001. Why Doesn't India Take Sides? | How Nations Think

Uh, thanks, James.

It's great to be on the show.

I think it's an important place to start and an important question to start with, uh, because if, if you were India's founding fathers and mothers in 1947, um, you came into a world, uh, that wasn't, wasn't what you might have, uh, liked.

Uh, but, you know, it's the old kind of, uh, Donald Rumsfeld ph- phrase, I think, which is, you know, you work with the, with the situation you, you, you have rather than the one you wished for.

And I think, uh, the important factor for just the, the chronology for India, it becomes independence, independent a couple of years after the, the Second World War, um, an experience that had touched India, uh, in many ways, including the fact that Indians, uh, had fought and died a- around the world, but also, uh, India's, uh, India had helped pay for Britain's, uh, Britain's participation in that war.

Um, so it was partly kind of coming out of the Second World War, but this is also, India becomes independent as, uh, kind of Cold War lines are hardening, so you start to see the US-Soviet competition really start to...

You know, Truman's, Harry Truman's, uh, 1947 speech, uh, happens just a few months before, uh, India becomes independent.

And then I think, so there's, on the one hand, it's the strategic environment in which India is operating that helps shape its foreign policy, a bipolar confrontation that's dominating the world.

But on the other hand, you also have India coming at these problems from, uh, as a, from, a, as a post-colonial state.

Uh, so it's thinking, so it's basically the intersection of kind of Cold War bipolar confrontation, but then the decolonization process that intersect into kind of Indian, Indian foreign policy developing.

And on that, there's, on, similarly, an Indian view at that time from both the right and left and center, uh, as well, about India as a, as a civilizational state that before, uh, be- before, uh, British Empire or before the, you know, colonial experience for Indians, had been a dominant economic power in the world, uh, going back thousands of years.

Uh, and then second, at the same time, a set of policymakers who had to grapple with the strategic environment, had the historical view of India as a great power, but then had to, had some immediate concerns, including nation-building, uh, putting together a country, uh, that didn't even have borders settled at that point.

So where, where this intersects is, or where this kind of, how this manifests it- itself is, an India that says, uh, "We need to, uh, nation-build, we need to develop, we need to secure our, uh, our frontiers, and we need to do this, uh, while the world might be blowing up, uh, all around us." And unlike China, which in its past had kind of, you know, kept foreigners towards its periphery, towards the coasts, uh, and, uh, India didn't have that luxury.

It had always had this experience, whether because it was a, a, uh, largely maritime country, but even continentally, it understood and its policymakers understood that India couldn't stay apart or aloof from what was happening in the world.

There was this belief that if there was a crisis anywhere, it would affect, it would spill over into India, that, uh, a wor- war anywhere could potentially become a world war, and that would disrupt that nation-building.

And so you saw an India, uh, that wasn't staying a- apart, that did want to be involved in things like the UN, in, uh, international order-building, uh, to keep the peace and stability, not because of something idealistic, but very pragmatically because India needed peace and stability to grow and develop and secure itself.

And you saw an India that also said it did not want to join- Alliances because for two reasons.

One, its experience of the, uh, uh, or its view of the Second World War, uh, was, or at least Nehru's view, the first prime minister's view, was that because of alliances, this war in Europe had become a global war.

And second, the view that as a post-colonial country, as a coun- a newly independent country, India wanted to retain independence of action, and it never wanted to be taken to war again, uh, uh, based on somebody else's interests.

So the short form was the decision should be made in New Delhi, not in London, Washington, uh, or Moscow.

And I, I, I think that sort of ties in very much, uh, with, with the idea of, of non-alignment, and it, it's, it's moved to become, um, sort of quite an influential member of that.

And, uh, uh, was that something that was...

From the sounds of it, it, it, it had quite widespread support in, in the country at the time at, at the political leadership.

It was certainly the dominant view.

I, I would point out there's never really been a consensus view on pretty much anything in India, including foreign policy.