4.1 Turning Outward — From Internal Challenges to External Ones

Up to this point in the textbook, the focus has been on what was happening inside the country — Partition, integration of princely states, the writing of the Constitution, the first general elections, the Congress's dominance and the early opposition. Now the camera turns outward. India's leaders had to face the equally testing world of external relations. Their innovative answer was the policy of non-alignment^?. Yet, even as they pursued non-alignment, they also found themselves at war with neighbours — the three wars of 1962, 1965 and 1971. External relations were both shaped by, and went on to shape, domestic politics.

This chapter therefore examines four big questions:

• The international context in which India's external relations were forged.
• The operational principles that informed Indian foreign policy.
• The history of India's relations with China and Pakistan.
• The evolution of India's nuclear policy.

4.2 The International Context — A Difficult World to Be Born Into

India became an independent nation-state in an exceptionally trying international setting. The world was just emerging from a devastating war and was struggling with reconstruction. A second attempt to build an international body — the United Nations — was under way. Many new countries were emerging as colonialism collapsed in Asia and Africa, and most of these new nations were grappling simultaneously with two challenges: welfare and democracy. Free India's foreign policy reflected all these concerns in the period immediately after Independence.

Apart from these global pressures, India also had its own particular burdens. The British government had left behind a legacy of unresolved international disputes; Partition brought with it severe communal and humanitarian pressures; and the unfinished task of poverty alleviation demanded urgent attention. This was the overall context in which India began to participate in world affairs as an independent nation-state. Born in the backdrop of the Second World War, India decided to conduct its foreign relations with the aim of respecting the sovereignty of all other nations and seeking security through the maintenance of peace. This very aim is echoed in the Directive Principles of State Policy.

Just as both internal and external factors shape the behaviour of an individual or a family, both domestic and international environments influence the foreign policy of a nation. Developing countries lack the resources to advocate their concerns vigorously in the international system. They therefore tend to pursue more modest goals than the advanced states — focusing on peace and development in their own neighbourhoods. Their economic and security dependence on the more powerful states sometimes shapes their foreign-policy choices. Many newly independent nations, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, ended up supporting the foreign-policy preferences of those countries that gave them aid or credit.

The result was the division of the world into two clear camps. One was led by the United States and its western allies; the other by the Soviet Union. There was, however, also a third experiment under way — the Non-Aligned Movement^? — in which India played a leading role. The end of the Cold War would later transform the very context of international relations. But when India achieved freedom and started framing its foreign policy, the Cold War was just beginning and the world was rapidly polarising. The big question facing Nehru's India was: did it belong to either of these camps?

4.3 The Operational Principles of India's Foreign Policy

From the Article-51 commitments and from Nehru's worldview, six core operational principles emerged that would guide India's external relations through the 1950s and 1960s — and beyond:

4.3.1 Panchsheel — The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence

The joint enunciation of Panchsheel — the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence — by Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai on 29 April 1954 was a major moment in India's foreign policy. It was meant to be a step toward a stronger Sino-Indian relationship, but it also became a template that India offered to the world.

4.4 The Architects — Nehru, Krishna Menon, Vijaylakshmi Pandit

4.4.1 Nehru — Prime Minister and Foreign Minister

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister, played a crucial role in setting the national agenda. Uniquely, he was his own foreign minister. As both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Nehru exercised profound influence in the formulation and implementation of India's foreign policy from 1946 to 1964. His three major objectives were to preserve hard-earned sovereignty, protect territorial integrity, and promote rapid economic development. Nehru sought to achieve all three through the strategy of non-alignment.

There were, of course, parties and groups in India that disagreed. Some leaders — including Dr B.R. Ambedkar — believed India should be more friendly with the bloc led by the United States, since that bloc claimed to be pro-democracy. Several anti-communist parties, such as the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and later the Swatantra Party, also wanted a pro-US foreign policy. But Nehru possessed considerable leeway in formulating foreign policy and was able to keep India firmly on the non-aligned path.

4.4.2 V.K. Krishna Menon — Diplomat and Defence Minister

4.4.3 Vijaylakshmi Pandit — India's Voice at the UN

The third architect was Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Nehru's sister and a path-breaking diplomat. She led India's delegation to the United Nations and in 1953 became the first woman President of the UN General Assembly. She earlier served as India's Ambassador to the Soviet Union and the United States, and as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom — a remarkable record given the pre-1947 reality of women's exclusion from public office.

4.5 Distance from the Two Camps

India's foreign policy in the early years vigorously pursued the dream of a peaceful world. It did so by advocating non-alignment, by working to reduce Cold War tensions, and by contributing significantly in human resources to UN peacekeeping operations. The natural question is: why did India refuse to join either camp? The answer is that India did not want to be tied to the military alliances led by the US and the USSR against each other. The US-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact had come into existence in the early Cold War. India advocated non-alignment as the ideal foreign-policy approach.

This was a difficult balancing act, and the balance did not always look perfect. Two examples from the same year illustrate the dilemma:

Despite such uneven moments, by and large India did take an independent stand on international issues and could secure aid and assistance from members of both blocs. While India was busy convincing other developing countries about non-alignment, Pakistan joined the US-led military alliances. The US was unhappy with India's independent initiatives. The result: considerable unease in Indo-US relations during the 1950s, a growing partnership between India and the Soviet Union, and a US that watched with discomfort.

India had also adopted a strategy of planned economic development with an emphasis on import-substitution. The drive to develop a domestic resource base meant that export-oriented growth was limited. This development strategy further reduced India's economic interaction with the outside world — a fact that, combined with non-alignment, gave India its distinctive 1950s posture: politically independent, economically inward-looking, morally vocal.

4.6 Afro-Asian Unity — From the Asian Relations Conference to Bandung

Given India's size, location and power potential, Nehru envisaged a major role for India in world affairs and especially in Asian affairs. His era was marked by deliberate cultivation of contacts between India and the newly independent states of Asia and Africa. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Nehru was an ardent advocate of Asian unity. Under his leadership, India convened the Asian Relations Conference in March 1947 — five months before India itself attained independence.

India also made earnest efforts for the early realisation of Indonesia's freedom from the Dutch colonial regime. In 1949, India convened an international conference in support of Indonesia's freedom struggle. India was a staunch supporter of the wider decolonisation process, and firmly opposed racism — especially apartheid in South Africa.

4.6.1 The Bandung Conference — 1955

The Bandung Conference^?, held in the Indonesian city of Bandung in April 1955, marked the zenith of India's engagement with the newly independent Asian and African nations. Twenty-nine Asian-African nations participated. The Bandung Conference later led directly to the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

4.7 The Non-Aligned Movement — Belgrade 1961

The First Summit of the NAM was held in Belgrade in September 1961. Twenty-five countries attended. Nehru was a co-founder of the movement. Together with him, four other leaders formed the core founding leadership of NAM:

4.7.1 Strategic Autonomy — The Logic of Non-Alignment

For India, non-alignment was not a passive neutrality. It was a strategy of strategic autonomy — the freedom to take a position based on the merits of each issue rather than on bloc loyalty. This freedom yielded three concrete dividends in the 1950s and 1960s: India received development aid from both the US and USSR; India played a respected mediating role in conflicts (Korea, Indo-China, Suez); and India's voice carried unusual weight in the UN General Assembly because it was not seen as anyone's proxy.

4.7.2 Critiques and Persistence of Non-Alignment

Non-alignment also attracted critics. Three lines of criticism recurred. First, inconsistency — that India's "non-alignment" sometimes leaned visibly toward Moscow, especially after the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty. Second, irrelevance after the Cold War — when the USSR collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War ended, the very logic of "non-alignment" between two blocs seemed obsolete. Third, opportunism — that India used non-alignment to extract aid from both sides without a clear principle. Defenders responded that non-alignment was always about independent judgement not equidistance, and that the principle survives in a multipolar world as strategic autonomy: India cooperates with the US on the Quad, with Russia on defence, and with China on BRICS — all simultaneously. NAM still meets, with India playing an active role in setting the global South's agenda.

4.8 Living Up to Article 51 — A First Audit

How well did the Indian state live up to its constitutional foreign-policy principles in the first two decades after Independence? On three counts the record was strong: India contributed peacekeepers to the UN, opposed colonialism and apartheid, and refused to participate in superpower aggression. On one count it stumbled — its idealism could not prevent three wars in ten years with neighbours. The next part of this chapter examines that harder reality.