M. R. Josse
Former
Editor-in-Chief
The Rising Nepal, Kathmandu. Nepal
This is not a traditional book review; it is a critique of the former Indian Foreign Secretary J. N. Dixit‘s preachy, didactic “Across Borders: Fifty Years of India’s Foreign Policy” (Picus Books, New Delhi, 1998).
Dixit is lavishly praised for painting “a broad canvas, stretching across a time span of over 50 years, with bold, powerful and authoritative strokes” and creating a “modern-day masterpiece.”
A Broad Canvas:
India’s Foreign Secretary between 1991 and 1994, he is hailed for not just projecting “the various facets of India’s foreign policy as they evolved” but also for placing in perspective “significant epoch-making events, which profoundly affected the orientation of India’s foreign policy priorities”, while offering incisive “analyses of their ramifications and repercussions.
The volume should thus be of considerable value to students of Indian foreign policy, in India and abroad, if nothing else than for the staggering quantum of historical data and assorted insights presented on myriad positions adopted by India, mostly between 1947 and 1998, on issues bearing on Indian foreign/security policy.
What many will find tedious is the author’s distracting predilection for repetition and over-analysis, articulated in a tone that is preachy and didactic.
The last attribute hints that the tome may have, to some extent, been written for the edification of fresh Indian Foreign Service recruits.
Cherry-Picking:
Неrе, I have no intention of scrutinizing each and even, Here, of A cross Borders’; neither of zeroing on what Dixit has or hasn’t, written on Nepal: there is precious line on the subject- which, of course, carries its own eloquent commentary!
I shall in fact cherry-pick: zooming in on items as are personally appealing to me, a student of international relations and a political journalist of some vintage.
Cutting to the chase, let me begin with the author’s claim (pp.43-44) that India missed securing a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council – due to “a principled decision of (PM) Nehru.”
“There was a suggestion from the Americans in the mid 1950s, when the US-Chinese antagonism was at its height in the Cold War context, that India should replace China in the Security Council as a permanent member… Washington thought it would achieve three objectives by offering India a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. First, it would reduce the communist presence in the Security Council.
Second, India could be won over to the side of the US by being given this important status. Third, it would generate antagonism between India and China if the former accepted the offer. Pandit Nehru, however, refused to accept the offer for the permanent seat at the cost of China in the context of India’s commitment to Asian solidarity and its support for Chinese government.”
May I dare say: (a) That there are no corroborative details or documents quoted to establish that outlandish claim; and (b) that he has not explained on what political/legal basis the United States could make such an “offer” to India, in the first place?
No less engrossing is the author’s admission, (p. 36): “Nehru’s unselfconscious regional leadership stance at the Bandung Conference and his equally ‘innocent’ attempt of introducing Chou En-lai to the rest of the Afro-Asian leadership at the conference aroused China’s sense of pride and hurt Chinese sensitivities. The negative consequences of these developments adversely affected Sino-Indian relations from 1955 onward.
Just imagine, for argument’s sake, the consternation that would have erupted within the Indian leadership if the Chinese premier had sought to ‘introduce’ Nehru to the Bandung conclave!
I can only remind that in 1955 Premier Chou En-lai needed no introduction at Bandung by Nehru, or, indeed, any other Afro-Asian leader.
What piqued my interest, too, is Dixit’s claim (p.52) that India had, prior to Bandung, “reconciled” herself to “China’s claiming suzerainty over Tibet and eroding the authority of the Dalai Lama” – strongly suggesting that India at the time possessed other viable options vis-à-vis China.
India’s military debacle at the hands of China, seven years after Bandung, demolishes the idea that India had a surfeit of arrows in her quiver to target China.
Incidentally, the author refers to the Dalai Lama being “exiled” from Tibet (p.228). The fact is that in 1959 he fled Tibet and entered an India which granted political asylum.
He subsequently set up headquarters in Dharamshala where he resides in self-exile.
I found it refreshing that Dixit (p. 55) admits: “The over confidence of some military commanders of the time about the superiority of the Indian Armed Forces over the Chinese was one of the inputs that triggered off the war” of 1962 between India and China.
Revealing is the claim (p.62) that between 1956 and 1961, “China had intensified its relations with both Nepal and Burma. Neither the Chinese on the one hand nor the Nepalese or the Burmese on the other kept Nehru informed. This was interpreted by Nehru as an incipient act of strategic encirclement of India. What is curious is that in his exchanges with Chou En-lai between 1954 and 1961, he did not raise these concerns in a categorical or firm manner.”
Dixit’s disclosures (pp. 66-67) regarding India’s contrasting reactions vis-à-vis the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of the Suez Canal zone and the Soviet invasion of Hungary are illuminating. While India chose – rightly – to excoriate the imperial gun-boat diplomacy so brazenly displayed during the Suez invasion, she however adopted an ambivalent and generally supportive stance regarding the latter.
While begrudgingly admitting that such sharply contrasting reactions “negated New Delhi’s claims that its foreign policy was based on moral principles”, Dixit seeks to justify her craven posture on the Hungary crisis explaining that “it was the first major manifestation of India acting firmly to safeguard its perceived national interests.”
No less edifying is that, regarding India’s intervention/ food drop in Sri Lanka in 1987, Dixit blandly informs, (P. 186) “though technically India’s action might have been a violation of international law…it was politically necessary and morally justified.” He compares it with the Berlin airlift, “the closest parallel”, before dropping this blooper: dating it to “1961”
[The reader can confirm that the Berlin airlift- which followed the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in June 1948 – caused the U.S. and Britain to initiate a massive airlift bringing needed supplies of food, fuel, and other commodities for the denizens of that beleaguered city. On 12 May 1949, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin acknowledged the blockade had failed and terminated it.]
A similar posture is reflected in his exegesis on the rationale of the 20-year Indo-Soviet pact, signed in New Delhi on 7 August 1971 – as a prelude to India’s military action against Pakistan vis-à-vis the East Pakistan/Bangladesh crisis, months later.
Doubtless, the pact (p. 106) triggered the USSR’s veto against “he US sponsored resolutions in the UN Security Council, which would have been mandatory, if passed, to stop Indian military operations” against Pakistan. He reminds that the “US tried its very best to prevent the defeat of the Pakistani forces.
”
He has also reminded (p. 107) that “a resolution on the East Pakistan crisis brought before the UN General Assembly resulted in an overwhelming majority of member-states voting against the liberation struggle and against India in September-October 1971.”
“Across Borders offers note-worthy recollections (P. 75) of the US aircraft carrier USS Enterprises’ controversial forays into the Bay of Bengal during two crisis situations: in 1962, against the backdrop of India’s humiliating defeat at the hands of China, and in 1971, in the context of Pakistan’s imminent humbling military defeat in East Pakistan.
With regard to the former, the author theorizes that the USS Enterprises’s entry into the Bay of Bengal was “to send a signal to the Chinese that there could be effective American military support for India if the conflict crossed certain thresholds which could threaten India’s territory.
“
Notably, with respect to the 1971 instance, Dixit does not refer to the probability that the American move was not to deter China from coming to Pakistan’s assistance, as was the prevalent Indian view, but to warn her not to take the India-East Pakistan war into West Pakistan and/or Kashmir!
Startling:
What came as a startling revelation was Dixit’s assertion (p. 86) that, during the midst of the Indo-Pak war of 1965, Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan, sent a secret memo to President Ayub Khan, purportedly linking Nepal and Sikkim to the defence of East Pakistan – quoting an excerpt from Stanley Wolpert’s acclaimed Bhutto biography, Zulfie Bhutto of Pakistan – thus:
“The defence of East Pakistan would need to be closely coordinated with Chinese actions both in NEFA (North East Frontier Agency) as also possibly in the regions of Nepal and Sikkim. It would be necessary to provide the Chinese with a link-up with our forces in that sector.
“I envisage a lightening thrust across the narrow stretch of Indian territory that separates Pakistan from Nepal [the reference is to the Jalpaiguri, Siliguri, Bagdogra, and Cooch Behar salients of Indian territory]
“From our point of view, this would be highly desirable. It would be to the advantage of Nepal to secure its freedom from isolation by India. It would solve the problem of Sikkim and Tibet, as for us [it would provide] a stranglehold over Assam, the disposition of which we could then determine.”
Dixit’s valiant attempt to put a gloss on Indian intervention in Sri Lanka, 1980-1990, is reflected in his labeling it, “involvement, not intervention” (p. 159). That is matched by his assiduous defense of India’s justification for the Soviet invasion/occupation of Afghanistan beginning in December 1979, explained at one point (p.137), of having taken place, “only because Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, backed by the US, were trying to subvert a critical exercise being undertaken by a segment of Afghan society to transform their society from its semi-medieval predicament into a modern society and stage.”
India hardly covered herself with glory when I.K. Gujral, as foreign minister in the V.P. Singh government, sided squarely with Iraq (p.
213-214), following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, leading to the first Gulf War in January 1991.
As the author recalls, Gujral, “rushed to both Kuwait and Baghdad” where instead of “expressing sympathy for the Kuwaitis who had been subjected to invasion” he dashed “to Baghdad…. where he managed to get himself photographed. warmly embracing Saddam Hussein.”
Though the author (p. 119) recalls that Prime Minister Morarji Desai criticized “India’s assuming direct control of Sikkim (1975)”, he did nothing to reverse the Sikkim’s annexation. Dixit flubs on the nature of the spurious referendum preceding Sikkim’s merger and presents a hideously distorted picture of Sikkim under the Namgyal monarchy.
Elsewhere, he recalls (p. 125) the “important” offer by US President Jimmy Carter, during his visit to India in January 1978, of supporting a massive project to develop the Brahmaputra basin on the lines of the Indus Waters Accord of 1960 between India and Pakistan.”
In doing so, “Carter also mentioned that the World Bank would be willing to help in this activity. He said this would facilitate honorable and equitable water sharing among Nepal, India and Bangladesh. New Delhi did not respond” thereby losing “an opportunity to find a durable and equitable solution to the vexatious problem of water sharing through international support and international guarantees.”
Summing up:
The mural that Dixit paints is indeed so variegated and vast it is impossible – in this space – to cover it comprehensively.
It is hardly surprisingly that a great deal of it has to do with the US, the USSR, China and Pakistan – including the background and justification for India’s maiden nuclear test in 1994, and the more dramatic ones in 1998 – by India and Pakistan.
In conclusion, I will say that while it is rather exasperating to wade through tons of self-righteous, moralistic rhetoric on India’s less-than-visionary foreign policy, there is, admittedly, considerable wisdom that may be gained from this packaged elucidation of fifty years of Indian foreign policy.
In short, like the curate’s egg: “Across Borders” is good – in parts.
21 April, 2020.
# Text courtesy: Geopolitically Speaking by M. R. Josse. Publisher-Periwinkle Prakashan Pvt. Ltd. Dilli Bazar Kathmandu, Nepal.
Published : September 2020:
Thanks the publisher and the author of the book: Ed. Upadhyaya.
# Our contact email address is: editor.telegraphnepal@gmail.com