Indian Express, 26 May 2001. 318 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in Central/South Asia by collaborating with China and Russia. By 2001–2, India–China relations were not a picture of neatness and harmony, but a pragmatic pattern of give and take, moves and countermoves.154 In the fi rst decade of the 21st century, China appeared to change its strategy from peaceful to belligerent, practising an over-assertive strategy in order to gain world power status. To some extent, this alternate approach has to do with China’s historic obsession with the superiority of the Chinese race to all other races, with the view that America was the only power obstructing China’s potential moves on territories like Taiwan, and with the shocking proposal that America should be wiped out by biological weapons. It cannot be dismissed entirely as a fl ight of fancy, because it has been written about not only by a professor of Beijing’s National Defence University, but also by a former defence minister of China.155 Moreover, to a large extent, this bellicose mindset of the Chinese derives strength from ill-considered announcements by top-level American policy makers. After all, in June 1998, during a visit to China, President Clinton infl ated China’s ego by a proposal (superfl uous and/or dangerous by any rational consideration) to share responsibility for the preservation of peace in the Asia-Pacifi c region, as also for the promotion of nuclear non-proliferation. President Clinton went so far as to issue a statement that specifi cally (though unrealistically) recognised a role for China in the eventual resolution of the J&K problem. America continued to respect China’s leadership aspirations; in 2005 it did not object to China’s civil nuclear cooperation deal with Bangladesh. Subsequently, the Obama administration thought of entrusting China with larger responsibility for resolving the Afghanistan problem, whereas Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went so far as to affi rm that America–China relations constituted the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century.156 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

154 Dixit, Across Borders, pp. 220, 403; Shri Prakash, China Report, vol. 30, no. 2, 1994, p. 250. Also, V.V. Paranjpe, The Times of India, 28 April 1998; The Statesman, 15 June 2001; Salman Haidar, The Statesman, 9 April 2002. 155 Quoted in Rajinder Puri, The Statesman, 24 June 2009. Also see, Rajinder Puri, The Statesman, 1 September 2004. 156 Jayadeva Ranade, The Times of India, 11 June 2009. Also see, unsigned essay in The Economist, London, and reproduced in The Indian Express, 24 April 2009; and, G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 19 March 2009. Relations with China 319

In this situation of unabashed flattery by America—partly unavoidable on account of the economic meltdown of 2008—China could afford to be imperious. Wen Jiabao, the premier of China, expressed worry over China’s assets in America, and urged upon America to guarantee their safety.157 The head of the central bank of China had the impudence to advise that a new international currency replace the dollar.158 It was no wonder, therefore, that the Chinese navy had a confrontation with the American navy in the South China Sea.159 Moreover, an offi cer of the Chinese navy had the temerity to propose to an American admiral that the two countries should divide their naval responsibilities between, respectively, the Indian and Pacifi c Oceans.160 The proposal was rejected, fortunately. If this is how China can treat America, it is not diffi cult to imagine how China will attempt to deal with India. A leading example was the way the Chinese behaved after the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai. China did not denounce the attack. Instead, China advised that India and Pakistan jointly probe the attack. Ha Yafei, China’s vice foreign minister, went to Pakistan, and underlined the urgency of cooperation and dialogue between India and Pakistan for a resolution of outstanding problems. Ha Yafei visited India too, and appeared to recommend restraint and dialogue to both India and Pakistan. ‘Mercifully, for once’, wrote G. Parthasarathy, ‘our pusillanimous mandarins signalled that we did not need China’s purported ‘good offi ce’ in dealing with the fallout of 26/11’.161 Moreover, scholars of the China Institute of Strategic Studies (CISS), who could never dream of writing anything without appropriate clearance from the competent political authorities, wrote that the 26/11 incident represented a failure of India’s intelligence machinery, and that India hurled accusations upon Pakistan in order to strengthen its control over Kashmir. A scholar of the CISS outdid Pakistan by proclaiming that Pakistan would secure China’s support in case of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a war with India, even before Pakistan itself complained of India’s aggressive conduct. This scholar went so far as to afﬁ rm that, in

157 K. Subrahmanyam, The Times of India, 18 March 2009. 158 Sanjana Joshi, The Statesman, 29 June 2009. 159 K. Subrahmanyam, The Times of India, 18 March 2009. 160 Premen Addy, The Pioneer, 22 June 2009; G. Parthasarathy, The Times of India, 29 June 2009. 161 The Pioneer, 19 March 2009. 320 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the event of a war between Pakistan and India, China could stage a military offensive in India’s Arunachal Pradesh (called Southern Tibet by China). One scholar of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations wrote (with inevitable authorisation by political bosses) that Indian terrorists themselves carried out the 26/11 attack, thus refl ecting the assessments of the virulently anti- Indian sections of the Pakistani media.162 China has always subjected India to diplomatic-economic pressures in diverse ways; some of them being odd. The Chinese Communist Party has signed an agreement with Pakistan’s Jamat- e-Islami (a totally anti-Indian outfi t), and the Government of China has established close links with the Taliban in Afghanistan (another militant organisation with pronouncedly anti-Indian orientation).163 The United States is worried about the planned transformation of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA is not to remain a low-tech outfi t for long duration confl icts. It is now evolving into a high-tech force for short decisive wars.164 India too is perturbed by China’s defence modernisation programme, stressing the acquisition of a blue water navy, of strategic missiles, as also technologies based in space, and sustained by ‘the double-digit growth in Chinese defence expenditure over the last 20 years’.165 China has taken a number of measures, which, taken together, may be interpreted as attempts at encirclement of India, for example, the establishment of coastal base facilities at Gwadar and Pasni in Pakistan, which are strategically contiguous to the Persian Gulf; of container facilities in Bangladesh’s Chittagong; of a fuelling station at Hambantota in Sri Lanka; and even of a strategic presence in the Maldives and Mauritius by pledging huge fi nancial help.166 A non-offi cial Chinese report on China’s intention to Balkanise India need not be a cause for concern. Nevertheless, India has to take seriously China’s attempts to preserve connections with Indian

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 insurgent groups in northeast India by utilising the services of Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI),

162 G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 20 August 2009. 163 Jayadeva Ranade, The Times of India, 24 March 2009. 164 A.P. Report, The Statesman, 26 March 2009. 165 Pioneer News Service, The Pioneer, 10 July 2009. 166 G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 19 March 2009. Also see Ranjit B. Rai, The Pioneer, 25 August 2009. Relations with China 321

especially when, according to a conﬁ dential report of India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), these insurgents are receiving support from Bangladesh for the establishment of a separate Muslim homeland.167 Nor can India view lightly the Chinese military base on Myanmar’s Coco Island, which is dangerously close to India’s Andamans.168 China has a plan to divert the Brahmaputra waters massively to its arid regions, which, if successful, will devastate the water balance of India as well as Bangladesh.169 What can India do? Presently, in all probability, the country has no Special Forces. Therefore, it cannot counteract the small-medium- big moves of proxy war by China (and Pakistan, which maintains, apart from governmental Special Forces, non-governmental Special Forces like the LET, JEM, etc.). China suffers from enormous weaknesses in Tibet and Xinjiang.170 India, however, does not have the intention or capability to capitalise on China’s weaknesses, including its failure to prevent numerous civil disturbances arising out of huge economic disparities. India can only extend cooperation wherever possible. On the issue of global warming, forgetting what China can do on the Brahmaputra, India and China cooperate to resist pressures by rich countries to force carbon emission reduction obligations upon India and China.171 India can persist in promoting trade with China, which, at US$52 billion in 2008, made China India’s largest trading partner (provided information technology trade was excluded). The two countries have held the 13th round of

167 Jayanta Gupta, The Pioneer, 19 August 2009; Rakesh K. Singh, The Pioneer, 24 August 2009. 168 Jayanta Gupta, The Pioneer, 19 August 2009. 169 S. Padmanabhan, Business Line, 14 April 2009. 170 See, for example, Sim Chi Yin, The Straits Times, reproduced in The Statesman, 16 April 2008; Jayadeva Ranade, The Times of India, 28 May 2009; Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 B. Raman, Paper no. 3293, South Asia Analysis Group, New Delhi, 6 July 2009; Cliford Coonan, The Statesman, 8 July 2009; Akhil Bakshi, The Indian Express, 9 July 2009; Saibal Dasgupta, The Times of India, 10 July 2009; Rajinder Puri, The Statesman, 10 July 2009; Ashok Malik, The Pioneer, 11 July 2009; Unsigned Essay in The Economist, reproduced in The Indian Express, 11 July 2009; Unsigned Essay in The Economist, reproduced in The Indian Express, 14 July 2009; Dru Gladney, Yale Global Online, reproduced in The Statesman, 14 July 2009. 171 Times News Network, The Times of India, 30 July 2009; Saibal Dasgupta, The Times of India, 25 August 2009; Editorial, The Times of India, 26 August 2009. 322 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

talks on the border issue. The LAC remains peaceful and tranquil. The prime ministers of the two countries have agreed to set up a hotline connecting them. But, on the border issue, China’s stand has become stiff. This is largely due to sterile obstinacy on the part of India, which has refused to accept the most feasible and realistic formula of an Arunachal-Aksai Chin swap, offered by Zhou Enlai as early as 1960, and reiterated by Deng Xiaoping as late as 1980. China is now ominously laying a claim to Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang, even though in 2005 China agreed with India on the guideline that there should be no exchange of populated areas in any border settlement. India has mainly to blame itself for squandering away the chance of an honourable settlement, and for providing China with a pretext to make its position more rigid.172 Growing disparity in the military strength of the two countries may have something to do with it. India has rightly decided to step up military preparations in Arunachal Pradesh. But these are not to be discussed publicly by military ofﬁ cers or scientists.

Statements and leaks to the press about troop and air power deployments in Arunachal, or about development of China-speciﬁ c Agni 3 and Agni 5 missiles, are uncalled for and appear to forget the old adage that actions speak louder than words.173

Newspapers, again, must not misrepresent remarks by military ofﬁ cers in such a way as to confess to an unwarranted feeling of inferiority vis-à-vis China.174 Growing defence cooperation between India and China is, moreover, welcome. Joint military exercises have taken place in 2007 and 2008, and warships of both countries are making calls at the ports of the other country.175 This chapter ends on an ironic note. In order to counteract inconvenient moves by China, a non-aligned India has to rely repeatedly on an invisible alignment with the United States. For example,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India recently applied to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for a three-year loan of US$2.9 billion, with a component of

172 G. Parthasarathy, The Times of India, 29 June 2009; Editorial, The Times of India, 13 August 2009. 173 G. Parthasarathy, The Times of India, 29 June 2009. 174 G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 20 August 2009. 175 Statesman News Service, The Statesman, 21 March 2009. Relations with China 323

US$60 million for watershed development in Arunachal Pradesh. But China opposed it because Arunachal Pradesh was a disputed territory. On 15 June 2009, American pressure overcame Chinese dissent and bailed out India.176 To take another example, in 2008, as part of a Pakistan-backed diplomatic offensive against India, China resisted the UN ban on Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) as a terrorist outfi t, on Hafi z Mohammed Saeed (the JuD head), as also on Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. The United States had already put this agency and its leaders in its sanctions list. But China argued that although the UN had banned the LET there was no conclusive proof that the LET had used JuD as a front outfi t. Eventually, India’s viewpoint and honour were upheld, as China submitted to American pressure, and endorsed the UN ban on JuD and its leaders.177 Such experiences, one hopes, will induce greater realism in future in India’s foreign policy moves. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

176 Pranab Dhal Samanta, The Indian Express, 16 June 2009. 177 Ibid., 25 June 2009. 6 Relations with Bangladesh

Relations between India and Bangladesh (East Bengal till 1956, and East Pakistan from 1956 to 1971) are complex and face a variety of problems. These challenges have arisen mainly out of the Partition of British India in 1947, and the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. Indeed, to some extent, these problems persist, because decision makers in both the countries have largely failed to summon the requisite resilience in coping with them.

Fate of Minorities: In the Plains Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 received much less time and attention than even the partition of family property in normal times. Politicians appeared to be in a hurry to get into power; civil-military ofﬁ cials rushed to occupy superior positions. They took ample care of their narrow self-interests, but they forgot one valuable dictum: solutions of today must not become problems of tomorrow. To take one extraordinary example, the power-hungry politicians and ofﬁ cials cavalierly ignored the minimum needs of the ordinary people, especially the minorities, who, in the words of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, constituted ‘a system of mutual hostages’. Acceptance of Partition signalled the endorsement of Jinnah’s thesis that Hindus and Muslims, forming two nations, confronted one another in every village or city, were incapable of living together, and, therefore, should be separated and regrouped Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 into two states. The logical corollary was an exchange of population. No less a person than B.R. Ambedkar advocated this in his 1940 publication, Pakistan or the Partition of India. M.A. Jinnah was pragmatic enough to propose the exchange of populations on 10 December 1945. He did so again on 15 November 1946, when he referred to the eviction of Hindus from Noakhali (in East Bengal) as a result of recent riots. Jinnah argued that the population transfer had already started, and that a machinery should be set up to carry Relations with Bangladesh 325

out the transfer peacefully. Another eminent Muslim League leader, Raja Ghaznafar Ali Khan, too, recommended population exchange as a corollary to the formation of a Muslim state.1 But the Congress Party leaders, especially M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, failed to perceive the logic behind population exchange as the inevitable corollary of Partition. Even while large- scale massacre and migration went on—before and after 15 August 1947—they continued to urge non-Muslims in Pakistan to stay on in their ancestral lands. A study of newspapers of August 1947 offers the amazing story of how Nehru, for example, deplored the forced exodus of minorities, as if this was not expected and natural. Leaders like him, safe in India and satisfi ed with the possession of enormous (long-dreamt-of) political power, laid themselves open to charges of dishonesty and deception, when, for instance, they asked the Hindus of East Bengal not to migrate to India. In pre-Partition East Bengal, the predominance of Hindus was all too apparent in the learned professions and business. Without a considerable corrosion of this Hindu predominance, a mere transfer of political power to the hands of Muslim League leaders would not be of much signifi cance to the many Muslims agitating for Pakistan for many years. The validity of this interpretation was borne out by the systematic policy of squeezing out the Hindu middle class, adopted by the Pakistan government following Partition. It was, therefore, a queer type of bluff and hypocrisy that Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan (prime minister of Pakistan) indulged in as they bitterly criticised the Hindu intelligentsia leaving Pakistan on the eve of Partition, and accused them of trying, under instructions from India, to paralyse Pakistan’s administrative-economic set-up. Such a withdrawal did produce some diffi culties for Pakistan. However, the Hindu middle class could not be expected to leave Pakistan gradually, in such a manner as to make way for skilled Muslims, without, at the same

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 time, imparting a blow (even if temporary) to Pakistan’s economy. The complaint of the Pakistanis was not about the creation of vacancies (for example, in the learned professions and business),

1 Azad, India Wins Freedom, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1959, pp. 143–44. Also, A.J. Kamra, Prolonged Partition and its Pogroms: Testimonies on Violence against Hindus in East Bengal 1946–64, New Delhi: Voice of India, 2000, pp. 35–36. 326 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

which they had been eagerly awaiting for many years, but the speed with which a large number of vacancies were created in 1947.2 The movement of Hindu refugees from East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh to India (to be elaborated subsequently in this chapter) has remained a persistent problem, even in the fi rst decade of the 21st century. It represents an unplanned transfer of population, resulting in acute human misery, which could have been largely (if not wholly) avoided had the Congress Party agreed to act upon Jinnah’s suggestion of a peaceful and planned exchange of population as an essential component of Partition. This is clear evidence of the tendency of power-crazy politicians and offi cials to accomplish Partition in a haphazard manner, unmindful of how it maximised human misery. Another indication of this fact was the violation of the cardinal principle of Partition in attaching Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) to the eastern wing of Pakistan. In 1947, Muslims formed only about 2.5 per cent of the CHT population, and Buddhists-Christians-Hindus constituted the overwhelming majority of 97.5 per cent. The people of CHT rebelled against the incorporation of their homeland into Pakistan, and hoisted the Indian national fl ag on 14 August 1947, that is, Pakistan’s Independence Day. Authorities subdued the rebellion easily, as it was far from organised. However, despite the lapse of a number of decades, Saradindu Mukherji reminds us how ‘Bangladesh authorities feel so peeved at this fact of an incipient rebellion’ that they deny ‘the very incident of the hoisting of the Indian tri-colour fl ag at Rangamati on 14 August 1947’. CHT caused serious domestic confl icts in Pakistan/Bangladesh, which impacted relations with India. In the 1980s and 1990s, problems of this area (to be elucidated ahead) pushed themselves to the foreground of issues in India–Bangladesh relations on account of a vast number of refugees from CHT taking shelter in India.3 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

2 The Statesman, 16–31 August 1947. Also see, Kamra, Prolonged Partition, pp. 36–37; Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan: The Heart of Asia, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950, pp. 34–35, 44–45; Jayanta Kumar Ray, Democracy and Nationalism on Trial: A Study of East Pakistan, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1968, pp. 23–24; Ian Stephens, Pakistan, London: Ernest, Benn, 1963, p. 224; Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-i-Azam Speaks, Karachi: Pakistan Publications, 1950, p. 33; L.F. Rushbrook Williams, The State of Pakistan, London: Faber and Faber, 1962, p. 38. 3 For a glimpse into the casual and callous manner in which the fate of CHT was decided, see The Transfer of Power 1942–7, Vol. XII, Her Majesty’s Relations with Bangladesh 327

In 1971, India provided signiﬁ cant assistance to the struggle for independence in East Pakistan following the genocide launched by the Pakistan Army on 25 March 1971 (the details of which have already been provided in the chapter on India–Pakistan relations). Largely as a result of Indian aid and participation, East Pakistan emerged as the independent state of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971. Many Indians believed that the dismemberment of Pakistan had buried Jinnah’s two-nation theory, and that the problems about the persecution of minorities (mainly Hindus) would disappear from Bangladesh. As will be analysed subsequently here, this belief turned out to be totally wrong. For, in 1975, by means of a military coup, anti-independence forces, led by Ziaur Rahman, took over political control in Bangladesh. Visibly or invisibly, military rulers exercised supreme political authority in Bangladesh till 1990. Meanwhile, secularism, one of the fundamental principles of state policy, as stated in the Bangladesh Constitution of 1972, was removed, and Islam was declared to be the state religion. Since 1991, the period of parliamentary rule, two parties have exercised power—The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Khaleda Zia (the widow of Ziaur Rahman), which was in power during 1991–96, and The Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina (the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman), which was in power from 1996 to 2001. While the Awami League led the independence struggle of 1971, the BNP, created in the cantonment by Ziaur Rahman, has a powerful component of anti- independence forces. In the elections of 2001, the BNP recaptured power. The Jamaat-e-Islami, the major anti-independence party of 1971, shared power formally in the coalition government led by the BNP since 2001. Remarkably, in a resounding reconﬁ rmation of Jinnah’s two-nation theory, both the Awami League and the BNP, treated leniently the anti-independence forces (led by the Jamaat). As an eminent author of Bangladesh, Muntassir Mamoon, has

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 remarked, Bangladesh is probably a unique country where there is a coexistence of supporters and opponents of independence, where newspapers, opposed to independence, circulate freely, and where

Stationery Ofﬁ ce, London, 1983, Document Nos 436 n; 452; 485 paras 6–7; 487; 489 paras 12, 15–16, and 77. Also see, Muntassir Mamoon and Jayanta Kumar Ray, Inside Bureaucracy: Bangladesh, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1987, pp. 202, 204, 219, 231–32; Saradindu Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees: Tragedy in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (1947–1998), New Delhi: Voice of India, 2000, pp. 16–17. 328 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

opponents of independence go on uninterruptedly maligning the supporters of independence.4 From this point of view, it is not surprising that minorities in East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh have remained ceaseless targets of persecution, although the visibility of its impact on India, in terms of the number of refugees coming in, has varied widely. In normal periods, the number has remained substantial, and yet low in contrast to the abnormal periods, for example, 1950, 1964, 1965, 1971, 1990–91, 1992–93, 2001–2. Remarkably, New Delhi has done virtually nothing to put pressure on the neighbouring country, and relieve the suffering of the non-Muslims (principally Hindus) left on the wrong side of the border. In view of the circumstances of Partition, and the assurances given by national leaders to these non-Muslims, it was their political as also moral responsibility to extend this relief. From this standpoint, it may not be inappropriate to characterise India’s foreign policy as immoral.5 Take, for instance, the February Killings of 1950 in East Bengal, which came as the denouement of large-scale violence against Hindus committed during several preceding months. From start to fi nish, the February outburst bore the stamp of careful offi cial planning, and remorseless implementation. Its principal architect, Chief Secretary Aziz Ahmed, deserved full credit for the success of his mission to squeeze out Hindus. On 6 and 7 February 1950, Radio Pakistan, Dhaka, came out with highly provocative announcements, virtually inciting the Muslims to take up arms against the Hindus. On 10 February came the fi nale. On that day the Dhaka Secretariat staff stopped work and took out a procession, shouting anti- Hindu slogans, and went to an important assembly ground, the Victoria Park, at about 12 noon, where they held a meeting. The meeting ended at about 1 p.m. when anti-Hindu orgies fl ared up

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 4 Muntassir Mamoon, Rajakarer Mon, Dhaka: Mowla Brothers, 2000, p. 17. The title of this book can be translated as The Mind of the Rajakar. The word, Rajakar, is commonly used in Bangladesh to denote all those who collaborated with the Pakistan Army in 1971 to frustrate the movement towards independence. 5 Government of India, Report of the Working Group on the Residual Problem of Rehabilitation in West Bengal, New Delhi: Ministry of Supply and Rehabilitation, Government of India, 1976. Government of West Bengal, Chief Minister’s Letters to the Central Government: A Selection, Calcutta: Department of Information and Cultural Affairs, Government of India, 1981. Relations with Bangladesh 329

simultaneously in all parts of the city of Dhaka. Violence spread to other parts of East Bengal at lightning speed. The most severely affected areas, apart from Dhaka, were Barisal, Chittagong, and Sylhet. In all these areas a government-sponsored mob recruited ordinary people and led the way to relentless barbarities. The police not only abstained from helping the victims, but also helped the oppressors. In certain places, mass conversions to Islam marked the halt of the carnage. Some ﬁ gures, indicating the nature and extent of the damage caused in Dhaka, are available. Hindus formed 59 per cent of the population and possessed 85 per cent of the properties in Dhaka after the establishment of Pakistan. About 90 per cent of this Hindu population left for India after the 1950 holocaust, and the property holdings of Hindus fell to 12.7 per cent. The number of Hindu boys in schools stood at 2,000 before this holocaust, and this number dwindled to 140 by December 1950; as to girls, the ﬁ gures were 1,200 and 25 respectively. About 90 per cent of the Hindu- owned shops in Dhaka were looted on 10 February 1950, and many were burnt down. Nearly 50,000 Hindus in the city lost their houses the same day. About 10,000 Hindus in East Bengal died during the February massacre. On 17 March 1950, at the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Maulvi Ibrahim Khan of East Bengal attested to the loss of Hindu lives and property in his province without any provocation from Hindus, and expressed a sense of deep shame.6 Although, in the preceding paragraph, anti-Hindu atrocities in East Bengal in February 1950 have been highlighted, in reality,

6 Samar Guha, Non-Muslims Behind the Curtain of East Pakistan, Dhaka, 1950, pp. 82–84; Samar Guha, East Bengal Minorities Since Delhi Pact, Calcutta, 1953, pp. 4–5; P.C. Lahiry, India Partitioned and Minorities in Pakistan, Calcutta: Writer’s Forum, 1964, p. 26; Jyoti Sengupta, Eclipse of East Pakistan, Calcutta: Renco, 1963, pp. 80–81, 95–96, 100. See, Memorandum, 20 March 1950, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 submitted before the Honourable Prime Minister of Pakistan by members of the opposition party (Assembly), East Bengal, in Recurrent Exodus of Minorities from East Pakistan and Disturbances in India: A Report to the Indian Commission of Jurists by its Committee of Enquiry, New Delhi, 1965, pp. 335–36. Also see p. 4 of this Report, brieﬂ y known as the Trikamdas Report, because a top-ranking lawyer, Purshottam Trikamdas, was the chairman of the Committee of Enquiry. Also see, J.N. Mandal, Letter of Resignation to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, 9 October 1950, in Genesis of Communal Violence in East Pakistan, The Foreign Relations Society of India, New Delhi, 1950, p. 67. Also see, Ray, Democracy and Nationalism, pp. 32–36. 330 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

large-scale assaults on Hindus had started in December 1949, continuing till April 1950. Small-scale assaults, however, continued, and the forced migration of Hindus to India did not stop even for a day. All this was not unexpected in the Islamic state of Pakistan. However, what was the response of the secular state of India under the leadership of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the February 1950 genocide in East Bengal? As elucidated ahead, the Indian response consisted of appeasing Pakistan, evading responsibilities towards minorities in East Bengal, and sheer incompetence in counteracting vicious Pakistani propaganda at the international level. In an article titled ‘Writing on the wall’, published in Calcutta’s Amrita Bazar Patrika, on 18 March 1950, Acharya J.B. Kripalani, a former president of the ruling Congress Party, depicted the Indian response in the most poignant manner. Kripalani clearly enunciated the essentials of India’s policy of appeasement towards Pakistan, as he drew attention to Pakistani policies and practices. Kripalani stressed that, like Hindus in Sindh, Hindus in East Bengal were being expelled by Pakistan in a premeditated fashion. If large-scale persecution of minorities in Pakistan produced a minor communal outbreak in India, ‘it is grossly and shamefacedly exaggerated by Indians’. Kripalani added:

While we admit what happens here and minimize the atrocities in Pakistan, the latter denies what happens there and exaggerates the happenings in India. If there are 10 deaths the ﬁ gure broadcast throughout the world is 10,000…. On the other hand, every communal action of barbarity perpetrated on the Hindu minority in Pakistan is here [in India] sought to be either hushed up or minimized. Ours is a secular state with vengeance, in as much as it allows a fanatical religious state on its borders to play on the feelings of its population, while we in India cannot afford to give the barest facts for fear of possible communal repercussions.7 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 What Kripalani wrote so vividly in March 1950 is applicable to the reactions of the government and newspapers of India to, for instance, the horrible and large-scale atrocities on minorities in Bangladesh

7 A.J. Kamra reproduces Kripalani’s invaluable article in his work Prolonged Partition, pp. 112–13. Relations with Bangladesh 331

during 2001–2. In the aforesaid article (of 18 March 1950), Kripalani went further and underlined India’s failure

…to check the ﬁ fth-column activities going on within the country. Pakistan knows everything about us while we know nothing about Pakistan. It would appear that Pakistani agents have access to our high ofﬁ cials. There is one-pointed determination on their side and a vacillation and fear on our side. There is an iron curtain against news on their side: on this side even truth cannot be told and what little of it must be told, because gruesome events cannot be long concealed, as little of it must be told as possible and that too in whispers and in bated breath.8

With this perspective, one can comprehend the response of the Indian government and Prime Minister Nehru to the anti-minority pogrom in East Bengal in February 1950. Nehru spoke a lot, but took only one action: he visited West Bengal several times. Nehru’s speeches in Parliament were wonders in underplaying the tragedy in East Bengal, and evading the need for decisive action against East Bengal (Pakistan). He understated the number of refugees coming from East Bengal to India, and overstated the number of Muslims crossing over to East Bengal. His insinuations amounted to equating the events in East Bengal and Calcutta. Only 20 Muslims and 11 Hindus died in Calcutta, and even this would not have happened but for the offensive taken by Muslim miscreants. When Nehru reported his meeting with Hindu refugees in West Bengal, he dwelt on his own personal feelings, not on the acute sufferings of the refugees. He created a confusing situation for himself, as also for others, by harping on the distinction between partial and complete solutions, and between short-term and long-term measures to relieve human suffering. What he did not care to do is elucidate this distinction, thereby conﬁ rming his tendency of evading responsibility. Yet, it was not possible to hold anyone else responsible for this evasiveness, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 because the sycophants and self-aggrandisers in the Congress Party had washed their hands off the East Bengal tragedy by placing reliance openly, and almost exclusively, on Nehru. Nehru’s statements in Parliament were quite evasive, as he argued that he had no magical powers to solve the problems of the Hindus in East Bengal, and that

8 Ibid. Also see, Subimal Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977. 332 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

he had to act with the help of the East Bengal government. This did not make much sense because, as he was fully aware, the East Bengal government had created the problem, and, therefore, could not provide the solution. Congress Party leaders comically orchestrated their cries that Nehru’s hands be strengthened in an hour of crisis, so that Nehru could think of the correct line of action. But Nehru preferred inaction, coupled with moral sermons.9 Perturbed by Nehru’s inaction, Acharya J.B. Kripalani told Parliament on 3 March: ‘Can a country be safe if, at critical times because of the difﬁ culties involved in possible solutions, it refuses to act? Is it not better to strive and suffer and persist than merely to vegetate and fade away…. Ruling a nation is no holiday affair.’ But Nehru, safe in the prime minister’s seat—to occupy which with undue haste he did not bother about the predictable fate of minorities in Pakistan—refused to do anything to counteract the savagery against non-Muslims in East Bengal. Instead, he offered some suggestions amounting to meaningless action against Pakistan, which Pakistan scornfully rejected. Nehru suggested a joint investigation commission, and, along with the premier of East Bengal, a tour of East Bengal and West Bengal. Rejection of these suggestions by Pakistan did not harm non-Muslims in East Bengal in any way. For, even if acted upon, these suggestions would not have provided any protection to the non-Muslims in East Bengal against barbarous attacks by the Muslims. Evidently, Nehru’s inaction was interpreted as cowardice, and members of the Army and police in East Bengal joined ordinary Muslims to raid border villages inhabited by Hindus in West Bengal. After all, what Nehru and his followers forgot was that in the event India occupied East Bengal’s position and acquiesced in anti-Muslim atrocities (on the scale of the anti- Hindu atrocities in East Bengal in February 1950), where East Bengal or Pakistan was as big and powerful as India, East Bengal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 or Pakistan would have taken stern military action against India. Jayaprakash Narayan was right when, because of the brazen failure of Pakistan to protect minorities on its territory, he afﬁ rmed that India send troops to East Bengal to safeguard the interests of these minorities. The Amrita Bazar Patrika conducted an opinion poll

9 Kamra, Prolonged Partition, pp. 76, 81–85, 95–96, 99, 100, 101, 105–9, 116–17. Relations with Bangladesh 333

throughout India. Among one million respondents, 87.2 per cent recommended police action or military intervention by India in East Bengal, while 9.7 per cent voted for a regulated exchange of population.10 Forget military intervention in East Bengal, Nehru’s government refused even to deploy the Indian Army to prevent border raids from East Bengal. Nehru had profound faith in sermons. Once, at a gathering of Hindu refugees from East Bengal, he asked them to overcome fear. In Parliament on 17 March 1950, Nehru argued that a joint statement (that is, sermon) by the prime ministers of India and Pakistan would guarantee protection to minorities. The Pakistan government withdrew accreditation from Indian pressmen in East Bengal, who did not have to overstate anything, as the bare facts of genocide were horrifying enough. In contrast, the Gov- ernment of India did not withdraw accreditation from Pakistani pressmen in India, whose reports bristled with plain falsehoods and boundless exaggerations. These reports—and complementary concoctions by the Pakistan government—enabled Pakistan to score propaganda victories against India in such countries as Britain and the United States. Prime Minister Nehru failed demonstrably to counteract Pakistan’s propaganda campaign. Was this attitude also a variant of the appeasement of Pakistan? A deeply degrading variant, however, was noticeable in Parliament, where the Speaker went to the length of disallowing a perfectly legitimate question on whether the Government of India should cancel the accreditation of Pakistani journalists in India. When, again, the Speaker of Parliament disallowed a question on whether India activated its diplomatic channels to counteract mischievous propaganda in a foreign country (viz. Iran), and another question drawing attention to the speeches of Pakistan’s prime minister blaming the holocaust in East Bengal on newspapers in India, including West Bengal,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 it became agonizingly apparent that the Government of India was hell bent upon appeasing Pakistan.11 Only once in Parliament, at an unguarded moment, Prime Minister Nehru appeared to commit a slip of the tongue, and afﬁ rmed that, in case of the failure of diplomatic methods, India

10 Ibid., pp. 82–83, 85, 93–94, 100. 11 Ibid., pp. 80–81, 93–94,101, 111, 117–20, 123, 144–45, 156. 334 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

would ‘have to adopt other methods’ in order to deal with the situation in East Bengal. In a few days, however, at a broadcast to the nation on 3 March 1950, Nehru virtually apologised for this affi rmation, and retracted it, expressing distress at being ‘criticized for hinting at the possibility of war’. This was unpardonable spinelessness, totally inconsistent with statecraft, especially with diplomacy needed to counteract the manoeuvres of the Islamic state of Pakistan. Eventually, India was compelled to adopt some tough measures towards East Bengal. India suspended the supply of coal to East Bengal, and posted a few battalions of soldiers along the border with East Bengal. However, New Delhi did not see these measures carried to their logical conclusion, and instead these measures were used to pave the way for a strange sermon in the form of the Liaquat-Nehru Agreement or Delhi Agreement of April 1950. Eulogising this agreement in Parliament on 10 April, Nehru resorted to deceptive bravado, and observed: ‘We have stopped ourselves at the edge of a precipice and turned our back to it. That by itself is, I submit, a defi nite gain.’ (This habit of Nehru to deceive the people and Parliament persisted, and, as analysed in the chapter on India–China relations in this book, Nehru had to pay dearly for this in 1962.) The Nehru–Liaquat Agreement of 1950 was one of the most awkward agreements in modern history. It was based on the thoroughly groundless assumptions that refugees, magically inspired by the empty promises of this agreement, would go back to East Bengal, regain possession of their properties, witness miscreants being subjected to punishment, and live forever happily thereafter, and that there would be no fresh infl ux of refugees to India.12 Two ministers, K.C. Neogy and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, resigned from Nehru’s Cabinet in protest against the Nehru-Liaquat Agreement. They set a unique precedent, rarely acted upon in India’s parliamentary history, by giving up high offi ces on the ground of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a noble principle, and regardless of political losses. Neogy was the Union Minister for Commerce, whereas Mookerjee was the Union Minister for Industry and Supply. On 19 April 1950, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee delivered an extraordinarily well-reasoned statement in Parliament, in sharp contrast to the confusing, illogical, and discursive speeches of Nehru. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, explaining his resignation by this statement, also discussed in a brilliant fashion

12 Ibid., pp. 95, 110, 118, 148–52. Relations with Bangladesh 335

the lapses in India’s policy towards Pakistan. These lapses could be summed up as appeasement (a thoroughly pernicious policy, which, as this book has illustrated, endured for decades, damaging India’s vital interests). Shyama Prasad characterised India’s policy towards Pakistan as ‘weak, halting and inconsistent’, which made Pakistan ‘more and more intransigent’, and forced Indians to ‘suffer all the greater’. ‘On every important occasion we have remained on the defensive and failed to expose or counteract the designs of Pakistan aimed at us’, Shyama Prasad reminded Parliament. He urged Parliament not to forget history, especially the history of the time preceding Partition, when he

…along with others gave assurances to the Hindus of East Bengal stating that if they suffered at the hands of the future Pakistan Government, free India would not remain an idle spectator and their just cause would be boldly taken up by the Government and people of India. Let us not forget that Hindus of East Bengal are entitled to the protection of India not on humanitarian considerations alone but by virtue of their sufferings and sacriﬁ ces, made cheerfully for generations, not for advancing their own parochial interests, but for laying the foundation of India’s political freedom and intellectual progress.13

The Nehru–Liaquat Agreement of 1950 had two predecessors, viz. the Inter-Dominion agreements of April and December 1948. The backdrop to the April 1948 agreement was provided by the forced expulsion of 500,000 Hindus from East Bengal (there being no comparable movement from West Bengal to East Bengal) during the period August 1947–March 1948. The April 1948 agreement, concerned specifically with the minority problems of Bengal, perversely equated the problems of oppression of minorities in East and West Bengal. (The same equation prevailed in the agreements of December 1948 and April 1950, reﬂ ecting the appeasement of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Pakistan by India.) While India largely complied with the terms of the April 1948 agreement, Pakistan did not. Consequently, the eviction of Hindus from East Bengal continued, necessitating the agreement of December 1948, which met with the same fate as its predecessor of April 1948. As Shyama Prasad noted in his statement of 19 April, ‘the fact remains that in spite of the two Inter-Dominion

13 Ibid., pp. 153–54. 336 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Agreements as many as 16 to 20 lakh Hindus were sent away to India from East Bengal’. From January to April 1950, again, West Bengal received at least 100,000 refugees from East Bengal, whereas Assam and Tripura too sheltered several hundred thousands. ‘Meanwhile,’ Shyama Prasad candidly admitted in his statement of 19 April 1950, ‘Muslims, though in much less numbers, have also started leaving India, a good number of whom belonged to East Bengal and had come to West Bengal for service or occupation.’ The Nehru-Liaquat Agreement not only refused to offer any compensation to victims of the pogrom in East Bengal, but also added ‘insult to injury’ by calling upon the minorities in East Bengal ‘to look upon the Pakistan Government for their safety and honour’. Like the agreements of April and December 1948, the agreement of April 1950, too, was pre-destined to prove worthless, because India did not bother to attach to these agreements any sanction against violations of such agreements by Pakistan. Nehru was to be squarely blamed for such a policy of appeasement towards Pakistan, because, as Krishnalal Shridharani wrote (in The Amrita Bazar Patrika of 8 April 1950), Nehru declared himself to be completely responsible for the Bengal and Kashmir situation. (In both, Nehru made a mess.)14 ‘The recent agreement, to my mind,’ said Shyama Prasad on 19 April 1950, ‘offers no solution to the basic problem. The evil is far deeper and no patchwork can lead to peace.’ Continuous loss of Hindu lives and property in East Bengal, molestation of Hindu women (including children), and the forceful conversions of an enormous number of Hindus to Islam, according to Shyama Prasad, could only take place because evidently ‘they formed part of a deliberate and cold planning to exterminate minorities from East Bengal: to ignore this is to forget hard realities’. Nehru and his followers were so obsessed with appeasing Pakistan that, far from taking action to tackle these ‘hard realities’, and solve the ‘basic problem’, they

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 refused even to acknowledge their existence. Therefore, on 19 April 1950, Shyama Prasad completely failed to make any dent on the wall of appeasement, when he narrated the following bitter truths about the Islamic state of Pakistan:

It is not how a few top ranking individuals in Pakistan think or desire to act. It is the entire set-up of the State and mentality of the

14 Ibid., pp. 151–55. Relations with Bangladesh 337

ofﬁ cial circles, high and low, the attitude of the people at large and the activities of organizations such as the Ansars which all operate together and make it impossible for Hindus to live.15

The evil effects of the policy of appeasement towards Pakistan, pursued by Nehru and his followers, endured and multiplied for decades in the 20th century, and continued into the 21st century. One is reminded of the following statement by socialist leader, Mushtaq Ahmad, in mid-March 1950, in which he urged the Government of India not to appease Pakistan. He said:

Knowing the Muslim League leadership and their approach to the problems, their cunning and false propaganda against India since 1937, I would not hesitate to warn the Congress Government that appeasement of Pakistan will not only endanger the principle of secular democracy but it will lead to chaos, anarchy and barbarism unknown in history.

Mushtaq’s statement proved to be prophetic. For,’ as A.J. Kamra wrote, ‘Pandit Nehru’s…. cowardly submission to Pakistan’s genocide of Hindus in 1950 led to their harrowing suffering for nearly fi ve further decades and their genocide in 1971, one of the ghastliest that the human race has ever been subjected [to] in this century.’16 Perhaps there is a limit to the energy, cruelty, greed, and lust of even the toughest hoodlums. Therefore, a pogrom on the scale of the one in 1950 could not go on indefi nitely. But small-scale atrocities on minorities continued daily with offi cial connivance, and the exodus to West Bengal did not stop for a single day. There were certainly some offi cials and political leaders in 1950, and afterwards, who tried their best to protect the minorities. No praise is too high for them. However, the quantitative impact of their heroic endeavours was less than negligible. A pogrom comparable to the pogrom in 1950 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 (though not exactly identical) occurred in East Pakistan in 1964. This was the time when Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s military dictator, found it extraordinarily diffi cult to cope with the movement for autonomy in East Pakistan. He failed to quell it by persecution and a

15 Ibid., pp. 154–57. 16 For this and earlier quote see ibid., pp. 108, 115–16. 338 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

few concessions. In January 1964, the Ayub Khan regime deliberately incited communal passions and initiated a large-scale one-sided slaughter and squeezing out of non-Muslims in East Pakistan, including Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus. Ayub Khan’s plan in sponsoring this holocaust appeared twofold. He probably intended to divert popular attention away from the autonomy movement. He also wanted perhaps to incite communal disturbances in India, which might then spread to different parts of India, and engulf Kashmir, thereby making it easier for him to pounce upon Kashmir. The Hazratbal incident, that is the theft of the sacred relic (hair) of Prophet Muhammad, from a mosque in Kashmir on 27 December 1963, supplied a handy pretext. The watchman, who was guarding the relic in the Hazratbal mosque, was absent for a few hours when the theft occurred. Although the relic was recovered within a few days (on 4 January 1964), the Government of Pakistan, its radio and the government-controlled press (excluding such newspapers of East Pakistan as Ittefaq, Pakistan Observer, and Sangbad, which at that point of time were fairly progressive and communally unbiased) poured out venomous propaganda. These propaganda outbursts bristled with numerous lies depicting the theft as being committed by a Hindu and as a mark of persecution of Muslims in India. Even after the recovery of the relic, the Pakistan government, radio, and a servile section of the press denounced the recovery as a fraud, a succeeded in whipping up mob frenzy that had ready targets among non-Muslims in the eastern wing of Pakistan, the other wing being by that time almost totally emptied of non-Muslims. A large-scale exodus of non-Muslims from East Pakistan, it might further be suggested, would help Ayub Khan’s regime in moving towards a population parity between the two wings of Pakistan, thus reducing the bargaining power of East Pakistan in any future scheme of representation in Pakistan’s central legislature according 17

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to population. There was considerable evidence to prove that the massacre of non-Muslims (mainly Hindus) in East Pakistan in January 1964

17 Dawn, Karachi, 29, 30 December 1963, 1, 6, 7, 8, 13 January 1964; Morning News, Dhaka, 31 December 1963, 2, 4, 9, 11 January 1964; The Pakistan Times, 3–6 and 9–13 January 1964; Pakistan Observer, 4, 5, 14 January 1964; Ittefaq, 5, 14, 17 January, and 23, 24 February 1964; Sangbad, 6, 14 January 1964. Also see, Kamra, Prolonged Partition, pp. 185–86. Relations with Bangladesh 339

was directly engineered by the Ayub Khan-led coterie and its East Pakistani henchmen such as Khan A. Sabur, the central communication minister, and Monem Khan, the governor of East Pakistan. Sabur and Monem Khan played an enthusiastic role in heightening communal passions in East Pakistan, especially among the non- Bengalee factory workers residing in that province. They took great initiative in observing 3 January 1964 as a day of protest against the Hazratbal incident in India. On that day Sabur spoke at a meeting in Daulatpur (near Khulna), the majority of the audience being non- Bengalee factory workers. These non-Bengalee Muslims listened to infl ammatory speeches, including that of Sabur, and immediately afterwards took out a procession that looted and burnt non-Muslim (mostly Hindu) houses, killed non-Muslims, and abducted and raped non-Muslim women without any interference from the police. On the same day, 3 January 1964, Monem Khan spoke in a meeting at Bagerhat (near Khulna), and had hardly left by helicopter when the attacks on non-Muslims (largely Hindus) started at that place. The military, without any orders to shoot, began patrolling only after atrocities subsided, presumably because the marauders needed rest or were unable to fi nd out profi table targets. As non-Muslims started crossing the borders, they did not meet with any opposition from the Pakistani offi cials who presumably wanted to use them as carriers of communal virus that should infect the neighbouring province of India, that is West Bengal, according to a reported master plan of the Ayub Khan regime. It was also maintained by one commentator that the Ayub Khan regime employed agents in West Bengal to foment communal outbursts, which might enable it to step up the hate campaign against India and the pogrom against minorities in East Pakistan.18 Regrettably, certain lawless elements in West Bengal played into the hands of Ayub Khan and his agents in West Bengal.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Minor communal outbreaks started in Calcutta as a reaction to the Khulna massacre. However, unlike in East Pakistan, the military,

18 Trikamdas Report, pp. 21–40, 58–59. Also see, Samar Guha, Whither Minorities of Eastern Pakistan, published by the author, Calcutta, 1964, pp. 2–4; Sakuntal Sen, Inside Pakistan, Calcutta: Compass Publications, 1964, especially, pp. 15–16. Sen presents in this booklet an account of his adventurous trip to East Pakistan, undertaken in the disguise of a Muslim, shortly after the 1964 massacre. 340 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

with orders to shoot, was immediately deployed in Calcutta, and the situation was brought under control without any delay—within 48 hours, to be specifi c. The military even committed excesses in checking the riot; for example, it shot at innocent Hindus who were out in the street on some urgent domestic business, and had no connection whatsoever with the riot. Despite the immediate suppression of the Calcutta disturbances, and the quick recovery of the Prophet’s relic, Pakistan’s ruling coterie went on abetting hatred towards India and non-Muslims in Pakistan. Its machinations bore fruit on 14 January when anti-minority arson, loot, rape, abduction, and murder convulsed different areas of East Pakistan. There were some major storm centres in which outbursts occurred almost simultaneously. All these areas, namely, the Adamji mills area in Narayanganj, the Nishat mill area of Tangi (18 miles north of Dhaka), and the Nawabpur area of the old city of Dhaka, were dominated by non-Bengalee workers of factories owned by non- Bengalee industrialists. These workers, industrialists, and those politicians who were benefi ciaries of Ayub Khan’s system of Basic (indirect) Democracy, were, in East Pakistan, avid supporters of the Ayub Khan-led coterie. Too readily did they cooperate in committing atrocities upon minorities. It is signifi cant that on 13 January, the day before the anti-minority explosion, the above noted mill-owners had a conference with the chief secretary to the Government of East Pakistan. They declared 14 and 15 January as holidays for the mills whose workers played a leading role in the massacre of minorities. They also supplied the workers with weapons and other materials to be used against minorities. These included iron rods, daggers, petrol cans and sprayers, and fi rearms. The industrialists helped the rioters with motor vehicles. The rioters, including many who were unemployed, derived great impetus from the propaganda that their problems of job, food, and housing would disappear after the minorities were driven out of East Pakistan.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Approximately 30,000 Hindus were killed in East Pakistan in January 1964, and 2,000 Hindu villages were reduced to rubble. Countless Hindus migrated to India.19 What happened to the minorities in East Pakistan in 1950 and 1964 on a horrendous scale, and continued on a small scale at all

19 Guha, Whither Minorities, pp. 5–16; Kamra, Prolonged Partition, pp. 186–88; Sen, Inside Pakistan, pp. 16–17. Relations with Bangladesh 341

other times, was the logical outcome of Partition without a regulated population transfer. Indian leaders could easily have foreseen this, and should have forestalled it. Alternatively, the Government of India ought to have taken stern measures to stop atrocities on minorities in East Pakistan immediately after their outbreak. In all these matters, however, the Indian leaders failed miserably. Instead, they stuck to a policy of appeasement of Pakistan whenever an opportunity arose. The Indus Waters Treaty of 19 September 1960 provided a valuable instance. Where any sound application of international law (viz. Helsinki Rules) on this subject entitled India to a share of 42.8 per cent of waters in the Indus Basin, India obtained only 20–25 per cent. Pakistan already enjoyed a surplus of water, and it was unable to use about 72 million acre feet of water in its share of Indus waters in accordance with the 1960 treaty. Therefore, the Indian policy of appeasement endowed Pakistan with the privilege of wasting this enormous volume of water, which could only rush to the sea. Nevertheless, the Indian policy of appeasement went further. India agreed to offer Pakistan a grant of £62 million. That this method of buying peace with Pakistan was utterly useless became evident quite soon, and afterwards, from what happened in East Pakistan in 1964. On 9 January 1964, in a speech before delegates to a Congress Party session at Gopabandhunagar in Orissa, former Defence Minister Krishna Menon deplored that concessions granted by India to Pakistan in the Indus Waters Treaty failed to restrain Pakistan from launching barbarous attacks on minorities in East Pakistan. Krishna Menon warned that Pakistan, emboldened by its military alliance with Western countries, as also its cordial relations with China, would repeat other such acts of hostility against India. Little did Menon realise that his observation revealed both the moral and political bankruptcy of India’s non-alignment policy, which could be one of the elements crippling India’s initiative

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 towards effectively safeguarding the human rights of minorities in East Pakistan. Incidentally, it is pertinent to recall that, according to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Lord Mountbatten used the services of Krishna Menon (as also of Lady Mountbatten) to inﬂ uence Nehru’s decision in favour of Partition. Unfortunately, neither Menon nor Nehru had either foresight or concern towards the minorities, which would have enabled them to accept a planned population exchange as an antidote to savage anti-minority outbreaks occurring in East Pakistan. Indian leaders (including Nehru) deserved praise for 342 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

practising liberal democracy (implying secularism), and for pre- empting or quickly quelling minor anti-minority disturbances taking place occasionally in India. Ironically, this only encouraged rioters in East Pakistan to perpetuate their atrocities at varying scales, for they remained confi dent that the exodus of minorities to India would remain one-way traffi c. Miscreants in East Pakistan and their offi cial patrons became further encouraged by press reactions in India, to embrace a policy of permanent rioting against minorities. Evidently, the offi cial policy of appeasement towards Pakistan infected most newspapers in India. Which is why, barring The Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta, other English-language newspapers in India gave no coverage (or gave paltry coverage) to the 1964 anti-minority holocaust in East Pakistan, not to speak of small scale incidents occurring everyday and incessantly. The architects of the anti- minority outrages in East Pakistan, therefore, felt comfortable that their vicious activities, far from arousing international concern, would not even attract widespread publicity inside India.20 The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ was not in vogue in the 1950s and 1960s. There is, however, no doubt that minorities (mostly Hindus) in East Bengal (East Pakistan) were subjected to ethnic cleansing the parallel of which cannot be discovered in the history of contemporary Asia. Undoubtedly, again, New Delhi’s rulers (including politicians and offi cials, especially diplomats) remained largely impervious to the depth of this tragedy. Not to speak of designing an effective deterrent to this perpetual ethnic cleansing (with highs and lows), ruling politicians and offi cials in New Delhi were not even ready to extend due recognition to this phenomenon, knocking off thereby any claim to a moral foundation of India’s foreign policy. In order to illustrate this indefensible mindset, one can refer to the writings of an eminent Indian diplomat, J.N. Dixit, a former foreign secretary, and the author of a number of important

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 books, including Liberation and Beyond: Indo-Bangladesh Relations, and Across Borders: Fifty Years of India’s Foreign Policy. In the current context, our attention is focussed on Liberation and Beyond.

20 Syeda Sayidain Hameed, Islamic Seal on India’s Independence, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 274; Kamra, Prolonged Partition, pp. 198–91; K. Warikoo, ‘Indus Water Treaty’, Himalayan and Central Asian Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, April-June 2002, pp. 14–17. Relations with Bangladesh 343

Dixit was the director of the Special Unit in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, which dealt with the East Pakistan crisis of 1971. He also served as India’s deputy high commissioner to Bangladesh for about three and a half years during 1972–75. In fact, Dixit opened the Indian Mission in the new state of Bangladesh on 17 January 1972. It can, therefore, be honestly presumed that he was fully aware of the large-scale ethnic cleansing of minorities as a result of Pakistani military action which commenced on the midnight of 25–26 March 1971, continuing till December. The Pakistani soldiers were also responsible for the genocide of Muslims in East Pakistan. But of the 10 million refugees crossing over to India, nearly 95 per cent happened to be Hindus. Following the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh on 16 December 1971, many of these refugees stayed on in India. Of those who returned, very few could get back their immovable (not to mention movable) properties and stay on in Bangladesh. Others moved back to India—unlamented and unnoticed—marching silently in small numbers, so that India’s rulers would not be tormented (even if momentarily) by the thought of an exodus. Remarkably, a majority of the small number of Hindu refugees who could recover their immovable properties in Bangladesh in 1971–72, and, therefore, continued to live in Bangladesh, became targets of ethnic cleansing. But anyone, reading Dixit’s Liberation and Beyond, may conclude that Dixit was totally unaware of the ethnic cleansing of the Hindus of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971 and the succeeding decades. This inevitably is a reminder of a book in which, a noted writer of Bangladesh, Muntassir Mamoon, has scanned the memoirs of a number of top-ranking Pakistani military ofﬁ cers, who were associated with the Pakistani military action in East Pakistan in 1971, and also analysed the results of interviews with some of these ofﬁ cers conducted in Pakistan in 1998. Nearly all of them refused to admit that there was, or that they had any knowledge about, 21

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 genocide in East Pakistan in 1971. Certainly, J.N. Dixit and the above-mentioned military ofﬁ cers of Pakistan cannot be placed in the same category in terms of their motivations. But there is a chilling commonality: the penchant

21 Dixit, Across Borders. Also see, J.N. Dixit, Liberation and Beyond, Delhi: Konark, 1999; Muntassir Mamoon, Parajito Pakistani Generalder Dristite Mukti Juddha (Liberation Struggle in the Eyes of the Defeated Pakistani Generals), Dhaka: Somoy, 1999, pp. 24–27, 172, for examples. 344 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

for suppression of some vital truths. In Liberation and Beyond, a valuable work of 317 pages, Dixit ﬁ rst refers to ‘the beginning of a massive exodus of refugees from East Pakistan into the States of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura in India’ as one of the important consequences of Pakistani military action in East Pakistan in March 1971 (p. 46). On pages 48–50, Dixit notes that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi created a separate department to cope with the problem of East Pakistani refugees whose number reached ‘between ﬁ ve and a half and seven million’, by the third week of May 1971, and whose presence put serious economic-demographic pressures on the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam. Dixit adds that India placed the East Pakistan crisis before the UN by way of emphasising the refugee problem. But there was no mention of Hindus being subjected to ethnic cleansing in a planned manner. Dixit next (on p. 51) deals with refugees as one of the elements of India’s policy approach to the East Pakistan problem, and informs readers of India’s desire that ‘Pakistan should ensure the return of all East Pakistan refugees to their homes, undertaking to guarantee their safety, honour and economic well-being’. It is evident from his book that, as India’s deputy high commissioner to Bangladesh, Dixit did not bother for a moment whether this laudable concern of the Government of India vis-à-vis refugees was respected by the Bangladesh government (the successor to the Pakistan Government). Pakistan’s view was that these refugees were miscreants, rebels, and secessionists, ‘and that the majority of them were Hindus’ (p. 52). Amazingly, without the least shade of objectivity, Dixit observes in Across Borders (p. 103) ‘that the majority of the refugees were, in fact, Muslims’. To resume an analyses of Liberation and Beyond, Dixit mentions (on p. 53) that India ‘was coping with the refugees’, while their number stood at eight million by the end of July. Still, there is no mention of Hindus being the special target of atrocities

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 by the Pakistan Army and its Muslim associates in East Pakistan, although, on page 55, Dixit cannot help acknowledge that in the post-1947 years Pakistan ‘was sending the Hindu population of East Pakistan as refugees to India’. He does so while enumerating a variety of ‘fundamental strategic considerations and immediate political compulsions for India to support the liberation struggle in Bangladesh’ (p. 55). Dixit reiterates (on p. 58) that ‘the economic and demographic burden imposed on West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Manipur (due to the largescale inﬂ ux of refugees) called for Relations with Bangladesh 345

decisive steps to ensure their return home’. Refugee camps were established in Assam, Tripura and West Bengal to accommodate East Pakistani refugees whose numbers swelled to eight and a half to nine million by the middle of June (p. 61). UN agencies expressed their willingness ‘to mobilise resources for helping the refugees’ (p. 63). During April–August 1971, Pakistan’s policy makers indicated that ‘Pakistan would take back all the Muslim refugees but not the Hindu refugees who had escaped to India in the face of military repression’, but ‘even the return of the refugees were subject to the condition that the United Nations and the Western democracies would provide all the resources for their resettlement’, (p. 64). Even this unfair, though not unexpected, suggestion from Pakistan failed to move Dixit to spare a bit of special attention for Hindu refugees from East Pakistan. On 27 September, at the UN General Assembly, Sardar Swaran Singh, India’s external affairs minister, stated that developments in East Pakistan ceased to be an internal issue of Pakistan because, in addition to other reasons, other countries had to share ‘the enormous cost of the massive exodus of Pakistani citizens into India’. The migration of refugees would not stop, added Swaran Singh, or the refugees in India would not try to return, unless there was ‘a political solution acceptable to the elected representatives of the people’ (p. 71). While Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN argued against Swaran Singh raising the issue of refugees, as the UN was already dealing with it, India’s external affairs minister reiterated that unless Pakistan ended repression, sent the Army back to the barracks, and started negotiations with East Pakistan’s elected representatives, the infl ux of refuges would not cease, and refugees in India would not be able to go back.22 To carry forward the story of the 1971 refugee infl ux to India, and to underline J.N. Dixit’s studied avoidance of expression of any specifi c concern for the fact that Hindus formed an overwhelming

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 majority of these refugees, Dixit notes (on p. 76) that ‘the international community was willing only to provide some marginal economic assistance’ to these refugees. At the same time, Pakistan was successful in inﬂ uencing some sections of the international community to raise questions about the correctness of the number of refugees calculated by India. The Government of India then decided

22 Dixit, Across Borders, p. 103; Dixit, Liberation and Beyond, pp. 48–73. 346 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to invite Indian and foreign observers to visit refugee camps. Such distinguished persons as Andre Malreaux, former minister of culture of France, Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Sub-Committee of the United States Senate on Human Rights and Refugee Problems, and Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, visited refugee camps during October-November 1971. Aga Khan ‘was allowed free access to the registration process, and individually to the refugees without any governmental monitoring or presence’. Aga Khan appeared to be ‘a deeply disturbed man having been greatly moved by the tragic predicament of the refugees’ (p. 77). Eventually, India’s assistance to the freedom ﬁ ghters of Bangladesh, followed by direct military intervention in reaction to the pre-emptive air strikes by Pakistan upon Indian airﬁ elds, led to the surrender of Pakistani forces on 16 December 1971 in Dhaka. Dixit notes ‘the deliberate distortion of the causes’ of this war, and adds:

It is important for the peoples of Bangladesh and India to remember that a number of Islamic countries viewed the Bangladesh liberation struggle as a confrontation between Islam and India, and not as a genuine war launched by the Bangladeshis. Several Muslim countries gave Pakistan direct military aid.

Dixit labels the ‘opposition of Islamic countries’ to the liberation struggle in Bangladesh as ‘uncomprehending’ in view of the facts that the majority of Bangladeshis were Muslims, who were subjected to a genocide during March–December 1971 (p. 123). But the lack of comprehensibility in this approach of Islamic countries could be dissolved if one is prepared to stress—and Dixit is not—that an enormous majority of the refugees from East Pakistan to India happened to be Hindus.23 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman headed the ﬁ rst post-liberation gov-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ernment of Bangladesh. J.N. Dixit has depicted his mindset in a highly insightful manner. Mujibur Rahman stressed the ‘Bengali Muslim identity of Bangladesh’, and wanted Muslim countries to acknowledge this ‘distinctive identity’ of Bangladesh (pp. 136, 157–58). What Dixit does not note (and probably does not know)

23 Dixit, Liberation and Beyond, pp. 76, 77, 123. Relations with Bangladesh 347

is that this was a sort of reassertion of Mujibur Rahman’s own identity in pre-Partition days as a tough youth leader of the Muslim League in Calcutta. Mujibur Rahman was one of the closest associates of H.S. Suhrawardy, premier of undivided Bengal, who, in order to pave the way to Partition, engineered the Great Calcutta Killing of 16 August 1946. It is totally misleading on Dixit’s part to suggest in a bland fashion that Mujibur Rahman ‘made arrangements for the return of the Bangladeshi refugees from India’ (p. 169), or that ‘Bangladesh was taking back all the refugees, but India continued to contribute to their rehabilitation’ (p. 179.). For, barring exceptional cases, Mujibur Rahman did nothing to ensure that the Hindu refugees recovered their properties. Many of them did not, and trekked back to India. On page 196, Dixit makes an astonishing discovery: ‘Communal disturbances between Hindus and Muslims reappeared after a gap of nearly a decade. Durga Pujas were disrupted, the Ramakrishna Mission in Dhaka was threatened and it had to be provided with special protection during the Durga Puja celebrations of 1974.’ These observations by Dixit suffer from the following infi rmities. First, Bangladesh has never witnessed ‘communal disturbances’ implying violent reactions by Hindus to attacks by Muslims. There have been no riots in Bangladesh per se, only unilateral atrocities on minorities. Dixit should have, but has not, stressed or clarifi ed this vital matter, probably because he (like most decision makers in New Delhi) is infl uenced by the examples in India, where, despite being in the minority, Muslims derive such confi dence from the secular-democratic order prevalent in India (barring occasional aberrations), that they not only participate in the riots actively, but also initiate riots often. That is why, despite periodic clashes with Hindus, no Muslim in India (not even in Gujarat of 2002) ever leaves India for Pakistan (far less Bangladesh) in order to avoid communal outbreaks. Many Hindus die of fi ring

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 by security forces in course of a communal riot, as in Gujarat of 2002. It is inconceivable for Muslims in Bangladesh to die of police ﬁ ring in case of unilateral atrocities on minorities. Moreover, because the onslaughts are one-sided, the economic life of Muslims in Bangladesh is not disturbed during anti-minority outbreaks. In contrast, Hindus of India suffer economically in case of a riot, and cannot but crave communal peace. Second, Dixit is totally wrong to suggest that there were no anti-minority atrocities in Bangladesh over a period of 10 years before 1974. Actually, attacks on minorities 348 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in 1974 were insignifi cant when compared to those in 1971, which were initiated by the Pakistan Army but ruthlessly carried on for nine months by Muslims in Bangladesh (including neighbours). What escapes Dixit’s attention—and what bears reiteration—is that between 1964 and 1971, as also between 1971 and 1974 (when Dixit becomes aware of anti-minority outrages in Bangladesh!), every day there were unpublicised instances of loot, molestation of women, and dispossession of properties, which compelled Hindus to leave Bangladesh for India. Third, Dixit completely misses the signifi - cance of, and never once mentions in his book, the vested and Non-resident Property (Administration) Act (Act XLVI) of 1974. Known in short as the Vested Property Act (as elucidated ahead), it became a principal instrument to maintain a state of permanent persecution of minorities for the purpose of their expulsion from Bangladesh.24 It is diffi cult to believe that, with his profound knowledge of Bangladesh’s domestic policy and politics (as displayed in Liberation and Beyond), J.N. Dixit was ignorant of the existence and implications of the Vested Property Act of 1974, according to which India is an enemy country. This 1974 Act is an adaptation of the Enemy Property Rules of 1965, although it substitutes the term ‘vested property’ for ‘enemy property’. A team of renowned Bangladeshi scholars, led by Abul Barkat, a top-ranking professor of economics, has revealed how, for decades, the Vested Property Act of 1974 and related government circulars deprived millions of Hindus of the fundamental right to their property, and pushed them out of Bangladesh. But Dixit completely overlooks this oppression and expulsion of minorities in Bangladesh. Therefore, he can record the misleading observation on page 277 of Liberation and Beyond, that ‘possibilities of migration from Bangladesh to India due to demographic pressure within Bangladesh cannot be ruled out’,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and, ﬁ nally, on page 285, Dixit makes the following insipid admission: ‘The ﬁ fteen years preceding Begum Khaleda Zia coming to power [i.e. from 1975–76 to 1990–91] had witnessed’, among

24 Ibid., pp. 136, 157–58, 169, 196. Abul Barkat et al., Political Economy of the Vested Property Act in Rural Bangladesh, Dhaka: Association for Land Reform and Development, 1997. Also see, S.M. Ali, After the Dark Night, Delhi: Thomson Press, 1973, pp. 10–11; Dom Moraes, The Tempest Within, New Delhi: Vikas, 1971, pp. 94–95. Relations with Bangladesh 349

other things, ‘the persecution of non-Muslims in Bangladesh.’ These observations attest to the chronic insensitivity of J.N. Dixit (as also the entire policy-making establishment in New Delhi) to the incessant sufferings of Hindus in Bangladesh (East Pakistan). This can be easily comprehended if one refers to the ﬁ ndings in the book Political Economy of the Vested Property Act in Rural Bangladesh written by Professor Abul Barkat (and others). Moreover, Dixit’s implicit presumption that no atrocities on minorities were committed in Bangladesh, since the establishment of parliamentary rule in Bangladesh in 1991 (under Khaleda Zia’s prime ministership), is totally invalid. Signiﬁ cantly, since 1964, barring the 1971 interregnum, murder has not been a major cause of disappearance of minorities from Bangladesh (except in the CHT). Intimidation by Muslims—even without the application of an act like the Vested Property Act—works magically in evicting minorities from the plains of Bangladesh (mostly Hindus). For, on account of a weak democratic culture in Bangladesh, the Hindus are totally demoralised. Forget incidents of actual loot, or abduction/molestation of women, and dispossession of properties, even the mere threat of such incidents—backed by forged land deeds, if necessary—is enough to drive away Hindus to India. (To reiterate, this is in sharp contrast to the situation in India, where a vibrant democratic culture emboldens Muslims not only to resist rioters but also initiate riots.) Enemy Property Rules were originally promulgated under the Defence of Pakistan Ordinance promulgated in the wake of a Proclamation of Emergency in Pakistan on 6 September 1965, when India and Pakistan were at war, which lasted from 1 September to 22 September. In January 1966, the signing of the Tashkent Declara- tion brought an end to the state of war between the two countries. Still, Pakistan adopted the Enemy Property Ordinance in 1969,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 prolonging the persecution of non-Muslims. But Bangladesh, which emerged as a sovereign independent country as a result of India’s support and the death of about 10,000 Indian soldiers in the 1971 war with Pakistan, performed a sort of political miracle, and continued to treat India as an enemy, by adopting the Enemy Property Rules/ Ordinance of Pakistani days under the garb of the Vested Property Act. Like Pakistan, Bangladesh has blatantly violated the letter and spirit of the law on enemy (vested) property. The aim of such a law is to prevent the misuse of the property by the enemy country (India), and protect the property of the enemy owners (Indians) till 350 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the conclusion of peace. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh used this law to misappropriate the property of Hindus, and to force them to migrate to India. Suppose, a Hindu legitimately gives away his share of a house property (inherited from his father) to his brother, and migrates to India, his property will be declared as enemy property. His brother, staying on in Bangladesh, helplessly watches a stranger grabbing a part of the ancestral house with the connivance of the government and/or the ruling party, and eventually compelling the Hindu owner to leave his house. Inﬂ uential local politicians and musclemen manoeuvred to get pieces of Hindu property declared as Vested Property, and usurped it, even when there was no trace of migration from Bangladesh, and the question of application of the Vested Property Act did not arise. Moreover, the Government of Bangladesh violated its own law, and transformed its lawful position of custodian into the lawless position of owner of Vested Property, and leased it to the Muslims. The Government of Bangladesh became guilty of violation of its own law when, again, it treated the property of a religious institution as vested (enemy) property. Evidently, even in the absence of the Vested Property Act, Hindu property could be grabbed almost at will, especially in rural areas. But the existence of this Act magniﬁ ed the opportunities for predators, who could now cross greater limits; for instance, holding a 50-year old Hindu widow captive, forcing her into a marriage, and compelling her to attach thumb impressions on forged documents relating to transfer of property. The government lawfully granted an army of petty bureaucrats (for example, tehsildars) the task of identifying such enemy (or vested) property. This was an administrative innovation that could be utilised to enforce the land ceiling law, and carry out urgently needed land reforms in Bangladesh. But that could not be done because such a move would have caused suffering to Muslim landowners. In contrast, even when a Hindu gathered the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 courage and resources to go to the court in a case of misuse of the vested property law (and related government circulars), and won a favourable verdict, there was none to implement this verdict. Moreover, Bangladeshi laws and regulations crossed all limits of decency (not to speak of a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) when a Pakistani, or an Indian Muslim, was permitted to get back his property in Bangladesh on returning to Bangladesh, even if he had spent many years away from Bangladesh. He was not an enemy, but a Hindu staying for some time in India Relations with Bangladesh 351

(or even in Britain and America) was an enemy, and this Hindu could not get back his property if he returned to Bangladesh.25 Abul Barkat (and his co-researchers) have made an extraordinarily signifi cant contribution by estimating the number of Hindus leaving Bangladesh during 1964–91 mainly because of the Vested Property Act and related government circulars. They have meticulously prepared this estimate on the basis of census data, government records (including those of local bodies) and fi eld surveys by trained social scientists. The approximate number of Hindus leaving Bangladesh per day stood at 703 during 1964–71, 537 during 1971–81, and 439 during 1981–91. In his book Liberation and Beyond, J.N. Dixit is totally—but not unexpectedly—silent on this matter. Dixit thus respects the tradition established by his predecessors. For example, Subimal Dutt, a former foreign secretary, in his book, With Nehru in the Foreign Offi ce, published in 1977, did not have the honesty to admit, for instance, that the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of April 1950 had failed totally to protect the Hindus in East Bengal. What Subimal Dutt did to defend the Nehru-Liaquat Agree- ment of April 1950 was to provide long quotations from Nehru’s grandiloquent and irrelevant speeches. So, nothing more needs to be added to demonstrate that the moral and political responsibility towards Hindus in Bangladesh (East Pakistan/East Bengal), devolving from the circumstances of Partition, has been completely disowned by New Delhi’s decision makers. This tradition persists. With regard to the large-scale assaults on minorities in Bangladesh in 1990, 1992, and 2001–2 (not to speak of small-scale attacks occurring daily and uninterruptedly), the Government of India has done nothing to alleviate the distress of minorities in Bangladesh.26 In 1990, a rumour did the rounds that an unused, dilapidated, and disputed structure at Ayodhya—popularly known as the Babri Mosque—in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh had been demolished.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 This baseless rumour started a large-scale anti-minority outbreak in which thousands of Hindu temples and homes were vandalised, Hindu women were molested, and there took place an exodus of Hindus to India. All this cannot but remind one of what happened

25 Barkat et al., Vested Property Act, pp. 31–52, 76, 76, 98–110. 26 Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, pp. 51–60. Also, Abul Barkat et al., Vested Property Act, pp. 52–54, 115–17. 352 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in 1971, and show the contrast between the situations in Bangladesh and India, which has its roots in the comparative strengths of the democratic cultures of the two countries. In 1971, serious provocation by the Pakistan Army in Bangladesh, as noted ahead, failed to dislodge the people of India from a scrupulous adherence to the tenet of secularism. An overwhelming majority—about 95 per cent—of nearly 10 million refugees rushing to India in 1971 were Hindus. The 700-year-old Ramna Kali temple, over which there was no dispute, and which lay in the heart of Dhaka city, was severely damaged by the Pakistan Army. But there was no BBC or CNN television crew to record it. Therefore, the conscience of the world was not aroused. There were also large-scale incidents of forcible conversion of Hindus to Islam in 1971, which were ignored by the world press. The Indian press—long habituated to discarding truth on the pretext of upholding secularism—did not record such incidents. There was not a single communal outbreak throughout India in 1971, despite all the above noted provocations. This was a sort of record in world history; such a glorious display of secularism by the people of India was indeed unmatched. But the world press failed to record even one word of praise for Indians on this speciﬁ c point. In contrast, in Bangladesh in 1990, an unfounded rumour about the destruction of a disputed structure at Ayodhya unleashed unspeakable atrocities on Hindus there. The largely bloodless exercise of eviction of Hindus—and misappropriation of their properties—received a big boost. In 1990, General Ershad was the supreme ruler of Bangladesh. Unlike what the democratically elected prime minister of Bangladesh Khaleda Zia did in course of the horrendous anti-Hindu onslaughts in 1992 or 2001–2, Ershad acknowledged the occurrence of anti-Hindu outrages in 1990. Ershad made such gestures as visiting some affected areas, and promising relief, even though the promises and the actions did not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 correspond. True to the tradition in Bangladesh, no miscreant was punished. The incentives and opportunities for unilateral assaults upon minorities remained intact. The commendable efforts of a few intellectuals to curb communalism proved to be utterly futile. There was, however, no retaliation against Muslims in India following the one-sided onslaughts upon Hindus in Bangladesh in 1990.27

27 P.B. Choudhury, in Sultana Nahar (ed.), A Comparative Study of Com- munalism in Bangladesh and India (in Bengali), Dhaka: Dhaka Prokashon, 1994, Relations with Bangladesh 353

In December 1992, the demolition of the Ayodhya structure was no longer a rumour but a reality. One can imagine how all hell broke loose on the Hindus in Bangladesh (even though they were not in any way responsible for this monumentally stupid act of vandalism). About 28,000 Hindu houses, 3,500 temples and religious institutions, and 2,500 business establishments were either severely damaged or totally destroyed. While a large number of Hindus were injured, only 15 of them were killed. But the skilfully practised strategy of nearly bloodless ethnic cleansing by means of one-sided assaults succeeded. Approximately 2,400 Hindu women were raped, which, as the miscreants were aware, could not but produce a mass exodus of Hindus to India. Raping women was a more effective means of expelling Hindus than dispossession of properties. The police remained scrupulously inactive, except when they tried to help the marauders. The Government of India maintained its record of non- alignment vis-à-vis hapless Hindus in Bangladesh. In contrast, the democratically elected prime minister of Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia, had the guts to protest against the demolition of the Ayodhya structure. She even outsmarted the former military dictator, H.M. Ershad, when she, unlike President Ershad in 1990, completely denied the occurrence of any anti-Hindu pogrom in 1992. Let us now contrast the situation in India. In 1992, on account of the destruction of the ruins of an unused and disputed mosque at Ayodhya, four democratically elected provincial (state) governments of the Indian Union were dismissed—such punishment for violation of secularism is probably unprecedented in the history of the world. In Bangladesh, following the anti-minority holocaust of 1992, the government, not to speak of punishing the guilty, did not even express regret. After all, according to the government, there had been no attacks on Hindus! A profoundly disturbing contrast between the situations in Bangladesh and India relates to the fate of writers who publicise anti-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 minority assaults. In India, authors, journalists, and social activists vie with one another to broadcast both sides of communal clashes. They do not face persecution by the government, as in Bangladesh.

pp. 81–82; Shahriar Kabir, Bangladeshe Samprodaikotar Chalchitra (An Account of Communalism in Bangladesh), Dhaka: Dana Printers, 1993, pp. 30–144; Sultana Nahar (ed.), A Comparative Study of Communalism in Bangladesh and India (in Bengali), Dhaka: Dhaka Prokashon, 1994, pp. 20–21; Anupam Sen, in Sultana Nahar (ed.), A Comparative Study of Communalism, p. 77. 354 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

To take the instance of Taslima Nasreen’s book, Shame, which depicts the demolition scandal in India, as also the anti-minority outrages in Bangladesh. What Nasreen’s book has revealed about these outrages is only the tip of the iceberg. For example, Nasreen’s book does not mention the hundreds of Hindus kept completely without clothes for days at Bhola in December 1992, while their houses had already been razed to the ground, and all valuables looted. Yet, her book provoked the ire of not merely the militant Islamists, but also of all political parties, and, barring a few exceptions, of intellectuals of all hues, from extreme rightists to extreme leftists. After all, Taslima Nasreen deprived these intellectuals of the privilege of lying in international gatherings. In the past, they could blandly rule out atrocities upon Hindus in Bangladesh, and stress that there were very few reports (and often virtually no reports) of such anti- Hindu atrocities in Bangladeshi newspapers. Actually, very few newspapers in Bangladesh had the courage to report these atrocities (and that too not regularly, but rarely) because they could not afford to draw upon themselves the wrath of not only the Islamic militants but of almost the entire Muslim society. But after the publication of Shame, it was diffi cult for Bangladeshi scholars to sustain the above noted affi rmations about the absence of anti-minority outbreaks in international conferences. Signifi cantly, for years, Nasreen regularly wrote in periodicals about the evil impact of militant Islam upon the society and culture of Bangladesh. But she was not persecuted. After the publication of Shame, however, Taslima Nasreen was hounded out of her motherland.28 On 8 April 2001, the Awami League government in Bangladesh, headed by Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (the architect of the Vested Property Act), played the most unsavoury (though bloodless) trick on Hindus. It passed the Vested Property Return Bill 2001, which misled some Indian intellectuals into

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 believing that Hindus, dispossessed of their properties listed as

28 Shaﬁ Ahmed and Purabi Basu (eds), Akhono Galo Na Andhar: Bangladesh Press Response to 1992 Communalism (in Bengali), Dhaka: Sahitya Samabay, 1993, pp. 16–18, 22–23, 44–48, 53, 56, 59, 61–62, 65–66; Kabir, Communalism in Bangladesh, pp. 33, 38–43; Nahar, Comparative Study of Communalism, pp. 145–46, 148, 150–52, 169–72, 174–75, 182, 188, 191; Taslima Nasreen, Shame (Lajja), in Bengali, Dhaka: Pearl Publications, 1993. Also, Ittefaq, 26 April 1992. Relations with Bangladesh 355

enemy (vested) properties, would get them back. This, for instance, is the message of ‘Vested Property’ by Parmanand appearing in The Statesman of 9–10 May 2001. Actually, this Act of 2001 makes it quite clear that vested (enemy) properties, snatched from owners and occupied by non-owners, cannot be returned to their owners/ successors/successors-in-interest. If one remembers the study by Abul Barkat (and others), in the rural areas of Bangladesh the Hindus were dispossessed of 1.05 million acres of land during 1964–91. Add to these the urban lands snatched during this period, as also both urban and rural lands taken away during 1991–2001, and the amount of land supposed to be covered and protected by the Act of 2001 would not exceed 300,000 acres. That this protection is illusory is evident from the numerous instances of daily evictions of Hindus via intimidation, rape, etc. During 2001–2, this became even more evident in course of large-scale atrocities upon Hindus (which we will discuss ahead). The unfathomably pitiable condition of minorities in Bangladesh became crystal clear when they had to take out a procession celebrating the passage of the Vested Property Return Bill 2001. They had thus to rejoice at their kith and kin being unwarrantedly dispossessed of their properties.29 In a few months—before and after the elections of October 2001— the Hindus of Bangladesh were subjected to atrocities on a scale reminiscent of the horrible happenings in 1971. There were some differences though. There were far fewer murders in 2001–2 compared to 1971. Moreover, in 1971 the atrocities were committed in both urban and rural areas, whereas in 2001–2 these were largely conﬁ ned to the rural areas. The ill-concealed design was to attract minimum adverse international publicity, and expel Hindus on such a large scale (to India) so as to convert Bangladesh into another Pakistan in the foreseeable future. Hindus would be reduced to numerical insigniﬁ cance, which would further degrade their status

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 economically, politically, and, above all, psychologically. When Ziaur Rahman replaced ‘secularism’ in the Bangladesh Constitution with ‘Sovereignty of Allah’, Hindus became second-class citizens. Subsequently, they became third-class citizens when H.M. Ershad amended that Constitution to declare Islam to be the state religion

29 Barkat et al., Vested Property Act, esp. p. 115. Also, The Statesman, 9–10 May 2001. 356 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of Bangladesh. The events of 2001–2 revealed that the four-party alliance, led by the BNP, which eventually won the October 2001 elections, was determined, even before the elections were held, to reduce Hindus to cowering non-persons, who would not have the courage to complain against their oppressors to the police, or even discuss the atrocities committed upon them, for fear of provoking further retaliation by the oppressors. The BNP, a party born in the cantonment, is strongly allied with the Bangladesh Army, which, again, has powerful links with Pakistan, especially the ISI of Pakistan. Evidently, the caretaker government of Bangladesh, entrusted with conducting impartially the elections of October 2001, came under the infl uence of the BNP, the Bangladesh Army, and the ISI. This might explain why the caretaker government had to sacrifi ce impartiality, and condone the onslaughts of the BNP, and its ally, the Jamaat- e-Islam, upon Hindus during the election campaign. All Hindus were conveniently labelled as Awami League supporters, even though they were not. Therefore, the BNP-Jamaat cadres terrorized Hindus, asking them not to go to the polling booths on election day. These cadres (including local-level leaders) extorted money from Hindus, snatched their properties, and dishonoured their women; such incidents multiplied manifold in the wake of the victory of the BNP and its allies in the October 2001 elections. In 1971, the Jamaat pursued the agenda of killing and/or evicting Hindus (in addition to committing other atrocities), so that Bangladesh (East Pakistan) would have negligibly few, or no, Hindus left on its territory. Following the 2001 election, the BNP joined the Jamaat (exercising governmental power for the fi rst time in the history of Bangladesh) to carry forward the unfi nished 1971 agenda of the Jamaat.30 That this agenda could not be fully accomplished was largely due to the fact that, despite systematic efforts by the Jamaat and its allies, Bangladesh is yet to be totally Talibanised. There were (and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 are) enlightened Muslims in some parts of Bangladesh, who did not

30 See the following Bengali dailies: Prothom Alo, Dhaka, 25 September 2001; Bhorer Kagoj, Dhaka, 6 October 2001; Janakantha, Dhaka, 3 October 2001; Sangbad, 23 October 2001. Also see, Salam Azad, Ethnic Cleansing, in Bengali, Kolkata: Ratna Prakashan, 2002, pp. 8, 16, 32, 38, 55–56, 58, 72–74, 80, 83–84, 87; Ruth Baldwin, ‘The Talibanization of Bangladesh’, The Nation, 20 May 2002; Bertil Lintner, ‘Bangladesh: A Cocoon of Terror’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 4 April 2002, pp. 14–15. Relations with Bangladesh 357

subscribe to the theory and practice of ethnic cleansing of minorities. Therefore, as analysed by non-government organisations (NGOs), which not only protested against, but carried out elaborate surveys of, the anti-Hindu outrages following the October 2001 election, 59 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh witnessed these outrages. Out of these 59 districts, some were categorised as most seriously affected, some as seriously affected, and others as affected areas. If somewhere a locally infl uential Muslim would pretend to extend shelter to Hindu girls in the neighbourhood and thereby arrange a mass rape, somewhere else a Muslim would risk his life to assure safety to some Hindu ladies. It is true that a large number of Muslim Awami League supporters became victims of attacks by members of the four-party alliance that won the October 2001 election. But their number was insignifi cant in comparison to the number of Hindu victims. Moreover, it was possible to prepare a fairly complete list of the Muslims who had suffered on account of their loyalty to, or links with, the Awami League. But the task of preparing even an approximately comprehensive list of Hindu victims would elude the most sincere and sympathetic investigators. For, barring few exceptions, the Hindus were unable to confi de and relate to others (including foreigners) the atrocities suffered by them. They ceased to expect even the barest minimum protection from any quarter. For decades, the Hindus had habituated themselves to tolerate such abusive words as ‘malaun’ showered on them in public places, including schools. During 2001–2, they reconciled themselves to the position of non-persons, of an absolute lack of the minimum of human rights. Although they preferred silence to speech, they trained their eyes to refl ect an all-consuming fear but no justifi able hatred, lest it provoked the would-be oppressors. This was but natural in a situation where Hindus were subjected to all sorts of atrocities, including large-scale losses of their properties and of the honour

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of their female relatives (in the age group 8–65), and then forced to sign a declaration stating unequivocally that they did not suffer from any persecution. Widespread loot, arson, rape, and dispossession of properties suffered by Hindus throughout Bangladesh in 2001–2 did not elicit the slightest positive response from the authorities responsible for the maintenance of law and order. The police became active only when Muslim marauders needed their help. This suggests central planning for ethnic cleansing at the highest administrative-political levels. Which is why, for days and 358 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

months, Muslim gangs could freely devise and implement the ways and means of maximising the oppression of Hindus. There were two broad modes of operation. First, Muslim raiders could pounce upon Hindu houses, and commit loot, torture, and rape (of the mother and daughter, or of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law on the same site) in such a way that the Hindus would have no option but to leave Bangladesh. Second, Muslim oppressors would promise to desist from loot, rape, etc., provided the Hindus agreed to pay them a monthly ransom at exorbitant rates. Those who failed to appease the extortionists would be compelled to leave their ancestral homes. There was, however, never any guarantee that, once the greed of the extortionists was whetted, the second mode of operation would not be converted into the ﬁ rst mode of operation.31 The Government of Bangladesh was not only aware but was also a silent instigator of these anti-minority atrocities, which (unlike in India), were thoroughly one-sided, so much so that even in villages where 100 per cent inhabitants were Hindus, the Muslim marauders did not face any resistance. But the response of the Government of Bangladesh was unbelievably outrageous. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia surpassed her record on the 1992 anti-minority atrocities in Bangladesh. Khaleda Zia had completely denied the occurrence of anti-minority atrocities in 1992. As to the 2001–2 atrocities, she took an incredibly shameless stand, stating that everybody in Bangladesh was a Bangladeshi, that there was no minority community in her country, and therefore the question of persecution of minorities in Bangladesh was irrelevant. Khaleda Zia’s home minister, Altaf Hossain Choudhury, a retired Air Vice-Marshal, announced that 80–90 per cent of newspaper stories on anti-minority atrocities were false. This was logically followed by the contention of the Cabinet committee on law and order that there were only nine speciﬁ c allegations about the harassment of minorities, that only two of these

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 complaints of persecution of minorities were partially correct, and that these complainants did not leave for India. Subsequently, the Government of Bangladesh paraded another odious concoction: it

31 Azad, Ethnic Cleansing, pp. 10–11, 15–16, 18–19, 25–26, 29, 35, 39, 48, 50, 52, 53–55, 57, 65, 69–70, 80, 89. Ratneswar Bhattacharya, Sankhyalaghu Bitaran: Bangladesh (Eviction of Minorities: Bangladesh), in Bengali, Kolkata: Kaladhwani, 2002, pp. 43, 52–54, 57. Also see, Janakantha, 8, 10–16, 18–20, and 21 October 2001; Bhorer Kagoj, 8, 9, 13, and 20 October 2001; Ittefaq, Bengali daily, Dhaka, 10, 13, 15, and 17 October 2001. Relations with Bangladesh 359

admitted the occurrence of anti-minority atrocities but attributed them not to communal fanaticism but to rivalries between individuals and families. All these indicated a queer attempt on the part of Bangladesh government to deny the undeniable, and thus side- track the appeals from such bodies as Amnesty International and the European Union (EU) for safeguarding the human rights of minorities. Perhaps the most macabre response of the Bangladesh government to such appeals from foreigners for communal harmony was to force Hindus (who had endured severe persecution) to observe Durga Puja (the worship of goddess Durga) in the fourth week of October 2001 (when anti-Hindu outrages peaked in numerous areas of Bangladesh), and arrange a conducted tour of some selected sites of worship for diplomats stationed in Dhaka. The ultimate irony was that in many such places the looters and rapists were the organ- isers of the mock religious festival, and their victims were forced to exhibit smiling faces. These places were heavily guarded by security forces, whose number sometimes exceeded the number of the visitors because, at the time, throughout Bangladesh Muslim miscreants had created panic among the Hindus by regularly attacking the Durga Puja pandals and breaking up the images of Goddess Durga. Occasionally, a few ordinary Hindu ladies with extraordinary courage punctured such elaborate governmental pretences. They revealed in a press conference or in a public meeting organised by the home minister, how they were subjected to loot and torture. A number of Muslim journalists, brave and conscientious, challenged the total falsehoods dished out by the government, and portrayed the ugly truths about heinous assaults upon Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus, without caring for the government’s attempt to brand them as Indian agents. One of them, Shahriar Kabir, who is also an eminent author and producer of documentary ﬁ lms, was imprisoned and severely tortured for months before being released

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 on bail. He was accused of treason simply because he was ﬁ lming the truth behind the horrifying persecution of minorities in Bangladesh, and their exodus to India.32

32 Azad, Ethnic Cleansing, p. 43–48, 54, 59, 68–69, 71–72, 78–79; Baldwin, ‘The Talibanization of Bangladesh’; Bhattacharya, Sankhyalaghu Bitaran, pp. 31, 42–43, 47–48, 51–54, 76–79, 94–100; Lintner, ‘Bangladesh’, pp. 15–16. Also, Ittefaq, 10, 14, 21, and 23 October 2001; Bhorer Kagoj, 14 October 2001; Sangbad, 16 October 2001; Janakantha, 18, 21, 24, 26, October 2001, and 1 May 2002; Prothom Alo, 23 October 2001; The Statesman, 19 August 2002. 360 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The passage to India was far from easy. The passage could be procured by bribing Muslim brokers in Bangladesh who had durable contacts with security forces on both sides of the border. Hindu refugees could only follow the heroine in Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage and exclaim: ‘God is merciful and men are bribable, that’s how His will is done on earth….. Corruption is our only hope’. Those who failed to bribe their way into India had sometimes to face the bullets of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), and/or languish for days in sub-human conditions in BSF camps. If, on account of humanitarian considerations dawning by chance on some BSF ofﬁ cials, these Hindu refugees were not pushed back into Bangladesh, they would try fast to melt into the local Hindu population, always careful to conceal their identity. The same had to be done by those refugees who paid bribes to elude the secularist violence of the BSF. They habituated themselves to concealing their Bangladeshi roots. They became non-persons in India, too, although this new status of non-persons in India was quite different from the old status of non-persons in Bangladesh. For, in India they remained free from the daily nightmare of probable loot, torture, rape, and dispossession of property, once they moved from the border to the interior areas of West Bengal. All this brought to the fore the attitudes and actions of authorities in New Delhi and Kolkata, which were no less reprehensible than those in Dhaka. Pressures from New Delhi could have substantially relieved the sufferings of Hindus in Bangladesh. But New Delhi did not care to exercise this option, thus proving once again that it had forgotten the circumstances and pledges of 1947, and that lack of morality had corroded the core of India’s foreign policy. Moreover, authorities in New Delhi and Kolkata exposed themselves to the charge of a gross violation of human rights of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh, when they showed practically no interest in arranging their relief and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 rehabilitation. A climactic instance of brutal apathy of authorities in India towards these Hindu refugees came to light in April 2002, when it was reported that the home secretary of India’s West Bengal state deliberately avoided any meeting with Hideo Fujita, counsellor in the Japanese embassy in Dhaka, who wanted to assess the impact of atrocities upon minorities in Bangladesh and their expulsion to India. Above all, authorities in New Delhi and Kolkata have failed to comprehend the relationship between the growing Talibanisation of Bangladesh and the anti-minority atrocities in 2001–2. Alex Perry Relations with Bangladesh 361

has noted that Bangladesh’s ‘southern coastal hills and northern borders with India are lawless and bristling with Islamic militants armed by gunrunners en route from Cambodia and southern Thailand to Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Central Asia and the Middle East’. These Jihadis—including Arabs, Afghans, and Bangladeshis— trained by the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, not only plan terrorist operations inside India, but also incite anti-minority outrages within Bangladesh. Consequently, the overall impact of Bangladeshi policies and practices on India may be no less adverse than that of Pakistani policies and practices. In this perspective, and in view of the fact that despite decades of ethnic cleansing the Hindu population in Bangladesh far exceeds that of J&K in India, one can appreciate the legitimacy of the question raised by Ratneswar Bhattacharya in his book on expulsion of minorities from Bangladesh, about whether it is realistic on the part of India to take a hard line towards Pakistan and a soft line towards Bangladesh.33

Fate of Minorities: In The Hills This question acquires greater salience in the context of a ruthless anti-minority policy followed by (Pakistan and) Bangladesh in the CHT. On 15 August 1947, non-Muslims formed about 97.5 per cent of the total CHT population. The Jumma people—consisting of 10 language groups and 13 tribes (the largest being the Chakma tribe), who were mainly Buddhists—formed an overwhelming majority of these non-Muslims in the CHT. The legitimacy of the CHT’s incorporation into India, therefore, was beyond any debate. Pakistani leaders, however, pleaded with the British that the Chittagong district as well as the CHT must be awarded to Pakistan, for, otherwise, East Bengal would be deprived of its sole source of hydroelectricity, viz. the Karnaphuli River. The Indian leaders lacked the determination, foresight, and morality to outwit Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Pakistan. In the opinion of an eminent writer of Bangladesh, Shahriar Kabir, the British appreciated East Bengal’s urgent need for a port,

33 Alex Perry, ‘Deadly Cargo’, Time, 21 October 2002; Manash Ghosh, The Statesman, 4 April 2002; Bibhuti Bhushan Nandy, The Statesman, 16 July 2002. Also, Azad, Ethnic Cleansing, pp. 48–49, 65, 69–70, 89; Bhattacharya, Sankhyalaghu Bitaran, pp. 55, 70–71, 81–82. 362 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

that is the Chittagong port, because the other port of undivided Bengal, the Calcutta port, fell into India’s share. Therefore, in order to assure security for the Chittagong port, the CHT was merged with Pakistan. But the hill (or the Jumma) people had naturally expected that their territory would form an integral part of post- Partition India. In fact, the Indian fl ag fl ew in the hills for a few days following 14–15 August 1947. Afterwards, when the Jumma people discovered that, in perverse defi ance of all logic and imagination, they had been tacked to the eastern wing of Pakistan, some of their leaders staged an abortive revolt. On 21 August 1947, the Pakistan Army replaced the Indian fl ags with Pakistani fl ags. The fact that even today the Bangladesh authorities resent ‘this fact of an incipient rebellion’, writes Saradindu Mukherji, ‘is proved by the denial of the very incident of the hoisting of the Indian tricolour fl ag’ in the CHT on 14–15 August 1947.34 The Pakistan government, since its inception, adopted a policy towards the CHT which smacked of communal animosity. It upheld the traditional autonomy of tribals, preserved by the British, in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), but not in the CHT. The obvious reason was that the NWFP was a predominantly Muslim area, whereas the CHT was a preponderantly non-Muslim one. The British adopted an important Regulation for the CHT in 1900, which respected the traditional authority of the Hill people over their land, and forbade any sale to outsiders. The CHT was an ‘Excluded Area’. But the Pakistan government decided to ignore this Regulation of 1900. Pakistan’s military dictator, Ayub Khan, initiated the policy of large-scale resettlement of plainland Muslims in the CHT. The Ayub Khan regime of the late 1950s and 1960s had, at least, two important reasons to favour this policy. First, population should be transferred from the overpopulated plains to the underpopulated hills. Second, an area like the CHT, with an

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 overwhelming majority of non-Muslim population, was a threat to Pakistan’s Islamic identity and security. The ﬁ rst reason was

34 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power 1942–7, Vol. XII, 8 July–15 August 1947, Her Majesty’s Stationery Ofﬁ ce, London, 1983, Document nos 436n; 452; 485, paras 6–7; 487; 489, paras 12, 15–16, and 77. Also, Shahriar Kabir, Shantir Pathe Ashanto Parbatyo Chattogram (The Unquiet Chittagong Hills: Towards Peace), in Bengali, Dhaka: Ananya, 2008, pp. 11–13; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 16–17. Relations with Bangladesh 363

invalid, as the per capita availability of cultivable land in the CHT was no more than that in the most densely populated districts of East Pakistan. When Muslim settlers arrived in large numbers in the CHT, they could obtain farmland only by eviction of the original owners, viz. the Hill people. The inevitable happened. In 1961, the Bengali Muslim settlers used violence against the Hill people, and pushed out nearly 60,000 of them into India (and some to Burma/ Myanmar). ‘Thus’, writes Saradindu Mukherji, ‘the plan to turn the homeland of the ethnic national minorities into a land of Muslims was set in motion’.35 The Pakistan Constitutional Amendment Act of 1963 deprived the CHT of the status of an ‘Excluded Area’, and supplied legal legitimacy to the government’s ongoing efforts to push Bengali Muslims into the CHT in substantial numbers. During 1957–64, nearly 100,000 Jumma people, most of them Chakmas, were forcibly displaced by the construction of the huge Kaptai dam. The Hill people lost 54,000 acres of land (or 45 per cent of their cultivable land) to the Kaptai Lake, which also gobbled up the palace of the Chakma Raja (King). The Chakmas suffered not only in terms of loss of land and economic opportunities, but also the loss of collective memory and pride. A majority of the 100,000 displaced persons never received any compensation promised by the government, which earmarked US$51 million for rehabilitation, but disbursed only US$2.6 million. Tens of thousands of the Jumma people became internal refugees. India accommodated about 40,000 of the displaced persons in areas forming part of NEFA or today’s Arunachal Pradesh. Saradindu Mukherji observes,

While the Pakistanis went about throwing out the unwanted Kaﬁ rs, India had no option but to open its doors to the rejected people from the Islamic neighbour. Their sincere desire to stay with India had been once rebuffed. But logic of history was now bringing them back to the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Indian soil. Thus India got the people, but not their land. Pakistanis retained their land but without the people. In any case, it meant an

35 Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 11–13, 113, 20–21, 37; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 17, 26, 34; Syed Anwar Husain, ‘Internal Dynamics of South Asian Security: Ethnic Dissonance’, in Nancy Jetly (ed.), Regional Security in South Asia: The Ethno-Sectarian Dimensions, New Delhi: Lancers, 1999, p. 150. 364 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

extra burden on India and the victory of the Pakistani statecraft and its ideology of exclusiveness.36

During the Bangladesh liberation struggle of 1971, a few Chakma leaders supported the Pakistani military authorities, but the majority of the Hill people supported the Mukti Bahini. In course of this struggle, the Pakistan Army brought 50,000 Bengali Muslims from the plains and helped them misappropriate lands from the Hill people. They never left the CHT, and, afterwards, they engaged in such nefarious activities as arson, loot, rape, and vandalisation of temples, thereby alienating the Hill people. Following the liberation of Bangladesh, the tribal leaders expected that their autonomy would be restored, the CHT Regulation of 1900 would be re- promulgated, and the inﬂ ow of Muslim settlers from the plains would be stopped. The Bangladesh Constitution of 1972 did not fulﬁ l these expectations. Actually, during 1972–75, the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman stuck to the policy of large-scale resettlement of plainland Muslims in the CHT, so that, eventually, the number of Muslims would exceed that of the Jumma people. This, naturally, led to severe repression of the Hill people and growing encroachment upon their lands. With the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, General Ziaur Rahman exercised supremacy for about six years. Trained in Pakistan, General Ziaur Rahman followed Pakistani military leaders like Ayub Khan in shaping a policy towards the CHT. General Ziaur Rahman accelerated the resettlement of plainland Muslims in the CHT, which meant the grabbing of tribal lands by violent means. Consequently, the oppression of tribals increased, and the Parbattya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), set up in 1972 to carry out a peaceful struggle for the rights of the Hill people, had no option but to set up an armed wing called the Shanti Bahini. Although established in 1973, the Shanti Bahini did not engage in any major action before 1976. Meanwhile, General Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Ziaur Rahman appreciably stepped up military aid and training to rebels in India’s northeast region. This provoked the Government of India to extend some assistance to the Shanti Bahini. But, unlike Pakistani assistance to the rebels in India’s northeast region— which commenced in the 1960s, and Ziaur Rahman’s assistance to

36 Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 17, 33–35. Also, Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, p. 14. Relations with Bangladesh 365

them in the 1970s—Indian aid to the Shanti Bahini appeared to be haphazard and half-hearted.37 Shahriar Kabir has acknowledged, with rare candour and objectivity, that in 1976 the Shanti Bahini resorted to armed resistance and raids in reaction to the visibly repressive and sectarian policies of General Ziaur Rahman. For, the General’s policies incited the uneducated Bengali Muslims in the CHT to commit atrocities upon the Hill people for self-gratifi cation. A large number of youths were then attracted to the Shanti Bahini, as they were disappointed by the failure of the PCJSS to achieve the legitimate objectives of preservation of tribal land and identity by peaceful means. General Ziaur Rahman, despite occupying the highest post in independent Bangladesh, could not free himself from the infl uence of the ideas he imbibed in his younger days from senior Pakistani military offi cers. Like these Pakistani offi cers, who had attempted to impose a military solution upon a political problem in East Pakistan in 1971, Ziaur Rahman too believed that it was possible to use military repression to resolve the festering political crisis in the CHT. But, even by deploying more than 100,000 soldiers and paramilitary forces, General Ziaur Rahman failed to subdue the Shanti Bahini, even though the Shanti Bahini could never have more than 4,000–5,000 recruits. Soldiers were so afraid of the Shanti Bahini that they did not usually move out of the cantonment at night, and during the day they tried to confi ne themselves to specifi c areas. The forests in the vicinity of cantonments or military camps were largely under the control of the Shanti Bahini. Muslim settlers moving inside the forests to collect wood had to pay protection money to the Shanti Bahini. Yet, General Ziaur Rahman stuck to militarising the CHT, and shunned peaceful parleys with the PCJSS. Security forces took advantage of the repressive government policy, and enriched Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

37 Ibid., pp. 14–15, 46, 48, 55; Anti-Slavery Society, Indigenous Peoples and Development Series 2: The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Militarisation, Oppression and the Hill Tribes, London: Anti-Slavery Society, 1984, pp. 56–57; Dixit, Liberation and Beyond, p. 255; Husain, ‘Internal Dynamics of South Asian Security’, pp. 142, 159–60; Amena Mohsin, ‘The Nationalist State and The Chittagong Hill Tracts’, The Journal of Social Studies, Dhaka, October 1996, pp. 38–44; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 38–44; Survival International, Survival International Review, no. 43, Genocide in Bangladesh, London: Survival International, 1984, pp. 11–12. 366 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

themselves individually by carrying out illegal arrests of innocent tribals, while extorting money for their release. This could only strengthen the Shanti Bahini, and justify retaliation against soldiers and policemen. Sometimes, as in the 1980s, violence and counter- violence reached such high levels as to reduce to futility any attempt by the PCJSS to rely on negotiations.38 Following the assassination of General Ziaur Rahman in 1981, General H.M. Ershad wielded supreme power in Bangladesh till 1990. General Ershad continued Rahman’s policy towards the CHT, although the scale of atrocities/ethnocide/eviction in the CHT increased substantially during the Ershad regime. There was a massacre of tribals at the Tabalchari and Matiranga areas of the CHT on 26–28 June 1981. Muslim settlers and soldiers carried out this massacre, which resulted in the fl ight of nearly 18,000 refugees to Tripura in India. Subsequently, the Government of Bangladesh manipulated the repatriation of these refugees by promising protection of life and property. The promise was not kept. Most of the repatriates did not even get back their ancestral lands. Continuing atrocities by Muslim settlers and soldiers made a mockery of the government’s promise of proper rehabilitation. Another massacre of the Hill people took place at Bhusan Chara on 31 May 1984. Nearly 5,000 tribals were forced to fl ee to Mizoram in India. History was repeated when these refugees accepted the Bangladesh government’s assurances at face value, returned to the CHT, and confronted renewed assaults by Muslim settlers and troops, which rendered the government’s assurances worthless. The Shanti Bahini did not have the strength to prevent such outrages. In 1983 and 1985, General Ershad offered amnesty, and several thousand Shanti Bahini recruits (mostly non-Chakmas) surrendered to the government. General Ershad played upon inter-tribal rivalries. The government promised fi nancial rewards to some tribals (the Mrus) who were antagonistic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to the Shanti Bahini. The promise was not fulﬁ lled. Moreover, the Army did not mind dispossessing even these friendly tribals of their lands on some pretext or other.39

38 Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 14–16; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 44–48; Mohsin, ‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts’, pp. 51–52. 39 Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, p. 16; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 53–54. Relations with Bangladesh 367

Normally, the number of tribals suffering from arson, abduction, eviction, humiliation, forcible conversion to Islam, torture, or rape was far larger than the number of persons killed by Muslim settlers and security forces. In May-June 1986, however, there was a sharp rise in the number of tribals subjected to murder. Hundreds of them were killed in the areas of Panchari, Dighinala, Khagrachari, and Matiranga. Consequently, the number of refugees fl eeing to India registered a signifi cant increase. Nearly 50,000 took shelter at Tripura in India. The charade of offi cial assurance about rehabilitation was repeated. But refugees, learning from the bitter experiences of repatriates in the recent past, refused to return to the CHT until the establishment of a conducive situation there. Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former foreign secretary of Bangladesh, has made some highly valuable observations on this matter. According to him, ‘as a result of foolish calculations Ershad and his accomplices were primarily responsible for creating the Chakma refugee problem in India….. If an enquiry is set up, like the Hamoodur Rahman Commission instituted by Pakistan Government after the 1971 debacle,’ it would recommend that ‘Ershad and his group should be publicly tried for being a party to criminal conspiracy to create a situation in Chittagong Hill District for bringing about a particular kind of result in 1985–86 which led to largescale movements of Chakmas into Indian territory, and intensifi ed armed revolt and insurgency movement in Chittagong Hill Tracts.’40 Unlike the non-Muslims in the plains of Bangladesh, the non- Muslims in the CHT could carry on international publicity campaigns successfully, and activate human rights groups as also politicians in Europe. Pressures exerted by them forced General Ershad to resort to negotiations with the PCJSS while persisting in ethnic cleansing. General Ershad also set up by an Act of 1989 the Hill District Local Government Parishad (Council). But negotiations with the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 PCJSS or the Act of 1989 were showpieces for misleading foreigners. Ground realities did not change. Torture/eviction/ethnocide continued in the CHT, as did militarisation. For instance, on 4–5 May 1989, about 22,000 tribals left for Tripura, following atrocities at Longudu. ‘Because of limited geographical spread of the local

40 Fakhruddin Ahmed, Critical Times, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1994, p. 193. 368 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

councils’, writes Saradindu Mukherji, ‘90 per cent of the Jummas could be deprived of their landed properties’, and ‘the councils were not vested with any power to deal with the ever-growing non-Jumma settlements or protect the Jumma rights and economy or safeguard their religion and culture’.41 The Hill people derived at least one important beneﬁ t from General Ershad’s surrender to pressures from donor countries, and his decision to permit foreign observers to visit the CHT. Reports of these observers, including those published after the General’s exit in 1990, enlightened the world on the true state of affairs in the CHT. The situation did not change when Khaleda Zia became the prime minister of Bangladesh in 1991, and parliamentary democracy replaced military rule. Like General Ershad, Khaleda Zia too tried to cope with international pressures by carrying on negotiations with the PCJSS as a smokescreen behind which the government relentlessly pursued eviction/ethnocide of tribals. With invisible backing from nearly all political parties and a large majority of the civil-military bureaucracy, Muslim settlers and security forces appeared bent upon sabotaging peaceful parleys between the PCJSS and the government. They did so by staging large-scale atrocities from time to time; as in the days of General Ershad, so in the days of Khaleda Zia. It was a sad commentary on the helplessness of the PCJSS that it could not call off negotiations despite a recurrence of these outrages. On 10 April 1992, for example, Muslim settlers and military personnel killed several hundred tribals at Logang, resulting in more than 2,000 persons ﬂ eeing to Tripura. The Government of India did not appear to apply any pressure upon Bangladesh. But, apprehensive of a negative response from donor agencies, the Government of Bangladesh ordered an inquiry into the incident which was conducted by Justice Sultan Hossain Khan. His report admitted that Muslim settlers, in collusion with the military and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 para-military personnel, had carried out acts of arson and murder. But Justice Khan danced to the tune of the armed forces when he recommended that the Muslim settlers be supplied with weapons for self-protection, and that military operations were essential in the CHT. In spite of the Logang carnage, the PCJSS remained ready

41 Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 9, 17; Mohsin, ‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts’, pp. 53–54; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, p. 58. Relations with Bangladesh 369

to continue negotiations. On 10 August 1992, the Shanti Bahini proclaimed a unilateral ceasefi re. Five rounds of dialogue were held till 18 September 1993. On 24 November 1993, the PCJSS participated in the sixth round of talks, despite the fact that a week earlier, on 17 November 1992, more than a 100 tribals were injured and about 30 killed. Initially, the security personnel could, but did not, prevent armed Muslim settlers from assaulting the Jumma people brutally. Subsequently, the soldiers joined the settlers in perpetrating the massacre. In addition, in collusion with the state bureaucracy, the Muslim settlers engaged in an orgy of forging land papers. In order to facilitate the forgeries, the settlers went to the extent of destroying land records by arson. For instance, the Khagrachari land record offi ce was sacked in May 1991. The April 1994 report of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission disclosed that one Muslim settler was in possession of as much as 10,000 acres of tribal land, another of 500 acres.42 While efforts were made from time to time to repatriate refugees in Tripura to the CHT, the situation in the CHT was hardly conducive to such repatriation. In addition to forcibly dispossessing tribals of their homesteads and farmlands, the Muslim settlers and security forces joined hands to not only demolish the Buddhist temples but also to convert some of these temples into army camps, and construct mosques on tribal lands. In September 1993, 18 members of the Jumma Refugee Welfare Association (JRWA) and six offi cials of Tripura state visited the CHT. Upendra Lal Chakma, a former member of the Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad, led the JRWA team. K. Arya, the tribal welfare commissioner of Tripura, led the team of offi cials. In view of what has been stated above, the JRWA team rightly concluded that the situation in the CHT was not yet conducive to repatriation. In contrast, K. Arya affi rmed that the refugees could go back, because conditions in the CHT were

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 normal. This was one of a number of instances of how, on the issue of repatriation of refugees in Tripura to the CHT, the conduct of Indian ofﬁ cials was inexplicable, if not reprehensible. As to the

42 Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Life is not Ours: Land and Human Rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, Amsterdam, Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, May 1991, March 1992, and April 1994; Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 17, 21–22; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, p. 121. 370 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

conduct of Bangladesh offi cials, the less said the better. When, in February 1994, as an experiment and as a gesture of goodwill, the JRWA consented to the repatriation of the fi rst batch of 400 refugee families, Bangladeshi offi cials refused to admit 69 families on the strange plea of non-possession of citizenship papers. Strange because Bangladesh could hardly boast of administrative effi ciency and rectitude which would guarantee the supply of valid citizenship papers to all citizens, especially those fl eeing as refugees to a foreign country. Eventually, 379 families (1,846 persons) left for the CHT during 15–22 February 1994. In order to study the rehabilitation of these refugees, a JRWA team visited the CHT during 25–29 April 1994. The team noted that, barring a few cases, the refugees did not get back their lands for the simple reason that the security personnel and Muslim settlers were in illegal possession of these lands. The Indian authorities could well be accused of repatriating refugees forcibly, for they completely ignored the April 1994 report of the JRWA, and arranged the repatriation of another batch of 3,323 refugees during the period 21 July–5 August 1994. This batch, like its February 1994 predecessor, was subject to almost the same shocking treatment, although Romesh Bhandari, the then governor of Tripura, did not hesitate to claim credit for repatriation in February 1994.43 While failing miserably to fulfi l the promises made to the vast majority of returnees, especially those on the restoration of homesteads and farmlands, the Bangladesh government had to keep up the pretence of repatriation in order to appease the donor countries. Remarkably, Bangladesh appeared to be successful in procuring India’s collusion on this matter. Representatives of the Bangladesh government met refugees in Tripura in February 1995, and shamelessly offered the same old assurances which had been largely violated in the case of previous batches of returnees. Evidently, there

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were pressures for repatriation by the Indian government. Even the subhuman conditions in Tripura’s camps—which the Indian government did not bother to change—created a kind of pressure on the refugees pushing them to take a chance by returning to the CHT.

43 The Pioneer, New Delhi, 24 January and 15 February 1994; The Indian Express, 14 February 1994; The Sunday, Calcutta, 27 February–5 March 1994 and 13–19 March 1994. Also, Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 126–33. Relations with Bangladesh 371

In March 1995, a JRWA team of 15 members and two Indian offi cials visited the CHT. The result of their investigations was no different from that of earlier JRWA visits. Repatriates (barring exceptions) did not get back their houses and lands, and continued to suffer terribly from constant threats to their life, honour, religion, and economic security. Deb Mukherjee, the Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, appeared to be an exception among Indian offi cials. In May 1995, he could tell the truth. At a time when refugee leaders had failed to conclude that the situation in the CHT was congenial for the return of refugees, any attempt at fresh repatriation did not appear to be practicable. But, in June 1995, Siddheswar Prasad, the governor of Tripura, gave the completely misleading assurance that the Government of India would ensure the fulfi lment of pledges to repatriates by the Bangladesh authorities. Meanwhile, the PCJSS and Shanti Bahini carried out periodic extensions of the ceasefi re. But security forces set up new camps and exercised the privilege to violate the ceasefi re and torture tribals, whenever they desired, and they did not fail to characterise any defensive action by the Shanti Bahini as a violation of the ceasefi re.44 The Awami League returned to power in the general election of 1996. The Awami League appeared to be serious about conducting negotiations with the PCJSS in such a way as to produce a peace accord. In the military, too, an opinion gained ground that it was not possible to control the CHT by sheer force, and that too many soldiers were getting killed in the CHT. Out of the total number of 30,000 persons killed in the CHT in course of the long civil confl ict, 20,000 were soldiers or policemen. Moreover, many soldiers had died of malaria or snakebite. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina persisted in her efforts to accomplish a peace agreement. The PCJSS and the Bangladesh government eventually signed this agreement on 2 December 1997. This agreement cared little for the autonomy or

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ethnic identity of the tribals. All the cantonments in the CHT—seven in number—survived the peace agreement, although the Jumma people desired their removal. The Shanti Bahini surrendered its arms amidst a lot of publicity; the refugees left India for the CHT. The Government of India was happy. It did not bother about the

44 The Statesman, 18 May 1995; The Indian Express, 25 June 1995. Also, Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 138–41. 372 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

fact that the journey of the refugees from Tripura to the CHT was really a movement from one refugee camp to another. For, barring some token fi nancial assistance, very few refugees got back their homesteads and farmlands, it being nearly impossible to dislodge the Muslim settlers or security forces occupying these tribal lands. Nevertheless, opposition parties like the BNP and the Jamaat did not hesitate to spread absolute lies about the 1997 CHT agreement. Their leaders—including the preceding prime minister, Khaleda Zia—pointed out that this agreement was a surrender to India, and that the Awami League had proved its status as an Indian agent.45 Interestingly, the Bangladesh government has refused to sign convention number 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which stipulates that traditional land rights of the indigenous people ought to be respected. This, again, is thoroughly consistent with Bangladesh’s decision not to observe the year 1993 as the Year of Indigenous People, as resolved by the UN. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s government bluntly announced at that time—in a fi t of hideous majoritarianism—that there were no indigenous people in Bangladesh. This was an ironical and indirect testimony to the steady determination of the Bangladesh government to alter radically the demographic balance in the CHT. In 1947, Muslims constituted less than 3 per cent of the CHT’s total population. According to the 1981 census, the number of tribals stood at 62 per cent of the total population, and that of non-tribals at 38 per cent. In the 1991 census, the number of tribals dwindled to 51.5 per cent, and that of non-tribals rose to 48.5 per cent. Once the details of the 2001 census are published (if at all), it will probably be found that Muslims have outnumbered the non-Muslims in the CHT. Signifi cantly, in the 1970s and 1980s, with a view to reversing the trend of demographic invasion of the CHT, the EU offered adequate funds to the Bangladesh government for the resettlement of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the Muslim migrants in the CHT back to the plains of Bangladesh. The Bangladesh government did not respond.46

45 Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 24–25, 29–31, 51, 53; Mukherji, Subjects, Citizens and Refugees, pp. 156–66. Also see, The Statesman, 5 February 1998; The Times of India, 11 February 1998. 46 Ahmed, Critical Times, p. 191; Dixit, Liberation and Beyond, pp. 255–56; Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 19, 47; Mohsin, ‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts’, p. 54; Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘The Indigenous People of Bangladesh’, in Relations with Bangladesh 373

The above noted demographic transformation in the CHT signals a victory for nearly all political parties in Bangladesh, especially for parties which subscribe to the Jamaat line of thought, and intend to drive out all non-Muslims from the CHT (and the whole of Bangladesh). The Jamaat actively helped the regime of Ziaur Rahman (1975–81), for instance, in Islamising (and Pakistanising) the CHT. In 1961, there were 40 mosques and two madrassas in the CHT. In 1981, the CHT could boast of 592 mosques and 35 madrassas. It is not diffi cult to analyse the reasons why the Jamaat and its associates (including a large section of the BNP) wish to convert in this way the CHT into its exclusive preserve where, with Pakistan’s ISI, it can run training centres for rebels (including Islamic militants) operating in India’s northeast region. While Pakistan and Saudi Arabia remain important sources of fi nance for these military training centres and allied activities, an equally if not more important source is the Jamaat’s roaring trade in dangerous narcotics and illegal fi rearms. A thoroughly Islamised CHT will provide an enormous boost to this trade, and multiply the threats to India’s security. The chronic apathy of the Government of India to the fate of the Jumma people in the CHT (a disturbing reminder of its indifference to the travails of Hindus in Bangladesh) does not indicate that the Indian government is adequately alert to these threats.47 In 2005, Shahriar Kabir had the courage to publish, in three volumes, a White Paper on 1,500 days of persecution of minorities during the second Khaleda Zia regime (2001–6).48 Khaleda Zia’s coalition government wanted to conceal its attempts to empty Bangladesh of minorities, especially Hindus. The major weapon for concealment was denial by huge expenditure of public funds. Yet, as Shahriar Kabir writes, ‘No matter how much the government denies, the world community could learn about minority repression in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Nancy Jetly (ed.), Regional Security in South Asia: The Ethno-Sectarian Dimensions, New Delhi: Lancers, 1999, pp. 423, 432. Also, Frontier, Calcutta, 17–23 January 1999, p. 15. For some relevant details of the CHT issue, see Mizanur Rahman Shelley (ed.), The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: The Untold Story, Dhaka: Centre for Development Research, 1992, esp. pp. 167–78. 47 Kabir, The Unquiet Chittagong Hills, pp. 7–8, 24, 43, 46–47, 55; Lintner, ‘Bangladesh’, pp. 16–17; Perry, ‘Deadly Cargo’. 48 Published by Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, Dhaka, 10 October 2005. 374 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Bangladesh from mass media of the US and Europe’.49 Shahriar adds: ‘Two main partners of the coalition government are fundamentalists and fanatics, i.e. Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote who are involved with worldwide international Jihadi network’.50

Illegal Migration, Insecurity, Terrorism A shocking corollary to the persistent indifference of the Indian authorities to the adverse impact upon India of ceaseless oppression and/or eviction of minorities (including tribals) in Bangladesh is the suicidal tolerance of massive infi ltration of Muslims into India’s eastern/northeastern regions, creating grave insecurity. This indifference stems from misguided liberalism, tinged with emotionalism, which has two features. One, the Indian authorities have often failed to comprehend the threat to security from neighbouring countries. Two, they have failed to distinguish between two categories of migrants from Bangladesh, viz. refugees and infi ltrators. The circumstances of the Partition of 1947 (as also pledges from India’s political leaders) confer on Hindus (and other non-Muslims) in Bangladesh an inalienable right to come to India as refugees, and then settle down. More so because East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh has been carrying out ceaseless and ruthless pogroms against Hindus in order to drive them out of the country. In the early years of independence, some law makers in India had the pragmatism to maintain a distinction between Hindus (refugees) and Muslims (infi ltrators). The Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act of 1950 drew this distinction, and treated Muslim migrants as illegal aliens. But this farsightedness of the Indian authorities did not last long. The Act of 1950 was repealed in 1957. Yet, for some years, remnants of this farsightedness survived, unpublicised, in the shape of an administrative order of the Government of India, which empowered a district magistrate to grant citizenship to Hindus from Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 East Pakistan residing in India for more than six months. When authorities rescinded this order within a few years, they acquiesced

49 Shahriar Kabir et al., Recent Persecution of Minorities in Bangladesh, Dhaka: South Asian People’s Union Against Fundamentalism & Communalism, 2005, p. 22. 50 Ibid., p. 31. Relations with Bangladesh 375

in the creation of a situation in which, eventually, Muslim infi ltrators would prove to be a menace to India’s security. In Assam, even before Partition, self-seeking politicians orchestrated organised moves for decades to lure Muslims from East Bengal to Assam, and thereby alter Assam’s demographic balance. These moves persisted after 1947, and rendered unjustifi ed the tendency of liberals to ignore religion while examining the issue of migration.51 In 1964, the Government of Assam enacted the Prevention of Infi ltration from Pakistan (PIP) Act. The fate of this PIP Act demonstrated how Muslim leaders could use political blackmail to sabotage any effort by authorities to strengthen security by curbing infi ltration. Bimala Prasad Chaliha, Assam’s chief minister, played an energetic part in arranging deportations of a large number of infi ltrators to East Pakistan. He did not respect Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s desire for a liberal approach towards Muslim migrants, for, as Chaliha stressed, a severe threat to Assam’s demography and culture was emerging. But Chaliha’s determination failed to override the manoeuvres of Muslim legislators to stall the anti-infi ltrator programme. Chaliha’s Congress Party did not enjoy a stable majority in the legislature, and his health was fragile. Therefore, 20 Muslim legislators of the Congress Party (in a legislature of 126 members) could threaten Chaliha with defections leading to the collapse of Chaliha’s ministry. The PIP Act became inoperative in a few months after it came into force.52 Assam’s Muslim politicians capitalised on this preference for short-term political gains. Over the following decades, infi ltration continued (and it continues till today). It aggravated not only the threat to Assam’s cultural identity, but also to India’s unity and territorial integrity. Assam’s Hindu politicians have been so chronically short sighted on this matter that they have ignored repeated warnings by distinguished public servants since 1931.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 C.S. Mullan, Assam’s Superintendent of Census Operations, observed in the 1931 census report on Assam that the invasion of Muslim immigrants from East Bengal was likely to destroy the

51 Naresh Chandra, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh’, Dialogue, Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 3, January–March 2002, p. 18; Sanjoy Hazarika, Rites of Passage, New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2000, p. 61. 52 Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp. 61–63. 376 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

culture and civilisation of Assam. Mohammad Saadulla, a Muslim League leader, remained Assam’s premier for much of the time from 1937 to 1946. He arranged for large-scale distribution of government land to Muslims in Assam, who were lured from East Bengal by promises of huge land grants. During the Second World War, Saadulla claimed he had aided the British war effort by growing more food with the help of Muslim cultivators migrating from East Bengal to Assam. This provoked India’s viceroy, Lord Wavell, to comment that Saadulla was actually interested in growing more Muslims in Assam. The liberalism of Hindu politicians enabled a large number of Muslims, who fl ed to East Bengal in the aftermath of Partition, to return to Assam. Nearly all Muslim migrants, who were pushed out of Assam in the 1950s and early 1960s, returned to Assam surreptitiously—before and after the passing of the abortive PIP Act of 1964.53 It is not unusual to fi nd observers and writers pleading for large heartedness and liberalism in dealing with illegal migrants, because they do not themselves suffer from the consequences of such migration. In the case of Assam, however, Hindus (and other non-Muslims) themselves remained extraordinarily liberal, while the infl ux of Muslims caused a dangerous imbalance in Assam’s population. S.L. Shakdher, India’s chief election commissioner, warned in 1978 that foreign nationals would at some stage form a substantial proportion of Assam’s population. Shakdher deplored the fact that politicians clamoured for inclusion of names of foreigners in Assam’s electoral rolls. In a few years, as the census reports of India and Bangladesh revealed, the rate of increase of the Muslim population in the border districts of Assam was much higher than that in Bangladesh during 1981–91. Yet, Assam’s political parties (especially the Congress Party) engaged in a sort of competitive self- destruction, and treated infi ltrators as vote banks. They remained

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 oblivious of the transparent threats to Assam’s cultural identity and India’s territorial integrity. ‘The Congress would do anything’, wrote Subir Ghosh, ‘to ensure that their traditional minority vote bank remained intact’. Even occasional bloodbaths, as at Nellie in 1983

53 Jogesh Ch. Bhuyan, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh and the Demographic Change in the N.E. Region’, Dialogue, vol. 3, no. 3, January–March 2002, pp. 72–73; Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp. 72–74. Relations with Bangladesh 377

(an aberration from the long-practised large heartedness towards infi ltrators), failed to deter the Congress Party. Perhaps the Congress Party secured ironic encouragement from the fact that the evident possibility of large-scale recurrence of the Nellie massacre did not translate itself into actualities.54 As Assamese students launched a movement to oust illegal migrants, the Congress Party went to extremes to appease the Muslims. This explains why the Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals (IMDT) Act was rushed through the Union legislature in 1983, when there was no representative from Assam in the Lok Sabha because of a boycott of elections by the Assamese. ‘So’, writes D.N. Bezboruah, ‘it was an Act brought against the people of Assam behind the backs of the people of Assam’. It was an Act that committed incredible treachery against the people of Assam. The IMDT Act was meticulously designed to be so inoperative as to please the Muslims (including infi ltrators). Treachery was abetted by discrimination. The Foreigners Act of 1946 governed the rest of India, whereas Assam had to swallow the IMDT Act. The former places the onus of proof on illegal migrants, but the latter places the same on the complainant. A complainant has to move through 11 barriers under the IMDT Act, including the Lower Tribunal, the Appellate Court, and the High Court. Years may elapse before a Quit India notice can be served on an illegal migrant. This notice again can be contested in a court. All this—especially with overburdened police offi cers having little time for investigations, and retired judges in tribunals caring more for prolonging the enjoyment of high salaries than for speedy deportation of infi ltrators—may take a number of years. Eventually, when the trial is to begin, thousands of the accused are dead, or not traceable, or have moved elsewhere. So, during the period from 1983 to 1997, for example, only 2,314 cases could be actually tried by tribunals. Trials could be completed in 2,260

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 cases, and only 908 were adjudged to be foreigners. This ﬁ gure alone could underline the conspiracy directed against Assam’s culture and India’s security. The conspiracy was built into the IMDT Act,

54 Bhuyan, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh’, pp. 79–80, 82; Lokesh Chandra, ‘The New Millennium’, Dialogue, January–March 2002, p. 20; Subir Ghosh, Frontier Travails, Macmillan: Delhi, 2001, pp. 115–16; Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp. 234–35; Prakash Singh, ‘Management of India’s North-Eastern Borders’, Dialogue, January–March 2002, p. 67. 378 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

when it placed the burden of proof on a complainant. ‘This’, wrote Sanjoy Hazarika, ‘is the exact opposite of what is acceptable inter- nationally, the opposite of good law. For reasons not very diffi cult to fathom, the Congress Party fi rmly supports this fl awed concept’. To take another illustration of the farcical character of the IMDT Act, from 1990 to 1993, only 637 Quit India notices were issued in Assam, although notices could be actually served on only 407 persons. In contrast, the Foreigners Act of 1946, granting exclusive authority to the police to detect and deport foreigners, could have been used to push out hundreds of thousands of infi ltrators during the above noted period, viz. 1983–97. But the Congress Party decided to protect the Muslims, and leave unprotected Assam’s identity as also India’s territorial integrity. Apparently, as Subir Ghosh observes, the Congress Party (along with the Leftist parties) have been ‘obsessed with their minority (read, Bangladeshi Muslim) vote bank’. Sanjoy Hazarika aptly comments: ‘Is the Congress the thekedar of minority interests? It has the advantage of being a party that has bent over backwards in the past thirty years to accommodate Muslim interests’.55 In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the distinction between refugees and infi ltrators (stressed above) derives additional justifi cation from the employment of a number of infi ltrators by Pakistan, especially its ISI, for the promotion of Islamisation of South Asia as a component of the campaign for worldwide Islamic terrorism (WIT). Consequently, various attempts at underplaying this distinction, and minimising the threat to India’s national interest from infi ltration, are akin to abdication (voluntary or involuntary, selfish or disinterested) in favour of the forces of WIT. This abdication rests on such observations as (i) that migration has its roots in the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947; (ii) that it is a worldwide phenomenon; and (iii) that migrants are mostly

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 economic refugees. All these observations are correct, but they can be placed in proper perspective by the following comments.

(1) Partition did not resolve the problem of communal (Hindu– Muslim) hostilities.

55 Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp. 131–36, 235–36. Also, Ghosh, Frontier Travails, pp. 133–34 and D.N. Bezboruah, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh’, Dialogue, vol. 3, no. 3, January–March 2002, pp. 47–48, 51–52. Relations with Bangladesh 379

(2) Pakistan has signifi cantly accentuated these hostilities by emerging as the principal sponsor of WIT. Pakistan uses a section of infi ltrators (even if they have migrated for predominantly economic reasons) as perpetrators of terrorism, especially in northeast India. D.N. Bezboruah rightly remarks ‘that largescale illegal infi ltration from Bangladesh has not taken place only for economic reasons…. Most of it is being orchestrated. And this is evident from the fact that the ISI is today playing a very large role. And where is the base of the ISI operations in the northeast? It is in Bangladesh’. (3) The impact of migration in other parts of the world is not exactly comparable to that of infi ltration from Bangladesh upon eastern/northeastern India. For instance, Indian migrants to Britain, Canada and the United States, or Mexican migrants to the United States, do not upset the demographic or electoral balance in the host country, nor do some of them emerge as agents of WIT. As to the use of the adjective ‘Islamic’ before terrorism, that is enjoined by Pakistan’s incessant threats of Jihad.56

Another way of underplaying the problem of infi ltration, and its adverse impact upon security in India’s eastern/northeastern region is to deny it. In 1981, when The Statesman published a series of reports on infi ltration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, and underlined the seriousness of its impact, the chief minister of West Bengal dismissed them as a product of unbridled imagination. This preference for politics of vote banks (as against the defence of national interest) was carried to an extreme by Assam’s Hiteswar Saikia. Fifteen Pakistan- backed Muslim fundamentalist organisations were active in Assam, especially among infi ltrators, since 1987. Saikia pledged to drive out Bangladeshi infi ltrators from Assam when he was in the opposition.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 After he became the chief minister of Assam in 1991, he forgot this pledge, and his political postures amounted to a virtual denial of the menace of inﬁ ltration. No wonder that Sanjoy Hazarika spoke of Hiteswar Saikia as a ‘stocky politician with the guile of a fox and the organizing skills of an army general’, which he proved as early as

56 Sinha, ‘Pakistan’, pp. 1015–29. Also, Bezboruah, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh’, p. 48. 380 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

1980 in the general election. Leaders like Hiteswar Saikia and their associates can go to any extreme to mislead the country on the scale and signifi cance of infi ltration. They manipulated the 1991 census output for Assam. As D.N. Bezboruah affi rms,

I have information that there were verbal instructions sent out in the immigrant dominated areas, that only the ﬁ rst wife of the immigrant and her children were to be enumerated and not the subsequent wives and their children. The other thing that happened is that I know for a fact that in places like Guwahati and Tinsukhia, there were high density pockets of population where no enumeration took place. So the combined effect was that it did bring down the population.57

The 1991 census report put the 1981–91 population growth rates (PGR) in Assam at 18.84 per cent, which was not only much lower than 36.83 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh, and 39.70 per cent in Mizoram (which was inexplicable), but thoroughly incredible in view of the PGR of 34.98 per cent in Assam during 1951–61, and 34.95 per cent during 1961–71 (there being no census in Assam in 1981). Not all can manipulate census operations by unholy fi ats, and yet they are anxious to deny the scale and signifi cance of infi ltration from Bangladesh. Some of them can go to the extent of suggesting that Bangladesh has registered phenomenal progress in population control. In this context, they refer to the conferment of an international award for success in population control upon General H.M. Ershad of Bangladesh. Subsequently, however, a high level team of Bangladeshi offi cials found 92 per cent of ground level data paraded by General Ershad to be false. The UN Population Fund estimated the annual PGR in Bangladesh during 1981–91 at 2.7 per cent, whereas the 1991 census report in Bangladesh placed it at 2.1 per cent, which was somewhat fi ctitious in view of the fertility rate of 4.5. Signifi cantly, in all Muslims countries—the richest or the 58

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 poorest—the fertility rate is strikingly high, as is the PGR. This gives rise to the phenomenon of missing population in Bangladesh, which, according to the preliminary estimate for the

57 Bezboruah, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh’. 58 Sangbad, Bengali daily, Dhaka, 11 April 1993. Also see, World Bank, World Population Projections 1994–95, Baltimore and London: Oxford University Press, 1994. Relations with Bangladesh 381

1991 census, stood at 10 million, and, according to the revised estimate, at 8 million. Out of this 1.73 million were Hindus. The remainder of 6.27 million were presumably Muslims. Corres- pondingly, in West Bengal, a progressive Indian state, the actual PGR was higher than the PGR forecast by the demographic experts of the Government of India. The latter was 20.7 per cent for the 1981–91 decade, the former being 24.55 per cent. For the 1971–81 decade, West Bengal’s PGR was 23.2 per cent, and in a progressive state, but for infi ltration, the rate should have certainly gone down in 1981–91.59 One can only marvel at the coalition of domestic and international lobbies trying to suppress data about infi ltration. This may explain why the 1991 census report of India did not publish separate data for Hindus and Muslims, whereas it did so for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It was as late as 17 August 1995 that the cat came out of the bag, when, in response to a question by a Congress MP, Rajnath Sonkar Shastri, the Union Minister of State for Home P.M. Syed revealed all the data about the relative PGRs of different religious groups. In Arunachal Pradesh, for example, the total PGR during 1981–91 stood at 36.83 per cent, whereas for Muslims the fi gure was 135.01 per cent. For Mizoram, again, the respective fi gures were 39.70 per cent and 105.80 per cent. Those who believe in appeasing infi ltrators can offer the rejoinder that the population of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram is small. Therefore, one should turn to the populous state of West Bengal, where, during 1981–91, the total PGR was 24.73 per cent, and the PGR for Muslims was 36.89 per cent. As to relative PGRs for Hindus and Muslims in West Bengal, not to speak of border districts, even in interior districts such as Midnapore and Bankura, the fi gures were disturbing. In Midnapore, they were 19.74 per cent for Hindus, but 53.80 per cent for Muslims, and in Bankura the corresponding fi gures were

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 14.33 per cent and 38.71 per cent.

59 Government of Bangladesh (GoB), Bangladesh Population Census 1991, Vol. 2, Dhaka: Government of Bangladesh, 1993; Government of Bangladesh (GoB), Report of the Task Forces on Bangladesh: Development Strategies for the 1990s, Vol. I, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1991, p. 20. Mohiuddin Ahmed, ‘The Missing Population’, Holiday, Dhaka, 7 January 1994. Satchidananda Dutta Roy, Paschimbangabasi, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1994, pp. 21–22. 382 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Union Minister of State for Home P.M. Syed confessed in Parliament on 17 August 1995 that the growth of Muslim population in West Bengal and other border areas could be attributed to infi l- tration from Bangladesh. Syed further confessed that there was an ethnic expulsion of Hindus from West Bengal’s border areas. But a profound commitment to secularism prompted Syed to camoufl age the truth: he talked of ‘locals migrating into the interior’. The newspapers in Kolkata did not bother to publish all such important data presented in the Indian Parliament on 17 August 1995. The Government of West Bengal, too, did not appear to be concerned. A favourite tactic of those who want to play down the phenomenon of infi ltration from Bangladesh is to challenge the accuracy of data on infi ltration. Obviously, on this matter, as on many other signifi cant socio-economic matters (for example, the rate of interest charged by village moneylenders, the number of people below the poverty line, or the amount of black money in circulation in India), there is a need to draw a distinction between absolute and approximate accuracy, to give due weight to circumstantial evidence for safeguarding vital national interests, and to recognise that the extent of infi ltration is so alarming as to require thoughtful counteraction. The string of evidence, to start with West Bengal, is quite interesting and disquieting. In late July 1990, a West Bengal Government Task Force Report, partially leaked to a newspaper, put forward the following estimate: the preceding year, 100,000 infi ltrators had poured into nine border districts of West Bengal. In a year, on 1 August 1991, at the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, the chief minister stated that from 1 January to 30 June 1991, the Border Security Force (BSF) and the police had caught 39,055 infi ltrators from Bangladesh, including 28,000 Muslims. Any responsible offi cer of a security agency is aware that the ratio between those who are caught by law-enforcing agencies, and those who slip in undetected, is about

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1:10. Therefore, the annual fi gure for infi ltration works out to 800,000, which is not only close to the above-noted estimate of the West Bengal Government Task Force, but identical with the average annual number of the ‘missing population’ from Bangladesh, as calculated on the basis of the Bangladesh census report of 1991 (already mentioned in this chapter). In order to affi rm that such infi ltration is a nearly persistent trend, one can refer to a report of February 1999, wherein it is estimated that, through only one unoffi cial entry point at the West Bengal–Bangladesh border, 500 Relations with Bangladesh 383

persons enter into India daily, but only 250 go back to Bangladesh. There are, at least, 100 such unoffi cial entry points, and, assuming that the Bangladeshis are active on 300 of the 365 days in a year, the annual infl ux from Bangladesh can be plausibly (though not accurately) estimated at 750,000, which, again, is fairly close to the above noted ‘missing population’ from Bangladesh. The fi gures are so high—and so plausible—that the resultant sense of alarm cannot be dispelled by any alibi of lack of absolutely accurate assessments.60 In September 1992, Debaprasad Roy, a joint secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), and Somen Mitra, the president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, could temporarily shed their secularist inhibitions, and send identical notes to, respectively, the Union home minister, and the governor of West Bengal. They contended that there were 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants in West Bengal, basing their estimates on data available from law-enforcing agencies. Consequently, as they further affi rmed, the number of voters rose by 40–50 per cent in 132 West Bengal Legislative Assembly constituencies, and by as much as 50–92 per cent in another 34 constituencies.61 Probably, spurred by this move of the Congress Party, the Com- munist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI-M, West Bengal’s ruling party, decided to express some concern for unlawful migration. People’s Democracy, an organ of the Central Committee of this party, published an article by the chief minister of West Bengal in the issue of 18 October 1992. The contents of this article were reproduced in some newspapers. This article noted, among other matters, that, during 1977–92, the BSF identifi ed 235,529 unlawful entrants from Bangladesh, and sent them back to Bangladesh. Of them, 68,472 were Hindus, and 164,132 were Muslims. Similarly, during the same period, West Bengal’s mobile task force sent back 216,985 persons to Bangladesh. Of them, 56,342 were Hindus,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and 169,795 were Muslims. If one remembers that law-enforcing agencies cannot normally intercept the vast majority of these illegal entrants, the probable number of these Bangladeshis becomes truly

60 The Anandabazar Patrika, Calcutta, 27 July and 2 August 1991; Sunando Sarkar, The Statesman, 22 February 1999. 61 The Statesman and The Telegraph, 6 September 1992. 384 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

alarming. The search for absolute accuracy of estimates—and any tendency to use it as a plea for inaction on this vital matter—becomes dangerously irrelevant.62 The Election Commission of Bangladesh has (unwittingly) provided some signifi cant evidence of unlawful migration from Bangladesh into the neighbouring states of India, which reconfi rms the high plausibility of the number of illegal entrants estimated in the preceding pages of this chapter. During 1991–95, writes Bhuban Saikia, the Election Commission of Bangladesh had to remove the names of two million voters from the electoral rolls. They were absent, and hence their names were deleted. They disappeared from the country, representing a section of the ‘missing population’. Evidently, they moved to the neighbouring states of the Indian Union. For, very few could go as far as Australia, Britain, Canada, or the United States! Assuming that at least 50 per cent of these missing voters moved, along with their family members, into such Indian states as West Bengal and Assam, and assuming further that the average size of each family was fi ve, the number of illegal Bangladeshi migrants into India can be estimated at 5 million over a period of four or fi ve years. This fi gure, signifi cantly, is quite close to that for the ‘missing population’ in the Bangladesh census report for 1991, as already noted in this chapter. In the 1996 elections of Bangladesh, Sanjoy Hazarika records, ‘the number of voters fell from 62.18 million to 56.70 million, a drop of 5.48 million. Where did these 5.48 million go?’63 In 1993, senior Congress Party leaders of seven northeastern states of India reported to their party’s High Command that intelligence agencies of Bangladesh and Pakistan were in collusion to destabilise northeast India. The report pointed to the use of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International by Pakistan’s ISI to fund subversion in India. Moreover, a large number of offi cers of the Bangladesh

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Army were being trained in Pakistan for cross-border operations, the Congressmens’ report added. Evidently, the Congressmen were inﬂ uenced by a Union home ministry report stating that inﬁ ltrators from Bangladesh had so ‘overwhelmed’ 16 of Assam’s 18 districts as

62 Bartaman, Calcutta, 24 October 1992. 63 Bhuban Saikia, The Sentinel, 17 October 1995. Also, Hazarika, Rites of Passage, p. 220. Relations with Bangladesh 385

to upset the demographic and electoral balance. But authorities did not appear to pay the requisite attention to the interlinked problems of infi ltration and terrorism. This could explain why, just before 31 January 1994, when he retired from the post of director general of the BSF, Prakash Singh sent a letter cautioning the Union home ministry that ‘very soon’ the entire northeast India would slide into a Kashmir-type situation, unless adequate measures were adopted to counteract the twin problems of infi ltration and terrorism. Remarkably, one of the bridges between infi ltration and terrorism is built by smuggling. Gold, narcotics and arms are apparently smuggled form Bangladesh to sustain terrorism in northeast India. It is appropriate in this connection to note the observation of Ajai Sahni and J. George that terrorists become ‘criminal entrepreneurs’ and their movements turn into ‘organized criminal enterprises’. A report of New Delhi’s National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), published in 1995, supplied vital clues on this matter. This report dealt with smuggling across the border between West Bengal and Bangladesh. Whereas a huge variety of commodities smuggled from India to Bangladesh were all essential articles of everyday use (for example, livestock, vegetable oil, spices, cycles, parts of various machines, etc.), similar commodities smuggled from Bangladesh to India were very few in number, and insignifi cant in quantity. The riddle of how, then, smugglers on both sides squared their accounts could only be solved by pointing to arms, gold, and narcotics smuggled from Bangladesh to India. Remarkably, this report of the NCAER, New Delhi, did not appear to attract due attention from newspapers in Calcutta.64 The danger was clear. But the responses of the authorities seemed insuffi cient. Consequently, in late 1998, the governor of Assam, Lieutenant General (Retd) S.K. Sinha, sent a 42-page report to the president of India, warning against the evil consequences of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 inﬁ ltration from Bangladesh. This inﬁ ltration, as Sinha’s report stressed, was so massive as to disrupt the demographic balance in Assam, blur the identity of its people, and endanger India’s national

64 Sumit Sen, The Statesman, 28 June 1993; Wasbir Hussain, The Telegraph, 14 December 1992. Also see, Ajai Sahni and J. George, ‘Security and Develop- ment in India’s Northeast’, Faultlines, New Delhi, vol. 4, 2000, p. 58 and Sudhakar K. Chaudhuri, Cross-Border Trade Between India and Bangladesh, New Delhi: National Council of Applied Economic Research, 1995, esp. p. 85. 386 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

security. The report noted the preference of some political parties to disregard the seriousness of this danger, even though unchecked infi ltration might eventually leave India without any authority over the northeast region. In a similar vein, early in 1999, the chief minister of Tripura, Manik Sarkar, who belonged to the CPI-M, stated publicly that terrorists in northeast India had 24 main camps in Bangladesh as their operational bases. One deeply disturbing aspect of this allied phenomenon of infi ltration-cum-terrorism is, as Prakash Singh observes, ‘the encouragement being given by Islamic fundamentalist elements to people to move across the border because they have been propagating the theory of lebensraum, search for living space’ by Bangladeshis.65 As to West Bengal, it was from mid-1998 that West Bengal’s chief minister and home minister began to admit the seriousness of infi ltration, evidently because of its glaring links to ISI-sponsored terrorism. In 1999, the West Bengal government took a complete somersault, and bowed down to realities in an affi davit before the Supreme Court in connection with a public interest litigation on infi ltration. It acknowledged unequivocally that local touts, as well as a section of government offi cials and politicians, offered extensive patronage to infi ltrators, whether in the matter of procuring ration cards or enlisting themselves as voters. This was a big hindrance to identifying and deporting infi ltrators. (Naturally, the West Bengal government could not add that the infiltrators were precious vote banks.) The government of Bangladesh, too, obstructed the deportation of infi ltrators by refusing to recognise the validity of verdicts in Indian courts about the Bangladeshi citizenship of infi ltrators from Bangladesh, taken to courts by India’s law-enforcing authorities. In March 1999, the Director-General of Police (DGP) of West Bengal went so far as to affi rm that the police were aware of ISI hideaways in a number of educational and religious institutions

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 (euphemisms or secularised terms for madrassas and mosques) in Calcutta, Bongaon, Malda, Midnapore, and other places where

65 S.K. Sinha, Report on Illegal Migration Into Assam Submitted to the President of India by the Governor of Assam, Guwahati, 1998. Also see, Ghosh, Frontier Travails, p. 107; Onkareshwar Pandey, ‘ISI and New Wave of Islamic Militancy in the N.E.’, Dialogue, vol. 3, no. 3, January–March 2002, p. 88; Singh, ‘India’s North-Eastern Borders’, pp. 64–65, 68. Also, The Statesman, 1 February 1999; Editorial, The Statesman, 6 November 2002. Relations with Bangladesh 387

terrorists, including those connected with serial explosions in New Delhi and Mumbai in 1993, were taking shelter, and that the police conducted raids into such shelters. Such an important piece of information was virtually ignored by newspapers in Calcutta. The escalation of ISI activities in West Bengal gained high visibility on 22 June 1999, when a bomb blast at the New Jalpaiguri railway station killed and injured a number of Indian soldiers on their way to the Kargil front.66 A big belt along the West Bengal–Bangladesh border—varying from 5 to 20 kms on each side—is exclusively inhabited by Muslims from Bangladesh, the Hindus being driven out to India. On the West Bengal side, some areas in this belt are completely populated by Muslims, or totally dominated by them. Even those border villages of West Bengal, which, currently, have some Hindu residents, are likely to witness their departure to Hindu-majority areas away from the border. Whereas the media and social scientists in West Bengal have not paid necessary attention to this threat to India’s national security, in 2002, one scholar, Mihir Sinha Roy, has brought out an excellent report on this subject. This report, based on ﬁ eld surveys and case studies, in addition to such public documents as census reports, provides a harrowing account of how, during the last three decades, Hindus have been continuously and systematically uprooted from West Bengal’s border villages, and compelled to move to interior areas in search of honour and safety. The major reasons behind this forced migration within the same country are regular incidents of theft, murder, dacoity, assaults on women, and dispossession of land. Hindus have been so demoralised by the lack of cooperation from law-enforcing authorities and local government institutions, that they leave their homes even before a threat of force turns into an actual use of force, especially when the threat includes kidnapping or molestation of their womenfolk. In case of many Hindus, even

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the use or threat of force may become unnecessary. They leave their homes in the face of intolerable psychological torture by the Muslims, who deliberately slaughter cows in front of Hindu houses (even though there are plenty of other places), and broadcast anti-Indian

66 The Anandabazar Patrika, 17 June and 18 August 1998, 12 February 1999; The Statesman, 11 January and 11 March 1999. Also, Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp. 306–16. 388 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

cassettes from mosques. Hindus submitting to eviction include not merely those who have lived in their villages for generations (some being donors of lands for a 100-year-old school or a government offi ce), but also those who left East Bengal (East Pakistan) after the 1947 Partition, exchanging properties with Muslims in West Bengal. When they leave border villages, they are not able to sell their properties, except at a throwaway price. Even prominent Hindu members of a ruling or opposition party have to reconcile themselves to expulsion from their homes, because they fail to cope with the criminal activities of Muslim residents and infi ltrators who are in collusion with not only dacoits from Bangladesh but also local Muslim politicians. The sordid politics of Muslim vote banks ensures the supremacy of Muslim hooligans in West Bengal’s border villages, as also lebensraum for Bangladeshi infi ltrators.67 The process of infi ltration from Bangladesh, resulting in the forced evacuation of Hindus from Muslim-majority villages in West Bengal’s border areas, as also the conversion of Hindu-majority villages in these areas into Muslim-majority villages, continues unabated. The power of discrimination of Muslim dacoits and hooligans is indeed remarkable, for, not to speak of ordinary Muslims, even prosperous Muslims in the affected areas do not suffer from those acts of theft, dacoity, murder and molestation of women that are continuously pushing out Hindus from these areas to safer Hindu-dominated areas in West Bengal. Where this is a measure of ethnic expulsion inside West Bengal, this is also an indicator of how the calculations of the architects of the 1947 Partition have gone awry, and massive infi ltration has generated acute insecurity by shifting informally the border of a neighbouring country. One can go further, and agree with A.K. Ray, a former secretary to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, that such infi ltration can be equated to ‘deliberate aggression’ by Pakistan’s ISI. It bears reiteration that, unfortunately, the media

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 have not taken the necessary initiative to alert the public to this ever-growing menace. The people of West Bengal are, indeed, lucky that as yet no northeast India-type inﬁ ltration-related eruption has occurred in West Bengal. But this is no ground for complacency.

67 Mihir Sinha Roy, Cross Border Migration—A Case Study of West Bengal and Bangladesh, Kolkata: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, 2002, pp. 1–52. Relations with Bangladesh 389

For, as a former chief of the Indian Army, General (Retd) Shankar Roy Chowdhury, a Rajya Sabha member from West Bengal, told the Rajya Sabha on 20 April 2000, on account of illegal migration from Bangladesh to India, Bangladesh’s demographic border intruded upon India’s political border over a 10–20 km deep area inside West Bengal. He also reminded the Rajya Sabha that Bangladesh remained a base for ISI operations. All this, despite the hint of a demographic-cum-security threat, was a patently euphemistic (or secularist) way of underplaying the scourge of infi ltration. A Calcutta-based newspaper, The Statesman, reported Chowdhury’s speech in such a way that no common reader could perceive the intensity of the demographic or security threat from the incursions by the Bangladeshis.68 There may be a tendency on the part of some observers to draw comfort from the 2001 census report of India, which puts the average population rise in West Bengal during 1991–2001 at 17.84 per cent. This is a decline from the PGR of 24.55 per cent in West Bengal during 1981–91. But there is no cause for complacency about the continuing danger of infi ltration from Bangladesh. For, in the fi rst place, according to the 2001 census, population rise in the border districts of North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Malda has been, respectively, 22.64 per cent, 23.7 per cent, and 24.77 per cent. Second, the burden of past infi ltration is too heavy to be shrugged off. Third, the 2001 general election in Bangladesh brought to power a political party, the BNP, which, born in the cantonment, had close ties with Pakistan’s ISI through the Bangladesh government’s Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) and National Security Intelligence (NSI). In fact, over the past decades, the DGFI and the NSI have accumulated so much clout, and developed such an organic relationship with the ISI, that even if a civilian government, led by the BNP (or any other political party), tried to tame the ISI,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 it was not likely to succeed. Moreover, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the ally of the BNP, would not endorse any attempt to curb ISI operations. The eastern/northeastern region of India has to remain perennially alert in breaking the terrorist-inﬁ ltrator linkage (continually forged by the ISI). Especially, in the aftermath of America’s success in

68 A.K. Ray, The Telegraph, 16 October 1992; Hindustan Times, New Delhi, 21 April 2000; The Statesman, 21 April 2000. 390 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

dethroning the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002, the need for such alertness increased manifold, because many agents of WIT were forced to move from Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan to eastern and northeastern India.69 The ISI uses West Bengal’s Siliguri corridor as a convenient staging point of its dreadful activities, which attest to a convergence of infi ltration and terrorism, as also to the use of mosques and madrassas as sanctuaries for terrorists. But West Bengal’s leaders have not demonstrated adequate concern for such activities, presumably on account of a self-imposed and misconceived prescription for the politics of Muslim vote banks. The Siliguri corridor not only provides a strategic link between the rest of India and the northeast region, but also borders Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. There are a number of Islamic organisations in Nepal that are actively engaged in promoting WIT, and targeting India specifi cally. There are a huge number of madrassas and mosques along the India–Nepal border, which ceaselessly serve the cause of WIT, and the Government of Nepal does not appear to be able to curb their operations. The West Bengal government, too, seems to be unable to cope with the proliferation of madrassas and mosques in the entire border belt, including the Siliguri corridor. During 1994–99, 1,000 mosques (some of them providing sanctuaries to terrorists) were illegally constructed in the border districts of West Bengal. There was no evidence of any action being taken against such evidently dangerous activities by the West Bengal government. The attacks by terrorists upon the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001, and the Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001, certainly perturbed the West Bengal government, and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee refl ected this perturbation in a speech at Siliguri on 19 January 2002, when he affi rmed unambiguously that the ISI and its agents were running some unauthorised madrassas, which were not affi liated to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the West Bengal Madrassa Board. These madrassas, which sprouted suddenly, would be closed down, Bhattacharjee stressed. On 22 January 2002 came the terrorist attack upon the American Center in Kolkata. On 24 January 2002, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee declared at the Secretariat in Kolkata that he had speciﬁ c information about

69 Tirthankar Mitra, The Statesman, 15 October 2001; Editorials, The Statesman, 19 September, 6 November and 19 August 2001; C.R. Irani, The Statesman, 19 May 2002. Also see The Statesman, 19 August 2001. Relations with Bangladesh 391

some (not all) madrassas carrying on anti-national propaganda, and that this was not permissible.70 The above noted statements of West Bengal’s chief minister deserved high praise for depicting incontestable realities. Surveys by intelligence agencies revealed that in just one border district, North Dinajpur, the number of authorised madrassas stood at 40, while the number of unauthorised madrassas rose from 152 in 1995 to 541 in 2001. Signifi cantly, during the same period, the number of mosques in the district of North Dinajpur rose from 931 to 1,484. At another border district, Malda, intelligence agencies detected alarming documents in 30 madrassas. In another border district, Murshidabad, unauthorised madrassas mushroomed in the second half of the 1990s, bringing their total number to 600, whereas there were only 80 such madrassas two decades earlier. The teaching of not only English and Bengali but also mathematics and other science subjects is prohibited in a large number of these madrassas. Even the teaching of the alphabet is directed towards an inculcation of the spirit of Jihad. In a large number of villages, the affl uence of unauthorised madrassas, with an impressive number of teachers, stands in sharp contrast to government-run primary schools with dilapidated buildings and negligibly few teachers. This cannot but point to the fl ow of funds from some foreign countries, notably Saudi Arabia. Thus, even in a poor village with no electricity, post offi ce, health centre, ration shop, government primary school, or even one pucca house, one can come across a big madrassa with six teachers, 50 resident students and 500 day scholars. Intelligence offi cials of West Bengal have been able to trace the fl ow of counterfeit currency or explosives like RDX to some of these madrassas. These explosives, arriving from Bangladesh, have been used for subversive activities in places as far off as Coimbatore or New Delhi.71 The complaint of West Bengal’s chief minister about ISI

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 activities in some madrassas was correct, because it was based on intelligence reports. Yet, in about a fortnight, using the familiar

70 The Anandabazar Patrika, 7 December 1999, 20 and 25 January, 7 and 8 February 2002; Goutam Sidhanta, Bartaman, 25 January 2002. Also see The Statesman, 14 January 2003. 71 Anal Abedin, The Anandabazar Patrika, 31 January, 1 and 2 February 2002: these reports have made extensive use of intelligence reports of the West Bengal government. See C.R. Irani, The Statesman, 19 January 2003. 392 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

plea that newspapers failed to quote him properly, he bowed down to pressures (mentioned ahead) from Muslims, and politicians belonging to the ruling Left Front, including those in his own party, the CPI-M. Muslims took out processions, blockaded streets, and burnt effi gies of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Kolkata- based Urdu dailies, run by Muslims, launched vituperative attacks on him. The Imams of various mosques in Kolkata went so far as to issue on Friday, 8 February 2002, a threat of withdrawal of political support from the Left Front. The Statesman editorial of 10 February 2002 commented: ‘The hysteria whipped up by the Imams over Buddhadeb’s factual and correct statement is cold blooded and deliberate’. Left Front leaders worked overtime to plead that they had no information about unaffi liated madrassas, and that they were much more generous to madrassas than their predecessors, that is leaders of the Congress Party. The fi rst plea was false, but the second plea was correct. In the last year of Congress rule, there were 238 madrassas. They received `560,000 from West Bengal’s annual budget. On an average, each madrassa received `2,705. During Left Front rule, to take the 2000–1 fi nancial year into account, this average budgetary allocation shot up to `2.268 million for each madrassa, the total allocation being `1.15 billion for 507 registered madrassas. The Left Front could not afford to lose a vote bank built at such an enormous expense. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s backtracking on his entirely realistic statement about madrassas merely revealed that Left Front leaders were reconciled to placing the politics of Muslim vote banks above national security. In this process, deplorably, the ISI fi nds itself in the enviable position of dictating its own agenda to West Bengal.72 The lack of determination of West Bengal’s Left Front leaders to cope with the ISI’s threat to national security reminds one of a former chief minister of Assam, Hiteswar Saikia. ‘The Late Hiteswar Saikia’, stated an editorial in The Statesman of 6 November 2002,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ‘told the assembly there were three million illegal migrants in Assam but corrected himself the next day saying there was not a single inﬁ ltrator’. Such indecisiveness on the part of political leaders has gradually produced a situation in which, to quote Subir Ghosh,

72 Editorial, The Anandabazar Patrika, 8 February 2002; Bartaman, 9 February 2002; The Statesman, 6, 9, 10, 11 February 2002; Editorial, The Statesman, 30 November 2002: ‘How powerful the vested interests are was apparent when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s perfectly rational policy of monitoring madrassas was shot down by Alimuddin Street apparatchiks.’ Relations with Bangladesh 393

‘the course of history is today being charted out not by the people of the Northeast, but a venomous, Janus-faced entity called Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI)’. The ISI, ensconced in the Pakistan embassy of Dhaka, has been providing, since the early 1990s, military training as well as arms to rebel groups in India’s northeast region. In the late 1990s, a faction of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, that is Harkatul-e-Jihad-e-Islam (HUJI), with about 15,000 cadres, won recognition as the Bangladesh Taliban. Evidently, Al-Qaeda struck roots in Bangladesh, posing a serious threat to the security of India’s eastern/northeastern region. The ISI or the Al-Qaeda could carry on their terrorist operations in India because of continuous support from the intelligence, police, para-military and military agencies of Bangladesh. Towards the end of 2002, ISI activities in Bangladesh, targeted on India, became so alarming as to generate one more candid statement on this subject from Manik Sarkar, the chief minister of Tripura, on 21 November. This was followed by a statement by external affairs minister, Yashwant Sinha, in Lok Sabha on 27 November. Yashwant Sinha admitted that such terrorist groups as the Al-Qaeda, in collusion with the ISI, were using the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Dhaka as a sanctuary. He pointed to the dangers of proliferation of madrassas along the India–Bangladesh border, as also to the smuggling of narcotics and fake Indian currency from Bangladesh to India. Subsequently, India dispatched a formal letter (demarche) providing details about Al-Qaeda operations in Bangladesh and their impact on northeast India. While Bangladesh denies the launching of anti-India activities from its territory, and assures that it will not allow such activities, documents seized from arrested militants provide ample evidence of ISI operations in Bangladesh directed against India. Tripura’s chief minister, Manik Sarkar, was right when he told a press conference in Kolkata on 4 January 2003 that ‘Bangladesh might deny the militants’ presence in its territory for diplomatic reasons, but in the long run, this will

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 not beneﬁ t them’.73

73 Article by former Director General, BSF, E.N. Rammohan, in The Statesman, 28 September 2002. Also see, Editorial, The Statesman, 6 November 2002; The Telegraph, 22 November 2002; The Statesman, 28 November 2002. Also, statement by BSF Director General Ajay Raj Sharma on 29 November 2002, The Statesman, 30 November 2002; Nilova Roy Chaudhury, The Statesman, 2 December 2002. Also see The Statesman, 5 January 2003. For an elaborate analysis of terrorist outﬁ ts in Bangladesh, see Hiranmay Karlekar, Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005. 394 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

As in the case of oppression of minorities, so in that of support for anti-Indian terrorists, Khaleda Zia’s coalition regime remained in denial mode. One of her coalition partners, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), had undeniable links with militants/Jihadis. Social activists like Shahriar Kabir, with unquestionable secular-democratic credentials, exposed these links, and, therefore, had to go to jail.74 Whenever any militant activity took place, for example, a bomb explosion, it was blamed on the Indians or the Awami League. Not long after Khaleda Zia’s regime was deprived of an opportunity to rig another general election, and a military-backed caretaker government (CG) took offi ce on 7 January 2007, some arrested militants blew off the cover. Even a former Minister of State for Home under Khaleda Zia, Lutfuzzaman Babar, candidly confessed, after he was arrested by the CG, that Khaleda Zia’s coalition regime had enabled militant groups to fl ourish, and that Prime Minister Khaleda Zia had herself acted as a protector of the JeI.75 A close associate of JeI, HUJI maintains a bank account for its journal, Monthly Jago Mujahid, with the Islamic Bank of Bangladesh Ltd. (IBBL), which is a scheduled bank governed by the regulations of the country’s Central Bank, the Bangladesh Bank. This is unbelievable.76 This cannot happen without the collusion of the government. Similarly, another militant outfi t, a close associate of JeI, the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), which believes in Jihad, and runs an Arabic journal, Al Tadamun, has an account in the name of its chief with the IBBL. The RSO runs an Urdu journal, Insaaf, for which the RSO secretary maintains an account with the Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB).77 The JeI runs the IBBL, which has 141 branches in Bangladesh.78 During 2001–6, when JeI was a partner in the coalition government, it unlawfully seized 16.8 million acres of Hindu land notifi ed as vested properties.79 The Army-backed CG that came to power in January 2007 could claim a lot of credit for hanging the six Jihadi terrorists responsible for

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 500 bomb blasts in various parts of Bangladesh on 17 August 2005,

74 Shahriar Kabir, Jamat-e-Islami’s Link with Islamic Militancy, Dhaka: South Asian People’s Union Against Fundamentalism & Communalism, 2007, p. 3. 75 Ibid. 76 Shahriar Kabir, The Daily Janakantha, 3 May 2007. 77 Kabir, Jamat-e-Islami’s Link, pp. 5–6. 78 Ibid., p. 8. 79 Ibid., p. 9. Relations with Bangladesh 395

and who belonged to Jamat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JuMB). This effort earned praise from Indian observers.80 The CG, however, violated the constitutional mandate of holding elections within 90 days, and prolonged its existence unlawfully. It is interesting to review New Delhi’s policy towards the CG. In July 2007, the Indian foreign secretary spent as many as four days in Dhaka, thereby almost putting a stamp of legitimacy upon an unconstitutional government.81 This did not go well with the people of Bangladesh at large, did not project India’s commitment to democracy, and surely confused the Western powers, especially the United States and the EU. This was an affront to those Bangladeshis who had preserved their faith in a secular-democratic order—an order that the Bangladesh CG appeared to abhor. In the same month, the Indian minister of state for commerce spent three days in Dhaka, and appeared to reinforce the impression that India considered the caretaker regime in Dhaka to be legitimate and friendly. But the ‘blow hot blow cold’ syndrome came to the surface when, at the end of his tour, the minister of state for commerce issued a statement that India wanted a secular democratic regime in Bangladesh to ﬂ ourish. The foreign affairs ministry of Bangladesh rebuffed India, and summoned the acting Indian high commissioner to communicate its displeasure towards this statement. Early in the morning of 17 July 2007, in a thoroughly uncivilised manner, the police in Bangladesh dragged Sheikh Hasina from her prayer chamber to arrest her. New Delhi did not react. But, on 3 September 2007,82 soon after the arrest of Khaleda Zia, the ofﬁ cial spokesperson of India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) became suddenly very assertive, apparently by way of reaction to the arrest of Khaleda Zia, and observed, ‘The early and full restoration of democracy, due process of law and respect for individual rights will contribute to the evolution of a stable, democratic and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 prosperous Bangladesh’. There can be a number of comments on this admonition. First, New Delhi kept silent for years on limitless violations of human rights (especially of minorities) in Bangladesh. It was awkward to break this silence with a reaction to the arrest of

80 For example, G. Parthasarathi, The Pioneer, 28 June 2007. 81 B.B. Nandy, Dainik Statesman, 1 August 2007 (in Bengali). 82 The Times of India, 4 September 2007. 396 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Khaleda Zia, whose regime perpetrated the worst abuses of human rights. Second, the 3 September 2007 statement of the MEA may be interpreted as an indirect reaffi rmation of India’s support for the four-party alliance headed by Khaleda Zia, at any rate for Zia’s BNP. This interpretation can secure sustenance from reports that New Delhi, secretly and unnecessarily, extended support to the BNP in the 2001 general election. In this connection, one is reminded of the awful information supplied to this writer by a very infl uential Bangladeshi writer. In 2001, when minority-cleansing operations by the BNP and JeI assumed abnormal proportions (much above the level of normal, though perpetual, atrocities), the National Security Adviser (NSA) of India air dashed to Dhaka in order to reassure the BNP government that India was not at all concerned about internal happenings in Bangladesh. Third, if it is appropriate to observe a silence on political developments in Pakistan, it cannot be inadvisable to maintain a silence on political intrigues in Bangladesh (as in the fi rst six months of 2007). The 3 September 2007 statement of the MEA is all the more unfortunate because it came soon after the delivery of an important judicial decision, which sentenced some infl uential BNP colleagues of Khaleda Zia to imprisonment for abetment of crimes by two proscribed extremist outfi ts, viz. Jaish-e-Muhammad Bangladesh (JeMB) and JuMB. What newspaper reports had complained of since 2004 was confi rmed by this judicial verdict.83 These two groups of Islamic militants were initially very small. But they grew with astonishing rapidity, and, in the absence of support from some members of Khaleda Zia’s four-party coalition, this growth was inexplicable. Since cadres of these groups had carried out terrorist activities in India, the MEA’s statement of 3 September 2007 was unfortunate, because, even if involuntarily, it extended support to a prime minister who could not have been unaware of the links between

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 her colleagues and the JeMB or JuMB, which were responsible for simultaneous bombings in Bangladesh at 500 sites in 2005. On 21 November 2007, the Union home minister, speaking at Rajya Sabha, repeated the old stand of the Bangladesh government that there were no camps of anti-Indian terrorists on its territory.84

83 Brig. Gen. (Retd) Shahedul Anam Khan, The Statesman, 3 August 2007. 84 The Times of India, 22 November 2007. Relations with Bangladesh 397

This raised a fundamental question of whether India had a policy, or what were India’s compulsions to be demonstratively so weak, vis-à-vis terrorist camps in Bangladesh. This question acquired urgency because, under Khaleda Zia’s coalition government, Bangladesh had emerged as an important base of terrorist operations in India, as witnessed in, for example, Bangalore on 28 December 2005 and Mumbai on 11 July 2006.85 This situation had not changed under the so-called caretaker government. There were reports that, as a result of reverses suffered at the hands of military and paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir, such Pakistani terrorist organisations as the LET and JEM were paying greater attention to the northeast region of India, as also to West Bengal’s border with Bangladesh.86 The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), led by Paresh Barua, was an important ally of LET and JEM. According to a report of Strategic Foresight Inc (Stratfor) of the United States, Paresh Barua developed highly proﬁ table commercial enterprises in Bangladesh, India and West Asia. Some of the business operations (for example, hotels, departmental stores) were lawful, but others (for example, counterfeiting Indian currency or smuggling dangerous drugs) were illegal. An abundant supply of funds strengthened the ISI-ULFA links. From time to time, high-ranking Bangladeshi terrorists were arrested in Guwahati or on the outskirts of Kolkata. It was then learnt that they had been engaged in spreading the terrorist network of sleeper cells throughout India. West Bengal’s coastline was fast emerging as a satellite of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, as a reservoir of illicit arms, drugs, and their terrorist couriers.87 The question that is most pertinent today is how India is coping with the most important issue in India–Bangladesh relations, that is the issue of terrorism linked to insurgency, illegal migration, smuggling of arms/drugs, etc. The answer is: India has failed to put its own house in order.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 First, where countries like Britain are passing stricter laws to combat terrorism,88 India does not exhibit a similar concern. On the contrary, it seems to be back-pedalling. For instance, Bangladeshi

85 Hiranmay Karlekar, The Pioneer, 7 December 2006. 86 Rakesh K. Singh, The Pioneer, 19 January 2008. 87 Dainik Statesman, 26 January 2007. 88 The Statesman, 25 and 26 January 2008. 398 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

immigrants have created serious political-cultural imbalances in Assam, and poor immigrants can fall prey to inducements by moneyed militant leaders. Yet, rulers in national/state capitals have been using them as vote banks and pampering them. They have passed the IMDT Act, which is absurd, because, unlike the Foreigners Act, the IMDT Act places the onus of proof not on the person accused of illegal immigration but on the police. When the Supreme Court of India strikes down the outrageous legislation, rulers make a suicidal move—they amend the order on Foreigners Tribunal following the rules of the Foreigners Act, and persist in appeasement of illegal migrants.89 Second, India’s failure to cope with terrorist onslaughts by Bangladeshis goes far beyond refusal to improve the legal framework. It appears that we are unable to understand what is potentially the most serious target of these onslaughts. The target is our secular-democratic order. Unfortunately, India’s own faults have facilitated such targeting. Right from the early years of independence, ruling circles in New Delhi and other state/local capitals in the northeast region have expanded and consolidated the activities of a quadrangular alliance (for lack of a better word) of politicians, administrators, businessmen, and criminals (some of whom later transformed themselves into terrorists). This quadrangular alliance has been chieﬂ y responsible for the huge gap between what the northeast region could have achieved with its natural-human resources, as also huge grants from New Delhi, and what it has actually achieved in terms of economic advancement. Consequently, funds meant for development and poverty alleviation are mostly spent on purposes other than development, including the construction of top category hotels in and around New Delhi. It may not be deemed immoral to plunder the plunderers, and that explains the initial emergence of extortionists in the northeast region. But

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 extortionists can try to derive some moral strength from consistent and unpardonable failures of New Delhi to pay due recognition to

89 Lt. Gen. J.R. Mukherjee, ‘Conﬂ ict and Insurgency’, in Jayanta Kumar Ray and Rakhee Bhattacharya (eds), Development Dynamics in North-East India, Delhi: Anshah, 2008, p. 214; E.N. Rammohan, ‘The Northeast Insurgencies: Causes and Solutions’, in Jayanta Kumar Ray and Rakhee Bhattacharya (eds), North East India: Administrative Reforms & Economic Development, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2008, pp. 117–22. Relations with Bangladesh 399

the economic, political, and ethnic aspirations of the people of the northeast. Extortionists, parading these aspirations, gradually uplift themselves to the category of militants. Afterwards, due mainly to the incompetence of authorities in national/state capitals, some militants could mobilise supplies of arms, fi nance and training to promote themselves to the status of insurgents, tapping foreign sources like the DGFI and the ISI.90 Ruling circles in national/state capitals have been consistently neglecting both the development as well as security issues of the northeast region. Neighbouring countries have capitalised this negligence. The fl ow of foreign aid to Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs) in the northeast region can be curbed (if not eliminated) by building fences as on the India–Pakistan border. But national/state level rulers have not taken the requisite initiative. If the security situation in the northeast region today is still deemed to be manageable, it is largely because of Army operations. For, the police force is thoroughly corrupt, thanks to politicians, who have sometimes even stopped police/military operations when these have nearly decimated an insurgent group. It is diffi cult to calculate how much is this governed by a craze for votes and how much by the fear of losing the long-enjoyed share of extortion money. The Army, again, may commit mistakes in detecting and identifying terrorists without the help of the local police. Their mistakes may multiply on account of the application of some draconian provisions in the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). These provisions have to be amended. As to the police force, comprehensive reforms are required. A Model Police Act, in replacement of the 1861 Police Act, has been prepared (by the Soli Sorabjee Committee). On 22 September 2006, the Supreme Court of India ordered the adoption of a Model Police Act. But ruling circles in all national/state capitals of India (including the northeast 91

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 region), have nonchalantly ﬂ outed the Supreme Court’s order.

90 See Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘Introduction’, in Ray and Bhattacharya (eds), Development Dynamics, pp. 10–12. Also, Rammohan, ‘The Northeast Insurgencies’, pp. 99–100, 103, 105. 91 Rammohan, ‘The Northeast Insurgencies’, p. 16. H.N. Das, ‘Insurgency and Administrative Reforms’, in Ray and Bhattacharya (eds), Northeast India, pp. 139, 146. 400 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

With such habitual complacency, it may be extremely difﬁ cult to counteract terrorist onslaughts from Bangladesh. One may reiterate what was said earlier. India has to put its own house in order instead of passing on the blame to neighbouring countries. If complacency is compounded by appeasement of religious fanatics, Bangladeshi miscreants (in collusion with locals) may be able eventually to disrupt the secular-democratic fabric of India. A few examples may be provided with reference to West Bengal, which is regarded as the haven or Abhayaranya of terrorists from neighbouring countries. As already noted in this chapter, in January 2002, West Bengal’s chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, legitimately complained about ISI activities in some madrassas in his state. However, subsequently, he was almost compelled to withdraw this complaint on account of severe pressures from, for example, Imams of Kolkata mosques, who went so far as to issue on Friday, 8 February 2002, a threat of withdrawal of political support from the Left Front.92 Despite this totally undeserved affront to a popular and ﬁ nancially honest chief minister, members of the majority community observed self-restraint, and did not retaliate against the detractors of the chief minister. If we remind ourselves of a 1995 statement by the Union minister of state for home, P.M. Sayed, and a statement of Rajya Sabha Member, General Shankar Roychoudhury, in 2000, we can develop a deep appreciation of this self-restraint. For, as these statements indicate, neither New Delhi nor Kolkata is in a position to prevent a sort of ethnic eviction going on inside about a 10-km belt on the West Bengal side of the India–Bangladesh border. Hindus are expelled by force and intimidation by Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants. But there has been no reprisal by members of the majority community. Authorities, however, have not respected this honourable behaviour of the majority community. The authorities have hurt the sentiments, and aroused the suspicions, of the majority

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 community by issuing voter identity cards to illegal migrants in the 10-km belt along the Bangladesh border. This has attracted other illegal immigrants from the interior parts of West Bengal to the border belt, which has virtually ceased to be under the sovereign control of New Delhi or Kolkata.

92 Editorial, The Statesman, 10 February 2002. Relations with Bangladesh 401

A recent decision of the Delimitation Commission for elections further aggravated the situation. State Assembly and Lok Sabha seats for Kolkata were reduced, whereas seats for the border belt were increased. This enhanced the political bargaining power of illegal migrants, and tended to destabilise West Bengal politically, threatening the secular-democratic order. An alarming preview of what can happen on account of a thoughtless government policy was available on 21 November 2007. In Kolkata on 21 November 2007, the protest by Muslim fanatics against acquisition of land for industry by the government got unnecessarily but deliberately mixed up with the demand for expulsion from Kolkata of a lady writer, who had been offering constructive criticisms of all religious scriptures and practices (including those of Islam) for many years. Interestingly, no immediate provocation by her was noticeable on 21 November 2007 or in the recent past. The incident of 21 November was carefully planned much in advance. The police, therefore, requested countermeasures by the Muslim leaders of all political parties in and around the locality where the incident was about to erupt. The Muslim leaders refused to intervene. They adopted the same posture on 21 November when Muslim mobs blocked important crossroads in a central area of Kolkata, and launched violent attacks on vehicles, shops, and also the police, who suffered injuries but did practically nothing against the Muslim rioters. Many of these rioters were illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, and they threw brickbats at houses owned by non- Muslims, although they did not do any damage to houses acquired by illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh in the same area.93 Curfew had to be imposed. The Army had to march in. Peace was restored. A number of Muslim rioters were arrested by the police. But all of them—including those arrested for non-bailable offences under the Indian Penal Code—were released on bail within a few

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 hours. Imams of some Kolkata mosques—who played an important role in inciting the mobs—were not touched. Communal antipathies were aggravated. Fortunately, there was no backlash by members of the majority community. Their self-restraint was admirable. But, how far and how long can one bank upon such self-restraint in view of startling facts coming to light in cases of occasional

93 Arnab Aich, Dainik Statesman, 30 November 2007. 402 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

arrests of Bangladeshi criminals/terrorists in West Bengal. For example, Bangladeshi criminals are taking advantage of the present real estate surge in Kolkata, and making large investments.94 Intelligence teams fail to arrest a number of Bangladeshi terrorists, because the information about their imminent arrest reaches the terrorists so far in advance as to enable them to escape.95 Even the ofﬁ cer-in-charge of a border area police station (Gaighata) does not arrest the notorious Bangladeshi criminal, Abed, who is the principal accused in the case of bomb blasts in Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s meeting (on 24 August 2004). Nor does he arrest the kingpin of smuggling in that area, who provides shelter to Abed, who again receives information from the police station, and avoids arrest whenever New Delhi’s Special Task Force members arrive in the area.96 West Bengal’s policemen have discovered an ISI den in Howrah (the twin city of Kolkata). ISI agents have been using this place for a variety of purposes. It is a temporary habitation for Bangladeshi terrorists bringing money for sleeper cells in India, or explosives, and also providing training in explosives. Local recruits of the ISI are also accommodated in this place, and sent to Bangladesh at suitable moments. The Bangladeshi terrorists belong mostly to LeT and HUJI.97 In West Bengal, in the late 1960s and 1970s, the government wiped out the Naxalites, including hundreds of meritorious students, by tough measures. The question that remains unanswered is why the government of West Bengal today cannot take similarly tough measures against Bangladeshi terrorists supported by the ISI? One must remember that the majority community may not always remain quiescent. In December 1992, after the Ayodhya incident, and in the wake of initial strikes by the minority community in certain Calcutta areas where the police were so helpless that they had to call in the Army to match the ﬁ repower of the miscreants, the majority

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 community—including trained cadres of the highly organised ruling party—staged retaliatory attacks in other areas. If a highly organised party can switch over its allegiance from socialism to capitalism with

94 Times News Network, The Times of India, 10 December 2007. 95 Abhraneel Mukhopadhyay, Dainik Statesman, 10 January 2008. 96 Tarun Ghosh, Dainik Statesman, 22 January 2008. 97 Dainik Statesman, 29 January 2008. Relations with Bangladesh 403

unanticipated promptness, it can also, when pushed to the wall, temper its tolerance with intolerance. This will be a threat to the most priceless treasure of India—a secular-democratic order—unless the Union/state governments draft and carry out an appropriate policy towards Bangladesh, which sticks to the ISI design of spreading terror in India. At a conference of India’s northeast region chief ministers in New Delhi in August 2009, all the chief ministers stressed that infi ltration from Bangladesh posed the biggest threat to the security of the region. Tarun Gogoi, the Assam chief minister, pointed out that terrorist outfi ts like the ULFA and NDFB had secured the support of a foreign intelligence agency, and that Bangladeshi fundamentalist agencies like the HUJI were using Assam as a corridor and a pasture. The chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Dorjee Khandu, drew attention to links between Bangladeshi immigrants and local insurgents. Chief ministers of Meghalaya and Tripura emphasised the lack of proper fences at the border. The chief minister of Tripura also complained of cross-border movement of militants and smuggling of counterfeit currency from Bangladesh. The chief minister of Nagaland argued that, on account of infi l- tration from Bangladesh, Nagaland registered the highest decadal growth of population from 1991 to 2001 in India, viz. 64.41 per cent. Moreover, he warned, during 2007–8, the number of madrassas and mosques rose from 27 to 48.98 It is advisable in this context to be more specifi c on how infi ltration poses a threat to the socio-economic-political stability of West Bengal, a key state in east India. During 1951–2001, in every district of the state there was a decline in the Hindu population, and an extraordinary upswing in the Muslim population. In a number of districts, the rate of growth of the Muslim population has been double or more than double that of the Hindu population. During 1951–2001, growth

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 rates of Hindus and Muslims have been, respectively, 198.54 per cent and 310.93 per cent. In 1951, the population share of Hindus

98 For an elaborate discussion on this and related issues, see Bimal Pramanik, Endangered Demography–Nature and Impact of Demographic Changes in West Bengal 1951–2001, Kolkata, published by the author, 2005, esp. pp. 9–11. For a shorter discussion, see Bimal Pramanik, ‘Inﬁ ltration from Bangladesh: A Critical Analysis’, Dialogue, New Delhi, October-December 2008, pp. 54–62. 404 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and Muslims was, respectively, 78.45 per cent and 19.85 per cent. In the next 50 years, by 2001, the share of Hindus in Bengal dwindled to 72.47 per cent (a decrease of 6 per cent), whereas the share of Muslims rose to 25.25 per cent (an increase of 5.40 per cent).99 In the perspective of the Partition of British India in 1947 on the basis of religion, and the unfortunate (though unavoidable and hypocritically unacknowledged) perpetuation of communal antagonisms as a result of Partition, one aspect of growth of population as per the Indian Census of 2001 deserves special attention. In the age group of 0–6 years, the growth rate of Hindus and Muslims in West Bengal stands at, respectively, 12.69 per cent and 18.7 per cent. Among all religious groups in West Bengal, strikingly, the share of Muslims in the 0–6 age group stands at 33.17 per cent, although the population share of Muslims in the state, as already stated, is only 25.25 per cent. In contrast, the share of Hindus in the 0–6 age group is only 64.61 per cent, in spite of their population share of 72.47 per cent.100 This excessive increase of Muslims in the 0–6 age group points to an ominous consequence. Even if one assumes (although this is an absurd assumption) that there will be no infi ltration in West Bengal till 2040, the Muslims will form a majority in West Bengal by 2040. If infi ltration continues, this demographic change will take place much earlier, by around 2035. Even a person with the purest liberal conscience cannot view this with equanimity. For, it is the lesson of world history that (barring insignifi cant exceptions) whenever Muslims become a majority in a territory, they try to form an independent political entity, and resort to ethnic expulsion.

Enclaves An obvious way to minimise inﬁ ltration and terrorist onslaught is to conduct an exchange of India’s 198 enclaves in Bangladesh Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and Bangladesh’s 92 enclaves in India—including, curiously, a few enclaves inside enclaves. Governments of both the countries have thoroughly discredited themselves by failing to resolve this issue, even though the difﬁ culties are tremendous. The 1958 and

99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. Relations with Bangladesh 405

1974 agreements between the two countries faced some challenges in Indian law courts. These challenges ended by 1990. However, Bangladesh complains that, since then, India has ignored its request for completing the exchange of enclaves. Elsewhere in the world—for example, in the Belgium-Netherlands border—the problem of enclaves has been resolved by cooperation between, for example, postal, telephone, ﬁ re service, and road maintenance agencies of the two countries.101 Such cooperation between India and Bangladesh may be inconceivable at this stage. Perhaps a formula of buying out opponents of enclave exchange on both sides can be tried. A multinational business house (like that of the Ambanis) may be asked by India to devise such a buy-out formula, even if it fails at the stage of execution!

Trade In the sphere of trade, too, a buy-out formula may be evolved, so that the ceaseless complaint/propaganda about Bangladesh’s adverse balance of trade with India can be partially counteracted. Bangladesh, like Pakistan, believes in cutting its nose to spite India’s face. So, it may not agree to offer land-water transhipment rights to India to supply goods to its northeast region for appropriate fees, and thereby substantially reduce the trade gap with India. India can take a unilateral measure to abolish tariffs. Unlike infrastructure development for trade facilitation, and elimination of non-tariff barriers, abolition of tariffs can be done quickly. The disparity in industrial development between the two countries is such that Bangladesh will not be able to sell much to India. Consequently, the annual loss to India may not exceed US$50–60 million. This loss may hopefully be more than compensated by a surge of goodwill towards India.102 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

101 Brendan Whyte, The Statesman, 22–23 July 2007. 102 For details on the issue of India–Bangladesh trade and related matters, see Jyoti Prakash Dutta, ‘Challenges and Prospects of Bangladesh–India Economic Cooperation: Trade and Investment’, in Salman Haidar (ed.), India–Bangladesh: Strengthening the Partnership, Chandigarh: CRRID, 2005, pp. 31–53; and, K.B. Sajjadur Rasheed, ‘Potential for Cooperation in Multimodal Transport’, in Haidar, India–Bangladesh, pp. 54–64. 406 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Ganga Waters The division of the Ganga waters between India and Bangladesh remains a complex problem, in dealing with which the Government of India displays neither a regard for transparency nor for expertise. The 1977 Ganga waters agreement converted a predominantly Indian river, Ganga, into a predominantly Bangladeshi river, although Bangladesh contained less than 1 per cent of the Ganga’s catchment area (to give only one of many important data). It is useful to remind ourselves here that during the vital negotiations leading to the November 1977 accord, the Government of India did not consider it fi t to associate any recognised expert on the Calcutta port, although the Farakka barrage was constructed to save this port. Furthermore, when the agreement was nearing completion, Union Minister Jagjivan Ram went to the unbelievable length of depicting expert comments as ‘embarrassing’.103 Moreover, the 1977 pact, allocating 62.5 per cent of the fl ow at Farakka to Bangladesh, was signed without proper consultation with the Government of West Bengal. The Government of India failed—or did not care—to produce any convincing reason behind its decision. Interestingly, Bangladesh can be credited with giving due importance to the role of scientists and technologists in negotiations on water resource development. B.M. Abbas, the famous water resource engineer of Bangladesh, made it amply clear in Chapter III of his book104 on the Ganga accord of 1977, that at some crucial moments of the above noted negotiations, he, a technical expert, had to deal with a non-expert, India’s then foreign secretary, J.S. Mehta. Actually, Mehta had to evade a suggestion from the Indian prime minister, Morarji Desai, about Mehta accompanying Abbas to Nepal to study the Bangladesh proposal for dams in Nepal for the purpose of augmentation of Ganga’s lean season fl ow. Mehta avoided Morarji Desai’s suggestions by the simple observation: ‘he was not a Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 technical man’. At a highly important stage of the 1977 negotiations on the Ganga waters, that is after the two governments reached an understanding on 18 April 1977 in Dhaka,

It was generally assumed that I [Abbas] would be the leader of the [Bangladesh] negotiating team. The Indian Government thought,

103 Editorial, The Statesman, 5 September 1977. 104 B.M Abbas, The Ganges Water Dispute, Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1982. Relations with Bangladesh 407

however, otherwise and had no hesitation in offi cially intimating the Government of Bangladesh directly as well as through Bangladesh offi cials visiting Delhi, that they were nominating the Indian Foreign Secretary Mr. Jagat Singh Mehta to lead the Indian offi cial team and suggested that his Bangladeshi counterpart lead the Bangladesh team. The Government of Bangladesh was, however, fi rm in selecting me [Abbas] to lead the Bangladesh side.105

The 1996 treaty on the Ganga waters apparently attempted to reduce the 1977 imbalance in the division of the Ganga waters by means of a 50:50 formula. (It should be noted, however, that, according to Helsinki Rules of 1966, Bangladesh, with a catchment area of 0.73 per cent, is entitled to only 375 out of a total of 50,000 cusecs of water fl ow, although population fi gures, etc., may partially raise the entitlement to, say, 10 per cent.) But the statistical base of the 1996 treaty was thoroughly weak. The data for the period 1949–88 (average yield from the water fl ow data) have been assumed to be valid for the period 1996–2026. This is far from realistic, if one keeps in mind the turbulence of the Ganga. The water fl ow data were based on the Central Water Commission (CWC) studies up to 1983. Studies carried out by the Bihar State Irrigation Commission, based on data up to 1993, show the non-monsoon availability of water less than that worked out by the CWC in 1983. The extraordinary bias of the Government of India against technical expertise was apparent. For, experts of the Calcutta Port Trust (CPT) were specifi cally excluded from the crucial negotiations leading to the 1996 Ganga waters treaty. For quite some time, the CPT was not provided with an offi cial copy of this treaty. Nor was the Government of Bihar, which had legitimate rights, bequeathed by geography and history, to a vital share of Ganga waters.106 Not all issues of importance in India–Bangladesh relations have been discussed here in detail. That will require a separate book,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 rather than a single chapter in a book. It is, however, essential to

105 Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘The Farakka Agreement’, International Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, 1978, pp. 244–46. Also, K. Rangaswamy, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 10 December 1980. 106 For some vital information and comments on the 1996 Ganga accord and related matters, see Editorial, The Statesman, 15 February 2002; B.B. Nandy, The Statesman, 16 July 2002; Bikram Sarkar, The Statesman, 25 October 2002; Prasad Sarkar, The Statesman, 30 October 2004. 408 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

stress that the issues survive changes in government, with or without modifi cations. This was true after the caretaker government took over on 11 January 2007 on the promise that it wanted to hold free and fair elections on the basis of a clean (rather than rigged) voters’ list, and, therefore, they stopped the election scheduled for 22 January 2007.107 However, the application of emergency regulations beyond 90 days was not only unconstitutional, it also generated a situation of unacceptable violation of human rights. The people, as Rineeta Naik wrote, ‘must hand over suspects, see them indefi nitely detained without trial, and not cringe when they are brought to courtrooms on stretchers, wearing oxygen masks. They must control their rising horror when the relatives of suspects, including their children, are harassed and threatened.’108 Such was the fi at of the CG. All the usual maladies of Bangladesh—viz. oppression of minorities in Bangladesh, aid to Indian insurgents from the ISI-DGFI combine, assaults of Bangladesh-based terrorists upon India, circulation of counterfeit Indian currency by Bangladeshi criminals, etc.—continued to affl ict India during the tenure of the caretaker government.109 The rule of the caretaker government lasted till the end of December 2008 when a general election was held. Meanwhile, prices of essential goods for daily consumption skyrocketed. The caretaker government’s intrigues for excluding Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia from the election process110 did not succeed. This was, however, more than counterbalanced by the positive performance of the Election Commission. It eliminated 15 million ghost voters from the electoral roll. Its administrative toughness prevented minority-baiters from using their tactics to intimidate, and deprive minority voters of the opportunity to exercise their franchise. These were some of the principal factors behind the Awami League’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 107 Manash Ghosh, The Statesman, 28 February 2008. 108 Rineeta Naik, ‘Bangladesh: The Caretaker’s Burden’, Economic and Political Weekly, 1 September 2007, p. 3542. Also see Muntassir Mamoon, Jugantor Daily, Dhaka, 12 October 2007. 109 A very brief sample of references on these maladies is listed here: Editorial, The Pioneer, 4 September 2007; Bibhuti Bhushan Nandy, The Statesman, 15 February 2008; Rakesh K. Singh, The Pioneer, 27 March 2008; Statesman News Service, The Statesman, 21 December 2008; Richard L. Benkin, The Pioneer, 8 April 2009. 110 Editorial, The Statesman, 7 September 2007. Relations with Bangladesh 409

decisive victory in the December 2008 election.111 New Delhi was happy with the electoral victory of the Awami League. But, as Krishnan Srinivasan wrote: ‘New Delhi’s attitude towards the new government in Dhaka should be one of ‘Trust, but verify’’.112 The caretaker government did a lot of nasty things. For example, it sentenced some Rajshahi University teachers to rigorous imprisonment for two years, because they participated in a silent procession on 21 August 2007 in protest against police atrocities upon Dhaka University students on 20 August 2007.113 Subsequently, however, the caretaker government seemed to brighten its image by paying respect to the freedom fi ghters of 1971. For example, on 9 December 2007, the caretaker government took delivery from a grave in India’s Tripura state, of the remains of an illustrious freedom fi ghter of 1971, Hamidur Rahman, and reburied them at a place in Bangladesh where other freedom fi ghters were buried. ‘This is far beyond the remit of the caretaker Government, but comes as a welcome departure from past policy.’114 This points to an acute (and persistent) confl ict between those who are pro-Pakistan and look upon 1971 as the year of civil war, and others (presumably in the majority) who look upon 1971 as the year of the liberation struggle.115 Bangladesh’s new prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, appears to be determined to hold the trials of war criminals of 1971.116 Pakistan is opposed to it. What will India do? Will it support the Sheikh Hasina government, or, confi rm Z.A. Bhutto’s hypothesis that Indians are inhibited by experiences of hundreds of years of slavery? It may be too embarrassing to pursue this query any further! Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 111 Editorial, Dainik Statesman, 1 January 2009; Editorial, The Times of India, 31 December 2008; Mahfuz Anam, The Daily Star, 1 January 2009. 112 The Telegraph, 31 December 2008. 113 Hiranmay Karlekar, The Pioneer, 6 December 2007. 114 Kanchan Gupta, The Pioneer, 15 December 2007. 115 Editorial, The Statesman, 4 November 2007; Basudeb Dhar, Dainik Statesman, 15 November 2008; Editorial, The Daily Star, 15 November 2007; Muntassir Mamoon, Dainik Statesman, 17 December 2008. 116 See, for example, Dainik Statesman, 24 August 2009. 7 Relations with Nepal

When it is claimed that the relationship between India and Nepal is unique, it may sound clichéd. But it has to be added that a cliché— like this one—can sometimes connote essential truths. One indicator of this uniqueness is that for many centuries these two countries have maintained largely peaceful and friendly links. They shared extensive trade relations in the ancient and medieval eras.1 A related and perhaps more important indicator is that the peoples, rather than the ruling circles or governments, of these two countries have been mainly responsible for these cordial links. The peoples, again, have been vitally inﬂ uenced by geographical, historical, economic, and cultural factors. Religion has provided a stable foundation for cultural ties. India has four extraordinarily holy sites. The Nepalis consider it their spiritual duty to visit these sites. Similarly, Nepal has a number of sacred places, and the Indians regard it as their spiritual obligation to visit these for pilgrimage. ‘There is much that binds and little that divides our two countries except the fact that, politically, the two are separate and distinct entities.’2 Cultural-social propinquity, geographical contiguity, and political proximity have created a situation in which, for ages, the movement of people between territories (now called India and Nepal) has remained free from restrictions. This freedom of movement had been gifted by the people to one another, and is not a ﬁ at of the rulers. Kingdoms in the ancient and medieval ages covered vast areas overlapping territories, which currently form parts of India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and Nepal. This explains the movement of the Sanskrit language, the Gupta script, and architectural designs (with Hindu-Buddhist motifs) to Nepal. Sanskrit appears to have been the language of

1 Jahar Sen, Indo-Nepal Trade, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1977, pp. 15–17. 2 A.R. Deo, ‘India–Nepal: Few Steps, Giant Strides’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 44. (A.R. Deo was former Indian ambassador to Nepal.) Relations with Nepal 411

the court in ancient days, whereas the language of the masses in modern Nepal, viz. Newari, derives 50 per cent of its words from Sanskrit.3 Many kings from parts of present day India’s Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Bihar ﬂ ed to Nepal in order to avoid domination by Muslim invaders.4 For a long time, the royal houses of Nepal and India maintained matrimonial relations. Around 1769, King Prithvi Narayan Shah, through his conquests, laid the foundation of modern Nepal. Subsequently, the British in India too embarked upon a programme of annexation of territories in the 19th century. Eventually, despite the Britain-Nepal War of 1814–16, after the rebellion of 1857 in India, when Nepal rendered signiﬁ - cant aid to the British, the British rewarded Nepal by a cession of territories between the Mahakali and Tapti rivers. Modern Nepal thus consolidated its territorial possessions around 1860. The British treated Nepal as a buffer between China and India.5 In a sort of natural contrast, the founder of modern Nepal, Prithvi Narayan Shah, talked of Nepal as a ‘yam between two boulders’, that is between two mighty neighbours, viz. India and China. Although countless authors have been fond of repeating Prithvi Narayan Shah’s formulation, it is somewhat untenable. For, there are hardly any natural barriers between India and Nepal, with the average height of the mountains on the border varying between 610 and 2,200 metres. Rivers enter India from Nepal through valleys, which have a lower height. Nepal’s terai region merges into India’s Gangetic plains, and lies approximately 215 metres above the sea level. In contrast to this 1,590 kilometre long India–Nepal border, the 1,414 kilometre-long Nepal–China border has mountains with an average height of 6,100 metres. Harsh climatic and terrain conditions make Nepal’s border with China not really attractive for human habitation. Nepal can only trade with Tibet on land, and has no access to the sea through Tibet/China. There cannot thus be an easy movement of people from Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

3 Shriman Narayan, India and Nepal: An Exercise in Open Diplomacy, Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1971, pp. 22–23. (Shriman Narayan was a former Indian ambassador to Nepal.) 4 Ibid., p. 24. Also, Bhola Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment with Democracy, New Delhi: Ankur, 1977, p. 25. 5 Smruti S. Pattanaik, ‘India–Nepal Open Border: Implications for Bilateral Relations and Security’, Strategic Analysis, vol. XXII, no. 3, June 1998, pp. 462–63. Also see, Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 24–25, 28. 412 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Nepal to China, whereas movement is very easy (and economically profi table) to the vast population centres of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal in India.6 Moreover, historically, as Prithvi Narayan Shah’s successors and their prime ministers had experienced, feuds inside the royal court in Nepal were often much more decisive politically than Nepal’s confl icts with China or India. In this context, one may refer to some important developments in Nepal from 1843 to 1856. Matabar Singh Thapa was appointed the prime minister as well as the commander- in-chief by the King in 1843. Thapa’s nephew, Jang Bahadur, murdered his uncle in 1845. He massacred or banished a large number of his rivals or potential rivals. He extorted from the king the exalted title of the Rana for himself and his family/descendants. Jang Bahadur not only consolidated his power as the prime minister of Nepal but also converted it into a hereditary offi ce forcing the king to confer on him the title of the Maharaja—probably a unique feat in world history. He went so far as to strip the king of all his administrative powers and functions, compelling the king to confi ne himself to his palace.7 At the same time, Jang Bahadur was crafty enough to maintain good relations with the British Indian rulers, ensuring Nepal’s political independence.8 The rulers of British India too wanted to maintain cordial relations with Nepal, partly because they favoured the movement of Nepalis to India for tangible commercial military benefi ts. As British companies established tea plantations in India’s northeast region, they imported Nepali labourers, and encouraged them to settle down. These settlements were so vast in some areas that the number of Nepali migrants exceeded the number of local people.9

6 Sangeeta Thapliyal, ‘Movement of Population between India and Nepal:

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Emerging Challenges’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 23, no. 5, August 1999, p. 778. Also, Lopita Nath, The Nepalis in Assam, Kolkata: Minerva, 2003, p. 43. 7 Actually, ‘the King enjoyed less freedom than his palace guards’. See, Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 2. 8 Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 26–27. Also, Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 28. 9 R.L. Sarkar, ‘Some Ecological Considerations for Tea Growing in the Eastern Himalayas’, in S.K. Chaube (ed.), The Himalayas: Proﬁ les of Modernisation and Adoption, New Delhi: Sterling, 1985, p. 52. Relations with Nepal 413

The British East India Company, moreover, wanted to recruit Gurkhas to the British Indian Army. But the Rana government of Nepal was unwilling to allow this recruitment. Therefore, the British East India Company adopted a policy of inducing the Gurkhas to set up habitations in the hills of north and northeast India.10 Furthermore, the rapacity of the Rana rulers left many impoverished Nepali villagers with little choice but to move in quest of livelihood to India (whereas they could not certainly move to China).11 The Rana regime concentrated all civil and military powers in the hands of the Maharaja, the most senior member of the family, while the post of the commander-in-chief of the Army went to the second most senior member. The Ranas were divided into three categories—A, B and C—on the basis of seniority, as also legitimacy of birth. The Ranas did not believe in democracy. They did not promote socio-economic changes conducive to modernity. But there was ‘no doubt that the Rana regime brought in a long period of peace and stability in the Government. Centralisation of power in a single man checked the drift towards disintegration caused by endless warfare among the older families’.12 The rule of the Ranas was basically oppressive and anti-progress, and therefore resistance, facilitated by contact with India, was inevitable. Although the Ranas effectively stopped contact with other countries, they could not obstruct the people of the terai (especially) from building contacts with India. Low class Ranas, feeling deprived at home, moved to India and established businesses there. Political dissidents too shifted to India. They—including future prime ministers like B.P. Koirala and M.P. Koirala—came under the inﬂ uence of the Indian nationalist movement. They joined the Civil Disobedience and Quit India Movements of India. Moreover, in the 1920s and 1930s, anti-Rana agitators set up moderate as also extremist organisations, which led to arrests and executions. The Rana regime

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 imprisoned Indian socialist leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia (who ﬂ ed to Nepal in 1942). The formation

10 Thapliyal, ‘Movement of Population’, p. 779. 11 Nath, Nepalis in Assam, p. 41. 12 Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 27. 414 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of the Interim Government in India in 1946 stirred up enthusiasm among Nepal’s anti-Rana activists.13 The establishment of the Nepali Congress in April 1950 consolidated the anti-Rana and pro-democracy forces in Nepal. There existed at the time a widely held view that the nominal ruler of Nepal, King Tribhuvan, had secret contacts with the Nepali Congress, which had conducted the campaign to liberate Nepal from Rana rule.14 Tribhuvan and his family left the palace on 6 November 1950, and found sanctuary at the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. Almost immediately, the Nepali Congress stepped up its violent campaign, imprisoning the governor and other ofﬁ cials at Birganj. The Mukti Sena, an afﬁ liate of the Nepali Congress, formed a parallel government in Birganj. In the same month, November 1950, the small town of Parasi in western terai was captured by anti-Rana agitators under K.I. Singh’s leadership. Meanwhile, on 10 November 1950, New Delhi dispatched a special aircraft to Kathmandu, and brought Tribhuvan (as also his family) to India. Prime Minister Mohan Shamsher Rana played a trick. He proclaimed that Gyanendra, the three-year-old grandson of Tribhuvan, was the Maharajadhiraj (head of the state) of Nepal. India disagreed, and insisted on recognising Tribhuvan as Nepal’s head of state. New Delhi forwarded a memorandum to Kathmandu on 8 December 1950, which proposed that the government of Nepal should convene a Constituent Assembly composed exclusively of elected members. It further proposed the formation of an interim popular government, which would also include the present prime minister and some members of the Rana family. Mohan Shamsher Rana yielded. He extended recognition to Tribhuvan as the king of Nepal, and decided to form an Interim Cabinet with 50 per cent representing the people, as also to organise elections to the Constituent Assembly by 1952. Tribhuvan returned to Kathmandu on 15 February 1951. A Royal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Proclamation of 18 February created a new Council of Ministers, and pledged a democratic Constitution, signalling the termination of the Rana autocracy that had lasted about a century.15

13 Ibid., pp. 29–30. Also, G.P. Bhattacharjee, India and Politics of Modern Nepal, Calcutta: Minerva, 1970, pp. 18–26. 14 Ibid., pp. 32–35. 15 Ibid., pp. 31–32. Also, Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 35. Relations with Nepal 415

India thus played a positive part in Nepal’s democratic evolution. In the words of Rishikesh Shaha (who later became a foreign minister of Nepal),

the Nepali freedom movement in the real sense had its origin in the Indian soil, and to a large extent the Indian nationalist movement served as a model and inspiration to the Nepalese….. The Nepalese can never be too grateful to India for the support she lent them in their struggle for democratic rights and freedom.16

India performed a function that was exceedingly complex and not above controversy. Its attempts to strike a balance between ethics and realism deserved praise. In accordance with strict ethical considerations, India should not have interfered in Nepal’s internal affairs. But, from the standpoint of national security, especially when China was colonising Tibet, India could not afford to let things drift beyond control in Nepal. For, failing to reach a peaceful compromise with Mohan Shamsher Rana for the purpose of initiating a democratic process, B.P. Koirala and other leaders of the Nepali Congress had started, with substantial assistance from leaders of the Socialist Party of India, a violent insurrection. The Indian government provided indirect but not insignifi cant support—striking a middle path in some sense. The same path was followed when the Indian government brought together three parties—King Tribhuvan, the Rana prime minister, and the Nepali Congress—in negotiations that took place in New Delhi. These negotiations led to the return of Tribhuvan to Kathmandu and the Royal Proclamation of 18 February 1951, inaugurating an Interim Cabinet with fi ve ministers each from the Rana group and the Nepali Congress, although Mohan Shamsher Rana remained the prime minister. Negotiations in New Delhi had been carried out by Indian offi cials informally, there being no formal conference and a written agreement. A number of Nepali

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Congress leaders felt deprived because, despite launching a violent revolution and promising Nepalis a democratic socialist polity, they found themselves rather weak in February 1951. They were not in a position to ﬁ ght New Delhi. They accepted a compromise.

16 Rishikesh Shaha, Nepal and the World, Kathmandu: Khoj Parishad, Nepali Congress, 1955, p. 38. 416 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India too preferred a middle-of-the-road compromise between the ancient order and modern aspirations in Nepal.17 Foreign policy analysts are entitled to the privilege of using hindsight for an objective evaluation of foreign policies, past and present. Independent India’s foreign policy could not be an exact replica of British Indian foreign policy. But there was no reason to discard some essential tenets of British Indian foreign policy, which safeguarded India’s security. The British devoted a good deal of thought and action to the defence of India’s northern frontier, which dictated the urgent need for defence of Nepal’s northern frontier. Rhetorically, the Himalayas provided an impregnable barrier. Actually, there are passes through which invaders have moved from Tibet to Nepal and vice versa. In the 7th century, Song-tsan Gampo, the celebrated Tibetan ruler, invaded India through Nepal. The Gurkhas, again, marched into Tibet in 1790. The Chinese attacked Nepal in 1792. Jang Bahadur Rana of Nepal invaded Tibet in 1856. The British permitted the Rana rulers of Nepal to exercise complete internal autonomy and practise absolutism, but enforced strict controls on their external relations. If this was the ﬁ rst line of defence or buffer, the second lay in Tibet. The British succeeded in resisting the imposition of a Russian Protectorate over Tibet. Both Britain and Russia found it mutually convenient to preserve the myth of nominal Chinese authority (misleadingly titled suzerainty) over Tibet, and this was stipulated in the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Both Britain and Russia thus deprived each other of the opportunity to rule Tibet, whereas China was too weak to be seriously considered. Thus, Britain had a second buffer in Tibet, especially after the Simla Convention of 1914, which ordained that China would not maintain any army in Outer Tibet, which touched the Indian frontier.18 Independent India’s task was much more difﬁ cult than that of British India. For, India could not extend any political support to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Rana autocracy, and could not prevent Nepali migrants in India from campaigning for democracy in Nepal. After all, these campaigners derived immense inspiration from the Indian freedom movement, and, unlike the Ranas, the British did not reduce an overwhelming

17 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 33–34; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 36–38. 18 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 9–12. Relations with Nepal 417

majority of Indians to the status of serfs. Moreover, independent India faced a much more diffi cult situation than British India, because Communist China was fi rmly and forcibly establishing complete domination over Tibet. In this perspective, the actions of Indian policy makers, culminating in the informal Delhi compact of 1951 and King Tribhuvan’s Proclamation of 18 February 1951, deserve much more critical scrutiny than they have usually received. India (as has been noted in the chapter on India’s relations with China in this book) adopted a faulty policy towards Tibet, and lost the second buffer on the northern frontier. In Jammu and Kashmir, again (as has been noted in the chapter on India’s relations with Pakistan in this book), India adopted a mistaken policy, and vitally endangered its security on the Pakistan frontier. The policy towards Nepal, therefore, could have been better planned, and made more conducive to security on the northern frontier. Rhetorically, one could denounce policies of spheres of infl uence and buffer states. Actually, the supreme obligation to maintain national security made it inescapable to build up spheres of infl uence and buffer states (without openly proclaiming it). If so, the arrangement that India ordained in Nepal (which certainly turned many of its Nepali admirers into sceptics if not adversaries) was far from satisfactory. India could not preserve the pretence that it was not interfering in Nepal’s internal affairs. At the same time, it virtually dictated an arrangement that created deep insecurity for India as it prolonged internal tensions in a three-cornered contest between the king, the Ranas, and Nepali Congress. Nobody was happy with the outcome. Nobody trusted anybody. The Nepali Congress leaders—who suffered a lot for decades while fi ghting Rana repression—were probably the most disappointed lot. India could even be blamed for aborting (even if involuntarily) the 1950–51 revolution in Nepal.19 According to a leading journalist of Nepal, M.R. Josse, ‘post-1950

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Nepal–India relations’ were ‘characterized by a paradox’.

Although India contributed in making successful the ﬁ nal efforts of the revolution of 1950–51, …it was perhaps the very intimacy of this relationship which was responsible for its deterioration at a later date. Thus, in contradiction to normal expectations, Nepal–India ties

19 Ibid., p. 43; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 36, 38, 40, 46. 418 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

began to deteriorate rather than improve. Marking this deterioration was the steady rise of anti-Indian sentiment in Nepal.20

In the words of a former foreign secretary of India, Jagat S. Mehta, ‘It must…be honestly recognized that with no country has there been as monstrous, monumental and avoidable a failure of diplomacy as between India and Nepal’.21 Such observations sound all the more disappointing when one reminds oneself that in 1950–51 Tribhuvan considered favourably Nepal’s accession to the Indian Union.22 Truth and national sensitivities cannot always go together. If, therefore, it is argued from the standpoint of prospects for fulﬁ lment of the basic needs of the poor in Nepal—as also for the advancement of democratic rights—that accession to India in 1950 was preferable to the India-monitored February 1951 arrangement—which nearly laid the foundation for decades of chronic instability, royal autocracy, and fragile democracy till the ﬁ rst decade of the 21st century—it may hurt the nationalist sentiments of the Nepalis. Nevertheless, one can go a step further and argue that from the same standpoint, even the annexation of Nepal by British India (which was averted by sheer accident) was preferable to Rana autocracy. In this perspective, one has to examine the India–Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty of 31 July 1950. Mohan Shamsher Rana was then the prime minister of Nepal. He appeared to be interested in continuing with free India the same policy of adjustment that he and his Rana predecessors had followed vis-à-vis British India for safeguarding Nepal’s security and commercial interests. The Ranas, writes S.D. Muni, ‘were keen to conclude the Treaty in view of the developments in China and Tibet’.23 Some members of the Nepali elite subsequently speculated that the Ranas, by means of the 31 July treaty, wanted to court India in a situation where resistance to Rana repression was growing.24 This speculation, as already discussed in this chapter, was incorrect. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

20 M.R. Josse, Nepal and the World: An Editor’s Notebook, vol. 1, Kathmandu, published by the author, 1984, pp. 1–2. 21 Jagat S. Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations: A Victim of Politics’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 26. 22 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 49; Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, p. 26. 23 S.D Muni, ‘India and Nepal: Erosion of Relationship’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 12, no. 4, July 1989, p. 342. 24 Pattanaik, ‘India–Nepal Open Border’, p. 467. Relations with Nepal 419

Provisions of the India–Nepal treaty of 1950, and the Letters exchanged along with it, were signifi cant in many ways. First, they refl ected the genuine security concerns of the two countries, and their determination to cope with them in a cooperative manner. Therefore, Article 1 of the treaty pledged ‘everlasting peace and friendship’ and promised not to ‘tolerate any threat to the security of the other by a foreign aggressor’. Moreover, Para 1 of the Letters affi rmed, ‘to deal with such threat, the two governments shall consult with each other and devise effective countermeasures’, whereas in para 5 of the Letters, India and Nepal ‘agreed not to employ any foreigners whose activities may be prejudicial to the security of the other’. Nepal being a landlocked country in need of arms imports from overseas, para 2 of the Letters prescribed that Nepal would procure such arms with ‘the assistance and agreement of Government of India’. The importance of these provisions of the 1950 Treaty/Letters can be realised more keenly with reference to the India–Nepal agreement of November 1947, which dealt with the recruitment of Gurkhas from Nepal in the Indian Army—a practice that was started by Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore in 1815, and later adopted by the British rulers of India. India has undoubtedly benefi ted from the services of Gurkha soldiers from Nepal. It should be stressed, however, that Gurkhas have homes in some of the poorest areas in Nepal, and their remittances/pensions have been of invaluable help to their homeland.25 Second, provisions of the 1950 India–Nepal treaty/Letters sought to build up a sort of economic union, which would enable both the countries to expedite economic development and modernisation. Thus, nationals of one country were to receive equal and reciprocal treatment in the territories of the other country not merely ‘in the matters of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and privileges of a similar nature’, but

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 also ‘with regard to the participation in industrial and economic development of such territory’. But there was a well thought out and much-needed safeguard for Nepali nationals. They were, ‘for

25 Ashok K. Mehta, ‘Ex-Servicemen and India–Nepal Relations’, in India– Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 89. Also see, Lok Raj Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 76; Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 342–43. 420 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

some time to come’, and subject to ‘mutual agreement between the two governments’, protected from ‘unrestricted competition’ with Indian nationals. By way of reciprocation, Nepal agreed to grant— excepting the UN and its specialised agencies—precedence to the Indian government and nationals with regard to development of industries or natural resources in Nepal, provided the terms offered by any third country government or foreign nationals were not more favourable than those offered by the Indian government or nationals. All this can arouse interesting speculation; that India tried to use economic means to promote her security interests.26 In 1950, along with the Letters and the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, India and Nepal signed a Treaty of Trade and Commerce. As a land-locked and India-locked country, Nepal required facilities for transit through India with respect to trade between some parts of Nepal, as also trade with other countries. These facilities were certainly important even though at that moment trade with India comprised 90 per cent of Nepal’s foreign trade. India–Nepal trade has been inextricably linked with movements of population between the two countries for centuries, even though the 1950 treaty has endowed this movement with legality. It may be recalled in this context that the kings of Nepal encouraged Indians to settle down in Nepal’s terai region for centuries, so that they would cultivate the fertile land and provide revenues, which would enable the kings to live in luxury, and also engage in military adventures. The Hill people of Nepal, it should be added, were reluctant to settle down in the terai with a much warmer climate and the scourge of malaria. After the British built the railways in India, Indian entrepreneurs found it easy to establish industries/shops within Nepal, sometimes on both sides of the border, and engaged in exports/imports through an (unofﬁ cially but traditionally) open border.27 It is interesting to record the convergent march of India–Nepal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 security-economic interests in the 1950s. The two countries decided to establish check posts along Nepal’s border with China in 1951.

26 Padmaja Murthy, ‘India and Nepal: Security and Economic Dimensions’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 23, no. 9, December 1999, p. 1531. Also, Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’; Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 344. 27 Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 1534; Pattanaik, ‘India–Nepal Open Border’, p. 464. Relations with Nepal 421

These were manned jointly by India’s wireless and Nepal’s military personnel, so that India could obtain reports on China’s military activities. Moreover, at Nepal’s request in 1952, India dispatched to Nepal the Indian Military Mission (IMM), which was to train and modernise the Nepali Army, and enable Kathmandu to cope with external as also internal threats. India spent Nepali Rupees (NR) 70,018,000 in Nepal during 1951–56 in order to construct airports, roads, canals, irrigation and water supply channels, etc., whereas during that period foreign aid received by Nepal from various countries totalled NR 94,969,000.28 It is remarkable that the Letters exchanged between India and Nepal, simultaneously with the signing of the treaty, were not published till 1959.29 This tended to set off speculation that India, obviously the more powerful treaty partner, had something to hide. Some Nepalis could suffer from a feeling that Indian entanglement in Nepal’s affairs was unnecessarily deep.30 After all, there was nothing in the treaty and Letters to indicate that the treaty was unequal, even though it was not incumbent upon India to prove that she was being altruistic. In the words of A.R. Deo: ‘Our relationship is ancient and did exist without any formal treaty till the beginning of the 19th century. It has evolved and the 1950 treaty merely formalizes what has been the situation on the ground’.31 Nevertheless, the arrangement of 18 February 1951—recognised as being sponsored by New Delhi—generated such political instability that many Nepalis started accusing New Delhi (not always rationally) of imposing a settlement upon Nepal without much foresight about probable consequences, especially the inevitable tussles between the king, the Ranas, and democratic forces represented by such leaders of the Nepali Congress as B.P. Koirala. The Royal Proclamation of 18 February 1951 installed a 10-member coalition government. Mohan Shamsher Rana was made the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 prime minister and B.P. Koirala became the home minister. ‘The experiment commenced only to fail.’32

28 Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 1534. 29 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 39. Also, A.G. Noorani, The Statesman, 5 April 1995. 30 Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 1535. 31 Deo, ‘India–Nepal’, p. 48. 32 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 47. 422 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Tribhuvan’s Tenure The Ranas had put King Tribhuvan in a state of virtual political emasculation. But for the role performed by the Nepali Congress and India, Tribhuvan would not have been able to return to Kathmandu from political exile in India, and gain respectability as a monarch. He should have been willing to act upon the undocumented (but wholly legitimate) wishes of the Nepali Congress and India to treat himself as a ceremonial head of the state, and promote democracy. But he did not. Tribhuvan had practically no political experience. Instead, he began to engage in unsavoury politicking. He tried to remove Prime Minister Mohan Shamsher Rana and acquire substantial powers for himself. He wanted to become a governing rather than reigning monarch. B.P. Koirala, an experienced political leader, had no difﬁ culty in comprehending that powers, once transferred from the Rana prime minister to King Tribhuvan, were unlikely later to be vested in the people or their representatives, like the Nepali Congress leaders. Unfortunately, the manoeuvres of the king succeeded, and, on 30 March 1951, the Interim Government of Nepal Act (also known as the Interim Constitution of Nepal) transferred nearly all the powers of the prime minister to the king. This naturally created deep political instability, which was hardly conducive to the establishment of democratic institutions. The Ranas, accustomed to political supremacy for decades, were not expected to acquiesce in such a complete surrender. They set up the Gorkha Dal to oust the interim government. B.P. Koirala, the home minister, had no option but to carry out pre-emptive arrests of some powerful Ranas, which led the Gorkha Dal workers to attack the jail, and forcibly release their leaders. Intervention by the Army led to the rearrest of the Gorkha Dal leaders. But King Tribhuvan got an opportunity to assert his authority. He changed the composition of the Council of Ministers.33 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 If the power-hungry Ranas had dealt a blow to the feeble steps being taken towards nurturing democracy in Nepal, so did the power-starved Nepali Congress leaders, especially M.P. Koirala (the party president and B.P. Koirala’s half-brother) who did not ﬁ nd

33 Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 33–34. Also, Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 47–48. Relations with Nepal 423

a place in the Council of Ministers. M.P. Koirala and his followers went so far as to slander their Nepali Congress colleagues like B.P. Koirala for running a government in association with the Ranas. Eventually, B.P. Koirala and his Nepali Congress colleagues had to resign from the Council of Ministers. So did Mohan Shamsher Rana. All this only enhanced the authority of the king and weakened the democratic forces. King Tribhuvan set up a new Council of Ministers on 16 November 1951. M.P. Koirala became the prime minister. India too did not seem to play a proper part at this time. C.P.N. Singh was then the Indian ambassador to Kathmandu. He was not equipped to cope with the complexities of Nepali politics. He behaved in such an overbearing fashion as to create problems for the Nepali Congress and India. C.P.N. Singh did not visit the Kathmandu Secretariat. He did something totally improper: he asked Nepali ministers to meet him at the Indian embassy. This only enabled some Nepalis to criticise the Nepali Congress for its subservience to India.34 India’s policy towards Nepal, thus, could be branded unethical and also unrealistic. It should be stressed here that in December 1950 India proposed the election of a constituent assembly, and, in January 1951, Nepal accepted this proposal. But the constituent assembly never came into existence.35 Evidently, the king was not interested in forming a constituent assembly. On the contrary, he could take advantage of dissensions within the Nepali Congress (the principal citadel of democratic forces) to consolidate his own power. The Nepali Congress was the largest and the most popular political party in Nepal, and B.P. Koirala was indisputably its pre-eminent leader. But the king did not offer him any berth in the Cabinet that he formed on 16 November 1951 with M.P. Koirala as the prime minister. This only aggravated dissensions within the Nepali Congress, whose Working Committee expelled M.P. Koirala from the party in July

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1952. The king, however, allowed M.P. Koirala to continue as the prime minister. M.P. Koirala at least realised that his position was untenable. He had the good sense to resign on 6 August 1952. The king at that time, if he had had a deep interest in strengthening democracy in Nepal, should have invited the president of the

34 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 50–52; Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 34. 35 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, p. 43. 424 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Nepali Congress, B.P. Koirala, to form a new Cabinet. Instead, on 14 August 1952, the king demonstrated his capacity for sordid politicking by forming an Advisory Committee of fi ve members, who, with General Kesar Shamsher as the chief adviser, were to assist the monarch in running Nepal’s administration.36 King Tribhuvan persisted in debilitating democratic elements in Nepal. M.P. Koirala established a new political party, Rashtriya Praja Party, after he was expelled from the Nepali Congress. The popular base of the new party was weak. This was confi rmed on 2 September 1953, when, at the municipal election in Kathmandu, M.P. Koirala’s party failed to win even one seat. Yet, on 15 June 1953, King Tribhuvan disbanded the 10-month old Advisory Committee (which merely sanctifi ed his personal supremacy), and invited M.P. Koirala to form a new Cabinet. The Nepali Congress decided to fi ght for democracy by forming a united front with some smaller parties in Nepal, viz. the Praja Parishad of Tanka Prasad Acharya, and the Rashtriya Congress of D.R. Regmi. Tribhuvan retaliated by issuing a Royal Proclamation on 18 February 1954, which reconstituted the Cabinet, headed by M.P. Koirala, including representatives from such small parties as Praja Parishad, Rashtriya Congress, and Jana Congress (of Bhadra Kali Mishra), but excluding the Nepali Congress. Tribhuvan’s thoroughly undemocratic manoeuvre did not succeed, and one could doubt whether he himself wanted the same to succeed, for his principal aim appeared to be to discredit democracy and empower monarchy. The small parties failed to maintain discipline among their followers, and M.P. Koirala’s Cabinet suffered so many defeats in the legislature that he was compelled to resign in early 1955, when an ailing Tribhuvan was in Europe for medical treatment. Before he left for Europe, however, he did not hesitate to take steps to throttle parliamentary democracy by, for example, mandating that ministers in M.P. Koirala’s shaky Cabinet would act on the principle of individual responsibility,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and not on the normal principle of collective responsibility in a parliamentary democracy.37

36 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 44–45; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 34–35. 37 Anirudha Gupta, ‘Nepali Congress and Post-Panchayat Politics’, Indian Journal of Nepalese Studies, Special Issue, vols V & VI, 1995–96 (Varanasi), p. 2. Also, Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 45–46; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 60, 72; Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 36. Relations with Nepal 425

Meanwhile, India–Nepal relations deteriorated, and political parties in Nepal, unable to counteract the king’s anti-democratic moves, focused on quarrelling among themselves, which further strengthened the king’s autocratic tendencies. Moreover, political parties and leaders vented their frustration by heaping accusations upon India. This was helped by

the unimaginative and assertive functioning of the Indian Embassy. For whatever went wrong, and much did go wrong in those days, India was held responsible…. Even the Nepali Congress was no exception, if not for any other reason at least to escape the opprobrium of being an echo of New Delhi.38

The Nepali Congress struck a populist posture, and criticised the presence of Indian technicians and military advisers in Nepal, even though this was decided upon by mutual consultation between India and Nepal, and designed to serve mutual interests.39

Mahendra’s Manoeuvres What the squabbling politicians probably failed to realise is that their sponsorship of an anti-Indian lobby could whet the autocratic ambitions of the monarch. Even before King Tribhuvan’s death, his son, Crown Prince Mahendra, returned to Kathmandu with a Royal Proclamation that vested in him all the powers of the king. He accepted the resignation of Prime Minister M.P. Koirala (already submitted to King Tribhuvan, the absentee monarch, who was in Europe). Mahendra also dissolved the Cabinet, and decreed direct rule by the monarch. On 13 March 1955, following King Tribhuvan’s death, Mahendra occupied the throne.40 On 8 May 1955, King Mahendra held a large political conference attended by various political parties and social organisations of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Nepal. He did not hesitate to hint at his political predilections while addressing his audience, informing them of how, in the span of the previous four years, about 30 ministers had manned a few Cabinets,

38 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 53. 39 The Statesman, 15 March 1953 and 2 June 1954. 40 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, p. 46; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 68; Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 36. 426 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and had achieved little beyond squabbling amongst themselves and conspiring towards eventual self-destruction. On 8 August 1955, in view of the deliberations at this conference, King Mahendra announced that a general election was to take place in October 1957. But then he also decided to foment the bickering among the various political leaders. As the announcement of a general election encouraged the Nepali Congress, the Nepali Rashtriya Congress, and the Praja Parishad to put forward a concerted request for the formation of a Cabinet by them, collectively or singly, King Mahendra sabotaged this proposal by agreeing to invite two representatives from each of these three parties (in addition to two to four independents), but insisting that the three parties had to restrict themselves to choosing their Cabinet nominees from the panel of names dictated by Mahendra himself.41 This was unacceptable to the political parties who formed a sort of united front, although they submitted even to such an unreasonable demand that no prime minister, but the King would preside over Cabinet meetings. This merely conﬁ rmed what King Mahendra had said at the political conference on 8 May 1955: ‘I am emphatic that I am quite unable to be a passive onlooker of the ruination of the country in the name of democracy.’42 At any rate, King Mahendra was determined to derail democracy in Nepal! Mahendra appeared bent upon reducing political leaders to puppets, reminding one of the powerful civil-military bureaucrats in Pakistan playing similar tricks and paving the way for a military takeover of Pakistan in 1958. King Mahendra was preparing for a full-ﬂ edged monarchical takeover. That might explain why, suddenly, on 27 January 1956, instead of launching preparations for a general election and a new constitution, King Mahendra appointed Tanka Prasad Acharya of the Praja Parishad as Nepal’s prime minister. The king did so not merely because Tanka Prasad was known to be the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 most pliable political leader, but also because he wanted to destroy the emergence of a united front of political parties led by the Nepali Congress. The political strength of Tanka Prasad’s Praja Parishad hardly warranted such an appointment. Tanka Prasad made it very clear that he would abide by King Mahendra’s dictates to damage

41 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, p. 46; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 74. Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 36. 42 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 75. Relations with Nepal 427

the prospects for democracy in Nepal. He did not make preparations for the election of a constituent assembly. Instead, he announced that the king would grant a Constitution, and that a Parliament (and not a constituent assembly) would emerge from a general election. Irrespective of the facts that this did not conform to the Indian memorandum of December 1950 and a solemn pledge by King Tribhuvan, Tanka Prasad failed to arrange any general election because he did not have the capacity to sustain the solidarity of his Cabinets. Tanka Prasad was compelled to resign in the fi rst week of July 1957 (certainly without any deviation from King Mahendra’s script).43 Tanka Prasad’s brief tenure as prime minister was notable for some activities in the fi eld of foreign relations. Shortly before he took offi ce as prime minister, India rightly took an initiative so that, in December 1955, Nepal became a member of the UN. Nepal began to build close relations with China even before it became a UN member. On 1 August 1955, Nepal established diplomatic relations with China. Nepal signed a Treaty of Friendship with China on 20 September 1956, which repeated the Indian mistake of 1954, of recognising China’s sovereignty over Tibet. Like India, Nepal too gave up certain privileges it enjoyed in Tibet. In those dizzy days of ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’, India did not mind the growth of Nepal–China friendship, and China too did not mind the progress of Nepal–India friendship. China did not even bother about the professedly special relationship between Nepal and India. China agreed to provide economic assistance of `60 million to Nepal over a period of three years. Tanka Prasad secured this assistance during his visit to China in October 1956. Soon afterwards, Tanka Prasad visited India, and President Rajendra Prasad visited Nepal on a state visit. Whereas Rajendra Prasad might have displeased King Mahendra by equating any threat to Nepal’s security and peace with that to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India, the Chinese prime minister, Zhou Enlai, in course of his visit to Nepal in January 1957, seemed to reassure King Mahendra when he announced that the Chinese and the Nepalis were blood brothers, and that nothing could spoil their relationship.44

43 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 46–47; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 76; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 36–37. 44 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 46–47; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 78–80; Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 37. 428 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

After Tanka Prasad Acharya resigned, King Mahendra’s malevolence manifested in the most malicious manner. He held long meetings with B.P. Koirala, enticing him to form the Cabinet. He also had dialogues with leaders of other political parties.

But he took care not to concede anything that might contradict his scheme of political strategy. He saw to it that the political parties were kept on tenterhooks, and at the same time did not stray too far from the centre of power, the monarchy. In ﬁ ne, the political parties and their leaders were obliged to depend on his charity.45

In the course of discussions, B.P. Koirala suggested that Subarna Shamsher of the Nepali Congress be appointed prime minister. King Mahendra held talks with Subarna Shamsher. Afterwards, he resorted to the perfidious flattery that B.P. Koirala, being the leader of the most powerful political party in Nepal, deserved the post of prime minister, but only after a general election. Amazingly, but in accordance with his script of weakening democracy in Nepal, King Mahendra chose K.I. Singh (who had led an abortive armed revolt against Kathmandu in the early 1950s, and then ﬂ ed to China where he spent some years) as the successor to Tanka Prasad Acharya. On becoming prime minister, K.I. Singh unleashed full-scale repression upon the political parties and the press. The king dismissed K.I. Singh on 14 November 1957, less than four months after his appointment. Meanwhile, on 6 October 1957, King Mahendra issued a Proclamation that it would not be possible to hold the general election (as announced previously) on the Full Moon Day of October 1957. This resulted in political upheaval in Nepal. The Nepali Congress, the Nepal Rashtriya Congress, and the Praja Parishad established a Democratic Front. They threatened to launch a civil disobedience movement. The king panicked at the thought of a civil war, and issued a Proclamation on 15 December, 46 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 which promised a general election in February 1959. One wonders what New Delhi was doing while King Tribhuvan and King Mahendra were staging the most vile manoeuvres to forestall the emergence of democracy in Nepal, although, obviously,

45 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 83–84. 46 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, p. 47; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 84; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 37–38. Relations with Nepal 429

a stable democracy in Nepal was patently conducive to India’s national interests. King Mahendra ‘outwitted everybody, his source of strength being the traditional loyalty of the Army, the people’s attachment to the monarchy, and the immaturity, expediency and opportunism of the personality-centred political parties’.47 Like his father, Tribhuvan, King Mahendra too was totally opposed to the election of a sovereign constituent assembly (which was likely to decimate the monarchy). On 16 March 1958, the king appointed the Draft Constitution Committee. On 15 May 1958, a Royal Proclamation appointed a provisional government, headed by Subarna Shamsher of the Nepali Congress. On 12 February 1959, the king abrogated the Interim Government of Nepal Act of 1951, and proclaimed a new constitution. The constitution refl ected King Mahendra’s megalomania, making him, that is the Maharajadhiraj, and not the people or Parliament, the source of sovereignty. The people of Nepal were indeed lucky that the constitution recognised a few fundamental rights. There was a lower house, the Pratinidhi Sabha, and an upper house, the Maha Sabha. Although the king was the constitutional head of a Cabinet system, powers of the prime minister and the king were not properly defi ned—perhaps deliberately—so that there would be disputes enabling the king to assert his authority.48 The provisional government held the general election in time. Its success and effi ciency were easily recognisable.49 Politicians in Nepal proved, despite the manipulations of the king, that they could carry out their essential duties towards the people. The Nepali Congress remained the main target of the king, but the party ‘showed remarkable resilience to stand up against the forces of reaction and palace intrigues’.50 Eleven parties contested the 1959 general elections. The Nepali Congress won a two-thirds majority in the Pratinidhi Sabha, securing 37.2 per cent of the votes cast.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Although King Mahendra did not want B.P. Koirala to become the prime minister, there was no option due to B.P. Koirala’s unrivalled

47 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 85. 48 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 47–48, 85–86; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 85; Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 38. 49 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, p. 48. 50 Gupta, ‘Nepali Congress’, p. 2. 430 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

sway over the Nepali Congress.51 The king was not at all happy with this turn of events: ‘His calculations were that no single party would get an absolute majority, and consequently there would be no scope for a one-party government.’52 B.P. Koirala was sporting enough to inform Mahendra that his deputy in the Nepali Congress, Subarna Shamsher Rana (who was also close to King Mahendra), could be appointed a prime minister. Nevertheless, in May 1959, King Mahendra appointed B.P. Koirala prime minister, while in all probability chalking up his future plan of action.53 B.P. Koirala became Nepal’s prime minister at a time when India–China relations were deteriorating. India, therefore, should have remained cautious while making any statement on Nepal. For, B.P. Koirala, despite his deep friendship towards India, had to avoid criticism from political opponents who were ready to accuse him of subservience to India without caring for facts. On 27 November 1959, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated in the Indian Parliament that any aggression upon Nepal or Bhutan was to be judged as an aggression upon India. This was an immature and avoidable statement. The Indian foreign policy establishment, however, was frequently guilty of immaturity. This was only one example. Nehru’s statement could be interpreted as signifying friendship towards Nepal, although B.P. Koirala’s detractors may have interpreted this statement as an incipient threat of unilateral action by India inside Nepal on the pretext of mutual security. However, B.P. Koirala was bold enough to comment on Nehru’s 27 November 1959 statement, afﬁ rming clearly that Nehru had not suggested any unilateral action by India, especially when Nepal was not afraid of any danger from any quarter. B.P. Koirala’s courage resulted in diplomatic success on 8 December 1959, when Nehru announced clearly that the 1950 India–Nepal understanding did not stand for any military alliance, or any unilateral action

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 on the part of India. He added that he agreed completely with B.P. Koirala’s interpretation on this matter.54 Another measure of B.P. Koirala’s diplomatic success was the signing of a new trade and transit agreement with India in

51 Ibid., p. 3. 52 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, p. 88. 53 Ibid., p. 89. 54 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 93–94; Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 39. Relations with Nepal 431

September 1960. This was much more favourable to Nepal than its predecessor of 1950. Although it had the vision of setting up a common market, it paid abundant respect to Nepal’s right to use its foreign exchange fund for imports, as also to the urgent necessity for Nepal to export its products on payment of a minimum feasible customs duty to India, or, preferably, without any duty.55 On the economic front, B.P. Koirala was proceeding in the right direction. He took bold measures to reform the land tenure system, which kept an overwhelmingly large number of people in a state of semi-serfdom, and kept Nepal chronically poor. This certainly alienated the king and many of his followers who were age-old beneﬁ ciaries of a highly exploitative land tenure system. B.P. Koirala’s political opponents, who were out of ofﬁ ce, could not have been averse to utilising the disaffection caused by the radical land reforms (initiated by B.P. Koirala) to unseat B.P. Koirala. The prime minister’s concern for rights to the tiller of the soil was not shared by his critics and opponents. A situation of civil war was created in a conspiratorial fashion, giving an opportunity to the monarch to pretend to be a saviour by removing the democratically elected government. There were revolts in two areas, one incited by a so-called raja (local ruler), another provoked by a yogi (god man). Politicians, who belonged to opposition parties, and were out of power, agitated for the dissolution of the elected government. Even M.P. Koirala and some Nepali Congress leaders demanded the resignation of the Cabinet headed by B.P. Koirala. King Mahendra was not the man to let this opportunity slip by. He dismissed the B.P. Koirala Cabinet on 15 December 1960.56 B.P. Koirala paid the price for the success he achieved in domestic and foreign affairs. The king acted before democracy struck deep roots in Nepal.57 It merely proved that King Mahendra would not tolerate any other power centre in Nepal except the monarchy.58 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

55 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 58–59; Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 92–93. 56 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, 101–7; Gupta, ‘Nepali Congress’, pp. 3–4; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 39–40. 57 Satish Kumar, ‘The Panchayat Constitution of Nepal and its Operation’, International Studies, vol. 6, October 1964, p. 138. 58 Chatterji, Nepal’s Experiment, pp. 8–9. 432 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India’s reaction to the royal coup of December 1960 was crucial. There was not much evidence to indicate that India had taken any signiﬁ cant step (visibly or invisibly) to chasten the monarchy, in the decade when King Mahendra (and his father) were engaged in insidious manoeuvres to pre-empt the emergence of real democracy. After 15 December 1960, therefore, India should have been extraordinarily cautious in its response. It should not have criticised the king in such a strident manner (even if that was ethical) as to cause permanent alienation, and forestall any realistic chance of a patch up with King Mahendra at a later stage. But India did what was just the reverse of what it should have done. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru harshly criticised the royal takeover in Nepal. He expressed ‘considerable regret’ over ‘a complete reversal of the democratic process’.59 On this matter, the following remarks by a former foreign secretary of India, Jagat S. Mehta, reﬂ ect the lack of professionalism (and the resultant lack of realism) in the Indian foreign policy establishment:

On the overthrow of the Nepali Congress (NC) government led by B.P. Koirala in 1960, in an unprepared statement, the repudiation of democracy was openly criticized in parliament. (Alas, Nehru never asked, and so the Ministry only very occasionally provided drafts for his ofﬁ cial speeches). There have been scores of arbitrary regime changes in different parts of the world, which India had accepted without comment. No doubt smothering democracy was regrettable but it was a mistake to express our opinion publicly knowing the sensitivity of the neighbour. It was resented as a criticism of the Monarchy and was interpreted—erroneously—as India’s discriminatory superiority and anger at non-support for India vis-à-vis China. The Indian intelligentsia and many scholars even forget that for some months after the dismissal of B.P. Koirala, we actually facilitated the use of Indian territory to raid Nepal—a form of cross-border coercion signifying our disapproval. This, however, was often quoted by nationalists as Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 an example of India’s propensity to interfere in Nepal.60

King Mahendra displayed great political and diplomatic skills. He took steps towards improving relations with China, which not only put pressure on India but also obtained the support of the Nepali

59 Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 441–43. 60 Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, p. 28. Relations with Nepal 433

Communists for consolidation of royal autocracy. King Mahendra played on the nationalist emotions of the Nepalis by enhancing their anti-India impulses. In 1961, Mahendra paid a visit to China, which lasted, amazingly, as long as three weeks—from 26 September to 12 October. In addition to concluding a boundary agreement with China, Mahendra signed an agreement for the construction of a strategic highway (with Chinese assistance), which was to link Kathmandu with Kodari (in Tibet), and which obviously worried India because, in view of the open border with Nepal, this new highway would facilitate China’s access to Indian territory. Moreover, in the course of his visit to China, King Mahendra had obtained a public assurance from China that, in the event of any foreign attack upon Nepal, the people of China would support the people of Nepal. The India–China conﬂ ict of 1962 compelled India to review its policy towards Nepali political dissidents in India. At India’s request, these dissidents agreed to suspend violent agitations against the government in Kathmandu. This led to an improvement in India–Nepal relations, consolidated by the visits to Nepal by Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1963 (as home minister) and in 1964 (as prime minister).61 One irritant in India–Nepal relations was the presence of members of the Indian Military Mission (IMM) in Nepal. The irritation among some Nepalis on this point reﬂ ected a psychological malady (born of an inescapable power disparity between India and Nepal) rather than a genuine grievance. For, the IMM went to Nepal (as already noted in this chapter) in 1952 at the request of Nepal for the urgent training needs of the Royal Nepal Army (RNA). In six years, the strength of the Mission was substantially reduced, and its name was changed to the Indian Military Training and Advisory Group. When King Mahendra visited India in 1963, he told the Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) of India that the size of the training team should

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 be reduced, and the team gradually withdrawn. It did not follow that Mahendra thought of de-emphasising military engagements with India as envisaged in the 1950 India–Nepal Treaty. After

61 Josse, Nepal and the World, vol. 1, pp. 5–6; Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 346–47. Also see, M.D. Dharamdasani, ‘India and the Democratic Process in Nepal’, Indian Journal of Nepalese Studies, vols V & VI, Special Issue, 1995–96, p. 27. 434 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

all, the lesson of the India–China conﬂ ict of 1962 could not but have a sobering impact on a pragmatist like Mahendra. The king considered it wise to pay respect to India’s security requirements in some ways. He wanted to add to the number and capabilities of Nepali armed forces. Nepal exchanged letters with India on 30 January 1965, seeking large-scale cooperation from India in training, equipping, and modernising the Nepali Army. Nepal also agreed to obtain arms from Britain and America in order to sup- plement military aid from India, although on the basis of timely coordination of various matters of detail with India. The letters, which remained unpublished till 1989, reconﬁ rmed the 1950 arrangements about imports of arms by Nepal on the basis of cooperation between the two countries. In March 1965, again, India and Nepal exchanged letters by which Nepal assured India that the Chinese would not be permitted to carry out development or construction work in Nepal’s terai region, which was close to the Indian border. This led to the removal of Chinese workers from project sites for construction of the East-West Highway in the terai.62 As the RNA grew stronger in training and equipment over the years, the Indian Military Training and Advisory Group was renamed the Indian Military Liaison Group (IMLG). In 1966, the Group had only 52 members. The IMLG was downgraded in 1969, and re-designated as Indian Military Stores Liaison Group. On 18 August 1970, as requested by Nepal, the Group left Nepal. In the early 1950s (as already noted in this chapter) 17 check posts were set up along the Nepal–China border. Both Nepali and Indian soldiers manned these posts. On 11 June 1959, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Nepal, and announced that Indian soldiers (wireless operators) in these outposts would be replaced as soon as Nepali soldiers completed their training. In 1970, India vacated these border check posts. The process of withdrawal of Indian military

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 personnel from Nepal took so long and created so much ill feeling among the Nepalis, especially the ruling circle, as to raise questions about the maturity of the Indian foreign policy establishment. India appeared to assume that the existence of less than one hundred

62 Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, pp. 90–91; Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 347–48; Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 1535–36. Also see, A.G. Noorani, The Statesman, 5 April 1995. Relations with Nepal 435

Indian soldiers or signallers in Nepal was essential to India’s security. To Nepalis, this sounded absurd. After all, more than 1,000 kilometres of the Indian border—from the Nepal–Uttar Pradesh junction to the Darjeeling district—was so safe even during 1961–63 (the worst time of Sino-Indian confrontation) that India did not have to deploy a single soldier there. Probably, as many Nepalis pondered, India was suffering from a reverse non-alignment syndrome, thinking that Nepal put pressure upon India for withdrawal of Indian soldiers from Nepal under the inﬂ uence of countries hostile to India (Pakistan and China), although Nepal was entitled to paying India back in India’s own coin by adopting non-alignment to further the economic- political interests of Nepal. Probably, again, Indians felt a little jealous that Nepal’s relations with China appeared to be more stable/special than those with India. At any rate, it was unrealistic on the part of Indians to argue that, in exchange for the evacuation from Nepal of a few Indian soldiers and wireless operators, Nepal should devise an alternative safeguard for India’s security!63 Another source of chronic misunderstanding between the two countries related to Indo-Nepal trade and transit arrangements for a land-locked country like Nepal seeking rightly to expand overseas trade, as also to diversify foreign trade. The Indians and the Nepalis had genuine grievances. Their ofﬁ cials held a large number of meetings to resolve various issues, and secure mutual satisfaction. But they failed more often than not. In 1966, for example, the Indian government imposed an additional duty (akin to excise duty) on manufactured products imported to India. The Nepalis were alarmed that this would harm the jute industry in Nepal. They demanded that, in terms of the 1960 treaty between Nepal and India, Nepal had the right to an unrestricted export of its manufactured goods to India. The arguments that the new duty was imposed on Indian importers, and not on Nepali exporters,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 that there could be no discrimination against Indian manufacturers, and that the new duty did not violate the 1960 treaty, failed to convince Nepali critics. Nepalis argued that exports from Nepal formed

63 Josse, Nepal and the World, vol. 1, pp. 5, 12–15; Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, pp. 90–91. Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 348. Also see, Dilip Mukherjee, The Times of India, 5 September 1969; The Statesman, 6 September 1969; D.K. Palit, The Hindustan Times, 9 September 1969. 436 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

such an insignifi cant proportion of exports from other countries to India that India should have granted an exemption from the aforesaid duty in the case of exports from Nepal, especially when the 1960 treaty spelled out special relations between the two countries. At offi cial, as also unoffi cial levels in Nepal, there seemed to exist a confusion between customs duty (which could not be levied on Nepal’s exports, in general, according to the 1960 treaty), and excise duty, on levying which there could be no discrimination between Indian importers of Nepali goods and Indian manufacturers of similar goods. Therefore, misunderstandings and irritation persisted on both sides.64 It was to the credit of King Mahendra that, partly due to his search for maximising external independence and internal control, some industries were established in Nepal. But this led to a divergence of interests between Nepal and India. The treaty of 1960 (and related documents) provided that goods manufactured in Nepal from Nepali raw materials were exempted from Indian customs duties. Nepal levied nominal import duties on, for example, raw materials for stainless steel products and synthetic fabrics. Nepal annoyed India by ignoring its treaty obligation to consult India before imposing restrictions on some imports from India (for example, cigarettes). Moreover, Nepal issued freely licences for the import of such materials as synthetic yarns. In contrast, India prohibited in the 1960s the import of polyester yarn, and levied high duties on other synthetic yarns. Manufacturers in India faced a serious disadvantage in competing with manufacturers of similar products in Nepal using raw materials imported from abroad on payment of nominal duties. Apart from stainless steel utensils or synthetic fabrics, a large number of products (for example, cameras, fountain pens, watches, etc., manufactured in China or the Soviet Union) were smuggled from Nepal to India. It is remarkable that Indians

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 played a leading part in the management of large-scale smuggling from Nepal to India. In collusion with authorities in Nepal, these Indian businessmen even organised the dispatch of gift parcels on a huge scale to boost smuggling from Nepal to India. These Indian businessmen (or smugglers) had a network operating in a number

64 The Rising Nepal, 6 and 7 May 1966, 1 August 1966. Also, Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 208–9. Relations with Nepal 437

of countries, for example, Japan, Thailand and Singapore. An added—and ironic—complexity in India–Nepal commercial relations was the fact that a number of Indian goods, smuggled to Nepal, fetched hard currency from sale to third countries, and this foreign exchange was used to import raw materials for the manufacture of products to be exported or smuggled to India.65 Nepalis, similarly, would complain that India procured ginger, herbs, leather, linseed oil, etc., from Nepal, and resell them to third countries to earn hard currency. What produced enormous ill will on both sides was Nepal’s insistence on transit facilities through India without any restriction, and on allotment of an exclusive berth in the port of Calcutta for Nepal’s cargo. It was hard to reconcile these demands with the Indian contention that these were impracticable. Indians also argued that facilities provided for handling of Nepali cargoes matched the volume of these cargoes. A dispassionate observer would add that, as in nearly all ports of the world, in the port of Calcutta too, there were the usual bureaucratic harassments, which affected Indian port users as much as the Nepalis. King Mahendra intensiﬁ ed India’s irritation by raising the demand for unhindered transit facilities in a number of international conferences. Indian and Nepali ofﬁ cials failed to resolve their differences before the expiry of the Treaty of Trade and Transit on 31 October 1970. India refused to concede to Nepal’s demand of two separate treaties on trade and transit. It was not easy to comprehend clearly the debate on one treaty or two separate treaties. Nevertheless, relations between the two countries suffered from a severe downturn. India imposed a partial blockade on trade with Nepal. King Mahendra visited India in June 1971 to improve bilateral relations. Eventually, a single treaty of trade and transit was concluded on 31 August 1971.66 In the matter of transit facilities through India, the Nepali mindset, at times, seemed somewhat obtuse. They would clamour

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 for certain facilities, which were hardly worthwhile. For instance, the Nepalis asked for transit facilities through the West Bengal

65 The Indian Express, 12 October 1968; M.L. Kotru, The Statesman, 27 May 1969. Also, Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 96–97. 66 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 204–5, 211–16; Josse, Nepal and the World, vol. 1, p. 18; Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 1536; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 97–98. Also see, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 4 December 1968 and 27 March 1969; The Statesman, 2 May 1969. 438 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

railhead, Radhikapur, so that they could trade with the eastern wing of Pakistan. India was reluctant not merely because of its assessment that the prospects for Nepal–Pakistan trade through this route were not bright, but also because of strategic reasons. The transit route would pass through the highly sensitive and narrow corridor between West Bengal and Assam. But Nepal’s interpretation was different. It thought that India wanted to prevent Nepal from diversifying its foreign trade, and minimising its dependence upon India. In November 1963, India acceded to Nepal’s request for trade through Radhikapur. But Nepal made the peculiar demand that India should bear the cost of customs services and warehouse facilities, although, according to international conventions, landlocked countries were to pay for transit services. The Nepalis thus transformed even such a simple and non-controversial issue into a complex and controversial one. When India offered transit services at concessional rates, Nepali ofﬁ cials dubbed them as excessively high, and publicly denounced India for non-cooperation and violation of treaty obligations. Negotiations dragged on. The India–Pakistan War of 1965 caused further delays. Eventually, on 25 March 1969, India agreed to arrange transit facilities up to the Radhikapur railhead, and Nepal remained responsible for international movement of cargoes beyond Radhikapur. Probably, the most important point on transit through Radhikapur was that the scope of trade was so little as to make the transit route nearly worthless.67 A bitterly ironical aspect of transit facilities to Nepal provided by India related to the construction of the Kathmandu-Kodari Highway and other Chinese-aided projects. Although, India had no reason to laud such projects, and growing Chinese presence in Nepal, especially because the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu (like the Pakistan embassy) carried on virulent anti-Indian propaganda in abuse of Nepal’s hospitality and a gross violation of normal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 diplomatic code, consumer goods needed for various Chinese projects had to be transported through Calcutta. After all, Tibet could not supply these goods, and costs of road transportation from

67 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 216–17; Josse, Nepal and the World, vol. 1, p. 23; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 98–99. Also see, The Hindusthan Standard, 25 August 1964; The Times of India, 19 September and 30 December 1964; The Statesman, 11 December 1964; The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 27 March 1969. Relations with Nepal 439

the Chinese to the Nepali capital were prohibitive. Sale proceeds of these consumer goods, handed over to the National Trading Corporation of the Government of Nepal, were utilised to ﬁ nance the Chinese-aided projects. Another irony about the Kathmandu– Kodari Highway related to its use, after completion, for smuggling of Indian goods into Tibet, for example, iron, kerosene oil and petrol, wheat, wheat products, etc.68 Before his death in January 1972, King Mahendra left no stone unturned to placate China and offend India. He cavalierly ﬂ outed the assurance contained in the letters exchanged on 26 March 1965 (not to speak of clauses of the 1950 treaty), and trampled upon Indian sensitivities, when he permitted China to launch development activities (including geological surveys) in the terai. One reason could be Mahendra’s internal political compulsion. He wanted to perpetuate royal autocracy under the banner of partyless panchayat democracy, and depended for this purpose vitally on the communists in Nepal. But the more important reason, probably, was helplessness. Behind the façade of talk of equidistance from India and China, Nepal was acting upon a fear complex vis-à-vis China. Normal activities by India provoked strident public criticisms, whereas abnormal operations by China did not produce a squeak of objection (far less protests). The Nepalis indirectly proved that their faith in India’s age-old friendship was so deep rooted that they could take risks by being needlessly critical of India (as already noted in this chapter). Not so in the case of China. Nothing but fear (far from friendship) could explain Nepal’s acquiescence in the numerous nefarious activities on the part of China. Here are some examples. China sold in Nepal a number of its manufactured products (including luxury items) at prices much below their cost of production. Shepherds and herdsmen in the northern areas of Nepal received generous loans from the Chinese on economically

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 indefensible terms. China kept a road maintenance unit for the Kathmandu–Kodari Highway; this was manned by civil personnel. Quite suddenly, in 1965, they were replaced by military personnel. When the highway was under construction, China never revealed how many Chinese were working inside Nepal. After the construction

68 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 182–83, 208; Narayan, India and Nepal, pp. 98–99. 440 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

was completed, about 15 miles of Nepali territory, south of the China–Nepal border, were kept completely under Chinese control.69 This was the Chinese sensitivity on security, which Nepal fearfully respected. This was also the Chinese version of the unspoken special relationship with Nepal. Indian businessmen and entrepreneurs could have played a signiﬁ cant part in accelerating Nepal’s economic development and improving India–Nepal relations, if they, in collaboration with Nepali counterparts or the government of Nepal, established joint industrial ventures. The National Industrial Development Corporation (NIDC) of Nepal extended credits and other incentives for this purpose. But the response of Indian businessmen was not very encouraging. On the contrary, a number of them engaged in questionable activities, which could not but stir up anti-Indian sentiments. As Shriman Narayan, India’s ambassador to Nepal in the mid-1960s, observes:

During my diplomatic tenure, I encouraged several Indian industrialists to set up joint industrial ventures in Nepal with the assistance of the local entrepreneurs. But, to my great distress, several Indians who had come to Nepal some years ago had not earned a good name there, mainly because they tried to earn easy and quick proﬁ ts through dubious methods. They were more keen on evading Indian income-tax laws and excise duties rather than on helping Nepal in attaining a faster rate of economic growth through the diversiﬁ - cation of their economy.70

Virendra’s Vicious Vision Internal and international compulsions ensured that King Virendra, who succeeded his deceased father in January 1972, would pursue anti-Indianism with undiminished vigour. Enough has been written Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in this chapter to indicate that it was impossible for Nepal to maintain equally cordial or friendly relations with India and China. Yet, at the conference of non-aligned countries in Algiers in September 1973,

69 Bhattacharjee, Modern Nepal, pp. 174–77; Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 348–49. Also see, The Hindusthan Standard, 22 January and 5 August 1965. 70 Narayan, India and Nepal, p. 66. Relations with Nepal 441

Virendra propounded the impracticable theme of equal closeness of Nepal with both India and China. The only practicable impact of this proposition was to challenge the strategic partnership between India and Nepal, as envisaged in the 1950 treaty. A similar impact was achieved in February 1975, when Virendra expounded the proposal of Nepal as a Zone of Peace (NZOP). The most important component of this proposal, that Nepal would conduct its relations with all countries, especially the neighbouring countries, on the premises of equality and respect for each other’s sovereignty and independence, was superfl uous. For, it was endorsed not only by the UN Charter, but also by Nepal’s treaties with India and China. The really important component of the NZOP proposal was that countries endorsing this proposal would not support, shelter, or safeguard in any way those persons who were engaged in ‘hostile activities’ against Nepal, and the term ‘hostile activities’ was so loosely defi ned as to include press/public reports/comments. This let the cat out of the bag, that King Virendra was interested in securing surreptitiously the support of the international community for royal autocracy by prohibiting any criticism against it. As a corollary, he would point an accusing fi nger at India, where, for decades, Nepal’s political dissidents were seeking shelter. A number of countries, which could not be blamed for their lack of knowledge about, and the consequent failure to comprehend, Virendra’s hidden agenda, endorsed the NZOP proposal. Probably, a nominal endorsement of this proposal would not have harmed India in any way. Nevertheless, India appeared to take a shrewd stand. It did not denigrate the proposal. It did not accept the proposal.71 Sikkim’s integration into the Indian union was certainly not appreciated by the ruling circle in Nepal. What it failed to consider was the extent to which it itself had facilitated this integration by Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 71 Josse, Nepal and the World, vol. II, pp. 26, 56–65; Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 349–50. Also see, Anirudha Gupta, ‘Nepal’, in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy, 1987–88, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1988, pp. 192–93; Nagendra Nath Jha, ‘India–Nepal Cooperation Broadening Measures’, in Jayanta Kumar Ray (ed.), India–Nepal Cooperation Broadening Measures, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1997, pp. 9, 11; Sangeeta Thapliyal, ‘Changing Trends in India–Nepal Relations’, Strategic Analysis, vol. XXI, no. 9, December 1997, p. 1304. (Nagendra Nath Jha was a former secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.) 442 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

consistent attempts to increase the strategic distance with India, and that too at a time when the Kathmandu–Kodari Highway augmented India’s feeling of insecurity vis-à-vis China, which, instead of granting autonomy to Tibet, tightened its grip on Tibet via repressive measures. Actually, King Virendra heightened India’s legitimate security concerns. He sent senior military offi cers of Nepal to China and Pakistan for training. This could have been viewed as potentially threatening by India because Nepali offi cers held important positions in the Indian Army, and RNA offi cers received training in Indian institutions on high altitude warfare and counterinsurgency measures. In 1985, it was an open secret that palace offi cials supplied confi dential information to China, and enabled China to furnish the lowest tender for construction of a portion of the East-West Highway which was near the strategic Nepal–India–China trijunction, and ran through the terai of Nepal. This was a deliberate violation of the important understanding reached by India and Nepal through an exchange of letters on 26 March 1965. India had to pay a sort of blackmail money—a grant of `50 crore to Nepal—in order to dissuade Nepal from awarding to China the above noted project located close to the Indian border. In 1988, King Virendra imported from China a consignment of arms, including anti-aircraft guns. This was hardly compatible with such offi cially advanced explanations as coping with problems of hijacking, terrorism, and internal security. If it was a one-shot affair, one could dismiss it as tokenism—as a gesture of defi ance against India’s well-known security sensitivities, and assertion of Nepal’s independence. But India had cause for worry if this was a precedent setting a long-term trend. King Virendra showed scant regard for a tradition that sanctifi ed the Chief of Army Staff of India being the Honorary Chief of the Army of Nepal and vice versa.72 In addition to the import of arms from China by Nepal, there

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were other matters causing serious strains in India–Nepal relations in the 1980s. For example, India alleged that Indian Nepali militants,

72 Muni, ‘India and Nepal’, pp. 351–52. Also see, Ved Prakash Malik, ‘India–Nepal Security Relations’, in India–Nepal Relation: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 83. (Ved Prakash Malik was a former Chief of Army Staff, India.) Relations with Nepal 443

associated with the agitation for formation of a separate Gorkhaland in India’s West Bengal state, under the banner of Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) led by Subash Ghising, obtained shelter, military training, and funds in Nepal. Subash Ghising pleased many Nepalis by openly demanding the cancellation of the 1950 India–Nepal treaty. Moreover, Pakistan’s ISI was engaged in various anti-Indian activities on Nepali soil, without any reported restraint being exercised by the government of Nepal. The ISI assisted Kashmiri Muslim terrorists and other Muslims in Nepal with arms, explosives, money, and training for operations against India. The ISI used madrassas in Nepal for these purposes, and also set up such agencies as the Islamic United Liberation Army, Islamic Revolutionary Force, Islamic Movement of India, etc.73 Even before the import of arms from China in 1988, King Virendra’s government seemed to be determined to adopt certain measures to spoil relations with India. Irrespective of whether these measures violated any treaty or sacred understanding, they were deliberately designed to be unfriendly to India. In the middle of the 1970s, there was an undue application of force by Nepal against Indian workers, for example, construction workers. These poor people were shoved on to trucks and sent back to India. In the late 1980s, however, Nepal appeared to be far more aggressive. One could look upon 1 April 1987 as the crucial date in this context. Following this date, in the ﬁ rst place, Nepal demanded that Indians working in Nepal must have work permits, although India did not impose this restriction on Nepalis working in India. Second, without citing any valid reason, Indian schoolteachers in Nepal were dismissed from service. Third, additional duties were levied upon Indian exports to Nepal. Fourth, Chinese exports to Nepal obtained undue preference.74 While alienating India in this fashion, King Virendra’s govern-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ment failed to realise how unnecessarily it was endangering Nepal’s vital economic interests. History, geography and traditional people-to-people ties built up a complex web of mutually valuable

73 Pattanaik, ‘India–Nepal Open Border’, pp. 472–73. 74 Thapliyal, ‘Movement of Population’, p. 782. Also, Lt. Gen. (Retd) S.K. Sinha, The Statesman, 23 February 1992. (S.K. Singh was former Indian Ambassador to Nepal.) 444 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

relationships, which could not be tampered in such a reckless fashion. In the words of Jagat S. Mehta,

The national psyche, the asymmetry in size, knowhow and viability between India and Nepal got accentuated. The dichotomy between quest for political equality and economic capability was compounded by convenient amnesia—lessons missed or erroneously distilled, mindsets of the other forgotten and one’s own provocations overlooked.75

It was well known that Nepal was unhappy with India’s diplomatic position on the Soviet assault on Afghanistan in 1979. Nepal thought India was recognising the right of a more powerful country to dominate a weak neighbour.76 But Nepal should have also remembered that sometimes, as in the case of the trade and transit treaties of 1978, India abandoned its long-held viewpoint to accommodate Nepal’s. The right of transit was sacrosanct to Nepal—almost a symbol of independence—which was not to be mixed up with issues of ofﬁ cial trade and unofﬁ cial trade (smuggling), the latter often compensat- ing for the lack of balance in the former. In 1978, India signed two separate treaties on trade and transit, as also a third one on control of unlawful trade. Nepal was visibly happy.77 In about a decade, as the date of renewal of these treaties drew near, this happiness turned into a sort of nightmare, because King Virendra’s government was indisputably successful in the late 1980s in completely alienating the Government of India. On 23 March 1989, the treaties of trade and transit lapsed. India acquiesced. India’s irritation had evidently reached an unacceptable level. India remained a principal donor to Nepal for decades. For instance, in the 1970s, India supplied `205 million as credit and `1,009.1 million as grant, whereas in the 1980s, India provided `203.9 million as credit, and `1,072 million as grant.78 Apparently, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

75 Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, p. 30. 76 Ibid., p. 33. Also, Josse, Nepal and the World, vol. I, p. 37. 77 Jahar Sen, ‘India–Nepal Trade: In Retrospect’, in Ray (ed.), India–Nepal , 1997, p. 85. Also see, Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, pp. 31–32. 78 T. Nirmala Devi, ‘Indo-Nepal Economic Cooperation with Special Reference to Trade and Aid’, Indian Journal of Nepalese Studies, vols V & VI, Special Issue, 1995–96, p. 55. Relations with Nepal 445

although India was not at all enamoured of the royal autocracy in Nepal guised under a label of partyless panchayat democracy, it did not suspend aid to Nepal. Up to 1979–80, for instance, of the three principal donors to Nepal—China, India and the United States—India provided 50 per cent of total grants.79 Moreover, by 1984–85, India handed over to Nepal a number of completed projects, including 100 drinking water schemes in villages, a police hospital in Kathmandu, the Devighat Power Project, and the Mahendra Rajmarg (Road). Besides these, there were some projects launched by Nepal—for example, Mulghat hydroelectric project, West Rapti project, etc.—which received unstinted support from India.80 In this perspective, one could at least understand Indian sensitivities, when, on the expiry of the trade and transit treaty with Nepal on 23 March 1989, India reduced the number of transit points for Nepal from 22 to two. Nepal accused India of economically blockading a landlocked country. Although, consequently, Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product went down by 2.2 per cent during 1989–90, Nepal proved its capability for riding out the economic crisis, partly because it received generous foreign assistance, but mostly because smugglers on both sides of the border demonstrated true innovativeness. According to a former foreign secretary of India, India’s decision to reduce the number of transit points for Nepal was

…an ill-conceived exercise in coercive diplomacy (I do not know if it was professionally opposed or endorsed)…Incidentally, the Indian Army wisely allowed holidaying Gurkhas to take nominally small but nevertheless signiﬁ cant essential items like petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) and coal as ‘head loads’.81

Irrespective of whether restrictions imposed by India on Nepal’s transit facilities could be depicted as economic blockade or economic Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

79 Gupta, ‘Nepal’, p. 187. 80 Pitambar D. Kaushik, ‘Water Resources of Nepal: Key to Indo-Nepalese Relations’, Water Nepal, Kathmandu, vol. 4, no. 1, September 1994, pp. 27–29; I.N. Sinha, ‘Opportunity, Delay and Policy Planning Vision in the Synergic Development of Eastern Himalayan Rivers: A Conspectus’, International Journal of Water Resources Development, vol. 11, no. 3, 1995, pp. 303–14. 81 Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, p. 33; V.N. Sharma, ‘Discussions’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 128. 446 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

sanctions, these appeared to have some impact on pro-democracy groups in Nepal during 1989–90, when in different parts of the world, including East Europe, democratic forces were gaining ground. In 1989, a new government, led by the Janata Dal came to power in India. A number of leaders of the Janata Dal were socialists, and had close links with leaders of democratic groups in Nepal. The Nepali Congress held a convention on 18 January 1990. Some Indian political leaders were invited to attend this convention of democratic groups. Chandra Sekhar (who later became India’s prime minister for a brief period) was one of them. Ganesh Mansingh of the Nepali Congress led a coalition of democratic forces in Nepal, and launched on 18 February 1990 a non-violent movement for restoration of democracy. On 6 April 1990, more than 100,000 persons attended a meeting in Kathmandu. The meeting was followed by violent activities, for example, attacks on the Secretariat as also houses of government ofﬁ cials. The police and army applied force. A very large number of people died on the streets of Kathmandu. As many as 207 members of the Indian Parliament appealed to the Government of India for assistance towards the restoration of democracy and fundamental rights in Nepal. An eminent parliamentarian, Professor N.G. Ranga, became the chairman of an all-Party Nepal fund to provide this assistance. The Indian ambassador to Nepal wisely turned down the request for Indian military intervention.82 ‘Human feelings suppressed under thirty years of the Panchayat regime suddenly erupted in the wake of the successful People’s Movement of 1990.’83 Democracy was reintroduced in Nepal in 1990.

After Democracy was Restored in 1990 Undoubtedly, the existence of a democratic government in Nepal tends to foster good relations, although one need not go as far as one former foreign secretary of India, M. Rasgotra, who said: ‘My Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 personal experience of the development of Indo-Nepal relations since the 1950s tells me that whenever there is an attempt to suppress

82 Dharamdasani, ‘The Democratic Process in Nepal’, pp. 32–33; Munmun Majumdar, ‘Challenges Before the Democratic Government of Nepal’, Indian Journal of Nepalese Studies, vols V & VI, 1995–96, p. 90. 83 R.S. Mahat, ‘Security and Political Environment: A Nepalese Perspective’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 6. Relations with Nepal 447

or sideline democracy in Nepal, there is trouble in the relations between the two countries’.84 India–Nepal relations visibly improved following the restoration of democracy in 1990, and the exchange of visits in the same year by prime ministers of both countries— K.P. Bhattarai and I.K. Gujral. It is important to remind ourselves that before Bhattarai visited India, the government of Nepal had announced that it had postponed indefi nitely the import of arms from China. During Bhattarai’s visit to India, the two countries agreed upon a number of vital matters. India agreed to open all the transit points for Nepal. Discriminatory levies on Indian goods were withdrawn by Nepal, as were the restrictions imposed on Indians working in Nepal. In this way, ‘virtually all the conten- tious issues which had soured the mutual relationship have been removed’.85 India must be credited with observing restraint when Nepal subjected 150,000 Indians in Nepal to restrictions because ‘the 4.5 million Nepalese in India continued to live exactly as before’.86 Indian nationals in Nepal were freed from the obligation to procure work permits. While Nepal was allowed to impose duties on Indian exports for some time, many categories of Nepal’s exports were permitted unrestricted and duty-free entry into India.87 K.P. Bhattarai was the prime minister in an interim government formed by the king on 19 April 1990. Nepal adopted on 9 November 1990 a new constitution, which transferred sovereignty from the monarch to the people. Signifi cantly, the new constitution did not contain the favourite of King Virendra, viz. NZOP. A general election was held on 12 May 1991. The Nepali Congress won, although it did not have a two-thirds majority. Moreover, Prime Minister G.P. Koirala, and other leaders of his party—K.P. Bhattarai and Ganesh Mansingh—failed to rise above infi ghting and petty politicking, the chronic ailment of the Nepali Congress. Moreover, G.P. Koirala’s government exposed itself to charges of corruption

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and incompetence. Furthermore, the principal opposition party, the CPN-UML (the Communist Party of Nepal–United Marxist- Leninist), accused the G.P. Koirala regime of servility to India. Eventually, G.P. Koirala had to resign. A mid-term poll was held

84 Sharma, ‘Discussions’, pp. 131–32. 85 Editorial, The Statesman, 12 June 1990. 86 Ibid. 87 Editorial, The Statesman, 7 August 1990. 448 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

on 15 November 1994. It resulted in the formation of a minority government headed by Man Mohan Adhikari of the CPN-UML, which emerged as the largest single party in Parliament.88 The charge of servility to India, hurled upon G.P. Koirala, deserves some attention because it relates to an important project— the Tanakpur barrage. The agreement on this barrage was signed by India and Nepal in December 1991. It was revised in October 1992. During 1985–89, when Nepal was under the partyless panchayat regime, India built within its own territory a barrage and power station at Tanakpur. The agreements of 1991 and 1992 related to the construction of an affl ux bund within Nepali territory for prevention of inundation of agricultural land in Nepal. In 1991, India agreed to supply to Nepal, 150 cusecs of water for irrigating 4,000–5,000 hectares of land. Moreover, despite a substantial reduction of the supply of electricity needed by itself, India agreed to supply to Nepal, free of charge, 10 million units of power. In the 1992 agreement, this was raised to 20 million units. Moreover, Nepal would retain sovereignty over the land on which India was to carry out construction work. ‘Though appearing to be benefi cial to both the countries, the Tanakpur accord got enmeshed in the vortex of internal politics in Nepal.’89 Prime Minister G.P. Koirala, who belonged to the Nepali Congress, was accused of being subservient to India, not only by opposition party leaders but also by a faction of his own party. The controversy about the Tanakpur project did not ‘centre around the contents of the actual package as envisaged by Nepal’s decision on the project so much as around the non-observance of the formal procedure provided for such transactions in the 1990 Constitution of Nepal’.90 Since the Tanakpur agreement related to the highly sensitive issue of water resource development, the prime minister ought to have submitted the agreement to Parliament for ratifi cation in accordance with the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 country’s constitution. But he prevaricated. Possibly, he was afraid of being let down by rival factions in his own party.

88 Majumdar, ‘Democratic Government of Nepal’, pp. 92–94; Thapliyal, ‘Changing Trends’, p. 1307. 89 Kaushik, ‘Water Resources of Nepal’, p. 280. 90 Rishikesh Shaha, ‘Politics of Water Power in Nepal’, Water Nepal, vol. 4, no. 1, September 1994, p. 283. (Rishikesh Shaha was a former foreign minister of Nepal.) Relations with Nepal 449

Although G.P. Koirala was disgraced before his exit from the post of prime minister, his government must be credited with securing a favourable treaty of trade with India. It was signed on 6 December 1991. It was valid, as also renewable, for fi ve years. Certain facilities, over and above what existed before, were extended to Nepal by India. For example, goods manufactured in Nepal—with Nepali or Nepali/ Indian content of 65 per cent—received duty-free and quota-free entry to India before this treaty was signed. In accordance with this treaty, this content requirement was reduced to 55 per cent. (There was, naturally, a negative list to be prepared by offi cials of the two countries.) Nepal’s exporters had to obtain a proforma clearance from the Indian embassy in Kathmandu for quota/duty-free entry of their products into India. The validity period for such clearance was raised from the pre-existing period of two years to fi ve years. A new Nepal–India transit treaty, valid for seven years, was also signed. A third agreement for the control of smuggling or unauthorised trade, valid for fi ve years, was also concluded.91 As has been already noted in this chapter, Man Mohan Adhikari succeeded G.P. Koirala as prime minister. He proposed to rectify his predecessor’s mistake with respect to the Tanakpur agreement. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Nepal prescribed ratifi cation of this agreement by Parliament, and Parliament ratifi ed it after a considerable lapse of time—but not before sowing confusion and discord within Nepal as also between India and Nepal. Actually, the Tanakpur package, becoming a part of the broader Mahakali treaty of 1996, was fi nally ratifi ed by Nepal’s Parliament as late as in September 1996. (More interesting data about the Tanakpur affair will be provided in a separate section of this chapter dealing with management of some rivers common to India and Nepal.) Meanwhile, one has to focus on some remarkable features of India–Nepal relations during the tenure of Man Mohan Adhikari as

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 prime minister. During his visit to India in 1995, he made a highly realistic observation that, in the context of changes in the regional

91 The Statesman, 7 December 1919. For details, see Indra Nath Mukherji, ‘Indo-Nepal Relations: Building Confidence by Strengthening Trade, Investment and Infrastructural Linkages’, International Conference, CRRID and MAKAIAS, Kolkata, 1–2 March 2009; Jawhar Sircar, ‘Trade Relations Transits and Agreements’, in Ray (ed.), India–Nepal, 1997, pp. 93–97. 450 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and world situation, he wanted to carry out a comprehensive review of relations with India.92 Adhikari said that the 1950 India–Nepal treaty should be updated, but not abrogated. India and Nepal had been the ‘best of friends and neighbours’, and this friendship must not stagnate.93 He considered the concept of a security umbrella to be obsolete. He argued that India should restrict the movement of Indians for employment to Nepal, as Nepal was a very small country, whereas India, being a large country, could accommodate Nepalis. Adhikari made a few refreshing observations about Nepal’s relations with India and China. He rejected the notions of balancing relations with India and China, as also keeping equal distance. He advocated instead ‘equal friendship with New Delhi and Beijing’, and viewed Nepal as a ‘bridge’ between India and China.94 At the time of Adhikari’s visit to India, the prime ministers of the two countries issued a joint statement on 12 April 1995, which underlined a lasting truth: there were no major problems between the two countries. In course of his visit to India, Prime Minister Adhikari made a number of observations, which amply refl ected Nepal’s pragmatism. For example, he discarded the concept of a Greater Nepal, clearly rejecting as absurd the GNLF claim that Darjeeling (in India’s West Bengal state) was a part of Nepal. Adhikari, again, stated that he was fully aware of businessmen converting Indian black money into white money in Nepal. But he affi rmed that he was not ready to foreclose his options on this matter, for, realities had to override ideology in such matters. In the year 1995, India responded positively to Nepal’s pragmatic approach. For instance, India expanded transit facilities for Nepal by opening the ports of Bombay and Kandla (in addition to the port of Calcutta). Moreover, India agreed to provide an additional customs clearance facility at Raxaul. Those who are familiar with the notoriously cumbersome and delay-prone ways of customs offi cials in India cannot but express

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 happiness with this decision. For, if Indians feel oppressed by Indian customs authorities, foreigners tend to feel so even more.95

92 The Hindu, 10 April 1995. 93 The Hindustan Times, 11 April 1995. 94 The Hindu, 10 April 1995. 95 See Ray, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1, 3–4; Majumdar, ‘Democratic Government of Nepal’, p. 97. Relations with Nepal 451

In 1996, the governments of India and Nepal signed a few agreements attesting to the continuing pragmatism among policy makers. On 29 January 1996, India and Nepal concluded negotiations on several agreements, including those on the Tanakpur issue (already mentioned in this chapter) and the Mahakali River forming the international border. Nepal suffered from a sort of imaginary grievance that India’s construction of an affl ux bund for the Tanakpur barrage on Nepali land was to be treated not as a ‘gift’ but as a ‘right’. The principal agreement was the one on the integrated development of the Mahakali River. It underlined not only ‘equal partnership’ but also the right of Nepal to the supply of substantial quantities of water throughout the year, and the duty of India ‘to maintain and preserve the river ecosystem’. Nepal would continue to exercise ‘sovereignty and control’ over the land used by India for construction of the eastern affl ux bund for the Tanakpur barrage. Nepal was to obtain from Tanakpur 750 million kilowatt hours of energy, free of cost. Moreover, Nepal became entitled to 1,000 cusecs of water during the rainy season, and 300 cusecs in the dry season. As to the Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project located upstream of the Tanakpur barrage, the two countries upheld the principles of ‘equal entitlement’, of equity in the share of costs and benefi ts, as also of joint operation of the head regulator and waterways. Even the expenses on the Mahakali River Commission, consisting of an equal number of representatives from both the countries, were to be equally shared by both the countries.96 ‘Most impressive was the solid front Nepal put up by forging a consensus among the major political parties.’97 This exercise of caution by Nepal’s political elite pre-empted a repetition of G.P. Koirala’s sad experience on Tanakpur, and assured ratification by Nepal’s Parliament. In mid-February 1997, Nepal’s prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, visited New Delhi, and signed the above noted agreements with Indian prime

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. In addition to the above agreements, the two countries signed another pact to build 22 bridges on the Mahakali-Kohalpur segment of the East-West Highway in Nepal.98

96 The Statesman, 31 January 1996. 97 Editorial, The Statesman, 3 February 1996. 98 Pushpa Adhikari, The Statesman, 15 February 1996. Also, Thapliyal, ‘Changing Trends’, pp. 1310–11. 452 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Moreover, on 17 February 1996, India and Nepal once again demonstrated a spirit of equality, as also mutual respect for each other’s laws and regulations, when they signed a pact on electric power trade between the two countries. Undoubtedly, the policy of economic liberalisation, adopted by the two countries, contributed to the endorsement by this agreement of the ‘participation of local and foreign private investors also in the power industries of their respective countries’. This would ‘facilitate the process of electric power trade’ between an independent party in one country and any party in the other country. At that time, there was insignifi cant power trade between the two countries through only 17 points located in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.99 In 1997, India’s prime minister, I.K. Gujral, visited Nepal for three days (5–7 June). The atmosphere was conducive, as meanwhile Nepal’s Parliament had ratifi ed the Mahakali treaty by a substantial majority. During Gujral’s visit, the two governments exchanged Instruments of Ratifi cation for the Mahakali treaty (including the Tanakpur project). On 6 June 1997, Gujral took a highly signifi cant step, fulfi lling one of the insistent demands of the Nepalis. He provided Nepal with access to a 61-km transit route through Phulbari in West Bengal, which would facilitate Nepal’s trade with Bangladesh, as also with other countries through the port of Chittagong. Moreover, during Gujral’s visit to Nepal, another important pact was signed, which enabled the two countries to pursue a sort of ‘open sky’ policy, removing restrictions on the number of airlines to be operated in each other’s territory.100 In 1996, along with finalising the Mahakali treaty and the Electric Power Trade Treaty, India took a signifi cant step to improve Nepal’s balance of trade with India. True, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, Nepal’s trade with India declined from approximately 98 per cent of its total foreign trade to 28 per cent. Still, the annual estimated trade defi cit of Nepal with India stood at `18 billion. So,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in 1996, India removed the prevalent obligation upon exporters of manufactured goods in Nepal to ensure that the products contained not less than 50 per cent of local material/labour.101 By the year 2000,

99 The Statesman, 18 February 1996. 100 Parmanand, The Statesman, 27 June 1997. Also, Dixit, Across Borders, p. 239. (J.N. Dixit was a former foreign secretary of India.) 101 Editorial, The Statesman, 21 August 1996. Relations with Nepal 453

however, India’s Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry raised the hue and cry that Nepal persisted in exporting third country products to India, which defeated the purpose of the 1996 concession by India. Especially, Indian manufacturers of cigarettes, sugar, and vanaspati were adversely affected.102 Evidently, the Government of Nepal was not quite careful about issuing the certifi cates of origin for various exports from Nepal. Meanwhile, in 1998, treaties of trade and transit were concluded for seven years. The new transit treaty sought to minimise the defl ection of Nepali imports through the Calcutta port to various states of the Indian union. First, it reduced the number of entry points from 22 to 15 along the India–Nepal border. Second, it clearly identifi ed the legitimate routes through which imports for Nepal should be transported. Moreover, Indian customs offi cials were to establish small check posts in a few towns to detect smuggling by transporters.103 Jaswant Singh, India’s external affairs minister, paid a four-day visit to Nepal in September 1999. Achievements of this visit have been variously interpreted by both Nepalis and Indians alike. For example, an editorial in The Kathmandu Post of 13 September 1999 offered a somewhat negative view of this visit. According to it, what the foreign ministers of the two countries ‘had agreed upon relate more to expediting old agreements and understandings than exploring and opening up new areas of cooperation’. The editorial praised ‘the revival of the Nepal–India joint commission’, but raised the relevant question of why it had been allowed to ‘fade out in the fi rst place’. In contrast, Indian writers tended to view Jaswant Singh’s visit in a positive manner.104 For, it marked the persistence of ‘positive bilateralism which began in the 1990s following the establishment of democracy in Nepal’. Moreover, ‘its signifi cance arises from the joint approach both countries will take to tackle the new challenges on the security front’.105 Security was always a major

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 component of India–Nepal relations. But, in the latter part of the 1990s, it acquired two new dimensions. First, Pakistan’s ISI began to use Nepal as a launching pad for its terrorist operations, taking

102 The Statesman, 26 November 2000. 103 Ashish Gupta, The Statesman, 24 January 1998. 104 See, for example, Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’. 105 Ibid., p. 1539. 454 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

advantage of the Nepal–India open border, through which men and arms could be moved without much diffi culty. India’s success in restricting ISI activities in J&K and Punjab made it essential for ISI to use Nepal, a chronically ill-governed country, for access to not only such Indian states as Sikkim, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, but also to the states in northeast India. Offi cials of the Pakistan embassy in Kathmandu played a leading part in enabling the ISI to smuggle into Nepal large quantities of RDX explosives, electronic detonators, etc., for transfer to India.106 Second, activities of Maoist militants in Nepal since 1996 posed a threat to India. India was especially worried that Nepal’s Maoists might obtain arms and ammunition from the ISI. Nepal, on the other hand, was perturbed that Maoists in Nepal were receiving help from such Maoist outfi ts in India as the People’s War Group (PWG) in Andhra Pradesh and the Maoist Coordination Centre (MCC) in Bihar. India refused to admit that the Maoists of Nepal had some support bases on Indian territory. But it was well known that for years smuggler-politicians (having no fear of the police), active in six districts of Uttar Pradesh and nine districts of Bihar, were transporting contrabands, including firearms, across the India–Nepal border. None could be sure of whether or not such fi rearms reached the Maoist rebels in Nepal. The hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft from Kathmandu to Kandahar in 1999 vividly demonstrated the ISI’s success in using Nepali soil to impair India’s security. Nepal’s government was so mindless that it even manufactured a report on the hijacking of the Indian aircraft, which absolved the security apparatus at Kathmandu airport from charges of incompetence. There was, again, not much evidence that Nepal was trying to curb ISI activities, even though it was an open secret that the ISI built a network of smugglers in collusion with members of the underworld in Nepal in order to conduct anti-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India operations. Suspicion so grew that, despite the evident lack of training and capabilities of the police in Nepal to cope with Maoists, the king, who was the supreme commander of Nepal’s Army, refused to deploy the Army to vanquish the Maoists. He probably had two major aims: he wanted to discredit democracy in Nepal,

106 Parmanand, The Statesman, 28 June 1997; Deepak Gujral, The Statesman, 30 November 1998. Also. Thapliyal, ‘Movement of Population’, p. 785. Relations with Nepal 455

and he desired that Maoists should harass India (which had always supported pro-democracy forces in Nepal). After all, Leftists of all hues were constantly looking for opportunities—even non-events and non-issues—to harm India–Nepal relations. Which is why, in December 2000, the imaginary comments of Hrithik Roshan, an Indian ﬁ lm star (despite his denial), were manipulated by the Nepali media, and a constellation of anti-Indian forces (especially Leftists) to carry on anti-Indian riots for several days.107 Professor Lok Raj Baral, a former ambassador of Nepal to India, and probably the most impartial and perceptive observer of Nepal’s internal politics and international relations, wrote the following in February 2003:

The country is now in a deep crisis, politically and economically. Politically, the democratic process is obstructed by the King, by the Maoists, and by political leaders whose rivalry, lack of vision, and intolerance provided a ladder to the King for his ascendancy.108

Maoist violence led to the death of 8,000 persons during 1996–2003.109 Nine prime ministers gained power only to lose it in an indecently brief period during 1990–2002. The monarch did not intervene in these nine cases. In June 2001, there took place a massacre of all members of the royal family. King Gyanendra succeeded Virendra, and decided to deal with feuding political leaders in a more assertive fashion. Nevertheless, the quick rise and fall of prime ministers did not mean that parliamentary democracy in Nepal had no achievements to its credit. For instance, the number of people below poverty line declined from 49 per cent in 1991 to 38 per cent in 2000. Moreover, from 1990 to 2002, as many as 275 bills were passed, and some of them were path breaking in terms of curbing corruption and promoting local self-governance.110 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

107 Murthy, ‘India and Nepal’, p. 1540. Also, Editorial, The Hindustan Times, 21 April 2000; Shivnath Jha, The Statesman, 3 and 26 August 2000; The Statesman, 30 December 2000; Ashok K. Mehta, The Times of India, 7 January 2001; Jug Suraiya, The Times of India, 7 January 2001; Stephen Farrell and Michael Binyon, The Statesman, 7 June 2001. Also see, Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’, p. 80. 108 Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’, p. 80. 109 Mahat, ‘Security and Political Environment’, p. 5. 110 Ibid., pp. 8, 12. 456 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The Maoists, meanwhile, resorted to violence on an unprecedented scale—carrying out abduction, extortion, murder, and attacking banks, schools, government offi ces, police stations, and Army barracks. As Sagar S.J.B. Rana wrote in February 2003: ‘At no time in the history of Nepal have so many Nepalese been killed, maimed, mutilated and displaced from their homes and work than during the last six years.’111 During August-September 2001, when Sher Bahadur Deuba was the prime minister, the government held peace talks with the Maoists. But, on 23 November 2001, the Maoists themselves decided to terminate the talks. Moreover, they attacked an Army barrack. The government then declared an emergency. The Maoists were offi cially declared to be ‘terrorists’. The Army was deployed. The Maoists, however, persisted in terrorist activities against security personnel, killing at one stage the Inspector General of Police. It was surprising that immediately after this assassination, on 30 January 2003, the government and the Maoists agreed to a ceasefire. Apparently, this ceasefi re marked a sort of interim triumph for the extremists. For, the government accepted the conditions laid down by the Maoists, for example, the removal of the label of terrorists, of the INTERPOL red corner notices, as also of the announcement of rewards for the capture of some top-ranking Maoist leaders, and release of some leaders from detention. A number of factors seemed to sway the Maoists in favour of a ceasefi re. Young men were leaving the countryside in search of safety. It was becoming more and more diffi cult to recruit cadres. Moreover, some recruits could not be disciplined and restrained from committing petty crimes, which brought infamy to the Maoists. Above all, Nepal’s security forces received massive aid from not only India but also from America and Britain. India not only prevented the Maoists of Nepal from using Indian soil as a sanctuary, and supplied counterinsurgency

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 training and weapons to Nepali forces, it could overcome its old allergy about third countries providing such military aid to Nepal. As a result, the Maoists found that they had to suffer unacceptable

111 Sagar S.J.B. Rana, ‘Political-Security Environment and Resolution of Maoist Insurgency’, India–Nepal Relations:The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 53. Relations with Nepal 457

losses when they launched assaults on security forces possessing advanced military hardware and communication system.112

Gyanendra’s Coup and Nemesis A few months before the ceasefi re with Maoists, on 4 October 2002, King Gyanendra took a totally unconstitutional step. He removed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, sacked Deuba’s Cabinet, and vested all executive powers in himself. King Gyanendra thus proved the contention of Ashok K. Mehta that ‘The threat to a fl edgling democracy struggling to cohabit with constitutional monarchy is far greater than the one posed by Maoists’.113 It is true that Nepal continued to suffer from political instability due to the persistence of law and order problems, as also infi ghting within the Nepali Congress, leading to a split in the party, but that could not justify Gyanendra’s takeover, which was brazenly unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Gyanendra was a master tactician, and he tried to raise his status by carrying out secret parleys with Maoists and bringing about a ceasefi re, although the timing was not above question, coinciding as it did with the Maoist slaughter of the Inspector General of Armed Police.114 The royal takeover of 4 October 2002 displeased India, whose reaction again annoyed Gyanendra, although India erred on the side of caution when it expressed the hope that the ‘present crisis will be resolved soon within the framework of constitutional processes, paving the way for elections at the earliest and installation of a democratically-elected government in the interest of peace, stability and development in Nepal’.115 Nevertheless, much more pertinent on this matter is the following observation by Lok Raj Baral: ‘If the U.S., India and other scores of democratic countries want Nepal’s democracy to grow, they could have persuaded the King to abide Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

112 Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’, pp. 72–74; Mahat, ‘Security and Political Environment’, pp. 14–15. Also see, Salman Haidar, The Statesman, 9 July 2002. (Salman Haidar was a former foreign secretary of India.) 113 The Hindustan Times, 16 July 2002. 114 Editorial, The Statesman, 1 October 2002; Sudipta Chanda, The Statesman, 6 October 2002. Also, Rana, ‘Political-Security Environment’, p. 59. 115 The Statesman, 6 October 2002. 458 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

by the spirit of the Constitution’.116 In fact, Gyanendra violated the spirit of the constitution even in forming the interim council of ministers. Instead of accommodating the major political parties like the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, he called upon Lokendra Bahadur Chand of the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (a minor party) to form the interim ministry of nine members. Gyanendra thus made it clear that he not only had an unquenchable thirst for absolutism, but that he was not shy of demonstrating it publicly.117 King Gyanendra thus overplayed his hand, and paved the way for a full-scale agitation by seven political parties for the restoration of democracy. The agitation started formally on 4 September 2003. American, British, and Indian ambassadors urged upon the leaders of this agitation—former Prime Minister G.P. Koirala and former Deputy Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal—to keep the agitation peaceful. Although the Maoists did not cease their depredations, and did not formally join the seven-party alliance, they supported the anti-king demonstrations. Gyanendra failed to win over countries like America or Britain, not to speak of India, by using the anti-Maoist stand. Especially, India was worried about King Gyanendra’s links with Jamim Shah, a henchman of arch-terrorist Dawood Ibrahim (a former Mumbai don enjoying Pakistan’s patronage). After the royal takeover of 4 October 2002, Shah arranged pro-Gyanendra rallies in Kathmandu at his own expense. Shah was kingpin of smuggling in arms, gold, and narcotics through Nepal to India. It was an open secret that India supported the anti-monarchy movement launched by the seven-party alliance. Similarly, India, despite the Nepali Maoist’s professed aversion to foreign interference, arranged secret meetings in India between leaders of this alliance and the Maoist leaders.118 In subsequent years, till 28 May 2008, the day of abolition of the nearly 240-year old monarchy in Nepal (as also the terminal point

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 for this chapter), the performance of India’s foreign policy establishment (in New Delhi and Kathmandu) reveals how difﬁ cult it is

116 Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’, p. 76. 117 Editorials, The Statesman, 7 October and 14 November 2002, The Times of India, 19 October 2002. 118 Udayan Namboodiri, The Hindustan Times, 10 October 2002; The Statesman, 5 September 2003; Sudeshna Sarkar, The Statesman, 26 November 2003; Keshav Pradhan, The Hindustan Times, 16 September 2003. Relations with Nepal 459

to maintain a balance between ethics and realism even in relations with Nepal, a small, economically backward, and militarily weak country. The major problem was King Gyanendra himself, who behaved like the military dictators of Pakistan or Bangladesh (Ayub Khan or Pervez Musharraf, Ziaur Rahman or H.M. Ershad), and repeatedly outwitted India. What happened after the royal coup of 4 October 2002 has been brilliantly summarised by Deb Mukharji, a former Indian ambassador to Nepal. He writes:

As the King discarded every single one of his advisers who would offer rational advice and surrounded himself with courtiers known for their obsequiousness, as violence remained unabated in the country, as tourism plummeted and economic activity slowed down while the palace imported ﬂ eets of exotic cars, public discontent grew.119

King Gyanendra convinced himself that he had to augment his own powers in order to cope with this situation. From 2002 to 2005, he arbitrarily chose and sacked three prime ministers. But, on 1 February 2005, he staged another coup, proclaiming a state of emergency and pulverizing the pre-existing pseudo-democratic features of his polity. He tried to befool himself, his country, and the world by promising local government elections in 2006 and elections to Parliament in 2007. India’s external intelligence agency, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), had a large number of operators in Nepal. Still it failed to anticipate the royal coup of 2005.120 ‘The fact that we were not in the know and were as much surprised by the coup as anyone else suggests that we have become uncomfortably distant from the Palace and the sources of power.’121 India must, however, be credited with promoting parleys between the seven-party alliance for the restoration of democracy and the Maoists. These confabulations generated a consensus on restoration of democracy, formation of a constituent assembly, and the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 inclusion of Maoists in the political mainstream, viz. multiparty democracy. India’s success, though, was regrettably (even if unavoidably) marred by some mistaken moves, which retarded the anti-monarchy and pro-democracy movement scheduled for launch

119 Deb Mukharji, The Telegraph, 25 April 2006. 120 The Times of India, 19 April 2008. 121 Salman Haidar, The Statesman, 8 February 2005. 460 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

on 6 April 2006. G.P. Koirala, the Nepali Congress president, vaguely alluded to some foreign pressure which restrained him from launching an appeal for a peaceful movement in collaboration with the Maoists. Obviously, the ﬁ nger of accusation was pointed to New Delhi. It is remarkable that the Maoists, under the leadership of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (nicknamed Prachanda) did not falter where India did. He agreed to issue a similar but separate appeal (along with G.P. Koirala) for a peaceful pro-democracy movement, which would enable the pro-Maoist section of Nepalis to join this movement. What was wrong with India? Bharat Bhushan provides a plausible answer: ‘Not giving up on the King, a desire to continue playing with the political parties and the inability to wish the Marxists away have tied Indian policy in knots. New Delhi wants to make an omelette without breaking any eggs.’122 On 6 April 2006, the seven-party alliance stepped up its agitation by launching a four- day strike. Despite—or because of—police atrocities, this agitation became highly successful. For, a large number of people, belonging to a variety of socio-economic strata, participated in this agitation enthusiastically. ‘Wives of soldiers have joined the movement, discharging their duty to their nation as their husbands carry out theirs.’123 Maoist youths, normally operating in the countryside, appeared to take the opportunity to come to Kathmandu to strengthen this movement.124 Following the 1 February 2005 royal coup, the Government of India took a correct step. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused to participate in the Dhaka SAARC summit to be held a few days later, because he did not want to meet Gyanendra. Unfortunately, at the height of the April 2006 anti- monarchy agitation in Nepal, New Delhi made the serious mistake of sending Karan Singh (of royal ancestry) as the emissary to Nepal. As Ved Marwah wrote:

For India, the events have moved too fast to make any claim of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 success for its failed Nepal policy. Public criticism that followed Karan Singh’s meeting with the King in Kathmandu during the time when the mass protests against the King were at their peak, both in Nepal and India, was embarrassing to Indian policymakers.125

122 The Telegraph, 20 March 2006. 123 Deb Mukharji, The Telegraph, 25 April 2006. 124 Ashok Mitra, The Telegraph, 26 May 2006. 125 The Asian Age, Calcutta, 29 June 2006. Relations with Nepal 461

India made another mistake when, unable to withstand the pressure of the April 2006 agitation, King Gyanendra tried another subter- fuge. On 21 April 2006, due to a failure to understand the climactic changes taking place in Nepal, the king tried to rerun the coup of 4 October 2002. He asked political parties to recommend a prime minister who would be the king’s factotum in a parliamentary vacuum. New Delhi, evidently without a thorough study of the royal offer of 21 April 2006, applauded the same. What enhanced the fa- cetiousness of India’s pro-monarch response was the coincidence that the royal pronouncement was made a day after Karan Singh (the Indian prime minister’s envoy of royal ancestry) left Kathmandu.126 ‘If King Gyanendra’s offer has been suspect, New Delhi’s response to it is nothing short of a diplomatic disaster.’127 For, as India’s former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh observed: ‘We have let the people of Nepal down, lost the goodwill of the seven parties, earned the annoyance of the Maoists and received no kudos from King Gyanendra.’128 The only redeeming feature of New Delhi’s appreciation of King Gyanendra’s 21 April 2006 offer was that in just a day New Delhi indicated that it had to reconsider the policy.129 India confronted a highly complex problem immediately after the 1 February 2005 royal coup—that of arms supply to the RNA— which persisted even after the success of the pro-democracy agitation of April 2006. Initially, India (as also Britain and America) suspended military supplies to the RNA. Subsequently, in May 2005, India resumed non-lethal military supplies. Evidently, India did not want to lose all inﬂ uence over the RNA, which was ﬁ ghting the Maoists, who, again, had the capability to spread disorder in India. India’s external affairs ministry was not in favour of resumption of military supplies to the RNA, whereas the defence ministry reportedly was in favour of it.130 The Indian move, at a time when Gyanendra unleashed repression on the top-ranking political leaders

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and the media, could be interpreted as supportive of monarchy. The RNA, again, embarrassed India in August 2005, when it was

126 Deb Mukharji, The Telegraph, 25 April 2006. 127 Editorial, The Telegraph, 23 April 2006. 128 The Telegraph, 25 April 2006. 129 Bureau report, The Telegraph, 25 April 2006. 130 Salman Haidar, The Statesman, 17 May 2005; Editorial, The Pioneer, 27 October 2006. 462 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

reported that the Insas riﬂ es supplied by India were regarded as sub-standard by the RNA. It was an absurd charge—probably rooted in lack of adequate training—because the Indian Army and the paramilitary forces were using Insas riﬂ es since 1995 without any complaint. The RNA complaint was not only baseless but also unkind because the RNA’s anti-insurgency operations depended for years on Indian military equipment and training, 70 per cent of which were provided as grants.131 The issue of arms supply to the RNA became far more complex in October 2005, when General Pyar Jung Thapa, the RNA chief, visited China and obtained a pledge for weapons worth `500 million. Unlike in 1989, when India promptly protested against the import of arms by Nepal from China, in 2005, India remained silent. Luckily, silence did not signify total inaction. For, in December 2005, Shyam Saran, India’s foreign secretary, announced in Kathmandu that India continued its military cooperation with the RNA on such matters as training, but put a temporary embargo on arms supply in order ‘to foster a national consensus’.132 It was far from easy to contrive a better resolution of a persistent dilemma. In a few months—by September 2006— India faced a peculiar and unforeseen situation, as it had to stop the secret supply of anti-aircraft missiles to Nepal carried by a Russian aircraft, which failed to proceed beyond Mumbai, where it had unsuccessfully stopped for refuelling.133 After all, these weapons were not needed for counterinsurgency operations against the Maoists. In the same month, September 2006, India created enormous embarrassment for itself as it supplied 20 trucks to the RNA to preserve the links, and the Nepali media circulated false reports about arms being carried by these trucks, which led to Maoist protests on Kathmandu streets.134 In the latter half of 2006, India suffered substantial embarrassment before it could register positive achievement in the matter of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 promotion of democracy in Nepal. The Maoists began to threaten Indian workers in the casinos and hotels of Kathmandu, asking them to leave in a few hours or get killed. The Indian embassy in

131 PTI report, The Statesman, 14 August 2005. 132 The Statesman, 14 December 2005. 133 Editorial, The Statesman, 5 September 2006. 134 Sudeshna Sarkar, The Statesman, 14 September 2006. Relations with Nepal 463

Kathmandu was fully aware of the problem, but preferred not to issue any public statement.135 Perhaps this was a sound tactic, for any statement, however mild, could have aggravated the situation. India could not avoid worrying about the Maoists. But it had to remind and comfort itself that there was not much evidence of China extending support to the Maoists in Nepal.136 ‘Even if the Maoists have forgotten what the Chinese ambassador to Nepal had said in 2003, that their proclaimed affi liation to Chairman Mao amounts to a tarnishing of the latter’s image, geography dictates that Beijing will not be able to fi ll the gap’ in terms of aid for economic reconstruction, if India and the world community stayed aloof.137 In October 2006, Prachanda prevented the pre-scheduled ratifi cation by Nepal of the Extradition Treaty and Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance, which had been fi nalised by the two countries and also initialled in January 2005.

The validity of bilateral agreements, especially treaties, is not subject to change in Government and cannot be scrapped unilaterally, unless the violator is willing to be known as a rogue regime… Meanwhile, till such time the Treaty of Mutual Legal Assistance is in place, we might as well forget putting an end to Pakistan and Pakistanis using Nepal as a base and a hideout for their anti-India activities.138

Despite these setbacks, India’s Ministry of External Affairs, especially the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, was patient and steadfast in the promotion of democracy in Nepal. By November 2006, its valiant efforts were crowned with great success. Undoubtedly, this success was rooted in the victory of the popular uprising in April 2006, which compelled King Gyanendra to retreat, to bring Parliament back to life on 24 April, to witness (as he remained a virtual prisoner in his palace) G.P. Koirala becoming the prime minister (and K.P. Sharma Oli becoming the foreign minister). Nevertheless, but for sustained

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and largely invisible Indian efforts, the government of the seven-party alliance (SPA) and Maoists would not have agreed on 9 August 2006 to invite the UN to monitor Nepal’s regular Army and the Maoist’s

135 Himanshi Dhawan and Indrani Bagchi, The Times of India, 1 August 2006. 136 Ashok Mitra, The Telegraph, 26 May 2006. 137 Editorial, The Times of India, 2 August 2006. 138 Editorial, The Pioneer, 6 October 2006. 464 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

People’s Liberation Army (PLA), ensuring that they conﬁ ned themselves to the barracks till the constituent assembly elections.139 On 8 November 2006, again, largely due to Indian mediation, the SPA government and the Maoists agreed to sign a comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) on 16 November, and approve an interim constitution on 21 November.140 India earnestly desired that the people of Nepal should be able to exercise their franchise without any fear of gun-wielding guerrillas. It felt assured when, on 7 November 2006, Foreign Minister K.P. Sharma Oli reiterated the agreement of 9 august whereby the Maoists would permit the UN to monitor the PLA arms, whereas Nepal’s Army would stay in barracks.141 India demonstrated its diplomatic acumen by opting for an advisory role in the matter of arms surrender by the PLA, and entrusting to the UN the substantive role. Even Prachanda praised India for its positive role in the restoration of peace in Nepal.142 In mid-November 2006, Prachanda visited New Delhi, and made a lot of noise pleasing to the hosts. He castigated Stalin’s errors, denounced China for lack of consistency in the practice of communism, and dismissed the propaganda that the Maoists in Nepal were interested in building red bastions in India. He added that such propaganda was the insinuation by Indian elements loyal to Nepal’s monarchy. But the most important observation by Prachanda in New Delhi was that India was, and would remain, Nepal’s closest ally.143 For a Nepali, who would face charges of surrendering to Indian hegemonists by the offer of even the mildest (though legitimate) appreciation of India, this observation by Prachanda was indeed memorable (even if the memory might wither in the foreseeable future). Baburam Bhattarai, the second-in-command to Prachanda, combined with Prachanda, while in New Delhi, to ‘shed all pretence of the anti-Indianism that has been the leitmotif of their rebellion’.144

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 On 21 November 2006, the SPA government and the Maoists laid the foundation for durable peace in Nepal by signing an agreement to

139 Suman Pradhan, The Times of India, 10 August 2006. 140 Indrani Bagchi, The Times of India, 9 November 2006. 141 Ibid. 142 Editorial, The Times of India, 10 November 2006. 143 Akshaya Mukul, The Times of India, 18 November 2006. 144 Kanak Mani Dixit, The Statesman, 28 November 2006. Relations with Nepal 465

terminate the 10-year-old insurgency, enabling the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or CPN-M, to join the interim Parliament and the interim government.145 Prachanda thus abandoned the People’s War. ‘He showed nerve and steel in turning his insurgency a full 180 degrees, and bringing his commanders along with him.’146 It was a unique feat. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 21 November was an unparalleled landmark in Nepal’s contemporary history. All signatories agreed to renounce violence, and the Maoists pledged to dismantle the parallel government machinery they were running for years (for example, the courts). All this, however, did not foretell a smooth political transition. Especially, on the issue of abolition of Nepal’s monarchy, G.P. Koirala’s tenacious advocacy of postponement of a formal proclamation till the constituent assembly elections matched Prachanda’s persistent pressure for an immediate announcement.147 Probably, ‘some of the old style leaders seem to feel that a ceremonial monarchy shorn of effective authority could still have some value, for reasons of sentiment and also as a possible counter to the revolutionary ardour of the Maoists.’148 On 16 December 2006, the eight parties, including the CPN-M, prepared the draft of an Interim Constitution. This generated some controversy because it vested near-absolute powers in the prime minister, who headed the state as well as the government, while the monarch remained in suspension. There was no separation of powers, and the prime minister had the power to appoint even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, evoking protests from the Nepal Bar Association.149 The Maoists had no reservations about this Interim Constitution. Yet, they became restless because of some delay in the formal announcement of this constitution, with Prachanda trying his habitual threat of a people’s movement. The delay was due, partly to the lack of full implementation of transfer of PLA arms to the UN monitors, and partly to the agitation by Madhesias

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 living in Nepal’s terai (close to the plains of India’s Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states). The Madhesias formed 48.4 per cent of Nepal’s

145 The Times of India, 21 November 2006. 146 Kanak Mani Dixit, The Statesman, 28 November 2006. 147 Editorial, The Statesman, 17 October 2006. 148 Salman Haidar, The Statesman, 30 November 2006. 149 Yuvaraj Ghimire, The Indian Express, 26 December 2006 and 4 January 2007. 466 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

total population, but had an insignifi cant number of representatives in Nepal’s legislature as also in administrative bodies. The ruling circles of Nepal, consisting of the hills people, neglected these plains people. The fact that most of these terai people were of Indian origin and pro-India militated obviously against their getting fair treatment from rulers in Kathmandu. Eventually, despite some delay in the formal proclamation of the Interim Constitution, on 15 January 2007, the Maoist revolutionaries entered the national legislature. The old Pratinidhi Sabha (House of Representatives) passed the Interim Constitution unanimously, and then liquidated itself. A new interim Parliament was born. A new order emerged in Nepal after the death of about 15,000 people in a decade of insurgency, and, no less important, the death of more than a score of unarmed civilians at the hands of the RNA in course of the 19-day movement in April 2006. Nevertheless, the entry of Maoist rebels in Parliament could not prevent the unfortunate death of 17 persons during the terai agitation of January–February 2007. The much-advertised concern of Maoist revolutionaries for the downtrodden excluded that for the ill-treated Madhesias. In the fi rst week of February 2007, fortunately, the coalition of eight parties coped with the six- week-long agitation in Terai by agreeing to a system of proportional representation, raising the number of constituencies to match the population. It was good for India, because the terai people were not shy of pronouncing publicly their affi nity with India.150 Despite joining the democratic mainstream of a multi-party system, the Maoists could not get over their habit of issuing warnings or threats. For example, on 13 February 2007, the 11th anniversary of their People’s War, Prachanda sounded the alarm that, in case of delays in holding elections to the constituent assembly, he would start a peaceful agitation to establish a republic in Nepal. When there was some delay in the entry of the Maoists into the Cabinet

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 because of the incomplete transfer of PLA arms to the UN monitors, Prachanda again gave an ultimatum to the SPA that his party must be given Cabinet berths in a few days for elections to the constituent assembly.151 But King Gyanendra, too, appeared to match the

150 Editorial, The Statesman, 9 January, 18 January and 12 February 2007; Editorials, The Asian Age, 18 January 2007, and The Pioneer, 12 February 2007. 151 Sudeshna Sarkar, The Pioneer, 18 February 2007. Relations with Nepal 467

Maoist’s predilection for adventurism, when, on 19 February 2007, Nepal’s 57th Democracy Day, he violated the spirit of the Interim Constitution, ignored his own state of suspension, and tried to justify his February 2005 coup. He announced, without taking any prior Cabinet authorisation, that he was compelled to carry out the coup because of the failure of the government of the day to maintain law and order and hold elections. Not to speak of a grave deterioration in law and order during the post-coup months, King Gyanendra’s speech of 19 February 2007 gave an opportunity to Prachanda to allege that the king was still conspiring to foil the formation of a republic. It was only natural then—in reaction to this speech by the king—that several thousand youths, including students, associated with the principal political parties (as also Maoists) held angry demonstrations outside the Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu.152 On 10 April 2007, the CPN-M, that is the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), formally applied to the Election Commission of Nepal for earning the status of a regular political party along with an electoral symbol. If this denoted ﬂ exibility on the part of leaders of an insurrectionary group, it also signalled how extraordinarily skil- ful the veteran Nepali Congress leader, G.P. Koirala, was. Without his determination and leadership, a body of insurgents would not have converted themselves into a political party in a multi-party democracy. Unfortunately, the elections, scheduled for June, were postponed. One reason for the postponement could be the lingering political instability in the southern plains of Nepal, where the people demanded higher legislative representation in proportion to their numerical strength. Kathmandu’s rulers proposed to raise from the current number of three or four to approximately 50 per cent of seats in the legislature for the terai people. But the agitators were not satisﬁ ed. They demanded a sort of total self-government, and continued their movement, which led to a murderous clash with the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Maoist guerrillas. Not less than 27 people were killed in the terai in the month of March. The government did not carry out any investigation. The Kathmandu Ofﬁ ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) criticised the security forces of Nepal for their failure to prevent violence, protect victims,

152 The Statesman, 20 February 2007; The Kathmandu Post, 21 February 2007. 468 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and arrest culprits.153 The hills versus plains animosity persisted in the terai, resulting in frequent strikes. India played an exemplary role in refraining from intervention in the region, and the restraint exercised by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of Bihar (which was vitally affected by uncertainties in Nepal’s terai) deserved exceptional praise, especially because Bihar was full of lawless elements eager to fi sh in the troubled waters of Nepal’s terai, and they could easily have done so if Nitish Kumar had relaxed his strictness. India, of course, was right in diplomatically warning the Kathmandu government that unrest in the terai should not be used as a pretext for indefi nite postponement of elections, as also for undue prolongation of the tenure of the interim government.154 If political instability in the terai was one probable reason for postponement of elections, a more probable one could be the lack of consensus on the date for formal abolition of monarchy. Prachanda repeatedly accused G.P. Koirala and the Indian government of trying to preserve the monarchy in some form. India’s role on this specifi c matter was not exactly praiseworthy or mature, especially at a time when India displayed abundant fl exibility in leaving to Britain the crucial tasks of restructuring the Ministry of Defence and Home Affairs in Nepal for making Nepal’s Army adapt itself to civilian control, and Nepal’s police more effi cient as also respect- ful of human rights. India sent a clear message to Nepal that it did not favour the Maoist demand for the declaration of Nepal as a republic before elections. It is nearly indefensible to defend this diplomatic stance of India because Nepal’s monarchs did not bother about the basic needs of the Nepalis, forget the legitimate concerns of India. It is arguable that if India’s stand succeeded in achieving anything it was aggravation of political uncertainties in Nepal. Elections, scheduled for June 2007, were initially postponed to November 2007, but in September 2007, the Maoists went to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the extent of leaving the interim government because of the delay in the abolition of the monarchy. Therefore, elections were again postponed, and there was an agreement between the Maoists and

153 The Dainik Statesman, Kolkata, 11 March 2007; The Pioneer, 21 April 2007; The Statesman, Editorial, 5 September 2007. 154 Editorial, The Statesman, 13 April 2007; Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 30 May 2007; Sudeshna Sarkar, The Times of India, 19 August 2007. Relations with Nepal 469

the SPA to hold elections in April 2008, only after Parliament approved the abolition of the 239-year-old monarchy in December 2007. On 28 December 2007, in accordance with the interim Parliament’s endorsement on 24 December of an amendment to the Interim Constitution, Nepal was formally declared a Federal Democratic Republic. The implementation of this decision would have to wait for elections to the constituent assembly. When India hailed this development as ‘encouraging’ and ‘in the right direction’, it could not even save its face.155 It will be pertinent to note that months before the declaration of 28 December 2007, King Gyanendra began to experience a dramatic decrease of status. The interim Parliament robbed him of the title of Supreme Commander of the Nepal Army. The RNA became the Nepal Army. On 19 August 2007, the government of G.P. Koirala ordered the Nepal Army to discard all photographs and logos glorifying the king. On 6 September 2007, it was decided that the name of the king on coins and notes would be replaced by an image of Mount Everest, his image by the watermark of the national ﬂ ower (the rhododendron). In a sense, the sharpest blow to the prestige of the monarchy was probably struck on 7 September 2007, when the Nepali Congress, a traditional supporter of the monarchy, issued a declaration that it wanted the kingdom to become a republic; this, when some time back G.P. Koirala had toyed with the idea of replacing Gyanendra with his four-year-old grandson, Hridayendra. The national anthem did away with a reference to the king. The Royal Nepal Airlines lost the word ‘royal’. The payment of annual allowance of the king, $3.1 million, was stopped. About 50 per cent of the king’s ceremonial guard lost their positions. So did the queen’s beauticians. Finally, following the elections of 10 April 2008, on 27 May the constituent assembly was sworn in, and on 28 May the constituent assembly voted 560–4 to abolish the monarchy and Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

155 Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 30 May 2007; Sudeshna Sarkar, The Times of India, 19 August and 19 September and 22 November 2007; News Behind the News, 31 December 2007, http://news.indiamart.com/news-analysis/nepal- ends-monarchy p. 1; Editorials, The Pioneer, 26 December 2007, and The Times of India, 28 December 2007. Also, S.D. Muni, ‘Maoists in Nepal: Implications for India’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, pp. 101–2. 470 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

declared Nepal to be a republic. The king was asked to vacate the palace in a fortnight (and move to a spacious private, though palatial, residence).156 As already hinted, this is the appropriate terminal point of this chapter. At the newly elected constituent assembly, the CPN-M emerged as the single largest party, the Nepali Congress remaining a distant second. While none could predict the end of the vicious wrangling between and within the political parties, everyone could predict the persistence of, controversies on at least two issues of India–Nepal relations in the post-monarchy era: management of water resources, and the status of the 1950 treaty, especially the open border between the two countries. A brief discussion of these two issues will be provided here.

Water Resources Many of the issues between India and Nepal related to shareable water resources can be resolved if hydro harmony is allowed precedence over hydro politics. Misinformation, guesswork bordering on suspicion, misperception, and press reports based on ignorance or illicit infl uence, are frequently at the root of hydro politics. Even top-ranking experts in various fi elds, including political personalities, can fall prey to hydro politics. Take, for instance, the oft-repeated Nepalese complaint that Nepal has been cheated on the Kosi project, and that its sovereignty has not been properly respected. Indians are agonised by this complaint. For, due to fi nancial and other constraints, India drew up the Kosi project in a way that extended greater benefi ts to India than to Nepal. Actually, in such projects inside India—or other parts of the world—gains are not always equal.157 Moreover, but for Nepal’s consent, India was not in a position to construct the Kosi barrage. India was (and is) more powerful than Nepal, but it certainly lacked (and still lacks) the capability for imposition Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

156 The Times of India, 24 August, 7 and 8 September 2007, 18 April 2008. Also see, ‘Nepal creates republic, boots King’, at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id. pp. 1–4. Also, Khalid Mahmud, ‘Post-Monarchy Politics in Nepal’, Regional Studies, vol. 26, no. 4, Autumn 2008, Islamabad, pp. 91–93. 157 Sudhir Sen, ‘Making of the DVC and its Initial Phase: An Impression’, in Damodar Valley: Evolution of Grand Design, Calcutta: Damodar Valley Corporation, 1992, p. 272. Relations with Nepal 471

of the Kosi barrage agreement on Nepal. The agreement, dated 25 April 1954, notes that the Government of Nepal ‘has agreed to the construction of the said barrage, headworks and other connected works by and at the cost of the [Indian] Union, in consideration of the benefi ts hereinafter appearing’.158 India paid compensation to Nepal for lands transferred to it for the implementation of the Kosi project, but the India–Nepal agreement of 1954 stipulated clearly that ‘sovereignty rights and territorial jurisdiction of the Government [of Nepal] in respect of such lands shall continue unimpaired by such transfer’.159 Moreover, both Nepal and India agreed to ‘fi nal and binding’ arbitration in regard to ‘any question, differences or objections’ arising out of the agreement.160 True, benefi ts granted to Nepal by the Kosi agreement were not substantial. India, too, did not secure all the anticipated benefi ts. This was largely due to improper planning behind the Kosi barrage, which suffered from ‘a project-centric approach’, and did not ‘aim at optimum development, effective management and efficient utilization of the water resources of the basin’.161 It is true that the Kosi project has produced some adverse ecological consequences. But it is also worth noting, as the Report of the Technical Committee Constituted by the Government of Bihar in 1965 notes:

The unique translatory movement of Kosi river has in about 130 years caused a shift in its course of about 70 miles and in the process an area of about 6,000 sq. miles in North Bihar and Nepal has been devastated. This area received a great sense of security after the construction of the Kosi Project. This is apparent from the fast changing outlook in the districts of Purnea, Saharsa and Darbhanga…. The ﬂ ood embankments on both sides of the river Kosi have protected an area of 1.27 lakh acres in Nepal Terai from annual ﬂ ooding.162

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 158 Government of India, Agreements on Development of Inter-State and International Rivers, Government of India, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, Central Water Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, 1979, p. 355. 159 Ibid., pp. 356–57. 160 Ibid., p. 358. 161 T. Prasad, D. Gyawali and others, ‘Cooperation for International River and Basin Development: The Kosi Basin’, in Celia Kirby and W.R. White (eds), Integrated River Basin Development, New York: Wiley, 1994, pp. 497, 499. 162 Anon, Report of the Kosi Technical Committee Constituted by the Government of Bihar in 1965, Secretariat Press, Patna, 1966, pp. 11, 13. 472 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Undoubtedly, benefi ts to India and Nepal would have been incomparably greater—and criticisms of the Kosi project by the Nepalese might not have arisen—if a much more ambitious multipurpose project, costing `1.77 billion, had been carried out. This project evolved from several years of surveys and investigations carried out in Nepal (with the permission of the Government of Nepal) and in India. This project envisaged the construction of a 783 feet high dam at Barakshetra in Nepal and the storage of 6.9 million acre feet of water, as well as a barrage at Chatara and canals for irrigation benefi ts of up to 38.4 lakh acres in Nepal and Bihar, for distillation and improved drainage, and for the generation of 90,000 KW of hydroelectricity.163 This project for a Kosi High Dam, if implemented, might have transformed certain areas in north India and Nepal, generating an unstoppable movement towards prosperity, as the Bhakra Dam did for India’s western region. Signifi cantly, analyses and interpretations of why the much bigger Kosi project was abandoned in favour of a small one can offer glimpses into considerations of hydro politics, and also promise ways of substitution of hydro harmony for hydro politics. The Government of India’s 1953 project report on the Kosi project confesses fi nancial stringency as the reason for the failure to go ahead with building the big dam at Barakshetra. Rishikesh Shaha, a former foreign minister of Nepal, accepts the explanation, but modifi es it.164 According to him, Bihar could not compete with Punjab (which wanted the Bhakra Dam, to which Shaha does not explicitly refer) in claiming a large share of India’s limited resources. This may or may not be correct, partially or wholly. But Shaha’s other explanation—that the Barakshetra High Dam, located deep inside the Nepalese territory, was not preferred by India because of ‘security consideration’—is open to serious challenge, especially

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 when he adds:

Ever since then, India’s obsession with security has prevented it from thinking of building dams and power stations higher up in the mountain gorges of Nepal. India has been afraid that these costly

163 Government of India, Kosi Project: 1953 Project Report, Central Water Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, 1953, pp. 46–47. 164 Shaha, ‘Politics of Water Power in Nepal’, p. 286. Relations with Nepal 473

installations will not be safe in the hands of another country however closely it might have been linked with Nepal in matters of security and development through a formal exchange of letters in 1950.165

This assessment of Shaha can be questioned in several ways. The Government of India did not abandon the Barakshetra High Dam project. Its 1953 project report pleaded:

In view of the high cost of the project and the limited ﬁ nancial and material resources available in the country, the scheme was divided into seven easy stages, each self-supporting and independent in itself and yet capable of being superimposed on the preceding one without involving any engineering difﬁ culties or wasteful expenditure.166

The Kosi barrage that was eventually built represented merely the ﬁ rst stage in this comprehensive scheme. U.K. Verma, a former Engineer-in-Chief and Special Secretary of the government of Bihar, provides an explanation for the postponement of the Barakshetra High Dam project, which is devoid of hydro politics. He writes:

The high dam project had to be deferred in view of the uncertainties about the stability of a high dam in one of the active seismic zones in the world. In the early ﬁ fties, stability of rock ﬁ ll dams in high seismic regions was a major unknown issue and the technology was not developed. Even after consulting with American experts the proposal could not be taken further.167

But the Government of India never gave up the idea of the High Dam and kept it under active consideration. That is why it established a seismological observatory at Barakshetra, and set up a project at Chatara for researches on conservation work on the Kosi mountains.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 What then prevented the implementation of the other stages of the Barakshetra High Dam scheme in which the already constructed

165 Ibid. 166 Anon, Kosi Project, p. 47. 167 U.K. Verma, ‘Socioeconomic Renaissance Through Dynamic Indo-Nepal Cooperation in Water Resources Development’, Water Nepal, vol. 4, no. 1, September 1994, p. 140. 474 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Kosi barrage formed the fi rst stage? In order to answer the question, one may have to move from the domain of purely scientifi c technological explanations to that of hydro politics, and yet offer a corrective to Rishikesh Shaha’s above noted assessment. Evidently, India failed to convince Nepal of the logic and utility of the seven stages of the Kosi High Dam scheme. Evidently, also, Nepal remained preoccupied with the wrong supposed to have been done to itself at the fi rst stage of this scheme, that is when the existing Kosi barrage was erected. ‘If further investigations indicate the necessity of storage or detention dams and other soil conservation measures on the Kosi and its tributaries, the Government [of Nepal] agree to grant their consent to them on conditions similar to those mentioned herein’, stated Article 16 of the 1954 Kosi agreement. The word ‘conditions’ in this Article need not be negatively interpreted because Nepal would not have agreed to any unusual condition, and a perusal of the agreement would not reveal any extraordinary condition, although there could always be a scope for revision or improvement. This could be interpreted as taken care of by the word ‘similar to’ following the word ‘conditions’. Article 16 of the 1954 India–Nepal agreement had vast potentialities of gradual upgradation of collaboration in the development of water resources in the following decades, in tune with the availability of fi nancial resources and the march of technology. But the potentialities were virtually lost in 1966 when, at Nepal’s insistence, the 1954 Kosi barrage agreement was revised, and Article 16 was deleted. ‘Other suitable projects upstream of the present barrage were necessary to harness the river for mutual benefi t which would have also brought direct benefi ts to Nepal. But the sense of past “wrong” impaired the atmosphere of cooperation between two neighbours following the agreement of 1954. As a result, the past wrong was allowed to continue of its own choice more than anything else, when Nepal

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 should have been prompt, in seizing the opportunity to initiate other beneﬁ cial projects that would have made up the past losses.’168 The validity of the above noted observation was conﬁ rmed by the fate of the feasibility report on the Kosi High Dam at Barakshetra, which was prepared by India in 1980. This was forwarded to Nepal

168 Govind D. Shrestha, ‘Himalayan Waters: Need for a Positive Indo-Nepal Cooperation’, Water Nepal, vol. 4, no. 1, September 1994, p. 269. Relations with Nepal 475

in 1983. But Nepal did not respond favourably till February 1991, when at the 17th meeting of the Kosi Coordination Committee, India and Nepal ‘recognized the need’ for ‘surveys and investigations to explore the possibility of undertaking the Kosi High Dam’.169 The feasibility report on the Kosi High Dam reiterated that the onrush of silt was the principal problem in Kosi, and recommended that ‘it will be essential to construct a number of storage reservoirs on the major tributaries of the Kosi upstream of the proposed dam at Barakshetra within reasonable time to optimize the life and benefi ts from the proposed project’.170 As to the continuing debate on the positive and negative aspects of the present Kosi barrage, a 1983 report of the High Level Technical Experts Committee for Kosi barrage, presented an analysis of how the behaviour of the Kosi can baffl e planners, although the costs of inaction would have been immeasurably higher than the costs of unavoidably defective or non-foolproof action.171 The preceding discussion on the India–Nepal agreement of 1954 on the Kosi barrage provides an example of how hydro politics can gain precedence over hydro harmony, and also indicates how the process can be reversed in favour of hydro harmony. Another example is provided by the Tanakpur barrage agreement of December 1991 between India and Nepal, which was revised in October 1992. During 1985–89, when Nepal was under panchayat rule, as already stated in this chapter, India built within its own territory a barrage and power station at Tanakpur. The agreement of 1991/1992 related to the construction of an affl ux bund within Nepalese territory for the prevention of inundation of agricultural land in Nepal. In 1991, India agreed to supply 150 cusecs of water to Nepal for irrigating 4,000–5,000 hectares of land. Moreover, despite a substantial reduction of the supply of electricity needed by India, India agreed to supply to Nepal, free of charge, 10 million units of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 power. In the 1992 agreement, this was raised to 20 million units.

169 Anon, ‘A Short Note on the Utility of the Proposed Kosi Dam at Barakshetra for the Existence of the Existing Kosi Project and its Present Status’, Government of Bihar, Patna, 1991, p. 73. 170 Government of India, Feasibility Report on Kosi High Dam Project, Central Water Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, 1980, pp. 2–3. 171 Anon, Report of the High Level Technical Experts Committee for Kosi Barrage, Government of Bihar, Patna, 1983, pp. 12–13. 476 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Moreover, as in the case of the 1954 Kosi agreement, Nepal would retain sovereignty over the land on which India was to carry out construction works. ‘Though appearing to be benefi cial to both the countries, the Tanakpur accord got enmeshed in the vortex of internal politics in Nepal.’172 The prime minister, belonging to the Nepali Congress, was accused by the opposition leaders of being subservient to India. A faction of his own party also strengthened this attack upon him. The controversy about the Tanakpur project did not ‘centre around the contents of the actual package as envisaged by Nepal’s decision on the project so much as around the non-observance of the formal procedure provided for such transactions in the 1990 Constitution of Nepal’.173 Since the Tanakpur agreement related to the highly sensitive issue of water resources development, the prime minister ought to have submitted the agreement to Parliament for ratifi cation in accordance with the country’s constitution. But he prevaricated. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Nepal prescribed ratifi cation of this agreement by Parliament, and Parliament ratifi ed it after a considerable lapse of time—but not before sowing confusion and discord within Nepal, as also between India and Nepal. Actually, the Tanakpur package, becoming a part of the broader Mahakali treaty of 1996, was fi nally ratifi ed by the Nepalese Parliament as late as September 1996. This submergence of hydro harmony by hydro politics could have been avoided had political leaders, bureaucrats, professional engineers, and media persons played their respective parts in a responsible manner, relied on facts and enlightened self interest, and refrained from infecting the public with misperceptions. ‘Many reporting Tanakpur, for example, have met experts and offi cials who have spoken only half-truths. For example, the fact that the disputed bund was built as suggested by a Nepali fact-fi nding mission, was

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 made public only recently while there were people knowing about this all along’, afﬁ rm B. Bhattarai and R. Dahal.174 Bhattarai and

172 Kaushik, ‘Water Resources of Nepal’, p. 280. 173 Shaha, ‘Politics of Water Power in Nepal’, p. 283. 174 Binod Bhattarai and Rajendra Dahal, ‘Dissemination of Scientiﬁ c Know- ledge and Management of Mass Opinion: Challenges before Journalism’, Kathmandu Meeting on Cooperative Development of Himalayan Water Resources, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, 27–28 February 1993. Relations with Nepal 477

Dahal have also made the following important observations on the Tanakpur debate in Nepal. First, ‘Those with knowledge about the technical, constitutional and legal intricacies of the project have behaved rather unprofessionally, and have also been unsuccessful in presenting facts to the public’.175 Second, ‘the politicians have been concerned more with political overtones of the debate and less with the scientiﬁ c truth’.176 Third, ‘The media in general… appear to be myopic, biased and even getting manipulated…’.177 As to the Indian press, the less said the better. Indian media persons did not apparently have the training for, and interest in, reporting such a vital issue of water resource development as the Tanakpur issue. They could easily be accused of chauvinism.178 Some Indian observers, however, have expressed their regret over the fact that the Nepalis appear to play up the allegation of them being losers or cheated on such issues as the Kosi barrage or the Tanakpur barrage, whereas they play down the beneﬁ cial impact of numerous projects completed with substantial Indian assistance. To reiterate what this chapter has already noted, even during the panchayat regime,

The strained relations notwithstanding, India has continued its assistance programme in Nepal. By 1984–85 ﬁ ve projects were completed and handed over to the Nepali Government. These were the Devighat Power Project, Mahendra Rajmarg, a Police Hospital in Kathmandu and included one hundred drinking water schemes in rural areas… However, even sincere Indian economic aid is perceived suspiciously in Nepal.179

It should be added that many important Nepalese projects, for example, the Kankai multipurpose project, the Mulghat hydroelectric project, the West Rapti project, etc., ‘did receive synergic support from India’.180 All this happened despite the overall unpropitious Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

175 Binod Bhattarai and Rajendra Dahal, ‘Media: The Missing Fourth Dimension of Water Resources Development’, Water Nepal, vol. 4, no. 1, September 1994, p. 291. 176 Ibid., p. 292. 177 Ibid., p. 295. 178 Ibid., p. 297. 179 Kaushik, ‘Water Resources of Nepal’, p. 279. 180 Sinha, ‘Synergic Development of Eastern Himalayan Rivers’, p. 307. 478 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

situation in which suspicions about India’s role in such issues as the Kosi and Tanakpur issues persisted, and ‘Nepal made incredulous and unreasonable claims to thwart even viable and wellmerited projects’ on development of Himalayan water resources proposed by India.181 The naturally complex relationships between the upper riparian and the lower riparian affect Nepal and India. Nepal is the upper riparian vis-à-vis India. The incontestable advantage of an upper riparian favours Nepal. India’s dependence on Nepal is glaring— almost desperate. Nearly 75 per cent of north Bihar is ‘prone to annual fl oods’, whereas ‘more than 60% of the basin areas of the rivers fl owing through North Bihar lie in the northern neighbouring country of Nepal’.182 India’s helplessness in taming the extraordinarily turbulent and excessively silt carrying Kosi without Nepal’s permission for the erection of heavy engineering works in Nepal is too obvious to need much reiteration, and many offi cial reports have amply confi rmed it.183 India’s political-economic superiority is not of much help in negotiations on water resource development with its neighbour. For, a less powerful country is so oversensitive to the charge, real or imaginary, of subservience to a more powerful neighbour, that it may, even on mere suspicion of pressure, prefer inaction to action. ‘Thus the political clout and economic power of India, in the context of water accords, have become its weakness rather than its strength.’184

181 Ibid. 182 I.N. Sinha, ‘Irrigation Policy for Realisation of High Agro potential of Bihar State in India’, Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, vol. 122, no. 1, January/February 1996, p. 36. 183 Anon, Reports on Investigations of Kosi Valley Schemes, Part-II, Government of India, Ministry of Irrigation and Power, Central Water and Power Commission, New Delhi, 1964; Anon, Report of the Kosi Technical Committee; Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Anon, Feasibility Report on the Kosi High Dam Project; Anon, Report of the High Level Technical Experts Committee; Anon, Comprehensive Plan of Flood Control for the Ganga Sub-Basin Part-II/6: Comprehensive Plan of Flood Control for the Kosi River System Vol. II/6(a), Report, Government of India, Ministry of Water Resources, Ganga Flood Control Commission, Patna, 1986; Anon, ‘Utility of the Proposed Kosi High Dam’. 184 Bhim Subba, ‘Tapping Himalayan Water Resources: Problems, Oppor- tunities and Prospects from a Bhutanese Perspective’, Water Nepal, vol. 4, no. 1, September 1994, p. 210. (Bhim Subba was formerly the director-general, Department of Power, Bhutan.) Relations with Nepal 479

In a world where even the relentless adversaries of two world wars have come close economically, politically, and even militarily, there is no reason why Nepal and India cannot work together for water resource development, moving from mini-micro to mega-projects, so that the people do not have to wait for decades to eat the tantalizing fruits of super big projects. Certainly, ‘in the changing global scenario where the economic agenda increasingly exerts greater infl uence on the politics of nations, the chances of proper economic partnerships, even between unequal neighbours, are bright’.185 Although, for obvious reasons, India has to take the initiative with regard to the Kosi High Dam project, if the project materialises at some point of time, Nepal (and Bangladesh) will benefi t in many ways. To take a few examples, Nepal may be able to sell electricity to Bangladesh, thereby depriving India of its status of a monopoly purchaser of electricity from Nepal. Moreover, Nepal may even be able to relieve the agony of its landlocked status by the construction of a waterway through Indian lands to Bangladesh. Again, Bangladesh will benefi t from the augmentation of Ganga’s dry season fl ow as also fl ood mitigation. Taking all such matters into account, one can argue that ‘it would be economically suicidal for the smaller nations to stubbornly sit on their resources because of perceptions of being shortchanged’.186 India, again, should be careful that it does not appear to press home its advantage of being, economically and politically, more powerful than Nepal. Nevertheless, mistrust of small countries towards India naturally persists, although ‘it is diffi cult to evaluate whether such feelings of mistrust on the part of the smaller countries are objective’.187 In Nepal, ‘the case of the Trisuli project constructed by India, which feeds the Nepalese capital Kathmandu with much- needed electricity, has not made much difference in the public impression’, which is one of mistrust towards the bigger neighbour.188

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 As already noted in this chapter, in February 1996 was signed the Mahakali treaty between India and Nepal, which aimed at an

185 Ibid., p. 214. 186 Ibid., p. 216. 187 Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, ‘Water Management in the Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin: Emerging Challenges for the 21st Century’, Water Resources Development, vol. 11, no. 4, 1995, p. 434. 188 Ibid., p. 433. 480 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

integrated development of the Mahakali river system, and apportioned the costs and beneﬁ ts of development equitably between the two countries.189 The Pancheshwar Dam is an essential component of the Mahakali treaty. But it appears that Nepalis and Indians cannot agree on anything. They cannot ﬁ nalise the detailed project report (DPR), because they cannot settle the issue of location of the regulating dam. Nepal suggests Rupaligad as the location, which, according to Indian experts, cannot hold the desired quantity of water, and which is dangerously exposed to the malady of quick siltation. Nepal refuses to examine the Indian recommendation of Poorangiri as an alternative location, partly because of some problems of human displacement resulting from submergence. On water resources, there is no dearth of India–Nepal institutional arrangements. There is a Joint Committee on Water Resources (JCWR), a Standing Committee on Inundation Problems between Nepal and India (SCIP), a Joint Committee on Embankment Construction, which is a sub-committee of SCIP, a Joint Group of Experts (JGE) for the Preparation of Master Plan for Flood Management, a Coordination Committee for Kosi Project, a Coordination Committee on Gandak Project, a Commission on Karnali, a Karnali Coordination Committee, a Joint Group of Experts of Nepal and India on Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project, a Joint Team of Experts (JTE) on Sapta Koshi High Dam and Sunkosi Kamala Diversion Project, a Power Exchange Committee, Joint Task Force on Flood Control and Forecasting. Thus, while the commissions/committees/groups/teams, etc., proliferate, actual cooperation languishes. Meetings of many of these committees, etc., may not be held for years. There are complaints of faulty design and inadequate maintenance of projects. Gandak, for instance, has generated an annual average of 6 megawatts of power, although the installed capacity is 15 megawatts.190

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Indians and Nepalis have some genuine grievances against one another. For instance, British India took far greater care in holding consultations with Nepal on various matters of water resources

189 Ray, ‘Introduction’, p. 6. 190 Dwarika N. Dhungel, ‘Nepal–India Water Resources Relationship: Looking Ahead’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, pp. 196–201. Relations with Nepal 481

than free India.191 Nepal on its part, while referring to downstream benefi ts for India from waters stored in Nepal, refuses to admit that ‘there is no concept of ownership of fl owing water in international law…naturally fl owing water is free like air and sunshine’.192 This unavoidably brief discussion on water resources may be concluded by underlining an Indian perspective provided by a former foreign secretary of India, who negotiated the Mahakali treaty.

We had envisaged a different kind of joint future for India and Nepal when negotiating the agreement, trying to ensure that this great resource of Nepal would be harnessed for the beneﬁ t of both countries. We felt that we had embarked on something that would transform the lives of the people of the Ganges valley and of Nepal. Unfortunately, this vision seems rather remote at the moment.193

For an Indian conversant with Pakistani and Nepali politics, the impression is inescapable that a section of the Nepali elite (like a section of the Pakistani elite) believes in cutting one’s nose to spite another’s face. So, some members of the Nepali elite would not mind Nepal remaining underdeveloped in order that India cannot share the fruits of Nepal’s development. That is why Nepal cannot follow the example of Bhutan, which has utilised Indian ﬁ nance and technology to harness its water resources, sell electricity to India, and emerge as having a higher per capita income than that of its neighbour in South Asia.194

The 1950 Treaty The attitude of a section of the Nepali elite (noted in the preceding paragraph) is to be sharply contrasted to the attitude of the common people of Nepal to India, which deserves due respect in any discussion of the current relevance or obsolescence of the 1950 Treaty of Peace

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and Friendship between India and Nepal. It may not be implausible

191 Salman Haidar, ‘Negotiating the Mahakali Treaty’, India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 202. 192 B.G. Verghese, ‘Harnessing of Water Resources: India–Nepal Relations’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, pp. 206–7. 193 Haidar, ‘Negotiating the Mahakali Treaty’, p. 204. 194 Mehta, ‘India and Nepal Relations’, pp. 40–41. 482 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to argue that, on account of the inordinate strength of the people-to- people relation between the two countries (which no government in New Delhi or Kathmandu is in a position to upset), with or without the 1950 treaty, Nepal–India relations might have evolved in the same or similar manner. Therefore, one can further argue that an abrogation of the 1950 treaty may not have much importance. For, the persistence of many-splendoured people-to-people relations can minimise the potentially adverse impact of abrogation of the treaty upon inter-governmental relations.195 It may, however, be feasible for India to stop short of abrogation of the 1950 treaty, and initiate steps to eliminate or rewrite those provisions of the treaty which Nepalis consider to be violative of their sovereignty, even if the Indian interpretation is different.196 If Nepal deeply resents, and does not require, the so-called security umbrella provided by India under the 1950 treaty and related documents, India should not have the slightest hesitation to remove it. India must not indulge in legal quibbles about the lack of any clause for amendment in the 1950 treaty.

It is interesting to note that, despite nationalistic slogans raised against India in Nepal, no government regardless of its political identity—royal, NC, Left and coalition—has ever proposed to nullify the Treaty by giving the one year advance notice prescribed by the Treaty.197

Rephrasing the treaty is obviously much easier than revoking the same. Rewriting a document or treaty is frequently the most important preoccupation even at the highest level of multilateral diplomacy, for example, at the UN. Since Indian and Nepali diplomats possess an enviable expertise in the English language, phrase mongering—and the consequent rewording of the 1950 treaty—should not pose much of a problem. If India and Bhutan

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 can update the 1949 treaty, Nepal and India too can remodel the 1950 treaty.198

195 Deo, ‘India–Nepal’, p. 49. 196 See, for example, Vidya Bir Singh Kansakar, ‘Nepal India Relations: Aspects of Environment’, in Ray (ed.), India–Nepal, p. 20. 197 Baral, ‘Democracy and Indo-Nepal Relations’, p. 77. 198 Editorials, The Statesman, 21 December 2006 and 12 February 2007. Relations with Nepal 483

Both India and Nepal, again, have acted in such a way as to negate certain provisions of the 1950 treaty. For instance, in cases of threats to its security from third countries (in 1962, 1965, and 1971, for example), India has not, as required by the 1950 treaty, held consultations with Nepal. Article Seven of the 1950 treaty stipulates reciprocity of treatment to Nepalis in India and Indians in Nepal in the matter of residence, and guarantees ‘ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce and movement and privileges of such nature’. But Nepal has deviated from Article Seven of the 1950 treaty by means of a number of laws, for example, the Industrial Enterprise Act 1961, the New Mulki Ain of 1963, the Citizenship Act of 1964, the Land Reforms Act of 1964, and the Ukhanda Land Tenure Act of 1964.199 The anti-Indian section of the Nepali elite does not endorse this Indian assessment. One Nepal government report goes so far as to claim that Indians have benefi ted more than Nepalis from the clause on reciprocity of treatment in the 1950 treaty.200 This report, widely known as the Harka Gurung Report, denounces the 1950 treaty, and disputes the usefulness of an open border between the two countries. It prescribes a three-stage regulation of population movement across the India–Nepal border. In the fi rst stage, there should be registration of names of persons crossing the border; in the second stage, there should be an entry permit system; and, fi nally, the normal passport system should be introduced.201 Accusations contained in this report are noteworthy. For example, it is alleged that Indians engaged in skilled work in Nepal obstruct the development of skills among Nepalis.202 The above noted report recommends the appointment of foreigners (including Indians) in industrial ventures in proportion to foreign investment and technology, subject to the requirement that their number must not exceed that of Nepalis in the same establishment. Moreover, in the construction

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 sector, foreign contractors should be offered tax concessions to encourage the recruitment of Nepalis.203

199 Pattanaik, ‘India–Nepal Open Border’, p. 467. 200 Government of Nepal, Report of National Commission on Population, Task Force on Internal and International Migration, Kathmandu, 1983. Brieﬂ y known as the Harka Gurung Report, p. 50. 201 Ibid., p. 52. 202 Ibid., p. 34. 203 Ibid., pp. 63–64. 484 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Apparently, anti-Indianism has provided quite an impetus to innovative arguments for the denunciation of the 1950 treaty and the open border between India and Nepal. Some Nepali scholars reject the theme of reciprocity in the 1950 treaty, and call it a myth. Unskilled or semi-skilled Indians move to Nepal, and rob Nepalis of employment opportunities. ‘But’, as Hari Uprety writes, ‘unemployment is the key problem of the Nepalese economy, while employment is exported through the open border’.204 Hari Uprety has gone much further to a position which may be unbelievable to Indians. ‘Almost every economic document, from diagnosis of economic ills to policy suggestions, that is produced in this country, mentions the open border as a hurdle to economic development, even if in a scanty manner’, observes Hari Uprety. His next observation is shocking: ‘But there is hardly any literature available on the full impact of the open border’. He adds: ‘An open border by itself is not a problem. But the inability to use it to one’s advantage is’.205 Hari Uprety refers to a 1995 report of the Government of Nepal, which deplores Nepal’s lack of performance in diversifying its foreign trade, attributes unauthorised trade to the open border, and underlines the consequent inability of the Government of Nepal to carry out those policies in the areas of trade, commerce, pricing, supply, which can be beneﬁ cial to the country. Unofﬁ cial trade (or smuggling) rises remarkably whenever the government in Kathmandu is weak on account of such factors as elections, strikes, or political instability. Nepal’s complaint is that open borders do not help Nepal’s exports to India because India imposes tariff and non-tariff restrictions on Nepal’s potential exports to India. At the same time, decision makers in Nepal do not have the strength to apply the same restrictions upon Indian exports to Nepal. Moreover, Nepal suffers from the burden of responsibilities due to the enforcement of India’s import and tariff policies at the border.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 When the Government of Nepal (like any other government) extends some essential beneﬁ ts (for example, subsidies) to Nepali producers and consumers, the beneﬁ ts are accessible to Indians

204 Hari Uprety, Crisis of Governance: A Study of Political Economic Issues in Nepal, Kathmandu: Centre for Governance and Development Studies, 1996, p. 24. 205 Ibid., p. 19. Relations with Nepal 485

across the border. In contrast, Nepal is adversely affected by the rise of prices of some commodities (for example, petroleum) in India. ‘The net result is—the market awaits policymaking on the other side of the border, than it does on its own side’, comments Hari Uprety. ‘The Nepalese economy’, according to him, ‘fi nds itself under a virtual siege without any room to move about’.206 To an Indian analyst, these words appear to be not only harsh but also uncharitable. One is reminded of Dhruba Kumar, who argues that the challenges facing India and Nepal ‘remain holed up in the slumberous 1950 treaty. A decent burial to the treaty could only provide a condition for a realizable goal of a social engineering to enhance confi dence for common pursuit of constructive engagement between the two’. If this appears at the end of an essay by Dhruba Kumar, one cannot resist the temptation to reproduce the fi rst sentence in that essay: ‘Nepali politicians, irrespective of their diverse ideological moorings, have a commonality in thinking whenever they face trouble on issues of vital national interests. They have an unfortunate tendency to think of India, whenever they confront problems in launching national development programmes’.207 ‘When it comes to relationships with India, we should not go through the anxiety syndrome and the knee-jerk conspiracy-seeking syndrome’, advises Kanak Mani Dixit, the editor of Kathmandu’s Himal South Asia.208 These words, though comforting to this author, cannot prevent him, in the light of the foregoing analysis, from suggesting that New Delhi must not be misled by such occasional statements by Nepali leaders as the one made by Prachanda to Karan Thapar, an Indian journalist, that he was in favour of special relations with India, including close cultural relations as also open borders.209 For, shortly after his success in the April 2008 elections to the constituent assembly of Nepal, Prachanda asked for a revision of the 1950 treaty with India.210 This author opines that India may Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

206 Ibid., pp. 20–23. 207 Dhruba Kumar, ‘Nepal’s Relations with India: Emerging Realities and Challenges Ahead’, in Ray (ed.), India–Nepal, pp. 32, 48. 208 Kanak Mani Dixit, ‘Innovative Approaches to Indo-Nepal Relations’, in India–Nepal Relations: The Challenge Ahead, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004, p. 65. 209 The Pioneer, 25 June 2007. 210 Arabinda Ghose, The Pioneer, 3 May 2008. 486 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

serve soon the one-year notice for termination of the 1950 treaty, and set in motion the process of replacement of the open border with Nepal by a normal international frontier, along with the usual accompaniments of passport/customs controls. It is not difﬁ cult to predict that this replacement will cause far greater harm to the Nepalis than to the Indians. This, again, may move Kathmandu authorities to change their mindsets, and evolve new/dynamic relationships with India, which may be mutually much more fruitful than the special relations implicit in the 1950 treaty. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 8 Relations with Sri Lanka

As in the case of many other facets of India’s foreign relations, so in the case of India–Sri Lanka relations, the Government of India has failed to strike that balance between ethics and pragmatism, between ideology and realpolitik, which can appreciably promote vital national interests. This failure is partially attributable to a lack of capability in the Indian foreign policy establishment for anticipating the emergence of a crisis in Sinhala–Tamil relations in Sri Lanka, and for forging a ﬂ exible response following the outbreak of this crisis. Partially, however, this failure is attributable to an overwhelming complexity of circumstances.

Sinhala–Tamil Relations To anyone familiar with Sri Lanka’s (Ceylon’s) domestic politics in the pre-independence (pre-1948) era—and India’s foreign policy establishment is not expected to lack that familiarity—the con- tours of the above stated crisis in Sinhala–Tamil relations should be clear. Tamils in Sri Lanka have been divided into two categories: Sri Lanka Tamils and Indian Tamils. This nomenclature is not exactly accurate, but it has prevailed. Sri Lanka Tamils and Sinhalas (who currently form the majority community) have been living in Sri Lanka since prehistoric times, even though it is not easy to resolve the controversy about who settled ﬁ rst in this island. There are a large number of factors generating and perpetuating tensions between

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the two communities: memories of wars during pre-colonial times; differences between the Sinhala and Tamil languages; divergences (however insigniﬁ cant philosophically) between Buddhism, the dominant religion of the Sinhalas, and Hinduism, the dominant religion of the Sri Lanka Tamils; the asymmetric response of the Sri Lanka Tamils and Sinhalas to the introduction of English education by the British colonial masters, resulting in a much greater access to learned professions (including government service) for the former; concentration of Sri Lanka Tamils in the country’s Dry Zone, 488 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

viz. Northern and Eastern Provinces; tensions arising out of the natural migration of some Sri Lanka Tamils to the Wet Zone; and the government policy of large-scale resettlement of Sinhalas in the Dry Zone, especially in the Eastern Province, which appeared to the Sri Lanka Tamils to be a deliberate attempt to upset their demographic advantage in their traditionally perceived homeland. As to Indian Tamils, the Sinhalas nursed hostility towards them as agents of British colonial rule because the British masters imported Tamil labourers from south India, as a substitute for unwilling Sinhala labourers, to develop plantations. Even though the poor and severely exploited Tamil labourers underwrote much of the country’s subsequent economic prosperity, the majority community of Sinhalas could not overcome their hostility towards them. At most, it was decomposed into prejudices.1 Sections of Sinhala and Tamil leaders, it must be acknowledged, tried to work out compromises from time to time in a democratic spirit. But their efforts did not succeed largely because the Sinhalas failed to restrain their legitimate preference for majoritarianism from degenerating into an indefensible craze for hegemonism. On the issue of language, for instance, in May 1944, Ceylon’s State Council (that is the national legislature) passed a resolution to replace English, in 10 years, by Sinhala and Tamil, as offi cial languages. The 10-year deadline, however, could not be observed. What was much more important and ominous, infl uential groups of Sinhala Buddhists demanded, in the 1950s, an abrogation of the 1944 language settlement, as also the substitution of only Sinhala for English. The intention was transparent. The ascendancy accruing to Sinhala Buddhists in the political sphere in 1931, on account of the introduction of adult suffrage, should be acquired by them in other spheres too, for example, in the state bureaucracy and technical professions. The Offi cial Language Act (No. 33) of 1956

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 recognised only Sinhala as the national language, whereas attempts at accommodating Tamil aspirations not only failed but also sparked off anti-Tamil riots.2

1 S.S. Misra, Ethnic Conﬂ ict and Security Crisis in Sri Lanka, New Delhi: Kalinga, 1995, pp. 19–39; O.N. Mehrotra, ‘Ethnic Strife in Sri Lanka’, Strategic Analysis, vol. XXI, no.10, January 1983, pp. 1520–21. 2 K.M. de Silva, ‘Language Problems: The Politics of Language Policy’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), Sri Lanka: Problems of Governance, New Delhi: Konark, 1994a, pp. 275, 279, 282, 286–87. Relations with Sri Lanka 489

The Government of Sri Lanka made a serious attempt in July 1957 to work out a settlement with the Tamils not only on the language issue but also on that of devolution of power to satisfy regional aspirations. This settlement provided, fi rst, for the recognition of Tamil as an offi cial language for purposes of administration in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Second, it offered a draft Regional Council Bill to fulfi l some demands of the Tamils for de- centralisation of power. Third, in order to enable the Tamils to retain their numerical majority in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, restrictions were placed on the resettlement of Sinhalas in these areas. Pressure by the Sinhalas, however, led to the abrogation of the July 1957 settlement in April 1958. Still, the tensions aroused by moves towards this settlement resulted in the anti-Tamil riots of May 1958.3 Nevertheless, the government succeeded in getting the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act (No. 28) of 1958 passed in August 1958. This legislation extended to the Tamils the rights to educate their children in Tamil, to use Tamil not only for correspondence with the government but also for appearing in competitive tests for entry into government service, although survival and promotion in the service required profi ciency in Sinhala. An effective application of this Act depended on regulations, which, though prepared, could not go through the process of parliamentary endorsement on account of political uncertainties climaxed by the assassination of Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. A general election took place in July 1960, and installed Sirimavo Bandaranaike as prime minister of the country. Bandaranaike’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) reached an understanding with the party of the Tamils, the Federal Party, before and during this general election. The Federal Party received the assurance that regulations required for the implementation of Act No. 28 of 1958 would be enforced. This

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 assurance was ﬂ outed in practice. Eventually, following the March 1965 general election, a coalition government led by the United National Party (UNP) succeeded not only in obtaining parliamentary approval for the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Regulations of 1966, but also, remarkably, in preventing large-scale Sinhala protests from degenerating into anti-Tamil riots.4

3 Ibid., pp. 288–89. 4 Ibid., pp. 289–92. 490 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Soon, however, the majority community, the Sinhalas, reasserted their hegemonism, and the 1972 Constitution of Sri Lanka reaffi rmed the ‘Sinhala Only’ policy. It stamped the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Regulations of 1966 as subordinate legislation. Implicitly, the Tamil language was relegated to a subordinate status.5 The 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka altered this situation drastically. It declared Sinhala and Tamil as Sri Lanka’s national languages, whereas Sinhala was the offi cial language. The Tamils could derive satisfaction from this incipient recognition of their distinct nationality. The 1978 Constitution further enhanced this satisfaction by incorporating all the rights accruing to the Tamil- speaking people from the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act No. 28 of 1958. These rights were rendered immune from ordinary legislative onslaught though not from a constitutional amendment.6 In the years preceding 1978, however, as also in the following fi ve years, Sinhala–Tamil relations deteriorated so much that the above noted decisions on the language issue proved to be somewhat irrelevant, and Sri Lanka slided into a civil war. The contributing factors were many. One, though not necessarily the most important factor, was religion. The 1972 Constitution of Sri Lanka endowed Buddhism with ‘the foremost place’ in the country, and made it ‘the duty of the state to protect and foster Buddhism’. Signifi cantly, this happened at a time when Sirimavo Bandaranaike headed a centre- left coalition, and enjoyed the support of infl uential Marxist parties. When the 1978 Constitution replaced the 1972 Constitution, it did not change the status of Buddhism as a semi-declared state religion. Even though the Buddhists were not known for attempting a large- scale conversion of the people from other religions to Buddhism, the Tamils resented the political implications of the primacy accorded to the Buddhist religion. As they could clearly witness, from the late

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1980s, when, despite the outbreak of a civil war in the country, the government showered patronage on the Buddhist religion more and more visibly, aggravating thereby the Sinhala–Tamil alienation, the Buddhist clergy became politically so inﬂ uential that the concept

5 Ibid., p. 295. 6 Ibid., pp. 296–99. Relations with Sri Lanka 491

of the secular state was virtually left without any proponent. This could not but exacerbate the Sinhala–Tamil discord.7 Signifi cantly, the year 1977 was a watershed in Sinhala–Tamil relations in the area of religion. For, in that year, the Sri Lankan government evidently decided to destroy the traditional religious amity between the Sinhala Buddhists and the Tamil Hindus. In the past, there were few cases of vandalisation of Hindu temples by Buddhist fanatics. Both Buddhists and Hindus used to hold sacred, and visit, the religious places of one another. From 1977, however, obviously at government instigation, Sinhala soldiers began to join rioters in desecrating and wrecking a large number of Hindu temples, including those frequented by Buddhists. In about a decade following 1977, more than 250 Hindu temples (some of them as old as 400 years) were vandalised. Idols were thrown into the streets or the ocean. Temple peacocks were slaughtered. Even a priest was killed and hung upside down for public exhibition. One Hindu temple was turned into an army checkpoint. The Tamil rebels got provoked by government machinations, and furthered the government’s objective of arousing religious animosity between the Sinhala Buddhists and the Tamil Hindus, when, in the mid-1980s, they started killing a number of Buddhist monks.8 Even before the large-scale temple wrecking had begun, the Tamils had become acutely aware of the determination of the Sri Lankan government to subject them to various kinds of cultural onslaughts. Thus, the import of Tamil books and fi lms from the state of Tamil Nadu in India was banned by Sirimavo Bandaranaike in the early 1970s. In Jaffna, on 10 January 1974, the Fourth International Tamil Conference witnessed an unprovoked attack by the Sri Lankan police on the audience, resulting in the death of eight persons. Nearly 100,000 books, including rare Tamil manuscripts, were destroyed on 1 June 1981, when the Jaffna public library was set on fi re by the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Sri Lankan security forces, receiving active encouragement from a deputy Inspector General of Police, and even a Cabinet minister. In Jaffna, on 9 April 1984, statues of the Tamil sage, Thiruvalluvar, and the Tamil poetess, Avvayar, were vandalised by the Sri Lankan Army. At Point Pedro on 2 September 1984, the century-old

7 K.M. de Silva, ‘Religion and the State’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), Sri Lanka: Problems of Governance, New Delhi: Konark, 1994b, pp. 335–37, 340–43. 8 M.S.S. Pandian, The Statesman, 31 July 1987. 492 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Wesleyan Hartley College was sacked by the Sri Lankan Army. Emphasising these among many other instances, M.S.S. Pandian observes: ’Wrecking the sites of cultural reproduction, burning books and breaking statues are an effort to deprive a people of their sense of history … to destroy the collective memory of a people and to justify Sinhalese hegemony over them’.9 The government’s resettlement schemes too fomented the Sinhala–Tamil discord, because the Tamils found these schemes to be blatantly discriminatory and a deliberate encroachment upon the territory where they enjoyed traditionally a numerical majority, as well as the feeling of safety in the perceived preservation of a homeland. While the land settlement schemes of the government permitted large-scale colonisation of the North and the East by the Sinhalas, the Tamils had no place in such schemes outside the North and the East. The Sinhala population rose nine times in the Eastern Province, from 1946 to 1981 (the last census year), but the Tamil population increased by only three times. During the same period, in the north-central districts, the Tamil population increased by only 13 per cent, but the Sinhala population went up seven fold. In 1948, the Tamils formed 70 per cent of the population in the Eastern Province, but in 1981 the fi gure stood at barely 42 per cent. No wonder then that the Tamils looked upon the colonisation of the North and the East by the Sinhalas, actively promoted by Colombo, as a severe threat to their security and survival. Remarkably, eminent Sinhala scholars (for example, K.M. de Silva, Jayadeva Uyangoda) do not seem to pay appropriate attention to the highly adverse impact of resettlement schemes upon Sinhala–Tamil relations.10 The Sri Lankan government intensifi ed the sense of insecurity in the Tamils by discriminating against them in matters of entry into universities, engineering colleges and civil services. Tamil Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 9 Ibid. Also see, A.J. Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000, p. 125. 10 N.N. Jha, ‘India-Sri Lanka Relations’, India Quarterly, vol. 50, January– June 1994, pp. 53–62; Misra, Ethnic Confl ict and Security Crisis, pp. 29–31; M. Sivasithambaram, ‘TULF Position’, Strategic Digest, vol. 16, no. 5, May 1986, p. 597; Jayadeva Uyangoda, ‘Economic Change, The State and The Question of Security’, in P.V.J. Jayasekera (ed.), Security Dilemma of a Small State, Part I, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1992, p. 196. Also see, K.M. de Silva, ‘Conclusion’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), Sri Lanka: Problems of Governance, New Delhi: Konark, 1994c, p. 407. Relations with Sri Lanka 493

representation went down from 31 per cent in 1948 to 16 per cent in 1970 among students in universities, from 36 per cent in 1973 to 20 per cent in 1975 among students in engineering colleges, and from 30 per cent in 1948 to 5 per cent in 1975 in the civil services. To take the instance of an important year, 1978, when the country got a new constitution, not even one Tamil was among the 140 recruits to the Ceylon Administrative Service (the counterpart of the Indian Administrative Service), or among 1,000 graduates recruited as teachers. In the same year, out of a total of 140,000 selected for various government jobs, Tamils got less than 1,000, even though (according to the 1981 census) they formed 18.2 per cent of the total population. Sinhalas formed 74 per cent of the population (92 per cent of Sinhalas being Buddhists) according to the 1981 census; the Sri Lanka Tamils (nearly all of them Hindus) formed 12.6 per cent; the Indian Tamils (mainly Hindus) formed 5.6 per cent; Moors made up 7.4 per cent; and the Malays and Barghers constituted 0.4 per cent.11 The Tamils had serious complaints about the palpably discriminatory economic policy of the Colombo government. A few instances may sufﬁ ce. During 1977–82, not a rupee of foreign aid was utilised in Jaffna district. The per capita capital expenditure of `313 in Jaffna in 1981 contrasted to the corresponding national ﬁ gure of `656 rather sharply, whereas the total capital expenditure at Jaffna in 1981 amounted to only 2.6 per cent of the total national expenditure of `9 billion. According to G.H. Peiris, ‘it cannot be denied that, especially since the early 1970s, the working of the political system in respect of economic affairs placed’ Tamils ‘permanently in the position of a disadvantaged segment of the electorate’.12 The complex relationship between the Sinhalas and the Tamils, and the continuous aggravation of their discords, could not have escaped the attention of Indian diplomats in Ceylon (Sri Lanka from

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1972), especially since, just after independence, the government of Ceylon had not hesitated to enact the most inhuman legislation against the Indian Tamils (also called Plantation or Estate Tamils).

11 Madhavrao Scindia, The Statesman, 27 August 1983. Also see, Misra, Ethnic Conﬂ ict and Security Crisis, pp. 23, 52; Sivasithambaram, ‘TULF Position’. 12 G.H. Peiris, ‘Economic Growth, Poverty and Political Unrest’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), Sri Lanka: Problems of Governance, New Delhi: Konark, 1994, p. 268. 494 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Under the British colonial government, the Indian Tamils enjoyed the right to franchise and territorial representation. But the Citizenship Act of 1948 (passed with graceless haste following independence), and the Indian and Pakistani Residents (Citizenship) Act of 1949, deprived the Indian Tamils of voting rights and citizenship. They all became stateless, even though ‘almost none of these Estate Tamils wished to return to India. India was, for most of them, as alien as Italy is to most Italian Americans’.13 Ceylon claimed the right to repatriate Indian Tamils to India, disregarding the plea of the Indian government that these Tamils, living for generations in Ceylon and looking upon Ceylon as their home country, made a signal contribution to Ceylon’s economic development, and, therefore, did not deserve statelessness.

It is a blot on the Sinhalese conscience that considerations of electoral arithmetic have denied the Indian Tamils, large numbers of whom had been in the island for several generations, the rights of citizenship and enfranchisement—a blot all the more dark because for many decades now it is this exploited segment of the population that has made the greatest contribution to the island economy via the tea industry which earns the greater part of the island’s export earnings.14

A stalemate persisted till 30 October 1964, when the Bandaranaike- Shastri pact vested the responsibility for an estimated number of 975,000 stateless Indian Tamils in India and Sri Lanka in the ratio of 7:4 (plus the natural increase). India agreed to confer citizenship on 525,000 and Sri Lanka on 300,000, whereas they would decide upon the disposition of 150,000 on a subsequent date.15 The task was to be completed in 15 years, that is by 30 October 1979. On 24 January 1974, the Sirimavo Bandaranaike–Indira Gandhi agreement apportioned equally the above noted group of 150, 000

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 stateless Indian Tamils between India and Sri Lanka. The last date

13 E. Valentine Daniel, Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence: Sri Lankans, Sinhalas and Tamils, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 97. 14 S.J. Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, quoted in Daniel, Sri Lankans, Sinhalas and Tamils, p. 163. 15 C.S. Jha, From Bandung to Tashkent: Glimpses of India’s Foreign Policy, Delhi, 1983, pp. 276–77. Relations with Sri Lanka 495

of granting citizenship to the stateless was subsequently extended by two years, from 30 October 1979 to 30 October 1981.16 On account of the chronic delaying tendencies of government ofﬁ cials, exacerbated by political differences, the problem of statelessness persisted even after 17 years following the 1964 accord. The interests of the helpless Indian Tamils were ignored while bureaucrats wrangled over whether the grant of citizenship by Ceylon should follow the conferment of citizenship by, and actual repatriation to, India. Moreover, Ceylon took as long as two years just to pass an Implementation Act. Eventually, the Ceylon Workers Congress, the principal trade union organisation of the Plantation Tamils, resolved to launch an ingenious agitation for a three-month period, starting 14 January 1986. The Plantation workers decided to join prayers till noon everyday to protest against the elusiveness of citizenship. The authorities, however, were alerted and were able to forestall this agitation. On 15 January 1986, Sri Lanka and India announced their decision to fulﬁ l their respective quota for grant of citizenship by September 1987. An interesting commentary on the 1964 pact, and, logically, on the 1986 pact too, was the belated discovery by the Sri Lankans that these pacts should not be fully implemented, if work at tea plantations was to continue. Therefore, a large number of Indian Tamils stayed on in Sri Lanka despite rising animosity between the Sinhalas and the Tamils.17 Meanwhile, Sri Lanka was engulfed in a civil war as a result of the ever widening—almost unbridgeable—Sinhala–Tamil differences. Anti-Tamil riots—rising in frequency, severity, and government support—telescoped these differences. In normal times, the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Indian Tamils exhibited a lot of disunity.18 Riots against the Tamils tended to dilute this disunity, whereas the civil war, commencing in mid-1980s, built a few bonds of unity.19 The anti-Tamil riots occurred in 1956, 1958, 1961, 1977, 1979,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1981, and 1983. Business premises, factories, houses, and shops of

16 B. Udayashankar, ‘India–Sri Lankan Accord on Tamils of Indian Origin’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 9, no. 1, March 1986, pp. 1241–42. 17 Daniel, Sri Lankans, Sinhalas and Tamils, p. 115; Udayashankar, ‘India– Sri Lankan Accord’, pp. 1240, 1242. Also see, Lt. Gen. Depinder Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, Noida (Uttar Pradesh): Trishul, 1992, p. 13. 18 Daniel, Sri Lankans, Sinhalas and Tamils, pp. 111–15. 19 Ibid., pp. 161–64. 496 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Tamils were set on fi re because they were situated in places other than the Northern and Eastern Provinces. The Tamils, in sleeping dress, had to rush to refugee camps, and allow themselves to be shipped like cattle in cargo vessels to Jaffna.20 In 1956, over 100 Tamils were killed. In 1958 a far larger number were killed, and approximately 10,000 Tamils in such places as Colombo and the plantations had to move to the North as refugees. Remarkably, the 1958 riots appeared to be preplanned, and the offi cial patronage extended to miscreants was barely concealed.21 In 1961, the Bandaranaike government in Colombo deployed Sinhala soldiers in the North to suppress violently the peaceful civil disobedience movement of the Tamils in defence of legitimate language rights. By the early 1970s, the failure of peaceful agitations to resolve Tamil grievances on the issues of education, employment, language, and land resettlement schemes led the Tamil youth to formulate the demand for an independent Tamil state. They were not ready to confi ne themselves to proposals for regional autonomy put forward by various Tamil political parties, which coalesced to form the Tamil United Front (TUF) in May 1972. On 14 May 1976, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) replaced the TUF, and proclaimed the goal of a secular state of Tamil Eelam. Youths, aligned with the TULF, set up underground organisations and developed links with south India. They used violence against police-military offi cials suspected of trying to sabotage the Tamil cause. In April 1975, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) announced its existence by claiming responsibility for killing a police inspector accused of arresting some Tamil youths. The TULF contested the 1977 parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka with the slogan of an independent Tamil state. It scored an impressive victory in the North and the East. It was still possible, as many Tamils thought, to weaken separatism by redressing some of the Tamil complaints. The

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1977 election manifesto of the victorious party, the United National

20 Subhas Chandra Nayak, Ethnicity and Nationbuilding in Sri Lanka, Delhi: Kalinga, 2001, pp. 232–33. Also, Sivasithambaram, ‘TULF Position’, p. 597. 21 Sinappah Arasaratnam, Sri Lanka after Independence Nationalism, Communal- ism and Nation Building, Madras: University of Madras Press, 1986, pp. 32–33; Tarzie Vitachi, Emergency 58: The Story of Ceylon Race Riots, London: Andre Deutsch, 1958, p. 7; A.J. Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conﬂ ict, London: Orient Longman, 1988, p. 228. Relations with Sri Lanka 497

Party (UNP), actually promised to do so. Nevertheless, in a month following this election, Sinhala–Tamil relations took a downward plunge, because Sinhala policemen burnt and looted Tamil houses in Jaffna. This was in sharp contrast to what happened in the past, when such anti-Tamil outrages took place in areas outside the Tamil strongholds of the North and the East.22 The stage was thus set for the violence to escalate in Sinhala– Tamil relations. Tamil militancy and tough government measures fed each other. The concessions to Tamils in the 1978 Constitution (as already noted in this chapter) were not of much avail in counteracting this drift towards a possible disaster. Nor was the ban on the LTTE, which began to seek the support of not only the people of Tamil Nadu, but also of the Government of India for its demand of a separate Tamil state. Colombo opted for the policy of mobilising Sinhala soldiers in the Tamil heartland to combat militancy. It failed because the militants could attack government ofﬁ ces, police-military establishments, etc., and then melt away in the Tamil crowd. Unable to catch these militants, the Sinhala armed forces wreaked vengeance upon innocent Tamils, resorting to arson, loot, and murder.23

1983: A Turning Point In these circumstances of continuing violence and counter-violence, the anti-Tamil riots of July 1983 provided a turning point, so that shortly afterwards the notion of anti-Tamil riots became a misnomer, and Sinhala–Tamil relations began to be described as a civil war. On 23 July 1983, in retaliation against the rape of Tamil schoolgirls at Jaffna by Sinhala soldiers, the local people ambushed and killed 13 Sinhala Army personnel.24 Even before this was reported in the press, there took place a week-long pogrom, starting in Colombo, and rapidly spreading to a number of other towns, which left nearly 3,000 Tamils dead, 150,000 homeless, and destroyed property worth Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

22 Ambalavanar Sivarajah, ‘Indo-Sri Lanka Relations in the Context of Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis (1976–1983)’, in P.V.J. Jayasekera (ed.), Security Dilemma of a Small State, Part I, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1992, pp. 507–8. Also see, Misra, Ethnic Conﬂ ict and Security Crisis, pp. 46–49, 52–55. 23 Misra, Ethnic Conﬂ ict and Security Crisis, pp. 55–57; Nayak, Ethnicity and Nationbuilding, pp. 233–35. 24 S. Rajappa, The Statesman, 21 August 1983. 498 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

`3.5 billion. Signifi cantly, this anti-Tamil riot did not merely represent unplanned mob fury. For rioters in Colombo not only marched to the playing of music, but also in the company of security forces, which extended support to rioters when they failed to pierce the iron gates of a shop, for example. The rioters carried offi cial documents to establish the identity of the owners of houses, shops, factories, etc. If, for instance, a shop was owned by a Tamil, but the premises belonged to a Sinhala, only the goods in the shop would be brought out and burnt. But if the premises, too, were owned by the Tamil shopkeeper, the goods as well as the premises would be set on fi re. Many patients in hospitals were murdered. Buddhist priests not only helped mobs with food, drinks, and weapons, but also led the mobs in some places. Left parties, for example, the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), actively participated in anti-Tamil riots, partly to destabilise the government of President J.R. Jayewardene. Even the members of the trade union, Jathika Sevaka Sanghamaya (JSS), affi liated to Jayewardene’s UNP, played a vigorous part in the anti-Tamil riots. High-ranking UNP leaders, too, strengthened the hands of the rioters. Many rioters had the privilege to use government vehicles. Their operations took place simultaneously in many areas of the country, indicating the existence of a centralised planning and signalling apparatus, which could not but belong to the government. Even the violation of curfew regulations did not invite punishment. Finally, neither Jayewardene nor any of his colleagues had the minimum sense of propriety to utter a word of apology or regret, not to speak of condemnation.25 Jayewardene did not even order an impartial inquiry into the July 1983 carnage. On the contrary, at the height of the holocaust, he broadcast over television his decision to wage a war against the freedom of speech and democratic rights of the Tamils. He announced that even peaceful advocacy of separatism would deprive

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the Tamils of all civil-political-economic rights. This announcement

25 Misra, Ethnic Conﬂ ict and Security Crisis, pp. 57–58; Nayak, Ethnicity and Nationbuilding, pp. 232–33; Tambiah, Sri Lanka, p. 22. Also, J.K. Chopra, Sri Lanka as an Ethnic State, Jaipur: Sublime, 2000, pp. 217–22. Also see, Ibid., p. 237, for excerpts from the March 1984 Report of the International Commis- sion of Jurists on The July 1983 Holocaust. See also, Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka, pp. 173–74; Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, p. 113. Also, S. Rajappa, The Statesman, 21 August 1983. Relations with Sri Lanka 499

was converted into the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which again was rushed through Parliament in a single day in the midst of continued carnage. In contrast, immediately after the massacre of the Tamils in July 1983, the Tamils did not take any revenge against the ordinary Sinhala inhabitants in the Tamil areas, conﬁ ning their attacks to Sinhala police-military personnel. The government, however, continued to act in a thoughtless manner. It refused, for instance, to carry out proper distribution of emergency supplies of relief materials from foreign countries among the Tamil refugees. Moreover, the government deployed the military in the North and the East to impose certain restrictions on the movements of men and materials, which deprived Tamils of their normal means of livelihood, for example, ﬁ shing, trade, transport, etc. While in the aftermath of the July 1983 carnage, Tamil militancy was on the rise, the number of Tamil guerrillas was so small—ranging between 1,000 and 5,000—that the government was guilty of overreaction in the deployment of the military. Although the population of Sri Lanka was six times that of Northern Ireland, for instance, the level of militancy in the latter was 57 times higher than in Sri Lanka. The situation in Sri Lanka did not require extreme military action. But the Sinhala military carried out loot, murder, and torture in the North and the East in such an indiscriminate fashion that the Tamils would look upon it as an occupying army, and enlarge their support to Tamil militant groups. Moreover, the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which required all members of Parliament to take an oath of allegiance ‘to the unitary state of Sri Lanka’, forced Tamil legislators to leave Parliament. The Tamils were thus effectively evicted from parliamentary politics. Militants among the Tamils were endowed with an almost exclusive political relevance.26 In March 1984, the International Commission of Jurists published its report on Sri Lanka, severely criticising the anti-Tamil policy

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of the government. That was also the month when the Sri Lanka government began to practise terrorism openly against the Tamils. Probably, President Jayewardene felt encouraged by the support he was receiving from the United States government. After a lapse of more than a quarter of a century, Sri Lanka permitted the resumption

26 Trevor Fishlock, The Times, London, reproduced in The Statesman, 8 January 1984. Also, Chopra, Sri Lanka as an Ethnic State, pp. 225–32; Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, pp. 114–15. 500 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts from its soil. The United States appeared to reciprocate by extending an invitation to Jayewardene to visit the United States in June 1984. (This contrasted with Britain’s decision to honour the wishes of the Tamils in Britain, and cancel Jayewardene’s visit to London scheduled for autumn 1983.) Despite the surge in anti-Tamil atrocities, the Tamils participated in talks with the Sri Lankan government. These talks were initiated through the good ofﬁ ces of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. As requested by her, the Tamils did not withdraw from these talks despite unduly long adjournments imposed by the Sri Lankan government. These talks ceased to serve any useful purpose except enabling Jayewardene to pretend to the Americans that he was engaged in negotiations with the Tamils. In this situation, the Tamils of Sri Lanka became increasingly dependent upon the Tamils of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, whose chief minister, M.G. Ramachandran, became active in mobilising support for the Sri Lanka Tamils. The Sinhalas mistook the effect for the cause, and would not agree that the quest of the Sri Lanka Tamils for support of Tamils in Tamil Nadu was a product (but not the cause) of repressive Sinhala rule.27 Apparently, years before the holocaust of 1983, the hawkish members of Jayewardene’s Cabinet decided to rely upon a military solution of the Tamil problem. This may explain why, as a few months of enhanced conciliatory efforts by India (following the July 1983 carnage) produced in December 1983 a joint India– Sri Lanka document (Annexure C) for a realistic devolution of powers to the Tamil provinces, Jayewardene’s ministers refused to accept it. This document, if acted upon, might preserve Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity, and dissuade the Tamil militants from clamouring for a sovereign country. This document was discussed in Sri Lanka at a conference of some political parties and religious groups. Jayewardene called it—quite improperly—an All Parties

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Conference (APC). From January to December 1984, the APC discussed Annexure C, and its report so diluted the document that Colombo’s determination to practise deception on the issue of devolution became transparent. Probably, Sinhala leaders kept

27 The Guardian, London, 17 and 19 April 1984; The New York Times, 2 May 1984; The Times, London, 17 May 1984. Also, Chopra, Sri Lanka as an Ethnic State, pp. 233–38; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, p. 13; Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka, p. 204. Relations with Sri Lanka 501

alive the pretence of negotiations to mislead Western aid givers and India. The Tamil demand for a separate state could have been counteracted by a genuine plan of regional/provincial autonomy in some specifi ed areas, for example, land policy, social and economic development, law and order, and justice. But the chance was lost because only a shadow of autonomy was offered. Deceitful negotiations enabled Colombo to gain time for stepping up its military presence in the North and the East. It refused to consider the possibility that military disengagement could be the best way to dissolve Tamil militancy.28 In these unpropitious circumstances, whatever measures India adopted or suggested would be open to criticisms and/or contradictions. India’s support for Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity was beyond any doubt. Indira Gandhi’s Lok Sabha statement of August 1983 and Rajiv Gandhi’s public statement of July 1985 confi rmed and reconfi rmed this support. At the same time, India could not sacrifi ce the legitimate aspirations of Sri Lanka Tamils and the sentiments of Tamils in India’s Tamil Nadu state. These sentiments, again, became so important in the internal political rivalries of that state as to create political compulsions for New Delhi. In response to these compulsions, New Delhi took steps which were not always well thought out or well executed. To give a few examples: The two intelligence agencies of the Government of India, concerned respectively with internal and external intelligence, viz. the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), began to provide military training and assistance to Tamil militant organisations. But there was little evidence that Indian authorities had made an appropriate assessment of whether the political outlook of such militant groups as the LTTE was democratic or not. For, that would eventually decide whether their relationships with India would be constructive. The Indian Army

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 was not associated with training the LTTE and other militant groups. It was doubtful as to how the IB and the RAW, with far less discipline than the Indian Army, would keep the Tamil militants under control. Indian authorities were not probably aware that even Israel gave some training to the LTTE. They could not even preserve the secrecy of their training operations for the Tamil guerrillas. The

28 Chopra, Sri Lanka as an Ethnic State, p. 241; Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka, pp. 176–83. 502 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

31 March 1984 issue of India Today offered an elaborate account of these training activities.29 Sri Lankan authorities too adopted measures that betrayed inconsistencies and lack of foresight. They recruited Israelis for counterinsurgency training to Sri Lankan armed forces without probably knowing that the LTTE too used the services of Israeli trainers. Colombo was apprehensive of military action by India in favour of the Sri Lanka Tamils. But it took measures which could compel India to consider direct military intervention as an option to save the lives of the Sri Lanka Tamils, as also to promote India’s strategic interests in Sri Lanka. India persisted in mediation despite clear indications that Sri Lanka was not interested in a negotiated settlement. Even the massacre of 150 Sinhala civilians at Anuradhapura in May 1985 and of 200 Tamil civilians at Vavuniya in August 1985 did not impel Colombo to pursue negotiations seriously. For instance, Colombo refused to accept a single autonomous North- Eastern Province as a viable alternative to an independent Tamil Eelam. India’s thankless mediation produced a document on 30 August 1985, which the Sri Lanka Tamils could not but reject. For, it conferred extremely limited powers on the proposed Provincial Councils, which again were subjected to the countervailing powers of the central government in Colombo. Indian mediation generated another document on 9 July 1986, which, like its predecessor, did not unite the provinces in the North and the East, did not contain any safeguard against the resettlement of the Sinhalas in the North and the East, and vested hopelessly inadequate powers in the Provincial Councils. Moreover, a governor, appointed by the president, could veto the decisions of the Provincial Councils. Even this document was opposed by a National Front consisting of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and some militant Sinhala Buddhist groups. As for the Tamils, they could not certainly have approved

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 it. India’s conciliatory efforts led to the formulation of another set of proposals, known as the Amparai Proposals, on 19 December 1986. It envisaged the separation of the Amparai district from the

29 Chopra, Sri Lanka as an Ethnic State, p. 230; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 17–18; Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka, pp. 183, 203; Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, pp. 118–19, 121, 131. Also see, Paul A. Groves (ed.), Economic Development and Social Change in Sri Lanka, New Delhi: Manohar, 1996, pp. 319–21, 343. Relations with Sri Lanka 503

Eastern Province because it had a substantial number of Sinhalas. This scheme, too, did not fulfi l the fundamental Tamil demand of the unifi cation of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.30 India had no option but to suspend its unenviable role as an intermediary. For, meanwhile, Sri Lanka had not only utilised foreign assistance to step up its military campaigns against the Tamils, but also to pose a threat to India’s strategic interests. It procured military aid in various forms from Israel, Pakistan, Britain, and the United States. Britain reportedly went as far as to fi nance a private company supplying ex-commandos of the British armed forces as mercenaries to Sri Lanka. America secured 1,000 acres of land near Colombo to build an extraordinarily large station of the VOA. India was apprehensive that messages transmitted from here to American nuclear-powered submarines in the Indian Ocean might adversely affect India’s security. British and American warships began to use (at a frequency that could not but arouse attention) the facilities for refuelling and crew rest at Trincomalee.31 The complexities of the situation in which India and Sri Lanka got enmeshed—and the resultant potentialities for blunders and crises—could be estimated from the fact that votaries of a negotiated settlement were not encouraged by such hardliners in the Sri Lankan government as Lalith Athulathmudali, the minister for national security. Athulathmudali and his followers did not appreciate the sincere mediatory efforts of the Indian government, especially Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Neither did these hardliners support the efforts of some Sinhala politicians (for example, Vijay Kumaratunga and Chandrika Kumaratunga) towards a political solution of the Tamil problem. Men like Athulathmudali aggravated the problem by inciting the Muslim Tamils against the Hindu Tamils, thus setting

30 P.A. Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka and Role of Indian Peace Keeping Force, New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation, 1999, p. 65. Wilson, The Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Break-up of Sri Lanka, pp. 184–99. Also see, Michael Hamlyn, The Times, London, reprinted in The Statesman, 28 February 1985. According to Hamlyn, Sinhala soldiers ‘displayed nothing short of barbarism’ in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. 31 Chopra, Sri Lanka as an Ethnic State, pp. 231–32, 240, 244; J.N. Dixit, Assignment Colombo, Delhi: Konark, 1998b, pp. 69–70; Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka, pp. 65–66, 73; S.D. Muni, Pangs of Proximity: India and Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993, pp. 53–55; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 24–25; Sivarajah, ‘Indo-Sri Lanka Relations’, p. 520; Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka, pp. 200–1. 504 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

off a chain reaction of violence and counter-violence. Athulathmudali and his colleagues were aware that in 1985, in order to facilitate a negotiated settlement, Rajiv Gandhi had ordered the stoppage of military aid to the Tamil militants. But the faith of Colombo in a military solution remained unshaken, justifying the suspicion that Colombo was using negotiations only as a smokescreen for preparations for full-scale military action. In January 1987, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF) escalated their operations, and imposed a ruthless economic blockade upon the Jaffna peninsula. While military operations forced a vast number of Tamil civilians in the peninsula to become internal refugees, the economic blockade, which prevented essential food articles and kerosene from reaching Jaffna, became for these civilians no less dangerous than the attacks by soldiers.32 SLAF further stepped up its military operations in the Jaffna area— codenaming it Operation Liberation—from a day in 1987, viz. the Tamil New year’s Day (or Pongal), which reinforced the belief among Tamil militants (and moderates, if any, at that stage) that the Sri Lankan government was hardly interested in a political settlement. SLAF had neither adequate troops nor safe roads to launch ground operations deep inside Tamil areas. They, therefore, based their operations in coastal areas, and used bombers, helicopters and the artillery against the Tamil heartland. This led to innumerable civilian casualties among the Tamils, and provoked Tamil militants to unleash atrocities on Sinhala civilians. New Delhi’s repeated requests and warnings to Colombo that attempts at scoring a decisive military victory over the Tamil heartland should be abandoned went unheeded. India was compelled to move beyond mediation and plan direct intervention. The passions of the people of Tamil Nadu, and the interests of its politicians (apart from humanitarian considerations) provided a legitimate impetus to such intervention.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 On 2 June 1987, in order to avert what appeared to India as a genocide of Tamils, India dispatched (after informing Sri Lanka) a number of fi shing vessels, which were to transfer essential food articles to Sri Lankan fi shing vessels, so that these could be delivered in Jaffna. But the Sri Lankan navy forced the Indian fi shing boats back to India. On 4 June 1987 (again after informing Colombo),

32 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 61, 68–71, 78–79, 83, 90; Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka, pp. 77–78; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, p. 82. Relations with Sri Lanka 505

New Delhi sent transport aircraft, protected by Indian Air Force ﬁ ghters, and airdropped food and medicines in Jaffna. The amount of supplies was not very large, only 25 metric tonnes. But the impact of this apparently symbolic humanitarian intervention by India was far reaching.33 After India airdropped food on 4 June 1987, SLAF suspended military operations against the Tamil heartland.34 This was the moment when Indian decision makers had to review the entire range of measures pursued by India in relation to Sri Lanka. Especially at a time when the scale of intervention by India in Sri Lankan affairs was likely to rise, India had to re-examine its support for Tamil militant groups (the LTTE in particular). India had also to carry out extensive preparations for direct military intervention, if it became inevitable. The number of Tamil militant groups was estimated at between 20 and 38. By 1985–86, however, ﬁ ve groups were worth a serious mention: the LTTE, the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Front (EPRLF), the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), and the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE or PLOT). By mid-1987, barring the LTTE, other Tamil militant groups were virtually decimated, perhaps more by LTTE assaults (in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu refugee camps) than by SLAF operations. After emerging as the most powerful political-militant group among Tamils, the LTTE became increasingly insistent upon their demand for a separate Tamil state. Possibly, it did not consider the fate of the Tamils in Sinhala-dominated areas of Sri Lanka. The conditions of these Tamils would become precarious in the event of establishment of an independent Tamil Eelam in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. Moreover, the LTTE did not possibly estimate the economic viability of a separate Tamil state.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 The dependence of the Jaffna peninsula for essential supplies upon the rest of Sri Lanka was obvious even in normal times; it became glaring at the time of the economic blockade by the SLAF in 1987. In this perspective, India should be credited with striving patiently

33 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 83, 90–108; Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka, pp. 78–79; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 82–83; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 19–20. 34 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, p. 112; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, p. 20. 506 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

for the preservation of Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity, while pleading for a substantive (as opposed to rhetorical) devolution of power to Tamil provinces.35 Nevertheless, India cannot be credited with thinking deeply and planning meticulously about how to deal with an organisation like the LTTE, which (for lack of a better word) could be characterised as a fascist organisation. The LTTE subscribed to the ideal of a one-party Tamil state, and, acting upon this ideal, nearly liquidated all its rivals. No word of praise can be suffi cient for the dedication, discipline, fi ghting skills, and innovativeness of the LTTE cadres. But all this cannot exonerate the culture of autocracy, brutality, and immorality that permeated the LTTE and crippled the Tamils living under the domination of the LTTE. In an LTTE military training camp, for instance, a cadre was not allowed to talk to another except in the presence of a third cadre. In the name of training, the camp commander would indulge in sadistic practices of intimidation and physical torture. Even for minor deviations from discipline, as arbitrarily interpreted by a despotic camp commander, a trainee would be sentenced to 30 days’ solitary confi nement. Or, he would be so savagely beaten as to lose his legs, and then allowed to live in the camp as a permanent exhibition of penalties for disobedience. As to any Tamil area under LTTE rule, no expression of dissent was permissible, and anybody could be executed on mere suspicion of collaboration with the SLAF. Undoubtedly, the LTTE became the protector of the Tamils against any SLAF onslaught. But the question lingered: was the uncultured (probably brutalized) life of citizens in an LTTE-ruled Tamil state worth aspiring for?36 India could certainly claim credit for its diplomatic campaign before the food-airdrop intervention in Sri Lanka. The success of the campaign was evident from the responses of major powers (including the United States) to the Indian action. Responses ranged from mild

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 criticism to oblique though strident disapproval without any promise

35 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 77–79; Groves, Economic Development and Social Change, pp. 342–51; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 20–21. Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, p. 126; Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka, pp. 185–87. 36 Daniel, Sri Lankans, Sinhalas and Tamils, pp. 140–42; Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 79–80; Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka, pp. 101–4; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 21–24. Relations with Sri Lanka 507

of actual assistance to Sri Lanka. The Pakistan government appeared to be willing to intervene, but geography and Sri Lanka’s Israeli connection (which the Pakistanis abhorred) ruled out Pakistani intervention. Sri Lanka faced near-complete diplomatic isolation, marking India’s diplomatic success. But Indian decision makers appeared to suffer from gross contradictions in their treatment of the Tamil militants. Despite Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s 1985 decision to stop military assistance to the Tamil militants, and despite the alarming reluctance of the LTTE (the only Tamil militant group that really mattered in early 1987) to promote a peaceful settlement by political compromises, some Indian decision makers not only provided money to the Tamil militants but also training in the use of anti-aircraft missiles (even though these were acquired from non- Indian sources). Curiously, this training was provided even before the SLAF launched its Operation Liberation in the Jaffna peninsula. If this operation demonstrated the limits to LTTE’s military power, and thereby had a slight chance to make the LTTE more inclined towards a political compromise, the chance was probably lost when the LTTE surprised the Sri Lankan Air Force by using a missile to shoot down an aircraft. India could hardly afford such demonstration of power by the LTTE at a time when Indian mediation had failed to arouse any admiration for it in either the LTTE or the Sri Lankan government.37 In the second fortnight of June 1987—either because the SLAF’s aggressive moves caused some rethinking in the LTTE about its military might, or because of the necessity for a tactical move to end a stalemate in which Indian mediation remained suspended—the LTTE indicated that it was ready for a political compromise. It laid down a set of proposals which, if accepted, would prompt the abandonment of the goal of a separate Tamil state. At the heart of these proposals were the following: (i) the adoption of Tamil as an

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ofﬁ cial language (along with Sinhala); (ii) devolution of powers (as discussed during 1983–86) to a uniﬁ ed province in the North and the East; and (iii) recognition of this area as the historical/traditional habitation/homeland of the Tamils. This LTTE effort once again brought India to the centre stage of mediation. But this imposed an enormous strain on India because of the extraordinary manipulation

37 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 111–12, 116; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 90–100; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, p. 26. 508 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

practised by the Sri Lankan government, especially by President Jayewardene, Prime Minister Premadasa, and National Security Minister Athulathmudali. Jayewardene used different ministers for varying purposes; one for conciliatory moves, another for complicating or even sabotaging conciliatory efforts. The Sri Lankan government was not prepared to give up their military preparations. The mirage of Pakistani/Chinese help allured Sri Lanka although, in the ﬁ nal analysis, no country except India could protect Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity. Jayewardene himself was subjected to relentless pressures by Premadasa and Athulathmudali, in addition to the Buddhist clergy and the opposition party (SLFP). Assuming that at certain points of time he was serious about satisfying the minimum of Tamil demands on language, provincial autonomy, and identity, he faced determined opposition from his own ministers. This may partially explain why, not once but twice, Jayewardene had to take the unusual step of inviting the Indian high commissioner in Colombo, J.N. Dixit, to discussions in the Cabinet.38

1987 Agreement: Indian Intervention The situation was so complex that it was easy to criticise New Delhi’s decision makers for one lapse or another. But it was nearly impossible to argue about the feasibility of alternative courses of action. For example, it was easy to suggest that the Tamil leaders, especially an LTTE leader, should have been closely associated with the above noted negotiations with the Sri Lankan government. In all probability, however, negotiations would have collapsed on this issue, and the early June 1987 scenario re-enacted. To take another example, New Delhi carried on extensive consultations with the Tamil Nadu government and all Sri Lankan Tamil groups, including (and especially) the LTTE. V. Prabhakaran, the LTTE supremo, was ﬂ own from Jaffna to New Delhi in an Indian Air Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Force plane. In the past, on several occasions, the LTTE’s obduracy had created serious problems for Indian negotiators (including the Indian prime minister). In 1987, therefore, especially in the background of Indian intervention (by way of food airdrop), India should have been extraordinarily careful to avert any embarrassing

38 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 115–42, 148–49; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 101–2. Relations with Sri Lanka 509

move by the LTTE. Prabhakaran was visibly annoyed that he was excluded from negotiations leading eventually to the signing of a crucial agreement (on 29 July 1987). He did not approve the idea of such an agreement being signed by the Governments of India and Sri Lanka (there being no signatory for Sri Lanka Tamils, preferably the LTTE). Above all, Prabhakaran found it impossible to endorse an agreement that (a) made the merger of Northern and Eastern Provinces not only temporary but subject to the outcome of a future referendum, and that (b) did not disband all the camps of the SLAF, and allied security forces in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. When, therefore, India decided to ignore Prabhakaran’s objections, and go ahead with signing the proposed agreement on 29 July, critics could easily complain of lack of caution on India’s part, as also of creating an agreement that could be abortive on account of the LTTE’s opposition. One should remind the critics, however, that attempts by India to prolong negotiations in order to win over the LTTE by certain changes in the proposed agreement could have exposed India and the LTTE to a repeat of the June 1987 crisis, which was hardly acceptable.39 The situation was so intricate—nearly intractable—that intransi- gence and manoeuvres on the part of the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government left no option for India but to play a dominant part, during June–July 1987, in shaping the above noted agreement. While this implied a readiness to intervene militarily in order to restrain the LTTE from sabotaging the proposed agreement, initially, India did not foresee large-scale military intervention, and planned only to have a token military and political presence at the time of arms surrender by militants in Jaffna following the signing of the agreement (scheduled for 29 July 1987). It was a bizarre situation in which neither the Sri Lankan government nor the LTTE would be able to reach an agreement without India’s active mediation, and, even

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 after an agreement was reached, neither was able to implement the same without political-military guarantees by India. Yet, both were ready to criticise India for what they judged to be shortcomings in an agreement, or lapses in the implementation of the agreement, even though these shortcomings and lapses were a product of Sri Lanka’s history which India could not reshape. Take, for instance,

39 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 143–52; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, p. 103. 510 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the legitimate Tamil grievance that since the mid-1950s, the Tamils were being evicted from areas in North-Central Sri Lanka where the Mahaveli-Ganga river basin development schemes were launched, and the Sinhalas were resettled. But it was impossible in 1987 to have an India–Lanka agreement providing for the expulsion of these Sinhalas and resettlement of the Tamils in their places. In fact, it was humanly impossible to devise an agreement that could resolve the multifarious issues affecting the relations between the Tamils and the Sinhalas in Sri Lanka. At most, this agreement could—and this is what the India–Lanka accord of 29 July 1987 largely did—settle some vital principles (and lay down broad parameters). These principles were (a) respect for Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity, (b) recognition and fulfi lment of Tamil aspirations within the framework of Sri Lanka’s territorial indivisibility, and (c) insurance against the adverse impact of the internal confl ict in Sri Lanka upon India’s geo-strategic interests.40 The India–Sri Lanka Agreement of 29 July 1987 demonstrated a sophistry in drafting that underlined the near-impossibility of a proper reconciliation of the interests and aspirations of both Tamils and Sinhalas. Needless to add, on every important matter, the formulas devised with extreme care failed to satisfy either the Tamils or the Sinhalas. Take, for instance, the issue of language. The recipe was: ‘The offi cial language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. Tamil and English will also be offi cial languages’. This could not but provoke suspicion not only among the Tamils but also among the Sinhalas. Take, again, the question of a homeland for the Tamils. According to the Agreement, ‘the Northern and the Eastern Provinces have been areas of historical habitation of Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking peoples, who have at all times hitherto lived together in this territory, with other ethnic groups’, and these provinces would be merged into one administrative unit, although this merger would have to be ratifi ed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in a referendum on a subsequent date. This prescription, too, was not expected to satisfy either the Tamils or the Sinhalas. Yet, on the problem of language or a Tamil homeland, it was hardly possible to devise a more appropriate formula.41

40 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 153–54, 157–58; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 104, 107. 41 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 179–82; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 105–8. Relations with Sri Lanka 511

On the matter of devolution of powers to the North-Eastern Provincial Council, however, the agreement of 29 July 1987 failed to observe comparable care and sophistication in providing a package. The minimum expectation of the Tamils, based on occasional assurances from the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was that their Provincial Council would enjoy the powers of a state in the Indian Union. The agreement, full of ambiguities, not only failed to fulﬁ l this expectation but also referred to incomplete devolution proposals emerging in 1986 from inconclusive Indian mediation efforts as the foundation for devolution. Moreover, there was no safeguard in the agreement against the breakdown of negotiations resulting from disagreements between India and Sri Lanka on the contents of the devolution package.42 At the time of signing the Indo-Sri Lanka accord on 29 July 1987, Jayewardene and Rajiv Gandhi exchanged letters to ensure that neither India nor Sri Lanka would permit such activities on its soil as would affect adversely the security, territorial indivisibility, and unity of the other country. India agreed to deny support to the Sri Lankan Tamil separatists and terrorists, while Sri Lanka would discourage anti-Indian activities by Israel, Pakistan, and the United States. India agreed to provide supplies and training to Sri Lanka’s security forces. Sri Lanka agreed to dispense with the services of foreign intelligence and military personnel engaged in counteracting Tamil militancy. No country would be allowed—and Sri Lanka also agreed—to make military use of Sri Lankan ports (especially Trincomalee) in any way injurious to Indian interests. In the recent past, Sri Lanka had disregarded the most advantageous bid from India for the repair and restoration of Trincomalee oil tank farms, and assigned the job to a consortium of private corporations headed by Americans. In terms of the aforesaid Jayewardene–Gandhi letters, the work was to be reassigned to India and Sri Lanka. These letters further required

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Sri Lanka to review the existing operations of foreign broadcasting agencies, and forbid the use of media activities as a camouﬂ age for electronic intelligence and strategic surveillance. Actually, despite this exchange of letters, the VOA commenced its operations on a subsequent date. This was indeed a refutation of the charge that the

42 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 181, 331–32, 357; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 108–9; Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, pp. 148–49. 512 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

accord of July 1987, and the exchange of letters between India and Sri Lanka, signiﬁ ed Indian hegemony upon Sri Lanka.43 The charge about Indian hegemony derived tremendous support from the dispatch of an Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka within a few hours of the signing of the accord on 29 July 1987. What escapes the attention of nearly all critics of this aspect of Indian military intervention in Sri Lanka is that India did not plan it, and that Jayewardene had virtually begged for the IPKF because he probably had the foresight to comprehend that disturbances provoked by some members of his own Cabinet, by the Buddhist clergy, as also by the JVP and SLFP, would lead to the disintegration of Sri Lanka unless the maintenance of law and order in the North and the East was entrusted to the IPKF. The Annexure to the 29 July 1987 accord tentatively suggested that an IPKF was to be stationed in Sri Lanka, if its president thought that this force was required, and if the president issued an invitation to India to meet this requirement. As was quite obvious, neither the Tamils nor the Sinhalas could be entirely happy with the terms of the 29 July 1987 agreement. But leaders of opposition parties and even some leaders of the ruling party took the short-sighted step of fomenting large-scale disturbances which struck at the roots of Sri Lanka’s political stability and unity. Few may remember that even before the IPKF arrived in Sri Lanka, India had to comply with Jayewardene’s request for the use of Indian aircraft to transport Sri Lankan soldiers from the North and the East of the country to the South (including Colombo). But for such Indian support to the SLAF, the Jayewardene government might have toppled, and the country plunged into irretrievable chaos. Indian navy vessels had to be deployed in the sea near the port of Colombo in order to prevent the worst, viz. the expulsion of Jayewardene by a coup. Ironically, S. Bandaranaike, the SLFP leader, managed to forget—when her

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 party actively instigated disturbances in the country in 1987—that in 1971 she herself had to take the help of the Indian Army to quell the JVP rebellion.44

43 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 183–85; Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka, pp. 79; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 111–14. 44 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 161–62,169–71, 186–87; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 114–17. Relations with Sri Lanka 513

The LTTE was evidently unhappy with the agreement of 29 July 1987, the annexure to this agreement, the accompanying exchange of letters, as also the letters exchanged on the stationing of the IPKF in Sri Lanka. Evidently, too, the LTTE felt frustrated because its demand for a Tamil Eelam receded into the background. This frustration was probably aggravated by the arrival of the IPKF in Jaffna, for the LTTE could no longer claim that the Tamils were solely dependent on the LTTE for protection against the SLAF. Moreover, addicted to monopolising military-political power, the LTTE could not view with equanimity the prospect of elections to the Provincial Council as stipulated in the agreement and the annexure. All this, however, did not entitle LTTE leader Prabhakaran to declare, at a public meeting in Jaffna, as early as 4 August 1987 that he reserved the right to decide upon his future courses of action in accordance with his own evaluation of the actual mode of implementation of the agreement. An essential aspect of the process of implementation was the surrender of arms by the LTTE. The surrender ceremony took place on 5 August 1987. It became apparent on that day and afterwards that the LTTE was determined not to lay down arms in quantities and qualities above the level of a hollow formality. The IPKF was not yet militarily and psychologically prepared for retaliating against the LTTE on this matter. In view of the circumstances in which the IPKF was rushed to Sri Lanka at Jayewardene’s desperate request, the Government of India could not be entirely blamed for lack of such preparations.45 Such was LTTE’s addiction to monopolising power that it resented the popularity of the IPKF among ordinary Tamils, the result of a number of welfare measures launched by the IPKF. The LTTE could not (although it wanted to) bar contact between the Tamil population and the IPKF. But it succeeded in arranging anti-IPKF demonstrations. The SLAF was made to vacate schools, hospitals,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 etc., and move out to positions occupied by them before May 1987. The LTTE whipped up public frenzy, and demonstrators demanded the evacuation of some speciﬁ c buildings, while they ignored the options of other vacant buildings, and refused to consider the administrative constraint of procurement of alternative

45 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 190–92; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 65–66. 514 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

accommodation for the departing SLAF. While the delay in the surrender of arms by the LTTE aroused the suspicion of the Sri Lankan government that the IPKF was unduly favouring the LTTE, the delay in the evacuation of Jaffna’s public buildings by the SLAF prompted the LTTE to plead that the IPKF was partial to the Sri Lankan government. Accusations of both the sides were incorrect, but the IPKF became the victim of adverse propaganda by the Sinhalas as well as the Tamils. Nor to speak of the Sinhala media, the LTTE used its own press, radio, and television apparatus (built up during the years of insurgency) to malign the IPKF. When, on one occasion, the LTTE-sponsored crowd became so undisciplined as to break the gate of an IPKF military camp, there was no option but to ﬁ re one shot and kill just one demonstrator. But the LTTE did not let this opportunity slip by. Its propaganda machinery depicted the IPKF as killers of the Tamils, and succeeded in realising its aim of alienating the ordinary Tamils from the IPKF. Perhaps no amount of rational planning by the Government of India (assuming that there was the time for it) could rescue the IPKF from such diabolical tactics of the LTTE.46 Even without forgetting the past sins of the Sinhalas, and without insisting on a completely rational (and hence unpractical) analysis, any detached observer could claim that the 29 July 1987 agreement hurt the sentiments of the Sinhalas, the majority community of Sri Lanka, much more than it hurt the sentiments of the Tamils, the minority community. The LTTE, which continued to receive huge ﬁ nancial subsidy from the Government of India for sustaining its cadres, should have been a bit patient and cashed in on the agreement. But the unwarranted urge to monopolise power prompted the LTTE to lose patience, to refuse to cooperate properly with the Indian government and the IPKF, and insist on an immediate transfer of vital powers to LTTE cadres even before

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the formation of the Interim Administrative Council (IAC) for the North-Eastern Province (pending elections). The LTTE demanded powers of taxation. It wanted to take over from the IPKF the tasks of maintenance of law and order. The LTTE overlooked the danger that such indecent hurry in the enthronement of LTTE cadres could

46 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 196–97; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 67–73. Relations with Sri Lanka 515

provoke a massive Sinhala rebellion, wiping out the tangible benefi ts of the agreement. On the formation of the IAC and the appointment of the chief administrator for the IAC, the LTTE proved to be most obstructive and recalcitrant. This resulted from a paranoid pursuit of a monopoly of power, which even bred the unfounded suspicion that the Government of India was helping some militant Tamil groups to cut the LTTE to size. The LTTE was also not satisfi ed with the offer of placing an overwhelming majority of its own nominees on the IAC, and of suggesting a panel of three names from which Jayewardene would select the chief administrator. Even after submission of a three-member panel, the LTTE insisted that Jayewardene appoint that member as the chief administrator whom the LTTE recommended. Jayewardene could not be blamed for refusing to capitulate to such an extent.47 The SLAF too tested the patience of the IPKF. Persons in civilian clothes sometimes fi red at IPKF patrols, and took refuge in the SLAF camps. But the SLAF persisted in denying the grant of shelters to the attackers. Clashes between the Sinhalas and the Tamils (which were not at all unexpected) provoked the SLAF to break out of its confi nement to camps and extend protection to the Sinhalas. Sometimes, the IPKF had to resort to a show of force to pre-empt such moves by the SLAF. The IPKF could not abdicate its responsibility for the maintenance of law and order, and witness an upswing in violence and counter-violence resulting inevitably from the SLAF leaving their camps, and violating the 29 July 1987 agreement. The LTTE, however, seemed to be determined to violate the agreement and risk a direct military confrontation with the IPKF (and the Sri Lankan government). In about six weeks following 29 July 1987, the LTTE clandestinely procured a substantial quantity of arms and ammunition from Singapore. On 3 October 1987, a boat carrying 17 senior LTTE personnel as well as a sizeable quantity

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of arms/ammunition was intercepted by the Sri Lanka navy. The SLAF decided to bring the 17 prisoners from Palaly in the North to Colombo for trial and punishment. A crisis could have been averted if these prisoners had been handed over to the IPKF. The Indian high commissioner in Colombo advised Major General Harkirat Singh, the IPKF Commander, to do what was necessary at Palaly airport to

47 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 200–8; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 66–67, 77–80. 516 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

stop the transfer of the 17 LTTE prisoners by aircraft from Palaly to Colombo. But Harkirat (removed from the command of the IPKF in late October 1987) proved to be a master practitioner of red tapism under the guise of respect for the chain of military command. He failed to understand the enormous political-military implication of a delay, and insisted that the Indian high commissioner move through the ministries of external affairs and defence in New Delhi, so that the GOC-in-C, Southern Command, would pass on necessary orders to the IPKF Commander. The Indian high commissioner then requested Jayewardene to halt the movement of LTTE prisoners to Colombo. Jayewardene agreed. But Lalith Athulathmudali acted so fast that Jayewardene’s instructions did not reach him before the SLAF tried to put the LTTE cadres forcibly on a military aircraft for the journey to Colombo. The LTTE cadres committed suicide at Palaly airport by swallowing cyanide capsules.48 Lalith Athulathmudali appeared to be competing with the LTTE leaders in sabotaging the agreement of 29 July 1987. He even supplied arms to the JVP to aggravate disturbances, and discredit the agreement as well as Jayewardene. The LTTE retaliated against the suicide at Palaly by killing more than 200 Sinhalas and destroying 10,000 Sinhala houses. Prabhakaran proclaimed that the agreement ceased to be relevant. His cadres not only arranged demonstrations against the IPKF but also slaughtered a few Indian soldiers. On 6 October 1987—in 69 days following the accord of 29 July 1987—India’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General K. Sundarji, ordered military action (Operation Pawan) by the IPKF against the LTTE. Jayewardene, the Supreme Commander of the IPKF in legal rhetoric though not in actual operations, could not have been unhappy.49 There was a debate on whether the IPKF should have started military action against the LTTE in early October, or whether it

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 should have waited for reinforcements. In a way, this debate was irrelevant. If the arrival of the IPKF was dictated by circumstances which were beyond India’s control (especially Jayewardene’s request, based on the unavoidable necessity to counteract internal

48 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 209–11; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 81–82. 49 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 209, 212; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 134–35; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 82–83. Relations with Sri Lanka 517

disturbances in Sri Lanka), so was the timing of the attack against the LTTE. Any delay in launching operations against the LTTE might have aggravated the diffi culties facing the IPKF. RAW did not provide the IPKF with much-needed intelligence. It was even doubtful whether RAW had the requisite intelligence. For, RAW suffered from the illusion that the LTTE would remain loyal to RAW in the post-agreement period. COAS Sundarji too was overconfi dent that in case of a clash with the LTTE, the Indian Armed Forces would be able to subdue them in 2/4 weeks.50 The Indian Army got sucked into one of the most complex and diffi cult operations conceivable. Even before the fi ght with the LTTE, the objectives of the operation were far from clear to even the ordinary soldier or fi eld offi cer of the IPKF. After the military action started against the LTTE, the objectives became even less clear. The IPKF demonstrated exemplary competence and discipline in carrying out the Indian government’s directive that, in course of actions against the LTTE, Indian soldiers must avoid hurting Tamil civilians. Any deviation from this directive was caused partly by the immense diffi culty in distinguishing between an LTTE cadre and a non-combatant Tamil, and more by the LTTE’s repeated use of non-combatant women and children as human shields against the IPKF. Despite these constraints, and that of lack of familiarity with a terrain interspersed with dense jungles and lakes, in a few months, the IPKF not only succeeded in restoring law and order in the North-Eastern Province, but also in confi ning the LTTE to the jungles. This enabled authorities in Colombo to reactivate the democratic process in the North-Eastern Province as well as in other parts of Sri Lanka. The SLAF, freed by the IPKF from the burden of commitments in the North-East region, could concentrate on crushing the JVP (whose opposition to nationwide elections proved to be fruitless). Elections to the North-Eastern Provincial Council

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were held in November 1988, the presidential election took place in December 1998, and the parliamentary election in March 1989. In this respect, the IPKF’s role was highly laudable.51

50 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 155–56, 212–14, 337–38; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 60–61, 84–88. Also see, Lt. Gen. S.C. Sardeshpande, Assignment Jaffna, New Delhi: Lancer Publishers, 1992. 51 Lt. Gen. E.A. Vas (Retd), The Telegraph, 5 April 1990. Also see, Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 244, 275, 283; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 143–45, 150–51; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 111–13. 518 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Ranasinghe Premadasa succeeded Jayewardene as the president of Sri Lanka on 2 January 1989. Soon afterwards, in March 1989, Premadasa began to supply arms and intelligence to the LTTE, so that the LTTE could substantially enhance its ability to fi ght the IPKF. This revealed once again the unimaginable complexity of the Sri Lankan situation, which defi ed rational analysis even in terms of Machiavellian calculations at the highest level of morbid opportunism. The Government of India, or any other government for that matter, would not normally be expected to cope successfully with such contradictory moves of the LTTE and the Colombo government. The IPKF had gone to Sri Lanka to prevent battles between two adversaries, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government, and now the IPKF witnessed the rare spectacle of these adversaries joining hands to combat the IPKF. Premadasa rescinded the ban on the LTTE, and demanded an early withdrawal of the IPKF. In December 1989, V.P. Singh replaced Rajiv Gandhi as India’s prime minister. Singh’s government announced in January 1990 that by 31 March 1990, the IPKF would leave Sri Lanka. The logic behind this decision of the Indian government was inscrutable because the task of decimating the LTTE remained incomplete, and it was evident by this time that the destruction of the LTTE’s military might was an indispensable condition for peace in Sri Lanka (though not justice for Tamils). The IPKF was about to fulfi l this task (despite Premadasa’s ill-considered support to the LTTE), when it had to withdraw from Sri Lanka. In as brief a period as 10 weeks from the date of IPKF withdrawal, the Tamil region reverted back to a situation of bloody confl ict, and an apparently interminable disorder.52 The fi rst batch of the IPKF landed in Sri Lanka on 30 July 1987; the last contingent left on 24 March 1990. The IPKF worked for 967 days in Sri Lanka. During this period, the Government of India, in addition to paying the salaries and allowances of the soldiers, spent `

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 9 billion on the IPKF. The number of IPKF soldiers dying in battles against the LTTE stood at 1,155, whereas 2,984 soldiers were wounded. The IPKF performed some vital tasks (as already noted) with extraordinary efﬁ ciency. But its experience in Sri Lanka could have been much happier, and its performance much higher, had the Indian decision makers at the union and state levels refrained from

52 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 287–94 ; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, p. 206; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, p. 152. Relations with Sri Lanka 519

committing serious lapses. Some of these lapses were persistent and familiar, for example, the failure to achieve coordination between civil and military offi cials of the Ministry of Defence (Government of India), between offi cials of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of External Affairs, or even between offi cials of the three services of the armed forces. In the Sri Lankan situation, however, some of the lapses of the Indian decision makers were unique. Take, for instance, some of the acts of the Tamil Nadu government. It extended substantial fi nancial assistance to the LTTE, when the LTTE was killing IPKF soldiers. The Tamil Nadu government permitted the medical treatment of LTTE cadres (wounded during operations against the IPKF) in Tamil Nadu. This was all the more shocking when, due to lack of timely appreciation on the part of civil offi cials about the urgent needs of the military, the LTTE could fi ght the IPKF with superior weapons and equipment. Ironically, members of one of the biggest and most reputed armed forces in the world could match the LTTE’s superiority only when they started using bullet-proof vests, radios, and rifl es captured from the LTTE. No wonder that IPKF heroes, returning from Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu, did not receive the due welcome.53 Nevertheless, it may be plausible to view as a trite afterthought any severe criticism of India’s failure to perform the role of mediator, and of a regional power asserting its authority in Sri Lanka (which received, signifi cantly, clear support from the United States, and a tacit one from China). The aims of the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government were irreconcilable. The LTTE did not give up the objective of Eelam. Colombo never took seriously the need for devolution of substantial power to the Tamil province. If the scheme of devolution in the July 1987 agreement was dangerously vague for the Tamils, the danger became a reality afterwards when Colombo enacted constitutional changes, which refused to grant to the Tamil

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 province even that share of power which states of the Indian union were entitled to under the Constitution of India (and the inadequacy of which states in India have always complained against). Sri Lanka’s constitutional manoeuvres, therefore, could hardly attract even

53 Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 339, 341–42, 348–50; Ghosh, Ethnic Conﬂ ict in Sri Lanka, pp. 145–46; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 153; Singh, The IPKF in Sri Lanka, pp. 127–31, 149, 161–62, 164–65, 170–76; Singh, Defending India, pp. 203, 210–11. Also see, Ajoy Bose, The Statesman, 16 October 1989. 520 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

those Tamils who were ready to exchange the demand of Eelam for substantial provincial autonomy. The Indian agenda—ﬁ nding a middle ground between the aims of the LTTE and the Colombo government—proved to be inherently irreconcilable with the agendas of the two adversaries. Mediation was doomed to failure. In this perspective, one could further speculate whether the IPKF’s departure from Sri Lanka before the destruction of the LTTE’s military machine (even though not planned by the Government of India) actually served the Tamil cause. For, with the LTTE totally vanquished, the Tamils would cease to have protectors (whom they feared as well as respected), and Colombo could quickly switch over to genocide against the Tamils, as in June 1987.54

Civil War and Genocide in Sri Lanka Bloody confl ict continued over the years in Sri Lanka, with occasional ceasefi re and peace parleys serving as intervals for recoupment/recovery, especially for the LTTE. Fortunes swung wildly, and sometimes Sri Lanka appeared to need Indian help desperately. Nevertheless, India wisely refrained from intervening, and complicating further the already diffi cult situation in Sri Lanka. It is not pertinent to argue that India has a moral responsibility to assist Sri Lanka in an emergency, simply because India in the past has rendered substantial military-fi nancial assistance to the LTTE. After all, inexcusable lapses on the part of authorities in Colombo were mainly responsible for the emergence of the LTTE. If initial Indian support for the LTTE created moral-political indebtedness, it was amply repaid when the IPKF preserved Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity in the face of twin threats from the JVP and the LTTE. Moreover, in the 1980s, Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and the revolution in Iran disrupted the normal routes of drug smuggling availed of by the Pakistani drug lords, who were compelled to rely Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 on the LTTE for providing alternative routes. Since then, Indian support became gradually less indispensable to the LTTE, as

54 Ashok Mitra, The Statesman, 29 December 1987. Also see, Dixit, Assignment Colombo, pp. 270–71, 282; Muni, Pangs of Proximity, pp. 103–4, 109, 118; Singh, Defending India, pp. 208–9. For a theoretical perspective on Indian intervention in Sri Lanka, see Rajat Ganguly, Kin State Intervention in Ethnic Conﬂ icts: Lessons from South Asia, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998. Relations with Sri Lanka 521

drug traffi cking remained a mainstay of its fi nancial and military resources.55 It is remarkable that Sri Lanka has been able to delink signifi cantly the political-military unrest in the country from economic development. Here again the Indian contribution has been important. For, the IPKF presence in the northeast region enabled the Sri Lankan government to crush the JVP-led insurgency, and pursue a liberal economic policy, which sparked the dynamism and innovativeness of the private sector in coping with the adversities of insurgency. For instance, the curtailment of red tape, an essential aspect of economic liberalisation, has been evident from the ability of the Sri Lankan government to approve a foreign investment project in two days, and from the success of an Indian company in constructing a textile plant in 150 days. Indian companies have proved their capacity to enrich the Sri Lankan economy by managing tea, rubber, and palm oil estates, as also by the establishment of pharmaceutical, sugar, textile, and tyre plants. Moreover, Sri Lanka has benefi ted vitally from the supply of intermediate technology by India. The transfer of food processing technology, and the availability of India-made low-tech gadgets deserve special mention in this connection.56 India–Sri Lanka trade transactions have been on the upswing. The coming into force of the South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangements (SAPTA) on 7 December 1995 has stimulated the exports of these two countries to each other. The Indo-Lanka Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which came into force on 1 March 2000, has reinforced this trend. Nevertheless, the disparity in the size, population, and resources of these two countries is so enormous, and the export base of India is so much more diversifi ed than that of Sri Lanka, that Sri Lanka continues to have an adverse balance of trade. This need not be a cause of excessive worry because Sri Lanka’s imports from India evidently serve Sri Lanka’s interests, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

55 Aunohita Majumdar, The Statesman, 6 May 2000; Editorial, The Statesman, 6 May 2000; Raja M., The Statesman, 2 August 2001; Editorial, The Statesman, 15 August 2001. 56 P. Jayaram, India Today, 15 March 1994, pp. 89, 91; P. Hari, Business World, 4–17 May 1994, p. 41. Also, N. Jayapalan, Foreign Policy of India, New Delhi: Atlantic, 2001, p. 399; P. Sahadevan, ‘India and Sri Lanka’, in Lalit Mansingh, M. Venkatraman, Dilip Lahiri, J.N. Dixit, Bhabani Sen Gupta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy: Agenda for the 21st Century, Vol. 2, Delhi: Konark, 1998, pp. 188–89. 522 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and no country can have bilaterally balanced trade with every other country. A favourable balance of trade with some countries takes care of the adverse balance with other countries.57 ‘The balance of trade, which favoured India fi fteen to one when the agreement (FTA) was signed has come down to fi ve to one, according to the Central Bank here [Colombo]’.58 An important reason behind the longevity and success of the LTTE was the steadfast support of the Tamil diaspora.59 This support became shaky after 9/11 because America began to attach far greater importance to counter-terrorism after the World Trade Center, and even the Pentagon, became targets of terrorist assaults on 11 September 2001. Members of the Tamil diaspora were naturally apprehensive about facing potential retaliation from America’s counter-terrorism offi cials.60 If this contributed to the LTTE’s receptivity to any proposal for activation of a peace process in Sri Lanka, many Sinhala politicians too might have experienced a psychological orientation in favour of peace parleys with the rebels. A parliamentary election took place in Sri Lanka in December 2001. The United National Front (UNF) coalition was victorious at this election. On 23 December 2001, the new government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (who belonged to the UNP) declared a unilateral ceasefi re. The LTTE responded positively. The ceasefi re lasted for about two months, and, on 22 February 2002, R. Wickremesinghe and V. Prabhakaran signed a long-term truce agreement. The government adopted such measures of accommodation as the release of a large number of persons arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), and withdrawal of the prohibition on movements of goods and services to areas under the LTTE domination. On 4 September 2002, the government went as far as to rescind the ban on the LTTE. This obviously paved the way to peace parleys which began in Thailand on 16 September 61

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 2002.

57 Indra Nath Mukherji, ‘SAPTA and Indo-Sri Lankan Trade’, in Nalini Kant Jha (ed.), India’s Foreign Policy in a Changing World, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 2000, pp. 215–24. Sahadevan, ‘India and Sri Lanka’, p. 188. Also see, The Statesman, 3 and 25 February 2000. 58 The Times of India, 15 October 2003. 59 Raja M., The Statesman, 2 August 2001. 60 B. Raman, The Pioneer, 7 January 2009. 61 Partha S. Ghosh, Ethnicity versus Nationalism: The Devolution Discourse in Sri Lanka, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003, pp. 414, 425–26. Relations with Sri Lanka 523

The accommodative steps of Wickremesinghe were reciprocated by the LTTE on 27 November 2002 (the Heroes’ Day for the LTTE), when Prabhakaran’s speech did not refer to an independent Tamil Eelam. It pleaded for ‘regional autonomy’ ensuring ‘internal self-determination’. Peace talks made substantial progress, despite lack of support from a number of leading Sinhala politicians, notably President Chandrika Kumaratunga of the SLFP, a part of the opposition coalition. This was evident from the outcome of talks held in Oslo during 2–5 December 2002. The government and the LTTE declared that Sri Lanka’s ethnic crisis required a federal solution, and that they should strive for a settlement that would preserve the unity of Sri Lanka but honour the principle of internal self- determination for Tamils in their traditional (historic) habitation. But there were enormous obstacles to the implementation of a federal plan, as that would require substantial amendments to Sri Lanka’s unitary constitution, and the UNF coalition, led by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe (of the UNP) would not be able to command the support of a two thirds majority in Parliament. In the absence of this support, the constitution could not be amended. Thus, even when a ruling party and rebels appeared to be moving towards the only viable solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic confl ict, Sinhala politicians failed to rise to the occasion, as on a number of occasions in the past (for example, in 1957, 1987 and 1995). ‘Every time the party in power came out with workable solution, the party in opposition scuttled it’, Sam Rajappa correctly observed.62 In this situation the fate of the 2002 ceasefi re was predictable, and consistent with recent history. Both the LTTE and SLAF would try to expand the areas under their control, each accusing the other of ceasefi re violations and civilian casualties. The LTTE found that the peace talks were not of much use. In April 2003, it withdrew from these talks. It also became bold and launched conventional

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 attacks to push out the SLAF from Jaffna and Trincomalee, instead of restricting themselves to the use of Claymore mines and suicide bombing as in the past. These attacks did not succeed. The LTTE became disappointed. This disappointment fuelled anger in March

62 Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 27 November 2006. For some details, see Ghosh, Ethnicity versus Nationalism, pp. 427–32; Nagendra Nath Jha, ‘India and Sri Lanka: From Uncertainty To Close Proximity’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, pp. 652–53. 524 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

2004 when Colonel Karuna defected from the LTTE, and began to collaborate with the SLAF. Karuna subsequently formed a political party, Tamileela Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP). He also set up a sort of civil-military administration in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province. In September 2004, however, chances of a Sinhala–Tamil reconciliation appeared to brighten because, in sharp contrast to the response of heads of state in Pakistan and Bangladesh towards perennial atrocities on minorities, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga acted upon the report of the President’s Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence (1981–84). Kumaratunga not only apologised for the anti-Tamil violence in the early 1980s, and sanctioned monetary compensation to the victims of violence (or their heirs) but also started paying compensation to a number of identifi ed victims. In October 2004, expectations over ethnic reconciliation rose as the LTTE submitted a devolution package to the UNP government. While it was the duty of the government to devise a devolution package, it not only failed to do so but also could not pursue the proposal formulated creditably by the LTTE. It succumbed to domestic political manoeuvres, and was forced out of power by its opponents.63 In November 2005, Mahinda Rajapakse (of the SLFP) became Sri Lanka’s president. He was a fi rm believer in Sinhala Buddhist supremacy, and did not bother to pursue the only feasible solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic confl ict, that is a federal solution. Nevertheless, under the Rajapakse regime, the LTTE joined the peace talks in February 2006, but again withdrew in April 2006. The confl ict between the LTTE and SLAF escalated. Mistrust deepened. Therefore, in June 2006 at Oslo, the rebels were present, but they refused to talk to the Sri Lankan offi cials. These talks were likely to fail because not only Rajapakse but also his allies, the JVP and Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), the former being Leftist and the latter Rightist,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were consistently opposed to a federal solution to the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka. They all forgot that if a federal solution was adopted in the 1970s or 1980s, Sri Lanka would have been as prosperous as Malaysia and Singapore. Instead, Sri Lanka remains much poorer,

63 M.G. Devasahayam, The Statesman, 12 March 2007; Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 6 September 2006 and 24 January 2007; Ajit Kumar Singh, The Pioneer, 28 March 2007. Also see, Apratim Mukarji, Sri Lanka: A Dangerous Interlude, New Delhi: New Dawn/Sterling, 2005, pp. 64,135–37. Relations with Sri Lanka 525

because it is a victim of undeclared warfare. In order to provide a thin cover to ceasefi re violations, the LTTE set up a People’s Force (Makkal Padai), which fought government forces regularly. As to the SLAF, without caring even to hide ceasefi re violations, it had, with the active assistance of Colonel Karuna, dislodged the LTTE from a number of bases in the Eastern Province.64 Probably the most disturbing development was Rajapakse’s apparent obsession with a military solution, although, if the history of ethnic confl ict in Sri Lanka is any guide, a military solution long remained a mirage. Where India had 1.3 military personnel for 1,000 people on an average, and Pakistan had four, Sri Lanka had as many as eight. India spends 2.5 per cent of its GDP on the military, and Pakistan spends 3.5 per cent; in contrast, Sri Lanka spends 4.1 per cent. All this illustrates the militarist mindset of the Sri Lankan rulers. From time to time, innocent Tamil civilians have been killed by the SLAF, but, as attested by the Swedish leader of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the blame was conveniently placed on the LTTE. The SLAF, assisted by Pakistani trainers and Ukrainian pilots, carried out air strikes against Tamil areas and killed a large number of civilians. In a report of 4 June 2006, for instance, Major General Ulf Henricsson, head of the SLMM, mentioned ceasefi re violations by both the LTTE and SLAF, but held the SLAF mainly responsible for provocations and escalation.65 It is highly deplorable that the Sri Lankan government depicted ceasefi re violations by the SLAF as merely deterrent measures. But the SLAF deterred the prospect of a peaceful solution by killing infl uential Tamils, who not only believed in parliamentary politics, but were capable of being elected to Parliament.66 In tune with this groping for a military solution, the Rajapakse regime struck a devastating blow at the prospects of any peaceful federal solution in the near future. It prevailed upon the JVP to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 lodge a petition with the Supreme Court for annulling the merger of Northern and Eastern Provinces stipulated in the India–Sri Lanka pact of 1987. The Supreme Court struck it down on a purely procedural

64 Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 29 January and 4 May 2006, 28 March 2007. 65 Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 25 June and 13 October 2006; Ajit Kumar Singh, The Pioneer, 28 March 2007. 66 Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 4 May 2006. 526 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

(and not substantive) ground. The Supreme Court’s objection was that the merger had been a product not of parliamentary law but of a presidential decree under Emergency Regulations. The UNP (the opposition party preferring a federal solution, and aware of the merger being an essential minimum component of this solution) promised support to Rajapakse for a relevant parliamentary law. But Rajapakse cavalierly brushed aside this offer of cooperation. As to India, in terms of ethics as well as realism, it should have protested against the de-merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. For this not only violated the sanctity of the Rajiv Gandhi– Jayewardene agreement and offended the memory of Rajiv Gandhi (who can be regarded as a martyr to the cause of a federal solution for Sri Lanka), but failed to foresee the consequences of forestalling a federal solution, viz. large-scale migration of Sri Lankan Tamils to India’s Tamil Nadu state.67 From January 2006 to March 2007 approximately 17,750 Sri Lanka Tamils moved to Tamil Nadu. This number could rise manifold according to a report of the United Nations High Com- missioner for Refugees (UNHCR), prepared in March 2007, because Sri Lanka witnessed, during April–March 2006–7, the emergence of 292,685 Tamils as internally displaced persons (IDPs). They lived in a situation of subhuman standards of food, hygiene, and sanitation. They were under perennial threat of assault or further displacement by security forces. Naturally, they were on the lookout for opportunities to migrate to Tamil Nadu. This would obviously enrage the people and government of Tamil Nadu, who were thoroughly dissatisﬁ ed with New Delhi’s indifference to Tamil Nadu’s ﬁ shermen, who were daily harassed, looted, and killed by the Sri Lankan navy. This was largely due to an unethical and unrealistic decision by New Delhi in 1974 to cede the island of Kachhativu (across the narrow Palk Strait) to Sri Lanka. This

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 small, uninhabited island was never a part of Sri Lanka. It was a portion of the zamindari of the Raja of Ramnad, and an inalienable part of Tamil Nadu’s Ramanathapuram district. After Colombo’s violation of the 1987 India–Sri Lanka agreement it was possible to move the Supreme Court of India to challenge the legality of the 1974 surrender of Kachhativu to Sri Lanka for no better reason than

67 Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 27 November 2006 and 27 March 2007. Relations with Sri Lanka 527

(presumably) to help Sirimavo Bandaranaike in her battle against domestic political opponents. India need not have bothered about strengthening Rajapakse. It could think of abrogation of the 1974 pact, when Rajapakse had been bold enough to annul the much more important 1987 pact. Unfortunately, India did not even protest against the abrogation of the 1987 agreement by the de-merger of Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces.68 In adopting this hands-off policy towards Sri Lanka, India injured its vital interests by creating opportunities for Pakistan to endanger India’s security. Pakistan could do so by using Sri Lanka as a base of operations. For a number of years Pakistan remained an ally of the Sri Lankan government in fi ghting the LTTE. As early as 2000, the Sri Lankan government could save Jaffna from LTTE attacks by using Multi Barrel Rocket Launchers supplied by Pakistan.69 Pakistan has considerable experience in subjecting its civilians in Balochistan province to aerial bombing. The Sri Lankan government benefi ted from Pakistani advice on this matter while carrying out air attacks on civilian targets in its Northern and Eastern Provinces.70 Such brutality on the part of the Sri Lankan government was of course matched by its efforts to prevent foreign aid from reaching the victims of the tsunami in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.71 Even if India did not care for the atrocities suffered by the Tamils in Sri Lanka, it could not afford to ignore the incipient threat to the nuclear installations on its eastern seaboard, posed by the consolidation of Pakistani presence in Sri Lanka.72 ‘Previously’, wrote Ashok K. Mehta in early 2007, ‘it was said that LTTE is the problem. Now the problem is the SLG’, that is the Sri Lankan government.73 The heart of the problem was the apparently irrational belief of the Rajapakse government in a military solution to the ongoing confl ict in his country. The defence budget grew from `108.67 billion in 2006 to `139.54 billion in 2007.74 Rajapakse failed Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

68 Radhika Giri, The Statesman, 5 April 2007; Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 27 March 2007; The Statesman, 27 April 2007. 69 Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 24 January 2007. 70 Editorial, The Pioneer, 25 December 2006. 71 Editorial, The Telegraph, 27 April 2006. 72 M.G. Devasahayam, The Statesman, 12 March 2007. 73 Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 24 January 2007. 74 Radhika Giri, The Statesman, 5 April 2007. 528 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to realise that it was not easy to win an outright military victory. If any fresh evidence was at all required in favour of this assessment, the same was provided by the early morning raid upon the main base of the Sri Lanka Air Force at Katunayake, about 35 kilometres north of Colombo, by the Tamil Eelam Air Force (TAF) on 26 March 2007. The TAF could launch this attack by repairing the Iranaimadu runway which had been damaged due to bombardment by the Sri Lankan Air Force. This was reminiscent of an LTTE attack on the same Katunayake air base in July 2001.75 The TAF again bombed an air base at Palaly in Jaffna on 24 April 2007, and it bombed fuel facilities near Colombo on 29 April 2007.76 Rajapakse did not yet put forward any proposal for genuine devolution and true federalism. Without such a proposal, the conﬂ ict could be unending, and, eventually, even Indian supporters of Sri Lanka’s unity might conclude that there was no alternative to an independent Tamil Eelam if the limitless sufferings of Sri Lanka’s Tamils had to end. New Delhi might be forced by the people and government of Tamil Nadu to decide whether it was with the Colombo government or the hapless Tamils in Sri Lanka.77 How difﬁ cult and complex it was for India to arrive at this decision can be comprehended from the remarkable growth in the mutually advantageous economic relations between Sri Lanka and India in recent years. In a few years from March 2000, that is the commencement point of the implementation of the FTA between the two countries, bilateral trade increased rapidly. Sri Lanka’s exports to India went up by 717 per cent and India’s exports by 139 per cent, during 2001–5. In 1998, the balance of trade was in favour of India in the ratio of 16 to 1. In 2005, it stood in favour of Sri Lanka in the ratio of 2.4 to 1. An example of bilateral cooperation in investment and services was provided by the Indian Oil Cooperation (IOC), which invested more than US$100

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 million in Lanka Indian Oil Corporation (LIOC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of IOC, and purchased 100 retail petroleum outlets from Ceylon Petroleum Company, which was owned by the government.

75 PTI report, The Statesman, 27 March 2007; Abhijit Bhattacharyya, The Pioneer, 20 April 2007. 76 The Statesman, 25 and 30 April 2007. 77 Radhika Giri, The Statesman, 5 April 2007. Relations with Sri Lanka 529

Prospects of bilateral cooperation appeared to be limitless because steps were planned to move from the FTA regime to the regime of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which would include services, whereas the FTA covered only goods.78 So, if the Government of India was eventually compelled by the people and Government of Tamil Nadu to choose between a cruel Sri Lankan government and the long-suffering Tamils in Sri Lanka, the choice would neither be simple nor easy. Diplomacy never is. The intricacy and volatility of the situation can be comprehended by a reference to the following examples. In 2000, LTTE-SLAF fi ghting took such shape in northern Sri Lanka that the SLAF had to rely upon India for a rescue operation in case Lankan soldiers had to be evacuated from Jaffna. Buddhist monks held a demonstration in front of the Indian high commission in Colombo. They carried placards asking the IPKF to return. In 2001, again, Sinhala newspapers printed reports deploring the departure of the IPKF, following the destruction of Sri Lanka’s fl eet of military and commercial aircraft at Katunayake airport by the suicide squads of the LTTE. In contrast, by the end of 2008, when SLAF was evidently winning the war, Buddhist monks pleaded that India should stay away from the confl ict.79 Actually in 2008, by the middle of October, about 8,201 LTTE soldiers lost their lives. The fi gures for 2006 and 2007 were less, viz. 2,319 and 3,345 respectively. By the last week of October 2008, SLAF advanced to about 10–15 kilometres from the LTTE headquarters at Killinochchi, losing 195 solders in course of operations within the district of Killinochchi. Six divisions of SLAF surrounded Killinochchi. Politicians in Tamil Nadu staged a drama of resigning from Parliament, pretending to put pressure upon New Delhi, so that New Delhi would prevail upon Colombo to effect a ceasefi re for relieving about 230,000 civilians trapped in the confl ict.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 New Delhi had the wisdom to respond via a dramatic gesture, using the playacting of some Tamil Nadu politicians. It issued a demarche to Colombo, asking sweetly for a political solution rather than

78 Mohan Kumar, ‘India–Sri Lanka: New Directions’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, pp. 663–66. 79 Ashok K. Mehta, The Pioneer, 5 November 2008. 530 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

military victory over the LTTE. But New Delhi did not ask for a ceasefi re because it wanted the LTTE to be decimated. For, over the years, the LTTE had proved itself to be the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world, being branded terrorist by 37 countries, including India, Britain and America. The LTTE killed moderate Tamils in Sri Lanka on a large scale, and forfeited the sympathy of the Tamils in Tamil Nadu, although some political leaders in Tamil Nadu played the maladroit game of paying lip service support to the LTTE. Colombo participated in the drama by sending an envoy to New Delhi, and agreeing to accept humanitarian aid from Tamil Nadu for Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka, but did not even consider a ceasefi re. Even at this crucial stage of the bloody confl ict in Sri Lanka, there was broad spectrum cooperation with India. Being able to draw lessons from the encounter of 1987–90 in Sri Lanka was certainly a sign of India’s diplomatic maturity.80 By the end of January 2009, the LTTE had under its control only 300 square kilometres of territory, in contrast to the 15,000 square kilometres it held at the peak of its power. Signifi cantly, the SLAF could not gain such military success without training and arms supplies from India, although India had to restrict the quantity (and even more the publicity on the subject) in order not to unduly offend the sensitivities of some Tamil Nadu political leaders. The SLAF also received military assistance from Pakistan and China, which India did not like but could not pre-empt. India chose not to distract itself and the SLAF from the primary goal of wiping out the LTTE.81 On one matter—the lack of even minimum protection for the Tamil civil population in northern Sri Lanka, exposed to atrocities by the LTTE as also the SLAF—India, Sri Lanka, and the entire international community appeared to look away. India was somewhat helpless. But Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapakse, and his Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

80 Statesman New Service, The Statesman, 7 October 2008; Editorial, The Indian Express, 16 October 2008; Editorial, The Times of India, 18 October 2008; Kanchan Gupta, The Pioneer, 19 October 2008; Kanchan Lakshman, The Pioneer, 25 October 2008; Editorial, The Statesman, 1 November 2008. 81 Editorial, The Statesman, 14 May 2008; Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 24 June 2008; Times News Network, The Times of India, 4 March 2009; Muzamil Jabed, The Indian Express, 29 April 2009. Relations with Sri Lanka 531

brother the defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, seemed to go to an extreme. During the war on the LTTE, they did not hesitate to terrorise Sri Lanka’s civil society. Mahinda Rajapakse claimed that unless he gave SLAF a free hand, and accepted collateral damages in the realm of human rights, he could not succeed in the war on terror. Only in this way could Rajapakse disprove the scepticism, expressed repeatedly in this chapter (and elsewhere by others), over the success potentials of an attempted military solution to Sri Lanka’s chronic ethnic conﬂ ict. Unfortunately, the Rajapakse brothers did not endeavour to avoid countless cases of unlawful detention and torture, which had nothing to do with the war against the LTTE. Caution was warranted, excess was not. All Tamils were not to be treated as terrorists or potential terrorists. Reputed war correspondents of various countries were not granted access to the war zone. Some Sri Lankan journalists, trusted by the Colombo government, enjoyed this privilege. Those Sri Lankan journalists, who tried to probe the truth about the war, were taken care of by unidentiﬁ able assailants. All complaints about rampant violations of human rights elicited only one response from the Rajapakse government: denial.82 Killinochchi was captured by the SLAF on 1 January 2009. The entire military operation against the LTTE came to an end on 19 May 2009. SLAF announced the establishment of No Fire Zones, where the LTTE went, and got entrapped. In conventional war, the LTTE would not have coped with a modern army that could use the Air Force. However, it could carry on guerrilla warfare by taking positions in the jungles. It is to the credit of the SLAF that its Special Forces established control over the jungles, and deprived the LTTE of an opportunity to prolong guerrilla warfare. Since winning the war, the Rajapakse government has to make attempts to win peace, not merely by rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced persons, but also by curing the minds of the minorities (the Hindus/Muslims

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 among the Tamils) of that feeling of inequity and discrimination, as

82 Sam Rajappa, The Statesman, 1 December 2007; M.G. Devasahayam, The Statesman, 4 February 2009; Ganes Selva, The Pioneer, 7 April 2009; David Blacker, The Times of India, 12 April 2009; Gethin Chamberlain, The Times of India, 26 April, 2009. For, atrocities on Tamil civilians by the SLAF, see articles by Andrew Buncombe and James Ross in The Statesman, 30 August 2009. 532 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

also of oppression by the ethnic majority, which, for decades, ran a dysfunctional democracy, and provoked militancy.83 One ﬁ nal comment. In the late 1980s, Sri Lanka outsourced counterterrorism operations to India, which did not succeed. In the closing months of the ﬁ rst decade of the 21st century, India may consider outsourcing to Sri Lanka the counterterrorism operations inside India, and try to create an example of intra-SAARC cooperation in anti-terrorism combat! Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

83 For an absorbing analysis of some of the issues discussed in this concluding paragraph, see Muralidhar Reddy, ‘Democracy Deﬁ cit & Two Movements’, and ‘The War is Over’, Frontline, 6–19 June 2009; N. Ram, The Hindu, 6, 7 and 8 July 2009; Darini Senanayake, M.D. Nalapat and Pradeep Jaganathan, ‘From National Security to Human Security: Winning Peace in Sri Lanka’, Strategic Analysis, November 2009, pp. 820–35. 9 Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia

It can be argued that India’s relations with the former Soviet Union (FSU) have been extraordinarily stable, considering the marked divergences in socio-economic-political systems. This stability has sometimes been rather injurious to India’s interests, especially economic interests. Probably, this can be explained by an examination of the political roots of these stable ties.

Political Transactions M.N. Roy, Executive Committee Member, Comintern (Moscow), wrote, in a letter dated 20 December 1927, to a leader of the Com- munist Party of India (CPI), Muzaffar Ahmed, that Jawaharlal Nehru was Moscow’s liaison agent in India.1 Subsequently, M.N. Roy denied that he had written this letter.2 Nevertheless, there was a lingering notion about the existence of a close relationship between Moscow and India’s ﬁ rst prime minister, which provided an explanation of stability in Indo-Soviet ties. There was low visibility of these ties, although, from time to time, they became glaring. During the Second World War, Nehru became an ardent advocate of intimate relations with the Soviet Union, and his sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, left New Delhi for Moscow 10 days before India became formally independent, in order to occupy the post of India’s ﬁ rst ambassador to the Soviet Union.3 At the Lok Sabha, Ram Manohar Lohia raised a vital question

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 about how Prime Minister Nehru could spend about `25,000 per day.4 On being told that Nehru earned huge royalties from his

1 Samaren Roy and M.N. Roy, A Political Biography, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1997, p. 102. 2 Ibid., p. 104. Also see, The Free Press Journal, Bombay, 15 September, 1928. 3 Arun Mohanty, Business Messenger, Moscow, June 2002, p. 4. (Business Messenger is the ofﬁ cial journal of the Indian Business Association, Moscow.) 4 For this and related matters see Ram Manohar Lohia, Rs 25,000/- A Day, Hyderabad: Navahind, 1965. Also see Indumati Kelkar, Dr. Rammanohar Lohia: His Life and Philosophy, Pune: Prestige, 1996, esp. pp. 389–92. 534 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

books, Lohia pressed for details about the publishers providing such royalties. It was then revealed that the Soviet government paid annually a hefty sum on account of royalties from his books. Since the number of genuine readers of Nehru’s books in the Soviet Union could not be signifi cant, one could reasonably infer that there were strong subterranean links between Nehru and Moscow, as also between the ruling parties in India and the Soviet Union, which (as will be explained below) could enable the Soviet Union to impose some excessively unfair terms of trade upon India. An important explanation of stability in Indo-Soviet ties was India’s dependence on the Soviet Union for counteracting Pakistan’s diplomatic offensive on Jammu and Kashmir (backed by the United States and Western powers), which, again, was due to India’s short- sighted policy toward Pakistan in 1947–48.5 India made a series of blunders (elaborated in the chapter on relations with Pakistan in this book), which enabled Pakistan not only to retain approximately one third of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), but also to create, in collusion with Western powers, repeated problems for India at the UN, where the Soviet Union had to come to India’s rescue, even to the extent of vetoing a resolution branding India an aggressor in J&K.6 India’s dependence on the Soviet Union was a product of its own folly. But Soviet support for India on J&K could be interpreted as Soviet concern for the protection of such a vital interest of India as territorial integrity. One must not, however, make the mistake of supposing the basis for Soviet support as ethics rather than realpolitik. In 1954, America formally recruited Pakistan as a military ally in the confl ict with communist countries. In 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khrushchev exchanged offi cial visits. While in India, Khrushchev declared J&K to be an integral part of India. Although this was interpreted as the commencement of a new age in Soviet-India relations, the Soviet move to counterbalance Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

5 See Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, for shocking (almost incredible) facts about India’s surrender to British manoeuvres, which prevented the expulsion of invaders from the entire territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Also see Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘India and Pakistan as Factors in Each Other’s Foreign Policy’, International Studies, vol. 8, no. 1–2, July–October 1966, for an analysis of how Indian diplomacy became a hostage to dependence upon the Soviets on the J&K problem. 6 K.P.S. Menon, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 30 December 1977. (K.P.S. Menon was a former foreign secretary of India.) Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 535

the America–Pakistan alliance was too obvious to be missed. After all—to give only a few instances—the Soviet view (as depicted in the New Times of 21 September 1948, and issues of the mouthpiece of the Soviet agent, the CPI, that is Crossroads, on 6 January 1950 and 3 August 1951) was to denounce Pakistani invaders and Indian reactionaries equally, and to plead for a plebiscite in J&K. The change of this Soviet view in 1955 was thus not a product of ethics but of realpolitik.7 The much-trumpeted theme of stable and friendly relations between India and the Soviet Union—as noted in the preceding paragraphs—needs some correction, for example, with reference to the early years of India’s independence. This correction would centre on (i) New Delhi’s misgivings about the role of the CPI, especially the CPI’s relations with the Soviet Union, and (ii) India’s expectations of economic assistance from the United States, and the resultant and probable (though not certain) hesitation over creating an impression of closeness to the Soviet Union, which doubted the capacity of free India to avoid policy dictations from Britain. Soon after independence, the CPI adopted a policy of violent overthrow of New Delhi’s ruling circle. Although the Government of India could not avoid the suspicion that this policy enjoyed the support of Moscow, available evidence failed to conﬁ rm the suspicion fully. After all, it was well known that before 1947 the CPI’s views did not always coincide with those of the Soviet Union. For example, the CPI favoured openly the creation of Pakistan and the partition of British India, whereas the Soviet Union strongly opposed it. Yet, New Delhi could not totally overcome the lingering suspicion about Moscow’s support for the revolutionary violence unleashed by the CPI in the early years of India’s freedom.8

7 Balraj Madhok, Kashmir: Centre of New Alignments, New Delhi: Deepak Prakashan, 1963, p. 129; Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 108, 112; Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, London: Allen Lane, 2005, p. 314. Recently accessible archival materials reveal that the Pakistani president and prime minister clearly assured Soviet politburo member Anastas Mikoyan that the Pak-US alliance was directed only against India, and not against the Soviet Union. See Surjit Mansingh, ‘Indo-Soviet Relations in the Nehru Years: The View from New Delhi’ http://www.php.isn. ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?Ing=en&id=56154, p. 17 8 Surendra K. Gupta, Stalin’s Policy Towards India 1946–1953, New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1988, pp. 11, 18, 53–54; Yuri Nasenko, Jawaharlal Nehru and India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Sterling, 1977, pp. 25–26. 536 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

While social scientists are prone to identify marks of a stable and continuous friendship between India and the Soviet Union, the realities are so complex and often changeful, that generalisations may turn out to be misleading. Take, for instance, the years 1946 and 1947 in Indo-Soviet relations. In 1946, the two countries appeared to develop friendly relations. For instance, at the UN General Assembly in 1946, India and the Soviet Union fought against apartheid in South Africa, and India severely criticised the Western powers (viz. UK and USA) for supporting South Africa. In 1946, again, India earned Soviet goodwill by opposing the United States and endorsing the veto privilege of ﬁ ve great powers in the Security Council as unavoidable in terms of contemporary international relations. In 1947, however, in the eyes of the Soviet Union, India appeared to be a stooge of the United States, when India endorsed the plan of a Little Assembly or an Interim Committee to circumvent the paralysing impact of repeated Soviet veto on the decision- making power of the UN. The Soviet Union, again, was deeply disappointed by the appointment of Britain’s Lord Mountbatten as India’s governor general, which cast doubts on the true character of India’s freedom from British rule. India on its part was upset by the restrictions imposed on the movements of its ambassador to Moscow (and on other diplomats), as also by the easily perceivable climate of suspicion in Moscow. Moreover, India became aggrieved because of the failure of the Soviet Union to respond to its request for food supply, so badly needed by India at that moment. In contrast, the United States expedited the export of food grains to India despite the problem of strikes by dock labourers in the United States. It should not, however, be assumed (too simplistically) that this was the only reason why India supported the proposal of the Little Assembly of the UN in 1947.9 The complexities of Indo-Soviet relations—the positive and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the negative strands—can be further illustrated by the contrast between Moscow’s instructions to the CPI, on the one hand, and the relationships between the Indian and Soviet delegates at some international forums, on the other hand. The Soviet regime under

9 Gupta, Stalin’s Policy Towards India, pp. 18–23, 66–77. Also see Nasenko, Jawaharlal Nehru, p. 79. Also, Andreas Hilger, ‘The Soviet Union and India: The Years of Late Stalinism’, at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic. cfm?Ing=en&id=56154. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 537

Stalin suspected India to be a puppet of imperialists; The Great Soviet Encyclopedia depicted both M.K. Gandhi and Nehru as reactionaries. Consequently, Moscow recommended that the CPI should overthrow the Government of India led by Nehru. The Intelligence Branch (IB) of the Government of India (like its predecessor in British days) intercepted correspondence between the CPI and authorities in Moscow, and unearthed this recommendation. Sometimes, there was a warning in the messages from Moscow that these must not reach the Government of India. Simultaneously, the Soviet intelligence establishment (the KGB) successfully inﬁ ltrated the Indian embassy in Moscow by using the seductive powers of money and sex.10 At the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 (29 July to 15 October), on certain issues, for example, the status of Trieste as a free port under the protection of the UN Security Council, or the freedom of navigation on the Danube, India voted with Britain and the United States, opposing the Soviet stand. The USSR was annoyed, and Soviet commentators denounced India as a virtual stooge of Britain. It is true that the Indian delegates to the Paris Peace Conference were chosen by the British authorities before the formation of the Interim Government in September 1946. But, even if these delegates were chosen by Nehru, who headed the external affairs department in the Interim Government, the voting behaviour might not be different on the above stated issues. After all, these issues were so thoroughly complex as to preclude devising a logical middle point between the Western and Soviet standpoints.11 In the UN General Assembly session of 1946, however, the relations between Indian and Soviet delegates remained cordial. The Cold War so damaged the trust between the East and the West that the delegates of the two rival camps failed to rise above their animosities even on a social plane. In contrast, the Indian delegates (chosen by Nehru, the member for external affairs in the viceroy’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Executive Council, that is the Interim Government) developed friendly relations with Soviet delegates as they supported one another on the issues of racial discrimination in South Africa, the status of South-West Africa, trusteeship agreements, etc. The Soviet press,

10 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 312–13; Mullik, The Chinese Betrayal, p. 110; Mullik, My Years with Nehru, pp. 60–61. 11 Gupta, Stalin’s Policy Towards India, pp. 18–21; Iqbal Singh, Between Two Fires, Vol. I, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1992, pp. 178–79. 538 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

which had been critical of India’s role at the recent Peace Conference in Paris, expressed their appreciation of India’s performance at the UN General Assembly.12 Prospects of improvement in Indo-Soviet relations appeared to brighten, especially in the eyes of some leaders like Nehru, when, at the Moscow Congress of 1956, Soviet Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev rejected the doctrine of inevitability of war between communist and non-communist countries, and, furthermore, stressed the possibility of transition to socialism by parliamentary methods. Critics, however, did not fail to point out that these doctrinal changes were not brought about by any sudden change of heart but by a vital change of circumstances, viz. the emergence of an altogether new era in which both the United States and the Soviet Union mutually enjoyed and enforced thermonuclear deterrence. Critics, moreover, referred to the prevalent Soviet claim that the Soviet Union enjoyed socialism, and provided the warning that a communist party coming to power in a new country by parliamentary methods might adopt the familiar Soviet system of lack of rule of law, freedom of speech/expression, as also of free elections. In the aforesaid Congress, Khrushchev denounced Stalin but eulogized Lenin. This too had an ominous implication, for Lenin stressed underground work by communist parties in various countries. Com- munist parties in non-communist countries (for example, India), therefore, were permitted to carry out illegal operations even when formally adhering to parliamentary procedures.13 Late in 1956, when there was a near simultaneous violation of human rights as also gross aggression in Egypt and Hungary, India demonstrated its eagerness to fall in line with the Soviet Union. India severely denounced the Anglo-French invasion in Egypt but not the Soviet invasion in Hungary. While the KGB played a very prominent part in the Hungarian episode, and the part was so ignoble that even

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 an inﬂ uential KGB agent in Iran, General Ahmad Mogarebi, failed to suppress his conscience and proceeded to condemn the Soviet atrocities in Hungary, the Government of India appeared to remain quiescent.14 At the UN, in the words of A.D. Gorwala, India was not

12 Chagla, Roses in December, p. 244; Gupta, Stalin’s Policy Towards India, pp. 21–32. 13 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, pp. 193–96. 14 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 178–79, 314, 487. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 539

‘able to bring itself to record a vote condemning the Soviet Union for its barbarous suppression of national freedom in Hungary. The farthest’ India could go was ‘to allow itself mild verbal reprobation, and that too after public opinion throughout the country, moved for once to real emotion, strongly criticized its lukewarm attitude.’15 One can certainly plead that India’s stand on Hungary was realistic, as it refl ected unavoidable dependence upon the Soviet Union at the UN on the Kashmir issue, but this plea also marked a clear violation of ethics.16 The torment within the ruling Congress Party, however, was refl ected in the decision to exclude any reference to the Egyptian and Hungarian questions from the Party’s manifesto for the 1957 General Election.17 Relations between India and the Soviet Union remained deceptively steady and cordial. There were tensions refl ected in the moves and countermoves of India’s IB and the Soviet KGB. If, sometimes, the IB could recruit an infl uential CPI leader like Promode Dasgupta (who became the secretary of the West Bengal CPI in 1959) as its agent, by the end of 1950s and early 1960s, the KGB, with its far superior fi nancial resources and organisation, could outclass the IB. An important example was the formation in 1959 of an export- import agency with the consent of Ajoy Ghosh, the CPI general secretary. In about a decade, the annual profi ts of this trading agency exceeded `3 million. Moreover, Novosti, the Soviet news agency, regularly supplied huge subsidies to the publishing house of the CPI. Under these circumstances, the IB found it insuperably diffi cult to infi ltrate the CPI, whereas the KGB could penetrate the CPI easily and extensively.18 Soviet concern for India’s territorial integrity was exhibited in 1961, when India occupied Goa, because Portugal was not ready to hand over this colonial possession to India peacefully. Since India had been sermonizing other countries not to use force in defence of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 national interests, at the Security Council of the UN, there was a move (vigorously supported by the United States) to denounce India as an aggressor in Goa. But the exercise of Soviet veto forestalled

15 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, p. 266. 16 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 8, 12, 107. For some details, see T.J.S. George, Krishna Menon, London: Jonathan Cape, 1964, p. 198. 17 Nasenko, Jawaharlal Nehru, p. 234. 18 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 313. 540 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

this move.19 This dependence on the Soviet veto could have been avoided if military action had been taken years ago when Cold War antagonisms in South Asia were at a much lower level because Pakistan was yet to be formally recruited as an ally of the United States. After all, it was evident for a long time that Portugal was not interested in negotiations with India, despite advice from infl uential newspapers in the United States.20 The long-simmering India–China confl ict, culminating in a war in October 1962, provided a test of the supposed stability and cordiality of Indo-Soviet relations. The height of India–China hostilities was reached at about the same time as that of the Cuban missile crisis, pushing the United States and the Soviet Union (as also the entire world) to the brink of thermonuclear devastation. The Soviet response to the India–China confl ict could be divided roughly into three phases: before the outbreak of the Cuban missile crisis, during the time of intense crisis, and the period after the resolution of the crisis. For example, in 1960, when the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba was yet to be planned, Soviet statements appeared to placate India. One Soviet statement underlined the economic and military weakness of India, compared to China, and attributed lack of seriousness to any suggestion that India would actually take military action against China. In another statement, following a small border clash in which a few Indians were killed, the Soviets affi rmed that the deaths of the Indians implied that China was the attacker.21 This placatory mood of the Soviets vis-à-vis India changed completely in October 1962, following the discovery by the United States spy planes of missile sites being constructed by the Soviet Union in Cuba. Since India was preparing to attack China, one Soviet statement argued, China was taking those steps (in October 1962) which the USSR could take in a similar situation. Another Soviet statement denounced the McMahon Line and commented that Soviet–China

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 relations were far more powerful than Soviet–India relations. More- over, one Soviet statement even drew a distinction between friends, that is Indians, and brothers, that is Chinese. As long as the Cuban

19 K.P.S. Menon, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 30 December 1977. 20 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, pp. 236–38, 268; Kaul, India and the New World Order, vol. 1, pp. 79–81, 115; Nasenko, Jawaharlal Nehru, pp. 279–80. 21 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 153–54. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 541

crisis lasted, the Soviets could not afford to antagonise China. After the Cuban crisis petered out, however, despite continuing talks of military aid from Western powers to India for counteracting China, one Soviet statement disagreed with the suggestion that India could initiate a war against China. The Soviet Union, however, consistently supported China on the border controversy with India by publishing maps which corroborated the Chinese stand.22 In 1971, again, India signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in order to cope with manoeuvres of Beijing, Islamabad, and Washington to condone Pakistani atrocities in its eastern wing, which generated a sort of demographic aggression upon India by expelling millions of refugees to India. In early December 1971, Pakistan launched a surprise air attack on India, marking the commencement of a full-scale war. It was in the interest of India and the people of East Pakistan that India’s military moves should continue till the emergence of East Pakistan as the independent country of Bangladesh. But the United States tried to terminate these moves prematurely by actions through the UN Security Council. The exercise of veto by the Soviet Union saved India from stopping the military advances before achieving victory.23 Bangladesh emerged as an independent country on 16 December 1971. It was a memorable victory for Indo-Soviet diplomacy. In the words of a Soviet diplomat: ‘This is the ﬁ rst time in history that the United States and China have been defeated together!’24 There can be interminable word-spinning on how far the Indo- Soviet treaty of 9 August 1971 detracted from non-alignment. The incontestable minimum point was that India received the beneﬁ t of potential military support from the Soviet Union in an emergency, without formally joining a multilateral pact like the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, it was also indisputable, irrespective of whether this treaty tarnished non-alignment or not, that India had every right to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

22 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 44–45; Kaul, India and the New World Order, pp. 288–89. Nasenko, Jawaharlal Nehru, pp. 296–97; Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 155–60. Also see, J.N. Dixit, The Indian Foreign Service: History and Challenge, Delhi: Konark, 2005, pp. 169–70. 23 Dixit, The Indian Foreign Service, p. 173. 24 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 320–21. 542 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

use it in defence of its vital interests.25 It must not be forgotten that in 1962, in order to deter Chinese advances into Indian territory, India had to enter into some military arrangements with the United States, which, although falling short of membership of an organisation like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), could not but deviate from any strict construction of non-alignment. Once again, New Delhi had the right to safeguard India’s vital interests by opting for such an association with the United States. Nevertheless, in a sad commentary on how frivolously the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) deals with such serious matters, one should quote T.N. Kaul on the Indo-Soviet Treaty of 1971. He writes: ‘It is signifi - cant that when I, as Foreign Secretary, asked the Ambassadors of USA, UK, and France if they would sign a similar treaty with us (on the day after we had signed it with USSR) they merely smiled and kept silent.’26 In this process political relations between India and the Soviet Union became more close, and Indo-Soviet ties gained some stability. One indicator of this closeness/stability, ironically, was the phenomenal expansion of KGB operations in India. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did not try to limit the number of Soviet diplomats, including trade offi cials, in the country. India did not even refuse to admit those intelligence personnel of the Soviet Union who had, in the past, been expelled by other countries. Consequently, the Soviet Union could post as many intelligence agents in India as they liked. Not to speak of the CPI, the ruling Congress Party too received millions of rupees from the KGB.27 But there were questions about how far India was ready to sacrifi ce ethics in order to maintain proximity with the Soviet Union,

25 For an instance of work-spinning to defend the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty as something that does not disturb non-alignment, see Prem Varma, ‘Indo-Soviet Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Treaty of Friendship and Non-Alignment: A Legalist’s Analysis’, in Verinder Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Deep & Deep, 1993, pp. 151–59. 26 Kaul, India and the New World Order, vol. 1, p. 149; also pp. 310–11; Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 149–51; Ray, Public Policy and Global Reality, pp. 124–26. 27 Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 321–23. For a reference to KGB bounties for Indira Gandhi’s family and the Congress Party, see Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994, p. 223. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 543

and whether, along with this sacrifi ce, India had also to injure its economic interests (as will be examined subsequently in this chapter). On some issues of political convergence between the two countries, India could not be charged of being the Soviet Union’s tail, and/or of contravention of ethics. These issues were: opposition to apartheid in South Africa, advocacy of a homeland for the Palestinians fi ghting for their legitimate right of national self- determination; and condemnation of the United States intervention in Vietnam. However, even when attaching due importance to ethical considerations on these issues, India was needlessly strident in its tone of denunciation of the Western powers (and Israel). This was poor realpolitik. For, India alienated the Western powers on whom it depended vitally for economic and technological aid. There were other issues in the Cold War days on which India’s stand tended to open her to the charge of succumbing to Soviet desires (if not dictates). On the issue of naval presence in the Indian Ocean, India subjected Britain and America (but not the Soviets) to severe criticism. On the issue of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as also the Soviet-backed invasion of Kampuchea by Vietnam, India faced this charge unavoidably. Critics would easily point to ethical lapses on the part of India. They could talk of India’s non-alignment being reduced to virtual alignment with the Soviet Union. Especially, on the issue of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it was not enough to argue, as J.N. Dixit does, that ‘India could not be too categorically critical of the Soviet Union because of the factors of major defence supplies and signifi cant portion of oil supplies and technologies coming to India from the Soviet Union’.28 The end of the Cold War, the dissolution (or transformation) of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of a democratic Russia with Mikhail Gorbachev at its head, removed some of the foreign policy challenges confronting India in the Cold War days. For instance,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 apartheid in South Africa ceased to be a matter of discord between America and Russia. With the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan, to take another instance, India did not have to worry about how to defend the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan without appearing to be a lackey of the Soviets. But, in the post-Cold War era, too, India would be called upon to cope with new situations,

28 Dixit, The Indian Foreign Service, p. 182. Also see Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, London: Harper Collins, 2001, p. 460. 544 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and demonstrate its capacity for clear thinking, appropriate action, and maintaining a balance between ethics and realism. In the fi rst such situation, emerging in August 1991 in Russia, the foreign policy establishment of India failed—and miserably so. It was no surprise. It was only indicative of the chronic malfunctioning of foreign affairs decision makers since 1947, and repeated failures to deal with even foreseeable challenges from Pakistan and China, for example. The crisis in Russia in August 1991, when Gorbachev was overthrown by anti-democracy forces, could not be anticipated. But that could not justify the absence of any meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA), and the 20 August statement in Parliament by the external affairs minister, Madhavsinh Solanki, which practically defended the anti-Gorbachev coup.29 This was patently unethical, because the Government of India appeared to welcome the replacement of democracy by repression in Russia. It was also unrealistic because India should have cautiously waited for some time, and tested the longevity of the coup. Actually, the coup was utterly short lived, and, on 22 August, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao welcomed the reinstatement of Gorbachev, and praised glasnost and perestroika (pioneered by Gorbachev even before the dismantling of the Soviet Union). Gorbachev was under house arrest during the coup. After his release, he telephoned world leaders, excluding the Indian prime minister. Following the collapse of the coup, Boris Yeltsin held a briefi ng session for senior diplomats stationed in Moscow; the Indian ambassador stayed away from this session. It could be argued that ‘The Indo-Soviet special relationship, to which the KGB had devoted so much of its energies for most of the Cold War, was at an end’.30 The anti-Gorbachev coup of August 1991 was nothing short of a fi asco for the Indian foreign policy establishment. One important reason was that bureaucrats presumably loved to go back to the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Cold War days when India and the Soviet Union could take each other’s support for granted on a number of matters. Responses on complex issues (for example, Afghanistan) did not require strenuous, independent or innovative thinking. Indian diplomats could issue

29 The Telegraph, 23 August 1991. 30 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 340. For some interesting details on the August 1991 coup, see Albats, State Within a State, pp. 268–93. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 545

statements in an easy pre-determined manner. Occasionally, they would have the illusion of savouring the relevance of non-alignment in a bipolar world. The certainty of the Cold War days tantalized them during the ephemeral Russian coup of 1991. The uncertainty of facing momentous changes in an emerging unipolar world probably unnerved the Indian diplomats—at any rate, some of them who might have imbibed the communist philosophy, or pretended to do so. As Sankarshan Thakur aptly wrote:

The transformation that is taking place is way beyond our will or control and we have to come to terms with the realities. We cannot hope to continue behaving like international adolescents, always looking for protection under the ﬂ anks of the great Soviet bear everytime we are in trouble…The challenge is upon us and we must be up to it rather then bury our heads in farcical versions of borrowed comfort.31

It is yet to be determined exactly to what extent such rigidity in India’s foreign policy establishment was attributable to years of penetration of the Indian government by the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB. For years India remained ‘a model of KGB inﬁ ltration’, and the KGB ‘had scores of sources throughout the Indian government—in intelligence, counterintelligence, the Defence and Foreign Ministries, and the police’. ‘It seemed like the entire country was for sale…’ The KGB ‘was more successful than the CIA, partly because of its skill in exploiting the corruption which became endemic under Indira Gandhi’s regime’.32 Moreover, there was, amazingly and deplorably, a pro-American/Western group, and a pro-Soviet group in the Indian Foreign Service.33 Obviously, the pro-Soviet group played a decisive part in shaping the response to the anti-Gorbachev coup of August 1991. Nevertheless, with the demise of the Soviet Union, the scale of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 KGB operations in India had to be reduced, ﬁ rst because there was a de-ideologization of Russian foreign policy, and, second, because of the obvious resource crunch consequent upon the decline of Russia from the status of a superpower. Indian decision makers gained freedom from a dangerous situation in which the KGB sometimes

31 The Telegraph, 3 September 1991. 32 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, pp. 321–22. 33 Dixit, The Indian Foreign Service, pp. 230–31. 546 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

had as many as 10 Indian newspapers on the payroll, and could plant 5,510 articles in these newspapers in course of a single year.34 In a less suffocating environment for formation of opinions and policies, India should have summoned realism to adjust to such problems in Indo-Russian relations as the erratic supply of goods (for example, oil, military spares) from Russia overwhelmed by problems of transition. India did not send any high-level policy maker to Russia for the purpose of building a personal acquaintance and gauging sensitivities. Moreover, when Russian Secretary of State Gennady Burbulis (a known exponent of close Indo-Russian relations) visited New Delhi in May 1992, India failed to exercise necessary caution to win over Burbulis. On the contrary, on the very day Burbulis (and other offi cial delegates) arrived in India, Defence Minister Sharad Pawar tried to be too clever, and put pressure on the Russian dignitaries in a crude manner. Pawar announced that a committee had been appointed to assess the merits of advanced training aircraft manufactured in Britain and France, and that India had received some proposals from the aeronautical industry in Israel. This was a thoroughly inept move at a time when Russia was interested in new terms and conditions for trade, credit, etc.35 Burbulis was a confi dant of Yeltsin, who wanted to honour all the agreements between the former Soviet Union and India, including one on the supply of rocket-booster engines to India. Since America had already asked Russia not to supply those engines to India, and, during the stay of Burbulis in India, even threatened to subject India and Russia to penalties if Russia transferred rocket technology to India, the visit of Burbulis was of great signifi cance. For, at a press conference in New Delhi, Burbulis clearly announced that Russia would go ahead with this transfer.36 There were indeed doubts, during 1991–93, about the outcome of debates in the Russian foreign policy establishment following the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 transformation of the former Soviet Union. Policy towards India formed an important component of these debates. One view was that Russia should change the Soviet policy of maintaining a special

34 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 324. 35 O.N. Mehrotra, ‘Indo-Russian Relations after the Disintegration of the USSR’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 19, no. 8, November 1996, p. 1135. 36 Girish Mathur, ‘Indo-Russian Ties: Deﬁ ning the Parameters’, in Verinder Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Deep & Deep, 1993, pp. VIII–X. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 547

relationship with India, and of viewing South Asian affairs through the Indian prism. Proponents of this view claimed that Russia should achieve a balance in its South Asia policy. The most important way to do so was to strengthen relations with Pakistan, for example, by supporting Pakistan’s policy for a Nuclear Free Zone in South Asia (to which India was opposed). Moreover, Russia needed Pakistan’s help in combating forces of Islamic militants in Tajikistan. Since Pakistan was closely aligned with the United States, and since Russia was trying to adopt a Look West policy and move closer to the United States, one wondered whether changing the policy towards Pakistan was a way of paying allegiance to the United States. If, in this way, some Russian policy makers were trying to adjust to new realities of world politics, there were others who stressed emerging realities in which India was destined to establish a powerful position in world affairs, deserving a high priority in the foreign policy calculus of Russia. That the latter view prevailed became evident when Boris Yeltsin visited India in 1993.37 In late January 1993, Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, visited India, and made it amply clear in his speeches that Indo-Russian relations would be close, even if somewhat different from Indo-Soviet relations. India and Russia signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1993, which was obviously different from the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed in 1971. The 1993 treaty, unlike the 1971 counterpart, did not contain any provision for mutual security. In his speeches at the Central Hall of the Indian Parliament and at a meeting of Indian businessmen, Yeltsin made some important observations which stressed the pragmatic rather than ideological or romantic orientation of the foreign policy of new Russia. He said that he was averse to joining any block or axis, whether triangular or polygonal or with any such conﬁ guration. Yeltsin proposed to build bilateral relations with India or any

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 country, which would not be directed against a third country, and which would be based on mutual beneﬁ t and respect, friendship, and good neighbourliness. He reminded Indians that Indo-Soviet

37 R.R. Sharma, ‘Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership: Bilateral and Global Challenges’, V.D. Chopra (ed.), Global Signiﬁ cance of Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership, Delhi: Kalpaz, 2005, pp. 25–27; K.R. Singh, ‘New Parameters of Strategic Partnership’, in Chopra (ed.), Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership, pp. 66–67. 548 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

relations had been directed against ‘the world imperialism and so- called Chinese hegemonism’, whereas he now pleaded for friendly relations among China, India and Russia as a powerful force for stability in international politics.38 In course of his visit to India, Yeltsin extended unambiguous support to India’s stand on the J&K issue. If this signalled harmony in strategic perceptions between the two countries, that was underlined by the Moscow Declaration of July 1994 when Prime Minister Narasimha Rao of India was visiting Moscow. This declaration enunciated the forces of extremism, separatism, and terrorism (fuelled by nationalist, religious or political aggressiveness) threatening the stability of large, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious states like Russia and India. This declaration pleaded that democracy, rule of law, secularism, and tolerance were to be employed to counteract these threats. At the time of Narasimha Rao’s visit to Russia, Yeltsin recommended that Russia should embrace the Indian doctrine of unity in diversity. He also expressed appreciation for India’s endeavours to resolve complex problems emanating from ethnic-religious divergences. This harmony in strategic perceptions received a powerful boost in December 1994 when Russia’s prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, visited New Delhi, and afﬁ rmed unequivocally that Russia was not supplying military equipment to Pakistan, and that Russia did not intend to supply the same in future. In Chechnya, Chernomyrdin pointed out, Russian soldiers confronted a number of mercenaries who had received arms and training in Pakistan. Russia, therefore, wanted to join India in combating fundamentalist movements rooted in ethnic/religious considerations. On 22 October 1995, at a UN anniversary conference, President Yeltsin further consolidated the convergence in Indo-Russian strategic perceptions, when he impressed upon Prime Minister Rao the need for a strategic partnership between the two countries.39 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

38 ‘Documents on Russian President Boris Yelstin’s Visit to India’, Strategic Digest, vol. 23, no. 4, April 1993, pp. 585, 593–94. Shanta N. Varma, ‘Russia and India: From Hiatus to Resurrection’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 18, no. 4, July 1995, pp. 575–76. 39 Arundhati Roy, ‘Indo-Russian Military Ties in the Post-Cold War Period’, Jadavpur Journal of International Relations, vol. 2, 1996, pp. 155–57. Also see, Inder Malhotra, The Times of India, 23 June 1994; K.K. Katyal, The Hindu, 27 June 1994; Editorial, The Statesman, 6 December 1994; J.N. Dixit, The Indian Express, 27 December 1994; The Statesman, 17 April 1996. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 549

The goal of the Indo-Russian strategic partnership was pursued in a determined though cautious manner in December 1998, when Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov of Russia visited India. Although the special relationship between the two countries, prevalent in the days of the Soviet Union, could not be revived, its spirit had to be partially recaptured. For, Russia did not receive as much economic cooperation from the United States and other Western powers as it had expected. This re-established the importance of economic relationships with a country like India, which consistently made enormous purchases of defence articles from Russia. The contribution of these purchases to the Russian economy, reeling under the huge burden of foreign debt repayment and a dreadful rate of inﬂ ation, was not unimportant. It was no surprise, therefore, that, during Primakov’s three-day visit to India, seven accords on defence and economic cooperation were signed, the most important being on long-term military-technical cooperation up to 2010. The Indo- Russian Joint Statement, issued on 22 December 1998, pledged that soon the two countries would move towards a Strategic Partnership. It was not merely the economic compulsions which prompted Russia to cultivate old friends like India; Russia was also tormented by the continuing eastward expansion of NATO, and the growing American hegemony in a unipolar world. Russia contemplated the creation of a multipolar world with the support of countries like India and China. Primakov, therefore, advocated a strategic partnership between Russia, China, and India—although the joint statement did not incorporate it, and Primakov did not propose it formally. Intentions behind the proposal for a Russia–China–India partnership were certain, although the outcome was uncertain.40 If the aims of an Indo-Russian strategic partnership and a multipolar world were intertwined, these were deﬁ nitely advanced in course of the visit of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in October 2000. On 4 October, in the Central Hall of the Indian Parliament, Putin delivered a speech signifying the convergence of the Indo-Russian viewpoints on international terrorism and J&K. The Russian president emphatically stated that he had ﬁ rm evidence

40 The Statesman, 22 and 23 December 1998; Hari Vasudevan, The Statesman, 26 December 1998. Also see, Manohar Singh Batra, ‘Signiﬁ cance of Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership’, in Chopra (ed.), Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership, p. 86. 550 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to prove that the same organisations, as also at times the same individuals, took part in terrorist activities in places as far apart as Afghanistan, India (J&K), Kosovo, Philippines, and Russia (northern Caucasus). Putin not only expressed concern over the violence in J&K, but also suggested that India and Pakistan should resolve the problem bilaterally and without any foreign interference, while maintaining the absolute sanctity of the Line of Control (LOC). On 5 October, the India–Russia Joint Statement stressed that religious extremism and international terrorism originated from those areas of Afghanistan which were under the control of the Taliban. More- over, on that day India and Russia signed a Declaration on Strategic Partnership, and pledged to work for a multipolar world. It was, however, easy to question whether this declaration would have a rhetorical value till the dependence of both India and Russia upon America subsided, and till Russia expanded its power up to the status of America’s near-rival.41 Although the two countries exchanged 14 ministerial level visits in 2001, the Indo-Russian strategic partnership required reinforcement after 9/11. Annual summits, envisaged in the October 2000 declaration of strategic partnership, would not be enough. This reinforcement was provided by the visit of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the Soviet Union during 4–7 November 2001, especially by the Moscow Declaration on International Terrorism signed on 6 November. This declaration signalled an identity of Indo-Russian interpretation of terrorism, a straightforward rejection of terrorism irrespective of the preferred motive, a determination to combat it everywhere, and arrest the ﬂ ow of funds to terrorists. The declaration stressed the need for international efforts, in accordance with international law, to eradicate terrorism, which was not only a grave threat to peace and security but a heinous crime against civilisation and humanity. Multi-ethnic and democratic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 countries like India and Russia were especially exposed to terrorist attacks, which derived sustenance from national/international coalitions of criminals, including those who unlawfully trade in arms and narcotics. The Moscow Declaration speciﬁ cally pointed

41 The Statesman, 5 and 6 October 2000; Keith Flory, The Statesman, 5 October 2000; Hari Vasudevan, The Statesman, 12 October 2000. Also see, Sharma, ‘Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership’, p. 30. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 551

to the situation in Afghanistan, and the need to arrest the spread of terrorism from Afghanistan to contiguous territories. A critic could point out, however, that the practical impact of the Moscow Declaration depended much on whether the Indo-Russian defi nition matched the American defi nition, and whether the counter-terrorism operations of these three countries could be synergised.42 Lack of such synergy, apparent for quite some time to Russian as well as Indian offi cials and experts, became somewhat glaring in late November 2002 at a joint press conference of Vladimir Putin and George Bush, following their St Petersburg Summit. At this press conference Putin equated Iraq with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, stressing that, in order to combat terrorism, one had to pay attention not only to those who participated in terrorist activities but also those who supported and fi nanced terror. With supreme candour, Putin added that most of the perpetrators of 9/11 belonged to Saudi Arabia, whereas the leader, Osama bin Laden, was supposed to be hiding in some place between Pakistan and Afghanistan.43 Putin thus confi rmed the assessments of many Russian and Indian observers that America was applying double standards in the matter of identifying terrorists, and refusing to attach equal importance to terrorist attacks in New York, as also to those in Moscow or J&K. There was widespread suspicion among these observers that America was probably subordinating the war on terrorism to its own geopolitical agenda. Indo-Russian determination to combat international terrorism received a further demonstration on 4 December 2002, when, in the course of Vladimir Putin’s three-day visit to India, the two countries signed a declaration called the Delhi Declaration. It was a reminder of the Moscow Declaration of 2001. The Delhi Declaration, however, differed signifi cantly from the Moscow Declaration in some ways, although both the declarations denounced terrorism irrespective of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 any justiﬁ cation publicised by terrorists, and condemned any support (including ﬁ nancial help) rendered to terrorists by anyone. But the

42 See http://pib.nic.in/archieve/Ireleng/04 11 2001. http:// meaindia.nic. in/speech/2001/11/07; http://pib/nic.in/archieve/Ireleng/05 11 2001. http://pib. nic.in/archieve/Ireleng/06 11 2001; http://pub.nic.in/archieve/Ireleng/07 11 2001. Also see, Hari Vasudevan, The Statesman, 10 November 2001; Batra, ‘Signiﬁ cance of Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership’, p. 88. 43 Fred Weir, Hindustan Times, 24 November 2002. 552 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Delhi Declaration (unlike the Moscow Declaration) specifi cally noted the danger of a terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan, and called for national and bilateral measures to prevent and deter terrorism originating from a common neighbouring territory. The Delhi Declaration went far ahead of the Moscow Declaration, when it said that neither side would take any action threatening or impairing the security of the other. This was akin to a mutual security pact reminiscent of the 1971 Indo-Soviet treaty. At a press conference on 4 December 2002, Putin certainly charmed the Indians by asking Pakistan to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on its soil, and recommended that a resumption of India-Pakistan talks should be conditional upon the cessation of cross-border terrorism by Pakistan (although subsequently India sacrifi ced both ethics and pragmatism by ignoring this recommendation). Indians could further rejoice at Putin’s sarcastic though camoufl aged reference in the press conference to double standards employed by Western countries in treating terrorism.44 But critics could deplore the lack of any reference in the Delhi Declaration to joint action against Pakistan. They could also note the absence in Putin’s statements of any reference to the illegal transfer of nuclear technology from Pakistan to North Korea.45 Nevertheless, in February 2003, when General Pervez Musharraf was visiting Moscow, President Putin reaffi rmed his pragmatic insistence upon a prerequisite to the resumption of India’s dialogue with Pakistan, which had been suspended in December 2001, following the attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists. Putin, in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Vajpayee for as long as 12 minutes, fully supported the view that no dialogue with Pakistan could restart until Pakistan completely stopped cross-border terrorism. This conversation, taking place at a moment when the Pakistani president had arrived in Moscow, was a calculated rebuff to Musharraf. It was a reminder of another rebuff

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 suffered by Musharraf in June 2002 at Almaty in the course of the summit meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Conﬁ dence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Musharraf announced that

44 The Statesman, 5 and 6 December 2002. Also see, Sharma, ‘Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership’, p. 24; G.M. Shah, ‘Russian Stand on Indo-Pak Conﬂ ict on Kashmir: A Historical Analysis’, in Chopra (ed.), Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership, p. 28. 45 Editorial, The Statesman, 8 December 2002. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 553

Russia would invite him and Vajpayee to Moscow for the purpose of expediting the India-Pakistan dialogue. But India and Russia issued a prompt denial.46 At the annual Indo-Russian summit of November 2003, when the Indian prime minister visited Moscow, the strategic partnership between the two was sustained by a seven-page-long joint declaration and nine agreements (five of them on scientific-technological cooperation, and four on trade and investment). One riskless sop offered by Russia to India was that Russia argued for expansion of the UN Security Council, and that India deserved to be a permanent member of an enlarged Security Council—without spelling out whether India should also be endowed with a veto power like the present permanent members. The joint declaration dealt with ‘Global Challenges and Threats to World Security and Stability’. India and Russia drew up a nine-point plan to counteract terrorism. While India supported Russia’s measures to combat terrorism in Chechnya, Russia endorsed Indian steps to cope with terrorism in J&K. As at the annual Indo-Russian Summit of 2002, the joint declaration of the 2003 summit reiterated the impossibility of any meaningful India–Pakistan dialogue until Pakistan demolished the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory and in any territory under Pakistani control, and until Pakistan stopped cross-border terrorism. At the same time, Russia supported the Indian initiatives in April and October 2003, which led to the resumption of their respective posts by the Pakistani and Indian high commissioners, as also of the bus service between New Delhi and Lahore.47 Much was routine in the joint declaration, including pleas for actions by the international community—especially by the UN—to combat terrorism. The allusion to the adoption of double standards towards terrorism by the United States and the West was a reiteration of the Indo-Russian Summit Declaration of 2002. There was a touch

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of novelty in the 2003 joint declaration, though not unexpected in

46 The Statesman, 5 February 2003. (Subsequently, one must reiterate, India failed to match Russian pragmatism on this matter. India started and continued a dialogue with Pakistan despite the persistence of cross-border terrorism. One could not rule out American pressure as the major reason behind this decision on the part of India.) 47 Batra, ‘Signiﬁ cance of Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership’, pp. 79, 90; Sharma, ‘Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership’, p. 23. Also see, The Statesman, 13 and 14 November 2003. 554 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the perspective of the recent Anglo-American intervention in Iraq. It recommended the substitution of unilateral by multilateral moves to ensure global security.48 If this recommendation was nearly futile, so was the annual repetition of references to the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan, and infi ltration of terrorists from Pakistan. Strong words could not compensate for patent inaction. From time to time Russia made political pronouncements, which, though stirring the emotions of many Indians, were far more signifi cant in terms of rhetoric than of realities. For example, on 15 March 2004, immediately after winning an election and gaining a second four-year term as Russia’s president, Putin declared that he wanted to work for a further consolidation of the partnership with India and China. But, in an obviously partial dilution of this declaration, Putin announced that—Russia being both a European and an Asian nation—he would pursue a multi-directional foreign policy and work with the United States and Europe, as also with the Asian partners, viz. China and India.49 To take another example of the gap between rhetoric and reality in some rich political announcements by Russia on India, on 3 December 2004, when Putin was in New Delhi for the annual Indo-Russian summit, he reaffi rmed Russia’s desire to see India as a permanent member of an enlarged Security Council. He ranked India on the top, as far as eligibility of various countries for permanent membership of the Security Council was concerned. But this turned out to be a hollow rhetoric because he did not want that the expansion of the Security Council should affect the prevalent rights of the Security Council members. Evidently, Russia did not want India to wield the veto power, even if India succeeded in entering into an enlarged Security Council as a permanent member.50 Thus, Putin revealed the true character of the much-vaunted strategic partnership between India and Russia.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 On 22–25 May 2005, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the president of India, visited Russia, and met President Vladimir V. Putin. The joint statement of the presidents of the two countries reiterated the traditional and time-tested friendship between India and Russia,

48 Editorial, The Statesman, 16 November 2003. 49 The Statesman, 16 March 2004. 50 The Statesman, 4 December 2004. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 555

the depth of their mutual trust, the continuity as well as stability of their relations, and the compatibility of their strategic partnership with enduring national interests. The joint statement included the interesting observation that the two countries had similar or identical views on the majority of international issues. It claimed that Indo- Russian cooperation, with all its multiplex dimensions, strengthened peace and security at regional as well as international levels. This joint statement repeated the observation of its 2004 predecessor that India was eminently suitable for occupying a permanent position on the UN Security Council.51 The themes on the contents of Indo-Russian friendship—for example, continuity, mutual trust, stability, etc. (as noted in the previous paragraph) —were reiterated in the joint statement on the occasion of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Russia (during 4–7 December 2005). The Putin-Manmohan joint statement (about three pages long) was far more elaborate than the Putin- Kalam joint statement (about one page). The former, for instance, provided an account of attempts to develop/extend cooperation in the ﬁ elds of intellectual property rights, space technology, information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, nuclear energy, and exploration/production of hydrocarbons. Three agreements were signed. Without detracting from the importance of either, the May 2005 joint statement and the December 2005 joint statement had two major differences (in addition to what has been already noted). First, Russia’s intention to support India’s candidature for the permanent membership of the Security Council of the UN was announced in the May statement, but not in the December statement. Second, the December statement (though not the May statement) stressed the need to multiply contacts between Russian and Indian businessmen.52 Cooperation in the ﬁ eld of nuclear energy—especially the con-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 struction of the Kudankulam Atomic Power Plant in Tamil Nadu with Russian assistance, and the supply of uranium by Russia to the Tarapur Atomic Power Plant—occupied the most important place in the two-day talks in March 2006, when Mikhail Fradkov,

51 See http://meaindia.nic.in/speech/2005/05/26. 52 See http: //meaindia.nic.in/speech/2005/12/07. 556 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the Russian prime minister, visited New Delhi.53 India–Russia nuclear cooperation—a component of the India–Russia strategic partnership—appeared to move a step forward when Putin visited India in January 2007, and the Manmohan–Putin joint statement of 25 January proposed to expand nuclear cooperation, subject to an important stipulation, viz. conformity to relevant international obligations. Evidently, Putin’s offer to sell four nuclear reactors to India could not materialise until the India–America nuclear deal (elaborated in the Hyde Act) translated itself into reality following India’s negotiations/arrangements with not only the United States but also the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Obviously, while Russia and America were willing to claim a large share of the expectedly huge Indian nuclear business, no tangible step could be taken until the successful completion of complex international negotiations.54

Economic Transactions It is possible to construct a fairy-tale account of Soviet contributions to independent India’s industrial development and economic self-reliance. For, Soviet aid, commencing in the 1950s, enabled India to establish basic industries, for example, steel, oil, power, pharmaceuticals, etc. Interestingly, till 1952, the Soviet Union did not bother much about exports to developing countries (for example, India), and in the UN meetings denounced Western aid to developing countries. It was only in July 1953, at a meeting of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, that Soviet representatives declared their readiness to participate in technical assistance programmes for developing countries. To some extent, this could be due to the growing concern in East European countries about the need to take part in world trade. Partially, again, it could be due to the death of Stalin in March 1953, which released some Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 strangleholds upon Soviet policy makers. Argentina had its fi rst trade and credit agreement with the USSR in August 1953, and India signed the fi rst fi ve-year trade pact in December 1953.55

53 See http://www.rediff.com//news/2006/mar/16. 54 C. Rajamohan, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007. 55 Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind, New Delhi: Allied, 1986, p. 2. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 557

The fi rst important Soviet aid pact with India was signed on 2 February 1955, for the establishment of a public sector steel plant at Bhilai. India had started negotiations with the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany for the same purpose. But the Western powers were reluctant to set up any steel plant in the public sector. This was probably because (as demonstrated in the USSR) government plants, barring exceptions, were noted for their wastage, ineffi ciency, and corruption. Remarkably, however, following the Soviet decision to erect a huge metallurgical complex at Bhilai, offers came from Britain and Germany to build steel plants at, respectively, Durgapur and Rourkela. Even without sarcasm, it could be observed that but for Bhilai, steel plants would not have come up at Durgapur and Rourkela.56 The much-advertised characteristics of Soviet aid may be stated here. Soviet credit to a developing country is based on a bilateral agreement for a specifi c development project. While this credit consists of goods and services, the agreement takes care of all costs, starting with exploratory work, and ending with actual production. Costs of equipment, prospecting, drawing up blueprints, as also of training, are included. Where Soviet-aided projects concentrate on key industries, the rate of interest varies from roughly 2½ to 3 per cent. If this is liberal, so is the period of repayment, which begins a year after the delivery of equipment and plant or after the completion of the project, and terminates over a period of a minimum of eight or a maximum of 15 years. Moreover, Soviet loans are usually repayable in domestic currency or exports, which minimises the balance of payments problem arising out of a compulsion to repay in convertible currencies (as in the case of Western loans). A signifi cant characteristic of Soviet-aided projects in India (for example, on steel or oil) is that the USSR does not try to exercise any administrative or fi nancial control, whether by acquiring share capital or claiming 57

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a portion of proﬁ ts. As in the case of Bhilai, so in the case of setting up a fourth public sector steel plant (at Bokaro), India solicited American assistance only to be disappointed. The American decision makers

56 K.P.S. Menon, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 30 December 1977. 57 B. Natarajan, ‘India and Soviet Economic Aid’, in Verinder Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Deep & Deep, 1993, 558 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

procrastinated for three years, suggested unacceptable terms of collaboration, and eventually withdrew the offer of collaboration.58 Once again, as in the case of Bhilai, the USSR agreed to support the Bokaro steel plant project. Over the following years, the USSR built not only the steel plants at Bhilai and Bokaro, but a heavy engineering plant, a thermal power station, a hydropower station, a heavy electrical equipment plant, an antibiotics plant, a mining and allied machinery plant, a precision instrument plant, and even a designing establishment, viz. the MECON or Metallurgical and Engineering Consultants (India) Ltd. at Ranchi. These are regarded as the ‘new temples of India’.59 Of extraordinary signifi cance was the Soviet contribution to public sector oil extraction and refi ning in India, for, Western manoeuvres in this area were rather reprehensible. While the United States was opposed to any support for a public sector oil industry, multinational corporations (MNCs) like Burmah-Shell, Stanvac, and Caltex imposed a severe burden on independent India by dictating arbitrary oil prices through their worldwide cartel. When India wanted to set up refi neries, these companies initially refused to do so on the spe- cious plea that there was no economic rationale behind establishing oil refi neries in India. Subsequently, they offered to set up refi neries under some unacceptable conditions, viz. if crude oil could be imported without any duty, if profi ts could be repatriated in hard currency, etc.60 Moreover, as to oil exploration, manipulations of the Western powers crossed all limits. Western experts, invited by India for assistance in oil exploration, failed to locate oil reserves in the country. Some of them went so far as to declare that it was useless to search for oil in India, as India did not have any oil. Nevertheless,

pp. 454–55. Girija Kumar Sinha, ‘Koyali: Scene of a Historic Breakthrough’, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 599. Also see, N.M. Pegov, ‘Economic and Cultural Relations of USSR and India’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 611. 58 A. Gramovsky, V. Koptevsky, and L. Raitsin, ‘Indo-Soviet Economic Cooperation and Trade Relations’, in Verinder Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, 1993, p. 535. 59 Shankar Narain, ‘New Dimensions of Soviet-Indian Cooperation’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 507. 60 K.D. Malaviya, ‘Soviet Union and the Story of Indian Oil’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 588–89. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 559

subsequently, Soviet experts helped India’s Oil and Natural Gas Commission in discovering oil. The USSR also helped India in setting up an oil refi nery at Koyali in Gujarat.61 It is pertinent to remind oneself that mineral oil has multifarious uses: in the household for a gas cylinder, in clothes for chemical fi bres, in health/sanitation projects for detergents, in cars, for rubber tubes and tyres, in agriculture for fertilizers, in trucks, and aircraft.62 In the early 1970s, India (and the world) received the fi rst of repeated oil shocks. Nearly every country in the world started complaining of an energy crisis. The Soviet Union, however, appeared to suffer the least from this crisis. The Soviet Union was a pioneer in the development of technologies in the fi eld of equipment for production/ transmission of power, and India benefi ted enormously from Soviet assistance towards the use of its coal, lignite, and water resources in the establishment of a large number of thermal, hydro, and electrical power stations. The Soviet Union also extended enormous aid to the establishment of several atomic power plants in India.63 A large number of Indian and Soviet research institutes/laboratories successfully collaborated in diverse fi elds of science and technology, ranging from development of new strains of agricultural crops, combating salinisation of soil or corrosion of metal, solar energy, biotechnology, laser technology, cosmic rays, etc., to joint orbital space fl ight.64 In all these ways, Soviet aid to India truly laid the foundations of a modern economy for India. One signifi cant characteristic of this aid was the way in which various Soviet-assisted projects reinforced one another. To take a few examples, the Soviet-built Heavy Machine Building Plant of Ranchi supplied sophisticated equipment to Soviet- aided steel plants in Bhilai and Bokaro at the time of expansion of Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

61 Sinha, ‘Koyali’, pp. 596–97. Also see S. Skachkov, ‘Soviet-Indian Economic and Technical Cooperation’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 581. 62 A mural at Koyali depicts all these: see Sinha, ‘Koyali’, p. 596. 63 L.A. Abramov, ‘Power Development and Indo-Soviet Cooperation’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, 1993, pp. 602–5. 64 G. Marchuk, ‘Cooperation for Rapid Progress’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 605–9. 560 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

these plants. Multi-purpose industrial complexes represented a unique outcome of Indo-Soviet cooperation. Thus, as many as 34 projects of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, coal industry, heavy engineering, and power constituted one such complex. Another comprised 10 enterprises in petroleum and petroleum reﬁ ning industry.65 Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) of Hardwar (built by the USSR) supplied a 225,000 KW generator to the Soviet-aided Atomic Energy Plant at Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu). The USSR developed coal deposits at Singrauli, and the Soviet-assisted Vindhyachal Power Station utilised these deposits.66 Another important feature of Soviet aid, although noted previously, bears reiteration. The general mode of repayment of the principal amount of Soviet aid (as also the interest) was the export of goods produced in India, or Indian rupees. In some cases, repayment in convertible currencies could take place, for example, to take care of an unadjusted balance.67 In this process, Indo-Soviet trade registered tremendous growth. For example, during 1970–83, the trade turnover rose tenfold.68 Consequently, the cashew industry in Kerala, the footwear industry in several parts of north India, the handicrafts in Uttar Pradesh, the hosiery industry in Punjab, the tea industry in West Bengal, or the tobacco industry in Andhra Pradesh, witnessed remarkable growth.69 Moreover, a large umber of Soviet-assisted projects, located in relatively backward areas of India, enhanced the quality of India’s economic development by moderating regional imbalances.70 The positive impact of Soviet era aid upon India, underlined in the foregoing account, needs to be tempered by a few criticisms and counter criticisms. It was alleged that the USSR passed on second-best technology to India, for example, in Bhilai. ‘Since at that time’, wrote O.P. Arya71 ‘public sector steel plants were run by non-technical ICS fraternity, nobody questioned Russians about the second-best technology being given at Bhilai’. The Bhilai plant Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

65 A. Gramovsky, V. Koptevsky and L. Raitsin, ‘Indo-Soviet Economic Cooperation and Trade Relations’, in Grover (ed.) USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 521, 544. 66 Abramov, ‘Power Development’, pp. 603–4. 67 Natarajan, ‘India and Soviet Economic Aid’, p. 455. 68 A. Gramovsky, ‘Prices and Conditions’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 469. 69 Narain, ‘Soviet-Indian Cooperation’, p. 510. 70 Gramovsky et al., ‘Indo-Soviet Economic Cooperation’, p. 530. 71 The Statesman, 3 March 1980. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 561

took eight hours to manufacture steel, whereas the Rourkela plant, with advanced technology, took less than an hour. But a Russian critic would stress that, although construction started at Bhilai 18 months later than in Rourkela, the blast furnaces in both the plants commenced operations at about the same time.72 Moreover, as Der Spiegel, a German journal, complained, there occurred a large number of breakdowns at the Rourkela plant during construction, which hurt not only the prestige of West German fi rms engaged in this construction, but also that of West Germany.73 One cannot deny that Soviet aid to India contributed a lot to the promotion of economic self-reliance. Nevertheless, the attainment of self-reliance would have been easier and faster if India had been more assertive and the USSR more accommodating. For example, one Indian fi rm, M.N. Dastur & Co., was eminently qualifi ed to design the Bokaro steel plant, and offered its services. But the offer was rejected.74 Moreover, while technology transfer facilitates economic self-reliance, Soviet record in this matter left much to be desired. As early as 1957, the Soviet Union began collaboration with India in the construction of power plants. Yet, even after 25 years, when contracts for the establishment of the Vindhyachal Thermal Power Station were fi nalised, it became apparent that very little of transfer of vital technology had taken place, for, the USSR was asked to supply such important components as boilers, generators, transformers, turbines, etc. Again, as early as 1959, the Soviet Union commenced collaboration with India for making heavy electrical equipment. BHEL, however, had to depend on Soviet experts for the manufacture/operation/maintenance of 200 MW turbo sets even in 1980. Evidently, the transfer of technology was confi ned to an ability to use heavy cranes to assemble large blocks of, say, a thermal plant, imported from the USSR. Allied to this is the criticism that ‘the chronic defi cit operations of many public sector projects

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 built with Soviet aid have been blamed in part on their simple and outdated technology’.75

72 Veniamin Dymshits, ‘How Bhilai was Built’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 488. 73 Ibid., p. 490. 74 M.R. Pai, ‘Dovetailing of Indian Plans into Soviet Plans’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 569. 75 Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World, p. 141. 562 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

During the 1970s it became evident, in the ﬁ rst place, that the Soviet Union had no option but to modernise its industries with Western technologies that were much more advanced than its own. In the second place, countries like India, too, became fully aware that Western technology was superior to Soviet technology in most, if not all, areas. Consequently, India adopted American technology for a part of the Bokaro steel plant at the time of the second stage expansion of this plant. BHEL, too, had to procure from West Germany and America some advanced equipment which the USSR did not produce.76 An important comment on the Indo-Soviet trade on rupee payments was that its success had a penumbra of handicaps in terms of changing capacities and needs of the Indian economy, as also the comparative technological achievements of the Soviet Union and Western countries. The greater this success the larger the penumbra. The hint of handicaps was available as early as the 1960s. There was a huge gap between the amount of credits announced by the USSR and the amount used by India. By the end of 1966, the respective amounts stood at ` 7.34 billion and ` 3.07 billion.77 By the early 1980s, a large amount of Soviet-authorised credits had remained unutilised for about 15 years.78 From time to time, scintillating—but misleading—trade statistics were paraded. For example, it was pointed out that Indo-Soviet trade turnover rose tenfold during 1970–83.79 Actually, during the 1970s, the share of Indo-Soviet trade in India’s total foreign trade declined remarkably. The constraints of bilateral rupee trade—a euphemism for what is basically a primitive system of barter—began to come to the fore with the changing composition of India’s exports to the USSR. Initially, and till the middle 1960s, the traditional export items, for example, tea, tobacco, cashew, coffee, raw wool, hides and skins, and jute manufactures formed the bulk of Indian exports to the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 USSR. While a negligible amount of engineering goods was exported to the USSR, footwear formed the most important manufactured item exported to the USSR.80 In the 1970s, however, the situation

76 Ibid., pp. 141–42. 77 Natarajan, ‘India and Soviet Economic Aid’, p. 452. 78 Balraj Mehta, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15 December 1980. 79 Gramovsky, ‘Prices and Conditions’, p. 469. 80 Natarajan, ‘India and Soviet Economic Aid’, p. 457. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 563

changed. More than 60 per cent of Indian exports to the Soviet Union consisted of manufactured goods.81 The composition of Soviet exports to India, too, witnessed a vast change in the 1970s. Machinery formed 64.9 per cent of exports from the USSR to India in 1970, but it decreased to 15.5 per cent by 1977.82 The constraints and obsolescence of the primitive barter system— that is trade by payments in rupees—now came to the fore. The system worked well as long as the Soviet Union and India were trading surpluses for mutual beneﬁ t, viz. machinery and equipment in the Soviet Union and agricultural commodities in India. But, over the years, on account of the natural growth of the Indian economy, partly with Soviet assistance, India needed less and less of Soviet machinery and equipment. Consequently, the Soviet Union had to change the composition of its exports to India in a vital manner. For example, it had to sell more of such commodities as petroleum and industrial metals as substitutes for machinery/equipment. But the Soviet Union was reluctant to do that. For, the Soviet Union could sell these commodities to other countries for convertible hard currency (rather than non-convertible rupees).83 Consequently, there was a gross imbalance in Indo-Soviet trade, with India registering a massive trade surplus, the amount of which, curiously, exceeded even the amount of loan from the USSR and its East European allies, which was actually utilised by India. This imbalance harmed the Indian economy in a number of ways. First, the commodities exported to the USSR, but not paid for immediately, represented a sort of interest-free credit from a developing country like India to a superpower, the USSR. Second, a large amount of these commodities could be sold to other countries for convertible currency. To take one instance, in 1981–82, the amount of hard currency that could be earned, but had to be sacriﬁ ced because of the obsolete or procrustean Indo-Soviet arrangements, was estimated `

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 at 17.829 billion. Third, on account of subservience to long-term arrangements based on a rupee trading system, which could not be easily shaken off, especially when there were other (political-military) constraints, India was compelled to forego superior technology options and accept the dumping of inferior Soviet equipment.

81 Gramovsky, ‘Prices and Conditions’, p. 469. 82 Valkenier, The Soviet Union and the Third World, p. 141. 83 Balraj Mehta, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 15 December 1980. 564 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

For instance, in the 1980s, India had to import worthless mining equipment from the USSR. Fourth, due to the pressures of a monopoly situation in which a developing country is pitted against a superpower, the prices of many Indian commodities exported to the USSR were not only ﬁ xed in an arbitrary manner but also sometimes at rates below the domestic cost of production.84 In view of what has been stated above, periodic announcements of a new Indo-Soviet trade protocol (as in 1988), projecting a dramatic increase in Indo-Soviet trade in the next ﬁ ve years, amounted to propaganda stunts, which tried but failed to cover up dark realities. The realities were that the structure of Indo-Soviet trade was dangerous, and that it empowered the USSR to force India to accept some commodities from the USSR and thereby endanger its interests. The output of some products, for example, hosiery in Punjab, shoe uppers in Uttar Pradesh, or cashew nuts in Kerala, enjoyed a tremendous rise mainly because of their exports to the USSR. But this gave the Soviets an opportunity for arm-twisting which they did not fail to utilise. In 1983, for instance, the Soviet Union suspended the purchase of Indian cashew nuts. This was a way of expressing displeasure over India’s unwillingness to buy those manufactured goods which India did not need, although India went on incurring heavy debts on account of a large-scale purchase of Soviet armaments. Only after India promised to buy a larger amount of manufactured goods from the USSR, did the latter lift the ban on the purchase of cashew nuts from India. In 1987, for example, the USSR virtually compelled India to import 1.1 million tons of fertilizer from the USSR. At that time the Indian fertilizer industry was facing a serious problem because of unsold stocks of about 3 million tons. It was estimated that, by April 1988, nearly 3.5 million tons of India-produced fertilizer would have no space in existing warehouses. The arrival of an additional 1.1 million tons

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of fertiliser from the USSR would only multiply the problems of wastage, spoilage, and avoidable ﬁ nancial loss.85

84 Venkataraman K., The Statesman, 22 December 1985; O.P. Arya, The Statesman, 3 March 1980; Rama Sampat Kumar, The Telegraph, 11 August 1994; C.V. Gopalakrishnan, The Telegraph, 11 August 1994. 85 See S. Nihal Singh, The Yogi and the Bear, New Delhi: Allied, 1986, for details on the negative facets of Indo-Soviet economic transactions. Also see, The Statesman, 19 December 1985; Editorials, The Statesman, 28 July and 27 November 1987. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 565

The core element in Indo-Soviet economic transactions—rupee trading arrangement—was branded as evidence of a ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. But this special relationship—like the KGB’s all-pervasive links with India—had a sort of subversive fallout on the Indian economy, as also the political system. This can best be understood if one refers to the events in a free trade zone (FTZ), for example, the one at Kandla. An FTZ is set up mainly to boost India’s exports and hard currency earnings. In the latter half of the 1980s, it was evident that some companies, operating at Kandla, were defeating the aims of an FTZ. At the country’s cost, they were importing components/equipment in semi-knocked down condition on payment of hard currency. They then simply assembled these materials and sold the fi nished goods to the Soviet Union in exchange for rupees. On some occasions, for example, on 12 December 1986, one of these companies went to an unbelievable extreme and imported (on payment of hard currency) some highly sophisticated medical equipment, viz. Hemo Dialysis machines, and in a few days these equipment were dispatched to the Soviet Union in accordance with the special relationship of trading in rupees. While India lost valuable hard currency, these companies at the Kandla FTZ accumulated immense tax-free profi ts, which could be used to preserve the special relationship with the Soviet Union, as also with the ruling party in India, whose patronage produced these profi ts.86 Another signifi cant aspect of this special relationship between India and the USSR was the facilitation of mutual favours by the ruling politicians of the two countries through the extraordinary mechanism of the rupee-rouble exchange rate. This conformed to neither the IMF ratings nor the usual world market rate. In terms of a 1978 protocol, for example, the rate of a rouble was fi xed at `31.78, which, in view of the prevailing rupee–dollar exchange rate, 87

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 was highly inequitable. This, however, created a serious problem after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent Russian Republic in the early 1990s. For, the Soviet- era rupee-rouble exchange rate consistently favoured the USSR by

86 The Statesman, 14 July 1987, provides a lengthy report from a special correspondent on this subject. 87 S. Nihal Singh, The Telegraph, 5 February 1993; Ashok Dasgupta, India Today, 28 February 1993, p. 114. 566 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

overvaluing the rouble, and this could not be sustained in the post- Soviet era when Russia was suffering from massive infl ation, and India had to pay off a huge debt for import of defence items from the Soviet Union. While India enjoyed a surplus in non-military trade, there was an enormous defi cit in military trade, which could not be camoufl aged by slogans of balanced trade in rupees. Chickens had come home to roost. Ballons of nearly fi ve decades of propaganda about the unique Indo-Soviet economic relations—a balanced rupee- based trading system—were punctured. The rate of infl ation in Russia was sometimes as high as 2600 per cent. While in early 1993, when India reached a settlement of its debts to Russia, `30 fetched US$1, whereas US$1 was equivalent to about 550 roubles. Considering these international market rates, `1 at that time would be equal to 18 roubles. But, during debt negotiations, Russia insisted on adherence to the 1978 Indo-Soviet trade protocol. This protocol pegged the rouble at `31.78. This meant that, in accordance with a settlement in early 1993 (when President Boris Yeltsin visited India), India had to repay a debt of `313.77 billion to Russia. A portion of this debt, `196.43 billion (about 63 per cent) was to be repaid at an interest of 2.4 per cent over a 12-year period. The remainder of `117.34 billion was to be repaid without interest over a period of 45 years. With the subtraction of discounts, the total debt could be calculated at `217.16 billion, reducing thereby the exchange rate to ` 22 per rouble. This complex debt settlement formula undoubtedly left India as the loser. But even this could not have been reached but for India’s compulsion to acquire spares urgently for Russian equipment which formed nearly 70 per cent of its arsenal, Russia’s compulsion to revive its ordnance factories convulsed by lack of orders and money, India’s continuing need for a market for its consumer goods in Russia, and Russia’s need for these goods, which, if unavailable, could cause

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 social unrest in Russia. Beyond trade for debt repayment by India, however, henceforward all Indo-Russian trade would be conducted in convertible currencies.88

88 Editorial, The Telegraph, 26 July 1990; Sankarshan Thakur, The Telegraph, 11 June 1992; S. Nihal Singh, The Telegraph, 5 February 1992; Ashok Dasgupta, India Today, 28 February 1993, pp. 114–15; Editorial, The Hindu, 5 July 1994; C.V. Gopalakrishnan, The Hindu, 6 July 1994; Madhu Limaye, The Statesman, 16 July 1994; Rama Sampat Kumar, The Telegraph, 11 August 1994. For some relevant details, see Sreemati Ganguli, Indo-Russian Relations, Delhi: Shipra, 2009, esp. pp. 69–71. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 567

The transformation of the former Soviet Union into 15 independent republics in 1991 led to an inevitable dislocation of trade. In 1990, before the process of transformation started, Indo-Russian trade stood at `88.19 billion. In 1992, it declined to `20 billion.89 It was, however, essential to try to enhance trade with Russia. After all, Russia, with only 2.4 per cent of world population, could boast of possessing as much as 34 per cent of global natural resources.90 Nevertheless, in the post-Soviet era, the composition of trade revealed some remarkable changes. Some traditional items of export to Russia registered a decline. For instance, the export of cotton yarn, cotton fabrics, and made-ups decreased by 60 per cent in 2001–2, and again by 43.73 per cent in 2002–3. The export of tea dropped by 45.84 per cent in 2002–3, obviously because, unlike in the Soviet era, Indian tea had to compete with tea from Kenya or Sri Lanka in the post-Soviet era. In contrast, the export of a non-traditional items, for example, readymade garments, rose from US$81 million in 1996–97 to US$210 million in 2002–3. The export of transport equipment witnessed nearly a threefold increase from 2001–2 to 2002–3. As to imports from Russia, one notable item was synthetic and reclaimed rubber. The import of this commodity registered a nearly eightfold increase from 1996–97 to 2002–3. In future, Indo- Russian trade may witness a sharp rise in the ﬁ eld of diamonds, gems, and jewellery. For, while India imports nearly 70 per cent of the world’s uncut diamonds, and possesses the largest diamond processing capacity in the world, Russia is one of the principal producers of diamonds.91 An important component of Indo-Russian cooperation is the attempt to safeguard India’s energy security by mutually advantageous deals in the ﬁ elds of oil/gas and nuclear energy. Russia possesses the largest gas resources in the world. The network of the principal gas pipelines of the Soviet era remains intact. Russia can control a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 preponderant share of oil and gas in the Caspian Sea region, which

89 Ashok Dasgupta, India Today, 28 February 1993, p. 114. 90 Rakesh Joshi, Business India, 8–21 March 1999, p. 68. 91 Hari Vasudevan, Shadows of Substance: India-Russia Trade and Military Tech- nical Cooperation Since 1991, New Delhi: Manohar, 2010, p. 136; R.K. Wadhwa, ‘Economic Cooperation between India and Russia’, in V.D. Chopra (ed.), Global Signiﬁ cance of Indo-Russian Strategic Partnership, Delhi: Kalpaz, 2005, pp. 209–11; Also see, Rakesh Joshi, Business India, 8–21 March 1999, p. 68. 568 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

boasts of resources surpassing those in the North Sea region.92 In this context, the Government of India deserves praise for promoting public–private partnership in investments in oil fi elds of foreign countries. For example, the ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL) has teamed up with the Khemka Sun Group to explore hydrocarbon resources in Russia. Moreover, in a situation where Vladimir Putin has asserted his authority vis-à-vis Western companies, for example, by cancelling Russia’s production sharing agreement with Royal Dutch Shell in Sakhalin 2, India secures an opportunity to expand oil/gas ties with Russia in the Caspian region and elsewhere, enlisting Russian help to promote energy deals with Central Asian countries. It is signifi cant that India could gain Russia’s invitation for participation in Sakhalin 3 after Russia refused to do business with the United States in this area. It is also signifi cant that Sakhalin investment happens to be India’s largest foreign investment.93 India’s quest for energy security with Russia’s cooperation received a big boost in January 2007, when President Putin visited India. At a time when efforts towards strengthening India–America civil nuclear cooperation were progressing, Putin concurred with President Bush’s recognition of India as a virtual nuclear weapon power, when, on 25 January 2007, he did not hesitate to reiterate— almost repeat—the language of the India-America joint statement of 18 July 2005. Putin affi rmed that India was a state in possession of advanced nuclear technologies. Putin thus thinly camoufl aged his endorsement of India’s programme of nuclear weapons. This convergence of Russian and American assessments of India’s nuclear status augured well for the eventual success of India–America civil nuclear cooperation, which would be evidently reinforced by India–Russia cooperation. That Putin agreed to establish four new nuclear reactors at Kudankulam (in the state of Tamil Nadu), and more reactors at other places, was indeed signifi cant. Much

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 more signiﬁ cant, however, was Russia’s commitment to continue interactions with the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)

92 Igor Tomberg, The Statesman, 6 May 2005. 93 Radharaman Chakrabarti, India’s External Relations in a Globalized World Economy, Delhi: Anthem, 2007, pp. 51, 68; Anuradha M. Chenoy, ‘India and Russia’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2007, pp. 738–39; Vasudevan, Shadows of Substance, pp. 133–34. Also see, Vikram Sood, The Hindustan Times, 18 January 2007. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 569

to dismantle the apparatus of nuclear apartheid against India, so that Russia could carry out its promise to expand civil nuclear energy cooperation with India. Equally signifi cant was the agreement between India and Russia to extend this cooperation beyond nuclear energy for mutual benefi t.94 There was some apprehension that America–Russia divergence on Iran’s nuclear programme might complicate India–Russia– America nuclear transactions.95 Nevertheless, the India–Russia joint statement of 25 January 2007 dissolved this apprehension. This statement supported the UN Security Council Resolution 1737, subjecting Iran’s nuclear programme to mandatory sanctions, and decreeing that Tehran should stop its shady nuclear activities. Vladimir Putin and Manmohan Singh put forward the demand that Iran should resolve ‘outstanding verifi cation issues’ by ‘more active and transparent cooperation’ with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This India–Russia convergence on Iran’s nuclear programme certainly weakened the accusation by some political parties in India that India was sacrifi cing its independence by agreeing with the United States to oppose nuclear proliferation by Iran.96

Military Transactions In the early years of India’s independence, and until the end of the 1950s, India’s military transactions were principally with the Western powers. Yet, curiously, at a time when India was yet to acquire formal independence, that is during the days of the Interim Government, Nehru and his associates demonstrated a lot of haste in attempts to arrange an exchange of ambassadors with, as also a visit by Nehru to, the Soviet Union. These attempts failed to evoke any warm response from the Soviet Union. Moreover, even prior to these attempts, V.K. Krishna Menon, Nehru’s personal Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 envoy, talked to the inﬂ uential Soviet leader, Molotov, and inquired about the possibility of procuring the services of Soviet defence experts for India. Remarkably, Molotov’s response was afﬁ rmative, al-

94 C. Raja Mohan, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007; Shobori Ganguli, The Pioneer, 26 January 2007. 95 Chakrabarti, India’s External Relations, pp. 66, 109. 96 C. Raja Mohan, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007; Editorial, The Pioneer, 27 January 2007. 570 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

though there was no concrete outcome of this exploration because of expected opposition from not only the British Foreign Offi ce but also from India’s diplomatic establishment. It is anybody’s guess as to how far such enthusiastic efforts—before India achieved independence on 15 August 1947—refl ected Nehru’s view, expressed in some parts of his book Glimpses of World History, that the Soviet Union, socialist as well as virtuous, was a victim of conspiracies by capitalist countries.97 It was not before the early 1960s that Indo-Soviet military transactions acquired some signifi cance. The explanation for this is complex and diverse. In June 1955, Prime Minister Nehru visited the Soviet Union for as long as two weeks. In November–December 1955, Soviet leaders, Bulganin and Khrushchev, visited India for an even longer period, viz. three weeks. This was the time when the United States was setting up a military alliance system (including Pakistan) directed against communist countries. Actually, on the day Bulganin and Khrushchev arrived in New Delhi, the United States declared that it would construct airfi elds in Pakistan at an expenditure of US$20 million. As many as 196 Indian cultural delegations visited the Soviet Union during 1954–57. But, probably the most important explanation behind the growth of Indo-Soviet military ties was the almost simultaneous deterioration in India-China and Sino- Soviet relations in the late 1950s. In 1960, there were Indo-Soviet negotiations for the purchase of helicopters and transport aircraft. In 1961, India purchased Soviet transport aircraft suitable for operations in Ladakh.98 The offi cial announcement on the supply of Soviet supersonic MIG-21 fi ghters to India took place in May 1962. The deal was signed in October 1962. The progress of the deal was not free from controversies, delays, and hesitations. Many Indian civil/military offi cials and politicians preferred the United States F 104 supersonic

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Starﬁ ghters, which Pakistan obtained as gifts. The Soviet Union,

97 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, p. 31; Singh, Between Two Fires, pp. 192–95. 98 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, pp. 405, 411–12; K.P.S. Menon, The Lamp and the Lampstead, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 71; K. Subrahmanyam, Indian Defence Effort in Perspective, in K.P. Misra (ed.), Studies in Indian Foreign Policy, Delhi: Vikas, 1969, p. 303; Arthur Stein, ‘India’s Relations with the Soviet Union’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, p. 91. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 571

again, quickly revised the initial cost estimates by more than double. Although by 1964 India acquired a substantial number of AN-12 transport aircraft and MI-4 helicopters, in the same year, that is 1964, the Soviet Union rejected the Indian proposal to build a surface-to-air missile factory in India. Eventually, in the early part of 1964, India received the MIG aircraft. In the latter part of 1964, India signed an agreement for the procurement of light tanks from the Soviet Union. In 1965, India decided to obtain frigates and submarines from the Soviet Union. In early 1966, Soviet supersonic SU-7 fi ghter bombers began to reach India. The early part of 1968 witnessed the dispatch of Soviet submarines to India, as also the commencement of assembling in India the MIG components imported from the Soviet Union. By 1971, India came to possess hundreds of Soviet combat aircraft (MIG-21 and SU-7) and tanks, as also a substantial number of guided missiles, artillery pieces, missile boats, etc., and four submarines.99 Thus, while during the 1960s, India–Russia military transactions acquired a great and apparently irreversible momentum, ironically, the Soviet Union took some steps which indicated a diminution of confi dence about India’s capabilities, and a resultant desire to cultivate Pakistan. The debacle of the Indian troops in the confl ict with China in 1962 was a major factor behind this loss of confi dence in India. Moreover, the rule of General Ayub Khan in Pakistan created an illusion in the minds of some Soviet analysts that Pakistan was politically more stable than India.100 Moreover, as Pakistan– China relations improved, and Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, the Soviet Union embraced the idea of courting Pakistan, even if it hurt India. ‘Quite possibly’, as Vijay Sen Budhraj has argued, ‘the Soviets thought that Pakistan’s growing cordiality towards China was more dangerous than US-Pakistani friendship. Distant America, the Kremlin perhaps concluded, would have to leave South Asia one

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 day, but China would always be there, on the north of the Indian

99 Charles B. Mclane, Soviet-Asian Relations…The Military Balance 1972–1973, London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 1972, pp. 48–49; Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, pp. 445–46; Swadesh Rana, ‘Indo-U.S. Relations: The Soviet Factor’, Strategic Analysis, December 1977, pp. 13–14; Stein, ‘India’s Relations with the Soviet Union’, pp. 91–92. 100 Vijay Sen Budhraj, Soviet Russia and the Hindustan Subcontinent, Bombay: Somaiya Publications, 1975, pp. 189–90. 572 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

subcontinent’. Therefore, in 1968, in demolition of the myth of special Indo-Soviet relationship, the Soviet Union decided to supply arms to Pakistan. India could do nothing to prevent it. The Western arms embargo on India, imposed during the India–Pakistan War of 1965, left India helplessly dependent on Soviet weapons for its Army, Navy and Air Force. Indian diplomacy remained frozen in non-alignment with a tilt towards the Soviet Union. In contrast, Pakistan’s diplomacy was many-splendoured: it relied on multiple and changing alignments, drawing closer to itself China as well as the Soviet Union (in addition to the United States). In 1969, the Soviet Union became so worried over its animosity with China (especially after military clashes along the Ussuri River in March 1969) that it ﬂ oated the proposal for a collective security system in Asia, largely as a move to contain China. India did not respond positively to this proposal.101 All this—and continuing military transactions throughout the 1980s and beyond—marked the emergence of the Soviet Union as the biggest supplier of military hardware to India, outrivaling the Western countries. There are a number of explanations of this replacement of Western sources by Soviet sources. One, Soviet supplies came in time to enable India to cope with the threat from China, as also from Pakistan, which continued to receive military aid from its ally, the United States. Two, the Soviet Union provided loans over a long term (for example, 17 years) at a low (for example, 2.5 per cent) rate of interest. Three, India beneﬁ ted from the relatively lower unit costs of Soviet weapons (in contrast to weapons from other sources), as also from the facility of loan repayment in rupees. Four, it was comparatively easier to adapt to the small technological upgradation of Soviet weapons from one generation to the next higher generation, than in the case of American weapons with continuously large technological upgradation. Five, the Soviet Union did not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 require India to enter into a formal military alliance with itself. As to the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace Friendship and Cooperation (1971), it is well known that India itself took the initiative. Six, the United States imposed restrictions on the use of military items supplied to India in the wake of hostilities with China. For instance, these

101 Vijay Sen Budhraj, ‘Major Dimensions of Indo-Soviet Relations’, in Grover (ed.), USSR/CIS and India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 124–29, esp. p. 124. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 573

items could not be deployed against Pakistan. The Soviet Union did not subject India to any such disability. Seven, unlike the United States, the Soviet Union permitted India to produce its armaments (for example, combat aircraft, tanks) under licence. Interaction with Indian defence experts also enabled the USSR to improve the design of its weapons, for example, the MIG aircraft.102 In view of what has been noted in the preceding paragraph— probably irrespective of the existence of the Indo-Soviet treaty of 1971—India became heavily dependent upon Soviet military supplies. At the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, this dependence could be quantiﬁ ed at nearly 70 per cent of India’s total defence requirements.103 This extraordinarily close military relationship between India and the USSR has not been free from blemishes. One, there have been complaints about the lack of transparency on the part of the Government of India, which has not spelt out clearly which of the important components of a combat aircraft or tanks have been actually manufactured under licence in its factories. Two, while the unit prices of Soviet armaments have been comparatively cheaper than those of Western armaments, the prices of spare parts and ancillaries have been exorbitant. This problem is aggravated by the pressures from a supplier enjoying near-monopoly, as also by deformities in rupee-rouble exchange rates, which have hurt India. Three, there have been avoidable escalation of costs due to delays by the Soviets in the supply of spare parts, the issuance of import licences, and customs clearances. Spare parts of Soviet-supplied equipment had a unique advantage. They were so designed as to ﬁ t a variety of equipment. But, when spare parts did not arrive in India, in time or in requisite quantities, this advantage turned into a devastating disadvantage, forcing idleness on a variety of military equipment. Four, improper sequencing in the supply (to Hindustan

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Aeronautics Limited, for instance) of alloys, castings, and forgings for MIGs, automatically increased costs. Five, experts of the USSR (subsequently of Russia) have been reluctant to share technical information with their Indian counterparts. For example, even for

102 Sita G. Ramchandran, ‘India’s Relations with Erstwhile Soviet Union and Russia’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 18, no. 7, October 1995, pp. 983–84. 103 R.R. Subramanian, ‘India, the US and Russia in a Changing World Order’, Strategic Analysis, vol. xv, no. 12, March 1993, pp. 124–25. 574 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

minor repairs or parts replacements in USSR-supplied battleships, there has been an almost complete dependence on technicians from the USSR (Russia). These technicians have thus been able to prolong their stay at the Visakhapatnam shipyard indeﬁ nitely, and, at India’s expense, enjoy a living standard far higher than what they can dream of in their home country. Six, the language problem affecting communications between Russian and Indian defence forces has not been resolved even after decades of interaction. A report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, states that the translation of a defence manual from Russian into English has cost the exorbitant sum of `416.4 million.104 This CAG report also reveals that delays in delivery of armaments, as also cost escalation, so familiar in the 20th century, have persisted in the 21st century. For example, the cost of 140 Sukhoi 30 MK1s has escalated from `221.2278 billion in 2000 to `392.2409 billion in 2005. But this is a multi-role frontline combat aircraft which India needs urgently.105 Moreover, ‘not only was the original estimation completely open ended, the subsequent estimates were continuing to rise and the ﬁ nal cost of the induction was not ascertainable’.106 While such information is indeed disconcerting, one may seek solace from recalling certain instances of Russian support in times of crises. For example, Russia even airlifted uranium stockpiles in order to keep India’s Tarapur atomic reactor in operation. One should not, again, forget that in 1998 Russia did not approve India’s nuclear tests. Yet, unlike America and other Western powers, Russia did not impose sanctions on India. Moreover, as India tries to acquire a satellite global positioning system, it has to rely on Russian cooperation. India has secured access to GLONASS or the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System, which carries defence collaboration to a higher level, even if the purposes are declared to be peaceful.107 Nevertheless, the India–Russia relationship—military or non-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 military—is not to be deemed currently as a ‘special relationship’, a notion which was associated with the Indo-Soviet Treaty of

104 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India for the year ended March 2005: Union Government (Defence Services): Air Force and Navy, No. 4 of 2006 (Performance Audit), p. 8. 105 Rajat Pandit, The Telegraph, 11 July 2006. 106 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, p. 11. 107 G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 6 September 2006; Shiv Aroor, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 575

Peace, Friendship and Cooperation of 9 August 1971. This treaty was replaced on 28 January 1993 by the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. The security clause of the 1971 treaty was absent from the 1993 treaty. It did not provide for immediate consultations in case of threat of aggression upon one signatory for the purpose of combating the threat. The stress of the 14-clause 1993 treaty was on bilateral relations, and not on promoting any special relationship. Nevertheless, this treaty signifi cantly laid down that the two parties promised to safeguard the territorial integrity of each other, and that neither party should launch any action that might affect the security interests of the other party.108 The closeness of India–Russia military interactions in the fi rst decade of the 21st century, however, is to be attributed less to this 1993 treaty than to the evolution of an integrated defence relationship in the course of nearly fi ve decades. While Russia, especially because of initial economic shocks (lasting till about 1997) from the dissolution of the erstwhile USSR, needed the Indian market, India too could not dismantle this relationship in a situation where, for example, 32 of the 41 fi ghter squadrons and 60 per cent of main battle tanks are of Russian origin. A few qualitative changes in this relationship are visible. In the preceding century, India had to negotiate with agents for arms procurement, but, currently, India can directly negotiate with Russian arms manufacturing entities. Moreover, the buyer-seller relationship seems to be set for maturing into a partnership in research, development, manufacturing, and marketing. As far back as 2002, Russia and India resolved to design and develop jointly such futuristic weapons as the fi fth generation multi-role combat aircraft. ‘This is a really unique case’, writes Viktor Litovkin, ‘when countries, without any legal military-alliance commitments, will jointly develop a multi-role 21st century fi ghter’. No less signifi cant is Litovkin’s assertion that Russia does what no

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 other country does, when it sells highly advanced frigates and tanks to India, while Russia itself does not have them at all or does not possess them in sufﬁ cient numbers.109

108 Ramchandran, ‘India’s Relations with Erstwhile Soviet Union and Russia’, pp. 978–79; Varma, ‘Russia and India’, pp. 585–86. 109 Viktor Litovkin, The Statesman, 19 November 2003; Sujan Dutta, The Telegraph, 7 February 2002; The Pioneer, 15 February 2007; Shiv Aroor, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007. 576 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

As in the case of Indo-Soviet military transactions, so in the case of Indo-Russian military transactions, some serious criticisms persist. For instance, during 1995–96, India signed a lease deal with Russia for the supply of 152 mm guns. No global tender was ﬂ oated. No other country was approached. Only Russia produced 152 mm shells, which were inferior to 155 mm shells (used in India’s Bofors guns). The introduction of a new gun—without any apparent cause of urgency behind this acquisition—would only serve to produce logistical problems. No ﬁ eld trials were conducted before the lease deal was signed. Probably, the understandable hurry of Indian arms dealers was transmuted into an indefensible decision of the Government of India.110 There are complaints about the MIG 21—the pride of the Indian Air Force—and about Bison, the modernised version of the MIG 21. The MIG 21 has earned the notoriety of being the aircraft most susceptible to accidents. An important reason behind these accidents which caused the deaths, for example, of as many as 50 pilots in the decade preceding November 2002, is the familiar inability of Russia (and the USSR) to provide a timely supply of high quality spares. Even the Bison has a record of three crashes in three years, raising questions in addition to those on aircraft maintenance.111 There are misgivings about the `690 billion deal for the procurement of the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. Originally constructed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, this carrier bears the name of S.G. Gorshkov, the Admiral of the Soviet navy. Swaraj Parkash (who later rose to be Vice Admiral of the Indian Navy) was the Indian Naval attaché in Moscow in the 1960s, when India procured the British aircraft carrier Hercules, and renamed it as INS Vikrant. Admiral S.G. Gorshkov summoned Swaraj Parkash to point out that the British ‘for sure had put pressure on Prime Minister Nehru to buy an outdated and incomplete aircraft carrier which India

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 does not need and could ill-afford. Imagine, he said, the expense of operating the carrier as it would alone eat up half the budget of the Navy…. To conclude, he observed that the Indian Navy had been foisted a white elephant’. The ﬁ nancial stringency in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union prompted Russia to sell its

110 Tanmay Chatterjee, The Statesman, 12 March 1996. 111 Editorials, The Statesman, 22 December 1999 and 24 January 2006. Also see, Vasudevan, Shadows of Substance, p. 161. Relations with Former Soviet Union/Russia 577

fi rst aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov to India. Swaraj Parkash has raised the question of whether India will now be ‘foisted with a Russian white elephant’.112 There are reports that India’s Admiral Gorshkov will be modernised and will have an ample number of advanced combat aircraft, helicopters, and submarines with cruise missiles for land-attack.113 Still, misgivings about the cost-effectiveness of this aircraft carrier have not disappeared. As to the programme of joint development and manufacture of the fi fth generation fi ghter aircraft, S. Krishnaswamy, former Chief of Staff, Indian Air Force, has raised some serious questions. The project was announced around 2002. For about fi ve years, there was practically no information on it. In 2007, Russia has affi rmed that it will fl y this aircraft—PAK-FA—in 2009. India has not been entrusted with the details of the entire programme. India’s partnership with Russia in this programme will thus signify that it is limited to funding and sharing of risks. Moreover, Krishnaswamy raises a valid query about the comparative merits of PAK-FA and such aircraft from other sources which India is able to access. The quality of the Indo-Russian partnership in this project is hardly encouraging because, as Krishnaswamy affi rms, Indian engineers or scientists are not permitted to work in high security laboratories or projects in Russia. Even Indian test pilots are not allowed to fl y in Russia, or take part in programmes for fl ight development and testing of weapons systems.114 On the Brahmos supersonic anti-ship cruise missile for India’s navy—an Indo-Russian joint venture—S. Krishnaswamy offers an interesting comment. While the Indian Navy has inducted this missile into service, there is no information about whether the Russian navy uses it.115 Despite the complaints and criticisms noted above, India–Russia military transactions appear to be scaling new heights as of 2007 (the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 terminal year of the present study). For instance, India has entered into a deal worth `26 billion to lease for 10 years (commencing in 2008–9) nuclear-powered attack submarines. Signiﬁ cantly, this deal for Akula-II submarines has remained rather unpublicised.116

112 Swaraj Parkash, The Statesman, 22 December 1999. 113 Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 10 September 2007. 114 S. Krishnaswamy, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007. 115 S. Krishnaswamy, The Indian Express, 26 January 2007. 116 Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 10 September 2007. 578 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Moreover, on 11 September 2007 (a historic day!), 400 members of the special forces of India and Russia launched a 10-day exercise christened as Indira. This was a joint counter-terrorism exercise at fl ushing out terrorists in a third country. The site of this exercise was Pskov, which was close to St Petersburg. Indira would enable Indian and Russian commandos to learn operational as well as doctrinal lessons from each other, and acquire inter-operability.117 Signifi cantly, just a week before these India–Russia exercises, that is on 4 September 2007, India joined Australia, Japan, Singapore, and the United States in a series of naval exercises. Moreover, on 17 September 2007, India and Britain commenced a 24-day joint counter-terrorism exercise in a snowy border region, that is Ladakh. One can, therefore, express satisfaction that, unlike in most of the period in the past, Indian diplomacy displays (at the end of 2007) ample maturity and realism. Convergence of American, British and Russian attention on joint military manoeuvres with India (especially for counter-terrorism) deserves high praise at a time when Putin’s Russia has been asserting itself by fl exing military muscles (for example, by planting the national fl ag on the North Pole sea bed, and exploding the most powerful vacuum bomb in the world), giving rise to speculation about the start of Cold War Mark II.118 Finally, unlike in the Soviet and early post-Soviet eras, when India’s policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation were yet to yield adequate reserves of hard currency, India at present has an enormous reserve. This has made India a buyer’s market. For example, India is not constrained to limit itself to the purchase of exclusively or even predominantly Russian combat aircraft. As of 2007, India plans to buy 126 multi-role combat aircraft with an estimated price tag of US$10.4 billion.119 Although India still blunders occasionally on non-alignment, it is now in, or ready for, a mode of multiple and evolving alignment, in contrast to the non-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 alignment with a Soviet tilt in the pre-1991 period. India, therefore, can choose combat aircraft of Russian, European, as also American origin, saying farewell to the days when its dependence on the USSR caused a lot of unpublicised inconvenience.

117 The Times of India, 11 September 2007. 118 C. Uday Bhaskar, The Times of India, 3 September 2007; Sumer Kaul, The Statesman, 8 September 2007; The Times of India, 11 and 13 September 2007; The Pioneer, 17 September 2007. 119 The Times of India, 9 October 2007. 10 Relations with the United States

India’s relations with the United States can be examined under two broad periods, viz. the Cold War period and the post-Cold War period. In each of these periods, again, transactions between the two countries can be classiﬁ ed into political, economic, and military transactions—although with unavoidable overlapping. The post-Cold War era, again, may be subdivided into the periods before and after 11 September 2001 (also known as 9/11), that is the day Islamist terrorists attacked New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Cold War Era: Political Relations India and the United States exhibited a fundamental unity in terms of pursuing the long-term objectives of freedom, world peace and stability, and economic development.1 But the level of cordiality attained by these two countries was far from consistent with this deep-seated unity. Immediate objectives—and the means for their pursuit—set apart India and America. The reasons for this were basically the dogmatic approaches of ruling circles in both the countries. The Indian dogma was non- alignment. As has been demonstrated in the chapter on non- alignment, actually, non-alignment was indeﬁ nable, and it lost all meaning in the crisis situations of 1962 and 1971. Meanwhile, the pursuit of non-alignment unnaturally induced in Indian rulers a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 sort of holier-than-thou attitude, as also a tendency to deliver moral lectures to others (like the United States) on whom India had to depend constantly for economic and technological aid. The peculiar pursuit of non-alignment prevented India from attaining a balance between ethics and realism. This was perceptible all the time, but became glaring in crises like the ones in 1962 and 1971. The Indian

1 Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, p. 217. 580 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

pretence that non-alignment was ethical vanished into thin air as realism compelled India to sacriﬁ ce non-alignment. The American dogma was the recruitment of military allies throughout the world for the purpose of forestalling the threat from communist countries. The inaccuracies in this threat perception, and the series of unrealistic (if not counterproductive) measures adopted by the United States to cope with this threat are well-known.2 If India alienated America by somewhat excessively harping on non- alignment, America, too, needlessly hurt countries like India by parading the policy of anti-communist military alliances. In this encounter, obviously, India’s interests were damaged because, despite all slogans to the contrary, India could not get rid of its economic-technological dependence on the United States. India’s pursuit of non-alignment was vitiated by the preoccupation of the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, with playing an important part in world politics. Since India was militarily too weak to make its presence felt in international relations, this preoccupation had some awkward manifestations. Prime Minister Nehru developed the habit of exhibiting high-mindedness, and pouring advice on great powers, especially Britain and the United States, without even bothering sometimes about the composition of the Indian audience he was addressing.

Whether addressing a meeting at Trivandrum or Chepauk, it is the governments of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union to whom Mr. Nehru is talking. More often than not, he is implying that the ﬁ rst two should clear their minds of fear and suspicion of the third…3

In 1949, when Nehru visited the United States, he should have paid greater attention to advancing Indian interests, than to talking about world politics. But he did not. Such conduct on the part of a Prime

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Minister and External Affairs Minister of India was neither ethical nor realistic. As Secretary of State Dean Acheson has reported,

…Nehru had kept the talk on the failing of the Dutch and the French. I wanted as innocently as possible, to get him to talk about his own….

2 See, for example, Ray, Public Policy and Global Reality, esp. pp. 1–22, 178–204. 3 Gorwala, Not in our Stars, p. 257. Relations with the United States 581

When, ﬁ nally, I urged Pandit Nehru to help me by a frank discussion of a practicable solution of the trouble over Kashmir, I got a curious combination of a public speech and ﬂ ashes of anger and deep dislike of his opponents…4

Nehru exhibited such lack of realism—especially greater preoccupation with world politics than with burning domestic issues—even before he became India’s prime minister. For example, on 7 September 1946, nearly a year before he formally occupied the post of India’s prime minister, he broadcast a long speech over the radio to the citizens and governments of the entire world, in which this preoccupation became patent. At a time when he and his colleagues in the Congress Party were hardly succeeding in the task of preventing the partition of India, he asserted, ‘we shall make the history of our choice’, and that independent India would try to establish a ‘world commonwealth’, and work for ‘One World’. ‘We are of Asia’, Nehru observed, ‘and the peoples of Asia are nearer and closer to us than others. India is so situated that she is the pivot of Western, Southern and South-East Asia’. At a time when the Muslim League contested the Congress notion of cultural unity of India, Nehru did not hesitate to stress that ‘in the past our [India’s] culture fl owed to all these countries and they came to her [India] in many ways’. Iqbal Singh was probably correct when he made the following comment on Nehru’s speech of 7 September 1946: ‘Master of ambiguity though Nehru was, for once he was carried away with the momentum of his own eloquence’.5 After independence, too, when Nehru formally occupied the posts of prime minister and external affairs minister of India, he and his followers in non-offi cial circles (notably the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi) seemed to abandon the path of a realistic, and a mature understanding of the history of international relations. They excelled in the substitution of rhetoric for reality, and of utopian Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 affi rmations for rigorous analysis—without, moreover, being able to stay away from self-contradiction. The most important lesson from the history of world politics is that peace can be preserved by a careful attention to national defence, and an alertness to maintain a balance

4 Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation, New York: Norton, 1969, pp. 334, 336. 5 Singh, Between Two Fires, vol. 1, p. 171; also see pp. 168–70. 582 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of power (by aiding in the defence of another country, if necessary), so that a potentially aggressive state does not accumulate so much power in its hands as to be able to exercise, or threaten to exercise, an unwarranted domination over a relatively weaker country. But Nehru and his apologists, while accepting the need for a competent national army, and for its possible use in defence of an endangered country, slided into a sort of involuntary or thoughtless self-contradiction by denouncing the concept of balance of power as also the practice of power politics.6 (Ironically, soon after independence, and in the 1950s, India got embroiled in power politics and balance of power exercises vis-à-vis Pakistan and China, but did not do well, as noted in the relevant chapters in this book.) Indian observers, ofﬁ cial and non-ofﬁ cial, failed to comprehend the incontestable truth that ‘in the absence of world government, the balance of power system is the only other way known of distributing power so that it restrains resort to violence. It is a poor second best—a deplorable answer to a deplorable vacuum at the top’.7 Such lack of realism in Nehru and his associates (especially powerful favourites like V.K. Krishna Menon), when coupled with queer dogmatism on certain important matters, could not but harm India’s vital interests. For example, Nehru himself suffered from a deep seated anti-Americanism for which he failed to provide any rational explanation. His cousin, B.K. Nehru, who was for some time India’s ambassador to the United States, once asked him why he was anti-American, and why his ‘instinctive reaction to any proposal that may come from the United States is to reject it, no matter how good it may be’. Nehru fell into a long reverie after which he replied in a low voice:

Maybe there is some truth in what you say. Maybe I am instinctively anti-American. I remember that when I was at Harrow there was one single American boy in the school. He was very rich and the rest of us Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

6 Tibor Mende, Conversations with Mr. Nehru, London: Secker and Warburg, 1956, pp. 80, 140; Jawaharlal Nehru, Visit to America, New York: John Day, 1950, p. 31. Also see, A. Appadorai’s Report in Benjamin Akzin, New States and International Organizations, Paris: UNESCO, 1955. A. Appadorai and others of the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi, in India and the United Nations, Carnegie Endowment, New York, 1957. 7 Alan De Rusett, ‘On Understanding Indian Foreign Policy’, in K.P. Mishra (ed.), Studies in Indian Foreign Policy, Delhi: Vikas, 1969, p. 112. Relations with the United States 583

disliked him for his preoccupation with money and looked down upon him for that reason. It may be that my negative reaction to America is because of that experience!8

Indians could hardly consider themselves fortunate to have a prime minister and external affairs minister who chose to be guided by a boyhood experience to shape his attitude towards a superpower from which India had to secure technological-economic cooperation. Nehru’s ingrained antipathy to America could be a vital reason why, despite receiving an offi cial invitation to visit America in August 1947, Nehru, reputed for according priority to foreign as against domestic affairs, did not visit America before October 1949. Even before India became formally independent, however, at the UN General Assembly session in 1946, some Indian delegates, especially Krishna Menon, did everything to demonstrate anti-Americanism. Krishna Menon alienated the American media and public opinion.9 Certainly, anybody had the right to criticise America’s or any other country’s policies. But if the tone of criticism is needlessly irritating, it does not promote the country’s interests. Krishna Menon’s ‘very appearance, his gestures, his way of talking’ were such that they ‘sometimes nullifi ed any good’ that his comments might otherwise have achieved.10 It was no surprise, therefore, that when Nehru arrived in America in October, he did not fi nd a number of Americans, including legislators, in a positive mood.

An immediate irritant in the Indo-American relations was provided by the manner in which India’s request to the U.S. Government for a dollar loan to purchase 1.5 million tonnes of wheat was being treated in America…. The request met with resistance in the American Congress aided by an active anti-Indian campaign started by the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.11

Evidently, Pakistani leaders did not share the aversion to power Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 politics publicised by their Indian counterparts. In the course of his 1949 visit to America, Nehru observed that ‘friendship and cooperation’ between America and India was

8 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 289. 9 Singh, Between Two Fires, pp. 196–97. 10 Chagla, Roses in December, p. 232. 11 Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, p. 217. 584 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

‘natural’, and that he offered ‘both in the pursuit of justice, liberty and peace’.12 But ‘signifi cantly neither in public nor in his private talks with the American leaders did Nehru refer to the request for wheat-loan’.13 In view of the fact that food grain shortage in India became ‘usual’14 in those days, this lack of reference to the need for a wheat loan could be interpreted as a silent affi rmation of dignity by Nehru, or as an expression of moderate arrogance. After all, ‘in the very early fi fties’, India obtained a soft wheat loan from America—‘the fi rst time that any transaction of this kind’ took place between America and India.15 At the UN General Assembly session of 1946, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Prime Minister Nehru’s sister, headed the Indian delegation. She sometimes made comments on the American president, Harry S. Truman, whose harshness could have been diluted without any loss to India or any other developing country.16 One can now recall that in early 1949 the Point Four programme was announced by President Truman. In the words of Chester Bowles, the American ambassador to India, during 1951–53 and 1963–69, this was a ‘foresighted and generously conceived’ programme ‘under which the United States government would assist the less developed countries, including the newly independent nations, to achieve social and economic advancement for their people’, and which ‘was to be of outstanding importance to India and the United States in my fi rst assignment to India’. Chester Bowles added:

My arrival as Ambassador in New Delhi barely preceded the arrival of the fi rst Point Four agricultural extension specialists and other technicians, and in a matter of weeks the fi rst signifi cant capital grant or loan made by the U.S. anywhere under Point Four—a grant of $ 54 million.17

In this context—and in view of what has been noted in the few

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 preceding paragraphs—the assessments of America and its leaders by India’s top-ranking leaders were somewhat error-prone, and

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., p. 218. 14 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 231. 15 Ibid., pp. 231–33. 16 Singh, Between Two Fires, pp. 196, 198. 17 Bowles, Mission to India, p. x. Relations with the United States 585

reeked of a sense of helpless dependence degenerating into a chronic inferiority complex. The Point Four programme was announced in early 1949, whereas Nehru’s America visit took place in late 1949. Evidently, the Indian foreign policy establishment, unlike Chester Bowles, did not recognise the potentialities of the Point Four programme. Even if it did, such recognition was not refl ected in Nehru’s speeches in America. India’s Ministry of External Affairs offi cials were certainly aware of the deep divergence between Nehru’s outlook on international relations and the American outlook. Nehru’s America tour, therefore, should have been carefully planned. It ought to have been a short businesslike tour, focusing on how to serve India’s interests. Actually, the tour (including some stay in Canada) lasted nearly a month. Even allowing for Nehru’s known preference for foreign rather than domestic affairs, this visit was too long. It offered an opportunity to Nehru to expound the divergence between Indian and American viewpoints on world affairs. The result of the visit—as far as India’s vital interests were concerned—was not positive; it was negative. In the words of Charles H. Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, ‘the US could not fi rmly reinforce India’s primary international objective, the eradication of colonialism, and India was unwilling to support the paramount American goal, the containment of communism’.18 It was a disturbingly complex situation. Both sides could claim moral superiority.19 The Americans could deem India’s (especially Nehru’s) refusal to join the crusade against Stalinist communism as immoral. So could Nehru denounce as immoral America’s failure to attach greater importance to anti-colonialism than to anti-communism. After all, Nehru had personally experienced not the excesses of Soviet communism but the severe injustices of colonialism. Nevertheless, an American author, Harold A. Gould,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 appears to be more than fair to Nehru when he writes that ‘Nehru had a genuine soft spot in his heart for the Soviet Union and genuinely believed socialism to be a superior economic system to capitalism’.20

18 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, p. 350. 19 Harold A. Gould, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations: The Early Phase’, in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, p. 19. 20 Ibid., p. 24. 586 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

It will be unfair if one does not complain that Nehru never provided a rational explanation of why he looked upon communist theory as sound and why he failed to revise his favourite notion that the Soviet example was a white patch in an otherwise black world. Evidently, he was not aware of the unmistakably enormous infi rmities, economic as well as political, of the Soviet experiment, as brought out in such authoritative publications as The God That Failed. For the Americans, the clash with the Indian perspective on world affairs became all the more severe on account of two important developments in the late 1940s. One was the explosion of a nuclear bomb by the Soviet Union, ending the American monopoly. The other was the emergence of communist China.21 These appeared to traumatize a number of infl uential American decision makers whose dream of American economic-political hegemony over the post-Second World War world received a big blow. Trauma cannot be the basis of a sound policy. Therefore, despite the fi ndings of a rich American government publication, China White Paper 1949, American decision makers refused to decipher realities, and extend recognition to communist China. India’s plea for such recognition created mistrust, and inclined a number of Americans to label India as pro-communist. A large number of members of the American public, too, failed to read the realities, and formed a China lobby that demanded non-recognition of communist China. Soon, with the emergence of McCarthyism in America, it became politically dangerous for any American decision maker to plead for recognition of communist China without being denounced as pro-communist and anti-American.22 The Americans, who shared the apocalyptic view of communist countries trying to conquer the world by instalments, received concrete support for their view in June 1950 when ‘Russian-trained North Korean troops, with the backing and support of China,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 invaded South Korea, involving the United States and its United Nations allies in a costly war’.23 An open military invasion by a communist country—conﬁ rming their dire prediction—inclined American policy makers to erect an ethical barrier between those

21 Ibid., pp. 31, 33. 22 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 4–7; Gould, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations’, pp. 20–21. 23 Bowles, Mission to India, p. xii. Relations with the United States 587

non-communist countries who fully supported the American war effort against North Korea, and those who did not. If a country (for example, India) offered limited support, or showed signs of ambiguity or vacillation, it would be accused of being unethical.24 When India agreed, at the UN, to brand North Korea as an aggressor, but refused to supply troops to the UN contingent for fi ghting aggression, it could be criticised by America for taking an unethical stand. The supply of a medical unit by India could hardly be a substitute for the dispatch of combat troops. India of course could consider it ethical to preserve in this clumsy manner its aspiration to play the part of a mediator in the Korean confl ict. This leads to a much more important query about India’s role in the Korean confl ict of 1950–53. During this confl ict, India pleaded at the UN for America and other Western powers to extend diplomatic recognition to communist China, and offer it a seat at the world body for facilitation of a settlement of the Korean confl ict. India was ethically right. But did India practise ethics in such a way as to damage some of its vital interests? Probably no other Indian author (excepting the present one) has ever tried to address this question. At one stage of the Korean confl ict (in October 1950), Chinese soldiers (calling themselves volunteers) began to participate directly in the Korean War.

Despite the opposition of India, Burma and the Socialist (Communist) states a resolution branding China as an aggressor was passed by the General Assembly. The Indian opposition was bitterly criticized in the U.S.A. If it met with Chinese approval, there was no indication to that effect from China.25

What was the score card for India? China did not even condescend to offer thanks. America was antagonised, while India’s technological- economic dependence on America persisted. This antagonism was

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 needlessly aggravated by Krishna Menon’s handling of the Korean issue at the UN in New York.

Krishna Menon’s acid tongue and striking—almost diabolic—looks soon made him a media celebrity at the United Nations. Since his

24 Heimsath and Mansingh, Diplomatic History, p. 351. 25 Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, p. 85. 588 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

barbed verbal thrusts were more often than not aimed at the United States, Menon’s presence added a new, and ultimately heavy, burden to Indo-American relations.26

A related question—though largely ignored by most Indian authors— is whether Nehru behaved as a mature and responsible leader when he assigned to Krishna Menon the task of coping with the Korean issue at the UN. The answer is, surely, no. Nehru wanted Krishna Menon in New Delhi for some important post. Nehru also offered to him the job of Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union. But Menon was obviously unwilling to sacrifi ce the creature comforts of living in much-maligned Western countries. At the same time, Menon could not continue in the position of Indian high commissioner to Britain. ‘Menon left under cloud after the British complained about leaks from the High Commission to the Communists and Menon’s mismanagement of the Mission became a political embarrassment in New Delhi.’27 Therefore, Nehru carved out a New York posting for Menon, which not only attested his deep friendship towards Menon, but also underlined his unconcern for a threat to India’s interests from Menon’s intemperate remarks (which was earlier evident at the General Assembly session of 1946). India’s claim to ethical superiority of non-alignment seemed to rest on its abstention from military operations in Korea, where Cold War adversaries used violence. They played the game of power politics and balance of power. India did not condescend to play this game, although its wait on the sidelines for a proud role of conciliator resulting from a military stalemate between contestants in Korea could be characterised as unethical opportunism. Others engaged in bloody confl icts, and when they got tired, India secured the opportunity to play the part of a mediator. India had no power to create this part; others had the authority to assign this part to India. Only when the contestants reached a balance or equilibrium Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of military power, India could be called upon to play this part, and, for instance, become the chairman of the Neutral Nations Repatria- tion Commission in Korea.28 To be candid, the imagined achievement of India in world politics at the time of the Korean confl ict,

26 Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies: India and the United States 1941–1991, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994, p. 75. 27 Ibid. 28 Rusett, ‘On Understanding Indian Foreign Policy’, pp. 114–15. Relations with the United States 589

in the words of Sham Lal, ‘was no more than a make-believe. It was not because of our persuasion that the USA and China sought a settlement in Korea. They only used our services as a go-between after they had decided to negotiate’.29 Some Western authors, for example, Michael Brecher, have been very generous in showering eulogies on India’s role in the Korean confl ict. Brecher writes: ‘As for India’s role in the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, one fi nds this curious, perhaps unique, capacity to satisfy both sides on all the major issues—the positive contributions of neutralism in that case.’30 But, Brecher’s own statements do not support this contention. According to him, ‘the most striking feature of India’s role in the Korean truce-making settlement from 1950 onwards is the extent to which its support alternated between one side and another’.31 For example, when the UN forces, under the United States command, wanted to cross the 38th parallel and carry the war inside North Korea, India opposed it. Subsequently, when efforts to have a conference of North and South Korean representatives proved futile, India endorsed the crossing of the 38th parallel. Such reversals in decision making were not expected to please any side—not to speak of all sides. Again, when India failed to resolve the contradiction between the United States recommendation of voluntary repatriation of prisoners of war and the plea by the communist side of compulsory repatriation, it simply evaded the issue by unilaterally releasing prisoners to the detaining sides. This, too, was not likely to be satisfactory to any of the contesting sides. The Indian device of word play and papering over cracks was not always productive. For example, Secretary of State Acheson ‘found Krishna Menon exasperatingly diffi cult to negotiate with’ and he thought that Menon ‘was a master of putting words together so that they conveyed no ideas at all’.32 Therefore, the assessment by a former foreign secretary of India, Subimal Dutt,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 appears to be far more realistic than that of Brecher. Dutt writes: ‘On the whole, however, the Korean war left a legacy of misunderstanding [about India’s role] on both sides’.33

29 Sham Lal, ‘National Scene and Foreign Policy’, in K.P. Mishra (ed.), Studies in Indian Foreign Policy, Delhi: Vikas, 1969, p. 320. 30 Michael Brecher, ‘Sources of Indian Neutralism’, in Mishra (ed.), Studies in Indian Foreign Policy, p. 54. 31 Ibid., p. 53. 32 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 76. 33 Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Ofﬁ ce, p. 221. 590 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Most Indian authors have not considered one probable long- term impact of India’s role in the Korean War upon Indo-American relations. A fair though summary assessment of this role is that India left no stone unturned to extend support to China, even at the obvious cost of alienation of America. There was no word of appreciation from China. India suffered from the delusion of India–China amity within the larger framework of Asian solidarity. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit once went so far as to write: ‘While confl ict has been the general rule throughout European history, and peace has been confi ned to periods between wars, in Asia the reverse has been the case.’34 While this estimate is completely unhistorical, and is at best an illusion, the expectation of China’s friendship, too, appeared unrealistic. Despite all the strenuous efforts made by India to support China during the 1950–53 Korean confl ict, China did not reciprocate even by a gesture, let alone by action. On the other hand, India provoked American antagonism by advocating China’s cause, and American policy makers became inclined to teach India a lesson by propping up Pakistan as a counterbalancing force. Otherwise, there was no explanation why, by 1953, America had decided to recruit Pakistan as a military ally despite Pakistan’s emphatic assertions (offi cially and unoffi cially) that Pakistan’s sole aim in procuring American military assistance was to attain parity in military strength with India so as to facilitate the solution of the Kashmir problem to Pakistan’s satisfaction. Pakistan made it very clear to China and the Soviet Union that it did not nurse any hostility towards them. It may not thus be unfair to argue that India’s role in the Korean War of 1950–53 was a catalytic factor behind Pakistan’s success in pursuing a policy of multiple and fl exible alignment; and eventually writing an epitaph to India’s non-alignment. Although a number of these and related matters have been extensively covered in the chapter on relations with Pakistan in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 this book, the following comments by Chester Bowles deserve to be recorded:

The Indian Government pointed out that the military equipment that we were giving to Pakistan had no relevance to our alleged military objectives. If the Pakistan army were actually designed to become

34 Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, ‘India’s Foreign Policy’, in Mishra (ed.), Studies in Indian Foreign Policy, p. 71. Relations with the United States 591

part of a U.S.-sponsored defense system to discourage a Soviet or Chinese military movement through the Himalayas or the Hindu Kush Mountains, it would be seeking equipment appropriate for ﬁ ghting in the mountain areas. However, the equipment we supplied to Pakistan—tanks, motorized artillery and the like—was suitable for use only on a relatively ﬂ at terrain, in other words, on the plains of North India. Moreover, from the outset the Pakistan Government had itself made clear that it had no quarrel with either the U.S.S.R. or China and privately admitted that its military build-up was, in fact, directed against India.35

It is indeed amazing that Indian authors have largely ignored the vast difference between Nehru’s publicised and unpublicised views on China. The latter, if known to Americans in the 1950s, would have considerably lessened American antipathy towards India, and caused lesser injury to India from American policies (for example, those supporting Pakistan as a counterweight to India). It is worth recalling Nehru’s unpublicised views on China, as related to his close and trusted associate, B.N. Mullik, the Director of Intelligence Bureau. What Nehru told Mullik around March 1952—as noted elaborately in the chapter on relations with China—thoroughly contradicted the rosy notions of India–China friendship, Asian solidarity, etc., preached by him and his sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. A few sentences may be reproduced to lend a proper perspective to what follows in this chapter. Nehru said,

…all through history China had been an aggressive country. Now it had acquired an aggressive political philosophy and was being governed by very aggressive leaders who had waged an unceasing war during the previous twenty years and had ultimately succeeded…China did not believe in treating other countries on equal terms. Therefore… she would try to extend her inﬂ uence and leadership…over Asia. In this struggle for supremacy in Asia, her biggest obstacle would 36 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 be India.

A question that is difﬁ cult to answer is why, in the course of the Korean conﬂ ict of 1950–53, for instance, Nehru suppressed these realistic views on China, and paraded those views which sounded

35 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 94. 36 Mullik, My Years With Nehru, 1948–1964, pp. 78–79. 592 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

ethical (but alienated America)? Did it mean that Nehru’s dogmatic anti-Americanism prevailed over his realistic suspicion towards China? In this context, it is important to recall that, around 1953, India appeared to commit two grievous errors, and thoughtlessly threw away the prospects of long-term gains for India in the realm of power politics. It rejected the American offer of support for an ‘Indian Monroe Doctrine’ in South Asia, as also the American proposal for replacing Taiwan by India in the UN Security Council.37 One cannot think of a greater failure to strike a balance between ethics and realism in India’s foreign relations. The acceptance of these two American offers would have enabled India to forestall many threats in coming years from such neighbouring countries as Pakistan and China. At a time when Nehru showed no scruples in playing power politics in the domestic sphere in order to maximise his personal control over the government and the Congress Party, the above noted abstention from power politics in the international realm could be characterised as marking the height of thoughtlessness and/or incompetence. An important case of inconsistency between ethics and realism in India’s foreign relations came to the fore during the invasion of Goa in 1961. Undoubtedly, the 400-year Portugese rule over Goa had been ‘marked by massacres, oppressions and forcible conversions’.38 However, India did nothing for 14 years since 1947. So, what were the actual compulsions behind military action on 17 December 1961? John K. Galbraith, the American ambassador to India, told Nehru on 15 December that ‘India, having rid herself by peaceful means of the British and the French, would be showing real weakness if ever she had to use force to be rid of the Portuguese pimple’.39 Certainly, none would defend the survival of a Portuguese colony in 1961. But the way the Indian newspapers prepared the ground for imminent military action raised suspicions about the hidden

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 agendas of one or two leading politicians, which went far beyond a simple plea of anti-colonialism. Galbraith, a great friend of India and proponent of anti-colonialism, complained of ‘a high component of contrivance’ in Indian newspaper reports. ‘The casual reader could conclude from the papers that Portugal is about to take over the

37 Tharoor, Nehru, p. 183. 38 Mullik, My Years with Nehru, p. 385. 39 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 256. Relations with the United States 593

entire Indian Union.’40 ‘Every morning’, wrote Galbraith, ‘there are incidents, all more or less imaginary. However, the impression is rapidly getting around that the Portuguese are about to march on Bombay’.41 Even Prime Minister Nehru, informing Galbraith of ‘newsprint atrocities by the Portuguese’, immediately ‘conceded that no one had been shot’.42 When, on 17 December, India invaded Goa, there was a lot of misunderstanding between India and America (even if temporary). Much of it could have been avoided had Nehru discussed Goa with President Kennedy with whom he had long meetings in November 1961 when he had visited the United States.43 B.K. Nehru was then the Indian ambassador to the United States. ‘It was widely believed’, he wrote, that the Goa invasion ‘had been engineered by Krishna Menon taking advantage of the absence of the Prime Minister’. ‘The object was to ensure his success at the general elections due shortly afterwards’, added B.K. Nehru.44 B.N. Mullik too concurred that by end-November 1961 Krishna Menon ‘pressur- ized the events and decisions’.45 Apart from having an eye on the forthcoming general election, Menon wanted to use the liberation of Goa ‘to divert attention from the Chinese Communist penetration in Ladakh’, for which he, as defence minister, could not escape the blame.46 America publicly denounced Portuguese colonial rule over Goa. But it failed to exercise adequate diplomatic pressure upon Portugal for giving up Goa, probably because Portugal was a valued NATO ally.47 At a meeting of the Security Council, Adlai Stevenson, the American ambassador to the UN, did not lose the opportunity to use ‘the occasion to spill some of his anger at Krishna Menon’.48

40 Ibid., p. 251. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 41 Ibid., p. 252. 42 Ibid., p. 259. 43 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 198. 44 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 382. 45 Mullik, My Years with Nehru , p. 375. 46 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, pp. 257–58. 47 Jane S. Wilson, ‘The Kennedy Administration and India’, in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, p. 49. 48 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 260. 594 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Probably, the Indian ambassador to the United States, B.K. Nehru, had to swallow the bitterest truth when President Kennedy told him:

I am not in the least bit annoyed because I understand your case. You have done now what you should have done fourteen years ago. But you spent those fourteen years in preaching morality to us and telling us how wrong it is to use force in one’s own interests. Now you have done exactly what any other country would have done and used violence to further your interests. The result is that the country is saying that the minister (preacher) has been caught coming out of the brothel and people are clapping.49

There was a specifi c, additional circumstance explaining why the Americans (including pressmen) heaped extraordinarily severe condemnation upon India for the nearly bloodless military action in the tiny territory of Goa. In the words of B.K. Nehru, ‘the chief representative of India (in the American mind), Mr. Krishna Menon, used, not only to vituperate against and abuse the Americans but specifi cally used their actions to illustrate the sins, including violence, against which he was preaching’.50 Commenting on the military action in Goa, B.N. Mullik, a great admirer and confi dant of Nehru, wrote:

There was severe criticism of this action as a serious departure from India’s profession of peaceful methods to solve international disputes. There is no doubt that India’s and particularly Pandit Nehru’s prestige suffered a serious dent by this action. The indirect result was that, having once fallen from the high pedestal of non-violence and abjurations of force to settle international disputes, India did not get the amount of sympathy and international support which she deserved when the Chinese aggressed against her a few months later.51

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 To be candid, the Goa action of 1961, and the conﬂ ict with China in 1962, pricked two of the most colourful balloons ﬂ oated by India’s foreign policy apologists, especially Jawaharlal Nehru. One was the occupation of an ethical high ground in the matter of denunciation of use of force in defence of national interests. The other was the

49 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 385. 50 Ibid. 51 Mullik, My Years with Nehru, p. 385. Relations with the United States 595

fi xation upon non-alignment along with the condemnation of military alliance as insurance, or an immediate counteraction, against any military threat. On Goa, it is impossible to resist the temptation to quote Arthur M. Schlesinger: ‘The contrast between Nehru’s incessant sanctioning on the subject of non-aggression and his brisk exercise in matchpolitik was too comic not to cause comment…It was almost too much to expect the targets of Nehru’s past sermons not to respond in kind’.52 As to the India–China confl ict of 1962, much has been written in the chapter on relations with China in this book. Yet, some stories need to be stressed here—especially the dangerous fun and frolic about non-alignment in the face of severe drubbing by the Chinese, or even earlier, when the need for American military aid became more and more urgent, if India had to cope with the threat from China. Signifi cantly, at every crucial point in these stories, the shadow of Krishna Menon not only hangs but vitiates India’s foreign relations and vital interests. Behind him stands his friend, Nehru, who never had the mental maturity to strike a balance between ethics and realism, but who, by 1961, became a physical wreck, incapable of handling India’s foreign relations but thoroughly unwilling to give up power. In September 1961, Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul, the Chief of the General Staff of the Indian Army, met B.K. Nehru in London. At that time B.K. Nehru, who called B.M. Kaul ‘Bijji’, was about to leave for the United States of America as India’s ambassador. What B.K. Nehru recorded about his meeting with Bijji was terrifying:

Bijji told me that we were going soon to come into military conﬂ ict with the Chinese. Krishna Menon had adopted a ‘forward’ strategy ordering the Army to go right ahead to the frontier we claimed. The Chinese were already, in the Ladakh area at least, well into our territory. It was obvious, therefore, that this forward policy would bring us into direct confrontation with them. We had neither training

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 nor arms nor equipment to meet the assault when it came and we would get a terriﬁ c licking. As I was going to Washington I should please, please arrange to get American military aid so that we could defend ourselves.53

52 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, p. 527. 53 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 344. 596 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Signiﬁ cantly, B.M. Kaul was a beneﬁ ciary of Krishna Menon’s unwarranted manoeuvres with promotions in the Indian Army.54 B.K. Nehru told B.M. Kaul in the aforesaid London meeting, that the latter ‘had access to the Prime Minister; why did he not go to him and tell him what was happening’. B.K. Nehru went further:

In any case, I said that I thought he was the blue-eyed boy and a great friend of Krishna Menon’s—he was widely regarded as Krishna Menon’s stooge—so how was it that he was doing something contrary to the Defence Minister’s views. He said that it was true that he had been a great friend of Krishna Menon but that friendship had ceased when he discovered that that man’s motivation was not the pursuit of the national but his own political aggrandizement. He had ordered this forward policy not because it was the best defence strategy but because it gave him political mileage.55

Among Krishna Menon’s various capabilities, two were glaring: telling untruths and being needlessly impolite. As Khushwant Singh put it: ‘Lying was Menon’s second nature and came as easily to him as discourtesy’.56 Ambassador B.K. Nehru had to withstand this lying when, a few months following his meeting with Bijji, he came from Washington to New Delhi for consultations. B.K. Nehru writes:

I told the Prime Minister about my conversation with Bijji and asked him whether he would like me to do anything with the Americans. He said he would enquire and let me know. A few days later, he said he had enquired from Krishna Menon who had assured him that our army was fully equipped and fully trained to meet any Chinese onslaught and nothing need, therefore, be done. I reported both these conversations to Bijji and asked him to go and speak to the Prime Minister. He said he would but the difﬁ culty was that when he disagreed with Krishna Menon it was the latter who was believed. If Krishna Menon had assured the Prime Minister that we were all prepared, he was totally wrong.57 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

Evidently, Nehru did not have the mental alertness to perceive the depth of the looming crisis in India–China relations. Moreover, as revealed during his trip to America in November 1961, Nehru

54 Wilson, ‘The Kennedy Administration and India’, p. 55. 55 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second , p. 344. 56 Singh, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, p. 152. 57 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 345. Relations with the United States 597

did not have the physical strength to discharge his duties as India’s prime minister and external affairs minister. Therefore, his friend and de facto foreign minister of India, was at liberty to play havoc with India’s vital interests. On 5 November 1961, Nehru arrived in America. On 7 November, talks between Nehru and Kennedy, along with their ofﬁ cers, lasted two and a half hours. Galbraith, who was present at this meeting, writes:

As talks, they were a brilliant monologue by the President. This was not intentional—Nehru simply did not respond. Question after question he answered with monosyllables or a sentence or two at most…the President found it very discouraging but he kept his good humor and kept on trying.58

On 10 November, Nehru and Kennedy met alone and ‘things went much better. In private, the conversation became much more relaxed’.59 Ambassador B.K. Nehru’s assessment of Nehru’s visit to America is important.

In view of Jack Kennedy’s respect for Jawaharlal personally, his understanding of the Indian position as a whole and his unshaken and continuous support for Indian democracy and India’s economic development the visit should have been a great success. Unfortunately, it was not to be. The President, as I gathered later, was left with the impression that the Prime Minister was ‘ﬁ nished’…There were moments during his visit when the old Jawaharlal returned but for long periods he was spiritless, listless, uninterested in his surroundings and uncommunicative…60

So, in 1961 and 1962, India meandered into a bloody and disgraceful conﬂ ict with China under the leadership of two sick persons: the prime minister and external affairs minister, and the defence minister and de facto external affairs minister. If Nehru’s sickness was recent,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Menon’s was old and universally known, although mystifyingly ignored by Nehru. On 15 August 1947, Nehru appointed Krishna Menon as the Indian high commissioner to London. Sudhir Ghosh told M.K. Gandhi in 1947 that ‘one day this Krishna Menon

58 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 227. 59 Ibid., p. 228. 60 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, pp. 367–68. 598 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

will probably destroy Panditji’. (Actually, before Krishna Menon destroyed Nehru visibly in 1962, he vitiated India’s defence and foreign relations for decades—rendering India’s foreign policy both unethical and unrealistic.) Gandhi agreed with Sudhir Ghosh and pointed out that ‘Jawaharlal is a poor judge of men’. ‘Gandhiji added that he accepted H.N. Brailsford’s analysis of Krishna Menon’s personality as accurate and fair’, and gave Ghosh a letter dated 24 October 1947 in which Noel Brailsford wrote to Gandhi that Krishna Menon ‘is a sick man whose relations with his fellows can never be normal or happy. He seems always to create round himself an atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue. He split the Indian community in London and for years it gave a painful exhibition of disunity’.61 So, the two friends—Nehru and Menon—who were largely responsible for upsetting the balance between ethics and realism in India’s foreign relations had been sick for a long time (as early as 1949),62 although their sickness became glaring in 1961 and 1962. Of course, Krishna Menon’s sickness (reﬂ ected in a continuous dependence on a drug called Luminal) was much more chronic and acute, and the not-yet-fully answered question is why Nehru not only tolerated but continually boosted Menon when there was ample evidence as early as 1951 that Krishna Menon, high commissioner to London, was terribly sick—physically as well as psychologically.63 How does one explain Krishna Menon’s physical and mental sickness? He spent many years in London, setting up the India League and working for India’s independence. But, as B.K. Nehru records,

He had neither money nor means of livelihood, though he technically was a barrister. The extreme frugality that he practised, even to the extent of not eating enough, was not voluntary; he had no alternative. Whether as a result of the physical hardships he suffered or otherwise

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 he developed over the years a nature so irritable, so acerbic and so quarrelsome that the number of people he fought with or deliberately insulted seemed to exceed the number of his followers.64

61 Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, pp. 221–22. 62 For details see the chapter on relations with the United Kingdom, and Singh, Truth, Love and Malice, esp. pp. 136–37. 63 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2, pp. 140–43. 64 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 370. Relations with the United States 599

But, the question is this. Did Nehru get infected by his friend’s mental sickness? Otherwise, it is difficult to understand the ‘Rasputin-like effect’65 that Krishna Menon exercised on Indian affairs in general and Nehru in particular. This effect magnifi ed as Nehru confi rmed his own mental disorder in 1957, when he made Krishna Menon the defence minister. ‘This’, writes S. Gopal, ‘proved one of Nehru’s less fortunate decisions’. For, ‘Menon’s devious ways of functioning and his propensity to create coteries were known to Nehru’. Moreover, Gopal adds, ‘even in high offi ce, Menon remained a whining egotist with a talent for grievance. Within two months of taking up the defence portfolio’, he wrote to Nehru ‘one of his characteristic letters of masochistic bitterness, bemoaning his unfriended plight and offering to resign’.66 Of course, he would never actually resign. In 1958, for instance, he proposed to resign twice. Perhaps this was a tactic to ensure he carried on in an autocratic manner and adopt perverse measures that damaged India’s interests without provoking any protest from Nehru. Nevertheless, Menon’s perverse personality created unprecedented problems for the Indian military, noted for its professionalism and abstention from politicking. B.K. Nehru writes,

He had only one base which was his closeness to Jawaharlal Nehru and he was so protective of this base that he tried to prevent aggressively anybody else getting near to the roots of his power. If he suspected anybody who was independent and objective of having inﬂ uence with the Prime Minister that man became the target of his attack.67

At about the time that Menon became the defence minister, General Thimayya (Timmy to his friends) became the Chief of Army Staff (COAS). ‘With little interest in politics and an outstanding record for courage and professional ability, Thimayya enjoyed unparalleled popularity among the ranks. He also, at this stage, commanded the 68 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 confi dence of Nehru’, writes S. Gopal. This probably proved to be his greatest disqualifi cation. Menon could not confi ne himself to ‘unpleasant bossiness and supercilious bullying’,69 in dealing with

65 Ibid. 66 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, pp. 128–29. 67 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 374. 68 Ibid., p. 131. 69 Ibid. 600 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

senior offi cers like Thimayya. He concocted the story that ‘Thimayya was planning a military coup against Jawaharlal Nehru’, and, according to B.K. Nehru, this ‘was explicable only on the theory that he did not want anybody other than himself to have the ear of the Prime Minister in regard to defence. Jawaharlal, trustful as ever, seems to have swallowed what he was told’.70 Public protests prevented Krishna Menon from carrying out the dismissal of General Thimayya. Nevertheless, ‘what he did succeed in doing was to destroy the confi dence of the Prime Minister in the Chief of the Army Staff and equally to destroy the morale of the Army. After Thimayya’s tenure, the Army began to be politicized. It was this politicization’, observes B.K. Nehru, ‘and the consequent ineffi ciency and loss of morale which contributed greatly to the inglorious defeat at the hands of the Chinese of this once proud and till then invincible force’.71 Being sure of Nehru’s support for anything he did, Krishna Menon went to incredible lengths to hurt India’s interests, proving at every step that he was of unsound mind, and that his ailment could infect Nehru. As S. Gopal observes,

Nehru was gratiﬁ ed by Menon’s efforts to effect economy by realloca- tions within the sanctioned budget and to increase production in defence factories for the needs of the armed services as well as for the ordinary market. This was in itself unobjectionable, although Menon took it to absurd lengths by ordering the production of hair-clippers and pressure-cookers and was planning, at the time of the Chinese aggression, the manufacture of mechanical toys.72

At the time of the war with China, writes Galbraith, ‘the Indian army is without equipment…partly because resources have gone into his highly advertised supersonic and transport planes and other gadgets none of which are available to the soldiers on the frontier’.73 Add to all this, Krishna Menon’s inestimable capacity for telling lies, and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 thereby paving the way to the 1962 disaster. At a time when China was in possession of a large tract of territory in Aksai Chin claimed by India, Krishna Menon ﬂ atly denied it (on 10 September 1961 in Agra). He said: ‘I am not aware of any aggression, incursion

70 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 374. 71 Ibid., pp. 374–75. 72 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, pp. 130–31. 73 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, p. 379. Relations with the United States 601

or intrusion by the Chinese into any part of Indian territory’. As S. Gopal comments: ‘With such a perverse refusal on the part of the Defence Minister to face facts which had been ofﬁ cially disclosed by the Government of India, it is not surprising that, when China did launch large-scale attacks, India was unprepared’.74 On 29 October, Nehru publicly announced—without being aware probably that he was making a fool of himself and Krishna Menon—that to the query ‘why India had not been prepared for a border war he did not know of any adequate answer’.75 After all, he himself was the author of a forward policy towards China as early as 1954! Nehru did not want to blame anyone for the 1962 disaster. How could he? He had himself and Menon to blame. P.V.R. Rao, who became India’s defence secretary in November 1962, has written: ‘Even as the danger continued to develop with the passage of time, Nehru developed no policy to meet the situation’.76 One can rhetorically state that both Krishna Menon and Nehru had been long sleeping over the China policy. That is why Nehru did not eject Menon from the Cabinet even when it became crystal clear that Krishna Menon lacked the physical and mental ability to perform the duties of defence minister. Thus, in November 1961, when Nehru was speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York,

…what was noteworthy was Krishna Menon’s behaviour. He sat at the head table, of course….And then, very ostentatiously, very rudely and very objectionably, closed his eyes during the Prime Minister’s speech and pretended that he had gone off to sleep with his head lolling backwards and forwards and side to side. Galbraith pointed this out to me and whispered that if a Minister had dared to do that in the presence of the President he would have found himself out on the street the next day.77

What actually happened was that, in a year, Menon put Nehru on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the road in the matter of India’s foreign relations in general, and relations with China in particular. At the time of the 1962 military catastrophe, Nehru had to seek foreign military assistance, especially American assistance. The behaviour of Indian leaders (including Nehru) revealed the utter lack

74 Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 3, p. 131. 75 Ibid., p. 224. 76 Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 13. 77 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 369. 602 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of balance between ethics and realism in India’s foreign relations. More importantly, their behaviour provided—by its combination of self-pity, self-righteousness, vainglory, and straight shameless stupidity—a script for a tragic comedy. In sharp contrast, American behaviour reﬂ ected a sensibility (bordering magnanimity) that probably had no parallel in India–America relations till the 21st century at the time of negotiations over India–America civilian nuclear-cooperation.78 According to P.V.R. Rao, ‘nonalignment was ingrained in Nehru’s bones. Nehru, aged and worn out and his sole adviser, Krishna Menon, who was equally allergic to any approach to the United States…were enmeshed in the toils of their own policy’.79 In deciding to supply military aid to a non-aligned India, America naturally faced opposition from Pakistan, an old ally. Galbraith therefore requested Indian decision makers that they should, at that critical moment, play down the threat from Pakistan. In this context, one wonders whether Krishna Menon was merely giving vent to his innate perversion or trying to sabotage American military aid to India. For, in October 1962, in course of one fortnight, in Bangalore and New Delhi, ‘Krishna Menon had reminded his audience that Pakistan was the major enemy’.80 About the same period, the Parliamentary Congress Party met Nehru three times, and on the third occasion, ‘the only person opposing Menon’s departure was Menon himself’.81 But Nehru would not dismiss or even discipline Menon. After the commencement of war and India’s military reverses, B.K. Nehru received a number of telegrams, addressed by Prime Minister Nehru to President Kennedy, which asked for military help. Summing up these telegrams, B.K. Nehru writes: ‘Our reaction to this invasion as it affected our much vaunted policy of nonalignment and our supercilious attitude towards the Americans was, I fear, the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

78 For numerous tragi-comic details, see the chapter on relations with China, and Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, esp. pp. 379–80, 387, 389–90, 394, 396, 403, 405, 413–14, 419, 424, 435–36. Also see Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, esp. pp. 404–5, 407. 79 Rao, Defence Without Drift, p. 15. 80 Ibid., p. 393 81 Ibid., p. 394. Relations with the United States 603

most humiliating episode in Indo-American relations that I had the misfortune to handle’.82 Lal Bahadur Shastri became India’s second prime minister on 2 June 1964, following Jawaharlal Nehru’s death on 27 May 1964. In October of the same year, Ambassador Chester Bowles suggested to Shastri that he wanted to plan a visit by Shastri to the United States. Although Shastri had never gone abroad, unlike some numbers of Nehru’s Cabinet (for example, Krishna Menon), he was not anxious to grab opportunities for foreign trips. Shastri told Bowles that he would consider a visit to the United States after about a year. ‘The State Department and White House’, writes Chester Bowles, ‘quickly agreed to the visit but suggested, for a variety of reasons, that it be scheduled for the spring of 1965, to which Shastri with considerable reluctance agreed’.83 Lyndon B. Johnson was then the President of the United States. Unlike his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, Johnson had very little interest in, and much less of knowledge about, foreign relations. Johnson’s ‘downgrading of foreign affairs’, writes B.K. Nehru, ‘took the form of refusing to see any Ambassador. In fact it extended this refusal to all foreigners, no matter of which rank’.84 Harold Wilson, the British prime minister, came to New York to deliver an important address before an international gathering. Probably because Wilson was not ready to extend all-out support to American military ventures in Vietnam, Johnson refused to see him. Johnson changed his decision only after the American secretary of state warned that Johnson’s refusal to receive Wilson might lead to a diplomatic catastrophe. But, as B.K. Nehru informs, Johnson treated Wilson ‘rather offhandedly. It was reported that he had ﬁ rst kept Wilson waiting in the ante room; then met him for a few minutes and then excused himself by saying that he had unfortunately to leave for Texas immediately’.85 Indira Gandhi was the information and broadcasting

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 minister under Prime Minister Shastri. She went to New York to participate in the inauguration of the 1964 World Fair. She carried a letter from Shastri, and wanted to meet Johnson, who initially refused. But the secretary of state alerted him to the harmful impact

82 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 404 83 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 117. 84 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 416. 85 Ibid., p. 417. 604 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of this refusal upon relations with India. Therefore, Johnson received Indira Gandhi. As B.K. Nehru reports, ‘the compromise reached was that she would call on Mrs. Johnson who would spend considerable time with her and the President would then only see her for a few minutes in the Rose Garden as a kind of extra benefi t!’86 But if all this was President Johnson’s personal frailty, the foibles of the state department were no less worrisome. Shastri agreed to visit Washington D.C. in early June 1965 to suit Johnson’s timetable. But the state department could not overcome its addiction to equating Pakistan with India. Therefore, the visit of the Pakistani ruler, Ayub Khan, was set for mid-April 1965. ‘This was’, comments Chester Bowles, ‘as illogical as the President of France’s refusing to invite the President of the United States to France unless a similar invitation were sent to the President of Mexico’.87 Probably, however, the state department was incapable of comprehending accurately the mind of President Johnson. For, eventually, in early April 1965, Johnson chose to uninvite both Ayub and Shastri. His colleagues in the state department informed Chester Bowles that ‘the President had suddenly decided that he could not handle all the commitments he had made for the coming weeks’.88 But this information might not refl ect the whole truth. For, in the words of Dennis Kux, ‘worried that Pakistan’s cozying up to China and its unhelpful attitude on Vietnam could cause problems, Johnson decided to cancel Ayub Khan’s trip….On refl ection, the Chief Executive concluded he should put Shastri off as well’.89 It is interesting to add what Phil Potter, a close friend of Johnson, told Ambassador B.K. Nehru about the real reason behind the above noted invitation. Potter pointed out that the president ‘cancelled these visits because he was having trouble with the aid bill in Congress and would not have been able to tell either the President or the Prime Minister what aid he could give them for the next 90

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 year’. Actually, Shastri did not plan to solicit aid. For him it was a familiarization trip—an opportunity to exchange views with the American president. Nevertheless, it is interesting to recall how the

86 Ibid. 87 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 118. 88 Ibid., p. 119. 89 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 232–33. 90 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 419. Relations with the United States 605

two victims of Johnson’s incredibly maladroit move—India and Pakistan—proceeded to react. After all, offi cially, no explanation was given for the cancellation of the two visits. A press statement of the Government of India noted, among other things, that the Indian ambassador in Washington ‘has informed the Secretary of State that the unusual manner in which this step has been taken will cause misunderstanding in India’.91 The Pakistani response smacked of clever sycophancy. ‘The main target of US anger, Ayub Khan, perhaps more familiar with Johnson’s unpredictable style, swallowed hard and contained his annoyance.’92 One reason why the Pakistan government kept completely quiet about the unpardonable snub from Johnson could be that they were planning to seize Kashmir by force, using American weapons and equipment gifted to it since 1954 for operations against communist countries (and not India). In August 1965, Pakistan sent 5,000 armed infi ltrators to India-held J&K, with the expectation that the infi ltrators would be able to catalyse a liberation war against India. Pakistani calculations behind such a move—which could certainly lead to war—were indeed complex. One, ‘the Pakistani had long been convinced that one Muslim soldier could outfi ght ten Hindus’.93 Two, after China exploded a nuclear bomb, and demonstrated India’s relative weakness on this point, the Pakistanis felt ‘fortifi ed by China’s assurance that in a few years there would be no India worth bothering about’.94 India embarked upon a defence modernisation plan after its defeat in the hands of China in 1962. ‘Although in 1965 Pakistan’s armed forces could not match India’s in numbers, thanks to U.S. aid, they had gained a qualitative edge in armour and air power’.95 The Pakistanis wanted to take military action against India before this edge disappeared. So, when armed Pakistani infi ltrators failed to ignite an anti- India uprising, authorities in Pakistan launched on 1 September

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 1965 a full-scale war against India across the J&K ceaseﬁ re line. The United States was aware of aggression by Pakistan. It did not reprimand Pakistan for using American weapons against India in

91 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 119. 92 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 233. 93 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 122. 94 Mathur and Kamath, Conduct of India’s Foreign Policy, p. 135. 95 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 235. 606 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

violation of solemn assurances to India by three American presidents and ﬁ ve American ambassadors to India.96 Moreover, America did not denounce India when it crossed the international border in Punjab to checkmate Pakistan on a terrain deemed favourable by India (the J&K terrain being advantageous to Pakistan). ‘There was, of course, an immediate cut off of American aid to both sides but the food shipments were not stopped. This was something very much in our favour’, writes B.K. Nehru, ‘for our defence forces were certainly not as dependent on foreign aid as Pakistan’s were’.97 Many important aspects of the India–America–Pakistan triangular relationship centring on the 1965 India–Pakistan War have been elaborated in the chapter on relations with Pakistan in this book. Yet, a few points may be stressed at a partial risk of repetition. America succeeded in alienating both India and Pakistan. India could not accept the American argument that once American arms were in Pakistani hands, the Americans lost all control.98 The war came to an end on 22 September. But approximately 3,000 Indians, as also 3,000 Pakistanis, lost their lives. Yet, as Ambassador Bowles was repeatedly reminded by the Indians, ‘every Indian casualty had been caused by an American bullet, an American shell or an American hand grenade’.99 ‘The little goodwill that had been generated in India for the United States as a consequence of the U.S. response to the Chinese aggression of 1962 quickly dissipated.’100 Pakistanis felt let down because they concluded that they did not get that military support from America, which they deserved as an ally of America. America, again, must have been disappointed by the failure of its ally to make efﬁ cient use of such sophisticated equipment as Patton tanks which could not be matched by India’s old model tanks. It has been claimed that, in course of the 1965 war, India scored a ‘clear and heartening victory not so much over Pakistan as over the sophisticated and superior American weaponry with which Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

96 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 125. 97 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 428. 98 Ibid., p. 425. 99 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 124. 100 Sumit Ganguly, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations During the Lyndon Johnson Era’, in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, p. 82. Relations with the United States 607

Pakistan was ﬁ ghting’ India.101 ‘Almost half of the U.S.-provided Patton tanks in the Pakistan army were destroyed or badly damaged by Indian ﬁ re. More than one hundred were captured intact’, writes Chester Bowles.102 The United States supplied large-scale economic assistance to both India and Pakistan, who spent enormous resources on waging war against each other. This must have created in the minds of American policy makers a sense of futility about its policy towards South Asia. America’s growing engagement in Vietnam, too, might have caused a reconsideration of its South Asia policy. When, therefore, the Soviet Union proposed to try and mediate between India and Pakistan, observes Dennis Kux, ‘the United States supported this move—a startling reversal of policy after a decade of trying to limit Moscow’s role in South Asia’.103 Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin convened a peace conference at Tashkent in January 1966. Kosygin demonstrated his diplomatic skill by persuading Shastri and Ayub Khan to sign a peace document on 11 January. While Khan lost the war, Shastri displayed an almost unparalleled magnanimity attesting to a long-term vision for stable amity with Pakistan. As Chester Bowles writes (and Indian writers have seldom showed such appreciation for Shastri):

There were very few Indian leaders, or, indeed, leaders from any country, who could have mustered the courage Shastri showed. The Indian Army, at great cost, had won several positions from Pakistan which were of strategic importance to India in its defence against future Pakistani or Chinese attacks. But Shastri knew that total withdrawal was essential to assure a solid base for the kind of over-all peace agreement with Pakistan that he was seeking.104

Shastri returned all the positions to Pakistan, including the Haji Pir Pass, the principal route of Pakistani inﬁ ltration from Pakistan- occupied Kashmir (POK). ‘Any sensible and objective redrawing of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the borders of India and Pakistan would award this territory to India.’105 While Shastri’s long-term vision for peace in the subcontinent

101 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 428. 102 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 123–24. 103 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 238. 104 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 126–27. 105 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 430. 608 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

deserved high praise, and so did the Indian military’s ungrudging acceptance of a political decision, the abject failure to comprehend the mindset of the Pakistani leaders could not but be criticised. ‘Deeply ingrained hypotheses of rationality and pacifi sm in the psyche of the Foreign Service’, writes J.N. Dixit about his colleagues at the Tashkent conference, ‘affected its advice’.106 Perhaps Shastri himself started questioning his own decisions, for example, on the Haji Pir Pass. The mental stress he was suffering from could be a major cause of his death, a few hours after he signed the Tashkent Declaration. Once again, India failed to strike a balance between ethics and realism. Shastri’s death could be regarded as a pathetic reminder of this failure. Shastri’s successor, Indira Gandhi, agreed to visit the United States within two months of occupying the offi ce of India’s prime minister. The visit lasted from 27 March to 2 April 1966. ‘The Prime Ministerial visit had been a great success’, writes B.K. Nehru. He adds: ‘It was clear that LBJ had been completely bowled over by Indira Gandhi’s charm while she too had been impressed by his warmth and understanding’.107 What has not, however, been properly stressed by Indian writers is the fact that the major reason why Indira Gandhi’s trip succeeded was that President Johnson committed an unprecedented sacrifi ce of protocol in order to develop good relations with India. At the very fi rst ceremony on the White House lawns for an offi cial reception, the president ‘went out of his way to be cordial’, attests Chester Bowles.108 But cordiality magnifi ed into a breach of protocol, at the end of the reception, when Johnson accompanied Indira Gandhi on foot to a nearby house where Indira Gandhi would reside.109 The next breach of protocol occurred when Johnson called on Indira Gandhi. The visit, as protocol demanded, should not have lasted for more than half an hour, from 7.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. But Johnson did not leave even after an hour. This created a problem

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 because guests were arriving for another party, a dinner preceded by a 20-minute cocktail session. Johnson committed another breach of protocol when he began to receive the guests (including the vice president and the defence secretary) for the dinner. The ultimate

106 Dixit, The Indian Foreign Service, p. 172. 107 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, pp. 464–65. 108 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 136. 109 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 457. Relations with the United States 609

breach of protocol was committed when Johnson (barred by protocol from joining the dinner) himself expressed a desire to stay on for the dinner, and actually did so. One American lady columnist ‘almost fainted with astonishment at this unprecedented behaviour’ on the part of the United States president.110 To portray Indira Gandhi’s trip to America as basically a goodwill visit would smack of hypocrisy, an essential feature of India’s foreign policy. ‘There were many subjects for discussion. The most immediate was wheat.’111 Since the early 1950s, India was importing ‘an average of two million tons of wheat’ from America.112 Food shortage was due partially to faulty supposed-to-be socialist planning, and partially to the vagaries of the monsoon. As B.K. Nehru observes,

Ever since we started to plan the development of our economy in the 1950s, our stress has been on rapid industrialization. It was not that we were not aware of the importance of agriculture. The shortage of foodgrains to feed our people had compelled us even as early as 1952 to ask for wheat from the United States. We had taken the deliberate decision to pour whatever investment we could afford into the industrial sector rather than into agriculture.113

India was obtaining American wheat at a notional payment of rupees (the details of which will be narrated ahead, in the section on Indo-American economic transactions). Effects of misjudgement on macro-economic policy were aggravated by the failure of the monsoon, which was evidently not taken properly into account by the makers of the macro-economic policy. A foreign observer like Ambassador Chester Bowles understood clearly what probably these policy makers could not. ‘Probably’, writes Bowles, ‘the most important single political development in India each year was an economic event—the success or failure of the monsoon rains’.114 In 1965 and 1966 India suffered from poor crop output due to ‘two

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 nationwide droughts in succession’, which had not happened ‘for nearly a hundred years’.115

110 Ibid., pp. 457, 459, 462–63. Also see Bowles, Mission to India, p. 137. 111 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 135. 112 Ibid., p. 119. 113 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 430. 114 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 67. 115 Ibid., p. 135. 610 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Therefore, the Americans were as aware as the Indians were that Indira Gandhi had to earn much more than goodwill from her visit to America. She had to ask for economic aid, especially food aid. The Indian prime minister depicted Indian foreign policy at its hypocritical best when she confi ded to an Indian journalist that during her visit to America her ‘main mission is to get both food and foreign exchange without appearing to be asking for them’.116 Indira Gandhi was remarkably successful. Unlike her father, she did not try to lecture and annoy. She deftly used her magnetic personality and well-drafted speeches to impress not only the president but also Congressmen. The Indian Wheat Bill was then being considered by Congress. ‘The Bill fi nally went through without too much diffi culty.’117 The goodwill generated during Indira Gandhi’s visit to America was dissipated too soon, by July 1966. This happened mainly because Indira Gandhi succumbed to thoughtless pressures from her own party men (including the Leftists), as also Leftists outside her own party. Pressures arose out of some economic issues (discussed subsequently ahead) and the issue of American role in Vietnam (which will be discussed at this point). If, as a result of the loss of America’s goodwill, India suffered from severe damage to some of its vital interests, India was mainly to blame. On the Vietnam issue, India had an opportunity to play the part of a mediator between America and the Soviet Union when Shastri was the prime minister. In the past, even in the absence of a genuine opportunity, India appeared to be itching for such a part. ‘The Foreign Offi ce in Delhi’, writes B.K. Nehru, ‘was for ever trying to mediate in the confl ict between the two superpowers. Nobody ever asked them to do so but they never gave up trying’.118 The United States took an extraordinary initiative and actually asked Shastri to mediate between Washington and Moscow on the Vietnam issue. Till then, in the American

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 assessment, the Indian approach to the Vietnam problem was somewhat balanced. India simultaneously stressed that the American bombing of North Vietnam should cease and that the Geneva Conference on Vietnam should be reconvened. Shastri responded

116 Inder Malhotra, Indira Gandhi: A Personal and Political Biography, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, p. 95. 117 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 465. 118 Ibid., p. 438. Relations with the United States 611

to the American request, talked to Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin, urging him to persuade North Vietnam to start negotiations with America. On 6 January 1966, when Shastri was in Tashkent, he wrote to Johnson about all this.119 Unfortunately, Shastri passed away within four days. Shastri’s successor, Indira Gandhi, visited Moscow in July 1966, and, presumably under the inﬂ uence of pro-Soviet Leftists within (and outside) the Congress Party, including P.N. Haksar, who replaced L.K. Jha as secretary to the prime minister, she destroyed the balance in the Indian posture on Vietnam. Indira Gandhi’s visit to Moscow, observes Chester Bowles,

…[was] obviously calculated to balance her visit to the United States. But the balance somehow got out of hand, and the joint press statement issued by Mrs. Gandhi and Premier Kosygin at the end of her visit called for an end to our bombing of North Vietnam and also contained vague references to the nefarious imperialistic powers…. This set off new ﬁ reworks in Washington.120

India, with its memory of British colonial rule and a vague apprehension of substitution of French colonial rule in Vietnam by American domination, was entitled to criticise the American role in Vietnam. This was ethically correct, especially when America’s European allies (including Britain) refused to extend any support to America by sending even a medical unit. President Johnson was deeply frustrated by this behaviour on the part of his allies.121 But America’s European allies could afford to do certain things which India could not. B.K. Nehru reminds us,

In 1965 and 1966, the India Supply Mission, a wing of the Indian Embassy, shipped to India no less than fourteen million tons of foodgrains at a cost of well over a billion and a half dollars. Grain ships at one time were leaving from various ports of the United States Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 at the rate of one every ten minutes.122

Otherwise, innumerable Indians would die of starvation. But once again India failed to strike a balance between ethics and realism.

119 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 248. 120 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 139. 121 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 439. 122 Ibid., p. 432. 612 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

President Johnson took the Gandhi–Kosygin communiqué of July 1966 as a personal insult. There was no opportunity to assuage Johnson’s feelings, because ‘soon afterwards, Mrs. Gandhi, under increasing attacks from the Left of her own party and the opposition, felt compelled to reiterate statements criticizing the American bombing of Vietnam’.123 Even the alibi that a junior Indian diplomat fell into the Soviet trap and gave his concurrence to the offending July 1966 communiqué124 ceased to be valid. As to the Indian claim of application of ethical or moral principles to foreign policy,

From the American standpoint the Indian critique was, at best, empty and moralizing, and at worst, downright hypocrisy. It was seen as moralistic because the Indians lacked the necessary power to implement their concerns, and it was seen as hypocritical because India was not averse to using force when critical national interests were involved.125

If India had the right to decide what its vital national interests were, so did America. At any rate, the failure of India to maintain a proper balance between ethics and realism on the Vietnam issue had an adverse impact on India’s national interests, which will be analysed ahead in some detail in the section on India–America economic transactions. In January 1969, Richard M. Nixon succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson as the president of the United States. While India’s dependence on America for economic-technological aid was as great as before, there was hardly any vital area of America’s dependence on India. Realism, therefore, dictated that India should, at least, be courteous to Nixon. President Johnson had treated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with great cordiality and warmth when she visited the United States. In sharp and sad contrast, Indira Gandhi and her colleagues did not shower due attention (not to speak of warmth or even cordiality)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 when President Nixon visited India in August 1969. Probably, India could learn a diplomatic lesson or two from Pakistan. President Nixon left India for Pakistan, where he was treated with much greater warmth than in India, although Pakistan was very annoyed

123 Ganguly, ‘U.S.–Indian Relations’, p. 67. 124 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 139–40; Ganguly, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations’, p. 86. 125 Ibid., p. 85. Relations with the United States 613

with the American policy of continuing restrictions on arms supply to Pakistan since 1965.126 India was fairly consistent in practising diplomatic ineptitude vis-à-vis Nixon. Even earlier, in 1967, while Nixon (even as a former vice president of America but presently a private citizen) was treated in Pakistan as a celebrity, in India no attempt was made by Indira Gandhi to even conceal her contempt for Nixon.127 ‘Never one to forget a slight’, comments Thomas P. Thornton, ‘the experience rankled in Nixon and probably coloured his approach to the subcontinent’.128 Nevertheless, it was not easy to decide how far tensions in India– America relations arose out of the personal predilections of Nixon and Indira Gandhi, or out of Indira Gandhi’s political necessity during 1967–71 (when her Congress Party ceased to enjoy a majority in Parliament) to placate the Leftists in the country—sometimes even by pleasing the Soviet Union at the expense of the United States. India tried to set up an embassy in Hanoi, but desisted only when America threatened to cut off economic assistance, which at that time was too substantial to be ignored. Realism prevailed over Leftism. In late 1969, Trivandrum (later Thiruvananthapuram) witnessed the death of nine construction workers when a building caved in. This incident received more than normal publicity because, ﬁ rst, the building belonged to the Soviet cultural centre, and, second, it was being constructed in clear contravention of prevalent government rules. There was no option but to close down this illegally constructed cultural centre. But, in a sop to the Leftists, the government closed down ﬁ ve centres of the United States Information Service (USIS). Perhaps the most unkind and disgraceful act committed by Indira Gandhi was the unnecessary humiliation she heaped on Nixon by refusing to attend a White House dinner for heads of governments to celebrate, in late 1970, the 25th anniversary of the UN. President Yahya Khan of Pakistan accepted this invitation. After all, Indira 129

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Gandhi and Yahya Khan were already in New York at the time.

126 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 280. 127 Ibid. 128 Thomas P. Thornton, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations in the Nixon and Ford Years’, in Gould and Ganguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, p. 93. 129 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 282–85; Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, pp. 95–96. 614 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

What President Yahya Khan experienced in the course of the aforesaid dinner was not merely an expected excellence of cuisine, but the opening up of a great diplomatic opportunity, which could be used against arch-rival India. Nixon sought Yahya Khan’s help in promoting an America–China reconciliation. That Nixon, and his principal aide, Henry A. Kissinger, chief of the National Security Council, was planning a sort of diplomatic coup by moving close to China was not even known to the United States state department, including the secretary of state. Therefore, the Indian foreign policy establishment, or the Indian intelligence establishment, was not expected to know the Nixon–Kissinger game about China, and about soliciting Pakistani help in this game. But this only underlines the necessity of avoiding extreme steps like the Indian prime minister humiliating the president of the most powerful country in the world by a boycott of the above noted White House dinner. Even without this boycott, Nixon would have lionized Yahya Khan. But, in the absence of the boycott, there was a chance that Nixon’s support for Yahya Khan in the 1971 East Pakistan (Bangladesh) crisis could be less dogmatic and shameful. This crisis has been discussed elaborately in the chapter on India’s relations with Pakistan in this book. But a few points about perversion in American diplomacy ought to be highlighted here. Nixon and Kissinger appeared to ignore completely the human rights crisis in East Pakistan, which tended to overshadow the political crisis. In mid-July 1971, at the height of the East Pakistan crisis, Nixon made the amazing announcement of Kissinger’s trip to China, undertaken secretly with Islamabad’s assistance. Following this Kissinger mission to China, America could use its embassy in Paris for communications with the Chinese embassy in the same city. It was no longer dependent on Yahya Khan for contacts with China. Yet, because of perverse reasoning (noted ahead), Nixon and Kissinger persisted in encouraging Yahya Khan 130

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to demolish democracy and human rights in East Pakistan. The East Pakistan crisis commenced in early 1971, when the West Pakistani ruling circle headed by Yahya Khan refused to honour the verdict of the ﬁ rst-ever nationwide elections held in December 1970, evidently because it did not want to install Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the undisputed leader of East Pakistan, as the

130 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 289–96; Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 967. Relations with the United States 615

prime minister of Pakistan, in strict compliance with the electoral verdict. Things moved from bad to worse after 25 March 1971 when the Pakistan Army launched a genocidal attack against the East Pakistanis (especially the minorities) who fl ed to India in thousands, and subsequently in millions. Till 16 December 1971, when the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan surrendered, and Bangladesh came into existence, Nixon and Kissinger did nothing to promote a political settlement in accordance with the 1970 electoral verdict. They adopted, for lack of a more appropriate phrase, what could be regarded as a thoroughly perverse approach. They encouraged Yahya Khan to carry out a ruthless pacifi cation campaign, and urged upon others, including nearly all offi cial and non-offi cial experts on South Asia, to wait until Yahya Khan succeeded. They never put pressure upon Yahya Khan to open a dialogue with Mujibur Rahman, who was languishing in a Pakistani jail. If the expectation over the prospects of Yahya Khan’s success was weird, no less was the expectation that China would intervene militarily against India to rescue Pakistan. Kissinger went so far as to try to intimidate (without any success however) the Indian ambassador to the United States by observing that America would not be able to assist India against China. Perversion reached the most reprehensible extent in early November 1971, when Indira Gandhi met Nixon in Washington. In a White House welcome speech, Nixon talked of the sufferings of the people of the state of Bihar in India on account of fl oods, but he did not refer to the misery of the millions of East Pakistani refugees in India. As Indira Gandhi criticised Nixon for this lapse, she was kept waiting for 45 minutes when, the next day, she went to the White House for a meeting with Nixon. Again, in an after-dinner speech, Nixon failed to refer to the tragedy in East Pakistan.131 The emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country was a major outcome of the 1971 East Pakistan crisis. India’s relations

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 with the Nixon administration obviously deteriorated. India’s pre- ponderance in South Asia had to be grudgingly acknowledged by America. What was particularly irksome to America was the sense of futility about enormous American military donations (not merely supplies) to Pakistan. The Pakistan Army, ‘in spite of over a billion

131 Dixit, The Indian Foreign Service, p. 173; Frank, Indira, 2001, p. 336; Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 296–302; Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, pp. 97–99. 616 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

dollars in U.S. aid, was twice—in 1965 and 1971—overwhelmingly defeated—in a matter of days—by the Indian army long denigrated by U.S. military strategists’.132 Both America and India went on taking such steps that annoyed each other. In February 1972, Nixon visited China, and the joint communiqué issued at the end of the visit referred to the Kashmir conﬂ ict. Earlier, in January 1972, India posted an ambassador in Hanoi. In the same year, while the Israeli Olympic participants were murdered in Munich, India extended recognition to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), ignoring the traditional friendship of liberal American Jews towards India. Moreover, India behaved unwisely and unrealistically when, as retaliation against America’s negative role in the 1971 East Pakistan crisis, India imposed restrictions on visits by American academics to India. For, in general, the American academics severely criticised the role of the Nixon Administration in the East Pakistan crisis.133 Yet, what might thoroughly annoy Leftists inside and outside Indira Gandhi’s party, an extraordinary component of India–America cooperation could withstand the shocks of the 1971 East Pakistan crisis. Both ‘continued, jointly, to spy on the Chinese from the tops of the Himalayas’, for example, from ‘Nanda Kot, the 22,400-foot mountain adjacent to Nanda Devi’.134 For India—especially Prime Minister Indira Gandhi—1971 was an exceptionally lucky year. There were victory in war, a bountiful harvest, and electoral success. This was indeed a time to persist in a show of habitual deﬁ ance towards the United States. However, this luck did not last long. Next year saw a bad harvest. In another year, in 1973, oil prices rose dangerously. India, however, could not overcome its habit of defying America. At the same time, India did not mind receiving US$75 million of assistance from America. This was an example of American reluctance to follow a policy of tit for tat even though the opportunity was ripe. In October 1974,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Kissinger, then the secretary of state, visited India, recognised India’s pre-eminence in South Asia, its policy of non-alignment, and pleaded for maturity in India–America relations. Kissinger’s visit lasted from 27–30 October. ‘The Prime Minister met and

132 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 249. 133 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, pp. 192–93. 134 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, Allied: Bombay, 1979, pp. 40–41. Relations with the United States 617

had lunch with Kissinger during his fi rst day in New Delhi, but then abruptly left the capital for Kashmir in what appeared to be a calculated snub’.135 During the Kissinger visit, India and America set up an Indo-US Joint Commission, with sub commissions for science/technology, education/culture, and economics/trade, which would be able to insulate important areas of mutual cooperation from political gyrations. On 30 October, Kissinger announced at a press conference in New Delhi that the United States (more specifi cally the CIA) was not interested in interfering in India’s domestic politics.136 This announcement was necessary—even if ineffective—because Indira Gandhi repeatedly hinted—in season and out of season—at the CIA’s attempts to infl uence Indian politics. India was suffering from socio-economic-political unrest on account of food shortages and infl ation largely due to the failure of monsoon in 1972, 1973 and 1974. Corruption in government and general maladministra- tion aggravated the impact of this failure; for example, in Gujarat, where Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party was the ruling party. But Indira Gandhi attributed the unrest in Gujarat to a CIA plot.137 There can be no better riposte to Indira Gandhi’s allegation than that provided by Moynihan, who writes:

In New Delhi I had pressed the Embassy to go back over the whole of our quarter-century in India, to establish just what we had been up to. In the end I was satisﬁ ed we had been up to very little. We had twice, but only twice, interfered in Indian politics to the extent of providing money to a political party. Both times this was done in the face of a prospective Communist victory in a state election, once in Kerala and once in West Bengal, where Calcutta is located. Both times the money was given to the Congress Party, which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs. Gandhi herself, who was then a party ofﬁ cial.138 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 In this context, one is entitled to raise the question of whether, at a time when ‘in the early 1970s, the KGB presence in India became one of the largest in the world outside the Soviet Bloc’, Indira Gandhi

135 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 328. 136 Ibid., pp. 328–29. 137 Frank, Indira, p. 358. 138 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, p. 41. 618 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

tried to camouﬂ age this development by talking about the CIA. Actually, ‘Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade ofﬁ cials’ so that the Soviets could use ‘as many cover positions as they wished’.139 India did not appear to be interested in promoting a mature relationship with the United States. That was apparent from the way the Indians treated Ambassador Moynihan, who was to complete two years in India soon after Kissinger’s trip to New Delhi; he was not interested in extending his stay in India. An eminent professor of Harvard University, Moynihan did everything to relieve India of the pains of a debtor nation by writing off the wheat loan (which would be discussed in detail in the section on India–America economic transactions in this chapter). Moynihan put himself through unbearable strain in order that India could recover its self-respect. However, and unfortunately, he was not treated by the Indians with the respect he deserved. In Moynihan’s words:

In my two years there, from 1973 to 1975, I gave four speeches, two of them lectures at the Indian Institute of Management in my next to last month. I held no press conference until my next to last day….The affair of the heart, surely, was over. It was my hope that now that we perhaps liked each other less, we might respect one another more. I had no great success. Under the rule of Nehru’s daughter, the world’s largest democracy had, in foreign affairs, become bound to Soviet policy.140

Neither academics nor media persons in Delhi covered themselves with glory when they ignored an exceptionally gifted academic like Moynihan. Probably, they tried to play safe and take their cue from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on how to improve relations with America. ‘The road ahead was neither smooth nor the direction clear, and Mrs. Gandhi often seemed unconvinced that it was worth 141

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 taking’. What Indians forgot was that India needed the United States much more than the United States needed India. What Indians also forgot was that disagreements between two sovereign countries were natural, but excessively rancorous reactions to such disagreements

139 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 321. 140 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, pp. 16–17. 141 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 111. Relations with the United States 619

were neither normal nor desirable. In this perspective, a comparative assessment of Indian/American reactions to some important events in 1974 and 1975 proved that the Americans were much more restrained than the Indians, even though the Americans could afford to be less restrained, whereas India could not. Thus, many traditional friends of India were disillusioned after India exploded an underground nuclear device on 18 May 1974. For example, those Americans who criticised America’s role in the 1971 Bangladesh crisis, and extended moral support to India, became aggrieved by India’s nuclear test. Secretary of state, Kissinger, however, restrained his department from showering any sharp criticism upon India for this test. Similarly, when Indira Gandhi dealt an unexpected blow to the Indians by imposing on them the Emergency on 24 June 1975, American admirers of India became thoroughly dejected. After all, despite all the strains in India–America relations over the decades, India’s functioning democracy provided an invisible moral link, as it were, to a democratic America, which could override all the strains. But once again Kissinger played a key role in underplaying America’s ofﬁ cial response to the shattering shock to Indian democracy caused by Indira Gandhi’s declaration of Emergency on 24 June 1975. Perhaps he was atoning for the moral lapse he committed in favour of Yahya Khan in 1971 by the moral lapse he indulged in favour of Indira Gandhi in 1975!142 In contrast, India’s reaction to America’s lifting of the arms embargo upon Pakistan (as well as India) on 24 February 1975 was unbalanced and unrealistic (if not irresponsible). Unlike in the past, America planned to sell (and not donate) small quantities of weapons to Pakistan (as also to India if India wanted). These sales would not be on such a scale as to generate an India–Pakistan arms race, or disrupt the India–Pakistan military balance. An old ally like Pakistan had to be occasionally propitiated by the sale of a modest quantity

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of arms. India too could take advantage of the situation and obtain arms from America, if India so desired. Nevertheless, India’s reaction to the American move of 24 February 1975 was excessively sharp—so much so that even India’s ambassador to the United States, T.N. Kaul, committed a gross violation of diplomatic etiquette, and publicly reviled the American policy. A few days after the American

142 Frank, Indira, p. 385; Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 314–16, 336–38; Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, pp. 111–13, 116. 620 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

announcement of 24 February 1975, William Saxbe succeeded Moynihan as the United States ambassador to India. Saxbe was a critic of the American policy towards the 1971 Bangladesh crisis. But he found the Indians wallowing in contradictions vis-à-vis their attitudes, activities, and assertions towards the United States. ‘When I call on cabinet ministers, the President, or Governors, they all love to talk about their sons, sons-in-law and daughters in the United States and how well they are doing and how well they like things. The next day I read in the papers that the very same people are denouncing the United States….’ Nothing can illustrate more poignantly the huge chasm between ethics and realism in India’s foreign relations.143 Jimmy Carter became the president of the United States in January 1977. One week before he took offi ce, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi terminated the Emergency, released a large number of political prisoners, and announced the holding of general elections in March 1977. Offi cial and non-offi cial circles in America were enthusiastic about the restoration of democracy in India, and the probability of building good relations with India. In March 1977, a coalition of political groups, called the Janata Party (JP), won the elections. The new government harped on genuine or proper non-alignment, arousing hopes within the American administration that the new regime would cease to be as pro-Soviet as its predecessor, that it might balance the policies towards the two superpowers, so that the maintenance of good relations with one did not have to prejudice relations with the other. If this soothed American sensibilities, the Americans themselves took some steps to respect Indian sensitivities. The Carter administration made it clear that it looked upon regionally infl uential countries in different parts of the world—for example, India in South Asia—as anchors for world peace and stability. In July 1977, Deputy Secretary of State Warren

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Christopher visited New Delhi, but, in sharp contradiction of past American practices, did not visit Pakistan. India felt assured that America did not want to equate Pakistan with India, and avoided hurting India’s sentiments. When, again, President Carter visited India in January 1978, he pleased Indians immensely because he too did not visit Pakistan. At the end of Carter’s visit to India, a

143 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 329–34; Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 114. Relations with the United States 621

declaration was issued, which demonstrated that on the plane of broad principles at any rate, there was a convergence between the two governments. The declaration, for example, stressed that nations had to be morally accountable for their actions, and, therefore, immoral means would never be compatible with moral ends. In the matter of avoiding the arms race in South Asia, the Carter administration’s approach appeared to be even-handed. If it rejected the proposal to sell A-7 fi ghter-bombers to Pakistan, it also ruled out the proposal to provide General Electric engines for Sweden’s Viggen fi ghter aircraft, which was to be procured by India.144 The Indians were certainly delighted in April 1979 when, due to secret Pakistani moves to acquire nuclear weapons, America suspended economic and military aid to Pakistan. This delight did not outlast January 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which commenced on 29 December 1979. A few days later, Indira Gandhi won the general elections and became the prime minister of India. Even when she was briefl y out of power, the KGB did not forget to offer fi nancial assistance to an organisation called the Committee for Democratic Action fl oated by her.145 Shortly after Indira Gandhi came back to power, the UN General Assembly witnessed a reprehensible demonstration, in course of a debate on Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, of how unethical India’s foreign policy could be. Alternatively, any plea of being realistic, and of the resultant compulsion to respect Soviet sensitivities in public interest would only expose how disgracefully poor was India’s foreign policy management—as confi rmed and reconfi rmed in the past in the cases of Soviet invasions of Hungary (in 1956) and Czechoslovakia (in 1968). On 14 January 1980, the General Assembly, by a vote of 104 against 18 (with 18 abstentions) denounced the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; India abstained. The statement of the Indian representative was little short of servile. According to this statement,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India never supported the presence of foreign bases and troops in a country. It argued that the Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan in response to requests from Kabul, and that India believed in the Soviet

144 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 345–54. Also see, Robert F. Goheen, ‘U.S. Policy Toward India During the Carter Presidency’, in Gould and Ganguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, pp. 123–26. 145 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 334. 622 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

assurance of withdrawing troops on the basis of Kabul’s request.146 The Indian performance at the General Assembly illustrated indeed an authentic exercise of the Indian brand of non-alignment! In January 1980, the United States had hardly any option but to subordinate its Indian and Pakistani policies to the supreme need to counteract the Soviet actions in Afghanistan. It had to supply substantial military aid to Pakistan, which was to act as a frontline state. Amazingly, despite what India did at the UN General Assembly, the United States did not immediately lose all faith in India’s capacity to play a positive part in the Afghanistan crisis. The American ambassador to India, Robert F. Goheen (former president of Princeton University), and Clark Clifford (former Attorney General of the United States) tried to persuade New Delhi to exercise its inﬂ uence upon the Soviet Union to facilitate an early withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. But India’s threat perceptions were radically different from those of America. India was much less worried about the activities of the Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan than about the supply of American arms to Pakistani troops for the ostensible purpose of uprooting the Soviet presence from Afghanistan. What the Indians probably failed to realise was that, unlike in the 1950s when Indian complaints about American arms to Pakistan were supported by many Americans, in the 1980s such complaints did not arouse any support.147 When Indira Gandhi was out of power during the JP regime, the American diplomats took care to pay due courtesy to Indira Gandhi. This—and the temporary banishment from power, giving opportunity for quiet contemplation—possibly sobered Indira Gandhi, made her less dogmatic, and more realistic about world affairs. This could explain some of her actions—some time before 20 January 1981 when Ronald Reagan became the American president—to impress the Americans with her desire to cultivate good relations with them.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 She dispatched B.K. Nehru (a former Indian ambassador to the United States and a close relative of hers) to Washington where he conveyed with some success Indira Gandhi’s interest in establishing friendly relations with the United States. Again, in April 1981, Indira

146 Goheen, ‘U.S. Policy Toward India’, pp. 130–32; Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 366–68. 147 Goheen, ‘U.S. Policy Toward India’, pp. 132–33; Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 368–71. Relations with the United States 623

Gandhi sent two special envoys to Washington to discuss America’s military assistance to Pakistan. These envoys did not meet with much success because the Americans failed to understand why the Indians were worried about a proposal to supply 40 F-16 combat aircraft to Pakistan (but not about the presence of Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan), especially when, despite the supply of these F-16s, India would retain a 6–1 superiority in combat aircraft over Pakistan. Such political differences, even if persistent, would not create a permanent barrier to improvement in Indo-American relations. What was probably far more irritating to the Americans was how the pro-Soviet circles in New Delhi occasionally created a mess in Indo-American relations. For example, under the inﬂ uence of Soviet propaganda, New Delhi rejected the visa application of an American diplomat, which caused Washington to retaliate against an Indian diplomat.148 ‘The greatest successes of Soviet active measures in India’, write Andrew and Mitrokhin, ‘remained the exploitation of the susceptibility of Indira Gandhi and her advisers to bogus CIA conspiracies against them’.149 It is to the credit of Indira Gandhi that the enormous inﬂ uence of the pro-Soviet lobby in New Delhi could not restrain her from trying to upgrade relations with the United States. For example, at the global economic summit at Cancun (Mexico) in October 1981—despite inevitable differences on trade, aid, and debt between India and America—Indira Gandhi was able to strike warm personal relations with Reagan. Moreover, she decided that she should visit Washington before her visit to Moscow. On 30 July 1982, Indira Gandhi reached Washington. ‘Just as she charmed Washington during her 1966 visit’, writes Dennis Kux, ‘Indira, now a matronly sixty- four years old, repeated her success in 1982’.150 Basic disagreements between India and America (including that on America’s Pakistan policy) could not disappear soon, but India at any rate conformed

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to the American expectation that, at a critical moment of Pakistan’s history, when it had the Soviet Army breathing down its neck, India would not subject Pakistan to any extraordinary pressure.151 Usual

148 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 379–85. 149 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 336. 150 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 391. Also see, pp. 387–90. 151 Stephen Philip Cohen, ‘The Reagan Administration and India’, in Gould and Ganguly (eds), The Hope and the Reality: US-Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan, pp. 144–45. 624 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India–Pakistan disagreements were evident in 1983, for example, when in that year, on all the 10 issues before the UN, adjudged to be important by America, India acted against (whereas Pakistan acted in favour of) America.152 Yet, in May 1984, India showed its readiness to deviate from normal diplomatic behaviour in order to please the United States. The residence of the Indian president in New Delhi is usually reserved for accommodating presidents or prime ministers of foreign countries. But, in May 1984, the United States vice president, George Bush and his wife, were requested to reside in the Indian president’s house.153 Such an extraordinary decision could not have been taken without Indira Gandhi’s consent. After all, she exercised total control over India’s foreign policy.154 Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984. A measure of improvement of Indo-American relations during her second term (1980–84) was evident by the presence at her funeral of not merely Secretary of State George Schultz, but also of four former American ambassadors to India. Indira Gandhi’s son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, was expected to carry forward this process of improvement. For, he was free from the socialist dogmas of his mother and maternal grandfather. Moreover, he had a great deal of interest in India’s external relations.155 Two of the most important foreign policy developments during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure (1984–89) were the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987 (details of which are discussed in the relevant chapter of this book), and in Maldives in 1988. If these two incidents refl ected India’s interest in asserting regional hegemony, they also attracted American support, and thereby acquired great signifi cance.156 Moreover, during Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to the United States in June 1985, Washington accorded him an honour that was denied to his mother in the course of her three offi cial visits to America. Rajiv Gandhi had the privilege to address the Congress. But, the die-hard pro-Soviet lobby

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 was so strong in New Delhi that Rajiv Gandhi went to the Soviet

152 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 396–97. 153 Ibid., p. 397. 154 Harish Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, 1947–92, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994, p. 192. 155 Ibid., pp. 193–94. 156 Cohen, ‘The Reagan Administration and India’, p. 147; Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 111. Also see, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi, London: Picador, 2007, pp. 594–95. Relations with the United States 625

Union before proceeding to the United States.157 Nevertheless, Rajiv Gandhi could act as an informal channel of communication between the United States and the Soviet Union while also taking care to convey India’s interest in the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.158 Rajiv Gandhi ceased to be India’s prime minister following a general election in December 1989. V.P. Singh became the prime minister, heading a rather unstable and quarrelsome coalition. December 1989 was not only signiﬁ cant for a general election but also for the transformation of dissidence in J&K into full-scale terrorism. This led to a military confrontation between India and Pakistan. Both the countries engaged in military mobilisation, which caused consternation in the United States, and produced high-level diplomatic initiatives. Unlike in the past, India did not disregard these initiatives, possibly because the United States accepted the Indian view that bilateralism was the most effective mode for a peaceful resolution of the J&K issue. While the India–Pakistan crisis petered out, India faced a tough diplomatic situation when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral took the initiative to visit Iraq for rescuing Indian workers stranded in Iraq and Kuwait. V.P. Singh’s government permitted American military aircraft to refuel at Indian airports in the course of their long journey from the Philippines to the Persian Gulf. Before this news leaked out, V.P. Singh was replaced by a weaker prime minister, Chandra Sekhar. But Chandra Sekhar’s main support base was Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party, the main opposition party in the Indian Parliament. Rajiv Gandhi led the assault on Chandra Sekhar in the matter of refuelling of American combat aircraft (which were bombing Baghdad) because he and his party speculated that by doing so they could thus inﬂ uence Muslim votes in the forthcoming election. Chandra Sekhar stopped the refuelling. Unable to bear the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 strains of running a fragile coalition government, he also scheduled a general election for May 1991.159 The ancient saying—adversity is the nursery of innovations— proved clearly applicable to India’s foreign relations in general, and Indo-American relations in particular. In May 1991, in the course

157 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 403–4. 158 Ibid., p. 416. 159 Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, pp. 144–46, 199–201; Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 431–34, 438–41. 626 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of a general election, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. In June 1991, when P.V. Narasimha Rao became the prime minister (until then the prime minister with the highest academic qualifi cations) leading a minority government, India’s foreign exchange reserves dwindled to US$1.1billion, a sum adequate for procuring essential imports for about two weeks. Decades of acting upon socialist dogmas (in contradiction to realities of world economic history), especially during the regimes of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, had resulted in so much mismanagement of India’s gigantic resources that in mid-1991 the Indian economy stood on the brink of an abyss. It is to the everlasting credit of Narasimha Rao (and an ungrateful Indian elite has not heaped suffi cient praise on him, just as it has not appropriately criticised Nehru and Indira Gandhi for their planned lapses) that at this juncture his government boldly plunged into large-scale economic reforms by means of liberalisation and globalisation. The resultant growth of the Indian economy brought about signifi cant changes in India’s foreign relations, including an upturn in Indo-American relations. Realism in domestic economic policy interacted with realism in foreign relations.160 It should be added, however, that the favourable impact of Indian economic reforms (initiated in 1991) upon Indo-American relations was facilitated by a 1988 recommendation of the Pentagon that the United States realise the potentials of, and engage in comprehensive interaction with, India.161 While the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990s could facilitate the fulfi lment of the Pentagon’s recommendation, the persistence of America’s opposition to India’s nuclear aspirations remained a major hindrance. India conducted a series of nuclear tests in May 1998—almost gate crashing informally into the fi ve-member nuclear club. These tests immediately annoyed the United States. Paradoxically, these tests led to a long and extensive dialogue between Jaswant Singh (India’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 external affairs minister) and Strobe Talbott (America’s deputy secretary of state). During the next two years, they had 14 meetings in as many as seven countries.162 This ‘strategic dialogue between

160 Kapur, India’s Foreign Policy, p. 145. Also, Guha, India After Gandhi, p. 714. 161 Daniel Twining, ‘America’s Grand Design in Asia’, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 3, Summer 2007, p. 82. 162 K. Alan Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress: India-U.S. Relations, Congressional Research Service, Washington, July/August 2007, p. 4. Relations with the United States 627

Washington and New Delhi’, writes Daniel Twining, ‘revealed a startling congruence of interests, including a mutual concern about the strategic implications of rising Chinese power’.163 The positive role of the United States in resolving the India–Pakistan conﬂ ict at Kargil in 1999, and the visit of President Bill Clinton to India in March 2000 were recognised to be two of the most important outcomes of the wide-ranging dialogue between Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh.164 In a joint statement, issued during Clinton’s visit to India in 2000, the two countries promised to work for a visibly profound partnership. In the same year, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited the United States, when a Vajpayee–Clinton joint statement obliged the two countries to cooperate on arms control, terrorism, and HIV/AIDS. Vajpayee addressed a Joint Session of the United States Congress. The two governments established a Joint Working Group on Counterterrorism. A giant stride forward in Indo- American relations took place in the aftermath of 9/11. Realism dawned upon India’s decision makers, who, unlike in the past, did not react petulantly to America’s extensive collaboration with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. ‘Instead, they also offered to assist the United States through the provision of military bases, overﬂ ight rights, and intelligence cooperation.’165 Indo-Pak relations, however, continued to bedevil Indo-American relations. Following an attack on the Indian Parliament by Pakistan-based terrorists on 13 December 2001, there was a sort of military confrontation between India and Pakistan. That this did not lead to a full-scale war owed much to American diplomacy. In March 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell went to Pakistan after visiting India, and, without alerting India beforehand, bestowed upon Pakistan the status of a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Thailand enjoy this status.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ‘The conferral of this status goes well beyond symbolism because it eases weapons transfers to these nations and also permits the United States to pre-position weapons and equipment in the allied states.’166 India’s decision makers, however, stuck to realism, and

163 Twining, ‘America’s Grand Design’, p. 82. 164 Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress , p. 4. 165 Sumit Ganguly, ‘America and India at a Turning Point’, Current History, no. 104, March 2005, p. 121. 166 Ibid., p. 123. 628 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

preferred to express legitimate concern rather than the past practice of peevish proclamations. It must be emphasised that even before 9/11—probably in tune with what the Pentagon recommended in 1988 and what emerged from post-1998 Talbott–Singh talks—Bush and his confi dants decided as early as 2000 that ‘their Asia policy would include a greater role for a dynamic and democratic India in shaping the Asian balance and tackling global challenges’.167 In the early months of their tenure, the Bush administration wanted to put an end to the post-1998 sanctions imposed upon India, but failed to overcome the opposition from the state department’s Nonproliferation Bureau.168 Of course, 9/11 brought about a sea change—it was as if a magic wand suddenly upgraded the level of political consensus/understanding between India and America. Consequently, as will be discussed in detail in subsequent sections of this chapter, unprecedented developments took place in the realms of economic (technological/ nuclear) and military transactions between the two countries. Here it is suffi cient to note that in October 2001, the United States reduced from 159 to 16 the number of Indian entities subjected to technology denial. In September 2004, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) earned this exemption, as did six other agencies in August 2005.169 In November 2001, the Vajpayee–Bush meeting achieved much more than the Vajpayee–Clinton meeting of 2000. Vajpayee and Bush agreed that their two countries should accelerate cooperation in regional security, scientifi c collaboration (for example, in space), civilian nuclear safety, and a vast range of economic and other matters. That this agreement was being implemented with great determination became apparent in 2002 when President Bush’s National Security Strategy of the United States stressed that ‘U.S. interests require a strong relationship with India’.170 More so in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 March 2005, when Condoleeza Rice visited New Delhi. While Rice discussed the sensitive proposal relating to the sale of F-16s to

167 Twining, ‘America’s Grand Design’, p. 82. 168 Dinshaw Mistry, ‘Diplomacy, Domestic Politics, and the U.S.-India Nuclear Agreement’, Asian Survey, vol. 46, no. 5, September/October 2006, pp. 680–81. 169 Ibid., p. 682. 170 Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress, p. 5. Relations with the United States 629

Pakistan, she more than counterbalanced it by offering a comprehensive strategic partnership with India, including large-scale cooperation in the civilian nuclear sector, subject to the exercise of adequate controls by India upon exports of nuclear materials. Shortly afterwards, a team of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission visited New Delhi, and reinforced this proposal. ‘India’s foreign policy establishment was surprised by the U.S. offer. It was not expecting such a signifi cant shift in U.S. nonproliferation policy towards India, but the Indian Prime Minister’s Offi ce quickly acted on this opportunity to engage the United States’.171 In 2005, again, the United States announced that it would ‘help India become a major world power in the 21st century’, and that it would ‘play midwife to the birth of a new great power’.172 Such announcements are indeed without a parallel in the history of international relations. Very soon, in May 2005, the dramatic rise in political consensus between India and America was evidenced by the passage of a law in the Indian Parliament, which tangibly strengthened pre-existing government controls over exports of biological, chemical, nuclear, and missile technologies from India. The stage was thus set for momentous development in Indo- American relations in the course of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington in July 2005, when, on 18 July, the two countries reached an agreement by which America recognised India’s right to enjoy the benefi ts accessible to a responsible, technologically advanced country with nuclear capabilities, although India was not formally a nuclear weapon state. Moreover, by this agreement, the United States announced that, along with its allies and friends, it will engage in comprehensive cooperation with India in the fi eld of civil nuclear energy and trade.173 Many important features of this political transaction on 18 July 2005 will be elaborated partially in the relevant section of this chapter, and more fully in the chapter on

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India’s nuclear policy in this book. What should be stressed here, however, was that the message of 18 July 2005 was reinforced by The National Security Strategy of the United States for 2006, which illustrated again the depth and breadth of political understanding between the two countries as it stated that ‘India now is poised to

171 Mistry, U.S.–India Nuclear Agreement’, p. 682. 172 Twining, ‘America’s Grand Design’, p. 82. 173 Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress, p. 5. Also, Mistry, ‘U.S.-India Nuclear Agreement’, p. 683. 630 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

shoulder global obligations in cooperation with the United Sates in a way befi tting a major power’.174 President Bush paid a three- day visit to India in March 2006, and urged that the two countries strengthen their ‘global partnership’.175 During this visit, President Bush and Prime Minister Singh agreed to launch joint projects for cooperation in a large number of areas, including an Energy Dialogue, Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, Economic Dialogue, Global Democracy Initiative, military partnership in south and east Asia, etc. (in addition to civil nuclear and space cooperation).176 The joint statement issued by Bush and Singh in March 2006 made one highly signifi cant announcement: India had successfully completed (as envisaged in the July 2005 joint statement) the separation of its 14 civil nuclear facilities from eight military nuclear facilities. By 2014, India promised to place all the 14 civil nuclear establishments permanently under IAEA safeguards, as also to place other new civilian nuclear facilities under permanent IAEA safeguards.177 This pledge was destined to have a far-reaching impact upon India–America relations. For, this paved the way to an unprecedented change in the American legal framework that would enable India to avail of full-scale civilian nuclear cooperation with America without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954 put some restrictions on nuclear commerce with India because India did not sign the NPT and the CTBT. On 18 December 2006, President Bush signed into law a historic act: the Henry J. Hyde United States–India Peaceful Atomic Energy Act of 2006. This Act enabled the Bush administration to prepare jointly with India a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, which, again, would be submitted to the United States Congress for approval after—only after—India succeeded in entering into an India-specifi c safeguards agreement with the IAEA, and in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 obtaining a clearance from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The agreement with the IAEA was concluded on 1 August 2008. The NSG clearance was obtained on 6 September 2008.

174 Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress , p. 5. 175 Ibid. 176 R. Nicholas Burns, ‘United States Policy in South Asia’, DISAM Journal of International Security Assistance Management, vol. 29, no. 2, July–August 2007, p. 119. 177 Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress, 20 June 2007, p. 19. Relations with the United States 631

President Bush forwarded the 123 Agreement with India (so designated because of compliance with section 123 of the United States Atomic Energy Act, of 1954) to Congress for approval on 11 September (a rather signifi cant date!). The House of Representatives approved the Indo-US nuclear agreement on 27 September, and the Senate on 1 October. The outbreak of a fi nancial turmoil in the United States delayed the fi nal signing of the deal twice: it could not be signed in Washington DC in the last week of September 2008 or in New Delhi in the fi rst week of October 2008 despite earnest efforts on the part of America and India. It was eventually signed on 10 October 2008 in Washington DC. Signifi cantly, even before the Indo-US deal was approved by the American Senate, France signed a comprehensive nuclear cooperation deal with India on 30 September.178 This made it apparent that the Indo-US deal was actually ‘a multilateral initiative involving the endorsement of all the other major powers and the international community’, and that ‘without the U.S. delivering the ‘passport’, there was no way India could get a ‘nuclear visa’ from Paris or Moscow’.179 The year 2008 marks an appropriate climax to the era of pragmatism in India’s foreign economic and political relations (as also in India’s domestic economic policy) initiated in 1991. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, and Commerce Minister P. Chidambaram initiated the policy package of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG), which rescued India from an economic crisis into which decades of non-alignment and socialism consigned India. The choice was forced, but this did not detract from the merits of the choice, transparent in 2008, when the great powers (for example, Britain, France, Russia) as also the sole superpower, the United States, are ready to boost strategic partnerships with India. These partnerships will embrace not merely nuclear transactions but also

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 access to dual-capable technologies in diverse ﬁ elds (for example, space research, agriculture, transportation, etc.), which will uplift the Indian economy to an unprecedented high level. Indian scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs deserve to be complimented for their demonstrated ability to cope with the

178 The Statesman, 1 October 2008. 179 Editorial, The Indian Express, 2 October 2008. 632 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

restrictions imposed on access to high technology from abroad due to the absence of LPG in the pre-1991 era, and to sanctions imposed after India’s nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998. But for the post-1991 LPG, however, this ability could not have attracted worldwide attention and acclaim. Indian entrepreneurs, for instance, have been able to take on the world. The success of 2008 owes much to their inventiveness and innovativeness. Moreover, in the pre-1991 era, India had a peculiar penchant for damaging relations with countries, especially America, which could assist India in diverse ways.180 The success of 2008 has depended largely on India’s ability to develop good relations with America. For, in its absence, and without prompting from America, the IAEA and NSG would not have safeguarded India’s interests in an expeditious manner. All this signifi es not American hegemony but widening areas of dependence and cooperation between India, the great powers, and the sole superpower. As to India, specifi cally, the era of sanctimonious and sterile non-alignment has given way to constructive, multiple and fl exible alignment.

Economic Transactions Jawaharlal Nehru’s shallow and self-contradictory socialism and deep anti-Americanism made it unlikely that independent India would develop relations with the United States along proper lines, and thereby secure adequate economic-technological cooperation from the United States for India’s economic advancement. ‘Life under Socialism would be a joyless and soulless thing, regulated to the minutest detail by rules and orders’, wrote Jawaharlal in 1919.181 In December 1928, drawing upon his experience of a four-day visit to the Soviet Union in 1927, as also upon his study of English language writings on that country, Nehru wrote a book on the Soviet Union, which was ‘a paean in praise of the Soviet Union’. In the same year, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 he told a meeting of students in India:

Though personally I do not agree with many of the methods of [the] communists, and I am by no means sure to what extent communism can suit present conditions in India, I do believe in communism as an

180 See, Tharoor, Nehru, pp. 185–86. 181 Ibid., p. 173. Relations with the United States 633

ideal of society. For essentially it is socialism, and socialism, I think, is the only way if the world is to escape disaster.182

One may pardon Nehru’s ignorance of the distinction between communism and socialism (expounded by the Marxists), and proceed to the following statement made by him at the 1936 Lucknow session of the INC:

I am convinced that the only key to the solution of the world’s problems and of India’s problems lies in socialism… a new civilization radically different from the present capitalist order. Some glimpse we can have of this new civilization in the territories of the USSR…. If the future is full of hope it is largely because of Soviet Russia.183

In 1941, Nehru wrote, ‘The theory and philosophy of Marxism lightened up many a dark corner of my mind…. I was fi lled with a new excitement’.184 What Nehru wrote or spoke about socialism in the Soviet Union was pardonable in 1928, but not in 1936, leave alone 1941. For, Stalin abandoned Lenin’s New Economic Policy in the late 1920s, since when unscientifi c management of the economy fl ourished through decades along with the personality cult and administration by arbitrary injunctions. The last year before forced collectivisa- tion of agriculture by Stalin was 1928; agricultural output dropped sharply in subsequent years, and it was as late as 1956 that the 1928 level could again be reached. There appeared such major maladies in state industrial enterprises (barring exceptions) as wastage, ineffi ciency, and corruption. The ordinary people had to suffer from chronic shortages of nearly all sorts of necessities, as also from all- pervasive black market operations.185 Nehru’s astonishing ignorance, and persistent glorifi cation, of Soviet socialism had a noticeably adverse impact on the Indian economy. Nehru applied to India ‘an idiosyncratic variant of socialism’. ‘The economist Jagdish Bhagwati Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

182 Ibid., p. 57. 183 Ibid., pp. 173–74. 184 Ibid., p. 57. 185 For details about these and other deformities in the economic, political, administrative, and social developments in the Soviet Union, see Jayanta Kumar Ray, ‘Some Aspects of Perestroika and Glasnost in the USSR’, in Samir Dasgupta (ed.), Aspects of Socialist Renewal in the Soviet Union, Calcutta: Centre for Soviet Studies, 1989, pp. 1–34. 634 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

has suggested that what India needed at the time was probably socialism on the land and capitalism in industry. Nehru tried the opposite.’186 Consequently, India embarked upon ‘a series of Five Year Plans, starting in 1952, that bore successively decreasing relation to reality; actively impeded, rather than facilitated, the country’s development; and shackled India’ to a growth rate of around 3 per cent when some developing countries in Asia attained a growth rate of 10 to 12 per cent.187 Although, the First Five Year Plan stressed agriculture, it was so faulty that agricultural production dwindled in India during 1953–57. Although approximately 80 per cent of Indians depended on agriculture, the country began to import food grains. One reason for this sad state of affairs was the essentially dogmatic character of Nehruvian socialism. ‘Nehru’s mistrust of foreign capital kept out much-needed foreign investment but paradoxically made India more dependent on foreign aid.’188 All this can partially explain the perplexing lack of maturity that characterised Nehru’s approach to the urgent and complex issue of India–America economic relations. One may begin with the Faridabad experiment (1949–52) launched by Sudhir Ghosh (who had won in ample measure the trust and affection of M.K. Gandhi). Sudhir Ghosh writes,

Every distinguished visitor from other parts of the world to New Delhi from 1949–52 was sent down to Faridabad to spend half of a day with me to see a demonstration of what a community of ordinary men and women could do, given a little capital and some leadership, to build a new life for themselves in a self-ﬁ nancing and self-perpetuating community development project.189

Refugees from Pakistan participated in this project, which borrowed capital from the the government to run industries (for example, a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 diesel engine factory), so that proﬁ ts could eventually extinguish the loan. Initially, powerful ofﬁ cials in the Ministry of Refugee Rehabilitation (as also the minister himself) did not interfere in Ghosh’s project, although they were not happy about this departure

186 Tharoor, Nehru, p. 175. 187 Ibid., p. 176. 188 Ibid. 189 Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, p. 246. Relations with the United States 635

from the bureaucratic tradition. For, they were aware that Sudhir Ghosh enjoyed the full support of Prime Minister Nehru. Moreover, bereft of the aptitude, ability or ambition of Ghosh, they consoled themselves that he would soon discredit himself.190 However, Ghosh’s success and fame (which aroused jealousy and hostility among bureaucrats in the refugee rehabilitation ministry), the attention attracted from Chester Bowles (the American ambassador to India), and Nehru’s eccentric attitude to American aid, all combined to create problems for, and eventually undid, Ghosh’s Faridabad project.191 Chester Bowles was a great friend of Nehru and India. Bowles was of the opinion that America ought to support comprehensive community development work of the Faridabad type—embracing agriculture, health, education, etc.—which could banish poverty from India. He, therefore, ‘put forward to the U.S. Administration, for the ﬁ rst time in Indo-American relations, an ambitious programme of American ﬁ nancial and technical assistance to India’.192 An American legislator, Owen Brewster, came to India to inquire whether Bowles’ proposal deserved American legislative support. Brewster visited Faridabad, and was impressed that Ghosh’s project relied on a sound business plan, and not on charity. Brewster and Bowles took steps towards organising a tour for Ghosh to the United States in April 1952, so that he could study agricultural extension services in America, and have meetings with American legislators.

But this deeply upset Mr. Nehru. It is not that he did not want American money but his attitude towards American assistance was very complex. He not only wanted American money but wanted it in large quantities for India’s development. But he did not want any Indian associated with his Government to make any kind of effort to persuade the Americans to assist India. It was for the United States to come and offer American assistance to the Government of India and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 it was for the Government graciously to accept it. He was prepared, when he was in a good mood, even to say thank you.193

The Minister for Refugee Rehabilitation (as also ofﬁ cers under him) got a long-awaited chance to give vent to their jealousies, to

190 Ibid., pp. 232–33, 252–53. 191 Ibid., pp. 250–51. 192 Ibid., p. 254. 193 Ibid., p. 256. 636 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

dislodge Ghosh, and demolish his Faridabad experiment. Subse- quently, Ghosh had to resign from his post, and visit America as a non-ofﬁ cial person in 1952. Sudhir Ghosh writes,

Mr. Nehru’s suspicion about the American motive behind the invitation appeared to me unworthy and I said so. There was an unpleasant exchange of words over it. Mr. Nehru took the position that I could go to the United States on such an invitation only as a non-offi cial person unconnected with the government (since then many hundreds of government offi cials have been to the United States on such invitations). In a huff I resigned and made myself a non-offi cial person and went to the United States on 18th April 1952.194

Nevertheless, Sudhir Ghosh’s trip to America, and his extensive parleys with legislators, offi cials, university professors, media persons, etc., had an immediate and benefi cial impact upon the Indian economy at a time when parts of south India were suffering from drought and famine-like conditions. ‘My efforts’, wrote Ghosh, ‘certainly helped to create a climate of opinion favourable for U.S. assistance to India. India got the fi rst 50 million dollars of U.S. assistance’.195 B.K. Nehru, a nephew of Prime Minister Nehru, was at that time the fi nancial adviser at the Indian embassy in Washington D.C., as also the Alternate Director for India at the World Bank. He admonished his uncle, on his fi rst offi cial visit to America, telling him that in economic policy making ‘he was allowing his emotion rather than his intellect to guide him’.196 In the course of this visit, at a gathering of heads of major fi nancial and industrial establishments, arranged by Citibank, Nehru’s exaggerated sense of self- esteem prompted him to give the assembly ‘such a blast that till these hurt egos had retired from the scene, economic interest in India was not visible in Wall Street!’197 Who lost—America or India?

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 After all, as B.K. Nehru candidly wrote: ‘In the very early ﬁ fties, we were, as had become usual, short of foodgrains and we did, again as usual, not have the dollars to pay for them. We wanted them on a soft loan basis from the Americans’.198 Bureaucratic procedures for

194 Ibid., p. 257. 195 Ibid., p. 258. 196 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 225. 197 Ibid., p. 238. 198 Ibid., p. 231. Relations with the United States 637

such transactions are cumbersome everywhere—probably far more in India than in America. But, Vijaya Lakshmi, the Indian ambassador to America, became exasperated with such procedures, for, she seemed to share her brother’s (Nehru’s) view that the Americans would be doing themselves a favour by providing economic aid to India. Otherwise, there was no explanation as to why Vijaya Lakshmi expressed her disaffection about normal offi cial procedures in America (as anywhere else in the world) in such an abnormal fashion, and misbehaved with B.K. Nehru when he was merely soliciting her signature on an important document!199 There were some fundamental fallacies in Nehru’s economic thinking, which could not be covered up by vague affi rmations of socialism. The fi rst fallacy was that a foreign investor was likely to turn from a trader/investor into a governor, as did the British East India Company in the colonial era.200 In the post-colonial era, such a transformation was unlikely. The second fallacy was that India could develop its economy with indigenous capital. It could not. As A.D. Gorwala wrote, ‘the great catalyst, capital, is sadly lacking’ in India. ‘Nor can it in large measure come except from abroad.’201 The third fallacy was that in the early years of India’s independence, ‘capital was not looking for investment, investment opportunities were looking for capital’.202 So, India had to look for foreign capital in order to expedite poverty alleviation. But, unfortunately, there was none around Nehru to contest these fallacies. Although Nehru paraded his aversion to power politics in the international arena, he practised it adroitly in the domestic arena, concentrating power in his own hands, and promoting dogmas masquerading as policies. As long as Patel was alive, he faced some challenge, as in the case of the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948, which sanctifi ed state monopolies over all important areas (old, new or emerging). After Patel’s death in 1950, Nehru had no contestant

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 inside his party. For, he took steps to reduce an exceptionally in- telligent person like Rajagopalachari to impotence, and he ousted Purushottam Das Tandon from the Congress presidency, which he himself assumed in September 1951.203 Actually, even when Patel

199 Ibid. 200 Tharoor, Nehru, p. 176. 201 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, p. 283. 202 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 239. 203 Ibid., pp. 169–70. 638 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

was alive, Nehru kept trying to attain supreme power inside the Cabinet by ignoble means. For example, he would interfere in Patel’s legitimate sphere of activity, and he would set up Cabinet committees under his own chairmanship, but none under Patel.204 That Nehru was a past master in power politics was dramatically proved in early 1955, when he gave up the presidency of the Congress Party.

An unthreatening veteran, U.N. Dhebar, was chosen to replace him from January 1955, not by a full ballot of the All-India Congress Committee as in the past, but by the Congress Working Committee under Nehru’s chairmanship—a throwback to the days when that body rubberstamped the Mahatma’s nominee for the President.205

Jawaharlal Nehru’s unrivalled authority in the government and the Congress Party enabled him to use dangerous dogmas as the foundation of what he claimed to be sound economic policies (internal as well as external), the soundness being derived from the incessant use of socialist slogans. The Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, passed in 1951, and followed by a number of complementary laws, inaugurated the licence-quota-permit Raj (as complained by Rajagopalachari), throttled the Indian economy.206 ‘The road to disaster, as usual’, writes Shashi Tharoor, was ‘paved with good, even noble, intentions’.207 Nehru’s government announced, in December 1954, the objective of ‘a socialistic pattern of society’. In 1955, the Congress Party resolved that the state should occupy the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 and the Second Five Year Plan conformed to this resolution, and embraced state capitalism under the camoufl age of socialism. ‘Nehru placed bureaucrats rather than entrepreneurs upon the commanding heights, stifl ed initiative and investment, and spent the rest of his years in offi ce presiding over a system that sought to regulate stagnation and divide poverty.’208 In this context,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the following comment by B.K. Nehru on his interaction in the early 1950s with Eugene Black, the third president of the World Bank, is worth recording:

204 Godbole, The Holocaust of Indian Partition, pp. 274, 276–77. 205 Shashi Tharoor, op. cit., pp. 179–80. 206 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 270. 207 Tharoor, Nehru, p. 177. 208 Ibid., pp. 177–78. Relations with the United States 639

Black could never, however, get over his inbuilt bias in favour of private enterprise as against state enterprise. This was a running argument between him and me and we did inﬂ uence each other’s thought. With the beneﬁ t of hindsight, having seen the prostitution in India of the public sector for private gain, I confess I cannot help thinking that Black was right and I am wrong.209

In Nehru’s socialist imagination, the government would be a glorious business agency.

Government functionaries would ﬂ y aeroplanes, drive buses and generally zoom about getting busy…. Nehru’s government did reach dizzying heights of incompetence. It dumped two-thirds of the country’s investable funds into the public sector…. Government factories sprung up overnight and churned out shoddy watches, fridges, scooters, bicycles, milk, cheese. You name it. And oh yes! Bread.210

Government funds certainly improved infrastructure. ‘But we received the short straw even on this, since scarce resources were drained off by failed public business. For each successful Bhakra Nangal Dam we got a Modern Bakery that made a bonﬁ re of our wealth, easily halving our infrastructure.’211 A government-owned steel complex (at Bhilai, Durgapur, and Rourkela) emerged in India in the 1950s in accordance with the ‘pet notion that you get a lot of socialism if a number of large industries are owned by the State and managed by civil servants irrespective of the cost at which the products are made available to the people or what return the investment yields’.212 India was annoyed by the United States refusal to provide assistance to the Bhilai steel plant mainly because it was in the public or government sector (and not in the private sector). The Soviet Union built this plant. What is, however, plainly forgotten is that 1,000 Indian engineers (who

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were to work in the above noted steel complex) received practical training in the United States with Ford Foundation grants.213

209 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 243. 210 Sanjeev Sabhlok, Breaking Free of Nehru, Delhi: Anthem Press, 2009, p. 22. 211 Ibid., p. 23. 212 Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, p. 274. 213 Ibid., p. 285. 640 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Evidently, India could not do without American economic aid despite foreign policy differences between the two countries (for example, on how to deal with communist China). Men like John Foster Dulles and his colleagues in the United States Republican administration (including George V. Allen, American ambassador to India) were prepared (in the early part of the 1950s) to ignore these differences, and extend substantial aid to India because it was ‘a genuinely democratic country attempting to give its people a better deal through democratic methods’.214 Moreover, these American ofﬁ cials agreed ‘with Mr. Nehru that the quantum of aid should not be large, as in that case the aid-receiving nation becomes over-dependent on the aid-giver’.215 Consequently, for the American ﬁ scal year 1954–55, America proposed `450 million of aid for India (which amounted to about 10 per cent of the Government of India’s budget estimates). It must be noted, however, that America was upset by some of India’s foreign policy pronouncements. For example, the joint communiqué, issued at the end of the 1955 tour of India by Soviet leaders Bulganin and Khrushchev, underlined an Indian tilt towards the Soviet Union. This was not compatible with the sharp contrast between American and Soviet aid to India. As A.D. Gorwala wrote on 17 January 1956, ‘Since 1950, the United States has made gifts to India of 291 million dollars and has loaned to it 230 million dollars. During the same period all the Soviet Union has done is to give 700,000 dollars, and enter into a contract to build a steel mill on commercial terms.’216 Moreover, Indian and American observers were amazed by the confusion Indian decision makers suffered in the matter of foreign aid. For example, for the implementation of the Second Five Year Plan, India needed foreign aid worth about `8–10 billion. ‘In the present state of the world, even loans of the amount needed would seem to be beyond the capacity of any country 217

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 except the United States.’

The attitude adopted by the [Indian] government’s spokesmen towards this matter seems somewhat strange. Some of them keep

214 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, p. 280. 215 Ibid. Also see Gould, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations’, p. 37. 216 Ibid., pp. 286–87. 217 Ibid., p. 286. Relations with the United States 641

on asserting that large foreign aid is bad and must be avoided, since inevitably the tendency for countries receiving such aid is to subordinate their policies to the policy of the country giving the aid. If, of course, they hold this view seriously, the plan they put forward and discuss in detail should not contemplate and take into account foreign aid on this scale. But it does. Probably, then, they are not serious about their assertions. And indeed several instances, especially that of Yugoslavia, show that there is no inherent connection between receipt of aid and subordination of policy.218

This long quotation from A.D. Gorwala needs to be supplemented by the following in order to easily comprehend the web of confusion and illogicalities surrounding socialism, planning, and foreign aid, with which Jawaharlal Nehru succeeded in infecting the entire Indian establishment in the 1950s.

Other Government speakers just slide over the issue. They know that the aid is essential, that without it the plan is not likely to succeed. But they neither will say so, nor make any effort to get the aid. They keep on hoping that somehow it may come. The experts advising Government take a similar line, though perhaps for them there is greater excuse. The planners assume this amount on the resources side: well, it is up to them; why question their view, seems to be their feeling. It is about time this generally equivocal attitude was abandoned and the Indian Government clearly said that aid of this magnitude was not only necessary but was also wanted, and would be willingly and appreciatively received on conditions similar to those applied to aid in the past, which meant no abrogation from India’s sovereign authority.219

Despite all this lack of realism in the Indian approach to American aid, there was one good news by the end of 1960, viz. the termination of the Eisenhower presidency. American aid to India was ﬂ owing in substantial and larger amounts.220 It ought to be recorded here that Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 many of the most signiﬁ cant contributions to the Indian economy remained somewhat invisible and therefore ineligible for deserved appreciation. Since the 1950s, for example, the United States

218 Ibid., p. 285. 219 Ibid., pp. 285–6. Also see B.K. Nehru for an explanation of how some members of the Planning Commission were trying to build ‘a castle in the air’ by an ‘absurd’ Second Five Year Plan. B.K. Nehru, op. cit., p. 283. 220 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 172–73. 642 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

ﬁ nanced the establishment, and sustained the functioning, of eight agricultural universities. American technical assistance advisers offered valuable aid to these universities.221 Another example was the anti-malaria programme launched by the Rockefeller Foundation, the United States government and the WHO in 1953, which, in a decade, reduced malaria cases from approximately 100 million a year to 100,000 a year. ‘Since malaria usually struck around harvest time, the effect on Indian food production was considerable.’222 From 1953 to 1963, electricity production in India rose about sevenfold. ‘At least half of this increase was made possible by U.S. economic assistance which enabled the Indian Government to purchase the necessary equipment—almost all from American companies.’223 In January 1961, John F. Kennedy took ofﬁ ce as the president of the United States. Chester Bowles, an unfailing friend of India, became the Under Secretary of State. John Kenneth Galbraith, another friend of India, became the American ambassador to India. One could not think of a more favourable situation for the advancement of India–America economic relations. The Kennedy administration speeded up aid to India by acting upon a resolution introduced in the American Congress by Kennedy (then a Senator) and Bowles (then a Representative). The resolution recommended a consortium of Western companies, Japan, and the World Bank for an effective pooling of resources for aid to India.224 Despite all these and other important measures by the United States to boost the Indian economy, especially to feed India’s growing population amidst little concern for the pursuit of a successful population control policy, Jawaharlal Nehru and/or his de facto external affairs minister, Krishna Menon, did not cease to hurt American sentiments (though India did not have the capacity to damage actual American interests) on a number of highly sensitive issues. Such statements by Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 were not only unnecessary, but illogical and sometimes absurd. For example, on 25 August 1961, Jawaharlal Nehru had no business to comment illogically on the Berlin crisis. Anyone with a minimum knowledge of the Second World War and its fallout would consider

221 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 193. 222 Ibid., p. 191. 223 Ibid., p. 190. 224 Ibid., p. 187. Relations with the United States 643

Nehru’s comment—that Western access to the city of Berlin was not a right but a concession225—as at best unhistorical and at worst unrealistic because it would annoy the United States, which was then determined to make a success of India’s Third Five Year Plan, and to provide food to India’s hungry millions whom New Delhi was shamelessly incapable of feeding. Take, again, a 1961 statement by Krishna Menon (soon after the summit meeting of non-aligned countries in Belgrade) on Soviet nuclear tests in the atmosphere and America’s underground tests. Krishna Menon took the ‘blatantly nonsensical’ position that ‘testing in the atmosphere was cleaner and caused less pollution than testing underground’.226 A nonplussed President Kennedy inquired from the Indian ambassador, B.K. Nehru, why Krishna Menon had made such statements. B.K. Nehru, unable to explain the matter to Kennedy, has written the following in his Memoirs: ‘I could hardly give him the real reason which was Krishna Menon’s pathological anti-Americanism which, as he was more or less rightly regarded as the Prime Minister’s spokesman, was interpreted as India’s anti-American attitude’.227 Another instance of Krishna Menon’s brazen anti-Americanism was sampled by President Kennedy at an interview which Krishna Menon had himself sought for a discussion on Laos. The outcome, in the words of B.K. Nehru, was

…while Krishna Menon was careful not to display his usual bad manners (which were kept in reserve for those who could do him no harm), he was pursuing in its totality the Soviet line. The only words I can recall are the President’s saying to him, quite heatedly, ‘what you are saying in effect, Mr. Minister, is that the Soviets are always right and the United States are always wrong’.228

Despite such knock-out blows from the Indian prime minister and his de facto foreign minister, the Kennedy administration remained

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 deeply committed to offering continuous support for India’s economic development. Rarely have Indian authors extended due

225 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 191. Also see, for details about the issue of Berlin, Hans Speier, Divided Berlin, New York: Praeger, 1961, esp. pp. 3–8, 160–85. 226 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 348. 227 Ibid. Also see Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 192. 228 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 360. 644 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

recognition to this evidence of American liberalism and tolerance. The Eisenhower administration provided to India in 1960 a development loan of US$135 million. The Kennedy administration decided to triple this amount. At a meeting of the Aid India Consortium (Club), America pledged US$1 billion in annual development aid (including US$500 million for wheat under the Public Law 480 programme) for the ﬁ rst two years of the Third Five Year Plan. Other members of the Consortium (led by the World Bank) also promised to provide the same sum for the same period. The Consortium further pledged US$3 billion to take care of India’s foreign exchange requirements for the Second Five Year Plan.229 Ambassador John K. Galbraith tried his best to procure American assistance for two major projects in India, viz. a public sector steel plant at Bokaro, and a nuclear power station at Tarapur, close to Bombay (Mumbai). With regard to the steel mill, Galbraith failed because many American legislators were not in favour of such a project in the public sector, but mainly because the supporters of this project (a large group of American steel experts) drafted a needlessly expensive project. Instead of suggesting, say, a 1 million ton steel mill at US$200 million, they recommended a 4 million ton plant at US$900–1,000 million. ‘The Senators and Congressmen who examined the Foreign Aid Bill in the summer of 1963 in their Committees found it atrocious to provide 1000 million dollars for one single item of assistance to a country. This was something new in the history of American foreign aid.’230 Galbraith’s scheme for an American-ﬁ nanced steel plant at Bokaro could not muster the support of the United States Congress.231 On the Tarapur nuclear power station, however, Galbraith was successful. Atomic energy agencies of India and the United States engaged in long negotiations and hammered out a deal by May 1963. India agreed to use exclusively the nuclear fuel supplied by America at Tarapur,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and consented to a minimum of inspections deemed satisfactory by America.232 (Details about India’s encounter with America in Tarapur will be discussed in other relevant sections of this book.)

229 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 186; Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, pp. 334–35. 230 Ghosh, Gandhi’s Emissary, p. 291. 231 Ibid., pp. 290–92; Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 188–89. 232 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 189 Relations with the United States 645

In this context, one may recall that American technical advice to India has not sometimes received due appreciation because, ironically, even when this advice has aimed at promoting India’s self-reliance, Indians have rejected the same. Take, for instance, the Bhakra-Nangal Dam in India’s Punjab state, rated as one of the ﬁ nest achievements of independent India. While the Indians ﬁ nanced and implemented the project, it was supervised by a group of 60 Americans, headed by Harvey Slocum, who became a legend in his lifetime as a dam-builder.233 One of the American experts, Dr Stone, worked on the Dneiper Dam in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, representing America’s General Electric Company.

His assignment in Russia was the erection and manufacture of electrical generators for the Dneiper Dam. He explained [to P.V. Indiresan] how the Russians purchased only a couple of generators and fabricated the rest. Dr. Stone was very keen that India should follow that example in constructing the Bhakra Dam, but nobody would listen to him. As he told us: ‘Nobody in your country listens to me though I have been brought here at a fabulous salary that is an extravagance for a poor country such as yours. Your engineers are sold on buying imported machines and your politicians will not stop them’.234

America’s Food for Peace Programme under Public Law 480 beneﬁ ted India enormously, enabling India to avert famines. Wheat provided to India under this law was paid for in Indian rupees. Until 1968, that is when the food situation in India improved, 20 per cent of these rupees were to be spent by the American diplomatic mission in India on salaries, housing, furniture, etc. American commercial companies in India could have access to another 11 per cent of these rupees, and obtain loans. The Government of India received the remainder of 69 per cent as a loan at 5 per cent interest for development schemes.235 In this process, over a number of years, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a massive reservoir of rupees came into being. In 1963, therefore, Chester Bowles proposed an Indo-American Foundation, on the

233 Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal, pp. 116–41. 234 P.V. Indiresan, ‘Technology: Surmounting Cultural Hurdles’, in Hiranmay Karlekar (ed.), Independent India: The First Fifty Years, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 201. 235 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 204. 646 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

model of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations in the United States. An Indian was to be the president of this foundation; an American would be his deputy. An equal number of Indians and Americans would form the Board of Trustees, whereas the staffers would be mostly Indians. The Foundation would be located in India. Rupees already accumulated in India would endow the Foundation, and enable it to earn a substantial annual income. This would be used to fi nance research projects in Indian universities and scientifi c establishments, especially those in frontier areas, which would not normally fetch grants from fund-starved universities and research institutes. In this way, the infl ationary potentials of massive rupee reserves could also be checked.236 The accumulated rupee debt eventually amounted to one-third of India’s total money supply.237 In March 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk informed Ambassador Bowles that President Johnson was supportive of the scheme for an Indo-American Foundation drafted by Bowles in 1963. At the offi cial White House dinner for the visiting Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the end of the month, Johnson announced publicly his approval of the foundation. Before Ambassador Bowles left New Delhi for Washington DC in order to prepare for Indira Gandhi’s visit, he took care to renew his consultations with Indian offi cials on the foundation, and obtained a positive response.238 Nevertheless, following Johnson’s announcement, the foundation was subjected to severe criticisms, especially by the Leftists. One reason could be the surprise announcement without any prior reporting, discussion or publicity in the Indian press. Another reason could be a colonial hangover and the resultant suspicion that Americans would be able to use this foundation to control India’s higher education and even culture.239 The composition of the Board of Trustees and the staff being predominantly Indian (as already noted), this suspicion was not warranted. Perhaps the following observation by Chester Bowles

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 provides a vital clue to the real motivation behind the opposition to the Indo-American Foundation.

236 Ibid., pp. 135–36. 237 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, p. 17. 238 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 137. 239 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, p. 17; Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 461. Relations with the United States 647

I had expected there would be attacks from left-wing sources, but I was most concerned by the attacks by economists and political scientists at Delhi University, many of whom had been educated in the United States, and who we assumed, would have the clearest understanding of the many advantages that would stem from our proposal.240

The root cause of opposition to the foundation—a disgraceful commentary on the privileged Indian elite—was probably the professional threat to the oligopoly intellectual capital of a small number of persons (for example, at Delhi University), who, by talent or luck, had earlier obtained the coveted facilities of higher education in America. They appeared to be afraid that they would soon face competition from, if not displacement by, a large number of fellow Indians gaining opportunities of academic advancement in the United States from the Indo-American Foundation. After all, there was no evidence that members of this privileged elite ever shrank from applying for grants and receiving them from such American bodies as the Rockefeller or Ford Foundation. Amazingly, critics of the Indo-American Foundation (excluding, of course, the communists, crypto-communists and fellow-travellers, as also Leftists of some hues) did not express any misgivings about the threat to Indian culture (especially the culture of democracy expounded in the Constitution of India) from Soviet funds (nurturing not only the CPI, but also numerous front organisations). While these critics troubled their minds with imaginary threats to Indian culture from the Indo-American Foundation, they did not appear to be perturbed by the real threats to Indian culture from the Soviet Union and a large number of Soviet-ﬁ nanced agencies, which became glaring at least a decade back, by the mid-1950s that is. For instance, on the minor issue of an insigniﬁ cant rise in tram fare, the communists staged violent disturbances in the city of Calcutta (Kolkata), challenging the democratic culture.241 The

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Government of India did not seem to exercise proper vigilance upon how communists received and spent funds provided by Moscow or Peking (Beijing).242 Actually, as the performance of Nehru and/or Krishna Menon at the Colombo Conference of 1954, or the Bandung

240 Chester Bowles, op. cit., p. 138. 241 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, pp. 57–58. 242 Ibid., p. 70. 648 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Conference of 1955, demonstrated, unlike countries like Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India did not bother about the threat from international communism.243 Again, in 1955, the public response of New Delhi to the Bulganin-Khrushchev tour of India caused apprehensions in many Indians who held robust faith in democracy. For example, A.D. Gorwala wrote:

From the point of view of the true interests of the Government of India and this country, the tour has been most harmful. The principal oppressors and destroyers of the values to which the Government of India, in accordance with its Constitution, should strongly adhere, the principal champions and representatives of those which the Government of India, in accordance with its Constitution, is bound to abhor, have been received by it with acclamation and rejoicing. A Government, the leaders of which have time and again proclaimed their belief in the sharp distinction between good and evil and in the doctrine that the end never justiﬁ es the means, has embraced and acknowledged as its loving brother, another, the basic tenets of whose creed are that no action is either good or evil except as it helps or does not help the onward march of the Communist party, and that any means, however despicable and evil they are in the sight of the normal citizen, are completely justiﬁ able, if the end serves that same purpose of advancing Communist aims.244

On the domestic front, too, the Government of India was certainly aware of how the documents of Moscow-funded CPI challenged India’s democratic culture while it preached violence not only by peasants and industrial workers but also members of the armed forces.245 In 1957, following the second general election in India, the CPI came to power in the state of Kerala, and the chief minister of Kerala, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, threatened India’s democratic culture by going so far as to proclaim the urgency of ‘war, civil war, fratricidal war, war continuous, war endless, until as in China, victory 246 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 crowns our arms’. By the middle of the 1960s, when the abortive Indo-American Foundation was mooted, the information department

243 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, Bombay: Jaico, 1970, pp. 178–79. 244 Gorwala, Not in Our Stars, p. 73. 245 Ibid., pp. 62–63. 246 Ibid., p. 76. Relations with the United States 649

of the Soviet embassy in India in New Delhi, as also Soviet trade agencies in several Indian cities, established a sort of stranglehold over Indian culture by running as many as 53 front organisations (for example, friendship societies, youth and student organisations, workers’ and farmers’ associations, etc.).247 These organisations ran 47 newspapers and periodicals, and published a large number of books and brochures.248 Even advertisement fi rms were set up, so that newspapers could receive large Soviet subsidies regularly.249 The success of the press services of the information department of the Soviet embassy in New Delhi could be measured by the number of reproductions of these press services in various newspapers. In February 1965, for example, the number of reproductions was 305 in English, 291 in Hindi, 263 in Punjabi, and 271 in Urdu.250 Moreover, the information department of the Soviet embassy in New Delhi classifi ed some publications—for example, Patriot, Link, Century, Mainstream, Blitz, etc.—as ‘very good’ on the ground of their readiness to accede to Soviet requests for, and their regularity in, publication of Soviet copies, as also of the refl ection of friendship towards the Soviet Union in their editorials.251 Amazingly, to carry forward this story of Soviet intrusion into India’s cultural sphere, in 1965, Aruna Asaf Ali received the Lenin Prize. It could not be a simple coincidence that she was an important partner of a company called the United India Periodicals Private Ltd. For, this company was in fi nancial trouble, and had to operate the daily newspaper, Patriot, and the weekly magazine, Link. Link House was a highly expensive modish building on a central locality in New Delhi. Surprisingly, the Indian Refi neries Limited (affi liated to the Union petroleum ministry under the control of a fellow-traveller, K.D. Malaviya) granted a huge loan for the construction of this building. East Germany supplied at a heavily discounted price the printing presses for Patriot and Link, which, despite the occasional

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 trick of publishing a few anti-communist pieces, could not conceal

247 Peter Sager, Moscow’s Hand in India, Berne: Swiss Eastern Institute, 1966, p. 168. 248 Ibid., p. 175. 249 Ibid., pp. 99–100. 250 Ibid., p. 95. 251 Ibid., pp. 102–3. 650 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

their intensely pro-Soviet character. As Defence Minister, Krishna Menon (an unabashed fellow-traveller) ordered thousands of copies of Link.252 It is indeed shocking that critics of the Indo-American Foundation observed an almost complete silence on the large-scale and deep penetration of India’s cultural realm by the Soviet Union. The proposal for the Indo-American Foundation failed. President Johnson must have felt deeply hurt, although it would not be easy to connect this with his policy towards India. On 30 March 1966—just a day after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi left Washington DC for New Delhi—President Johnson, acting upon his assurance to Indira Gandhi, dispatched a special message to the United States Congress on emergency food aid for India. Cumulative failures in Indian economic policies and practices, interacting with the vagaries of weather, reduced India in the mid-1960s to almost a pauper in the matter of food production, and converted foreign policy making virtually into begging for food. India’s appeal for food was supported by the Secretary General of the UN, the Director General of FAO, the World Council of Churches, as also Pope Paul VI. But, apparently, adequate food aid could come to India from the United States alone. Johnson’s message to Congress reﬂ ected a profound affection for India and Indians. It said, for instance, that India stood ‘on the threshold of a great tragedy’, that India faced ‘an unprecedented drought’, and that without an appropriate response from the world, India would face a famine. The message added:

This, in our day and age, must not happen. Can we let it be said that man, who can travel into space and explore the stars, cannot feed his own... India is a good and deserving friend. Let it never be said that ‘bread should be so dear, and ﬂ esh and blood so cheap’ that we turned in indifference from her bitter need.253

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 On 19 April 1966, both Houses of the American Congress adopted a joint resolution to recommend food assistance for India.254 American wheat saved millions of Indians from hunger and starvation. American wheat could help about 12 per cent of Indians actually survive. The United States effort was gigantic: it was climaxed by

252 Ibid., pp. 177–78. 253 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 148–49. 254 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 251. Relations with the United States 651

the dispatch of 1,000 ships a year to India, each ship carrying 10,000 tons of wheat.255 Yet, the entire wheat epic, written during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson left both the Americans and the Indians dissatisfi ed. For, astonishingly, President Johnson took personal charge of wheat shipments to India, and took steps (that could be left to offi cials lower down in the hierarchy) in such a manner as to suspend wheat shipments from time to time, and to cause confusion, embarrassment, and agony to Americans as also Indians. ‘LBJ’s performance remains beyond comprehension or belief’, writes Chester Bowles. For, ‘on at least fi ve occasions in the critical years of 1965, 1966 and 1967 the President put the Indian Government and people through a needless ordeal in regard to food supplies with no valid explanation even to me and my associates, who had to work every day with exhausted and desperate Indian offi cials’.256 Similarly, B.K. Nehru wrote:

The distress caused by this stoppage in India was reﬂ ected in the continuous and desperate bombardment of telegrams asking us to expedite shipments. The shortages that were going to appear in India if wheat shipments were not resumed became apparent to the correspondents of the American newspapers and news items appeared quite frequently in the American press about our desperate food situation.257

The Indian ambassador to the United States, B.K. Nehru, then adopted ‘an active but secret strategy to have a newspaper blitz against this inexplicable and unreasonable attitude of the President’. Moreover, the Indian ambassador ‘let it be known that as there was nothing left for the Ambassador to do in Washington he would, as an act of protest, leave the capital and move his headquarters to New York’.258 This was a sordid confession that India’s foreign

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 policy was almost conﬁ ned to begging for food. But the strategy worked. President Johnson summoned B.K. Nehru to Washington DC, assured him of immediate wheat shipment, and the assurance

255 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 163. 256 Ibid., pp. 162–63. 257 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 465. 258 Ibid. 652 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

was carried out. The Indian ambassador returned to Washington DC.259 It is still a mystery as to why Johnson, whose sympathy for a democratic India was indisputable, adopted a sort of stop-and-start policy about wheat movements, while taking care not to terminate it. ‘Nobody could discover then and nobody has been able to discover since’, writes B.K. Nehru, ‘why it was that the President adopted this strange attitude. I have seen the papers relating to that period at the LBJ Library and found no indication of his giving to anybody any reason…’.260 There could be a variety of explanations. No single explanation would be completely convincing. The weight of each explanation would vary with one’s nationality and political orientation (or bias). One explanation was that Johnson wanted other donor countries to share the burden of food aid to India. For this purpose, Johnson entrusted a global campaign to Eugene Rostow, Under Secretary of State. Johnson even prevailed upon the World Bank to set up a Food for India Consortium.261 This explanation could be reinforced by Johnson’s apprehensions about the food situation in America. In 1966, the United States was a victim of drought itself. Huge wheat shipments to India could fuel infl ation and bread prices in America could shoot up.262 Moreover, Johnson wanted India to adopt and implement a proper agricultural policy, so that, in the near future, India would be able to avert the famine-type situation of the mid-1960s. Johnson did not fl inch from putting pressure on India for this purpose, and tried to regulate (even if not quite realistically) wheat shipments in accordance with India’s agricultural policy and performance.263 Eventually, by 1968, the Green Revolution made itself visible in India, and India achieved near-self-suffi ciency in food grains production. But it owed an enormous debt to American pressure for policy change, and, even more, to American technological assistance.264 Undoubtedly, however, India’s agriculture Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 259 Ibid., pp. 466–67. 260 Ibid., p. 467. 261 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 258. 262 Ibid., p. 256. 263 Ganguly, ‘U.S.–Indian Relations’, p. 87. Also, Bowles, Mission to India, p. 157: That India’s Fourth Five Year Plan awarded top priority to defence, followed by agriculture, could have some connection with American efforts. 264 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 201–2. M.S. Swaminathan, ‘50 Years of Progress in Indian Agriculture’, in Hiranmay Karlekar (ed.), Independent India: The First Fifty Years, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 147–53. Relations with the United States 653

minister, Chidambaram Subramaniam, deserves immense credit for piloting appropriate changes in agricultural policies and their implementation.265 Many Indians are apt to oversimplify the Johnson puzzle on wheat shipments, and resolve it by exclusively stressing the divergence between India and America on the Vietnam issue. In support of this interpretation, it may be recalled that at a time when, on an average, every day three American grain ships were anchoring in Indian ports,

Indian ofﬁ cials seemed almost to be searching for ways to prove that India’s integrity as a sovereign nation could never be bought with American wheat. The Indian Government swamped President Johnson with pleas to stop the bombing of North Vietnam. On one memorable occasion Mrs. Gandhi, following charges by Communist members of Parliament that by accepting U.S. wheat she had ‘sold out’ to the American imperialists, sent warm birthday greeting to Ho Chi Minh.266

It is difﬁ cult to conceive of a greater imbalance between ethics and realism in India’s foreign relations. The Indians thought that America could not dispense aid in a graceful manner. The Americans thought that the vivid demonstration of Indian ingratitude was simply disgraceful. ‘Chester Bowles was the greatest and most uncritical friend of India that we had ever had among the American Ambassadors’ to India, wrote B.K. Nehru.267 When Chester Bowles pleaded with the Johnson administration that the views of the Pope and UN Secretary General U Thant on Vietnam were not different from those of India, the riposte was that U Thant or the Pope did not ask for American wheat.268 The following comment could be classiﬁ ed as fair: ‘At a time of grave national need, one does not, literally, snap at the hand that is providing food’.269 One could

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 raise the query of whether India was pursuing a foreign policy for the world, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam, or for India. In this context, the assessment of the then Indian ambassador to America, B.K. Nehru, is worth referring to. According to him, in course of

265 Ibid., pp. 151, 154. 266 Bowles, Mission to India, pp. 151–52. 267 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 460. 268 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 152. 269 Ganguly, ‘U.S.–Indian Relations’, p. 88. 654 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

conversations with him, President Johnson did not ‘in any way suggest that unpleasant consequences would follow if we did not toe the line on Vietnam’. According to B.K. Nehru, the joint Indo- Soviet communiqué of 16 July 1966, denouncing the American policy on Vietnam,

…greatly annoyed the President but no inkling of this was given at the time to the Indian Embassy. A protest was made by the Americans but through their Ambassador in Delhi. But it was not accompanied by any threat of any kind nor were any retaliatory measures ever hinted at….The only explanation I am inclined to accept is that the President was, by this strange behaviour, reminding us of the consequences if we failed to pursue with vigour our new agricultural policy.270

In order to set the record straight about Johnson’s ‘short tether’ or ‘ship-to-mouth’ policy on grain shipments to India, let it be noted that probably he had the premonition that his party was going to lose the election for the American presidency on 4 November 1968, and that on the day before this election, he authorised immediate wheat shipments, as also disbursement of pending funds for economic aid, to India.271 In the mid-1960s, Indo-American relations came under severe strain on account of another issue, viz. the devaluation of the Indian rupee, although it was not a bilateral issue. Despite what apologists of the Indian government might pontiﬁ cate, there was hardly any doubt that the performance of the Indian economy was anything but poor. Indian agriculture did not receive the attention it deserved; the overstaffed and incompetent public sector drained away scarce resources, and the licence-permit-control Raj atrophied Indian entrepreneurs. In 1964, the World Bank and the IMF—the two principal multilateral agencies providing loans to India—resolved to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 initiate a study of ways and means to upgrade the Indian economy. The United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) ofﬁ ce in New Delhi carried out elaborate research for the World Bank staff engaged in a review of the Indian economy, and in the formulation of appropriate recommendations. In 1965, the World Bank advised

270 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 467. 271 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 160. Relations with the United States 655

(among other things) the deregulation of the economy and a devaluation of the Indian rupee. These might expectedly boost India’s exports, and accelerate economic development.272 In May 1966, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved the World Bank’s proposals, and ‘instructed key civil servants to work out implementation plans in secret’.273 On 6 June 1966, she announced a 57 per cent devaluation of the Indian rupee. Lack of advance political preparations, and the abject failure of the Indian ﬁ nance minister, Sachin Chaudhuri, to defend devaluation in Parliament, created an extremely difﬁ cult situation for Indira Gandhi. Some senior Congress Party leaders denounced devaluation, whereas the Leftists duly condemned it as a surrender to America.274 Devaluation would raise the prices of imported commodities, but not of those produced in India. ‘Nevertheless, many Indian shopkeepers raised their prices anyway, which caused the public to blame devaluation for all higher prices.’275 With only a few months of experience as prime minister, an expectedly limited understanding of economic realities, and a pardonable failure to cast away the spell of Nehru’s socialist shibboleths, Indira Gandhi retreated before Leftist insinuations, and robbed devaluation of the expected outcome by stalling deregulation.276 It should be recalled that, following the Indian announcement of devaluation on 6 June 1966, ‘President Johnson redeemed the pledge of US support by moving quickly on 11 June to approve a substantial US$335 million aid commitment for the upcoming consor-tium meeting’.277 Nevertheless, the devaluation/deregulation fiasco caused a sort of setback to India–America economic transactions. As before, the United States persisted in providing economic aid to India, acting, probably, on the following proposition: ‘To give aid may not gain goodwill, but to withhold it will lose it’.278 Since the massive Soviet propaganda machinery appeared to earn much greater

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 goodwill for the Soviet Union from aid to India, and America seemed

272 Ganguly, ‘U.S.–Indian Relations’, pp. 83–84. 273 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 253. 274 Ibid., pp. 253–54. 275 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 139. 276 Ganguly, ‘U.S.-Indian Relations’, pp. 84–85. 277 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 253. 278 Charles P. Kindleberger, Power and Money, New York: Basic Books, 1970, p. 140. 656 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

to lag behind, it may be advisable at this stage to compare Soviet and American assistance to India up to the mid-1960s. The comparison is not easy, because Soviet assistance consisted of loans, whereas about one-fourth of American aid comprised gifts or straightforward grants.279 As of 31 March 1965, American aid, already disbursed, amounted to `21,752 million, and the corresponding Soviet ﬁ gure stood at `2,452 million.280 There was not much evidence that the Indian elite (including policy makers) devoted any attention to these comparisons for the purpose of infusing realism in foreign relations and serving national interest. Realism was abandoned in major domestic economic decisions with an inevitable fallout on external economic relations. In January 1969, Richard M. Nixon became president of the United States. That very year, India passed the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act ‘with the sole objective of controlling monopolies and large industrial houses, who were denied expansion/ extension of capacity and even additional investment required for modernization’.281 This policy was far from pragmatic at a time when the country’s prime need was the expansion and modernisation of industrial production and when even the largest Indian industrial houses were pygmies in contrast to Asian, European or American giants. This and some other pieces of legislation in the subsequent years tinged by populism had their roots in the results of the 1967 general election in India. The Congress Party registered a weak performance in this election, and Indira Gandhi required the support of the Leftists inside and outside her party in order to remain prime minister until the 1971 election. She wanted to demonstrate that she was pro-poor and anti-big business, unlike her rivals in the Congress, which witnessed a split in November 1969. Indira Gandhi engineered the split to retain her dominance. She then indulged in an orgy of nationalisation—of banks, collieries, insurance, some heavy engineering, and even consumer goods industries (in addition

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to some sick private industries). Not much thought was given to the outcome of these drastic measures. While the Second and the Third Five Year Plans generated an enormous crisis of balance of payments,

279 Peter Sager, Moscow’s Hand in India, Berne: Swiss Eastern Institute, 1966, p. 120. 280 Ibid., p. 119. 281 Tarun Das, ‘Industry: From Regulation to Liberalization’, in Hiranmay Karlekar (ed.), Independent India: The First Fifty Years, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 171. Relations with the United States 657

‘the public sector was found a convenient tool for propagating a spirit of economic populism’.282 In order to assess the impact of such measures on domestic and foreign observers (especially American observers), it is pertinent to highlight Indira Gandhi’s methods and motives. In order to bolster her pro-poor image, Indira Gandhi did not hesitate to unleash mobocracy on the streets of New Delhi, with the mobs hailing her as the saviour.283 ‘Jam-packed in trucks and buses, for which obviously they were in no position to pay’, wrote Frank Moraes on 17 November 1969, ‘shoals of individuals have been taken on spontaneous pilgrimages of homage and acclaim. Some of the more worshipful have gone on foot.’284 Supporting mobocracy was in rampant violation of the solemn constitutional obligations and practices. For example, one populist or (deceptively) pro-poor measure was the derecognition, and abolition, of the privy purses of princes of indigenous states in British India. Pledges offered by the Government of India were discarded without parliamentary endorsement. The Lok Sabha passed the measure, but the Rajya Sabha rejected it. Indira Gandhi substituted an adverse parliamentary verdict by an Ordinance issued by the president. ‘Heading a minority government she is heavily reliant on the pro-Moscow communists on the one hand and the so-called Young Turks’ of the Congress Party on the other hand, wrote Frank Moraes on 7 September 1970.285 If, on the issue of privy purses for princes, Indira Gandhi deﬁ ed Parliament, on the issue of nationalisation of banks, she simply bypassed Parliament, which was to meet in two days, and got an Ordinance issued by the president.286 The following comment by Frank Moraes is worthy of attention:

It is not the Prime Minister’s policies so much as her motives and methods that arouse disquiet and distrust. For only when her own personal political position was threatened did she go into a whirligig Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of manoeuvres to outwit and outﬂ ank her opponents, the blitzkrieg being spearheaded by the nationalization of banks….287

282 Ibid., p. 171. 283 Frank Moraes, Without Fear or Favour, Delhi: Vikas, 1974. 284 Ibid., p. 27. 285 Ibid., pp. 48, 52–53. 286 Ibid., p. 15. 287 Ibid., p. 28. 658 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The poor and the underprivileged were deceived into believing that nationalised banks would miraculously shower funds on them. Frank Moraes wrote on 5 October 1970 that the Indian ‘Prime Minister’s subservience to Soviet Russia emerges more clearly every day….Not a month passes which does not see the visit of an Indian Minister or mission to Moscow and a similar inﬂ ux of Russian visitors to New Delhi’.288 The explanation of this situation, as provided by Frank Moraes, deserves critical attention. He wrote, on 21 July 1969:

Under the [Indian] Prime Minister’s stewardship the country is being deliberately mortgaged to the Soviet Union whose growing inﬂ uence is perceptible not only in the conduct of our foreign affairs but in the trend of our internal policies, particularly economic. Sometimes one wonders whether India is ruled from New Delhi or Moscow. Mrs. Gandhi’s overdramatic nationalization of banks will doubtless earn her the plaudits of her patrons in the Kremlin.289

These comments by the editor of Indian Express, Frank Moraes, one of the most eminent journalists of India, might contain traces of anguished exaggeration, but they were basically objective and patriotic. They are relevant when analysing Indo-American relations. The fact is that in the early years of the Nixon administration, which took ofﬁ ce in January 1969, India’s performance—economic or political—did not have much to enthuse Washington DC with. At any rate, America could not possibly stick to its earlier expectation that India could provide a bright example of democratic success in contrast to communist China. In the early 1970s, America took a long stride in cultivating communist China. After all, despite more than two decades of independent existence, what India exhibited internally was ‘political chaos and economic deterioration’, and there was over-reliance on the public sector in which ‘never has so little 290

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 been done by so many for so few’. The Nixon administration’s indifference to, if not disgust of, South Asia was apparent from the president’s foreign policy reports of 1970 and 1971. The former had 200 pages, with only a few paragraphs on South Asia, and the latter had three pages. The messages

288 Ibid., p. 53. 289 Ibid., p. 16. 290 Ibid. Also see Thomas P. Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 95. Relations with the United States 659

from these scanty references were that America was interested in resolving humanitarian issues in the India–Pakistan subcontinent, in contributing to economic development, in persuading the two countries to settle their discords, in encouraging no closer relationship between them and America than what they themselves wanted, and, fi nally, ensuring that the Soviets or the Chinese did not gain any pre-eminence in South Asia.291 During 1969 and 1970 fi nancial years, India received US$1.5 billion of American economic aid.292 While America remained preoccupied with courting China and assigning low priority to South Asian affairs, the crisis in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), simmering in 1970, exploded in March 1971, when, again, Prime Minister Gandhi experienced a tremendous accretion to her political authority and confi dence by virtue of winning 362 of 520 seats in the Indian Parliament at a general election. Nixon’s national security adviser, Kissinger (keeping even Secretary of State William Rogers in the dark) made a secret trip to Beijing in July 1971. Nixon publicly announced this trip, as also his own forthcoming mission to China on 15 July 1971. Meanwhile, the crisis in East Pakistan assumed intractable proportions. But Nixon and Kissinger persisted in the ‘quixotic undertaking’293 of patronising Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan, although, in the Nixon administration, ‘almost to a person, the offi cials working on South Asia were convinced the White House strategy would not work’.294 This subject—and the birth of independent Bangladesh in December 1971—have been treated elaborately elsewhere in this book. But it is pertinent to record here that ‘far from a diplomatic victory, the whole affair proved an unnecessary and embarrassing diplomatic setback for the United States’.295 In 1969, India wanted to raise its diplomatic representation in Hanoi to the level of an ambassador. But the threat of suspension of American aid restrained India. In 1972, following the successes

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 at the 1971 general election and the war in Bangladesh, none could stop Indira Gandhi from setting up an embassy in Hanoi. Moreover, Indira Gandhi closed down the American aid mission with more than

291 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 288–89. 292 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 95. 293 Ibid., p. 97. 294 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 296. 295 Ibid., p. 307. 660 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

1,200 Indian and American employees. She ordered a decrease in the number of American Peace Corps Volunteers from more than 500 to 50.296 ‘The Indian Government also imposed stringent restrictions on research by American academics, paradoxically, a group that had been among the vociferous opponents of Nixon’s policy towards the Bangladesh crisis.’297 Ironically, all this was happening at a time when India became ‘a model of KGB inﬁ ltration of a Third World Government’ because the KGB ‘had scores of sources throughout the Indian government—in intelligence, counterintelligence, the Defence and Foreign Ministries, and the police’.298 Add to this, ‘the taking over of key places in the government and administration, and outside this periphery by former communists, fellow-travellers and others of that ilk’, wrote Frank Moraes on 21 November 1972.299 Indira Gandhi became, wrote Frank Moraes on 19 October 1972, ‘the nut in the nutcracker, the marked victim of a double squeeze operated by the C.P.I. in India and their senior collaborators in Russia’.300 An awkward, embarrassing, and ominous question survived: till the 1971 general election,

…the Prime Minister’s alibi for leaning on Moscow and on Moscow’s friends inside India was her exposure to the slings and arrows of the reactionaries on the right. These forces have disappeared. There can be no excuse any longer for India to be tied to the coat-tails of Messrs Kosygin and Brezhnev. Much as we might love the Moscovites we would be the better for seeing a little less of their obtrusive presence in our midst.301

Astonishingly, in such an environment of Indian submissiveness to the Soviet Union, Nixon made a grand overture to India as he nominated Daniel Patrick Moynihan for the job of American ambassador to India (in place of Kenneth Keating). Moynihan, a Democrat, served capably in important positions under Presidents

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. As an American delegate to the UN in 1971, Moynihan unequivocally opposed the Nixon-Kissinger

296 Ibid., pp. 307–8. 297 Ibid., p. 308. 298 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, p. 321. 299 Moraes, Without Fear or Favour, pp. 148–49. 300 Ibid., p. 144. 301 Ibid., p. 76. Relations with the United States 661

policy towards the East Pakistan (Bangladesh) crisis. Early in 1973, when Moynihan arrived in India, Indo-American relations were suffering from the aftermath of the Bangladesh war of 1971. The battle of hurt sensibilities was raging. India was yet to recover from the humiliation of depending on American wheat for years. Consequently, when there was a bumper crop in India in 1971, India announced (without much foresight) that it would bring to an end the PL 480 programme, because it would not require any more of grain imports from America. Next year, unfortunately, the monsoon rains failed, and India had to purchase food from America. This was also the year when, embarrassingly, India had to ask for endorsement by America of the rescheduling of India’s foreign debt. In 1975, again, India had to buy American wheat at a concessional rate.302 While the Bangladesh war led to the suspension of American economic assistance to India, NGOs like CARE continued to supply free food (which New Delhi did not mind) available under some provisions of the PL 480 programmes. In 1973, when Moynihan was in India, the Nixon administration, in a mood to resume normal economic aid to India, budgeted US$75 million for this purpose. But it could not be released because India wanted America to lift the ban it had imposed during the 1971 war, whereas America desired that India should put forward a request.303 Although subjected by India to undeservedly inhospitable treatment, Moynihan could rise above egoism, and plan the establishment of a mature Indo-American relationship. Nixon’s foreign policy report of 1973 harped on such a relationship based on ‘equality, reciprocity and mutual interest’, while it proclaimed respect for India ‘as a major country’. Moynihan was determined to take practical steps towards achieving this goal by modifying (within existing constraints) the inherently unequal relationship between a dispenser and recipient of aid.304 Moynihan focused his attention

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 on the distressingly huge accumulation of Indian rupees, owned by America but deposited in the Reserve Bank of India, ﬂ owing from the PL 480 programme. In 1973, the amount stood at approximately US$3 billion.

302 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 107. 303 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 311. 304 Ibid., pp. 309–11. Also, Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, pp. 14–16. 662 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Although some of these rupees were being used to cover expenses of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and to ﬁ nance agreed-upon projects, the drain on the account was outpaced by interest payments, so that even after India stopped paying for grain in rupees, the account continued to grow.305

As in the cases of his 1973 foreign policy report, and of the appointment of Moynihan as ambassador to India, so in the case of solving the complex problem of PL 480 rupees, Nixon exhibited an extraordinary broadmindedness, which, one must confess, the Indians failed to match. Moynihan persuaded Nixon to keep US$1.1 billion rupees for America, and to write off US$2.2 billion, overcoming a natural resistance from the Washington bureaucracy.306 It was a matter of great political courage on the part of Nixon who was then wallowing in the Watergate morass. Nixon exhibited the same trait (as also compassion for India) when, backed by Moynihan, he frustrated the manoeuvres of a Democratic Party Senator to throttle the PL 480 rupee settlement by demanding Congressional endorsement. On 18 February 1974, the formal agreement, stipulating this settlement, was signed in New Delhi. Moynihan presented to ‘the Gov- ernment of India a check for US$2.2 billion worth of rupees, the largest check ever written until then. Moynihan deserved great credit for persevering in the effort to solve the problem. Ironically, Richard Nixon, never regarded as a friend of India, deserved part of the credit because of his willingness to back Moynihan on the issue’.307 During Moynihan’s tenure, on account of the severe shock from a sudden rise in oil prices in 1973, India had to swallow its pride and communicate its interest in availing of the already budgeted American aid worth US$75 million, which, though small, certainly helped India in continuing repayments on past loans.308 What Moynihan did for India on PL 480, on his own initiative, deserves our profound gratitude. What he actually received by the time he left

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India in 1975 was deliberate discourtesy, being virtually boycotted by universities and the media.

305 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 107. 306 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 313. 307 Ibid., p. 314. Also see Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 107. 308 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 314. Also, Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 108. Relations with the United States 663

In the 1960s, India received 48 per cent of all foreign assistance directly from America, whereas in the 1970s this fi gure dropped to 5 per cent.309 Yet, America remained indirectly the largest donor to India. The International Development Agency (IDA), the soft loan outfi t of the World Bank, compensated for decrease of bilateral American aid to India, as in the 1970s it doubled its assistance to India. American contributions accounted for an appreciable portion of IDA funds. America provided the World Bank with the largest amount of money, whereas India was the biggest recipient of World Bank loans.310 India’s aspiration to attain economic self-reliance remained a distant dream, especially after the rise in petroleum prices in 1973, which tripled India’s oil import bill. It was not possible to reduce this bill without exerting infl uence upon the oil cartel—the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)—in collaboration with countries like the United States. But India, as before, craved the leadership of the Third World, and, therefore, could not discard solidarity with the OPEC.311 In this battle between hard economic realities and vague political ambitions, India’s response remained confused—not at all untypical in the history of India’s foreign relations. There were other examples in the 1970s of how India sacrifi ced both ethics and realism in conducting foreign policy on major issues. At the Sixth Special Session of the UN General Assembly in 1974, for example, while dealing with the economic misfortunes of the Third World countries, the United States was amazed by the severe opposition it faced from India and other developing countries, as they committed a sort of hara-kiri by endorsing a rise in petroleum prices. But probably the most incredible thing happened at the UN World Population Conference at Bucharest in 1974. The United States had planned it through a number of years, but found its policy suggestions (mainly for the benefi t of low income countries, including India) totally

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 overturned.

The capacity of Communist spokesmen to intimidate others was much in evidence. The Indian delegates set out fully expecting to join in resolutions favouring oral contraceptives and male-sterilization.

309 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, pp. 101–2. 310 Ibid., p. 108. 311 Ibid. 664 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Once in Bucharest, they learned from the Chinese that contracep- tion was sheer capitalist imperialism, that there was plenty of room and plenty of food in the world, that the West had simply acquired a disproportionate share.

The Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir, that is, Karan Singh, the Indian delegate at the Conference, as D.P. Moynihan informs, ‘found himself denouncing “colonial denudation” of the East and (curious from a man with a swimming pool in his living room) the “vulgar affl uence” of the West’.312 In the 1970s Indira Gandhi stressed abolition of poverty at home along with the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO), which stressed the obligations of the developed countries (DCs) toward improving the standards of living in less developed countries (LDCs), including India. But, as already indicated, India and other LDCs failed to design realistic policies to serve their stated purposes. If a country like India failed to formulate and implement proper policies for poverty alleviation, and harped on the slogan of a NIEO, the poor masses would not benefi t. Despite the talk of socialism or a socialist pattern of society, the income disparity between the poor in India and their ministers (Union or state) kept increasing. As Frank Moraes wrote on 28 February 1971, an average Indian had an estimated annual income of `546 at a time when a Union minister had approximately a taxable annual income of `448,000. This was all the more amazing because, in a top industrial house, the taxable annual income of the highest ranking functionary stood at about `200,000 a year.313 Moreover, ironically, when Nehru denounced the profi t motive of the private sector, he took those measures in the name of socialism, which benefi ted the capitalists, especially the manufacturers of consumer goods, but not the masses. The public sector, for instance, would produce steel that was used by the private sector to turn out consumer goods and earn enormous profi ts. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Large-scale public investment—along with deficit financing— generated, during the period of the Second Five Year Plan (commencing in 1956), severe infl ationary pressures hurting the poor in India. During this period, prices of manufactured articles rose by 25 per cent, of foodstuffs by 27 per cent, of industrial raw materials

312 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, p. 31. 313 Moraes, Without Fear or Favour, p. 73. Relations with the United States 665

by 45 per cent, and wholesale prices by about 30 per cent.314 In the middle of 1964, at the midpoint of the gigantic Third Five Year Plan, India was facing economic collapse.315 Soon afterwards, Indira Gandhi became prime minister, and her socialist policies aggravated the poverty of her country. Indira Gandhi was merely following her father Jawaharlal Nehru. As James Cameron wrote:

The tragedy of the Nehrus has been on an almost classic pattern: they proclaimed and believed in the principles of social democracy and sustained and promoted their party through the nastiest aspects of unbridled and dishonest capitalism… Congress has been sustained by corruption for ever, by the black money from the business houses, who as quid pro quo have been tacitly allowed to run their own parallel economy for their personal enrichment, and the growing impoverishment of the people.316

In this dangerous situation, Indira Gandhi and her government should have been cautious and realistic in pursuing the NIEO in tune with vital national interests, especially in such forums as the UN. But, as already noted, India displayed neither caution nor realism, and the resultant impact on relations with America was hardly favourable. Take, for instance, the special session of the UN General Assembly in September 1975. In a 12,000 word speech, the American secretary of state, Henry A. Kissinger, suggested a sort of ‘new deal’ or ‘Marshall Plan’ for the LDCs, which attracted praise even from a radical country like Algeria. Kissinger proposed an IMF-linked agency to provide loans of up to US$2.5 billion a year to LDCs over a period of four years, an International Finance Corporation-linked international investment trust for facilitation of capital ﬂ ow to LDCs, an international energy institute, a 30 million ton world grain reserve, and changes ‘in the tariff systems whereby industrial countries favoured the import of raw materials 317

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 over manufactured goods’. Interestingly, the USSR ignored this American proposal. China and the USSR focussed on ﬁ ghting each other. ‘From the ﬁ rst, the two large Communist Powers went at one

314 Ronald Segal, The Crisis of India, Bombay: Jaico, 1971, p. 202. 315 Ibid., p. 227. 316 Quoted in Janardan Thakur, All the Prime Minister’s Men, New Delhi: Vikas/Bell, 1978, p. 8. 317 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, p. 130. 666 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

another, paying no attention and offering nothing to the developing countries in whose interests the Special Session had been called.’318 The Indian reaction was typically unrealistic at a time, as stressed earlier, when maximum realism was needed for India. For example, and astonishingly, it was argued by an Indian commentator that ‘the Russians are a little more helpful than the Americans in that they are willing to give their votes to the developing countries’.319 So, when India was a victim of growing impoverishment, vote was more important than planned economic assistance! Inﬁ rmities in India’s domestic and foreign policies appeared to reinforce one another. For example, India’s socialism was the misleading name for state capitalism and licence Raj. ‘In such regimes the privileged classes lived off rents collected from government licences.’320 If socialism pointed to a new domestic order where justice and equity prevailed, India was failing to take effective steps towards achieving it. India (and many other LDCs), however, proclaimed their desire to work towards a much more difﬁ cult goal, viz. the NIEO, which would require a transfer of resources from the DCs (or the North, a fashionable jargon) to the LDCs (or the South). Following the immense rise in oil prices in the 1970s, such a transfer took place from, say, the United States, to, for example, Saudi Arabia. India (and other LDCs) welcomed this transfer facilitated by the bargaining power of OPEC. They probably did not realise the full implication of what was happening, and what they were rejoicing at. The Saudis would consider the United States to be the best place for keeping their massive additional earnings. Therefore, as Moynihan wrote about the net effect of resource transfer due to the oil price rise, ‘we would get back not only the extra dollars the Saudis were charging us for oil; we would get the extra dollars they were charging Bangladesh and Tanzania as well’.321 A new category of LDCs or Third World countries came into existence—those who were Most

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Seriously Affected (MSA) by the sudden and skyrocketing rise in oil prices. At the relevant UN forum, India or other Third World countries did not shed tears for the MSA countries. On the contrary,

318 Ibid., p. 133. 319 Ibid., pp. 131–32. 320 Ibid., p. 100. 321 Ibid., p. 116 Relations with the United States 667

‘Third World delegates vied with one another to extol the rape of their economies by the sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf’.322 For the ruling circles in India (and other LDCs or Third World countries or members of the non-aligned movement), terms such as socialism or NIEO appeared to have a rhetorical and propaganda value and were supposed to contribute to the preservation of their political power. Otherwise, there was no rational explanation of why they would sacriﬁ ce realism and work against their self-interest in such international forums as the Nonaligned Foreign Minister’s Conference at Lima in August 1975, or the Seventh Special Session of the UN General Assembly (as previously referred to) in September 1975. At the end of the Lima Conference, India and other countries adopted a political document, which thoroughly denounced the United States, and expressed preference for an informal alliance with the Soviet Union. But, to illustrate the lack of pragmatism of countries like India, in the period before the Seventh Special Session of the UN General Assembly, as Moynihan informs,

The Soviets had made clear in a long sequence of preparatory meetings that spring and summer that no help should be expected from them. The Chinese had said the same. For all their denunciation, the Non- Aligned had no choice but to look to the United States as the one realistic source of aid.323

The twin victories at the general election and Bangladesh war in 1971 should have made Prime Minister Indira Gandhi more conﬁ dent and pragmatic in both domestic and foreign economic policies. In actual fact, she exhibited more assertiveness than pragmatism. She sanctiﬁ ed control, combining politics of control with economics of control. In both the former and the latter, pre-1971 trends were strengthened. With the help of the prime minister’s Secretariat, headed by P.N. Haksar, Indira Gandhi sought to maximise her

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 control over the polity as also the economy. She excelled in, for instance, depriving ministers, including senior ministers, of their due share of authority. She cut across normal boundaries of ministries in a parliamentary democracy, snatching for herself important outﬁ ts of such ministries as home, defence, commerce and industry.324 She

322 Ibid. 323 Ibid., p. 127. 324 Moraes, Without Fear or Favour, p. 52. 668 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

went so far as to reduce the country’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), to an espionage agency that would spy on her political opponents, and enable her to maximise political control.325 The quest for political and economic control seemed to march in step.

Some steps were taken to fulﬁ ll the populist promises she had made—most important, the government nationalized the trade in grain, and stringent new measures were introduced to limit foreign investment; but both proved to be economically disastrous, and the latter caused further complications in U.S.-Indian relations.326

As the economics of control failed to alleviate the misery of the masses, and inﬂ ation rose, Indira Gandhi appeared to consolidate the politics of control, which was successful. ‘Indira’s policy of controlling the state governments by handpicking the chief ministers had now become the rule…. Indira began to suspend rather than dissolve state legislatures, in order to paralyse opposition to the Congress Party in the states.’327 Growing success of the politics of control spelled an over reliance on the part of Indira Gandhi on a number of cronies or courtiers (including Union ministers, state chief ministers, top business houses, chairmen of nationalised banks), and, above all, her son, Sanjay Gandhi. Corruption became rampant because cronies discovered that the best way to please Indira Gandhi was to satisfy Sanjay Gandhi’s political-economic ambitions using any means. There was corruption under Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri too. ‘But it was only under Indira that corruption became endemic to the workings of government at every level.’328 In promoting Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi could certainly draw inspiration from the way Jawaharlal had built up his daughter. At a time when Indira Gandhi was just the prime minister’s daughter, without any important ofﬁ ce in the ministry or in the Congress Party,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 not merely ordinary followers but even Union Cabinet ministers tried to please Jawaharlal Nehru by violating government regulations when Indira Gandhi went to the New Delhi airport to board a plane. She and more than a hundred others set aside all government procedures,

325 Thakur, All the Prime Minister’s Men, p. 21. 326 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 109. 327 Frank, Indira, p. 348. 328 Ibid., p. 349. Relations with the United States 669

including those of the customs department, and invaded the tarmac in order to see off Indira Gandhi.329 In the case of Sanjay Gandhi,

[Indira Gandhi]… herself was going all out to project her son, often asking her Ministers and Chief Ministers to consult Sanjay Gandhi on some point or the other…. Or if she herself didn’t say it, there was always the great Sanjay-promoter, R.K. Dhawan, to drop the hint to the Union Ministers and Chief Ministers.330

All this meant the limitless misuse of power, which was both a cause and consequence of all-pervasive corruption. ‘Corruption also permeated Congress Party fundraising, now directly controlled from the Prime Minister’s offi ce.’331 The more political power Indira Gandhi amassed the more corruption she abetted. One reason why she probably misused this nexus was because she suffered from the perverse notion that adherence to democracy was a major cause of her failure in poverty alleviation.332 She sacrifi ced all democratic norms as she proceeded to establish domination over newspapers and even the Supreme Court of India.333 So, ‘by 1974, corruption stories had started bursting like chain-crackers.’334 Large-scale protests against infl ation and corruption, spearheaded by students, targeted the Congress Party and succeeded—fi rst in Gujarat, and then in Bihar.335 In order to curb these anti-Congress agitations, the Indira Gandhi regime resorted to gross misuse of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). Primarily designed to curb anti-smuggling operations, this Act was used to cow down political opponents, although some smugglers were indeed arrested. ‘The arrests had been selective, with many leading smugglers obviously tipped off and others detained in conditions of luxury, with continuing access to the best foreign liquor and female companionship that money could buy.’336 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

329 Thakur, All the Prime Minister’s Men, p. 163. 330 Ibid., p. 162. 331 Frank, Indira, p. 349. 332 Thakur, All the Prime Minister’s Men, p. 28. 333 Frank, Indira, pp. 351, 353. 334 Ibid., p. 161. 335 Ibid., pp. 358–59. 336 Ajit Bhattacharjee, Jayaprakash Narayan: A Political Biography, Delhi: Vikas/Bell Books, 1978, p. 184. 670 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In these somewhat unpropitious circumstances, on 18 May 1974, New Delhi carried out an underground nuclear test. (International ramifi cations of this test will be discussed elsewhere in this book.) At this point, however, it is pertinent to note the reaction of critics who denounced Indira Gandhi’s domestic policies. One such typical reaction was: ‘That this was motivated primarily by political rather than scientifi c or military reasons was clear from the fact that there was no follow-up to the explosion’, wrote Ajit Bhattacharjee.337 The impact on Indo-American economic relations was noteworthy. Congress demanded that the United States should oppose any move by the World Bank to extend concessional loans to India; the administration complied.338 The underground nuclear explosion undoubtedly reinforced Indira Gandhi’s obsession with acquisition of more and more power for herself and her son. She persisted in her undemocratic ways, and, on 12 June 1975, a sort of nemesis struck her. The news of the defeat of the Congress Party at the recent elections in Gujarat arrived on that day. But a much bigger—almost stunning—blow was struck on that day by the Allahabad High Court, which pronounced Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices in the 1971 election contested by her and of lying in court. The Court nullifi ed her election as an MP and declared her ineligible to participate in a parliamentary election for a period of six years.339 Indira Gandhi could have availed of the democratic option of an appeal to the Supreme Court. But she preferred the undemocratic course, to which she was habituated, and towards which she was pushed by her courtiers as also by her son Sanjay Gandhi.

In the days following the Allahahad High Court decision, Sanjay and R.K. Dhawan orchestrated a series of pro-Indira demonstrations and marches. Government employees were ordered to attend if they did not want to be marked absent from duty and their pay docked. Between 12 and 25 June, 1975, Delhi Transport Corporation

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 buses were requisitioned by Congress to transport Indira’s supporters to rallies.340

337 Ibid., p. 185. 338 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 112. 339 Bhattacharjee, Jayaprakash Narayan, pp. 193–94. 340 Frank, Indira, p. 373. Relations with the United States 671

The practice of renting rallyists was climaxed by a Proclamation of Emergency (almost a slaughter of democracy) that was approved in the early morning of 26 June 1975 by the Union Cabinet. Already used to endorsing Indira Gandhi’s dictates without any vote and without debate, the Cabinet, on that fateful day, concluded the meeting in less than 30 minutes, and conﬁ rmed the Proclamation of Emergency.341 It would be unfair not to remind ourselves of the prophecy made by Ambassador D.P. Moynihan in January 1975, when he was about to leave India. He prepared for his colleagues a note in which he predicted how Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would threaten Indian democracy. He declared his ‘belief that the Indian democracy was in danger.

The Prime Minister was running the economy into an ever more rigid state socialism. The consequent economic decline was creating ever-growing opposition, not least from responsible Indians who understood the sources of the decline. Yet she had established a doctrinal position from which to suppress that opposition on grounds that it was a threat not to her, but to the principles she stood for. As the opposition grew, the day of suppression would draw nearer. Unless she could recognize the cycle, the day was not far off when she would try to destroy her opposition, and in doing so she would destroy the Indian democracy.342

If the 1974 nuclear explosion annoyed and alarmed the Americans, the 1975 emergency deeply disillusioned them. As expected, the Soviet Union expressed unequivocal support for Indira Gandhi’s emergency.343 But India was aware that some of its economic requirements could be fulﬁ lled by the United States—and not by the Soviet Union. Sanjay Gandhi himself was enthusiastic about building economic ties with Western countries, including the United States.344 Therefore, India sent out signals—however vague or hesitant—that Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 she was interested in expanding relationships with America.345

341 Ibid., pp. 379–80. 342 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, p. 37. 343 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 337. 344 Thornton, ‘The Nixon and Ford Years’, p. 114. 345 Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years, Boston: Little, Brown, 1979, p. 916. 672 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In January 1977, Jimmy Carter took offi ce as the president of the United States. In March 1977, the Janata Party came to power in India (following a general election). The new government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai restored democratic government and civil liberties, ending the dark night of the emergency. During the period of the Carter presidency (1977–81), the USAID assistance for India did not exceed the somewhat insignifi cant and almost symbolic sum of US$103 million—in addition to the 1979 Food for Peace and disaster assistance, and the annual PL 480 food aid of about US$118–36 million. Nevertheless, the United States continued to supply substantial economic assistance through the World Bank’s soft loan provider, the IDA. Thus, the United States provided in 1980, for instance, US$346.95 million out of a total loan of US$1,285 billion of IDA loan to India.346 Undoubtedly, this was an indication of American recognition of India’s renewed faith in democratic ideals. The American Congress revoked the law it had passed in the aftermath of the 1974 nuclear test by India, which directed the American administration to oppose World Bank loans to India.347 Signifi cantly, Morarji Desai’s fi nance minister, H.M. Patel, adopted a realistic approach towards American aid for India, which sharply diverged from that of both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. During his visit to Washington in October 1977,

[Patel] made no bones about Indian interest in U.S. aid. Patel said bluntly he was not going to engage in the ‘hypocrisy’ of pretending India did not need help, or the ‘alphonse-gaston’ routine of waiting for the other side to ask ﬁ rst. India, according to Patel, needed both trade and aid.348

When Morarji Desai was in power, that is till July 1979, America became India’s largest trading partner. But trade was far more important for India than for America before, during, or after the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Morarji Desai years. For example, in 1980–81, India’s exports to America accounted for 24 per cent of all Indian exports, whereas they constituted an insigniﬁ cant proportion of American imports. The same divergence was there in the matter of Indian imports and American exports, the former being about 10 per cent, and the

346 Goheen, ‘U.S. Policy Toward India’, p. 124. 347 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 347. 348 Ibid., p. 356. Relations with the United States 673

latter negligible.349 Although Morarji Desai and his associates were denounced as rightists by Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai’s minister for industries, George Fernandes, was determined to enforce Indira Gandhi’s Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA), which could not but restrict American investments. Fernandes complained that Coca-Cola, which initially invested only `600,000 in India, was reaping an annual profi t of `10–15 million. A foreign investor could not own more than 40 per cent of share capital under the FERA. Coca-Cola refused to comply. It left India. Similarly, IBM had to leave India, even though IBM offered the sop of promoting technology development by fi nancing joint research endeavours. ‘The negative vibrations in the U.S. business community in North America were immediate, widespread, and in some quarters, lasting.’350 Again, ‘unlike Coca-Cola, IBM’s departure, just before the start of the personal computer revolution, proved a major technology loss for India’.351 In 1980, Indira Gandhi once again became the prime minister of India. When out of power, she had not enjoyed the sarcastic observations made by the leaders of the short-lived Janata Party regime about the lack of balance in India’s non-alignment policy. They hinted at the Indian tilt towards the Soviet Union. However, after returning to power in 1980, Indira Gandhi appeared interested in correcting this imbalance, and improving relations with America. An important motive was to gain access to superior American technology in order to upgrade the Indian economy. Indira Gandhi also did not forget that ‘during the Janata years, the Americans treated her courteously; in contrast, the Soviets maladroitly snubbed Mrs. Gandhi, virtually ignoring her when she was out of offi ce’.352 Therefore, shortly after Ronald Reagan won the American presidential election in November 1980, Indira Gandhi sent to America her personal envoy, B.K. Nehru (a former Indian ambassador to America), where he presented Indira

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Gandhi’s letter to the President-elect. The letter assured ‘the United States of our friendship and of India’s desire to have continuous and close contacts with that country’. According to B.K. Nehru, ‘the gesture was certainly much appreciated’.353 Moreover, Indira

349 Goheen, ‘U.S. Policy Toward India’, p. 125. 350 Ibid. 351 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 364. 352 Ibid., p. 381. 353 Nehru, Nice Guys Finish Second, p. 584. 674 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Gandhi did not conceal her interest in visiting the United States at an early date. The visit materialised in July 1982.354 Meanwhile, in October 1981, leaders of major industrially advanced and developing countries, including Indira Gandhi and Ronald Reagan, joined a conference at Cancun (Mexico) to discuss important global economic problems. Expectedly, differences between India and America came to the surface. While Indira Gandhi, as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), pleaded for NIEO, and for concessions from developed countries in the spheres of trade, aid, and debt, Reagan argued that the developing countries accelerate economic growth by embracing capitalism and encouraging private enterprise. In spite of these differences, Gandhi and Reagan reportedly developed good ‘personal chemistry’ in the course of a private meeting.355 This may account for the success of Indira Gandhi’s America visit in July 1982. One outcome of this visit— with long-term potentialities for economic advancement—was the launching of an initiative for cooperation in science and technology. Both the countries acted promptly upon this initiative.356 There was one factor which normally went unnoticed but vitally contributed to this initiative. This was the growing number of Indian immigrants to America, estimated at above 300,000 in the early 1980s. ‘The immigrants, typically professionals with advanced degrees, had the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the United States.’357 Moreover, many top American corporations, who had numerous Indians ‘on their technical and sales staffs’, were also ‘interested in selling advanced technology’ to India.358 But technology transfer from America to India required India’s compliance with America’s complex export control regulations, which was not easy. If America was worried about its technology being leaked from India to the Soviet Union, India too was sensitive about the curtailment of its sovereignty under the guise of a review by the Americans of how

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India used advanced American technology.

India not only had close economic ties to the Soviet Union but openly boasted that it would be a conduit to the Soviets for Western

354 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 389–90. 355 Ibid., p. 387. 356 Ibid., p. 391. 357 Ibid., p. 381. 358 Cohen, ‘The Reagan Administration and India’, p. 142. Relations with the United States 675

technology (American computers, for example, were matched to Indian machine tools and sold, as a package, to the Russians). This arrangement was perfectly legal and perhaps in American public and corporate interests, but it made wary many in the bureaucracy responsible for controlling advanced American technology.359

Eventually, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two countries was signed in December 1984, a few weeks after Rajiv Gandhi became India’s prime minister, following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi. Probably, this was facilitated by Washington’s knowledge of Rajiv Gandhi’s economic ideas and orientation. Rajiv Gandhi did not share his mother’s and grandfather’s obsession with socialism, and he wanted to encourage the private sector.360 Like the Carter administration, the Reagan administration continued initially to provide Indira Gandhi with an annual development assistance of US$100 million, and an annual PL 480 food aid of US$100 million to be channelled through NGOs. But Harry Barnes, the American ambassador to India, made a wise and innovative move. Under his direction, the USAID in India began to focus more on technology transfer and venture capital than on conventional programmes in agriculture and health. World Bank loans of about US$2 billion every year naturally overshadowed bilateral American assistance to India.361 Moreover, America was not ready to enhance its share of contributions to the IDA, urging upon India to obtain normal loans from the World Bank or from commercial sources, which carried stricter payment terms. Although India was a member of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), America opposed ADB loans to India. A partial explanation of such American behaviour could be American dissatisfaction with India’s role in the UN, where, in 1983, according to a State Department survey, India voted in favour of the Soviet Union on 80 per cent of crucial questions, and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in favour of America only on 20 per cent.362 Moreover, with China’s entry into the IDA with American support, India’s share of IDA loans could not but diminish. The Americans began to pay increasing attention to China. ‘Foundation money, corporate investment,

359 Ibid., p. 141. 360 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 395, 398, 401. 361 Ibid., p. 393. 362 Ibid., pp. 396–97. 676 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

and academic attention swung to a billion Chinese, ignoring three quarters of a billion Indians.’363 Indo-American economic relations continued to be strained, despite registering some notable improvements. Ambassador Harry Barnes succeeded in procuring fi nances for some of India’s science/ technology/education programmes from America’s PL 480 rupee deposits.364 The Indian scientifi c community badly needed a Cray model XMP-24 super computer from America. After an unjustifi able delay, America agreed to provide the Cray XMP-14 computer. The Indians accepted it—despite being deeply dissatisfi ed—because, otherwise, the access to advanced technology would remain closed. But India’s policy on the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Vietnamese in Kampuchea, and Sandinistas in Nicaragua, appeared to cast a shadow on American bilateral aid to India. Initially, the Reagan administration pegged the annual sum at US$100 million. Later on, this dwindled to US$50 million, and in the 1988 fi scal year to US$35 million.365 Even the American decision to provide the XMP-14 super computer was subsequently coupled with ‘India’s need for upgraded capability and the growing mutual confi dence that implementation of the Indo-U.S. agreement could provide’.366 In 1989, when George Bush was the president of the United States, bilateral assistance to India dwindled to an annual sum of US$20 million. Nevertheless, in December 1990, after more than two years of waiting, India received from Bush a great technology booster: Bush approved in principle the licence to export a Cray XMP-22 super computer to India, whose power was double that of XMP-14.367 Meanwhile, a vexatious altercation arose out of a 1988 American enactment, formally applied to India (along with Brazil and Japan) in June 1989. The Omnibus Trade Competitiveness Act of 1988 prescribed (in Paragraph 301) that countries like India, which enjoyed a trade surplus with America and yet put restrictions

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 on American commerce, should be subjected to retaliatory measures by America. Facts of Indo-American trade rendered the application of this prescription—gaining currency as Super 301—somewhat

363 Cohen, ‘The Reagan Administration and India’, p. 143. 364 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 407. 365 Ibid., pp. 410–11. 366 Ibid., p. 414. 367 Ibid., pp. 428, 430–31. Relations with the United States 677

irrelevant, almost fatuous. In 1989, for instance, Indo-American trade amounted to US$5.8 billion, with a paltry $690 million surplus for India. For India, America was then the most important trading partner, accounting for 18 per cent of Indian exports and 11 per cent of Indian imports, whereas the corresponding American ﬁ gures were less than 1 per cent. The Americans resented Indian restrictions on foreign investment, which resulted in about US$200 million worth of foreign investment in 1989, out of which the American share was US$37 million. India’s patent protection policy too infuriated them, and they failed to appreciate the social compulsions behind India’s policy. For instance, in order to make inexpensive medicines available to tens of millions of India’s poor, India limited patents to ﬁ ve years (whereas the Americans demanded 20 years), and respected, instead of the product patent, the process patent. ‘India is the world’s cheapest producer of a wide range of drugs. For that reason, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is now accepted as a dangerous enemy by MNCs.’368 India was deeply aggrieved, when, in June 1989, along with Brazil and Japan, India was placed by the Bush administration on the Super 301 watch list. ‘The fact that India, with its low per capita income and almost de minimis $690 million trade surplus, was lumped together as a trade policy sinner with wealthy Japan, which boasted an enormous $60 billion trade surplus, further incensed New Delhi.’369 While Japan and Brazil began to negotiate with America on this tricky trade dispute, India refused. The National Front government, headed by V.P. Singh (who replaced Rajiv Gandhi after the December 1989 general election), interpreted the issue not as a mere trade discord but as a threat to India’s economic independence. The Super 301 controversy lost much of its heat as America decided in 1990 to link the Super 301 dispute to global trade negotiations in the Uruguay Round under the Geneva Agreement of Trade and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Tariff (GATT). In 1990, as in 1989, foreign investment in India was tiny—US$76 million—while American investment slumped to US$19 million. The Indian economy continued to languish, with the public sector suffering massive deﬁ cits, and the private sector (in collusion with politicians and administrators) earning undeservedly large proﬁ ts in an illogically protected market. As of 1990, there were

368 Indiresan, ‘Technology’, p. 197. 369 Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 436. Also see pp. 434–35. 678 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

two redeeming features of Indo-American economic relations. One, American share of multilateral assistance to India (through the World Bank and the IMF) stood at the respectable fi gure of US$1 billion. Two, in collaboration with the Tatas, Pepsico obtained approval for a soft drink/food processing unit in India.370 But, in India of the late 1980s, ‘political turmoil had engulfed the country while the economy was sliding dangerously into a crisis of unprecedented dimensions. The severe macro-economic diffi culties which overtook it by the end of the 1980s culminated in a major crisis in 1991’.371 In addition to the cumulative effects of unsound public policies, as also faulty implementation of sound public policies, in 1991, India confronted a severe economic crisis on account of a number of factors. First, on account of the Iraq–Iran confl ict and the 1990 war against Iraq launched by an international coalition headed by America, there was a massive rise in petroleum prices. Second, the central government’s budget defi cits were huge—averaging 7 per cent of the GDP during 1980–90. During 1990–91, India’s foreign exchange reserves dwindled to US$2.24 billion, which could hardly take care of essential imports for one month. Third, the Soviet Union, which was a principal trading partner of India as well as a donor, virtually collapsed.372 Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s government tried to cope with this crisis using such measures as decreasing the budget defi cit, as also the tariff and non-tariff barriers. It eliminated licensing obligations, and thereby reduced government control over private sector investment. Moreover, it reformed the banking sector, liberalised the rules for foreign direct investment (FDI), and rationalised the exchange rate. All these reforms undoubtedly spurred economic growth, and facilitated the fl ow of FDIs to India. In 1990, FDI stood at around US$100 million; in 1996, it shot up to about US$2.4 billion, with the American companies accounting for more than one third of this amount.373 ‘The actions taken in the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 early 1990s were simultaneously visionary—informed by a clear

370 Ibid., pp. 437–38. 371 Das, ‘From Regulation to Liberalization’, p. 173. 372 CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 22 April 2003, pp. 1–2. Also see, Chakrabarti, India’s External Relations, p. 14. 373 CRS Report for Congress, p. 2. Relations with the United States 679

long-run goal—and pragmatic—taking specifi c concrete incremental steps to make that vision a reality.’374 In the mid-1990s, fragile coalition governments in New Delhi undoubtedly hindered the reform process.375 Yet, as the years passed, the impact of India’s economic reforms upon Indo-American economic relations became more visible. For example, from 1991 to July 2001, American FDI fl ow to India stood at US$3 billion out of a total FDI fl ow of $19 billion. By February 2001, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) from America invested about US$7 billion in India’s capital markets, out of a total FII investment of US$13 billion. There were 220 American FIIs registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) at that time, out of a total of 538 registered FIIs. The visit of President Clinton to India in March 2000, the April 2000 agreement for the establishment of the India–United States Financial and Economic Forum, and the September 2000 visit of Prime Minister Vajpayee to America gave a boost to business partnership between the two countries.376 An extraordinarily signifi cant impact of economic reforms upon India’s economic relations with America was the brief duration of American sanctions imposed upon India following the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998. In November 1998, President Clinton granted a waiver of sanctions for one year. On 27 October 1999, Clinton removed economic sanctions from India.377 The Americans, however, continued to resent the tariff and non-tariff barriers imposed by India upon the entry of American products to India, as also the loss of trade on account of India’s failure to stop the piracy on intellectual property rights (IPR). In 2002, for example, IPR piracy accounted for an estimated loss of US$468.1 million to American traders.378 Moreover, some American business groups were worried that a number of information technology (IT) jobs were outsourced by

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 374 World Bank, India Development Policy Review, New Delhi, July 2006, p. 30. 375 T.N. Srinivasan, Eight Lectures on India’s Economic Reforms, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 82. Also see, Chakrabarti, India’s External Relations, p. 16. 376 Embassy of India, India-U.S. Relations, Washington DC, 1 November 2001, pp. 1–3. 377 CRS Report for Congress, 26 June 2007, p. 30. 378 Wayne Morrison and Alan Kronstadt, CRS Report for Congress: India-U.S. Economic Relations, 22 April 2003, p. 5. 680 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

some American companies to India, and that this number would rise with improvements in India–America economic relations.379 The Indians, too, had their complaints against the Americans. In 2003, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) published an assessment of non-tariff trade barriers arising out of American laws. Some of these laws were in operation since the 1930s, and obstructed Indian exports. Indian textiles, for example, were subjected to quantitative restrictions. India’s edible articles, again, were the targets of inspections, the strictness of which was tantamount to an undeclared prohibition. As Radharaman Chakrabarti writes:

Again, under a provision of a 1990 U.S. law, import of shrimps must accept blanket prohibition where the manner of harvesting in the country of origin might adversely affect other marine species, especially sea turtles. Since this attracts bio-diversity preservation norms, it cannot be contested by ordinary legal means and countries like India would be obliged to restructure their ﬁ shing practice.380

Indians and Americans have hurled severe accusations of dumping against one another. While India can appeal to the WTO court for settlement of disputes, it has to incur enormous legal expenses.381 On balance, however, the negative aspects of Indo-American economic relations continued to be superseded by the positive aspects. While America persisted in investing its ﬁ nancial capital in India, the latter persisted in investing its human capital in America. It may be noted here that India is ‘the only large country in the world where the size of the working age population will grow over the next 20 years’.382 The American share of world GDP stood at 20.7 per cent in 1996, 21.4 per cent in 2001, and 20.9 per cent in 2004. The Indian share was 4.1 per cent in 1996, 4.7 per cent in 2001, and 5.9 per cent in 2004. This steady growth of the Indian

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 economy could not but have a positive impact upon India–America economic relations. Such an impact, moreover, was facilitated by

379 CRS Report for Congress: India–U.S. Economic Relations, 25 February 2004, p. 5. 380 Chakrabarti, India’s External Relations, p. 42. 381 Ibid., p. 43. 382 2005 Trumbull Lecture by P. Chidambaram, ﬁ nance minister of India, at Yale University, on 22 September 2005, p. 4. Relations with the United States 681

the state of economic freedom in India. According to the Economic Freedom of the World 2005 report by Canada’s Fraser Institute, India occupied the 66th position among 127 countries, although America occupied the third position. India’s rank was indeed signiﬁ cant, because China’s rank was 86th and Brazil’s 88th.383 From 2000–1 to 2004–5, Indo-American merchandise trade rose from US$12.3 billion to US$19.6 billion. By that time, America’s institutional investors had developed a great interest in portfolio investment in India, and America emerged as the second largest supplier of FDI in India. Nevertheless,

More than the bilateral trade in goods or FDI or portfolio investment, it is business process outsourcing (BPO) that has attracted the most attention…. Producing goods and services in India makes goods and services cheaper in the U.S. A county or state which is able to produce public goods in the U.S. by outsourcing to India is a county or state which is able to cut taxes. When U.S. corporations are able to produce goods or services in India, it makes them more competitive in the global marketplace, and be able to offer a better deal to their consumers.384

It may be added that a number of developed countries have a demographic defi cit in the sense of a sharp decline in the working age population, which makes it obligatory for them to outsource some economic operations, or, bring in migrant workers. In a world of growing competitiveness and interdependence, even India, despite a favourable demographic profi le, has to outsource some work. One signifi cant dimension of Indo-American interdependence is the fact that a number of venture capitalists in America confi ne marketing and research to America, but prefer to reserve development work for India. Another signifi cant dimension—practically inconceivable in the pre-1991 era—is that India’s transnational corporations have commenced operations in America, acquiring American Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 companies.385 India’s economic growth is undoubtedly the major determinant of a mutually profi table expansion of economic ties between India and America. Unfortunately, even in the latter half of the fi rst decade of

383 Ibid., p. 3. 384 Ibid., p. 5. 385 Ibid., p. 6. 682 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

the 21st century, India’s economic growth remains hamstrung by bureaucratic red tape. ‘It takes an entrepreneur 35 days to start a business, 270 days to obtain various licenses and permits, 62 days to register a property, nearly 4 years to enforce contracts’, write Tushar Poddar and Eva Yi.386 Evidently, the pace of economic reforms, initiated by India in 1991, has been somewhat slow. Yet, during the 2006–7 fi nancial year, the Indian economy registered a growth rate of 9.2 per cent, and in the 2007–8 fi nancial year, the rate was 9 per cent. Rightly, therefore, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has attributed, in its October 2007 survey, the economic progress of India to ongoing economic reforms.387 The year 2007, more or less the terminal year for this study, witnessed the surge in India’s economic relations with America in several ways. For example, India’s exports to America exceeded the exports in 2006 by 10 per cent, standing at US$24 billion. India’s imports from America, valued at US$17.6 billion registered a 75 per cent rise over imports in 2006.388 Above all, the year 2007 was the year in which America and India concluded a landmark agreement on peaceful nuclear cooperation. This could not but have a positive impact upon the pre-existing large-scale cooperation between the two countries on, for example, the peaceful uses of space technology, and trade in high technology items having dual (civil as well as military) use. It must be stressed, however, that, even before the nuclear deal, strategic partnership between the two countries was so evolving that in 2007 approximately 95 per cent of India’s applications for licence to trade in dual use technology items secured American approval. Moreover, in October 2007, the Bureau of Industry and Security of the United States Commerce Department extended recognition to India as a country that could benefi t from its ‘Validated End-User’ programme. This would enable trustworthy Indian purchasers to procure, even

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 without individual licences, the desired high technology items from America.389

386 Global Economics Paper No:152, 22 January 2007, G.S. Global Economic Website, https:// portal.gs.com, p. 24. 387 Alan Kronstadt, India–U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 12 August 2008, pp. 54–55. 388 Ibid., p. 55. 389 Ibid., p. 44. Relations with the United States 683

The worldwide economic slump of 2008 had predictably its impact upon economic engagements between India and America. But that is outside the scope of discussion in this book. In course of the duration of this crisis, however, and even after it is resolved, India and America will have to engage in continuous and large-scale collaboration for coping with some global issues with signiﬁ cant effects upon bilateral economic relations. One, they have to resolve their differences on the modalities of international trade under the Doha Round of negotiations of the WTO. They are to explore con- sensual ways to remove domestic subsidies which distort trade, to expand market access for agricultural goods, as also to do away with export subsidies. In the Indian assessment, the WTO tends to concentrate on economic variables and ignore socio-political issues. This can be easily illustrated with reference to the agricultural products of the United States and other developed countries, which enjoy massive subsidies. If such products are granted unfettered access to the Indian market, tens of millions of Indian farmers will lose their livelihood, and ﬂ ock to the already overcrowded cities, causing socio-political disruption.390 Two, India and America (along with many other countries) have to collaborate in reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and combating global warming. In a descending order, America, China, Russia, and India are the four largest generators of GHG. But per capita emission of America is 16 times higher than that of India. About 17 per cent of global population inhabits India, but they are responsible for only 4 per cent of total global emissions. India expects rich countries like America to assume far larger obligations for reducing GHG emissions. India has launched programmes to tap solar energy, hydrogen, and biofuels to build a cleaner environment. In October 2007, America announced grants for 23 clean energy technology projects in India.391 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

390 2005 Trumbull Lecture, P. Chidambaram, ﬁ nance minister of India, at Yale University, 22 September 2005, p. 8. Also see, K. Alan Kronstadt, India- U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 12 August 2008, p. 59. 391 Business Economics, 1–15 January 2009, pp. 62–64. Also, Kronstadt, India–U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 12 August 2008, pp. 61–62. An important book by Thomas L. Friedman—Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why the World Needs a Green Revolution and How We can Renew Our Global Future, London: Allen Lane, 2008—provides an elaborate as well as incisive analysis of this issue. 684 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Three, India and America have to cooperate in redesigning international ﬁ nancial arrangements created in 1945. They have to revise modes of management and behaviour of such institutions as the World Bank and the IMF so that they reﬂ ect the current global realities. Only then, today and tomorrow, will they be able to deal successfully with the foreseeable and unforeseen challenges confronting India, the United States, and the world.392

Military Transactions India’s earliest experience of military negotiations with the United States was not at all happy. In 1948, when the war with Pakistan was on, India wanted to purchase used bombers from the United States. But this transaction fell through because the Americans took the extraordinary stand that they could not discriminate between India and Pakistan.393 Soon, however, India was able to pay cash and procure some supply aircraft, recoilless guns, and Sherman tanks from America. At the time of the India–China confl ict of 1962, America and Britain were extraordinarily prompt in providing military equipment worth US$70 million to India.394 This confl ict brought to light serious defi ciencies in the Indian military. Ambassador Chester Bowles supported a programme for the modernisation of the Indian military that would cost US$100 million a year over a fi ve-year period. This was a modest sum, as Pakistan had been gifted military equipment worth a larger amount, while India would receive 50 per cent of the equipment by way of sales and 50 per cent as gifts. The infl uence of the Pakistani lobby upon the American Congress as also defence and state departments was so powerful that Ambassador Bowles found it very diffi cult to carry forward his modest programme of military support to India. Eventually, in mid-November 1963, he was able to win the support of President Kennedy. A meeting Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of the National Security Council was scheduled for 26 November 1963, when this programme was expected to secure approval. But President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963.

392 2005 Trumbull Lecture, P. Chidambaram, ﬁ nance minister of India, at Yale University, 22 September 2005, p. 9. 393 Kaul, The Untold Story, p. 99. 394 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 59. Relations with the United States 685

Bowles then took up the matter with President Johnson. The usual opposition from defence/state departments was counteracted by Bowles. India’s defence minister, Y.B. Chavan, visited Washington in May 1964. Proposals were to be fi nalised at a crucial White House meeting on 28 May. But Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru died on 27 May. Offi cials of defence/state departments seized this alibi to delay consideration of the military modernisation programme for India. The Indians thought that it might not be advisable to wait any longer for American support. In August 1964, an Indian military delegation, headed by Chavan, arrived in Moscow. The Soviet Union did not disappoint India.395 In 1964 and 1965—till the outbreak of India–Pakistan hostilities in September 1965—the United States provided to India some equipment worth only about US$30 million. Before the United States imposed an embargo on arms supply to India (and Pakistan) in September 1965, India received this equipment—static radar sets, signal/engineering equipment, factory machines, winter clothing, and supply aircraft—all of which were considered by America to be non- lethal. Restrictions imposed by America on the use of this equipment were irritating and expensive, to say the least. For instance, India was prohibited from supplying the signal equipment to Indian troops stationed along the border with Pakistan. In order to enforce this prohibition, America stationed as many as 110 observers, and India had to meet the expenses.396 Notable, in this context, is America’s obsession with Pakistan, which prompted the US to dispatch an aide memoire to Pakistan in November 1962. This aide memoire stated that the United States stood by past assurances of assisting Pakistan in case India committed an aggression upon Pakistan.397 This puts in perspective the almost ridiculous restrictions on the use of non-lethal American equipment supplied to India in the aftermath of the 1962 confl ict with China, as noted above.

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 In October 1980, a team of Indian ofﬁ cials, headed by the defence secretary, went to Washington to discuss the procurement of anti- tank missiles and howitzers. Discussions failed because America

395 Ibid., pp. 95–98. 396 P.K.S. Namboodiri, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 16 January 1981. 397 Dilip Mukerjee, ‘India’s Relations with the United States: A New Search for Accommodation’, in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy, 1987–88, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1988, p. 203. 686 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

prescribed certain conditions which India could not accept. For example, America refused to permit India to manufacture under licence or to supply night vision equipment, and retained the right to change the terms of procurement arbitrarily, as also to dictate the timetable for supply of spare parts.398 In October 1984, the White House issued the National Security Decision Directive (NSD) 147, which recognised India not only as a regional power but also as an emerging world power. This could explain the fi nalisation, in May 1985, of an MoU with India on the transfer of high technology, which could have military as well as civilian uses. In 1985, India received licences for 4,300 dual use technology items worth US$1.3 billion. This enabled India’s military research organisations to acquire highly powerful computers which could signifi cantly improve the capability of weapons manufactured by India. Collaboration with American fi rms rose remarkably. In the manufacture of advanced super mini computers, America’s Control Data Corporation agreed to provide assistance to the Electronics Corporation of India. Nevertheless, a sort of quantum leap was taken after Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to America in 1985, as General Electric (GE) procured the permission to sell to India the latest engine for combat aircraft—the GE 404—for use in the manufacture of India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). In October 1986, American Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger visited India, and announced, among other things, the supply of a super computer to India, and the possibility of agreements on co-production of weapons. It must be stressed here that the super computer, highly useful for civil research, was also adaptable to simulation of nuclear tests. All these were indeed encouraging signals for growth potentials in Indo-American military transactions, although, during 1979–83, sales of American arms to India represented about 2 per cent of Soviet military sales to India.399

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 In April 1988, American Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci visited New Delhi. In October 1988, the American Army Chief visited India. In the same month, India became the ﬁ rst country outside

398 Ravi Tomar, India–US Relations in a Changing Strategic Environment, Information and Research Services, Research Paper No. 20, 2001–2, Department of the Parliament Library, Commonwealth of Australia, 2002, p. 6. Also see, Mukerjee, ‘India’s Relations with the United States’, p. 208. 399 Mukerjee, ‘India’s Relations with the United States’, pp. 207–9. Relations with the United States 687

the American military alliance system to receive the Cray XMP14 super computer. India subsequently received the Cyber 205 and IBM 3090 super computers. A number of high technology items—in addition to the GE404 engines—were released by America for use in India’s LCA. Such growth in Indo-American military transactions was inconceivable a few years ago.400 In July 1989, Indian Defence Minister K.C. Pant visited America— obviously for the promotion of cooperation in defence. But India’s successful launching of an intermediate range rocket (Agni) in June 1989 seemed to impede such cooperation. For, the Agni test impelled the United States to disapprove the licence for export to India of a device to test rockets, which was called the Combined Acceleration Vibration Climatic Test System (CAVTS).401 Never- theless, in December 1990, America acceded to India’s request (which has been pending for over two years) for the Cray XMP-22 super computer (far more powerful than the Cray XMP-14 super computer) in a truncated form, that is by prescribing safeguards against its potential use for development of a nuclear armoury.402 In the course of the Iraq-Kuwait war of 1990–91 and the consequent international intervention under American leadership, the Indian government under Prime Minister V.P. Singh signifi cantly upgraded military cooperation with America when it permitted American combat aircraft to refuel at Indian airports. This was highly benefi cial for these military aircraft fl ying a vast distance from their base in the Philippines to the Persian Gulf. When Prime Minister Chandra Sekhar replaced V.P. Singh, he too continued this unpublicised defence collaboration with America. But a fortuitous leakage of this matter generated a political uproar, which, about a day before the end of the Gulf War, caused the termination of the above noted military facility to America.403 India faced restrictions upon the acquisition of missile-related

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 technology in the wake of emergence of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1987. During 1992–94, America stopped the transfer of cryogenic rocket engine technology from

400 K. Shankar Bajpai, ‘India’s Relations with the United States’, in Satish Kumar (ed.), Yearbook on India’s Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989, pp. 175–77. 401 Kux, Estranged Democracies, pp. 429–30. 402 Ibid., pp. 430–31. 403 Ibid., pp. 440–41. 688 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Russia to India, although it permitted the sale of the engine to India. In the mid-1990s, India and America formed a Defence Policy Group (DPG), which dealt with policy reviews, and exchange of visits by high ranking ofﬁ cials, including commanders of the armed services. Such enhancement of military cooperation might be attributed, at least partially, to the policy of economic liberalisation/globalisation adopted by India in the 1990s, arousing hopes of expanded American military sales to India. General Claude M. Kicklighter of the United States Air Force visited India in 1991, and proposed military exchanges, including training. The Indian and American navies conducted joint exercises in the Indian Ocean in 1996, as also in 1997. Such cooperation suffered a setback in the aftermath of India’s nuclear tests in May 1998. For example, America refused to supply spare parts needed by India’s Sea Harrier aircraft and Sea King helicopters for overhaul and repairs.404 Although the United States was openly opposed to nuclear tests by India, it reconciled itself to a situation in which India’s nuclear capability could not be rolled back, and India’s cooperation was essential for the success of United States’ efforts to arrest the proliferation of nuclear arms, as also of their means of delivery. This was an important message of the Clinton–Vajpayee joint statement of 21 March 2000. This joint statement also stressed cooperation in counterterrorism efforts.405 The terrorist assault upon America on 11 September 2001 prompted India to make the extraordinary offer of bases to America for operations against terrorists. Although America did not accept this offer, it signalled the possibilities of enhanced military collaboration with India in late 2001, when, for the ﬁ rst time since nuclear tests by India in 1998, the US-India Defence Policy Group had a meeting in New Delhi, and proposed regular and high- level discussions for fostering a defence partnership.406 In January 2002, the Indian defence minister visited America, and

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the two countries signed a very important agreement—the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). This incorporated a guarantee for protection of any classiﬁ ed technology shared

404 Tomar, India–US Relations in a Changing Strategic Environment, pp. 6–7. 405 K. Alan Kronstadt, India–U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 26 June 2007, p. 5. Also, Tomar, India–US Relations in a Changing Strategic Environment, pp. 7–8. 406 K. Alan Kronstadt, India–U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 26 June 2007, p. 5. Relations with the United States 689

by America and India, and facilitated sales of American weapons to India. It soon became apparent that, although America spurned the Indian offer of bases to America for the war on terror in Afghanistan, India extended signifi cant assistance for fl ights and logistics, so much so that, in the words of Richard Armitage, the American deputy secretary of state, India–America defence relationships became ‘astronomically different’ from what they were in the recent past.407 Robert Blackwill, the American ambassador to India, underlined the emerging pragmatism in the American view of these relationships, when he affi rmed that America recognised India’s right to procure military hardware from Russia, and that harmonious India–Russia relations served American interests in the post Cold War era.408 In April 2002, the American Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs arrived in New Delhi to participate in the fi rst ever Indo-US Political Military Dialogue, and pave the way for a more synergic security relationship between the two countries. In May 2002, the two countries decided to strengthen Critical Infrastruc- ture Protection by launching the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum. The US-India Defence Policy Group had meetings in May 2002 and February 2003, setting a trend of annual meetings. Meanwhile, in September 2002, India–America military cooperation acquired a signifi cant dimension, as mountain warfare troops held joint exercises, which blended advanced American equipment with the unique combat experience of Indian soldiers in places like Siachen. Obviously, foundations for long-term defence relationships were being laid.409 No wonder then, on 18 April 2002, an agreement for the largest ever single procurement of American military hardware was signed—the purchase of AN/TPQ-37 Weapon Locating Radars worth US$146 million.410 With each year, Indo-American security ties have begun to register higher and higher standards with the acquisition of increasingly more

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 expensive, sophisticated, and politically controversial equipment by India. For instance, in 2002, India procured Fireﬁ nder radars from

407 The Hindu, 3 May 2002. 408 The Times of India, 6 February 2002. 409 Tomar, India–US Relations in a Changing Strategic Environment, pp. 12–14, which include references to observations by Richard Armitage and Robert Blackwill. 410 Ibid., p. 27. 690 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

America, as also such countermilitancy and counterinfi ltration equipment like electronic ground sensors. India and America successfully negotiated the purchases of (a) equipment protecting the aircraft used by India’s head of state, as also Israel-made US-Israeli Phalcon airborne early warning system, in 2004; (b) a decommissioned am- phibious transport ship (USS Trenton) in 2006, subsequently re- naming it INS Jalasheva, the Indian Navy’s second largest ship; and (c) C-130J Hercules military transport aircraft in 2007. Moreover, the three military services of the two countries have been engaging (especially since 2002) in some significant military exercises, something that was inconceivable a few years back. For example, at mock air combats, Indian pilots on Russian-built Su-30MKIs successfully fought out American pilots on F-15Cs in 2004, and again on F-16s in 2005. The growing momentum of the Indo- American military relationship is unmistakably evident.411 Thanks to the agility of the India-US Defence Policy Group, India and America signed a 10-year defence pact in June 2005. This unprecedented pact promised to open up wide avenues of cooperation not only in military trade and technology transfer but also in co-production, missile defence, and even in multilateral operations. This pact also set up a Defence Procurement and Production Group. In 2006, the two countries signed a Maritime Security Cooperation Agreement to cooperate comprehensively in ensuring the free fl ow of commerce, and coping with such threats as piracy and illegal trade of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Obviously, as Admiral Tim Keating, the head of the US Pacifi c Command, observed in April 2007, the Pentagon wanted to expand military-to-military relationships with India in an aggressive fashion.412 Cooperation in counter-terrorism efforts is an important facet of expansion of Indo-American military ties. Army units of the two countries have jointly availed of counterinsurgency training. In

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 order to make counter-terrorism efforts more effective, India and America signed in October 2005 a treaty that aimed at formalising cooperation in law enforcement, and establishing regular institutions for mutual assistance. Following the 11 July 2006 terrorist attacks on Mumbai trains, CIA ofﬁ cials visited New Delhi, and explored ways

411 K. Alan Kronstadt, India–U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 26 June 2007, p. 27. 412 Ibid., p. 26. Relations with the United States 691

to enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism. One probable gain from such cooperation was America’s realisation of the importance of Pakistan-based terrorist outﬁ ts, including those fugitives from India (Dawood Ibrahim, for example) whom the United States Department of the Treasury formally branded as a terrorist in collusion with Al-Qaeda.413 The terrorist attacks in Mumbai on 26 November 2008—bearing numerous signatures of Pakistan-based LET and its government patrons—are outside the scope of this book. But it may be noted brieﬂ y that these attacks boosted Indo-American collaboration in counter-terrorism.414 Irrespective of what happened in Mumbai on 26 November 2008, military deals between India and America are multiplying. On 1 January 2009, the Indian government signed a commercial agreement with Boeing for P-81 long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft for the Indian Navy. Valued at US$2.1 billion, this is the biggest ever military transaction with America.415 In the foreseeable future, especially because of a rising complexity in the Afghanistan–Pakistan situation, India–America military ties are likely to get stronger and stronger. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

413 K. Alan Kronstadt, India–U.S. Relations, CRS Report for Congress, 12 August 2008, pp. 49–51. 414 See, for instance, The Statesman, 21 December 2008, and 6 January 2009. 415 Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 27 December 2008, and 5 January 2009. 11 Nuclear Policy

Any discussion on India’s nuclear policy has to begin with the question of whether India should manufacture nuclear weapons. The question was pertinent even before China detonated its ﬁ rst nuclear device on 16 October 1964. There are countries that are too small, weak, and technologically poor even to think of manufacturing nuclear weapons. India obviously is not one of them. These weapons automatically confer certain advantages—political, economic, and military—which India cannot be blind to. Of course, the issue of acquiring nuclear weapons gained greater urgency for India after the Chinese explosion of October 1964.

Response to China’s Nuclear Tests China detonated a second nuclear device in the summer of 1965 (on 14 May). While the second explosion need not have caused India to panic, it did not surely leave any ground for complacency. Detona- tion of one or two warheads is not equivalent to the possession of a full-scale operational nuclear capability. But the repetition of an atomic explosion undeniably indicated the seriousness of the Chinese to develop such a capability. How much China was investing for this purpose, and how fast its pace of progress was could not be accurately known—at least to unofﬁ cial observers. But it was a fair conclusion that by 1970 China would have operational nuclear capability suf- ﬁ ciently menacing to its immediate neighbours.1 China would then

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 be able to deliver a few dozen nuclear warheads to targets in South Asia, including some major Indian cities and industrial centres. The Indians should not have been under any illusion—often reﬂ ected in speeches by politicians or writings in periodicals—that China did not have delivery vehicles. In fact, China had such vehicles capable of delivering small atomic weapons. China had a large number of

1 M.H. Halperin, China and the Bomb, London: Pall Mall, 1965, p. 130. Nuclear Policy 693

TU4 bombers and IL 28 light bombers given by the Soviet Union, and also a few sophisticated supersonic bombers obtained from the same source in the past, all of which could be entrusted with modest nuclear missions in neighbouring territories. Experts believed that during the 1960s China might have been able to manufacture medium-range ballistic missiles and even a hydrogen bomb.2 As regards intercontinental capability, including the ability to strike at targets in the United States, it was doubtful that China would be able to acquire it before the 1980s.3 But it was not too early in the mid-1960s for policy makers in India (or elsewhere) to plan about contingencies in the 1970s or the 1980s. The Government of India was surely entitled to decide against the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It appeared to do so, as evident from many announcements by Prime Ministers Nehru, Shastri, and Indira Gandhi. However, such a decision needed to be backed by right reasons, and also provide a credible and reliable deterrent to threats from potential enemies, especially the conventional-cum- nuclear threat from China. If one searches for clarity, consistency, and realism in comments made by India’s offi cial spokesmen on this vital issue, one invariably feels frustrated. Unoffi cial spokesmen, too, including publicists representing important newspapers, were sometimes guilty of invoking wrong reasons for India’s decision to not make the atom bomb. Let us review, for instance, Chavan’s remarks at a meeting organised by the Bombay Union of Journalists on 24 October 1964 (a week after the explosion of the fi rst Chinese nuclear warhead). He said that the Chinese blast posed ‘a new factor for Indian defence’ which had to be ‘borne in mind by those who are in charge of defence arrangements of the country’. He was undoubtedly right. He was also right when he said that the Indians should not panic because of the Chinese nuclear test, and that Indians ‘should be able to live

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 up to circumstances’. Chavan did not state how India was to deal with the new situation while he reiterated the policy of the Indian government not to manufacture atom bombs. When he suggested that India should not make these bombs because that would ‘alienate world opinion’, he was neither clear nor realistic. On such an issue it was impossible to discover a unique well-deﬁ ned ‘world

2 R.H. Powell, Foreign Affairs, July 1965, p. 625. 3 Halperin, China and the Bomb, pp. 156–57. 694 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

opinion’ that could lend itself to translation into a country’s policy for national security. Nor can an assemblage of vague, amorphous suggestions, euphemistically called ‘world opinion’, be allowed to veto the decision of a government which has to conform to the requirements of the country’s security. Chavan further affi rmed, quite categorically, that India was capable of producing nuclear bombs; he was not exactly correct. At the time, India did not have its own fi ssionable material which she was free to employ for military purposes. Championing the Indian government’s decision not to go ahead with bomb making, Chavan offered another curious comment: even the states possessing nuclear weapons were not immune to the danger of nuclear attacks, he said. In other words, he missed entirely the signifi cance of the concept of nuclear deterrence; he forgot that for many years the United States and the Soviet Union, by virtue of their possession of nuclear arsenals, had deterred each other from launching nuclear assaults. At the same meeting, Chavan remarked rather incoherently—and with bizarre self-assurance—about a US-USSR nuclear umbrella protecting India against China. He said that such an American- Russian umbrella was not practicable. He put forward this question: ‘Is there any guarantee that if we have nuclear umbrella protection there would not be any such attack on us?’ He further asserted: ‘There is no question of asking for such a thing [i.e., nuclear umbrella]. In the present-day world if a country attacks another country with a nuclear bomb, it will also receive one’. This odd observation of India’s defence minister rightly occasioned the following editorial comment in The Amrita Bazar Patrika4:

What the Defence Minister really meant is not clear. If he meant that a Chinese nuclear attack on India would automatically invite an American nuclear attack on China, his calculation would appear to be a strange example of over-simpliﬁ cation. As a non-aligned nation we

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 cannot count upon such automatic release of U.S. nuclear weapons for our beneﬁ t.

Unoffi cial opinion is often a corrective to offi cial dogmas; but it was dangerous that Chavan’s complacency on this urgent matter happened to be shared by some unoffi cial observers who played an

4 The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 October 1964. Nuclear Policy 695

important role in moulding public opinion in India. An editorial in the Statesman,5 referring to possibilities of a nuclear umbrella for India, said: ‘No such arrangement may in fact be needed to ensure protection; a nuclear attack upon any country is almost certain to invite American and Russian intervention’. A Times of India editorial said:

Any country dropping a nuclear bomb or threatening to do so anywhere becomes at once an enemy of the rest of the world. If, say, China dropped a nuclear bomb on India and none of the other nuclear powers reacted, they would stultify their own nuclear deterrent and expose themselves to similar nuclear blackmail. This then is a safeguard.6

The complacency latent in this comment is all the more dangerous because it is embroidered with a novel, though implausible, interpretation of the theory and practice of deterrence. It is also surprising that this mood survived the hostilities with Pakistan during September 1965, underlining at least the need to minimise dependence on, or expectation of, foreign help in a crisis. A Hindustan Times editorial7 spoke of ‘the enormous effort and expenditure involved in’ acquiring a nuclear capability and added: ‘And we may ﬁ nd at the end of it all that it would still be useless because in the context of Big Power confrontations we might never have the need or the opportunity to use it’. Here was self-complacency again of a different order—not so explicit but lying just below the surface. At the 69th session of the Indian National Congress (INC) held in Durgapur on 7 January 1965, Morarji Desai, former Union ﬁ nance minister, spoke at length on why India should keep out of the nuclear race. His speech, in a different way from Chavan’s speech of 24 October 1964, signalled a lack of comprehension of the concept of deterrence. Desai said that the use of atom bombs by India and China

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 against each other would only lead to their mutual destruction, and that there was no defence against a nuclear attack. He missed entirely the essential point that a deterrent was needed precisely because there was no defence against a nuclear strike. Morarji said that India had no place where an atom bomb could be tested. ‘India is so thickly

5 The Statesman, 20 May 1965. 6 The Times of India, 15 October 1965. 7 The Hindustan Times, 24 September 1965. 696 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

populated that a nuclear explosion in any part of the country will affect the entire race.’ This point was not quite well thought out by Morarji. For, in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan,8 an area of 1,000 square miles, suffi cient for a 20 kiloton nuclear explosion, could be earmarked for this purpose; some evacuation from this area of extremely low population density could be accomplished without serious diffi culties. More important, the question of atmospheric test (hinted at by Desai) did not arise because of India’s accession to the partial test-ban treaty of 1963. India could only conduct underground nuclear tests, which would be free from the menace worrying Desai. Some mystic-moralistic observations were also offered by Desai in support of his stand against India possessing atom bombs. ‘Should we succumb to the temptation of making the atom bomb with a view to ensuring physical safety of India, we will destroy in the process the soul of the nation’, Desai commented. He added that India’s decision to stay out of the nuclear path was moulded by traditions rooted in India’s history, that it would be un-Gandhian to plead for a nuclear-armed India, that ‘an India with [an] atom bomb would not be the India of Gandhi and Nehru’. These were not arguments to be countered, but an assortment of utterances to be recorded for the benefi t of statesmen of the next generation who, let us hope, would learn at least one lesson from these utterances: policy makers must not take shelter behind confusing, uncritical, and hasty generalisations when they are entrusted with hard thinking on matters affecting the survival and independence of the country. There was one argument of Desai deserving refutation: India’s scarce resources, instead of being diverted to the making of nuclear devices, should be better spent on providing food, clothing, and shelter to the needy millions, Desai emphasised. This argument will be taken up later in this chapter. During the Durgapur debate on nuclear weapons, Prime Minister

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Shastri appeared to take on a ﬂ exible attitude. He said that the policy of the Indian government was not to make the atom bomb at present, but he was not sure of what would happen in the future. It was sensible on his part to suggest that the present policy was not expected to be everlasting. But after a few days, at a press conference, Shastri made a number of casual comments that indicated lack of

8 The Statesman, 11 November 1964. Nuclear Policy 697

thinking and prevalence of confusion in governmental circles on this point.9 He announced that while his government had decided not to manufacture nuclear weapons at present, the ‘present’ meant ‘a long period’. He added: ‘So long as we are here, we do not want that atom bombs be manufactured in India’. With regard to a nuclear shield for India, Shastri could neither assure anything on which his people could bank, nor could he impress that his own mind was clear about it. He said that some negotiations had already taken place, and some more would take place in the future, over the protection of non-nuclear powers against the nuclear threat. But he denied that he had asked for any nuclear umbrella. Shastri further maintained that China’s nuclear weapon was not an immediate threat to India, nor was India its major target. To say that India is not the major target of China’s nuclear weapons is, at least, to offer a thoroughly baseless generalisation. Again, a threat may not be immediate, but it can conceivably arise within a few years. If there is no threat at all, existing or incipient, it becomes surely irrelevant to talk about a nuclear shield for non-nuclear powers. The Government of India had been almost fanatically pursuing the goal of an international agreement banning further proliferation of nuclear weapons.10 India’s representative at the UN went so far as to propose formally an international treaty on non-proliferation. It is difﬁ cult to imagine how such a treaty could serve India’s interests. Nor did the Indian government take pains to explain the rationale behind such a policy. It was clearly in the interest of the nuclear powers to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, for it endowed them with diplomatic leverage that was covetable and unchallengeable. It kept them less exposed to the dangers of an accidental war, and it perpetuated their prestige born of technological-military superiority. On the other hand, it afﬁ xed a permanent stamp of inferiority on the non-nuclear powers. This inferiority would obviously result in

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 economic-political disadvantages for a non-nuclear power in its dealings with nuclear powers, as also with a non-nuclear power

9 See, for comments, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 26 January 1965, and Hindusthan Standard, 20 February 1965. Actually, in a masterly analysis of primary and secondary sources, Bharat Karnad has demonstrated how fruitless Shastri’s search for a nuclear umbrella was. See Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & India’s Security, New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002, pp. 259–63. 10 The Hindustan Times, 25 July 1965. 698 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

that would automatically pay far more deference to a nuclear power. These matters did not worry many non-nuclear powers as they were perhaps too weak, fi nancially and technologically, to aspire after a nuclear capability. But these ought to have bothered India, a country in a position to make nuclear weapons in the near future. If India signed a non-proliferation treaty, it would only be abdicating the prerogatives of its achievements in nuclear technology. Furthermore, it would voluntarily renounce its right of safeguarding its security against a potential enemy brandishing nuclear weapons. India’s nuclear virginity might not necessarily have been an object of admiration (far less of imitation) by others. Indonesia, for instance, seemed to have no fascination for non-proliferation. Sukarno, although he had signed the partial test-ban treaty, did not hesitate to announce later: ‘The more countries possessing the bomb the stronger the guarantee it will not be used’.11 The Pakistani attack upon India in September 1965 caused serious rethinking on the issue of India manufacturing nuclear bombs. One important lesson of this attack was that India could not really depend on help from a friendly country against any aggression. Pakistani aggression, if successful, would have struck at the roots of democracy not only in India but in the whole of the Afro-Asian world. Yet, countries like Britain and the United States, which were friendly to India, did not try to restrain Pakistan, although they had the effective power to do so. These countries might have had their reasons, which they deemed justifi ed, for taking such a course. For India, however, the warning was incontrovertible: it should not complacently rely on foreign assistance in order to repel or deter aggression, especially when there was no formal guarantee that such assistance would be available in a crisis. While reliance on foreign states could not be completely ruled out in the immediate future, the long-term goal of self-suffi ciency in armaments, including nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 weapons, had to be pursued vigorously. On 22 September 1965, 86 members of the Indian Parliament belonging to different political parties sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Shastri demanding immediate measures for the acquisition of nuclear capability by India. The memorandum referred to the Sino-Pak collusion against India, and declared:

11 The Bulletin, Sydney, 16 October 1965, p. 21. Nuclear Policy 699

‘The bitter experience of the denial of aid when India is ﬁ ghting not only to repel aggression but to make the country safe for democracy, makes it abundantly clear that the security of the country can no longer be left to the mercy or whim of the so-called friendly countries.’

This declaration surely echoed the feelings, apart from underlining a practical necessity, of countless Indians who found themselves let down when Britain and the United States promptly halted the dispatch of military hardware to India during the Pakistani onslaughts of September 1965. The fact that at the same time arms supplies to Pakistan were cut off was not expected to carry much weight with Indians who reminded themselves that Pakistan could launch a full- scale invasion of Indian territory chieﬂ y because of the enormous stock of gifted American weapons which even gave Pakistan an edge over India in respect of highly mechanised and sophisticated armaments. The pro-bomb agitation appeared to gain momentum as Mehr Chand Khanna, union minister for works and housing, declared on 27 September 1965 that India should begin to manufacture atom bombs. He was right to emphasise that India’s attempt to attain self-sufﬁ ciency in defence production was largely responsible for the success of military operations against Pakistani troops. On 1 October 1965, D.P. Mishra, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, said that he personally felt that India should make atom bombs and that he held that opinion since the day of publication of the news that China had made the atom bomb. The UNI interviewed a few chief ministers and eminent politicians on this question.12 V.P. Naik and M. Bhaktavatsalam, chief ministers of Maharashtra and Madras respectively, suggested that they preferred to be guided by the prime minister’s decision on this matter. Ajit Prasad Jain, then governor of Kerala, told UNI that if Pakistan manufactured the atom bomb, India could no longer abstain from manufacturing it, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 although he was not anxious that India should be in a hurry about it. E.M.S. Namboodiripad, the Left communist leader, made the cautious remark before the UNI man that he would not disagree to it if the government concluded that the atom bomb was essential for the country’s defence.

12 Hindusthan Standard, 4 October 1965. 700 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The Indian Council of World Affairs, Bombay, arranged on 7 October 1965 a debate on ‘India and the Nuclear Bomb’, in which Nath Pai, a socialist leader and member of the Indian Parliament, crossed swords with G.L. Mehta, a former Indian ambassador to the United States. The contents of this debate13 are worth recording chieﬂ y because they reveal how anti-nuclear weapons spokesmen persisted in dwelling on the plane of pious generalities, pseudo- moralistic pronouncements, extravagant expectations about others rushing in voluntarily to save India from Chinese domination, and how they failed to counter the arguments of pro-nuclear-weapons spokesmen anchored to a realistic assessment of the needs of national security. Mehta described the atom bomb as ‘an idiot’s apparatus’ because it was a weapon for the destruction of humanity and not for the defence of a country. Nath Pai was correct when he said that India did not have to use the atom bomb, and that the mere possession of the bomb would restrain adversaries from launching an attack. But Mehta confused the issue when he asked why at all atom bombs should be manufactured if they were not to be used. The concept of deterrence eluded his mind just as it eluded the minds of so many other anti-bomb spokesmen in India. Mehta advised that India should concentrate its efforts on wholesale destruction and prohibition of nuclear weapons. He reminded others that in the past, under the guidance of Nehru, whose voice in this matter was the voice of the conscience of mankind, India had insisted on, and worked for, peaceful uses of atomic energy. He emphasised that India had all along been opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that, according to the terms of agreement on the Canada–India nuclear reactor, India could use atomic energy for peaceful purposes only. As regards proliferation, Nath Pai made the sound observation that India’s decision to not make the atom bomb did not automatically put a stop to proliferation, and that one could never be sure

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 whether Egypt or Israel, for instance, was not developing nuclear weapons. He also warned that India’s nuclear chastity could not necessarily prevent Pakistan from securing nuclear weapons from some of its patrons in possession of those weapons. As regards Mehta’s concern with the terms of agreement on the Canada–India reactor, one could particularly suggest that it was open to India to set up its own reactor, to develop its own ﬁ ssionable material whose use would be free from the restrictive provisions of the aforesaid

13 The Hindustan Times, 8 October 1965. Nuclear Policy 701

agreement, and then to employ this material according to its own interest and necessities. In this debate of 7 October 1965, Mehta seemed to hide his head in the sand and to refuse to recognise realities. He said that China had not gained prestige by making the atom bomb. He forgot that China not only gained prestige but also strengthened the belief of statesmen like Cambodia’s Shihanouk or Burma’s Ne Win that the smaller countries of Asia should come to terms with China. He ignored the important fact that at the Cairo conference of October 1964, Shastri’s proposal to depute a delegation to Peking urging China to abstain from nuclear tests met with no success. To a large extent, the failure of Shastri’s proposal was due to the additional prestige that a nuclear power was automatically entitled to. Nath Pai, therefore, was correct when he claimed that China’s nuclear weapons had a political fallout, and that the small countries of Asia would be afraid of China’s overwhelming military might. Mehta was right in stressing the dangers of inﬁ ltration and subversion fomented by China. But he did not assign any reason as to why he ruled out a nuclear threat to India from China. Mehta also expressed his faith in the magic of international protection for India as he said that no state would allow China to dominate Asia, and that the international security system would operate to preserve the existence of non-nuclear countries against the threat from China. Nath Pai, however, suggested that the working of the UN in the past revealed that India could scarcely place its trust on the UN for the defence of its territory which had to be safeguarded by Indians themselves. According to Mehta, India’s poverty dictated that India should refrain from spending enormous sums on developing a nuclear capability. He quoted approvingly the remark by J.P. Narayan that India was not in a position to wage a war simultaneously against China, Pakistan, and poverty. He advised, therefore, that India should learn to live with its neighbours in spite

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of the difﬁ culties. Nath Pai admitted that the price for developing a nuclear deterrent would be high, even though it would stand no comparison with that of the USA or the USSR. He put the price at `2 billion annually. But he made the shrewd observation that the price of serfdom under China would be far higher. It is intriguing to note the similarity between Indian and Western commentators voting against India having nuclear weapons. Accord- ing to The Times, London,14 a rational computation of military needs

14 Editorial, The Times, London, 11 October 1965. 702 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

should not impel India to become a nuclear power. It suggested— without assigning any reason—that India could rely on foreign assistance in case of massive attack from any source, although it asserted that such an attack could not be immediately considered a serious threat to India’s territorial integrity. According to this editorial in The Times, emotional and political considerations underlay the demand for nuclear weapons in India. The anti-nuclear-weapons views of G.L. Mehta, previously recorded in this chapter, have an interesting affinity with The Times editorial. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, too, expressed a similar opinion in the article ‘To make or not to make the Bomb’ published in The Amrita Bazar Patrika on 17 November 1965. She mentioned the estimate of experts—that within the next ten years (or less) China would become a nuclear power—and raised the following question with an answer suggested by her implicitly. ‘What happens then? Would she use this against India and invite retaliation either by an Indian Bomb or by the Western Powers who would most certainly come to the aid of India?’ In this incredibly illogical way Vijaya Lakshmi discounted the Chinese nuclear threat to India. She also stressed emotional considerations giving rise to the demand for Indian nuclear weapons, as she condemned the petition of the members of the Indian Parliament asking the prime minister to go in for a nuclear programme. These parliamentarians, Vijaya Lakshmi deplored, were motivated by the fear of China and Pakistan. ‘But fear is not a sound adviser’, she warned. It is indeed lamentable to note how India’s top-ranking leaders, advising against India acquiring nuclear weapons, tended to approach such a crucial issue in a slapdash, frivolous fashion. For instance, Vijaya Lakshmi opened the above mentioned article ‘To make or not to make the Bomb’ thus:

To those who do not possess it the nuclear bomb is now a status symbol. To belong to the Nuclear Club is as important as the old Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 school tie or the right address on one’s note papers. It sets one apart from those less fortunate beings, who cannot aspire to high society and have not the money to pay the club’s entrance fee.

Vijaya Lakshmi claimed that her opposition to the manufacture of nuclear bombs rested on ‘moral or ethical standards’, although she did not care to clarify what those standards were. She further claimed that India’s advocacy against the manufacture of nuclear weapons at the UN and other international forums earned worldwide respect Nuclear Policy 703

for India. It is, however, diffi cult to substantiate how such respect, assuming it was actually enjoyed, contributed to national security. ‘China’s possession of the Bomb should not change our position. China has to have a Bomb because she has nothing else’, wrote Vijaya Lakshmi. ‘Let us not be carried away either by emotion or by fear’, she pleaded. One can comment, however, that she was being carried away by emotion while she dreamt of India being respected for not making the bomb or of China making a bomb because of having ‘nothing else’. Another startlingly slipshod observation in Vijaya Lakshmi’s article is worth quoting: ‘India, for her part, has a fi rst class nuclear capability and is now heading the list of Nuclear Powers who are in a position to develop nuclear weapons’. Any cursory glance at the literature on this subject should reveal that a nuclear power was one which had already manufactured nuclear weapons and India had not; moreover, one could suggest that India had potentialities for attaining a fi rst-rate nuclear capability in the future, which was very different from the assertion that India ‘has a fi rst class nuclear capability’. Such an assertion was until then true only of the United States and the Soviet Union. On 19 October 1965, Shastri told a press conference in Aurangabad that ‘it has been India’s policy not to manufacture the atom bomb and we wish to adhere to it’. He dodged the important question put to him, whether this was India’s permanent policy. ‘You can put that question later’, he replied. In other words, lack of clarity in offi cial policy was allowed to persist. On 8 November 1965, Shastri informed the Lok Sabha that India would stick to the decision not to manufacture nuclear weapons, and, instead, work towards their elimination. He emphasised that the recent hostilities with Pakistan did not call for any change in that decision. But he did not hold out the hope of an alternative providing a deterrent. On 16 November 1965, Shastri told the Rajya Sabha that India did not

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 envisage a nuclear attack from its two hostile neighbours, Pakistan and China. For Pakistan did not have a nuclear bomb, and China would not use its bomb because it ‘knows what the result will be’. Shastri ought to have ampliﬁ ed what he meant by this. One could guess the unstated assumption of other nuclear powers rushing to retaliate against China in case of a Chinese nuclear assault on India, without which Shastri’s utterance would seem to be devoid of any meaning. Shastri added that conventional weapons were ‘more important’ at the time, and that India discouraged the proliferation 704 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of nuclear weapons on the broad principle of strengthening world peace. Nevertheless, Shastri gave the very important assurance that India would reconsider its policy of not making nuclear weapons if China succeeded in stockpiling nuclear weapons and perfecting a delivery system. The preservation of India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would have prompted such reconsideration. This assurance, though welcome to citizens pining for a deterrent, fell short of what was needed. A reconsideration of India’s nuclear policy, if it was to provide a timely deterrent, must not await China acquiring a stockpile of nuclear weapons and a perfect delivery system. It must take place much earlier. Nuclear weapons cannot be developed at short notice. India had to develop its technological capabilities fi rst, for example, indigenous production of fi ssionable material, which can be used for bomb making. The government decision (or at least its announcement) to manufacture nuclear weapons might come later. But the government’s determination to go ahead with developing the necessary technological capabilities had to be forged without delay, and had to be transparent, and communicated to the public. The government could not be obsessed with maintaining secrecy in defence matters; nobody suggests that actual battle plans had to be revealed. But the people were surely entitled to know whether the government was taking necessary measures to acquire a deterrent against the Chinese nuclear threat. Shastri’s 16 November statement, however, although an improvement upon many of his past utterances, failed to satisfy the thinking citizens in this vital matter. In December 1965, it appeared for a while that the Government of India would make a fresh appraisal of its nuclear policy. For, some of its delegates to the 20th General Assembly of the UN, K.C. Pant and Rafi q Zakaria, after coming back to India on completion of their UN assignment, expressed the view that their recent experiences at the UN dictated a rethinking of India’s nuclear policy. Pant,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the secretary of the Congress Parliamentary Party, declared in New Delhi15 that India try to keep pace with new developments in world politics. China would gain admission to the UN in a year or two, said Pant, and occupy a permanent seat at the Security Council. India deserved a permanent seat at the Security Council, without which the balance of power in Asia could not be maintained. But,

15 The Hindustan Times, 14 December 1965. Nuclear Policy 705

Pant hinted, India should acquire nuclear capability, and achieve parity with China in order to clinch its claim to a permanent Security Council seat. Zakaria declared in Bombay16 that the possession of the nuclear bomb enhanced China’s international prestige, and was easing its entry into the UN. India, therefore, should seriously reconsider its policy of not manufacturing the atom bomb. Such thoughts in offi cial circles did not crystallise and lead to any announcement of change in the Indian government’s policy, although it was impossible to believe that the government was unaware of the mounting menace from China. Swaran Singh, India’s external affairs minister, said in a written answer to a question at the Lok Sabha on 21 February 1966 that China’s attempt to build a self-suffi cient nuclear arsenal was of great concern to India; the repercussions of the aggressive and expansionist Chinese design on Asia and the world were obvious. But the external affairs minister added that in this situation the importance of stopping the production, application, and testing of nuclear weapons, of executing an agreement on total comprehensive disarmament, increased all the more, and that India would continue to work for these goals. On the same day, 21 February 1966, India’s defence minister, Chavan, informed the Lok Sabha that in 1965 China had built the missile-carrying submarine, while Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (in a written reply to a question at the Lok Sabha) declared that there had been no reconsideration of India’s policy with respect to nuclear weapons. All this did not sound quite reassuring to Indian citizens looking forward to India brandishing a credible deterrent against the Chinese threat. They were especially shaken when Edward Teller, known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, issued the grim reminder that within fi ve to 10 years China would possess hydrogen bombs and rockets as the delivery vehicle. Teller declared:

It is my opinion that within the next 10 years, possibly even within Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the next ﬁ ve years, the Chinese will possess a considerable number of hydrogen bombs and that they will also have the means to deliver these explosives by rockets over a distance of at least a couple of thousand miles with an accuracy of a few miles.17

16 The Hindustan Times, 30 December 1965. 17 The Statesman, 20 March 1966. 706 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The policy of the Government of India to strive for disarmament was laudable. But it did not automatically guarantee India’s security. Moreover, success of disarmament negotiations hardly depended on India. The countries possessing nuclear weapons were not expected to be convinced by the pleadings of a non-nuclear power in favour of nuclear disarmament. Nor could such pleadings inspire confi dence in other non-nuclear powers and thus facilitate disarmament. One should never equate the goal of disarmament with the goal of security. When the nuclear powers negotiated on disarmament, they put security fi rst and disarmament next. They were right. But because of this they might fi nd it impossible to devise a disarmament scheme serving diverse interests. A nuclear disarmament agreement excluding China was useless not only to India but to the entire world. But it was almost impossible to assume that the United States and China, for instance, could agree upon a nuclear disarmament scheme in the immediate future. While China demanded that prohibition of the use of nuclear weapons must be carried out along with any ban on nuclear tests, it did not simultaneously advocate disarmament in the conventional fi eld.18 China did not discard the aim of supporting or sponsoring liberation movements in non-communist countries leading to the installation of pro-Chinese regimes. It had the largest conventional army in the world to further this aim. The United States, therefore, might not consider it safe to accept a scheme of nuclear disarmament unless China agreed to disarmament in the conventional fi eld too. China might not agree. Let us take another instance. India and Pakistan were both non-nuclear powers. It was extremely diffi cult to imagine how they could agree upon a disarmament scheme; accumulated fears and suspicions of several decades precluded the possibility of such an agreement in the near future. For the foreseeable future, it was a realistic assumption that numerous countries with diverse,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and sometimes directly colliding, interests, fears, strengths and weaknesses, would fail to arrive at a disarmament agreement. At most, they might hatch up an agreement of extremely limited scope which could not liquidate the necessity of a deterrent against a threat such as the Chinese threat to India.

18 Hungdah Chiu, ‘Communist China’s Attitude Towards Nuclear Tests’, The China Quarterly, vol. 21, January–March 1995, p. 106. Nuclear Policy 707

When politicians turn out directives with moral overtones they sometimes fail to clarify either the political necessities or the moral issues. R.R. Diwakar congratulated the Government of India on ‘rejecting the nuclear way to peace as it is the way to the destruction of all that humanity stands for’.19 V.K.K. Menon said on 30 November 1965: ‘If there are nuclear weapons in the world there would not be any world’.20 Diwakar or Menon made such statements in order to discount the necessity of an atomic deterrent for India. But they proved themselves blind to the operation of mutual deterrence as practised, for instance, between the United States and the Soviet Union for a good number of years without plunging the world into nuclear oblivion. They were guilty of playing up the danger of annihilation of humanity on account of a nuclear showdown, and playing down the danger to India, more real and immediate, owing to the nuclear imbalance between China and India. Diwakar or Menon would surely advocate a ban on nuclear weapons. Such a reaction, however, was not the best way to deal with a new technological development. One had to try to live with it. Whenever a newly discovered weapon surpasses older weapons in destructiveness, many people may feel so alarmed as to call the new weapon immoral and to seek its abolition. Throughout history there have been abolitionists who simply failed to halt the tide of newer-and-more-destructive weapons. If, in the mid-1960s, one only advocated a ban on nuclear weapons, and did not care for a deterrent, one simply betrayed a lack of historical perspective, and the consequent absence of a sense of proportion. In the words of Louis J. Halle,

[The attempt to ban nuclear weapons]… as immoral repeats an historical pattern. In 1139 the Second Lateran Council declared the art of crossbowmen and archers immoral and pronounced a ban against it. There was the same reaction to the submarine in more recent times, and the same reaction, no doubt, to the invincible combination

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of horse and sword that swept away the old societies of Europe sixteen thousand years ago. A knowledge of history would make us more doubtful of the ethical distinction between ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional’ weapons.21

19 The Hindustan Times, 26 October 1965. 20 The Hindustan Times, 1 December 1965. 21 Survival, September–October 1962, p. 238. 708 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Citizens less interested in the morality of atomic weapons and more concerned about national insecurity caused by such weapons in the hands of a hostile state could recommend the search for an external guarantee. India could try to obtain a nuclear deterrent in aid from one major power, say, the United States, or from two or more nuclear powers, for example, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain. A joint guarantee by several nuclear powers was obviously more difﬁ cult to obtain than the guarantee extended by one major power. But it is possible that neither was available; and the former, even if available, may not have been workable. A joint guarantee can lack credibility, which is the essence of deterrence. It might be difﬁ cult to bring about coordination of decision and military responses between several guarantors and the aid recipient during a crisis. There may be, for instance, political turmoil in any of these countries: a presidential election in the United States, a change in top leadership in the Soviet Union, or a nationwide general strike (that is, complete cessation of normal daily duties by citizens on account of a protest movement organised by all opposition parties on such vital issues as food prices and distribution, and leading inevitably to a closure of public transport for one or more days) in India. On such occasions the joint guarantee agreement would lack the credibility that it was otherwise intended to possess. The potential aggressor might not sit idle at this opportune moment; it might launch a nuclear strike against India with the hope that retaliation by the guarantors would not take place due to changes or confusions thus paralysing the apparatus of decision making. In future, the credibility of a joint guarantee would dwindle alarmingly when China would have the means to strike at the homeland of India’s underwriters, say, Britain or the United States. In that situation, the British-American threat of retaliation against China would stand countered and frozen by China’s threat of re-retaliation against British-American

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 homelands. As regards Soviet participation in a joint guarantee, it was rendered all the more doubtful by the fact that the Chinese threat of re-retaliation was more real and severe on account of the proximity of Soviet territory, and by the fact that such participation itself might cause a political crisis in the Soviet Union by provoking the pro-Chinese leaders. A joint guarantee by Western powers alone could be easier to negotiate than a joint Western-cum-Soviet guarantee. But uncertainties concerning the coordination of decisions and the planning Nuclear Policy 709

of military responses would remain. Much more credible could be a deterrent furnished by a guarantee extended by one single big power, say, the United States. Sometimes writers advocating the need for a guarantee by Western powers were guided by the fear that India’s programmes of economic development and social welfare had to be drastically curtailed if India diverted resources to the acquisition of a nuclear capability.22 Such a view overlooked the fact that this guarantee, assuming its availability, might not confer on India the necessary security. Foreign guarantors would defi nitely enjoy large latitude in choosing the time and type of assistance to be rendered to India; their choices might be responses to their own diplomatic necessities rather than to India’s military needs.23 In a moment of crisis India’s politicians and military planners were likely to be put to considerable embarrassment by the uncontrollable responses of foreign guarantors. Such diffi culties could not be entirely avoided even if the guarantee was extended by one power (not several powers), although reactions of a single power might be less unpredictable. A dramatic example of the terrible danger involved in dependence on foreign-manufactured arms (not to speak of a foreign nuclear guarantee) came out during the India–Pakistan hostilities of 1965. India had negotiated and put through a deal with England’s Vickers for a tank that was superior to any tank, including the Patton, which Pakistan possessed. The Vickers tanks were about to be delivered to India when Pakistan launched the attack; perhaps Pakistan did not want to wait till India’s armoured corps gained an edge over the Pakistani corps. Pakistan chose that moment for aggression when its armour still enjoyed some superiority over India’s. ‘This [Vickers] tank was made exclusively for us [India], to our specifi cations and is being paid for by the Indian taxpayer. Ready for delivery, their passage to India was halted on the orders of the British Government.’24 If a foreign government could suspend the supply of conventional

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 weapons, which had been actually purchased by India, the credibility of an external guarantee involving the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons was open to serious doubts. A more important point overlooked by advocates of an external nuclear umbrella for India was that it might not be available at all. A

22 H.M. Patel, ‘Arrangement with the West’, Seminar, January 1965, p. 18. 23 K.M. Munshi’s comments, The Hindustan Times, 5 November 1965. 24 Hindusthan Standard, 2 December 1965. 710 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

state can be unwilling to provide an umbrella even in a conventional confl ict, if, consequently, it has to sacrifi ce the lives of its citizens while defending the territorial integrity of the protected country. During the Indo-China crisis of 1954, France was in desperate need of American help which was not available chiefl y because the United States shrank from the enormous cost in money and men it would have to incur in support of France.25 If help was not rushed to France (an ally of the Second World War and in NATO)—seeking to counter a conventional threat—it was extremely diffi cult to take it for granted that India, which was not an ally of the Western powers, could secure an external umbrella for the asking against the Chinese nuclear (not merely conventional) challenge. The United States decision to abstain from intervention at a critical stage of the Indo-China War, making the loss of Dien Bien Phu inevitable, surely provided an impetus to the French striving for a nuclear force of their own that might compensate for the declining credibility of American military support.26 There was another crucial reason why an external guarantee protecting India against China might not have been formally available. The problem posed by the growing power of an expansionist China was not necessarily as urgent or awe-inspiring to the big powers as to India. Even if some of them were interested temporarily in helping India against China, the interest might be short-lived. Even in the United States, a country which for many years was regarded as China’s arch enemy, a great deal of rethinking on how China ought to be dealt with was proceeding apace. Many American academicians and statesmen began to feel27 that the United States would be able to solve the problem of Vietnam only if it could reach a political understanding with China, facilitating a serious and fruitful dialogue. They also felt that a China brandishing missiles (in the near future) might be diffi cult (perhaps impossible)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to contain militarily unless it was politically contained beforehand. India should not be surprised, therefore, if in future the big powers (including the United States), instead of propping up India against

25 Mathew B. Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Mathew B. Ridgway, New York: Harper, 1956, pp. 275–78. 26 Wolf Mendl, ‘The Background of French Nuclear Policy’, International Affairs, vol. 41, no. 1, January 1965, p. 31. 27 Selig Harrison, ‘U.S. Reappraisal of Attitude to China’, The Statesman, 23 March 1966. Nuclear Policy 711

China, proceeded to accommodate China as the latter gradually consolidated its big power status. An uncommitted state like India might even fancy an informal guarantee by the big powers which would operate in a crisis. Reliance on an unwritten unpublicised assurance of help sprang from the tendency to exaggerate the importance of an uncommitted state in the power-cum-ideological struggle between the big powers. In the 1960s, there was not much genuine reason why uncommitted states should ﬂ atter themselves with such an idea.28 Ideological considerations might impel one or two big powers to help an uncommitted state in a crisis; but it was never certain that in a nuclear showdown such considerations could play a decisive and timely role in saving an uncommitted country. This uncertainty appeared to be all the more probable as in the missile age the power of a weak uncommitted country counted for very little with the big powers in terms of concrete power calculations. This disparity of power between a big power (having nuclear weapons, missiles, etc.) and a non-nuclear non-aligned state was so great as to make the latter unimportant to the former in the context of a power contest with rival big powers. Yet, the propensity of some leaders of uncommitted states to assume that big powers would forever remain anxious to woo them and rescue them from a military crisis died hard. Prime Minister Nehru, in his letter of 5 January 1963 to Sudhir Ghosh, a Member of Indian Parliament, subtly hinted at his belief that England and America would help India in case of an all-out Chinese attack against India.29 This belief was unwarranted. There was a time when President Eisenhower was willing to gift three weapons to India against every single weapon gifted to Pakistan. Nehru had rejected Eisenhower’s offer not only with promptness but clear contempt. With time, governmental attitudes and policies change. In an interview to Sudhir Ghosh, ‘Mr. Kennedy gave…convincing

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 reasons for his inability to do what was easy for Mr. Eisenhower to do a few years earlier. With the passage of time situations change—not always in your favour’.30 An informal external guarantee, therefore,

28 Coral Bell, ‘Non-Alignment and the Power Balance’, Survival, vol. 5, no. 6, November–December 1963, p. 254. 29 Articles by Sudhir Ghosh, The Statesman, 13 January & 14 January 1965. 30 Sudhir Ghosh, ‘An Interview with Kennedy Recalled’, The Statesman, 14 January 1965. 712 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

might not be available even against a non-nuclear attack. With regard to a nuclear challenge, such a guarantee had to be treated as worse than worthless. The most essential need was to deter a nuclear attack. An informal guarantee made retaliation against the nuclear aggressor uncertain; the deterrent would fail. It was poor consolation that in case China dropped a few nuclear bombs on India, other big powers might also drop a few bombs on China, for, the uncertainty of response from India’s unknown allies torpedoed deterrence, and there would already be the untold destruction of Indian lives and property. Moreover, it was not always realistic to assume that the few bombs would be actually dropped on China, especially if China developed the power to escalate the confl ict and to infl ict unacceptable devastation on India’s sympathisers. As of 2007, the terminal point of this book, such debates on the availability/effi cacy of any nuclear umbrella for India would appear to be superfi cial and superfl uous (if not downright silly). But it is a sad commentary on infl uential Indian decision/opinion makers, offi cial and non-offi cial, who in the past energetically conducted such debates. They could cover up their lack of realism only by the unavoidable ignorance of Prime Minister Shastri’s experience following the Chinese nuclear test of 1964. Shastri sought ‘certain guarantees and assurances from selected major powers, within the ambit of the U.N. Charter, and India’s adherence to non-alignment’, wrote S.K. Singh, a former foreign secretary of India. But, as Singh added: ‘The results then had not been edifying. Our effort led to nothing specifi c, for the simple reason that no water-tight guarantees and assurances, in the context of this weapon, can ever be possible from any extraneous source’.31 So, there was scarcely any viable alternative to India having a nuclear capability of its own. This capability would be very modest, indeed, when compared to the huge arsenals of countries like

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the United States and the Soviet Union. India should only strive for a nuclear capability that could deter potential aggressors like China and Pakistan. Those who were against India acquiring such a capability would often refer to the costs involved in such an effort. According to them, India would ﬁ nd these costs unbearable, and the Indian economy might be ruined. They forgot that India

31 S.K. Singh, The Telegraph, 15 January 1991. Also see, Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security, an eye-opener on this issue. Nuclear Policy 713

had to strive for a limited nuclear capability which would not cost astronomical sums. They should have remembered the comment made by General Gallois, the French nuclear expert, that some powers deliberately circulated the myth of excessive cost of nuclear bombs in order to perpetuate their monopoly of the new weapons.32 Anti-nuclear-programme spokesmen should further note that India’s entire economy would benefi t substantially from the technological- commercial fallout of a nuclear programme. H.J. Bhabha, chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, declared in a broadcast on All India Radio (New Delhi) on 24 October 1965 that many countries would be tempted by the very low cost of atom bombs to manufacture them within the next fi ve to 10 years. Actually, as attested by a former foreign secretary of India, T.N. Kaul, Bhabha ‘could have produced a cheap atom bomb in 1957. When he told Prime Minister Nehru about it, the latter did not give him the green light’.33 Jawaharlal Nehru thus proved that he possessed neither foresight nor realism. There were other experts, in the 1960s, like Bhabha, who held a similar view vis-à-vis the costs of nuclear devices. L.P. Bloomfi eld and A.C. Leiss34 wrote: ‘Cost estimates put nuclear weapons within reach of the poorest nations within a few years’. In this connection, it is appropriate to refer to Herman Kahn’s forecasts,35 which made all talks about disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons sound hollow. In the early 1960s, there were about 10 nations spending over US$1 billion annually on defence, and about 25 nations (referred to as ‘small’ nations by Kahn) whose yearly defence expenditure ranged between a US$100 million and US$1 billion. Kahn, by extrapolating from these rates of defence spending and overall growth, arrived at the rough estimate that by AD 2000 there could be about 20 nations spending more than US$1 billion a year on defence, and acquiring a nuclear arsenal with a considerable second-strike capability. Kahn

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 added that, according to such an estimate based on the continuation of existing trends of economic growth and defence expenditure, there

32 The Statesman, 22 July 1965 and Hindusthan Standard, 25 July 1965. 33 Kaul, India and the New World Order, pp. 44–45 34 ‘Arms Control and the Developing Countries’, Foreign Affairs, October 1965, p. 1. 35 Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962, pp. 209–10. 714 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

could be about 50 small nations whose annual defence spending would range between a US$100 million and US$1 billion by AD 2000. Continuous technological advances would lower the cost of nuclear weapons and delivery systems and, by A.D. 2000, these 50 small nations were likely to acquire substantial nuclear weapons systems without, of course, any signifi cant second-strike capability. These predictions did not come true but they provided a warning that could not be totally overlooked. As for India, it had already invested substantial amounts in the programme for the development of atomic energy. The capital cost thus incurred would facilitate a nuclear weapons programme. Additional expenditure for manufacturing 50 bombs of Hiroshima potency (20 kilotons) was estimated in the 1960s at about `200 million by Alastair Buchan, the Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies, London.36 Raj Bahadur, India’s minister for broadcasting and information, declared in Bangalore on 19 March 1966 that about `1 billion would have to be spent for installing televisions in 113 cities and 250,000 villages of India in the course of the next seven to 10 years. A government that was inclined to spend this amount on televisions surely would not grudge the expenditure required for 50 nuclear bombs (of 20 kilotons each) which would provide India with a powerful deterrent against potential aggressors like China and Pakistan. An investment of `200/250 million for this purpose did not seem to be ruinous for the Indian economy even in terms of the annual defence budget. This investment would absorb only 5 per cent of India’s yearly defence budget, if it was spread over a period of fi ve years.37 At this stage one could refer in some details to two essays on the subject: one by Raj Krishna,38 the other by Sisir Gupta.39 Indian scientists were capable of manufacturing high grade uranium which could be used as fi ssionable material, and which would make nuclear

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 bombs far less costly than if plutonium was used. Annual capital expenditure for this purpose was estimated at ` 1 billion by Raj Krishna

36 Amalendu Das Gupta, ‘The Case for an Independent Nuclear Policy’, The Statesman, 22 July 1965. 37 Sanjoy Sen, ‘India’s Right to Make the Bomb’, Hindusthan Standard, 25 July 1965. 38 ‘India and the Bomb’, India Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, April–June 1965. 39 ‘Break with the Past’, Seminar, January 1965. Nuclear Policy 715

who recommended the annual expenditure of another `1 billion for the development of a delivery system and tactical artillery.40 During the Fourth Plan period, annual public expenditure was expected to be over `30 billion. Raj Krishna rejected as unconvincing the view that the sum of `2 billion could not be accommodated either within or beyond this planned public outlay for the sake of the country’s security. He emphasised that in many countries, including Russia under Stalin and China under Mao, defence preparations were found to have contributed positively to economic development. He then made a poignant observation: ‘It is a mischievous double-think to admire the high rates of growth in communist countries which were invariably associated with armament and to raise a guns-versus- butter scare when it is suggested that India make her modest effort to defend herself against real danger.’41 Sisir Gupta rightly observed that strict economic calculations, divorced from considerations of national power and prestige, must not be allowed to dominate, and thus vitiate, crucial policy decisions. He trenchantly remarked:

It is doubtful if the economists would ever consider the United States good enough economically to waste money on space ventures so long as Harlem and Mississippi are there. Likewise, how could the Soviet Union develop her luniks and sputniks when so many and so much of fundamental economic problems are yet to be tackled in that country.42

This remark is sufﬁ cient to dispel many illusions and misunderstandings about whether India should spend the required sums on a nuclear weapons programme. Sisir Gupta advanced another important argument in support of his pro-bomb thesis: nuclear weapons would provide India’s rulers with a symbol of power and international prestige that could be manipulated to bolster India-mindedness among

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the people torn by such divisive forces as linguism, provincialism, etc. The present writer also feels that it could be a good diversionary move on the part of the government to boost the morale and loyalty of the people who were haunted in the mid-1960s by the scarcity of just about everything necessary to their daily life.

40 India Quarterly, April–June 1965, pp. 130–31. 41 Ibid., pp. 131–32. 42 Gupta, ‘Break with the Past’, p. 29. 716 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

One could easily glean evidence from past history to indicate that scarcity, after all, was seldom allowed to dictate military needs and policies. For instance, from about the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century, the then big powers of Europe began to maintain large standing armies in times of war as well as peace. States like France or Prussia maintained armies, which a contemporary Indian economist, alarmed by the costs of an Indian atomic bomb, might consider unjustifi ably large, especially in view of the small population and low living standard of France and Prussia during those days.43 In 1690, France had a population of a little over 20 million, while its Army was 446,000 strong. In the 18th century, even in the period of peace following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), French Army strength reached the peak of 200,000. In 1739, Prussia had an Army of 83,486, while its population numbered only two million. Large standing armies, however, contributed to the emergence of an industrial era in Europe. Standing armies required large-scale production of standardised commodities and eased industrialisation.44 If India embarked on a nuclear weapons programme, the Indian economy might benefi t in diverse ways. Military spending includes expenditure on research and development programmes. These programmes would not only reward India with better weapons, but also with improved technology and skills which would accelerate the pace of economic development.45 India would have a larger pool of engineers and scientists with newer skills to stimulate the growth of such vital fi elds as metallurgy, electronics, etc., essential for the development of the entire civilian economy. Modern states have been compelled to learn to live with large defence budgets; they can surely console themselves thinking of the numerous benefi ts accruing to civilians on account of defence research. To take one very simple instance, the development of improved military transport aircraft

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 simultaneously promotes the cause of civil aviation.

43 John U. Nef, War and Human Progress, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1950, p. 202. 44 Ibid., p. 207. 45 See, for details about economic gains of defence spending, Charles J. Hitch and Ronald N. Mckean, The Economics of Defence in the Nuclear Age, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 81–83. Nuclear Policy 717

There was a lurking fear in the minds of even pro-bomb spokesmen in India that if India ofﬁ cially began the manufacture of nuclear weapons, many friendly countries (notably the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain), who played a dominant role in India’s economic development, might be alienated, and might even withdraw economic aid in protest.46 Such a fear could be set to rest in light of the following. First, the big powers knew that their bold announcements about the general goal of complete and comprehensive disarmament did not actually further the cause of any sig- niﬁ cant disarmament, nor were they designated for that purpose.47 Hence, they could not just accuse India of obstructing disarmament by the acquisition of nuclear weapons, and stop economic aid to India if it tried to enhance its security with a nuclear capability that would rank far below the capability of the big powers. Second, the attitudes of the nuclear powers towards disarmament and nuclear proliferation were primarily shaped by the state of nuclear technology in the country, the attitudes and policies keeping pace all the time with advances in nuclear technology.48 They were not guided by altruistic motives but by the cold logic of balance of power when they pleaded for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. They could not consider themselves entitled to exercise a veto on India’s decision to make nuclear weapons, especially when they could not supply a credible deterrent to India. Third, they were not able to demonstrate their intention or capability of preventing others, notably China, from going nuclear. There was no sign that they would compel China to dismantle its nuclear weapons establishment. Anything short of this must not persuade India to renounce nuclear weapons forever. The argument of non-proliferation should not restrain India from manufacturing nuclear weapons, as China—not very friendly with either the United States or the Soviet Union—was not penalized by the superpowers for ignoring this argument. Therefore, it is likely

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 that others, less unfriendly with the superpowers than China, were able to escape more easily any preventive or punitive measure for violating the unenforceable dictum of non-proliferation. Fourth, if the superpowers were interested in India’s survival and progress,

46 A.D. Moddie, ‘What Difference Lop Nor?’, Seminar, January 1965, p. 16. 47 Leonard Beaton, Must the Bomb spread?, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, p. 11. 48 Kenneth Younger, ‘The Spectre of Nuclear Proliferation’, International Affairs, vol. 42, no. 1, January 1966, p. 14. 718 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

they could not punish India simply because it manufactured nuclear weapons to deter China and Pakistan. When they talked of aid without strings, they could not surely attach such a dangerous string to their aid as would frustrate India’s attempt to earn security vis-à- vis hostile neighbours. Fifth, an India with nuclear weapons would be obviously able to contribute more effectively to disarmament and world peace than an India without nuclear weapons. Its stature with the superpowers would also increase, and its relations with them would tend to be far healthier and less distorted by inhibitions originating from an enormous disparity in power. China was and continues to be an expansionist power. There was no early prospect of its becoming a satisﬁ ed power with no interest in war or subversion abroad.49 Pakistan joined hands with China—the joint communiqué issued by Presidents Ayub Khan and Liu Shao- Chi on 31 March 1966 was an alarming pointer to that—in trying to pressurize India and gain its own territorial objectives. The present writer, therefore, concluded in the latter part of 1960s that India could and should try to attain a limited nuclear capability to deter China and Pakistan. There was no other alternative which was both available and viable.50 Nevertheless, India remained preoccupied with disarmament (conducive to world peace) rather than with preparations for the acquisition of new armaments like nuclear weapons. India thus failed to strike a balance between ethics and realism. The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), which banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water, came into force on 10 October 1963. India was a signatory. China was not. China criticised the PTBT (and India) because China opposed hegemony by a few nuclear weapon states (NWS). India and the United States signed the agreement on construction of the Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) in December 1963. Soon, in the early part of 1964, India received from

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the United States a computer that could simulate nuclear fusion—the CDC-3600-140A computer. In May 1964, a few weeks before his death, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru reiterated his decision not to manufacture a nuclear weapon.51

49 Robert Scott, ‘China’s Policy and Outlook’, Australian Outlook, December 1965, pp. 244, 247. 50 Jayanta Kumar Ray, Security in the Missile Age, Bombay: Allied, 1967. 51 Rear Admiral Raja Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000, pp. 74–75. Nuclear Policy 719

Not to speak of the utter lack of realism among many ofﬁ cial decision makers and non-ofﬁ cial opinion makers on the issue of a proper response to the Chinese nuclear test of October 1964 (mercifully, a few months after Jawaharlal Nehru’s death)—as already noted in this chapter—even the Indian military establishment demonstrated a shocking lack of minimum realism. For, in October 1964, it submitted a statement to the government, which ruled out any need for nuclear bombs.52 The consolation for those who had made a realistic appraisal of the need for nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis China was the statement by Bhabha that India could manufacture a bomb in 18 months following an order by the competent authority.53 But the decision to retain the nuclear option, and to exercise it eventually, was shaped through a long, tortuous, unplanned process—hardly in keeping with India’s human and material resources, and its security needs. To plead for nuclear disarmament without ensuring nuclear deterrence was to occupy a high moral ground from which the fall was inevitable when the NWS would take what they considered a long leap towards disarmament. This happened in 1968, when the NWS prepared the NPT, and India refused to sign it. India was right in doing so, and arguing that the NPT, by stopping horizontal proliferation, added to the insecurity of non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS), whereas it discriminated in favour of NWS by sustaining their right to vertical proliferation (that is, quantitative and qualitative enhancement of their weapons). In this way, however, India had to confess to the glaring contradiction in the policy it was following for decades: nuclear disarmament versus nuclear security. India made a half-hearted effort to resolve this contradiction as it rejected the NPT, adopting a policy of preservation of the nuclear weapons option.54 China and France conveyed their contempt towards the PTBT by staging atmospheric tests, whereas, despite the capacity and de-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 sire of the Indian scientiﬁ c-technological community to stage a subterranean nuclear explosion (SNE), the government in New Delhi

52 The Hindustan Times, 25 October 1964. 53 Achin Vanayak and Praful Bidwai, India and Pakistan: Security with Nuclear Weapons, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 261. 54 For details on this and related matters, see P.S. Jayaramu, India’s National Security and Foreign Policy, New Delhi: ABC Publishers, 1978. Also see Shelton L. Williams, The U.S., India and the Bomb, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969, Chapter III. 720 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

remained hesitant.55 Lal Bahadur Shastri deserved some credit for being proactive in the realm of nuclear policy. For, he approved Homi Bhabha’s proposal for exploration of an SNE.56 The ﬁ rst Indian SNE of May 1974, however, was an essentially reactive measure. It might not have taken place but for developments in 1971, when the crisis of East Pakistan/Bangladesh got enmeshed with the American policy of building a détente with China. Although it was debatable how much America had to depend on Pakistan for building a détente with China, and whether America, by playing up Pakistan’s role in fostering Sino-American détente, was trying to endow Pakistan with some respectability in American citizens’ eyes at a time when it stood thoroughly discredited on account of an avoidable genocide in East Pakistan. Nevertheless, Sino-Pak-American collusion was evident during the East Pakistan/Bangladesh crisis of 1971. With it was mixed up America’s ill-concealed manoeuvre to goad China (unsuccessfully) to intervene in the East Pakistan crisis, as also a veiled warning to India that India would not ﬁ nd it easy to deal with such intervention by a nuclear-armed China. If all this was not enough to ignite India’s nuclear ambitions, the movement into the Bay of Bengal of America’s Enterprise, an aircraft career with nuclear weapons, at the closing stage of the India–Pakistan war of 1971, appeared to compel India to exercise the nuclear option in the near future.57 (Elsewhere in this book, some domestic compulsions have also been hinted at.)

The Indian Nuclear Test, 1974 Apparently, in 1972, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sanctioned preparations for an SNE.58 The actual SNE took place on 18 May 1974. If there was a long-term plan, and Indira Gandhi cared more for national interest than for tall unconvincing talks on global nuclear Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

55 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy: 1964–98’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Nuclear India, New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1998a, p. 29. 56 Ibid., p. 27. 57 Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, New York: Summit Books, 1983, p. 452; Kissinger, White House Years, p. 913; Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, pp. 83–84; Richard M. Nixon, Memoirs, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978, p. 530. 58 Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 31. Also see George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 171–72. Nuclear Policy 721

disarmament, the test would have taken place at a much earlier date. It may be instructive to note that an Indian nuclear test, held soon after the fi rst Chinese test, would have been interpreted as a natural reaction to the Chinese action, and would have provoked little adverse reaction from the leader of the NWS and promoter of the NPT, the United States, which then had Johnson as the president. ‘All available presidential papers indicate that if India had exploded a nuclear device then in response to China, the Johnson Administration would have winked at India, perhaps with some proforma protests.’59 This reminds one of America’s intention to support India on the nuclear issue in the 1960s. A study of relevant archival sources has revealed America’s apprehension that China might have been able to stage a nuclear explosion in 1962. A number of state department offi cers thought that this would have added to the attraction to communism in the world, and, therefore, it was desirable that a friendly, non-communist Asian country like India should carry out a nuclear test before China. In fact, as Perkovich writes, a state department ‘memo suggested that the United States should explore whether American technical assistance could help induce India to conduct a nuclear explosion ahead of China’.60 Typically, the Indian diplomatic-intelligence establishment was probably unaware of such a crucial matter, and worse, even if it was aware, did not possess the initiative to pursue it. The response of the Nixon administration to the Indian test at Pokhran in May 1974 was far from aggressive; America certainly thought it wise to show some respect towards India’s capabilities. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger even set aside the state department’s advice, and refrained from unleashing any severe criticism upon India as that would not only worsen relations with India, but also decrease America’s capacity to infl uence India.61

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 In 1961, when negotiations for obtaining nuclear reactors for TAPS started, the Americans certainly knew that India’s nuclear activities could eventually lead to the production of nuclear explosives. For, in April 1961, India had started to erect its plutonium

59 P.M. Kamath, ‘Indian National Security Policy: Minimal Nuclear Deterrence’, Strategic Analysis, vol. XXIII, no. 8, November 1999, p. 1259. 60 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, pp. 52–53. Also see Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security, p. 192. 61 Kamath, ‘Indian National Security Policy’, p. 1260. 722 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

reprocessing plant at Trombay, which had the capacity to facilitate the manufacture of a nuclear bomb.62 An important aspect of the TAPS agreement was that the United States offered credit of US$80 million on extraordinarily generous terms. While the agreement was for 30 years, the repayment period was 40 years, and the annual interest rate 0.75 per cent. Signifi cantly, American legislators did not raise questions about the fi nancial terms or even the prospects for nuclear proliferation. Their objections were directed at the incompetence, ingratitude, and muddle headedness of the Indians, especially the Indian bureaucracy. As the American legislators pointed out, Indian customs offi cials had only recently prevented the entry of American arms for harried Indian soldiers engaged in fi ghting Chinese invaders; earlier, these offi cers had even demanded the payment of customs duties on American wheat supplied to India for people in near-famine conditions.63 One reason why Secretary of State Kissinger did not sternly rebuke India for the May 1974 atomic test was that it had not violated any agreement with America. Soon after this test, in June 1974, America dispatched an instalment of nuclear fuel to TAPS.64 The 1974 nuclear test appeared to be a departure from the norm of lack of realism set by the Indian political establishment in the realm of the foreign relations-defence interface, as amply illustrated in previous decades, especially in the cases of relations with China and Pakistan. This departure probably proved too demanding for the the Indian political leaders. They failed to pay proper respect to the intentions and capabilities of the Indian scientists and technologists (in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre or the Atomic Energy Commission, for instance), who logically pined for orders to carry out a number of tests in subsequent years. These would not only have carried forward their professional endeavours, and promoted India’s economic-technological progress, but also served India’s

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 interests in the areas of defence and foreign relations. Such orders were conspicuous by their absence. ‘The lack of any systematic military, technical, or political strategy to guide subsequent Indian nuclear policy soon became evident.’65

62 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 52. 63 Ibid., pp. 56–57. 64 Ibid., p. 184. 65 Ibid., p. 187. Nuclear Policy 723

The replacement of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Morarji Desai in the 1977 general election made matters worse for those who had masterminded the ﬁ rst Pokhran test in 1974. On 24 March 1977, in New Delhi, Morarji Desai afﬁ rmed his total opposition to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by India.66 At the UN General Assembly on 4 October 1977, Desai’s external affairs minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, announced that India not only disapproved the acquisition of nuclear weapons but that it would not manufacture nuclear bombs even if all other countries in the world did so.67 This quagmire of sentimentalism was perfect ground for policy anomalies to easily sprout. The Morarji Desai government abdicated the nuclear option permanently, but refused to abide by such arms control measures as the NPT, or the denuclearization of various regions of the world.68 Nevertheless, paradoxically, such inconsistencies in Desai’s government’s policies served the national interest in the long run. President Jimmy Carter was evidently impressed by Morarji Desai’s addiction to nuclear abstinence. He approved, in April 1977, the shipment of another instalment of nuclear fuel to TAPS.69 The United States Congress passed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Act (NNPA) on 10 March 1978. ‘The long and complicated legislation was the culmination of several years of intense intragovernmental debate informed by numerous official and nongovernmental studies. Much of this had been prompted by India’s 1974 nuclear explosion.’70 Apparently, the Americans were more concerned about one nuclear test carried out by India than about as many as 22 tests conducted by China by September 1977. It was not at all surprising. It merely attested to the cold realities of international relations to which Indian political leaders remained persistently insensitive. The NNPA, in short, prohibited the export of any essential nuclear material to any country that did not put all its nu-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 clear plants under IAEA safeguards (that is, if it did not adopt full- scope safeguards). Moreover, it banned the reprocessing of spent

66 The Hindustan Times, 25 March 1977. 67 The Times of India, 6 October 1977. 68 Brij Mohan Kaushik, ‘Regional Denuclearization in India’s Nuclear Policy’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 1, no. 9, December 1977a, pp. 19–21. 69 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 202. 70 Ibid., p. 206. 724 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

reactor fuel of American origin without American approval. As to old nuclear cooperation agreements between America and other countries (for example, India), the Act permitted a renegotiation period of 18 months.71 Meanwhile, in January 1978, President Carter had visited India. Carter promised not only biannual release of fuel consignments for TAPS but also supply of heavy water, and cooperation in the development of space, satellite, and river resource programmes. But Morarji Desai, despite his insistence on doing without nuclear weapons, disappointed Carter by refusing to sign the NPT or accept full-scope safeguards. Morarji argued that NWS should themselves stop nuclear tests, halt additions to their nuclear armoury, start dismantling their nuclear weapons, and submit to full-scope safeguards before India could reconsider adherence to the NPT and the full-scope safeguards.72 Morarji Desai’s obduracy, despite an element of incoherence, furthered India’s national interest. In June 1978, Morarji Desai visited America and promised neither to acquire weapons nor to carry out nuclear tests even for peaceful objectives. In fact, he observed that he was not concerned whether the existing nuclear stockpiles were reliable or not. He thus ‘revealed an outlook that no doubt bedevilled the Indian nuclear establishment…. This morally inspired and technologically disengaged view helps explain why Desai had renounced follow-up nuclear tests in India’.73 The Indian prime minister, however, reiterated that India would reconsider its rejection of full-scope safeguards only if NWS halted the manufacture of nuclear weapons and initiated measures towards nuclear disarmament.74 The United States Congress, however, upheld, in July 1978, Carter’s pending order for shipment of nuclear fuel to TAPS. The 18-month deadline, prescribed by the NNPA, expired. India refused to accept full-scope safeguards. In the same year, TAPS began to face difﬁ culties because the Americans

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ‘stopped supplying components, replacements, supply of fuel. How- ever, from 1978 to 1994 Tarapur was made to work satisfactorily by

71 Ibid. 72 Swadesh Rana, ‘President Carter’s Visit to India’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 1, no. 10, January 1978, pp. 5–8. 73 Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb, p. 212. 74 Ibid. Also see Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies, p. 358. Nuclear Policy 725

Indian scientists and produced the cheapest electricity from nuclear sources in this country—less than Re.1/- per kilowatt’.75 No applause can be too big for the Indian scientists/technologists who made this happen by overcoming diffi culties created by America over India’s refusal to accept full-scope safeguards for its nuclear facilities. At this stage, in order to put things in correct perspective, it may be pertinent to refer briefl y to the history of IAEA safeguards. It was on 29 July 1957 that the IAEA statute came into force. India was one of the 26 countries which ratifi ed the statute before it became effective. In its ratifi cation document, India inserted the comment that the implementation of IAEA safeguards would favour the great powers, but discriminate against less powerful and smaller countries.76 India built a research reactor—the Canada–India Reactor (CIR) —with uranium oxide from Canada. Subsequently, CIR was renamed CIRUS as the United States provided heavy water for this reactor. The India–Canada agreement stipulated that the reactor would confi ne itself to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It prescribed bilateral safeguards and reciprocal inspections, which were not seriously implemented. CIRUS attained the critical stage in 1960, when there were very few countries in a position to export nuclear materials and technology, and they did not suffer from any deep fear of nuclear proliferation. In the agreement with America on the commercial-scale reactors in Tarapur, it was mentioned that, subsequently, trilateral agreements would be signed (by America, India, and the IAEA) to enable the application of IAEA safeguards to Indian facilities. On 27 January 1971, TAPS came under IAEA safeguards through a trilateral agreement. Canada and India were collaborating on the Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant (RAPP). On 30 September 1971, RAPP was put under IAEA safeguards through the trilateral route. Both Canada and America could complain of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 virtual violation of agreements with them because the Indian nuclear explosion of 1974 used plutonium obtained from spent CIRUS

75 P.K. Iyengar, ‘India’s Nuclear Policy and the CTBT’, in M.L. Sondhi (ed.), Nuclear Weapons and India’s Nuclear Security, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2000, p. 26. Iyengar was a key person behind the 1974 Pokhran test, and the chairman of India’s AEC during 1990–93. 76 Brij Mohan Kaushik, ‘International Safeguards in India’s Nuclear Policy’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 1, no. 10, January 1978, p. 10. 726 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

fuel reprocessed at the facility in Trombay built by India. In 1976, Canada stopped collaboration on RAPP.77 Advocates of NPT appeared to take an excessive interest in India’s nuclear potentialities and try to stifl e them, while exhibiting very little concern about China’s fast-growing nuclear might. It was just one more proof—although unnecessary—of what China’s raw power (as contrasted to the high-minded disarmament rhetoric, an Indian specialisation) could achieve. As early as August 1974—a few weeks after the fi rst Indian atomic test—eight countries, including Britain, America, and the Soviet Union, underlined their obligations under the NPT in separate but identical communications to the IAEA Director General. This was the genesis of the so-called London Club, which formed a sort of oligopoly of major suppliers of nuclear materials and technology (as also their associates), their number soon reaching 15. In January 1978, this cartel of nuclear suppliers submitted a list of nuclear materials and technology the transfer of which was to be restricted, so as to preclude the preparation of a nuclear device. Members of this cartel were ready to sacrifi ce their commercial interests by promising to stop exports of items in the banned list to any country to which any other member had suspended the supply.78 The Indian nuclear establishment, therefore, faced tremendous diffi culties in carrying forward its programme of research and development. But these diffi culties were not totally insurmountable. What the NPT enthusiasts, the London Club of nuclear suppliers, for example, failed to realise was that the march of technology could not be halted. Britain and France were America’s partners in the project that led to the manufacture of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Afterwards, America refused to share the results of the research with Britain and France. But Britain and France soon developed their own nuclear weapons. After the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Second World War, the Soviet Union, in contrast to America, Britain or France, was designated as a technologically backward country. But

77 Ibid., p. 11. Also see, R.R. Subramanian, ‘India’s Nuclear Weapon Cap- abilities: A Technological Appraisal’, in P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Iftekharuzzaman (eds), Nuclear Non- Proliferation in India and Pakistan: South Asian Perspectives, New Delhi: Manohar, 1996, pp. 21–22. 78 Brij Mohan Kaushik, ‘Enforcing the NPT Regime: Recent Developments’, Strategic Analysis, February 1977b, pp. 39–41. Nuclear Policy 727

the Soviet Union manufactured an atom bomb as early as 1949. After India conducted the ﬁ rst nuclear explosion in 1974, it was not only subjected to restrictions upon its imports of nuclear materials and technology, but also upon access to academic training and exchanges. The NPT enthusiasts, however, failed to take into account some important points. One, even if they stopped the transfer of materials in their trigger list to countries with nuclear ambitions, they could not ban the discovery of new elements for making the atom bomb. In fact, these materials, being gradually discovered, would lead to the production of atomic bombs of relatively tiny size. Two, it was possible to manufacture new weapons that would generate X-rays and Gamma rays to destroy human lives but preserve buildings.79 Sanctions imposed by America and other nuclear suppliers after the 1974 nuclear test would hurt, but not cripple, Indian scientists. They were greatly inconvenienced by the failure of India’s political leaders to order a few more tests after 1974. In Bharat Karnad’s words:

The choice of policies relating to the nuclear deterrent, which were made hostage to domestic political developments and to mindless apprehensions about economic peril, if India tested and went overtly nuclear, resulted post-1974 in recessed nuclear weaponisation over the next quarter of a century.80

The much-trumpeted independence of India’s foreign policy remained a misnomer. The suspension of further nuclear tests did not prevent Indian scientists from extracting maximum research inputs from the fi rst Pokhran test using computer simulations, by fabricating a multiplicity of designs, through experiments with improvements in weapon confi gurations, by testing components of weapons at a reduced weight, and, fi nally, by endeavouring to devise a thermonuclear explosion. ‘In these and other ways’, says

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Bharat Karnad, ‘the 1974 ﬁ ssion device that weighed in at around a ton was...over the years designed and redesigned until…a 100 KT yield weapon is available with a weight of approximately 200–300 kilograms (Kg)’.81

79 Iyengar, ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’, pp. 22–28. 80 Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & India’s Security, 2002, p. 320. 81 Ibid. 728 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

The pusillanimity of India’s political leaders in acquiring a nuclear deterrent was in sharp contrast to the energy and determination of their counterparts in Pakistan, not to speak of China. India was ahead of China in nuclear reactor technology until 1965, but China soon left India behind. As for Pakistan, as early as 1972, Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan had secretly obtained from a laboratory in the Netherlands the technology to manufacture uranium-based nuclear bomb material. Pakistan’s atom bomb programme was quite advanced in 1974, when the fi rst Indian nuclear explosion took place. Moreover, in 1976, Pakistan purchased 32 Mirage-Vs with fi nancial assistance from Abu Dhabi, with the promise that in an emergency Abu Dhabi would supply Pakistan with its own 24 Mirage-Vs. These aircraft could deliver nuclear bombs on enemy territory. Pakistan had only one problem: it could not get over the obstacles created by the trigger list of the London Club, whereas the Indian scientists could do so. Nevertheless, Pakistan could compensate for this defi ciency by means of clandestine supplies from Europe, and comprehensive assistance from China. Around 1980, a large number of countries (including UK, USA, France, and Canada) became aware that the Pakistani nuclear bomb was almost ready.82 It is now advisable to pay a left-handed tribute to Pakistan. As has been discussed in the chapter ‘Relations with Pakistan’ earlier in this book, the then Indian prime minister was willing in 1947 to disband the Army. But for the Pakistani invasion of J&K in October 1947, New Delhi might have taken a glorious, though suicidal, decision on this matter. Around 1980, again, Pakistani advances in making a nuclear bomb jolted the unrealistic and suicidal complacency of the Indian political leaders on the issue of nuclear deterrence. But one aspect of the Indian reaction was typical—consistent with neither the moralistic claims of pursuing an independent foreign policy, nor with the immense natural/human resources of India. ‘Prayers, entreaties,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 arguments, curses and accusations were ﬂ ung at the United States to get them to stop Pakistan from doing whatever they were doing…. The Pakistani bomb programme never wavered.’83

82 For an in-depth analysis of the points mentioned in this paragraph, see Raja Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, pp. 86–91. Also see Subramanian, ‘India’s Nuclear Weapon Capabilities’, p. 30. 83 Raja Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, p. 91. Nuclear Policy 729

Another aspect of India’s reaction to Pakistan’s intimidating nuclear endeavours was reassuring, but ended in deplorable failure on account of suspected lapses committed by the top layer of the Indian bureaucracy, which, too, was a lurid commentary on India’s capacity to follow an independent foreign policy. In 1982, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved preparations for underground nuclear tests. However, the tests could not take place on account of extraordinarily stern American warnings of retaliation. The warnings were caused by an alleged leakage of confi dential information from the offi ce of P.C. Alexander, the principal private secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. If India was not able to forge a credible nuclear deterrent on account of American antipathy, India should try to eliminate the immediate nuclear threat from Pakistan by launching a surprise air attack on Pakistani nuclear installations, and destroying them, while remaining prepared for a general war with Pakistan. The Indians held consultations with the Israelis (who had earlier destroyed Iraq’s nuclear facilities at Osirak), and procured electronic warfare equipment from Israel to incapacitate the aircraft and guns guarding Pakistan’s nuclear complex at Kahuta. This was in 1983. But, once again, suspected leakages of information from P.C. Alexander’s offi ce to America, and then to Pakistan, sabotaged Indira Gandhi’s mission of a pre-emptive strike upon Kahuta. In 1984, Indira Gandhi decided to enlist the services of Israeli specialists to destroy Kahuta. When preparations reached the fi nal stage, New Delhi called off the strike primarily because of threat of retaliation by the United States, Pakistan’s military ally since 1954.84 In 1980–81, unlike in 1964, the Indian military recommended the acquisition of nuclear weapons. This recommendation, contained in a paper prepared by the Joint Planning Committee (JPC) of the three Services, was forwarded by the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSc) to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The civil bureaucracy

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in India is habituated to misplacing or misdirecting such papers

84 This paragraph is based on wealth of data, including those from conﬁ dential interviews, marshalled by Bharat Karnad in Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security, pp. 344–49. Some retired Indian scientists told Karnad that P.C. Alexander was an ‘American Trojan Horse’. As to Indira Gandhi, Karnad comments: ‘It was a daringly proactive turn in policy and was reminiscent of Mrs. Gandhi’s decision in 1971, to intervene militarily in the civil war in Pakistan and help an independent Bangladesh emerge.’ 730 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

without the danger of any disciplinary action. Therefore, the JPC paper did not reach the Cabinet Secretariat or the Prime Minister’s Ofﬁ ce (PMO). In 1984, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi showed a ﬂ eeting interest in the acquisition of nuclear weapons, it was apparent that the JPC paper never reached him.85 In November 1985, an inter-disciplinary taskforce, comprising representatives of the Indian Army, Navy, Air Force, the DAE and DRDO, presented a report to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It formulated a programme of minimum deterrence costing `70 billion over a 10-year period for the acquisition of 100 missiles (Agni and Prithvi), an adequate number of aircraft, and 100 nuclear warheads. This was afford- able. Indian scientists and technologists were very busy developing short and intermediate range missiles under the Integrated Guided Missile Programme (IGMP) formulated in 1983. They were also developing various designs of nuclear weapons. But Rajiv Gandhi did not take any interest in the November 1985 report on a minimum nuclear deterrent. In 1986, he became a vigorous campaigner for disarmament. Meanwhile, in 1985, Rajiv Gandhi signed an agreement with General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan for prevention of attacks on each other’s nuclear facilities.86 India, along with Greece, Sweden, Tanzania, Argentina, and Mexico, launched a 6-Nation 5-Continent Peace Initiative in 1984. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi devoted himself to this initiative in 1986. Mikhail Gorbachev, then Soviet president, visited India in 1986. By means of the 1986 Delhi Declaration, Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev pleaded for the establishment of a Nuclear Weapon Free World (NWFW). In 1988, at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Disarmament, Rajiv Gandhi proposed an Action Plan for Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon-Free and Non- Violent World Order. This Plan asked for everything, and got nothing. Among other things, it urged upon all countries to declare

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 a moratorium on nuclear explosions and move towards a CTBT to halt the production of weapon grade ﬁ ssile material, to establish a

85 Hriday Kaul, ‘National Security Policy and Development of Nuclear Forces’, in M.L. Sondhi (ed.), Nuclear Weapons and India’s Nuclear Security, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2000, p. 104. Also see, Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security, pp. 350–51; Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, pp. 97–98. 86 Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, pp. 40–43. Also, Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security, pp. 351–53. Nuclear Policy 731

comprehensive system of global security, and to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2010. As expected, the NWS treated this Action Plan with what it deserved: cold neglect.87 India was now in a thoroughly adverse situation. It had no alternative but to build a credible nuclear deterrent. This required tests for ascertaining the reliability of already existing nuclear stock, and newer weapons that could be built from bomb materials produced by the indigenously built DHRUVA reactor (which started operations in late 1985). But a non-aligned country, having the fourth largest community of scientists and technologists, did not have independence of action in the area of interface of foreign affairs and defence. It could not afford to alienate NWS like America by staging a series of nuclear tests. In contrast, Pakistan’s policy of multiple and ﬂ exible alignment enabled it to enjoy independence in the area of defence-foreign affairs interface. Two NWS, China and the Untied States, were in collusion with Pakistan.88 Pakistan could acquire nuclear weapons and missiles with extensive Chinese assistance.89 America looked away because since Christmas of 1979, it had had to treat Pakistan as a frontline state in the defence of Afghanistan against the Soviet invaders.90 Pakistan did not have even to test nuclear explosives on its own soil. China did this for Pakistan.91 The startling fact was: ‘In 1987 Pakistan had a weapon, while India was still scrambling towards one’.92 India’s nuclear policy was tainted by serious deﬁ ciencies. First, it suffered from excessive secrecy. Even diplomats in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had little knowledge about the nuclear

87 Manpreet Sethi, ‘The Struggle for Nuclear Disarmament’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Nuclear India, New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1998, pp. 81–82. 88 Ashok Kapur, ‘India’s Nuclear Weapons Capability: Convincing or Confusing?’ in Sondhi (ed.), Nuclear Weapons and India’s Nuclear Security, p. 38. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 89 For some details, see, for example, Sumita Kumar, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapon Programme’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Nuclear India, New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1998, pp. 157–68. Also see, Ruchita Beri, ‘Pakistan’s Missile Programme’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Nuclear India, New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1998, pp. 188, 192–99. 90 For some details, see Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, pp. 41, 43, 46, 50. Also see, Beri, ‘Pakistan’s Missile Programme’, pp. 201–2. 91 International press reports, cited in Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, pp. 96, 101. 92 Ibid., p. 92. Also see p. 99. 732 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

weapons at India’s disposal.93 Second, for several decades, military ofﬁ cers were excluded from decision making on nuclear matters.94 Third, top-ranking Indian politicians were not prepared to share with their colleagues some vital truths about the problems confronting India in the nuclear domain, for example, the complex nuclear relationship between China and Pakistan. One reason for this could be that India’s ‘political leaders are mostly municipal politicians with very little understanding of the dynamics of international politics’.95 No wonder, therefore, that from 1987 to 1990, ‘India was totally vulnerable to the Pakistani nuclear threat’.96 In the post-1987 decade, Pakistan even attempted nuclear blackmail upon India, without success, fortunately, because of unpublicised American intervention.97 Despite—or, more appropriately, because of—non-alignment, India remained incapable of exercising independence in the area overlapping foreign-defence affairs, and had to reconcile itself to a state of virtual nuclear insecurity, having the privilege to use such catchphrases as non-weaponised deterrence or recessed deterrence. Critical components of nuclear warheads remained unassembled. Delivery vehicles lay isolated. Yet, a capability to put these together without unacceptable delays constituted an assurance of protection against nuclear blackmail or coercion.98 If this smacked of pedantry, it was permissible; it was at any rate preferable to taking the dangerously high moral ground of nuclear disarmament. After all, ‘the call to disarmament is perceived at best as academically interesting, but of little relevance to a state whose existence is threatened by proliferation in its immediate neighbourhood’.99 Habits of decision makers died hard. India’s nuclear policy continued to bristle with anomalies and imperfections. India was a unique country, which, despite the unacknowledged possession of nuclear warheads, pleaded for total nuclear disarmament. India Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

93 Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 49 94 Kapur, ‘India’s Nuclear Weapons Capability’, p. 42. 95 Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 48. 96 Ibid., p. 44. 97 Ibid., p. 45. 98 Jasjit Singh, ‘A Nuclear Strategy for India’, in Jasjit Singh (ed.), Nuclear India, New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1998, pp. 310–11. 99 Robert G. Joseph and John F. Reichart, ‘The Case for Nuclear Deterrence Today’, Orbis, vol. 42, no. 1, Winter 1998, p. 17. Nuclear Policy 733

overlooked in 1993 all its past utterances—legitimate ones—about a discriminatory and hegemonic nuclear order when it became America’s co-sponsor for UN resolutions in favour of the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) and CTBT. One major aim of these treaties was to contain non-NPT signatories like India. In 1994, India could muster the courage to withdraw its UN resolution urging complete disarmament within a brief period. But the year 1995 witnessed an invisible surrender to America, as India abstained from any attempt to oppose the campaign for permanent extension of the NPT under America’s leadership. Such an extension would not only legitimise nuclear weapons in the hands of fi ve NWS, but also accelerate other non-proliferation measures like the FMCT and CTBT, while eventually blockading the exercise of the nuclear option by India. In 1996, India appeared to realise the blunder it had committed by co-sponsoring the CTBT. Thankfully, India commanded the boldness required to veto the CTBT at the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD).100 In such an unpropitious environment (mostly India’s own creation, and traceable to chronic/acute defi ciencies in India’s management of foreign-defence affairs, which bear no reiteration here), Prime Minister Narasimha Rao took a bold decision in late 1995. One cannot measure how much this decision was shaped by acute anxiety over the course of enforcement of the NPT by fi ve NWS, and how much by the evident accretion to India’s economic strength from the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation embraced by Rao’s government in 1991 (as also the inestimable potentialities of such accretion). Narasimha Rao decided to conduct a series of nuclear tests. Unpardonably, the Indian bureaucracy (the repository of unmatched privileges) often reduced itself to a sieve. The Americans learnt about Rao’s decision, and laid a siege. The tests did not materialise.101 Another shameful example of non-aligned

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India’s failure to exercise independence in foreign relations! One hard reality was that India’s major nuclear opponent was China, which was far ahead of India in this fi eld. Suppose, for example, that India had defi ed the fi ve NWS, and conducted a series of nuclear explosions and IRBM trials successfully. By the time

100 The points raised in this paragraph have been clearly and sharply analysed by Brahma Chellaney in The Hindustan Times, 24 March 1999. 101 Subrahmanyam, ‘Indian Nuclear Policy’, p. 51. 734 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

India would have done so, in ten years possibly, China was likely to possess not only an incomparably larger nuclear stockpile, but also multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs).102 Some consolation could be derived from a few examples in history, which demonstrated the successful operation of nuclear deterrence even in a situation of extreme disparity in the possession of nuclear armaments. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 proved that the dreadful possibility of one nuclear bomb hitting a principal American town could deter America. In 1969, again, the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, whereas China did not have even a dozen. Still, they fought a large-scale conventional war. Nuclear deterrence prevailed.103 But, after China signed the NPT in 1992, and approved its indefi nite extension in 1995, it began to play a vicious part vis-à-vis India. It forgot that India sacrifi ced its interests when it refused to accept the Security Council’s permanent seat in lieu of China after the Second World War. China also forgot that in pleading for China’s admission to the Security Council during the Korean War of the 1950s (as also in supporting China in other ways), India had alienated America, and paved the way for an America–Pakistan alliance, which, even in the 21st century, remained one of the toughest problems in India’s foreign-defence affairs. In the 1990s, China, being the junior most among the fi ve NWS, made serious attempts to castrate India’s nuclear potentials with the help of America and Russia.104 India was thus pushed into a corner. There was no option but to exercise independence and stage a number of nuclear tests. Even- tually, these tests took place in May 1998 when the National Demo- cratic Alliance (NDA), spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was in power, and Atal Behari Vajpayee was the prime minister. Ashok Kapur writes: ‘Nehru had talked about an independent policy, the BJP-led coalition was practising it’.105 After the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 indeﬁ nite extension of the NPT in 1995, 185 countries who signed the NPT appeared to be saying the following to the ﬁ ve NWS:

102 Subramanian, ‘India’s Nuclear Weapon Capabilities’, p. 34. 103 Singh, ‘A Nuclear Strategy for India’, p. 314. 104 M.V. Rappai, ‘India-China Relations and the Nuclear Realpolitik’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 23, no. 1, April 1999, p. 17. 105 Kapur, ‘India’s Nuclear Weapons Capability’, p. 43. Nuclear Policy 735

‘We will not go nuclear but you can do as you like’.106 Of the four countries which stayed out of the NPT—Cuba, Israel, Pakistan, India—Cuba was not known to have any nuclear aspiration. Israel had an unpublicised nuclear capability as early as 1968, when the NPT ﬁ rst came into existence. ‘Israel always has an implicit nuclear umbrella guaranteed by its special relationship with the USA. Pakistan enjoys the protection of its Chinese patron. Only India would be left standing out there completely alone.’107 Untested devices in India’s hands could deter Pakistan, but certainly not China.108 Moreover, deployment would be risky without a proper test of explosives for which computer simulation or laboratory exercises could never be effective substitutes.109

Indian Nuclear Tests of 1998 Unlike the chemical and biological (bacteriological) weapons, nuclear weapons were not prohibited or eliminated. The promise in the NPT that the ﬁ ve NWS would take steps towards nuclear disarmament was not acted upon. On the contrary, they went on experimenting with the production of nuclear weapons of higher potency and smaller size. There were many such examples of the double standards of the NWS. When France rejected the so-called international concord in 1995 and carried out nuclear tests, it received open British support.110 The NWS remained quiet on Israel’s nuclear capabilities. But when India carried out nuclear tests in May 1998, and Pakistan followed suit, the NWS manipulated the Security Council in such a way that India and Pakistan were asked to sign the NPT not as NWS but as NNWS. Moreover, the United

106 Miguel Marin-Bosch, ‘Nuclear Disarmament, 1995–2000: Isn’t it Pretty to Think So?’ Disarmament Forum, No. 1, 2000, Reproduced in Strategic Digest, Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 vol. XXX, no. 5, May 2000, p. 534. 107 Harold B. Gould, The Statesman, 25 November 1998. 108 P.R. Chari, ‘India’s Nuclear Option: Future Directions’, in P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Iftekharuzzaman (eds), Nuclear Non-Proliferation in India and Pakistan: South Asian Perspectives, New Delhi: Manohar, 1996, p. 74. 109 P.K. Iyengar, The Indian Express, 18 May 1994. 110 Ashok Chakrapani, ‘Plain Speaking About Indian Nuclear Testing’, The Round Table, October 1998, reproduced in Strategic Digest, February 1999, p. 192. 736 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

States, which itself did not ratify the CTBT, called upon India and Pakistan to sign the same.111 India tested three devices on 11 May 1998. These were: a fi ssion device, a fusion (or thermonuclear) device, and a subkiloton weapon. The thermonuclear device was far more destructive and technologically complex than a fi ssion device. One test was not enough to manufacture a dependable weapon for the Indian military. Yet, on 13 May 1998, India tested two subkiloton weapons but no thermonuclear device. Subkiloton weapons might be viewed as short term, low cost mobile deterrents in the borders, but thermonuclear weapons are essential to build up a minimum credible nuclear deterrent (MCND) against potential adversaries across India’s borders. Many more tests were required over a period of fi ve to 10 years to establish the MCND. The margin of safety available in conventional warfare is not available in a nuclear confrontation. The fl ight times of missiles from Beijing to New Delhi, and from Rawalpindi to New Delhi, were, respectively, 500 seconds and 150 seconds. In the absence of a known MCND, India could be the target of a pre-emptive fi rst strike. That could devastate the command and control system on the ground, and thereby render ineffective any possibility of retaliation from submarines. India, however, soon after the fi ve tests in May, appeared to be so exhausted that it declared a policy of No First Strike (without acquiring a second strike capability), as also a moratorium upon further tests (without which it could not acquire the MCND). In other words, India retreated into its small power habitat, despite years of pretence about being a big power.112 In his letter to President Clinton, Prime Minister Vajpayee sought to rationalise the Indian tests of May 1998 by referring to China’s nuclear capabilities, and the nuclear transfer from China Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 111 Marin-Bosch, ‘Nuclear Disarmament, 1995–2000’, pp. 531, 533–34. Also see Steven E. Miller, Nuclearization of South Asia: Problems and Solutions: A Conference Report, UNESCO, LNCV & USPID, City Hall, Como, 20–22 May 1999, p. 1. 112 Vishnu Bhagwat, ‘The Question of Credibility,’ in M.L Sondhi (ed.), Nuclear Weapons and India’s National Security, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2000, pp. 118–19; Iyengar, ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’, pp. 30–31; Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security, pp. 111–12; Menon, Nuclear Strategy for India, pp. 114–15. Also see, K.K. Ganguly, The Statesman, 28 May 1998; Jayprokash Chakrabarti, The Statesman, 9 March 1999. Nuclear Policy 737

to Pakistan.113 Vajpayee could not add that in the spring of 1999 NATO adopted at its Washington Summit an offensive strategic doctrine that endorsed NATO intervention outside NATO’s geographical boundaries. In the crucial month of May 1999 itself, such intervention, without any cost to NATO, without UN sanction, was evident in Kosovo. NATO violated Serbia’s sovereignty, intervening in Serbia’s internal affairs, and even bombarding Serbia. Against NATO’s costless, unstoppable, conventional intervention, therefore, a relatively weak country (for example, India) could try to protect itself by developing nuclear weapons.114 Subsequent to the Indo-Pak nuclear tests of 1998, President Clinton described South Asia as the ‘most dangerous place in the world’.115 Clinton was simply wrong because these ‘nuclear tests represented only a minor change in the status of India and Pakistan—from assumed nuclear weapon states to demonstrated nuclear weapon states’.116 Moreover, it was unfair to assume that unlike America and the Soviet Union (Russia), or China and the Soviet Union (Russia), India and Pakistan were incapable of managing their nuclear rivalry without catastrophic consequences. If one kept in view the period of roughly 15 years before the 1998 tests, both the countries rode out severe confrontations, and proved themselves to be able to adopt the culture of nuclear deterrence. As Lowell Dittmer writes: ‘My own tentative interpretation is that the South Asian experience has shown that escalation control at the top end of the ladder (from conventional war to nuclear exchanges) has proved to be surprisingly robust under exceptionally trying circumstances.’117 Moreover, the Lahore Declaration of 21 February 1999 was a clear rebuttal of the aforesaid remark of President Clinton. The prime ministers of India and Pakistan signed this declaration, and pledged to promote bilateral dialogue, as also to execute a number of conﬁ dence building Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

113 The New York Times, 13 May 1998. Vajpayee’s defence minister, George Fernandes, was more explicit: see, for example, Mohan Malik, ‘The China Factor in the India-Pakistan Conﬂ ict’, Parameters, vol. 33, no. 1, Spring 2003, p. 40. 114 Miller, Nuclearization of South Asia, p. 3. 115 The Times of India, 12 October 2000. 116 Miller, Nuclearization of South Asia, p. 5. 117 Lowell Dittmer (ed.), South Asia’s Nuclear Security Dilemma: India, Pakistan and China, New York: Sharpe, 2005, p. 215. Also see Malik, ‘The China Factor’, p. 42. 738 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

measures (CBMs).118 Meanwhile, in June 1998, India exposed the hypocrisy of the NWS (including of course Clinton’s own country). At a conference in Rome, India combined with Egypt, in course of ﬁ nal deliberations on the proposal to set up an international court of criminal justice, to try to include the use of nuclear weapons in the list of crimes against humanity. But the NWS rejected this move by India and Egypt because they considered the possession and use of nuclear warheads by themselves (not others) as legitimate.119 The operation of nuclear deterrence between any two or more countries is always complicated. In the Cold War era, the sustenance of nuclear deterrence between America, the Soviet Union, and China was extraordinarily intricate. After the Cold War, these three countries detargeted their missiles against one another. Therefore, the situation became less intricate.120 However, complexities persist because China, for instance, is apprehensive that America intends to reﬁ ne its capabilities to a point where it gains ‘Absolute Security’, bypassing the usual nuclear balance of terror.121 As to Indo-Pak mutual deterrence, the situation was more uncertain before May 1998 than afterwards. Before the India–Pakistan tests of 1998, the two countries were undeclared nuclear-capable states, and Pakistan used China’s nuclear-missile umbrella to carry on proxy war inside India.122 After the 1998 tests, uncertainties diminished vastly, since both sides were sure that nuclear stockpiles in their hands were usable, and both were declared nuclear-capable states. Such observations about the situation in South Asia appeared to be somewhat simple and obsolete on account of several events taking place in the latter part of 2001: the 11 September attack on America, the 1 October attack on India’s J&K Assembly, and the 13 December attack on the Indian Parliament. These acts of international (Jihadi) terrorism changed the situation not only in South Asia but the entire world. All carried the indelible Pakistani signature. The major

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ﬁ nding of the 585-page ﬁ nal report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States—the 9/11 Commission

118 Miller, Nuclearization of South Asia, p. 4. 119 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Nuclear India in Global Politics’, World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, July–September 1998b. Reproduced in Strategic Digest, December 1998, p. 2007. 120 Ibid., p. 2004. 121 Brad Roberts, ‘Asia’s Nuclear Future: The Major Power Aspect’, Paper for a Workshop at the Carnegie Endowment, Moscow, 17 July 2008, p. 5. 122 Malik, ‘The China Factor’, p. 36. Nuclear Policy 739

Report—in the words of Arnaud de Borchgrave was as follows: ‘The imprint of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11—where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan’.123 Normally, this should have strengthened Indo-American relations, and weakened US–Pakistan relations. This did not happen, as the situation was thoroughly abnormal. After all, Pakistan had lavishly used American money and arms to rear the Al-Qaeda and Taliban in its war against the Soviets in Afghanistan (and afterwards). Moreover, Pakistan’s security services had ample knowledge about the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan used their services in India’s J&K, as attested by the 9/11 Commission Report.124 In order to launch and carry out a war on terrorism inside Afghanistan, America urgently needed air space, bases, etc., in Pakistan.125 Consequently, on 22 July 2004, the day the 9/11 Com- mission Report was made public, the Hon. Thomas H. Kean and the Hon. Lee H. Hamilton said the following in a statement to the public: ‘We need to ensure that key countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are stable, capable, and resolute in opposing terrorism’.126 This was one of the wildest ironies in the history of international relations, for Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had for years been providing comprehensive military, ﬁ nancial, and ideological support to innumerable terrorists, including the 19 who on 11 September 2001 ‘turned the international order upside down’.127 America’s (and NATO’s) war in Afghanistan, which started soon after 9/11, and the attendant diplomatic threats and counter threats (which could not but affect India’s nuclear policy) were academically fascinating but perplexing when examined practically. Both India and Pakistan had beneﬁ ted from American aid in the resolu-

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 tion of the 1999 Kargil conﬂ ict. Both supported the American war

123 http://davinci.dilykos.com/story/2004/7/25/164937/572. 124 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, US Government Printing Ofﬁ ce, Washington, DC, 2004, Executive Summary, p. 7. 125 Malik, ‘The China Factor’, p. 37. 126 Public Statement, Release of 9/11 Commission Report, Washington, DC, 22 July 2004, p. 3. 127 Ibid., p. 1. 740 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

in Afghanistan. But Pakistan thought that it could take advantage of this war, and infl uence America to put pressure on India to resolve the J&K issue to Pakistan’s satisfaction. India tried to use America’s infl uence over Pakistan to limit, if not eliminate, Pakistan’s cross- border terrorism against India. Neither could claim much success. But their efforts to sway American policy could not but raise tensions among themselves.128 Following the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, India staged large-scale military exercises along the frontier with Pakistan. This riveted world attention upon Pakistani sponsorship of international Jihadi terrorism. America, Russia, Britain, France, and Japan appealed to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan for the termination of trans-border terrorism inside India. Pakistan appeared perturbed by the joint Indo-American military exercises that lasted 10 days, from 16 to 26 May 2002. Perhaps it was not a simple coincidence that on 27 May 2002 Musharraf televised the ban on the three Jihadi organisations, which played a leading part in India’s J&K—the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Jaish-e- Mohammad (JeM), and Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT). Musharraf also promised to put an end to infi ltration of militants from Pakistan to India across the Line of Control (LOC).129 For decades after independence, Indian political leaders had proclaimed the balance of power strategy as obsolete, putting forward socialism as the way to economic prosperity. In the 1990s, both dogmas had to be discarded. For, in the 1990s, all the socialist countries of Europe adopted the market economy and democracy with varying success. China (to put it briefl y) adopted capitalism without democracy in the late 1970s. India lagged far behind China, as it adopted the policies of economic liberalism and globalisation in the early 1990s. As the bureaucratic chains were unshackled (even though partially), within a few years India’s economic-technological prowess attracted worldwide attention. This was the major factor

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 accounting for the futility of American sanctions imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests.130 Scholars in China seemed to attach great

128 Stephen Philip Cohen, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear War in South Asia: An Unknowable Future’, Paper Presented to the United Nations University Conference on South Asia, Tokyo, May 2002, p. 6. 129 Malik, ‘The China Factor’, p. 39. 130 Arun Shourie, The Asian Age, 18 December 1998. As already analysed in the chapter on Relations with the United States in this book, these sanctions died a natural death after 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. Nuclear Policy 741

importance to a World Bank projection, that by 2020 America, China, India, and Japan would occupy the four top positions among 15 countries with the largest economies.131 India’s growing economic strength, coupled with its military might, which, despite nuclear asymmetry vis-à-vis China, seemed to impress the Chinese. As Weixing Hu wrote: ‘Given a growing Indian nuclear and missile capability, the current asymmetric balance is bound to change. It is just a matter of time before New Delhi’s nuclear-tipped long- range missiles can reach key Chinese industrial and population centers 4,000 to 5,000 km away from India’. India acquired the economic and military might, and mindset, to apply the balance of power strategy in a world torn by Jihadi terrorism but enlivened by globalisation (or at any rate until the global economic meltdown of 2008, which is outside the scope of this book). The preferred term was not balance of power but strategic partnerships or relationships. So, India established strategic partnerships/relationships with all the great powers (including China).132 It was not easy to operate this post-Cold War, post-Soviet balance of power system. Its profound complexity was only matched by its immense unpredictability. To take one instance, US–China economic relations are so extensive that America cannot think of containment of China (despite America’s search for nuclear weapons with matchless sophistication). It can only explore engagements with China. Yet, it is impossible to eliminate some vital strategic differences between China and America, for example, over America’s acquisition of ballistic missile defence (BMD), a possible supply of theatre missile defence (TMD) equipment to Taiwan. ‘To many Americans it appears that China sees itself as the successor to the Soviet Union, as the new challenger to American hegemony.’133 To take another instance, US–Pakistan relations, as far as India is concerned, have been irritatingly intimate for decades. But if Pakistan

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 continues to improperly use the massive American aid (including tied aid) coming its way, fails to rid itself of the growing characteristics of a failed state, remains unable to rein in the Jihadi terrorists (created

131 See, for example, Weixing Hu, ‘India Going Nuclear: A Bomb Against China?’ Journal of Chinese Political Science, vol. 4, no. 2, September 1998, p. 35. 132 K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Partnership in a Balance of Power System’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 29, no. 4, October–December 2005, pp. 551–52. 133 Cohen, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear War in South Asia’, pp. 9–10. 742 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

largely by Pakistan), and generates so much instability as to lead to breakaway provinces becoming independent countries (like Bangladesh did in 1971), America may have to take India’s help to ﬁ nd a solution to the problem called Pakistan.134 The enormity of the problem has been underlined by the following statement of Bruce Riedel, a former White House ofﬁ cial: ‘Pakistan has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons programme that is growing faster than any place else on earth.’135 The bizarre nature of the problem, again, can be illustrated by the fact that America is virtually blackmailed by Pakistan into bankrolling Pakistan’s nuclear enterprise. American officials are afraid of linking ‘aid to greater transparency and accountability on the nuclear front’ because ‘Pakistan would rather forsake aid, go bankrupt and self-destruct—a dread some critics say Islamabad is capitalizing on’.136 ‘The government is paralysed. People generally feel that they are on their own. This is not only a disturbing sentiment, but a dangerous trend.’137 In the not-too- distant future, then, America may avail of Indian help to emerge as the terminator of such a weird situation. In this connection, it is pertinent to remind oneself that the United States is not able to sustain a large volunteer army (after the abolition of draft), partly because of the demographic disadvantage of an ageing population. (In contrast, India has a young population, and there is no dearth of volunteers for security forces.) In Iraq, for instance, the United States government had, sometimes, to rely on private corporations for the supply of soldiers, who, however, cost far more than government troops.138 In this perspective, blending the past, the present, and the future the Indo-US joint statement of 18 July 2005 on nuclear cooperation could be regarded as a signal for India’s resoluteness to practise the balance of power strategy. Moreover, this was probably the most

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 pragmatic and successful move (if not the only one) in the history of

134 Ibid., p. 11. 135 Quoted by Chidananda Rajghatta, The Times of India, 19 May 2009. 136 Ibid. 137 Sayeed Hasan Khan and Kurt Jacobsen, The Statesman, 13 August 2009. 138 For revealing details on privatisation of military security, see Peter W. Singer, ‘Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatised Military Industry and Its Ramiﬁ cations for International Security’, International Security, vol. 26, no. 3, Winter 2001/02, pp. 186–220. Nuclear Policy 743

India’s foreign relations since 1947, which was undeniably tainted by one major blunder after another (for example, with regard to policies towards Pakistan and China). The joint statement was a step towards fulfi lling India’s urgent need for commerce with nuclear suppliers, including America. The harsh export control laws of international technology control regimes, for example, the NSG and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), obstructed India’s efforts to obtain high technology items from America and others. The joint statement paved the way to mutually benefi cial arrangements between India and the above noted technology control regimes. While India had to try to preserve its MCND, to produce fi ssile material for this preservation, and to pursue the long-term programme of nuclear power generation, the international control regimes had to ensure that India would carry out a limited programme of nuclear weapons production, and that it would accept some regulations conducive to non-proliferation. So, in terms of the 18 July 2005 agreement, the NSG guidelines would be adjusted to India’s requirements, and India would agree to separate its peaceful and military enterprises in the nuclear domain, to reach a safeguards agreement with the IAEA for all of its peaceful enterprises, and to sign an Additional Protocol with the IAEA. It must be added, however, that India had to earmark its civil nuclear establishments, and pass on the information to the IAEA. India did not have to forward to the IAEA any communication about its military nuclear facilities. India, therefore, would continue to carry out research and development work on nuclear weapons.139 In addition to India, there were two other non-NPT signatories with nuclear capabilities, viz. Israel and Pakistan. Not much was known about Israel’s capacity for production of nuclear weapons. As for Pakistan, experts estimated that, annually, Pakistan could expand its stock by fi ve to six weapons, and the total number stood between 55

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and 90. The corresponding ﬁ gures for India were four, and 55–115. While India could produce only bomb grade plutonium in some of its reactors (DHRUVA and CIRUS), Pakistan could produce bomb grade plutonium as also uranium. Unlike India, however, Pakistan was guilty of nuclear proliferation. As for Israel, it did not obviously

139 G. Balachandran, ‘International Nuclear Control Regimes and India’s Participation in Civilian Nuclear Trade: Key Issues’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 29, no. 4, October–December 2005, pp. 562–64, 569. 744 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

need as much nuclear energy as India did, and this probably explained why Israel was not interested in the sort of civil nuclear cooperation envisaged by the Indo-US accord of 18 July 2005. It was thus possible to justify the exceptional treatment provided to India—a treatment that Pakistan and Israel would not receive. When India agreed to promote international non-proliferation by promising not to transfer technologies for nuclear enrichment and reprocessing, it merely stated what it had practised. Actually, NSG Guidelines did not ordain such a promise for nuclear trade. India transcended the Guidelines to honour the India-specifi c modifi cation of NSG Guidelines for nuclear commerce to be carried out by America and other NSG members in due course.140 India has agreed to IAEA safeguards for its civil nuclear facilities. The IAEA has to carry out periodic inspections. But the IAEA has been suffering from a severe shortage of fi nancial and human resources required for inspections in a number of countries. In 1992, for example, this scarcity of resources compelled the IAEA to suspend inspections in America. In 1994, it resumed inspections on America’s request, and on condition of securing reimbursement of expenses from America. Therefore, in the case of India—which is to be treated as a de facto NWS by the IAEA—quite interestingly, inspections may not be all-comprehensive because the IAEA has to cope with the resource crunch.141 It was in less than 18 months from 18 July 2005 that the Henry J. Hyde United States–India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 was passed by the United States Congress. The time gap was so brief that, without a fl ashback to, and a pardonable recapitu- lation of, some developments around India’s 1998 tests, it may be impossible to comprehend the extent of India’s diplomatic success. India’s decision to hold nuclear tests was an example of rare courage displayed by the Indian leaders. With courage was coupled a capacity

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 for risk taking. If, in the 19th century, Clausewitz could plead for war as a continuation of diplomacy by other means, which demanded courage and entailed risks, in the closing years of the 20th century, India could think of nuclear assertion as a continuation of diplomacy by other means. Like most foreign policy actions of various countries

140 Ibid., p. 570. 141 R. Ramachandran, ‘Indo-US Nuclear Agreement and IAEA Safeguards’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 29, no. 4, October–December 2005, pp. 579–80, 589. Nuclear Policy 745

throughout the world, the nuclear assertion of 1998 (reminiscent of 1974) could not be so planned as to forestall adverse consequences. Nor could the decision makers foresee all the benefi cial outcomes of this action. One consequence could be predicted: the 1998 tests would enhance India’s self-esteem. But this could yield diplomatic advantage only under a constellation of circumstances that could neither be controlled nor foretold by India. Another consequence was predicted with certainty: India risked the annoyance of, and retaliation by, the great powers, especially the United States, which would reinforce the already existing technology denial regime vis-à-vis India. This happened soon enough. A number of leading centres of scientifi c-technological research in India faced enormous diffi culties in upgrading their activities. The annoyance of the United States towards India was so much that it even retaliated diplomatically against India by courting China. It took advantage of one statement in India’s communication to the United States that underlined a nuclear threat from China as justifi cation for the 1998 nuclear tests. Perhaps diplomatic amorality could go no further, for the United States overlooked all the sins of China in the matter of clandestine transfers of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan. China and the United States appeared to work overtime to impose sanctions on India, and isolate India diplomatically. India could fi nd solace in the moderate responses of France and Russia.142

Indo-US Nuclear Deal There is a vast distance between this situation and the situation in December 2006 when the United States Congress passed the Hyde Act to facilitate wide-ranging civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and India. Before one critically examines the provisions of the Hyde Act, and assesses the prospects for Indo-American nuclear cooperation, it is necessary to examine why and how the Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 above noted distance was traversed. How was the deep distrust of the United States towards India overcome? It is the fond belief of some members of the Indian intelligentsia that, from 1998 to 2006, there were several instances in which India behaved as a responsible power determined to avoid a nuclear

142 G. Parthasarathy, a former ambassador of India to Pakistan, in The Pioneer, 25 January 2007. 746 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

showdown with neighbouring Pakistan. India thus became eligible for earning America’s trust. In the Kargil War of 1999, India refrained from attacking Pakistani territory with conventional weapons, even though this attack could have considerably reduced India’s sacrifi ce in terms of men and money for recovering its own territory.143 The United States was so impressed by India’s self-restraint that it put pressure on Pakistan, and thus reduced the duration of the Kargil confl ict. It may be argued that India’s decision not to provoke Pakistan by launching a retaliatory conventional attack on Pakistani territory deprived Pakistan of any opportunity for nuclear escalation. But Pakistani threats of nuclear confrontation were palpable, and therefore India’s self-sacrifi ce could be interpreted as surrender to Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail, even if America was appreciative of such a surrender. Similarly, it is believed by some Indian intellectuals that India’s stock went up in the United States because of its persistent refusal to strike at the terrorist training camps in Pakistan, which sustained a proxy war against India, and slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent civilians in India, in addition to security personnel. Thus, it can be argued, India won America’s esteem as a responsible power by avoiding escalation by conventional means, which might have led to a nuclear confrontation. But it again demonstrated that the Indian leaders were not behaving responsibly in terms of minimising the sufferings of the actual and potential victims of Pakistan’s proxy war. It is also doubtful whether the United States was taken in by India’s self-restraint or astounded by its cowardice. Perhaps the climactic evidence (in American eyes, as argued by some Indian writers) of India’s capacity to act as a responsible power with nuclear weapons became available in the wake of the escalation of Pakistan’s proxy war which led to a daring attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. India did not strike at the training

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 camps for terrorists inside Pakistan. It spent (rather wasted) millions of rupees on mobilising a huge number of troops along the border with Pakistan. There was not even a scratch on Pakistan’s face. On the contrary, India blackened its own face by killing its own soldiers engaged in demining operations at the end of a charade of military mobilisation. It does not require much intuition or access to secret diplomatic parleys or documents to point out the successful American

143 Dixit, India–Pakistan, p. 55. Nuclear Policy 747

pressures on India that froze India’s military manoeuvres.144 After all, following 9/11, Pakistan became an ally of America in the war in Afghanistan, and America persisted in applying double standards to the terrorist activities on Pakistan’s western and eastern borders, the latter being cavalierly overlooked. As to India, her courage and capacity for risk-taking, evident in the 1998 nuclear tests, seemed to have reached vanishing point. Under these circumstances, America could have taken India for granted, and not forge a deal for civilian nuclear cooperation. Therefore, India behaving as a responsible power with nuclear weapons could not be the only or most signiﬁ cant explanation behind America’s decision to pass the Hyde Act of 2006, although American policy makers appreciated India’s self-restraint in keeping its nuclear arsenal much below the level that could be attained by indigenous uranium reserves.145 Another explanation—among several others to be noted below—is America’s concern about the rising power of China, and the need for propping up India as a counterweight to China. This explanation is partially valid. America is aware that India has long been shy of playing the balance of power game. In fact, since 1947, some of India’s leaders have betrayed their ignorance of history and contemporary reality by harping, in season and out of season, on the obsolescence of the concept of balance of power. America respects Chinese power. Which is why, after China acquired nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missiles, America changed in the 1970s its decades-old policy of non-recognition of China. As of May 2005 and 2006, China’s annual purchase of United States Treasury Securities stood at, respectively, US$242 billion and US$699 billion. This could render the United States incapable of courting India for fear of irritating China. American policy makers have failed to devise ways and means to rise above dependence on low-interest but invisible

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Chinese loans and cheap Chinese consumer goods, which have kept the spendthrift Americans happy and prevented a near-collapse of the

144 For an insightful discussion on this matter, see Sumit Ganguly, ‘Toward Nuclear Stability in South Asia’, Strategic Analysis, vol. 33, no. 3, May 2002, pp. 387–88. 145 Ashley J. Tellis, Atoms for War? U.S. Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and India’s Nuclear Arsenal, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006, pp. 18–20. 748 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

American economy (at least before the world economic meltdown of 2008, which is beyond the scope of this book). There have been talks of contribution by infl uential non-resident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIOs) in America to the passage of the 2006 Hyde Act.146 This contribution was certainly positive, but it could not be graded as signifi cant. Perhaps the most signifi cant—if not decisive—contribution was made by American businessmen bent upon selling nuclear reactors to India.147 Other- wise, it would have been extremely diffi cult for President Bush, suffering from serious political weaknesses, to get the Hyde Act passed by Congress. The weaknesses were obvious: the costs of the invasion of Iraq by America could not be written off by any argument, and the popular aversion to this invasion was, at least partially, responsible for Bush’s eventual defeat in the 2006 elections to Congress. This economic imperative of selling nuclear reactors to India has to be placed in the much broader framework of the need to expand Indo-US relations to a strategic partnership, encompassing a signifi - cant variety of economic and political transactions. Economically, India (with a high growth rate of around 8–9 per cent) could procure from America a wide range of technologies, goods, and services, whereas America, which suffered from chronic trade defi cits on a global scale, remained eager to export them to India.148 Politically, at a time when the challenges to democracy were intertwined with the global threat of terrorism, India and America needed each other to preserve and spread democracy, while counteracting the common menace of international terrorism. A related and signifi cant contribution to the passage of the Hyde Act was possibly made by the Bush administration’s argument that helping India develop nuclear energy was good for India, America and the world.149 India would continue to consume enormous amounts of energy due to its huge population and high rate

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of growth, and unless new energy sources like nuclear energy were developed, this consumption would aggravate the worldwide problems of environmental damage and climate change. It must be

146 Kalyani Shankar, The Pioneer, 22 December 2006. 147 Brahma Challaney, The Times of India, 9 January 2007. 148 Shyam Saran, ‘The India-US Joint Statement of July 18, 2005—A Year Later’, in Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta (eds), Indian Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Foreign Service Institute and Academic Foundation, 2007, p. 760. 149 Anil Kakodkar, The Hindu, 17 January 2007. Nuclear Policy 749

noted here that India belongs to a very small number of countries that have mastered the complete nuclear fuel cycle technology. It is steadily moving from thermal reactors through fast breeder reactors to thorium reactors. Since energy systems have to be based on indigenous energy resources, and thorium is abundantly available in the country, India has to build up thorium reactors. This is predicated upon autonomy in decision making. There are misgivings and controversies about whether the Hyde Act di- lutes this autonomy. The length or language of the legislation is such that it cannot but stir concerns and criticisms.150 Initially, the offi cial bill had a small size: only three pages and a half. The fi nal legislation covered as many as 41 pages. As if this was not enough, an Explanatory Statement, attached to the Act, elucidated the intentions of law makers in ways that multiplied misgivings.151 If the basis of the Hyde Act was the Indo-US joint statement of 18 July 2005, and the fundamental premise of the statement was that India was a responsible country with advanced nuclear technology, a perusal of the lengthy Act and the Explanatory Statement creates the impression that American law makers do not fully subscribe to this premise.152 If one studies Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statements from August 2005 to August 2006, and related actions, one will easily perceive that Singh began to express misgivings about the impact of the American law upon India. On 3 August 2005 in the Lok Sabha, and on 4 August 2005 in the Rajya Sabha, Singh clearly affi rmed that the American law would conform to the principles laid down in the 18 July 2005 joint statement. One fundamental principle of this statement was reciprocity. India would have the same advantages and benefi ts, as also the same obligations and responsibilities, as the United States and other countries with advanced nuclear technology. But this reciprocity was violated, and India’s autonomy in decision

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 making was threatened by 2 March 2006. On that day India unfolded a plan for segregation of the civilian and military components of its nuclear programme. For, other nuclear weapon countries (including America) did not make any comparable or reciprocal move. More- over, these nuclear weapon countries retained the untrammelled

150 B. Balachandran, The Indian Express, 9 December 2006. 151 Lt. Gen. Vinay Shankar, The Indian Express, 5 January 2007. 152 Anil Kakodkar, The Hindu, 17 January 2007. 750 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

right to convert their civilian nuclear facilities into military facilities. But India was permanently deprived of this right.153 Even more disturbing was the sacrifi ce of India’s autonomy in decision making with regard to the separation plan. Although Prime Minister Singh assured the Lok Sabha on 3 August 2005 that India would exercise its own judgement on separating civilian and military facilities, India had to negotiate with the Americans, and yield to their interference. While India wanted to increase—from the existing four to 14—the number of reactors under international safeguards, it was compelled to raise the number to 35, leaving only 10 per cent of the reactors for India’s military programme. Moreover, the fear of loss of control over its own nuclear policy is underlined by the simultaneous Indian decision to close down by 2010 the CIRUS research reactor which supplies one-third of weapons-grade plutonium to India annually.154 The Hyde Act has not tried to hide that one of the major objectives of American legislators is to halt, reduce, and eliminate nuclear weapons in South Asia (including India).155 No wonder then, in August 2006, when the American law was nearly fi nalised, and in December 2006, when the fi nal product was available, Prime Minister Singh expressed serious concern over it in the Lok Sabha, for the law clearly violated the principles of the 18 July 2005 statement. It therefore contradicted Singh’s assurances about India’s decision making autonomy provided to the Indian Parliament, and anchored to the principles of the 18 July statement. Therefore, the critics have a right to express their misgivings over the Hyde Act, but they also have a duty to put the complex Indo-US nuclear deal in the perspective of India’s past experience, present exigencies, and future requirements. Simultaneously, the critics are to keep in view the compulsions of domestic politics in the United States, where the chief executive (at the time George Bush) is not a part of the legislature (unlike in a parliamentary democracy like

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India), and where every legislation requires bipartisan support, and the president cannot take for granted the votes of even his own party members in the Congress.

153 Brahma Chellaney, The Pioneer, 13 January 2007. 154 Arun Shourie, The Indian Express, 23 December 2006; M.J. Akbar, The Asian Age, 24 December 2006; Brahma Chellaney, The Pioneer, 13 January 2007. 155 Sudheendra Kulkarni, The Indian Express, 24 December 2006. Nuclear Policy 751

This may explain why the Bush administration and Congress took about a year and a half to conduct negotiations and arrive at compromises for eventually forging the Hyde Act. Obviously, such an Act cannot fulfi l all the expectations of the Americans as well as the Indians. While the Bush administration (and not Congress) took the initiative towards formulating this Act, it was not easy for Congress to modify its decades-old policy towards India. In 1974, India detonated its fi rst nuclear device. Since then the Congress has been preoccupied with making non-proliferation laws stricter. The 1998 nuclear tests were a bold attempt by India to defy these laws, and gain a place in the sun. However, these tests witnessed India being subjected to tremendous pressures for signing the CTBT as a non-nuclear power.156 These pressures were largely withdrawn in 2001 mainly because of the 9/11 attacks on America. But technology denial persisted, and India, poised for rapid economic growth with the adoption of the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation in the early 1990s, remained hamstrung by lack of access to American and Western technology. If thus a brief review of India’s past experience prompts a favourable assessment of India’s acceptance of the Hyde Act, a consideration of present exigencies, that is the situation around 2005–7, would reinforce this assessment. With some relaxation of technology denial on account of pressure from American companies and a unique post-9/11 scenario, Indian entrepreneurs could register enviable progress and offer tantalizing potentials. But the rate of growth fell short of the potential because of defi ciencies in agricultural productivity/commerce, energy security, and infrastructure. An important way to remove these defi ciencies was to energise the Indian private sector, and facilitate cooperation with its American counterpart. This is why, on 18 July 2005, India and America agreed to set up a CEOs Forum, which subsequently went into action.157

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 If now, after reviewing India’s past experience and present (2005–7) exigencies, we turn to future requirements, the reaction to India’s endorsement of the Hyde Act would prove to be even more positive. The future success of the Indian economy will depend largely upon the sustenance of a knowledge economy fed by continuous technological innovations. Amidst globalised competition, India can

156 Udayan Namboodiri, The Pioneer, 16 December 2006. 157 Saran, ‘The India–US Joint Statement’, p. 763. 752 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

survive and prosper through innovations leading to patents. Although in September 2005 India and America signed a framework agreement for science and technology cooperation, this did not pave the way for innovations and patents, unless India accessed advanced American and Western technologies, which, frequently, have civil as well as military uses.158 The Hyde Act merits commendation because of the removal of restrictions on India’s access to dual-use technologies. In return, India had to offer a plan to separate military nuclear plants from civilian nuclear plants, which were to be placed under international safeguards. This again would enable India’s department of atomic energy to access the most advanced technology, upgrade nuclear research, and enhance India’s energy security.159 In the brief six-decade history of nuclear diplomacy, the Hyde Act represents a unique phenomenon. It amends prevalent international rules to serve only India. These rules preclude nuclear cooperation between a non-nuclear state and nuclear states—unless the non- nuclear state complies with full-scope safeguards, that is, it puts all its nuclear plants under international safeguards. India is technically a non-nuclear state. It rejects full-scope safeguards and runs a nuclear weapons programme. Yet, the Hyde Act discriminates in favour of India, and facilitates civilian nuclear transactions between India and America, and between India and the rest of the world. Only a country with America’s hard and soft power can bring about such a deal, and enable countries like Russia and France—waiting for a change of existing non-proliferation rules—to sell nuclear plants to India.160 Noam Chomsky (like many Indian Marxists) has criticised this deal for sacriﬁ cing nuclear arms control measures on the altar of commercial-industrial interests.161 But Noam Chomsky’s credentials are hardly impeccable. ‘As Daniel Bell once pointed out, Noam Chomsky has been hoisted by the Marxist petard. “Some years ago he was accused by a Canadian Maoist revolutionary periodical of being

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 an agent of American imperialism.” It stood to reason…. Chomsky had mentioned, in the publication of his early work, that his research had been ﬁ nanced by the Ofﬁ ce of Naval Research.’162

158 Ibid., pp. 764–65. 159 Editorial, The Indian Express, 9 December 2006. 160 Rajesh Rajagopalan, The Indian Express, 3 January 2007. 161 Noam Chomsky, Interview by G.N. Prasanth, The Times of India, 6 January 2007. 162 Jonathan Power, The Statesman, 7 August 2009. Nuclear Policy 753

In this situation of exceedingly complicated Indo-US bargaining, which has aroused as much criticism in America (especially among members of the non-proliferation lobby) as in India (especially among advocates of complete decision-making autonomy), it is unfair and unrealistic to expect that the Hyde Act will respect everything that the Indians want, and ignore whatever the Americans desire. The Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006 is an India-specifi c deal, which, in the words of the US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, will not be executed with ‘any other country in the world’.163 Nevertheless, this Act cannot go wholly against the wishes of the United States Congress with which any administration in Washington has to engage in continuous adjustment, bargaining, and compromise on any important matter of domestic and foreign policy. Many American legislators want that American offi cials should undertake inspecting India’s civilian nuclear plants in case the IAEA faces problems doing so. This demand was incorporated in the Senate version of the Hyde Bill. But the Bush administration, with due deference to Indian sensitivities, deleted this stipulation from the fi nal version of the Hyde Act. Again, many American legislators recommend—as refl ected in the Senate version of the Hyde Bill—that the United States president should annually certify that India does indeed comply with its commitments on non-proliferation. The Bush administration, however, has honoured India’s stand and taken steps to remove this recommendation from the fi nal version of the Hyde Act.164 The fi nal Act merely stipulates that the president has only to report the matter to Congress, just as he does routinely on numerous other matters. The Washington administration has on some occasions risked the annoyance of Congress while trying to promote long-term cooperation with India. For example, the administration failed to

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 attach due importance to consultations with Congress before issuing the Indo-US joint statement of 18 July 2005 and the declaration of March 2006. The administration further wanted, as a corollary to the Hyde Act, that the Indo-US agreement on nuclear cooperation (under Section 123 of the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954) should come into force within 90 days of signing of this agreement

163 Shobori Ganguli, The Pioneer, 9 December 2006. 164 Pranab Dhal Samanta, The Indian Express, 9 December 2006. 754 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

by America and India (briefl y noted as the 123 Agreement), unless Congress passed a Resolution of Disapproval within 90 days. How- ever, Congress did not appreciate this perceived attempt on the part of the administration to bypass Congress. Therefore, the Hyde Act clearly stipulated that the 123 Agreement would come into force only if, within 90 days of the submission of this agreement to Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate separately passed a specifi c ‘Resolution of Approval’. Moreover, Congress cannot consider this 123 Agreement unless such important documents as the IAEA-India Safeguards Agreement accompanied the 123 Agreement.165 If the 123 Agreement cannot come into force without the IAEA- India Safeguards Agreement, the Safeguards Agreement too cannot be adopted unless the NSG lifts the legal restrictions on the supply of nuclear materials to India (despite India being a non-signatory of the NPT). After India secures the clearance of the NSG, and obtains the IAEA Safeguards Agreement, as also the 123 Agreement with the United States, India will hopefully not suffer from a shortage of nuclear fuel supply for its plants, which has prevented these plants for years from running to full capacity. A related query, relevant to India’s search for energy security, is whether India will have the right to reprocess spent fuel. The Hyde Act is silent on this, but Nicholas Burns has clarifi ed that India can exercise its sovereignty to claim this right.166 India is also expected to take a sovereign decision on maintaining its nuclear weapons programme. The Conferees, that is members of the Joint Conference Committee of the United States House of Representatives and Senate, have noted in the Explanatory State- ment (forming a part of the Hyde Act proceedings) that peaceful nuclear cooperation between the United States and India cannot be construed to hinder India’s nuclear weapons programme. At the

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 same time, the Conferees are naturally cautious to add that such cooperation is not intended to strengthen India’s nuclear arms programme. If this is ambiguity, this is also a necessity in the highly competitive domestic politics of America and India.167

165 Arun Shourie, The Indian Express, 21 December 2006. 166 Abhishek Singhvi, The Indian Express, 27 December 2006; Pranab Dhal Samanta, The Indian Express, 9 December 2006. 167 Rajesh Rajagopalan, The Indian Express, 3 January 2007; Pranab Dhal Samanta, The Indian Express, 9 December 2006. Nuclear Policy 755

From the Indian standpoint, one negative feature of the Hyde Act is the following provision: in case India carries out any nuclear test, nuclear cooperation between America and India, including the supply of nuclear fuel, will cease. Indian anxiety on this score can be relieved in light of the following. First, India is currently under a self-imposed moratorium on further nuclear tests. Second, India may not fi nd any need for further nuclear tests unless China (or Pakistan) resumes testing of a new generation of nuclear weapons. At that stage, even if America suspends the supply of nuclear fuel to India’s civilian reactors, Russia and France could come to India’s rescue in the interest of their business. Meanwhile, NSG rules would have been relaxed. In fact, Russo-French cooperation with India may pre-empt withdrawal of American cooperation. Third, India, keeping in mind such a contingency, may design another deterrent to probable American retraction: it may encourage the private sector, including foreign fi rms, to invest in new nuclear facilities with machineries imported from abroad.168 There are some prescriptions in the Hyde Act that are advisory but not binding upon the president who has the constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy. For example, this Act enjoins scientifi c cooperation between America and India on nuclear non- proliferation. Scientists of the two countries are advised to develop a common programme on non-proliferation technologies. But the Explanatory Statement on the Hyde Act makes it clear that this provision for scientifi c cooperation does not impose any obligation upon India. Another example relates to Iran. The Hyde Act expects material and political support from India for American policy in such a way so as to ensure Iran’s compliance with the NPT to which Iran is party—whether by isolation, dissuasion, sanctions, or containment. Even if one fails to stress that acquisition of nuclear capability by Iran is not in India’s interest, one should remember

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 that this provision in the Hyde Act is not mandatory but advisory—as far as the United States President is concerned. In a statement on 18 December 2007, President Bush stressed the advisory character of such Congressional policy prescriptions. Obviously, President Bush—or any other American president—has to balance the desires

168 Abhishek Singhvi, The Indian Express, 28 December 2006; Rajesh Rajagopalan, The Indian Express, 3 January 2007; G. Parthasarathy, The Pioneer, 25 January 2007. 756 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

of American legislators, the requirements of American foreign policy, and the vital needs of India, with which the United States is bent upon building a strategic partnership. This is the larger goal that India has to keep in view for making an appropriate assessment of the Hyde Act. The implementation of the Hyde Act—whether by drawing up the 123 Agreement or otherwise—will test the diplomatic skills of both America and India. The wide-ranging impact of this test cannot be accurately predicted.169 One has to wait for quite some time before one can properly evaluate the long-term impact of the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement upon Indo-US strategic cooperation in general, and cooperation in particular towards enhancing India’s nuclear energy production. Meanwhile, the debate on use of nuclear plants for producing electricity may persist. India’s annual per capita energy supply stands at 520 kilograms of oil equivalent (KGOE), but it has to be raised four or ﬁ ve times if the country aspires to maintain a growth rate of 8 or 9 per cent. While the United States has a per capita energy supply of 7,853 KGOE, the ﬁ gure for China is 1,688 KGOE. India meets 33 per cent of its energy requirements through oil, and 50 per cent through coal. India imports 70 per cent of its oil. Large-scale use of coal damages the environment. Unlike coal, nuclear power is clean. But in contrast to France using nuclear power to meet 79 per cent of its energy requirements, Belgium 60 per cent, Sweden 42 per cent, Switzerland 39 per cent, Japan 31 per cent, Britain 21 per cent, and America 20 per cent, India meets only 3 per cent of its energy needs through nuclear power. Therefore, some commentators point out that India can substantially raise its per capita KGOE by augmenting its nuclear power production in cooperation with the United States and other countries by capitalising on the Hyde Act, the 123 Agreement, etc. Unless it does so, India may fail to maintain an 8 or 9 per cent growth rate.170

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 There is a different view on how India can achieve energy security and sustain a growth rate of 8 or 9 per cent. If India is looking for clean energy sources, it should prefer hydroelectric power to nuclear power. For, in the case of the former, India does not have

169 C. Rajamohan, The Indian Express, 26 December 2006; M.J. Akbar, The Asian Age, 24 December 2006; Chidananda Rajghatta, The Times of India, 20 December 2006; Rajesh Rajagopalan, The Indian Express, 3 January 2007. 170 Abhishek Singhvi, The Indian Express, 27 December 2006. Nuclear Policy 757

to depend on any foreign country. India possesses the technology to manufacture all machineries for multiplying hydroelectric power, and tap the huge reservoir of hydroelectricity in northeast India. It is true that India has abundant uranium reserves to sustain a programme for nuclear weapons, as also nuclear energy.171 But in the case of nuclear energy India may have to depend on other countries for technological innovations, at least for some time to come. In the long run, by strengthening our land acquisition process for uranium mining, and developing the fast breeder technology (so that a reactor breeds more fi ssile material than it consumes), India may attain self-reliance in the production of nuclear power. Until then, India may have to favour other sources of clean energy, which can be developed without dependence on foreign countries.172 On 1 August 2008, the Board of Governors of the IAEA unanimously adopted the India-specifi c safeguards accord.173 (On 2 February 2009, India eventually signed the agreement.)174 India did not sign the NPT, but it was ready to be a promoter of the global non-proliferation regime.175 On 6 September 2008, India received the 45-nation NSG waiver for nuclear commerce. But for relentless American pressure, this waiver would not have materialised, although India did not hesitate to reiterate its assurances on non-proliferation rooted in its track record.176 Next to America, sustained support was given to India by France and Russia (which had already carried out negotiations for bilateral agreements of civil nuclear cooperation with India), whereas China (with its glaring proliferation record) remained absent from the NSG meeting when the voting took place, failing to frustrate India.177 President George W. Bush’s administration could not only counteract ‘the sinister Chinese dragon that provided covering fi re to the sanctimonious resistance by nonproliferation hardliners’, but also extended to India ‘the space to reconcile its strategic programme with global acceptability’.178 One should at

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 the same time pause to ponder whether this could have happened

171 Tellis, Atoms for War?, pp. 12–15, 18–20, 22–23, 36–37. 172 Arun Shourie, The Indian Express, 23 December 2006. 173 G. Balachandran, The Indian Express, 20 August 2008. 174 The Indian Express, 3 February 2009. 175 K. Subrahmanyam, The Indian Express, 9 August 2008. 176 Indrani Bagchi, The Times of India, 7 September 2008. 177 Sachin Parashar, The Times of India, 7 September 2008. 178 Swapan Dasgupta, The Times of India, 10 September 2008. 758 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

without 9/11.179 NSG approval would not only enable India to enhance the share of nuclear energy in India’s power requirements from 3 per cent to 15 per cent in 2020, but also strengthen the global nuclear industry by decreasing the cost of installation of nuclear reactors.180 Access to latest imported technologies would enable Indians themselves to cut down costs of plants and products without going through the process of reinventing the wheel.181 On 11 September 2008, President Bush forwarded the text of the 123 Agreement to Congress. On 27 September, the House of Re- presentatives approved the agreement, with 298 members voting for it, and 117 voting against. ‘Without White House’s steam roller, the opponents of the deal—107 Democrats voted against it—could have killed it with simple legislative manoeuvre.’182 At the very least, they could have delayed the voting by a few days, and the Senate would have adjourned without approving the agreement. Meanwhile, on 25 September, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh publicly praised President George W. Bush for his endeavours in support of the civil nuclear deal. This, however, marked ‘a new trend in India’s diplomatic culture—of owning the nation’s friends in public’.183 India conﬁ rmed its support for the global non-proliferation regime on 29 September 2008, when it announced that India did not support the nuclear weapon aspirations of Iran, which, as an NPT signatory, should respect its international obligations.184 Next day, on 30 September 2008, France signed with India a civil nuclear cooperation pact, which was a turning point, as it terminated the 34-year- long nuclear apartheid against India.185 One day later, on 1 October, the United States Senate approved the 123 Agreement, with 86 votes for it, and 13 against. On 4 October, India and the United States signed the nuclear deal. It must be underlined, however, that this bilateral deal was fundamentally ‘a multilateral initiative involving the endorsement of all the other major powers and the international

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 community’, and one could not but ‘recognize that without the US

179 For relevant comments, see Shashi Tharoor, The Times of India, 7 September 2008. 180 Srinivas Laxman, The Times of India, 7 September 2008. 181 Yoginder K. Alagh, The Indian Express, 20 September 2009. 182 Editorial, The Indian Express, 29 September 2008. 183 Ibid. 184 The Statesman, 30 September 2008. 185 The Statesman, 1 October 2008. Nuclear Policy 759

delivering the “passport,” there was no way India could get a “nuclear visa” from Paris or Moscow’.186 It should be noted in this connection that the EU was India’s largest partner in trade and investment, and a number of small and medium enterprises in Europe could provide Indian industrialists with the most advanced technologies.187 A landmark deal like the Indo-US civil nuclear initiative could not but generate controversies. One related to the matter of Enrichment and Reprocessing Technology (ERT). On this, as David C. Mulford, the American ambassador to India, stressed, India had its own ERT, whereas the 123 Agreement conferred the ERT right on India, on condition that India established, within one year, a dedicated reprocessing facility. Moreover, no American government could force any foreign government or private American company to provide nuclear technology or fuel to India.188 Nevertheless, Areva of France, Rosatom of Russia, and General Electric or Westinghouse of America did make moves to do business in India.189 Another controversy about the 123 Agreement related to whether it prohibited future nuclear tests by India. Actually, there was no such ban imposed by the 123 Agreement, and the CTBT, which imposed this ban, was not ratiﬁ ed by India or America.190 Nevertheless, as a member of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, M.R. Srinivasan, pointed out: ‘We might be obliged to test, but we have to pay a price for it. To expect a cost-free test is an impractical proposition’.191 It should be recalled in this connection that on several occasions prior to the 1998 tests, information about impending nuclear tests leaked out from the Indian Prime Minister’s Ofﬁ ce to the American government, which then stopped the tests. Probably, in 1998, India could spring a surprise because of the existence of some underground shafts prepared for the previous (though abortive) tests. Finally, the 123 Agreement must be assessed not only in terms of its nuclear dimensions but in much broader terms. It could ease

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India’s access to dual purpose technologies, and boost the Indian

186 Editorial, The Indian Express, 2 October 2008. 187 Kanwal Sibal, The Times of India, 2 October 2008. Kanwal Sibal is a former foreign secretary of India. 188 Simran Sodhi, The Statesman, 3 October 2008. 189 Srinivas Laxman, The Times of India, 3 October 2008. 190 Muchkund Dubey, The Statesman, 16 September 2007. Muchkund Dubey is a former foreign secretary of India. 191 Quoted in Srinivas Laxman, The Times of India, 3 October 2008. 760 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

economy. This agreement could substantially enhance military cooperation between the two countries, and enable India to reduce its excessive dependence on Russia (for the supply of 60 to 90 per cent of defence items). The 123 Agreement can lead to a comprehensive improvement in Indo-American relations.

If one sees it in the light of national interest, then it is indispensable for India to forge close links with the United States, the only superpower in the world. Every other signiﬁ cant country in the world, including Russia and China, have moved in this direction.192 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

192 Muchkund Dubey, The Statesman, 17 September 2007. The economic meltdown of 2008 in America and the world—which is outside the purview of this book—can modify but not negate the fundamental validity of this observation by a former foreign secretary of India. 12 Epilogue

It has been observed that in India there is ‘remarkable intolerance of debate and illiberalism’ which has preserved the ‘study of the liberal arts and social sciences in the stone age’.1 Perhaps nowhere is this observation more applicable than to the studies on India’s foreign relations by Indians (barring a few honourable exceptions). One can go further and argue that in New Delhi—the seat of political power and government-controlled academic institutions—there was hardly any debate on foreign policy among scholars, journalists, and retired diplomats till about 1991, at any rate till 1964. The reason was not merely lack of access to archival materials, which was deliberately barred by offi cials anxious to conceal mistakes (sometimes as heinous as crimes against the country) committed by themselves and their political bosses. A much more important reason was the lack of expertise in the area of interface of domestic-foreign-defence affairs, which resulted, for example, in highly placed academics of New Delhi defending Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy by quoting from Nehru’s mostly sanctimonious speeches. The most vital reason is rooted in this tendency to defend offi cial policy, to hero worship a prime minister or external affairs minister, which was not unexpected in a poor country with very little opportunity for academics, journalists, etc., except by competition for offi cial favours. This tendency fast degenerated into habitual sycophancy. This, however, is not a specifi c Indian trait. All over the world, social scientists (including historians, journalists, etc.) do not (barring glorious exceptions)

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 search for the truth. In degrees varying with one’s personal achievements and greed, they practise hypocrisy and opportunism. Perhaps the ultimate in sycophancy and opportunism was accomplished by a retired Secretary General of India’s external affairs ministry, K.P.S. Menon, who observed:

1 Shekhar Gupta, The Indian Express, 22 August 2009. 762 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

A Foreign Ofﬁ ce is essentially a custodian of precedents. We had no precedents to fall back upon, because India had no foreign policy of her own until she became independent. We did not even have a section for historical research until I created one…. Our policy therefore necessarily rested on the intuition of one man, who was Foreign Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Fortunately his intuition was based on knowledge….2

This observation is downright silly because, as demonstrated in the case of India’s relations with China, free India could ignore the precedents set by British India’s foreign policy only at its own peril. Moreover, as A.G. Noorani commented:

How could the civilian head of a Foreign Ofﬁ ce offer frank advice to the political head when he himself regards the organization as no more than a research bureau? But, of course, Nehru had scant use for expertise in a ﬁ eld he regarded exclusively his own. One singularly tragic instance of his indifference to professional advice may be cited. The late Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai advised him, about the time of the Panchsheel Agreement with China, to stipulate that in return for India’s recognition of China’s sovereignty over Tibet, China should recognize the McMahon Line and agree to the re-opening of an Indian Consulate in Sinkiang. The advice was rejected.3

This practice becomes all the more obnoxious with the convenient ideologies of so-called socialism or socialistic pattern of society driving India to the verge of bankruptcy under Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi (acting as external affairs ministers, formally or informally), and depriving India of that position of primacy in the world which a proper use of its immense material and human resources warranted. In Mumbai, fortunately, writers like A.D. Gorwala, Frank Moraes and A.G. Noorani raised dissident voices, but they were only crying in the wilderness. In New Delhi,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 barring few exceptions, writers (sometimes outrivaling politicians) excelled in competitive sycophancy. In consequence, practically none analysed the judgemental aberrations afﬂ icting Mohandas K. Gandhi since the mid-1930s, and Jawaharlal Nehru since the mid-1940s, which made Partition

2 K.P.S. Menon, Many Worlds: An Autobiography, London: Oxford University Press,1965, p. 271. 3 Noorani, Aspects of India’s Foreign Policy, p. 51. Epilogue 763

inevitable, enabled a relentlessly anti-Indian Louis Mountbatten to act as defacto external affairs minister during 1947–48, a corrupt psychopath like V.K.K. Menon as defacto external affairs minister and defence minister during the 1950s and early 1960s, and caused a series of disasters in India’s foreign relations. The only redeeming feature of the Indian writers was that even some foreign writers fell prey to vested interests, and the imagined virtues in Gandhi and Nehru, which did not actually exist. The physical and/or mental failures of Nehru—evident during his fi rst visits to the United Kingdom in 1948, as also the United States in 1949—eluded them. A sense of decency restrained knowledgeable foreign journalists from publicising these lapses (just as at an earlier period some abomin- ably abnormal behaviour patterns of Gandhi had not been reported by the British government and journalists). It may again be charitable to trace Nehru’s eccentricities to the mid-1940s. For, it was as early as 13 September 1927, that he prepared the paper ‘A Foreign Policy for India’.4 This paper conveyed immense confusion on the part of Nehru, oversimplifi ed reality, and was full of moralistic platitudes, which vitiated his post-1947 foreign policy. Let’s look at some of the gems that were pervasive in Jawaharlal Nehru’s paper of 13 September 1927. He was of the opinion that since India was friendly to all countries, there should be no country bearing hostility to India. He also believed that there was no reason why Muslim countries of West Asia should have unfriendly attitudes towards India. His ideas on the Soviet Union, again, were divorced from facts and experience, although he was in the good company of H.G. Wells or Sidney and Beatrice Webb.5 Vis-à-vis Britain, Jawaharlal Nehru’s psychological vulnerability came to the fore repeatedly and humiliatingly—before and after 15 August 1947. The following observations are signifi cant: that Nehru ‘was thoroughly programmed by the British since his school

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 days’, and that ‘even before Mountbatten’s arrival in India, Lord Wavell had complained that Nehru was often informed by Whitehall before he was!’6 The way Jawaharlal Nehru began unnecessarily to ask for and take orders from Attlee and Mountbatten after the Pakistani assault upon J&K in October 1947 could not but raise

4 Singh, Between Two Fires, Vol. One, Chapter III, esp. pp. 56, 63, 65. 5 Thatcher, Statecraft, p. 12. 6 Rajinder Puri, The Statesman, 19 August 2009. 764 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

unanswerable questions about the genuineness of his affection for the people of India, or, worse, about his mental composure. More- over, the vicious impact of the blunder in J&K persists even in the 21st century. Yet, Jawaharlal Nehru is regarded as a great historian and philosopher by his admirers (notably in Calcutta/Kolkata and New Delhi). These sycophants never refer to his views on Tibet. Jawaharlal Nehru was so hopelessly ignorant about the history of Tibet and China that in the 1950s he equated the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China with that of Goa/Pondicherry vis-à-vis India. One need not repeat here what has been discussed at length in the chapter on Relations with China, how Nehru voluntarily blended his ignorance of world history/ politics with his delusions about Indo-Chinese amity to commit the blunder of 1962 when soldiers in summer uniform were dispatched to a height of 18,000 feet along the Himalayan border with China (another one of the numerous testimonies to the questionable state of Jawaharlal’s judgement). Signiﬁ cantly, Pakistani–Chinese collusion persists in the 21st century, and stands testimony to Nehru’s abiding contribution to keeping India’s foreign relations crippled. There is an ancient proverb that a person is declared to be a minor doctor if he has been instrumental in the death of a hundred persons: when the number reaches a thousand, he is acclaimed as a great physician. In the sphere of foreign relations, similarly, Jawaharlal Nehru has committed one blunder after another, and thereby established his claim to being a great historian and philosopher. (The same comment applies to Nehru’s patron Mohandas K. Gandhi.) Deﬁ ciencies in India’s foreign relations have been aggravated by shortcomings in domestic economic policy, which, again, were sustained by ideological dogmas. Despite the proclaimed priority given to agriculture in independent India’s First Five Year Plan—and a passionate preference to so-called socialism—India remained a

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 chronically food-deﬁ cit country. There was no alternative to begging for food—and that too from America—towards which Nehru had an insensate antipathy (not unmixed with inferiority complex), as attested by his nephew, Ambassador B.K. Nehru (already narrated in the chapter on Relations with the United States). This situation drew out the worst traits of India’s administrative and political leaders, especially Nehru. They had to be supplicants, and yet tried to keep up the pretence that they were not. Moreover, they expected the donors to feel gratiﬁ ed that they had the opportunity to help Epilogue 765

India, and were ready to forego the claim even to hint that they were assisting India! In domestic politics, Nehru violated democratic norms and used dirty tricks to acquire personal supremacy in the ruling Congress Party.7 Moreover, he also paved the way for the emergence of his daughter, Indira Gandhi, as his successor.8 There was a chance that, after Nehru’s death in May 1964 in deservedly humiliating circumstances (following the defeat in the China War of 1962), the Nehru dynasty would not come into existence. Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded Nehru as prime minister, and, judging by his performance during the 1965 war with Pakistan, he was a much more capable leader than Nehru. However, Shastri did not live long. He died at Tashkent in January 1966, under mysterious circumstances that led to much plausible speculation about the role of some infl uential individuals in the manipulations that caused Shastri’s sudden death, thereby completing Nehru’s unfi nished task of establishing a ruling dynasty.9 Nehru’s surrender to the British in 1947–49 on the J&K confl ict eventually led to India emerging as a sort of Soviet stooge to counteract Western support for Pakistan in the UN. This cancerous legacy of Nehru persisted in the days of Indira Gandhi, who succeeded Lal Bahadur Shastri as the prime minister of India. This and the other evils generated by Nehru during 1947–64—for example, the establishment of personal supremacy over the ruling Congress Party, gross violation of democratic norms for maximising the power of the dynasty, prolongation of the food crisis and the dogmatic pursuit of socialist shibboleths, appeasement of Pakistan and the USSR, etc.—assumed greater proportions under Indira Gandhi’s rule. Actu- ally, in the matter of maximising personal authority and perpetuating dynastic rule, she went to an extreme, sacrifi cing democracy, and imposing the Emergency during 1975–77.10

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 As to economic policies, Indira Gandhi made them secondary to her goal of strengthening personal and dynastic political control.

7 See, for example, C.B. Gupta, C.B. Gupta: Autobiography, as told to Satyendra R. Shukla, Lucknow: Umakant Mishra, 2003, pp. 218–19. Also see, Kamath, Last Days of Jawaharlal Nehru, p. 19. 8 M.O. Mathai, Reminiscences of the Nehru Age, New Delhi: Bell/Vikas, 1979, pp. 229, 234. Also see, Wolpert, Nehru, pp. 467–68. 9 See, for example, Rajinder Puri, The Statesman, 15 July 2009. 10 Mathai, Reminiscences of the Nehru Age, pp. 251–52. 766 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

In fact, her misguided socialist measures saw the economy sliding downhill. At one stage—in the mid-1960s—she was forced to adopt devaluation and deregulation on the advice of the World Bank and America. But her Leftist allies, inside and outside the Congress Party, made matters far worse by pressuring her to accept devaluation and reject deregulation. The food situation was so precarious, and a famine-like situation stalked so many areas of the country, that Indian foreign policy—particularly vis-à-vis America—was reduced to scrounging for food. President Lyndon B. Johnson treated India with profound sympathy. During Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s fi rst visit to America, Johnson violated all protocol and precedents to join an Indian embassy reception, which astonished Washington’s diplomatic and journalistic circles. But Indira Gandhi could not override her father’s legacy. She kowtowed before the USSR, issuing statements on Vietnam (which did not help Vietnam in any way), thus adversely affecting India’s interests. Consequently, Johnson executed the policy of food aid in a way as to express his displeasure, but, more importantly, to prod India to change its agricultural policy, which, along with the liberal supply of American technical knowhow, paved the way to India’s attainment of relative self-suffi ciency in food within a short period of time. What Indian writers are probably not aware of, and seem to have left unacknowledged, is Johnson’s magnanimity in the dying days of his presidency. As he became painfully aware that he was going to lose the election to the presidency, he took measures to ensure the continuance of fi nancial and food aid to India.11 President Nixon probably had far less regard for Indira Gandhi than his predecessor. Yet, Nixon helped India immeasurably by endorsing Moynihan’s recommendation that the mammoth PL 480 debt of India (a testimony to the failure of so-called socialist planning in India) be written off.12 There is no information that any Indian

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 writer has spared the slightest praise for Nixon on this account. As to Ambassador Moynihan, a great benefactor to India, the ofﬁ cial and academic communities of India permanently damned themselves by their supercilious treatment towards Moynihan, which was totally unwarranted.

11 Bowles, Mission to India, p. 160. 12 Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, pp. 17–18. Epilogue 767

Remarkably, this was the time when Indira Gandhi’s cronies shouted in season, and out of season, against the CIA, whereas Prime Minister Indira Gandhi left no stone unturned to enable the KGB to penetrate deeply scores of offi cial and non-offi cial agencies, bringing ineradicable shame to India. This was the morass in which the so- called non-aligned foreign policy, reinforced by the so-called socialist economic policy, dumped India into. The third prime minister of the dynasty, Rajiv Gandhi, made feeble efforts to lift the country out of this morass. Unfortunately, he lacked minimum capability for high-level decision making.13 Moreover, he could not overcome the Leftist legacy of his mother and maternal grandfather.14 India continued to wallow in the morass, and drifted into bankruptcy by 1991.15 Some determined measures in economic policy and foreign relations were essential to arrest this drift. These were taken after P.V. Narasimha Rao became India’s prime minister in 1991. Until then (and till Manmohan Singh became the prime minister in 2004), he was India’s most scholarly and educated prime minister. By a bold adoption of the policies of liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation (LPG), as also of pragmatism in general in foreign relations, Narasimha proved himself to be the fi rst great prime minister of independent India (Manmohan Singh being the second). As LPG policies rapidly boosted India’s economic fortune, and Rao rose above domestic vote bank politics (coupled with a misguided West Asia policy), extending, for example, a disgracefully belated formal diplomatic recognition to a true friend of India, Israel, India’s stature and bargaining power in world politics witnessed a signifi cant rise. Narasimha Rao’s government could have raised India’s status much higher but for at least two major lapses (one of them diffi cult to differentiate from treason) committed by the Indian bureaucracy, which seldom believes in anything but unending self-aggrandisement,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 and which requires major reforms for the institutionalisation of transparency and accountability (discussed in the later part of this

13 Krishnan Srinivasan, The Jamdani Revolution, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2008, p. 30. 14 Sabhlok, Breaking Free of Nehru, p. xxxiii. 15 ‘India was like the friend who is always touching you for a loan, but who also refuses to change his behaviour in order to become solvent.’ See Nandan Nilekani, Imagining India, New Delhi: Penguin, 2009, p. 68. 768 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

chapter). One was the unpardonable blunder committed by the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), at any rate the pro-Soviet section of it, which rejoiced at the anti-Gorbachev coup of August 1991 that fi zzled out in a few hours. (Some details are available in the chapter on Relations with the Former Soviet Union & Russia.) Even more unpardonable was the leakage of a plan to the Americans about the staging of a much-needed subterranean nuclear test from the PMO, headed by a well-known member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), who has sometimes enjoyed an ambassador’s post. The incapability to exercise realism and/or independence in foreign relations was reconfi rmed; its prospect too was darkened. Narasimha Rao was succeeded by three prime ministers heading fragile short-lived coalitions. One of them was so devoid of foresight and knowledge of India’s diplomatic history that he propounded the doctrine of non-reciprocity in dealing with India’s neighbours, little remembering that since 1947 India had skilfully followed this doctrine, for example, vis-à-vis Pakistan (on J&K) and China (on Tibet). He virtually stabbed the country in the back by abolishing the Special Forces without which it was impossible to counteract Pakistan’s relentless proxy war against India. By the mid-1990s, India had found itself in a humiliating situation—quite inconsistent with its immense human and material resources. Pakistan treated India as if India was a minor power, using its offi cial (for example, ISI) and non-offi cial (for example, LeT) Special Forces to carry out the proxy war, play havoc with India’s economy, and threaten India’s secular-democratic polity. With Chinese support and American acquiescence, Pakistan successfully used nuclear blackmail to forestall Indian attack on terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan. Moreover, India blackmailed itself by its perverse politics of vote banks, which prevented it from launching an all-out attack upon domestic collaborators of Pakistani terrorists. Talented Indian

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 entrepreneurs could not make maximum use of LPG policies to take strides forward because of lack of access to dual-use technologies in the possession of Americans and Europeans. Some bold policy initiatives were essential to underline India’s capacity and earnestness for the deserved attainment of a great power status. These initiatives were launched by the government headed by a near-great prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in the late 1990s. Five underground nuclear tests by India in May 1998 signalled India’s determination to explore ways to become a great power, in Epilogue 769

tune with its abundant human and material resources. Pakistani tests followed the Indian tests. Both were subjected to sanctions by America (and others). The disparity in economic-technological accomplishments between the two countries was such that America’s ally, Pakistan, suffered much more from the sanctions than India. Paradoxically, even America suffered considerably on account of the sanctions imposed on India. Sanctions were gradually—though not always publicly—relaxed, and, following 9/11, which nearly overturned the pre-existing world order, post-1998 sanctions died an unlamented death. But Pakistan’s proxy war left India in a totally helpless situation, all the more so because publicly a pretence to heroism had to be maintained. India could not retaliate against Pakistani terrorist training camps even after attacks by Pakistan’s terrorists upon J&K Legislative Assembly and the Indian Parliament. This was evidently because of Pakistan’s successful practice of nuclear blackmail sustained by its well-tested policy of multiple/ﬂ exible alignment yielding a steady support from America and China, leaving India’s non-alignment policy in a state beneath contempt and pity. India had to devise a way out of the Pakistan–China nutcracker. The option of alignment vanished long back, atrophied by decades of moral sermons preached by India. Something akin to alignment had to be devised, so that the assurance of protection by America could pre-empt the destruction of India in instalments by Pakistan’s ruthless proxy war. Since a number of inﬂ uential Americans were in favour of helping India become a great power and assume global responsibilities, in collaboration with America, for combating terrorism, protecting the environment and promoting democracy, the Vajpayee government adopted the policy of building a strategic partnership with America. This partnership was taken to an appropriate height by Manmohan

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Singh, the second truly great prime minister of free India (the ﬁ rst being Narasimha Rao). Manmohan Singh signed the civil nuclear cooperation pact with America, foiling obnoxious obstructionism by his Leftist partners in the government. The timely application of America’s unmatched soft power procured the support of the NSG and the IAEA, which persuaded the American Congress to sign a unique civil nuclear cooperation deal with India, which was a nuclear weapon state as well as a non-signatory to the NNPT. The pact with America, superseding prevalent international rules, 770 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

opened the avenues for civil nuclear collaboration with countries like France and Russia. India earned the much-coveted access to technologies usable for both civilian and military production. A signifi cant step was thus taken to facilitate India’s march towards a great power status. Whether, and how soon, this status will be actually attained will depend much on whether India can put its own house in order in at least three major areas: reforms in defence planning and procurement of defence items, as also reforms in civil-diplomatic services (especially, or summarily, in the IAS and IFS), and in counter-terrorist operations. Meanwhile, one can only observe with comfort the advances in the Indo-US strategic partnership, for example, the attempts to increase inter-operability of the two countries’ combat forces by two signifi cant exercises in October 2009.16 Success in foreign relations is integrally related to competence in military affairs, which, again, demands immunity from the petty rivalries of electoral politics. Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon had been outrageously guilty of dragging dirty politicking into defence, which culminated in the disaster of 1962. The Kargil confl ict of 1999 (although it led to a memorable victory for self- sacrifi cing Indian soldiers) illustrates how a number of political leaders belonging to the ruling and opposition parties meanly politicised the Kargil crisis. In this perspective, one has to appreciate the greatness of Manmohan Singh as a prime minister (who was the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha at the time of the Kargil war). At the 10th anniversary of India’s victory in the Kargil war, in 2009, Manmohan Singh rose above political partisanship, ignored the fact that his political opponents were in power at the time of this victory, and laid a wreath in honour of the Kargil martyrs.17 Unfortunately, the Manmohan Singh government, and its predecessors, have been pusillanimous in taking some vital decisions

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 in matters of defence planning and procurement, which cannot but have an adverse impact on foreign relations. It is a shame for the entire country that a 2009 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) sketches ‘a sordid saga of squandering away of public money without long-term strategic planning no matter what

16 Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 21 August 2009. 17 Vedprakash Malik, The Indian Express, 20 August 2009. Also see Vedprakash Malik, The Indian Express, 23 August 1999. Vedprakash Malik is a former Chief of Army Staff, India. Epilogue 771

the political dispensation was’.18 The same impression is formed when anyone reviews the annual defence budget, for example, the 2007–8 budget. Those who prepare the budget painstakingly do not fail to juggle the numbers. For example, they point to a rise (if any) in the current year’s defence outlay, in comparison with the previous year’s (for example, 7.8 per cent in 2007–8), to the unspent capital outlay for procurement and modernisation (`3000 crore in 2007–8, for example), to the percentage of defence spending in the entire government expenditure (12 per cent in 2007–8), as also to the contrast in the percentage of GDP earmarked for defence by India (2.1 per cent), Pakistan (4.5 per cent) and China (7.2 per cent), as also to numerous other details. Nevertheless, it is ‘reﬂ ective of an accountants’ mindset: a little more here, a little less there. But with no particular thrust, focus, or even contour of a strategy that would extricate outlays from the vicious circle in which they stand entrapped’.19 Annual reports of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have sustained two myths. One is old, that is self-reliance in defence production, there being a separate Department of Defence Production (DDP). The other is recent: private entrepreneurs in India and abroad have been permitted to manufacture advanced weapon systems in collaboration with relevant government agencies under the control of Department of Defence (DOD). As to the ﬁ rst myth, one should record the following observation made by a former Director General of Army Air Defence, Lt. Gen. C.S. China:

The track record over the last ﬁ ve decades of indigenous development and production of defence systems by the various efforts of the DRDO, defence PSUs, and ordnance factories, with some outsourcing to private industry, under the control and regulation of the DOD and the Department of Defence Production (DDP), has been very unsatisfactory.20 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 As to the second myth, China’s comment is no less disturbing:

Anticipating major business amounting to thousands of crores, with many foreign governments now prepared to share their defence technology, leading Indian industries and foreign defence companies

18 Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 25 July 2009. 19 Editorial, The Statesman, 5 March 2007. 20 The Indian Express, 28 July 2009. 772 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

are reported to have been negotiating for joint venture development and manufacture of advanced defence systems. In some cases, collaborative agreements have been fi nalized and infrastructure established for the manufacture of specifi c high technology defence systems. This fl urry of activity is taking place despite the fact that no sanction for the development of a prototype based on any specifi c Service’s requirement, or contract for any such system, has been accorded by the government.21

Defi ciencies in decision making on military procurement offer horrifying tales, some of which may be presented here. New Delhi took more than two decades to decide upon procurement of Advanced Jet Trainers (AJTs), which was quite different from actual acquisition.22 Meanwhile, a large number of pilots lost their lives. Achievement of self-suffi ciency in defence production is indeed a laudable ideal. But India cannot create dangerous gaps in defence while pursuing self-reliance. The project for indigenous manufacture of the Main Battle Tank (Arjun) commenced in 1974. It was not ready for combat even after three decades. Sarcastic comments that it can be reserved for ‘target practice’ or as a ‘museum piece’ cannot be lightly dismissed. The project of making Tejas, the light combat aircraft (LCA), was sanctioned in 1983. It may not come into full operation till 2012, giving rise to the observation that Tejas may turn out to be eminently suitable as a ‘vintage fl ight’. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) spent `3 billion on the 9 kilometre range anti-missile defence (AMD) system called Trishul, and tested it more than 80 times. Yet it could not move beyond demonstrating the technology. The Israeli Barak-1 AMD system had to be procured. Similarly, DRDO failed to deliver in time the 25 kilometre range anti-aircraft missile system, Akash, which the Indian Air Force (IAF) was to receive in 2003. By late 2006, the IAF had no option but to acquire an Israeli anti-aircraft 23 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 missile system called Spy Der.

21 Ibid. (All this points to the urgency of reforms required to endow the Indian bureaucracy with accountability and transparency, which will be taken up later in this chapter.) 22 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Union Govern- ment (Defence Services), Air Force and Navy, Report No. CA18 of 2008–9, pp. 27–32. 23 Editorial, The Statesman, 15 October 2006; Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 16 October 2006. Epilogue 773

India is credited with possessing the third largest scientifi c and technological manpower in the world, and the DRDO has an annual budget of approximately `60 billion a year, claiming about 30 per cent of India’s Research and Development budget. By late 2006, for instance, it was engaged in 430 projects costing around `169.25 billion. Its research laboratories can be the envy of many countries across the world. If it has not achieved the level of success expected of it, this may be essentially due to the prevalent government culture of lack of accountability and transparency. In an age of LPG, one can think of dividing the DRDO into several autonomous units with a variety of private/government funding. They may compete/cooperate with one another, as also with their domestic/foreign counterparts. They can then benefi t the military as well as the civilian sectors of the economy. This experiment is worth trying, for, even if it earns only limited success, the wastage of national resources in this experiment will be much less than in the present mammoth DRDO.24 Under these circumstances, it is hardly unexpected, though never publicly acknowledged by the authorities, that, in terms of modernisation and acquisition of state-of-the-art weapon systems, all the three armed services of India are stuck in the 1970s, and the early 1980s.25 Yet, from time to time, public announcements are made, that may mislead the Indian public into a false sense of security and pride. On 26 July 2009, for instance, INS Arihant, India’s fi rst nuclear-powered indigenously built submarine was launched with great fanfare. It was indeed a matter of profound pride that the Indians built the light water reactor (LWR) to supply nuclear power to the missile-carrying Arihant. What is not a matter of pride is that this submarine project, launched as early as 1983, is another testimony to the unique delaying propensities of the insensitive Indian bureaucracy (despite political clearance at the highest level). Since India has voluntarily adopted the doctrine of

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 non-ﬁ rst-use of nuclear weapons, and there is at least one neighbour of India which may not shrink from using nuclear bombs in a ﬁ rst strike, Arihant-type submarines are probably the most essential component of a second-strike capability for India. Unfortunately, one need not rejoice too soon. Arihant will have to undergo several

24 Editorials, The Statesman, 15 October 2006, and The Times of India, 18 October 2006; Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 16 October 2006. 25 C.S. China, The Indian Express, 28 July 2007. 774 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

years of trials before the Indian Navy can formally induct it into service, whereas China reportedly possesses at least 10 nuclear- powered submarines.26 Despite the failures of LCA Tejas and MBT Arjun, one may dream of an India-built, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.27 Deplorably, until large-scale reforms in the Indian decision-making bureaucracy are undertaken to make it accountable and transparent, it may be extremely diffi cult to translate such a dream into reality. Take, for instance, the acquisition of aircraft carrier Gorshkov from Russia.28 India entered into an agreement with Russia in 2004. But, as the CAG has underlined, this second-hand ship has a lifespan that is half of a new aircraft carrier, and its cost exceeds that of a new carrier by 60 per cent. In 2005, again, New Delhi signed a deal with French fi rms for the supply of six Scorpene submarines at `187.98 billion. The government took nine years (the CAG has complained) to fi nalise the deal, and construction is behind schedule by two years, leaving a dangerous gap in India’s defence capabilities.29 Predictably, gaps have emerged in other areas too—especially, vis-à-vis Pakistan. For example, under the umbrella of the War on Terror, Pakistan, as a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA), received in 2008 a large number of M-109A5 self-propelled artillery guns, although the Indian Army placed before the civil authorities an urgent request for such guns in 1978. For two decades, the Indian artillery has not witnessed any upgradation. Although in 1982, the proposal for upgradation underwent some processing, and trials took place over a period as long as eight years, no concrete output emerged partly because the government, bitten by the Bofors bug, became sensitive to probable accusations of corruption, and blacklisted three potential suppliers of South Africa, Singapore and Israel.30

26 Rajat Pandit, The Times of India, 27 July 2009; Editorial, The Pioneer,

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 28 July 2009; Srinivas Laxman, The Times of India, 28 July 2009. 27 Editorial, The Statesman, 10 August 2009. 28 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Report No.CA18 of 2008–9, pp. 14–22. 29 Rajat Pandit, two dispatches, The Times of India, 25 July 2009; Manu Pubby, The Times of India, 25 July 2009; PTI Report, The Statesman, 25 July 2009. Also, Report of the Controller and Auditor General of India, Report No.CA18 of 2008–9, pp. 22–27. 30 Manu Pubby, The Indian Express, 25 August 2009; Vinay Shankar (Director General, Artillery, at the time of the Kargil conﬂ ict), The Indian Express, 18 August 2009. Epilogue 775

The story of self-propelled artillery was repeated in the case of towed guns. The multi-rocket launcher, the Smerch, was spared this fate— but only after a lapse of 10 years. Take, again, the case of multi-role combat aircraft. India cannot even pretend to manufacture them (it cannot even manufacture aircraft for civil aviation). It has to purchase them from one or more of a few European countries or America. The outlay is huge, so much so that if cautiously undertaken, it can not only close alarming gaps in defence capabilities but also produce a highly favourable impact upon foreign relations.31 Let alone planning a benefi cial fallout upon foreign relations, Indian decision makers (mainly civilians) cannot even remove dangerous defi ciencies in military capabilities because of their dependence on procedures that only delay. There is hardly much that can justify such procedures, although there is an alibi bequeathed by the Bofors scam. The real reason behind these procedures has to be traced to some age-old characteristics of India’s civil bureaucracy. These are: selfi shness, incompetence, laziness, and obstructionism (SILO). Even when Indian offi cials try to take shelter behind the plea of political interference, they are actually practising SILO. After all, they have been provided with permanent jobs (unlike their political bosses) with assured pay scales and periodic promotions, as also enhancement of pay scales. There is no relationship between pay and timely discharge of minimum duties, and between performance and promotion. In short, there is no accountability and/or transparency. It is pertinent, in this context, to quote Vinay Shankar, a former Director General, Artillery, of the Indian Army. He writes:

Ever since the Bofors controversy, the belief of successive dispensa- tions that rigid procedural policies will cleanse the system and make it efﬁ cient continues to be belied…. Currently, …[the system] is procedure and technicality-driven a ritual of endless trials and reams

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 of paperwork but no acquisitions.32

As already stated, at the root of this feigned fi delity to procedures and paper shuffl ing is the urge for enjoyment of enormous powers and privileges without action and accountability. This virus has infected Indian offi cialdom at every level—from the villages to state

31 Vinay Shankar, The Indian Express,18 August 2009. 32 The Indian Express, 18 August 2009. 776 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

capitals, and the national capital. This is the principal reason why the immense resources of the country are wasted (with or without corruption),33 and, publicly acknowledged or not, at least 25 per cent of the people live below the poverty line. Distress is the main cause for emergence of extremist movements in many (fortunately not in all) areas of India. These sometimes sustain, or receive sustenance from, forces of international terrorism. A nearly incredible example of how wastage, corruption and ineffi ciency give rise to, and build bridges between, domestic extremism and international terrorism, is provided by India’s northeast region. It is an open secret that a simple distribution among individuals/families of the massive grants provided by New Delhi to this region will ensure a moderate prosperity for everyone in this region. In actuality, a major portion of these grants is misappropriated by politicians, offi cials, businessmen, and gangsters (who subsequently fi nd it much more remunerative to turn into terrorists).34 It is, therefore, essential to carry out overdue reforms in the Indian bureaucracy, especially the IAS and the IFS, if the country is to cope properly with problems in the areas of domestic-foreign- defence affairs overlap, and offi cials are to pay far greater attention to transparency and accountability than to self-aggrandisement.35 The wrong route to reform is to start with the false contention that the Indian bureaucracy, the IFS for instance, is relatively ill-paid and understaffed.36 Offi cials of the Government of India (GoI) secured a hefty rise in pay scales in 2008.37 Even GoI-run

33 ‘In government’, says one Indian Police Service (IPS) offi cer to a newly recruited IAS offi cer, ‘you’ll realize this over the years…there’s nothing such as absolute honesty, there are only degrees of dishonesty. All offi cers are more or less dishonest…. But, of course, honesty does not mean effi ciency.’ Upamanyu Chatterjee, English August, New Delhi: Penguin India, 2002, p. 138; (The writer of this novel is himself an IAS offi cer). 34

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 For numerous details on this issue, see the following two books edited by Jayanta Kumar Ray and Rakhee Bhattacharya: Northeast India: Administrative Reforms and Economic Development, New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2008; Development Dynamics in North East India, Delhi: Anshah, 2008. 35 For some relevant observations, see Government of India (GoI), Organisational Structure of Government of India, Thirteenth Report, Second Administrative Reforms Commission, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 35–37. Also see, Chetan Bhagat, The Times of India, 24 October 2009. 36 Daniel Markey, ‘Developing India’s Foreign Policy ‘Software’,’ Asia Policy, no. 8, July 2009, esp. pp. 77–78. 37 Amy Kazmin, Financial Times, 15 August 2008. Epilogue 777

universities, colleges, and research institutes have benefi ted from this bounty. But, as before, there is no discernible relationship between monthly salaries and timely discharge of essential duties, between performance and promotion. The 2008 pay revision has put GoI staffers in comparatively much more lucrative positions than most of their counterparts in the private sector, with the difference that one cannot survive in the private sector without accountability, whereas in the government sector one can not only survive but also prosper, regardless of accountability. Moreover, adding to the size of the Indian bureaucracy, including the IFS, simply opens it up to further avenues of paper pushing and delay-prone procedures. For instance, if in one division of the Ministry of External Affairs there are currently a Joint-Secretary (JS), Director (D), Deputy Secretary (DS) and Under Secretary (US), belonging to the IFS, and a number of clerks, messengers, etc., any addition to these posts and entry of new incumbents will merely multiply delays in decision making because of the perennial affl iction of passing on papers and responsibilities to one another, preferring the privilege of inaction to the natural pains of action. On the contrary, a reduction in the number of these posts, for example, by elimination of the posts of Director and Under Secretary, may perhaps reduce delays and increase effi ciency. An experiment will be worthwhile. The most important way to reform the Indian bureaucracy is to adopt the British system in which 75 per cent of incumbents work on the basis of short-term performance-based contracts. India may benefi t immensely from raising the percentage to 85, so that many potential non-performers may not even apply for a number of posts.38 (Undoubtedly, in addition to the trade unions, which in any case follow the political parties, the IAS and the IFS will offer stiff resistance to such reforms. How to overcome such resistance is outside the scope of this chapter/book.) The suitability of this reform for the IFS

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 can be easily illustrated. Currently, as in the case of the IAS, in the IFS too there is a sort of musical chairs being played, with frequent transfers (precluding a ﬁ xation of responsibility) and postings that bear little or no relationship with expertise and performance. The proposed reform can pay due deference to expertise by an integration of training (especially language training), acquisition of expertise and

38 For some useful observations on this issue, see Sabhlok, Breaking Free of Nehru, pp. 194–96. 778 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

posting. Moreover, it can attract high-level experts for top positions from business ﬁ rms, management schools, research institutes, etc., while steering clear of, or minimising, resentments that currently embarrass those who secure a lateral entry into the IFS. Moreover, at present, some conscientious ofﬁ cers have themselves taken the initiative to acquire expertise, but they may not secure suitable postings, leave alone promotions. They somehow thrive as islands of worried specialists in an ocean of carefree generalists. The proposed bureaucratic reform is not expected to take place in the short run, if at all. So, administrative dysfunctionalities will persist, and Pakistan-sponsored terrorists and would-be terrorists will receive encouragement from a situation in which the trial of the 1992 Mumbai blasts drags on for an unpardonably long period of 13 years.39 Moreover, a number of Indian politicians appear to be determined to frustrate the country’s war on terror by courting Pakistan-sponsored terrorists to preserve or acquire vote banks. So, for example, the Kerala Assembly went to the length of passing a resolution for the release of the principal accused in the 1998 Coimbatore blasts.40 Not to speak of politicians, even honourable judges of a state High Court or the Supreme Court of India appear to be behaving in ways that cannot but encourage Pakistan-sponsored terrorists, their Indian accomplices or potential terrorists. On 11 August 2009, for instance, two judges of the Indian Supreme Court awarded a huge compensation of `10 lakh to the mother and three brothers of Sohrabuddin, a notorious criminal, whom the Gujarat police killed in November 2005 in public interest. Moreover, the venerable judges did this at a time when investigations were yet to be completed.

Some immediate questions arise—should compensation be awarded for known criminals when the state has the legitimate right to use force for public good? Should compensation be given before relevant Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 cases are disposed of by the courts? Is the quantum of compensation determined by the ‘earning capacity’ of the criminal, and his family’s

39 According to the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, Govern- ment of India, ‘most countries have been adopting tough anti-terrorism measures whereas the provisions of similar laws have been diluted in India over a period of time’. See Government of India, Combating Terrorism, Eighth Report, New Delhi: Second Administrative Reforms Commission, 2008, p. 43. 40 The Pioneer, 1 October 2006. Epilogue 779

addiction to the wages of sin? Have the victims of such criminals received comparable compensation? If victims are invisible to the judiciary, what quality of justice can citizens expect from the honourable courts?41

In 2004, the Gujarat police killed Ishrat Jahan, and three companions, while embarking upon a terrorist mission. The website of Pakistan’s LET paid respect to all four, hailing them as martyrs. Amazingly, on 13 August 2009, the Gujarat High Court ordered a probe into Ishrat Jahan’s death.42 Apparently, the learned judges of the Supreme Court or Gujarat High Court have not had the time and patience to acquire adequate knowledge about the history, society, and politics of Pakistan. Jihadi terrorists of Pakistan pursue a global mission by a concoction of religious dogmas and invented grievances in places as far apart as, for example, Bosnia, Chechnya, or J&K. Jihadi terrorists do not reﬂ ect upon social-political-economic injustices in Pakistan, and their remedies. Anti-Jihadi operations in India can succeed when the authorities dispel dogmas and delegitimise grievances.43 Deplorably, some judicial actions in India appear to be moving in a reverse direction. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016

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Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 to the Congress by Richard Nixon, President of the United States, Washington D.C., 1972. About the Author

Jayanta Kumar Ray is Research Coordinator, Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata. Some of his previous assignments were: Chairman, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, Kolkata; National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi; Centenary Professor of International Relations, and Founder- Director, Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata; Professor of Behavioural Sciences, Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi; Senior Research Associate, Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses, New Delhi; Senior Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; and Reader, Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He was the ﬁ rst Indian scholar to publish research studies on modern Indonesia, Thailand and East Pakistan and to write a book in defence of acquisition of limited nuclear deterrent by India. His writings on civil–military relations, politician–civil servant relations and internal colonialism in ex-colonial countries have attracted a good deal of praise. His publications include India: In Search of Good Governance (2001); To Chase a Miracle: A Study of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh (1987); Administrators in A Mixed Polity (1981); Public Policy and Global Reality (1977); Portraits of Thai Politics (1972); Democracy and Nationalism on Trial: A Study of East Pakistan (1968); Security in the Missile Age (1967); and Transfer of Power in Indonesia 1942–49 (1967). He has co-authored and edited several books and has published important articles in national and international journals. Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Index

Abas, B.M., 406 Aswan project, 68 Advanced Jet Trainers (AJTs), 112 9/11 attack, on US, 90, 522, 738–39; Afghanistan: Soviet Union’s war impact on internal security en- in, 14 vironment, of India and China, 123 Agreement: between India and 314–15 US, 631, 754 Attlee, Clement, 52 Airborne Early Warning Command Awami League government, 371; and Control System (AWACS), impact of Vested Property Act, 315 on Hindus, 354–55 Aksai Chin, 260; movement of Ayodyha structure: demolition in Chinese troops in, 248–49 1992, 353 All India Congress Committee (AICC), Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam, 15 5, 9, 383 Al-Qaeda, 91; America, collaboration Babri Mosque dispute, 351 with Pakistan, to combat, 627; use Bangladesh, 615; assassination of, of American money by Pakistan, General Ziaur Rahman, 366; for arms supply to, 739 Chakma leaders, to Pakistan America: pressure on Pakistan, to join military during liberation struggle anti-Taliban war, 15 by, 364; Election Commission Amnesty International, 359 evidence, on illegal migration, Amrita Bazar Patrika: opinion poll 384; exchange of enclaves between by, 332–33 India and, 404–5; inﬁ ltration pro- Anglo-Chinese Convention (1906), cess from, 388; Mujibur stress, on 209 Bengali Muslim identity of, 346; Anglo-French resolution: Canal opposition of Islamic countries, dispute, on, 70 to liberation struggle in, 346; anti-colonialism, 26 PGR in, 380; Talibanisation anti-colonialist struggle: Africa, in, 26 of, 360 anti-Communist alliance system, 14 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), anti-Gorbachev coup, 544 anti-Tamil riots, in Sri Lanka, 495; 327 Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) Barakshetra High Dam project: be- Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 participation in, 498 tween India and Nepal, 473–74 Armed Forces Special Powers Act barter system, 562–63 (AFSPA), 399 Bengal: partition of, 53 Arunachal Pradesh, 218 see also Bhakra-Nangal Dam, 645 McMahon Line Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited Asian Development Bank (ADB), (BHEL), 560 322–23, 675 Bhutto, Zulﬁ qar Ali, 136, 172, 303 Asian Relations Conference (1947), Bihar State Irrigation Commission, 13, 225 407 Associated Chambers of Commerce Border Roads Organisation (BRO), and Industry, 453 265 806 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Border Security Force (BSF), 360 Cold war, 17, 19, 77–78; India’s rela- Bose, Subhas Chandra, 4, 58 tions with US during, 579; India’s brahmacharya, 55 stance in, 543 British Nationality Act (1948), 78 Combined Acceleration Vibration British Nationality Act (1981): cate- Climatic Test System (CAVTS), gories of citizenship, 81 687 Brussels Pact, 22 Commonwealth Immigrants Act Burma Committee, 6 (1962), (1968), 80 Bush, George, 551 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ business process outsourcing (BPO), Conference, 64 681 Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), 529 Comprehensive Peace Agreement Cairo conference, 26 (CPA): between Nepal and Calcutta Port Trust (CPT), 407 Maoist, 465 Canada-India Reactor (CIR), 725 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Canal Users Association, 70 (CTBT), 45, 630, 730 Carter, Jimmy, 620 Comptroller and Auditor General Castro, Fidel, 35 (CAG), 574 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Conﬁ dence building measures (CBMs): 222 between India: and China, 311; Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and Pakistan, 737–38 74, 321 Confucianism, 199 Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), Congress Party, 3, 10; acceptance 131, 146 to partition, 7 Central Water Commission (CWC), Congress Working Committee (CWC), 407 4; adoption of Quit India resolu- Chakma tribe, 367; Bangladesh, in, tion, 5; on old imperialism, 22 361 Constituent Assembly: Nehru speech China–India relation(s) see India– in, 31 China relation(s) Council of Foreign Relations, 601 China Institute of Strategic Studies Cuba troops: role in Angola decolon- (CISS), 319 isation, 26–27 China White Paper (1949), 113 Chinese investment(s): India, in, 316 Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), 326; Dalai Lama, 203 adoption of regulation by British, Dali see Talai 362; anti-minority policy, of Declaration on Strategic Partnership: Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Pakistan and Bangladesh, 361 between India and Russia, 550 Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, Deep Penetration Strike Aircraft 369 (DPSA), 109 Churchill, Winston, 52, 59 Defence Policy Group (DPG): forma- Citizenship Act (1948), (1964), tion by India and America, 688 483, 494 Defence Research and Development Civil disobedience movement, 4, 413 Organisation (DRDO), 730, 771, see also Gandhi, M.K. 772 civil non cooperation, 55 Delhi Agreement (1950), 334–36 civil war: Sri Lanka, in, 520 Delhi Declaration (2002), 551–52 Index 807

democracy: restoration in Nepal, 446 Free Trade Agreement (FTA): be- Desai, Morarji, 305 tween India and Sri Lanka, 521 Directorate General of Forces Intel- ligence (DGFI), Bangladesh, Galbraith, John Kenneth, 145, 278, 320–21 289 disarmament: India’s preoccupation Gandhi, Indira, 23, 624 with, 718 Gandhi, M.K., 1, 2, 54 divide and rule policy: Britain, of, Gandhi, Rajiv, 109, 504, 626 55–56 Ganga water dispute: between India Dominion status, 58; Congress party and Bangladesh, 406–9 acceptance of, 57 Ganga Waters Treaty (1996), 407 Durban Declaration, 47 General Security of Military Informa- tion Agreement (GSOMIA), 688 Geneva Agreement of Trade and East Pakistan, 614; and Bangladesh Tariff (GATT), 677 crisis (1971), 75; India’s assistance genocide: Sri Lanka, in, 520 for independence struggle to, 327; genuine non-alignment, 23 Nixon Administration, criticism Ghosh, Manash, 408 against, 616 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 543–44 Eelam People’s Revolutionary Front Gorkha National Liberation Front (EPRLF), 505 (GNLF), 443 Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Government of India Act (1935), 3 Students (EROS), 505 greenhouse gases (GHGs): collabor- Electric Power Trade Treaty, 452 ation between India and America, Enemy Property Ordinance (1969), to reduce emission of, 683 349 Green Revolution, 652 Enemy Property Rules: Pakistan, of, Gujral, I.K., 41 349 Gulf War (1990-91), 41 ethnic cleansing, 342 European Economic Community Haji Pir Pass: returning of position to (EEC), 95 Pakistan, by Shastri, 607 European Union (EU), 50, 359 Harare Declaration, 37 extremist: Gandhi as, 55 Harkatul-e-Jihad-e-Islam (HUJI), 393 Hazratbal incident, 338–39 Federation of Indian Chambers Highly Skilled Migrants Programme of Commerce and Industry (HSMP), 83–84 (FICCI), 680 Hindu refugees: movement of, 326

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty House of Commons, 53 (FMCT), 733 Hungary case: India’s role in, 72 Food for Peace Programme: America, Hyde Act (2006), 745, 747–56 of, 645 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), 316, 678 Illegal Migrants Determination by Foreigners Act (1946), 377 Tribunals (IMDT) Act, 377 Foreign Exchange Regulation Act illegal migration: of Bangladeshi (FERA), 673 people, into India, 374 freedom movement: role of Gandhi, Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) 55 Act (1950), 374 808 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Immigration Act (1971), (1988), 81, Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs): 82 foreign aid fl ow to, 399 immigration, in Britain: reasons for, Indian Military Liaison Group during 1950s, 79 (IMLG), 434 India–America civilian nuclear- Indian Military Mission (IMM): cooperation, 602 Nepal, in, 421, 433 India–Bangladesh relation(s): ex- Indian National Army (INA), 58 changing of enclaves, 404; Indian National Congress: preparation Ganga water dispute, 406–9; of foreign policy, of India, 228 illegal migration, insecurity and Indian Space Research Organisation terrorism, 374; minorities fate: (ISRO), 628 in hills, 361–74; in plains, 324; Indian territory(ies): Kaul suggestion trade relations between, 405 to Nehru, for ejecting China India–China conflict (1962), 28; from, 285 formulation of long and medium Indian Wheat Bill, 610 term programme by Britain, 73 India–Pakistan relation(s): 1947–48 India–China relation(s): development confl ict, 114; 1965 confl ict, 135– after 1962 confl ict, 300; devel- 45; 1971 confl ict, 145; political opment during (1945-50), 225; turmoil impact, on China, 304; Morarji government, interests of, 1999 confl ict, 181–83; jihad by 305–6; Simla conference (1913- Pakistan, 183; J&K at United 14), 216–25; Tibet status, 198; Nations, 128–35; post-1971 de- towards 1954 agreement, 240– velopment, 175–81 45; towards 1962 confl ict, 245 India–Russia Joint Statement, 550 India Committee, 6 India’s Atomic Energy Commission, India–former Soviet Union (FSU)/ 713 Russia relation(s): economic India–Sri Lanka Agreement (1987), transactions, 556; military 510; Indian Peace Keeping Force transactions, 569; Moscow (IPKF), dispatch of, 512 instruction, to CPI, 536–37; India–Sri Lanka relation(s): 1987 political transactions, 533 agreement between, 509–20; Indian Air Force, 13 anti-Tamil riots, in 1983, 497– Indian and Pakistani Residents 508; civil war and genocide, in (Citizenship) Act (1949), 494 Sri Lanka, 520; Sinhala–Tamil Indian Council of World Affairs, relations, 487–97 581, 700 India’s Tarapur Atomic Power Station, India–Nepal Peace and Friendship 89 Treaty (1950), 418–19, 481–86 India–UK Defence Consultative Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 India–Nepal relation(s): after restora- Group (DCG), 111 tion, of democracy in 1990, 446; India–UK relation(s): disagreement coup and punishment, of King during 1970s: Anglo-America Gyanendra, 457; dispute between agreement, for naval base devel- water resources, 470; Mahendra’s opment, 76; Soviet invasion, of manoeuvres, 425; treaty of 1950, Afghanistan, 76–77; disposal of 481–86; Tribhuvan’s tenure, 423– cliché, 52, 54; East Pakistan and 25; vicious vision, of Virendra’s, Bangladesh crisis (1971), 75; 440–46 economic transactions between, Indian Foreign Service (IFS), 62 94–101; improvement during Index 809

Indo-China war (1962), 72; terrorists, in Nepal, 443; West military transactions between, Bengal’s Siliguri corridor, use 101–12; political transactions of, 390 between, 60; Prime Minister’s Iran–Iraq war (1980), 36 Initiative, signing of, 93; transfer Iraq: possession of WMDs by, 93 of power decision, by Attlee, Islamic Movement of India, 443 52–53 Islamic Revolutionary Force, 443 India–United States relation(s): eco- Islamic terrorism, 1 nomic transactions, 632; mili- Islamic United Liberation Army, 443 tary transactions, 684; political relations during Cold war era, Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 88 579 Jamat-e-Islami (JeI), 394; signing of Indo-American Foundation, 645–47 agreement by China’s communist Indo-British Partnership Initiative party with, 320 (IBPI), 97 Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD): resistance Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace Friend- of China, on UN decision by ship and Cooperation (1971), banning, 323 572 Jamat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh Indo-US nuclear deal, 745 (JuMB), 395 Industrial Enterprise Act (1961), 483 Jammu and Kashmir (J&K): Industrial Policy Resolution (1948), Khrushchev declaration on, 534 637 Janata Dal (JD), 446, 620 Industries (Development and Regula- Janata Party: practising on non- tion) Act (1951), 638 alignment, 23; rule during 1977- Indus Waters Treaty (1960), 341 79, 23 INS Mysore, 108 Jefferson, Thomas, 18 INS Vikrant, 108 jihad, 92 Integrated Guided Missile Programme Jihadi terrorism, 1, 60; recognition (IGMP), 730 of, 2 Intelligence Bureau (IB), 263, 501 Jinnah, M.A., 1, 3, 324 Interim Constitution of Nepal Jumma Refugee Welfare Association see Interim Government of (JWRA), 369–70 Nepal Act Interim Government of Nepal Act Kabir, Shahriar, 394 (1951), 422, 429 Karlekar, Hiranmay, 409 internally displaced persons (IDPs): Kaul, T.N., 18, 23 Tamils as, 526 Kennedy, J.F., 268, 296 International Atomic Energy Agency Kerry-Lugar Pakistan Aid Bill, 195

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 (IAEA), 569, 723 KGB, 545, 660; inﬁ ltration into Indian International Commission of Jurists: embassy, 537; presence in India, report on Sri Lanka, 499 617; role in Hungary crisis, 538 International Development Agency Khan, Aga, 346 (IDA), 663 Khilafat Movement, 2 see also Gandhi, International Labour Organisation M.K.; agitators in, 3 (ILO): Bangladesh government Kosi project: between India and Nepal, refusal to sign convention number 470–72 169, 372 Kripalani, J.B., 10 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), 15; Kudankulam Atomic Power Plant, assistance to Kashmiri Muslim 555 810 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

Kumar, Nitish, 468 Missile Technology Control Regime Labour Party: issuance of policy state- (MTCR), 687, 783 ment, on Jammu and Kashmir, Model Police Act, 399 86 Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act, 656 Laden, Osama bin, 91 Monroe Doctrine, of India: South Land Reforms Act (1964), 483 Asia, in, 13, 592 Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT), 187; UN Moscow Declaration (1994), 548, ban on activities of, 323 550–51 less developed countries (LDCs), Most Seriously Affected (MSA), 666 664–66 Mountbatten, Edwina, 57 Lhasa Convention (1904), 208–9, Mountbatten Plan, 7 216 Munich crisis: Europe, in, 4 Liaquat–Nehru Agreement see Delhi Muslim League, 6, 56 Agreement (1950) Muslim separatism, 2 liberalisation, privatisation, and glob- mutual hostages system, 324 alisation (LPG), 97–98, 631–32 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 496, 506, 525; against Nasreen, Taslima, 354 India–Sri Lanka agreement Nathu La Pass, 316–17 (1987), 513 National Commission on Terrorist Line of Actual Control, 301, 308; Attacks, 738–39 signing of, agreement on main- National Council of Applied Eco- tenance of peace and tranquillity nomic Research (NCAER), 385 along, 310 National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Linlithgow, Lord, 4 734 Look West policy, 547 National Industrial Development Corporation (NIDC), 440 Mahakali treaty, 452, 480 National Missile Defence (NMD): Maintenance of Internal Security Act India’s support to, 314 (MISA), 669 National Security Decision Directive Manmoon, Muntassir, 343 (NSD) 147, 686 Mandela, Nelson, 46 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 1 Maoist Coordination Centre (MCC): Nehru–Liaquat Agreement see Delhi Bihar, in, 454 Agreement (1950) Mbeki, Thabo, 46 Nepal as a Zone of Peace (NZOP), McCarthyism emergence: America, 447; component of, 441 in, 586 Nepali Congress: establishment in Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 McMahon Line, 72, 260; Chinese 1950, 414 views on, 252 Nepal–India relation(s) see India- Menon, V.K. Krishna, 60, 101 Nepal relation(s) MIG-21 ﬁ ghters, 576; supply to India New Delhi Declaration, 37 by Soviet Union, 570 New International Economic Order migration: from Britain to India, 78 (NIEO), 664–65 military pact: between America and non-alignment, 290, 580; ancestry Pakistan, 15 of, 18; deﬁ nition of, 20; genuine minimum credible nuclear deterrent (see Genuine non-alignment); (MCND), 736 Morarji government on, 305; Index 811

Nehru statement on, 20; votaries Omnibus Trade Competitiveness Act of, 21 (1988), 676 Non-Alignment movement (NAM), Organisation of Petroleum Exporting 33, 49–50, 674; disunity in, 36; Countries (OPEC), 663 Gulf war impact, on India’s part- Organization for Economic Cooper- icipation in, 41; reinforcement ation and Development (OECD), of unity at Lusaka summit, 35; 682 traditional item in, 37; Yugoslavia Organization of Islamic Conference, invitation to members of, 39–40 43 non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS), 719 Pakistan army: attack on India’s mili- Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 44, tary (1965), 74 89, 630; India’s refusal to sign, Pakistan Constitutional Amendment 719; signing by China, 734 Act (1963), 363 Non-resident Property (Adminis- Pakistan–India relation(s) see India– tration) Act (Act XLVI) (1974), Pakistan relation(s) 348 Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK), non-violence concept, 18 see also 14, 607 Gandhi, M.K. Palestine Liberation Organization North Atlantic Treaty Organization (PLO), 616 (NATO), 21, 25, 542; justiﬁ cation Panchsheel incorporation: 1954 agree- by Nehru, 68 ment between India and China, North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), in, 245–46 197, 218, 298; battle at Walong Panchsheel Treaty of 1954: violation area, 292; publication of map, by by China, 262 Beijing, 250 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, 61 North Western Frontier Province Parbattya Chattagram Jana Samhati (NWFP), 362 Samiti (PCJSS), 364 Nuclear Haves, 44–45 Paris Peace Conference (1946), 537 Nuclear Non-proliferation Act Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), 718 (NNPA), 723 Partition: Bengal, of (see Partition, of nuclear policy(ies), of India: deal with Bengal); debate on, 17; Gandhi’s United States, 745; deﬁ ciencies assurance to voters, 6; impact on in, 731–32; nuclear tests, of 1998, India’s foreign policy, 2; long- 735; reaction to nuclear tests term consequences of, 2; Punjab, conducted, by China, 692 of (see Partition, of Punjab); short- Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), 630 term consequences of, 2 nuclear test(s): by China: India’s re- Patel, Vallabhbhai, 1

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 sponse towards, 692; by India: in People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 320 1974, 720; in 1998, 735 People’s Liberation Organisation of Nuclear Weapon Free World Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), 505 (NWFW), 730 People’s War Group (PWG): Andhra nuclear weapons: Indian military re- Pradesh, in, 454 commendation to acquire, 729 Point Four programme, 584–85 population growth rates (PGR), 380–81 Obama, Barack, 192 Pramanik, Bimal 403 Ofﬁ cial Language Act (No. 33) (1956), Prevention of Inﬁ ltration from Pakistan 488 (PIP) Act (1964), 375 812 India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007

proxy war see jihad South Asian Preferential Trading Punjab: partition of, 53 Arrangements (SAPTA), 521 Putin, Vladimir, 551, 568 South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), 130–31, 146 Soviet Union’s: adoption of national- Quit India movement, 6, 413 istic expansionist policy, 22; India’s political–military depend- Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant (RAPP), ence on, 14; joining of China, 39; 725–26 post-1945 rule, 21–22; signing Ramakrishna Mission, 347 of treaty: with China, 224; with Rao, P.V. Narasimha, 43, 544 India, 303; war in Afghanistan, Rapid Deployment Force (RDF), 77 14 Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Srinivasan, Krishnan, 409 501, 668 Sri Lanka constitution (1972): Rohingya Solidarity Organization ‘Sinhala Only’ policy, 490 (RSO), 394 Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Roosevelt, F.D., 222 489, 508 Royal Nepal Army (RNA), 433–34, Sri Lanka-India relation(s) see 461–62, 469 Sri Lanka–India relation(s) rupee trading arrangement: between Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF), India and Russia, 565 504; and LTTE ﬁ ght in north Russian Global Navigation Satellite Sri Lanka, 529; suspension System, 574 of military operations, against Tamils, 505 Sri Lanka Tamils: concentration in Sanskrit language: use in Nepal, dry zone, 487–88 410–11 subterranean nuclear explosion (SNE), Second world war: Gandhi advice 719–20 to Britain, 55; joining of Indian Suez Canal dispute, 69; war between viceroy, 56; Tibet expectation for Egypt and Israel, 71 US help, 222 Suppression of Terrorism Act (1978), secularism: inclusion in Bangladesh 85 Constitution, 355–56 Securities and Exchange Board of Talai: deﬁ nition of, 201 India (SEBI), 679 Taliban: America collaboration with Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 34 Pakistan, to combat, 627; Pakistan Shimla (Simla) Conference (1913-14): support to, 14; use of America Britain threat to China, 216; money by Pakistan, for arms sup- suggestion of Britain, to divide to Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 ply to, 739 Tibet, 216 Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation Sikkim’s integration: into India and (TELO), 505 its impact on ruling government, Tamil Language (Special Provisions) of Nepal, 441–42 Act (No. 28) (1958), 489 Singh, Charan, 77 Tamil United Front (TUF), 496 Singh, Manmohan, 48, 555 Tamil United Liberation Front Singh, Swaran, 22 (TULF) see Tamil United Front Sinhala–Tamil alienation, 490–91 (TUF) Sino-American intervention: Tanakpur agreement, 476 Bangladesh crisis, in, 29 Taoism, 199 Index 813

Tarapur Atomic Power Plant, 555 criticising security forces, of Tarapur Atomic Power Station Nepal, 467–68 (TAPS), 718 United Nations High Commissioner Tashkent Declaration (1966), 349 for Refugees (UNHCR), 526 territorial integrity, of India: Soviet United Nations (UN): Jammu and Union concern, in 1961 over, 539 Kashmir issue at, 128 terrorist attack: in Mumbai, on 26 United States Agency for International November (2008), 691 Aid (USAID), 654 Thagla tragedy, 272, 287 United States Atomic Energy Act Thatcher, Margaret, 72, 89 (1954), 630–31, 753 Third World see non-alignment United States–India Peaceful Atomic Tibet: appeal to United Nations, 233; Energy Act (2006), 630, 744 China’s stress on liberation of, United States (US): criticism against 229; Chinese invasion, in 1950, Anglo-French attack, on Egypt, 225; Chinese invasion of, 234; 14; planning to recruit Pakistan, India’s desire, to acquire Britain as military ally, 14 rights in, 226; Korean war impact UN Security Council, 76; resolution on on, 237; status and its impact on India’s nuclear programme, 313 China, 198 Tibetan Trade Mission, 226–28 Tibet–China treaty (822), 216 Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 45 trade values: India with China, of, 316 Vajpayee–Clinton joint statement, Treaty of Friendship: between China 627 and Nepal, 427 Validated End-User programme: Treaty of Friendship and Peace America, of, 682 (1993): between India and USSR, Vested Property Act (1974), 348, 29–30, 547 354–55 Treaty of Trade and Commerce: between India and Nepal, 420 Warsaw Pact, 28, 29 Turkey: citizens question on Nehru Washington, George, 18 knowledge, of history, 21 Weapons of mass destruction two-nation theory, 327, 356 (WMDs), 93 Western colonialism, 21 Ukhanda Land Tenure Act (1964), Western liberal democracy, 20–21 483 Westland scandal, 110–11 UK-India relation(s) see India–UK White Paper on ‘Nationality, Immigra- relation(s) tion and Asylum’, 83

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016 underground nuclear tests, by India: World Bank, 655 US reaction on, 89 World Trade Organization (WTO), UN General Assembly, 71 47 United Liberation Front of Assam worldwide Islamic terrorism (WIT), (ULFA), 397 378, 390 United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), 66 Yeltsin, Boris, 547 United Nations Emergency Force Yew, Lee Kuan, 35–36 (UNEF), 71 United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR): Zia, Begum Khaleda, 348–49 Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 01:22 24 May 2016