Something About The Law

Our tech-savvy Minister of State for External Affairs seems to have got into a spot of bother again – this time though, its not on Twitter’s turf, but at an event organised by the Association of Indian diplomats and the Indian Council of World Affairs in London. To quote Mr. Tharoor,

“I think his [is a] very clear summary for us of the way in which Indian foreign policy drew from our founding fathers’ sense of our civilisational heritage, the extraordinary contribution of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to the articulation of that civilisational heritage, the manner in which both enhanced India’s standing in the world and gave us the negative reputation for conducting foreign policy as a sort of moralistic running commentary on other people’s behaviour.”

Quite naturally, the Congress establishment has been taken aback by his comments on a rather hallow issue like Nehruvian Foreign Policy. However, his comments, which supplemented Lord Bikhu Parekh’s, opens the door for a lively debate on whether Independent India’s foreign policy was moral to a fault. The need for such a debate is extremely relevant at a time when our aspirations and commitments at both regional and global levels are rapidly burgeoning.

To be very clear, Tharoor himself has not been critical of the moral angles to Nehruvian policy – as is evident from the quote, he has merely stated that the pursuit of such a policy was a double-edged sword which, apart from its advantages, also generated negative reputation for its moral evaluation of ‘other people’s behaviour’. Undeniably true.  When Indian troops marched to occupy the Portugese colony of Goa in 1961, JFK is reported to have said that atleast now, the US would be spared India’s lectures about a moral foreign policy. Despite all our early commitments to non-alignment, India has had phases of proclivity towards the USSR (during Mrs. Gandhi’s regime) and the U.S (the past 6 – 1o years). Whereas we walked the moral high ground of non-proliferation in the 50s, India exulted after the Buddha smiled at Pokhran in ’74 and ’98. Evidently, emerging India has rarely sung to the tune of Pt. Nehru’s sacrosanct policy. Despite breaking free from moral shackles (which some may claim never existed), it is critical to understand whether India’s foreign policy benefited from such a posture in its infancy.

Nehru, who was our PM and EAM for 17 long years, articulated India’s foreign policy along the lines of multilateral cooperation and non-alignment. At a time when colonialism was beginning to witness its sunset, Nehru’s statesmanly approach to international organizations emboldened the voice and stance of developing countries in the same. If we have a G77 today, and if India is still bracketed as a benign leader of the Developing World, it is because of old alliances forged during the formation of the UN and the NAM.

When I was at the United Nations for a summer program last year, I was told of the high regard in which Indian diplomats were considered, not just by developing countries, but the Great Powers as well. Its natural to put this down to the talent of some of the best Foreign Service officers in the world, but it is equally important to recognize that our strong presence in the UN is due to our long-standing and invaluable contribution to multilateral diplomacy – be it in the form of Blue Berets in regions and conflicts where India had absolutely no interests to preserve, or to the cause of democratic reform which we preached endlessly about.

Emerging from the bloodbath of Partition and nationalist violence, it was easy for India to have swung towards the path of militarism and authoritarian rule. Our foreign policy’s moral compass, however, prevented that. While,  like Mr. Tharoor says, we might have come across as a running commentator on third-party affairs, our ‘priesthood’ also resulted in a self-imposed responsibility to maintain internal democracy. True, this has been criticized in instances such as Goa’s annexation and Kashmir’s plebiscite condition, but India’s integrity as a conglomerate of incredible and awe-inspiring diversity needed to be protected at all costs. We could’ve had tanks on our streets for decades, but our commitment to (undeniably) moral aspirations have hitherto resulted in 15 General Elections.

Non-alignment is another realm of Nehruvian FP that has often come under heavy artillery. From the rather convenient outpost of hindsight, its easy to see that NAM has had its own advantages. As a newly-independent country, hungry for resources and aid, it was easy to have turned into a superpower-satellite prior to the Cold War.

Let’s just take a look at what has happened to USSR satellites now. East Germany, North Korea, Poland, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba – the list is rather long, and boasts of several impoverished regions of the world. Of course, the US fought the war with its ‘Allies’ and in as much as it is fashionable to say that we should’ve teamed up with the eventual winner of the Cold War, India was clearly in no position to be an ‘ally’ to the West. At the same time, India would’ve been doomed to obscurity had we just slept over the War. Instead, Nehru rose to the occasion, seizing an opportunity to grab the spotlight on the international stage. Like they say, any publicity is good publicity.

Its true that our morality in foreign affairs was prone to massive hits, even at the slightest opportunity. Kashmir and the issue of plebiscite was a raw wound, open to further international criticism. But it would be rather foolish not to expect a nation-state to preserve its interests at the foremost – the issue of a moral foreign policy was, in fact, central to our interests. (How?) As an emerging nation, it was in our best interests to ally and possibly ‘lead’ a group of developing nations in order to gain leverage on contentious issues such as Kashmir. It was also the best way to subvert any dominance from the extant superpowers that would later influence our trajectory of development.

It would not be unfair to say that we have not led the true potential of this ‘moral’ foreign policy to its logical conclusion. Nehru’s final years marked the beginning of our isolationism in world politics, and for years we basked in the non-existent sunshine of values, when millions starved. Now we have the opportunity to redeem ourselves, but will the proverbial Elephant in the room squeeze out the others?

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Tags: Foreign Affairs, india, Nehru, Shashi Tharoor