4.2 The seven phases of India foreign policy
From the course by The University of Melbourne
As India's influence increases in the international system, understanding its foreign policy and its engagement with the rest of the world is critical for students of international relations. This section is designed as a comprehensive review of some of the key issues related to India's word view and its behaviour towards the external world. Apart from taking stock of contemporary thinking and policies of the country, the major thrust would be on India's relations with its neighbours and great powers, its nuclear weapons policy and the ideological foundations of its foreign policy after independence.
We talked earlier about why India is interesting or
why India is exceptional and why is India's foreign policy or
engagement the world worth understanding.
Let me now take you to the seven different phases of Indian foreign policy.
The Power of Ideas from 1947 to 1962, the Fractured Years from 1962 to 1970,
the Idea of Power from 1971 to 1989.
The Years of Reflection from 1990 to 1998, The Reality of Power from 1998 to 2011,
Back to the Future from 2011 to 2014 and
Enlightend National Interest 2014 and beyond.
So let me take you through the first ways the Power of Ideas.
The Power of Ideas was a power when India became independent.
From 1947 when India became independent until about 1962
India's foreign policy was rooted in the kind of idealism that had been part
of the Indian Freedom Movement led by the two figures that you see in this slide,
Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
Who's described as a father of the nation, but who led the freedom movement,
the movement for independence non-violently, believing as he did
that the highest goal is non-violence.
That there can be no difference between means and ends.
That if you win
your freedom through violence, that freedom would not be worth winning.
And that's why he had made civil disobedience and
non violence the two pillars around which the Indian freedom movement campaigned and
carried out its struggle.
The freedom movement
was the kind of ideology provided the ideological bedrock for
the shaping of India's foreign policy.
And the first expression of that was in a concept called non-alignment.
Remember that India's
first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was also India's foreign minister.
He was educated in Harrow, Cambridge, was called to the bar,
and was one of the most thoughtful leaders that India has ever produced.
His writings and autobiography, his writings on Indian history,
on world history, are even today recommended reading in many universities.
And this whole philosophy of non-alignment was something that he deeply believed in.
The term was first used by Krishna Menon, a protege of Nehru, in 1953.
But the basic philosophy was that India will not
get itself enwalled or
entrapped in the Cold War rivalry between the East and the West.
Recall that there was now a fiery Cold War,
to mix metaphors deliberately, between the Soviet Union-led Warsaw Pact countries and
the United States-led NATO countries.
And most countries in the world, had a part of the Soviet bloc or
demonstrated loyalty to the Soviet bloc or were part of the US-led bloc.
India, newly independent,
took a stand that we will not get trapped in this Cold War.
For us,
our autonomy to decide on what is
right on an issue based principle is important.
And that's why Nehru campaigned for non-alignment a third way.
A way which was different from neutrality.
India said that it's not that we will sit back passively.
We'll take a stand, but we'll take a stand on its merits.
And it was also rooted in the whole idea of Panchsheel,
which India and China had then pioneered based on the five restraints.
Which has mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty,
mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in domestic affairs,
equality and mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence.
So non alignment and Panchsheel went together.
At this stage, Nehru and India believed
in the power of ideas that ideas rather than military power can make a difference.
In any case even realists argue that India's non-aligned
policy was perhaps the best way of influencing the world at the time
given how militarily weak, how economically deprived India was
recently decolonized but
what it had in Nehru was someone who was able to articulate new idea,
think out of the box and earn the respect of several within the world.
Indeed it used to be said when Nehru speaks, the world listens.
There were others, like the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,
of the United States, who found nonalignment immoral and said so.
But it was during this idealistic phase of India's foreign policy from
from 1947 to 1962.
That India pioneered new ideas, new policies, new frameworks of thinking,
and some of these were a great belief in decolonisation and anti-apartheid.
India led the movement against apartheid in South Africa, campaigned vigorously and
ferociously for decolonisation of other parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
India was in the forefront of disarmament and peace-making.
Indeed, the first, the precursor to the comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty,
the partial Test-Ban Treaty, was pioneered by India.
India and Nehru were asked
to intervene and mediate in the Korean dispute in the 1950s.
Similarly, on issues of Afro-Asian unity, on believing that the Third World or
the new recently decolonized countries had a common stake in building a more
peaceful world, was part of Nehru's thinking and India's thinking.
India similarly pioneered multilateralism.
In the United Nations, in the Commonwealth.
Many had expected that India would walk out of the Commonwealth,
the moment India attained independence.
In contrast, India believed that any multilateral forum
where you could have a voice, where you could express your opinion.
Where you could, you could articulate new ideas, was a forum
worth contributing to.
So India became a champion of the commonwealth as well.
While pursuing also or for development policies across
the globe which recognise that there were severe equity issues,
that there were parts of the world which were deeply deprived and
were living in deprivation and partially because
of colonisation.
And that there had to be corrective measures introduced multilaterally,
to ensure that there was more even development.
So if you've seen this phase, you see the phase in which India is struggling within
to create stability in the economy, and in the polity, but internationally
it is representing the best ideas of Nehru, of India, and
of the leadership which had led India into independence.