Fateful Triangle. Tanvi Madan
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“India and particularly Nehru” were “the most solid element with which the United States can associate itself.”19 The US ambassador to Moscow added that instead of wasting resources trying to take on the communists in China, the US should build up countries like India and Japan “where we still have [a] good chance [to] stem [the] Communist tide.”20
Thus, by the time Nehru landed in Washington in October 1949, India had been assigned a role in the US strategic framework—a role that was highly derivative of that of China. This came with benefits. The press declared Nehru to be the “number one man in Asia” and the “strongest figure in a troubled continent.” India was “potentially a great counterweight to China.”21 Time put Nehru on its cover and declared India the “anchor for Asia.”22 Along with public adulation, Robert J. McMahon has argued that India’s new value also “led a growing number of administration strategists to accept India’s intransigence [on issues like Kashmir] with equanimity.”23
The “fall” of China also ensured that Indian economic aid requests were given “a more thorough hearing” in Washington. In the early years of Indian independence, the US had either ignored or rejected most aid requests from Delhi because policymakers had not seen assistance to India as “significantly advanc[ing]” American interests. But by early October 1949, US ambassador to India and committed cold warrior Loy Henderson was proposing a five-year, $500 million economic assistance package for the country. The basis that he laid out for Washington was that India could become “a stalwart and worthy champion in Asia.”24
Not everyone in the Truman administration shared this enthusiasm. For example, Raymond Hare, the deputy assistant secretary of state for the Near East and South Asia, was skeptical about India’s ability to play the role envisioned. Others, such as the Far Eastern Affairs director, W. W. Butterworth, had a more fundamental question: Was it willing?25 The US awaited Nehru’s visit in October 1949 to find out.
China and the US: The View from Delhi (1947–1949)
Nehru’s assessment of the consequences of the Second World War would partly shape his answer to that question. For many American policymakers, a key lesson had been that aggressors should be confronted, not appeased. For Nehru, who dominated Indian foreign policymaking as prime minister and foreign minister, other aspects resonated more, including the way India had become entangled in a war not of its choosing and the war’s adverse impact on the economies of India and other countries. Furthermore, he believed that the World Wars had not resolved the global situation and indeed had generated some new problems.26
Focused on nation building, India’s newly independent leaders did not need more problems—they needed peace. As tensions rose globally in the late 1940s, G. S. Bajpai, foreign ministry secretary-general and the former Indian agent-general in the US, expressed concern that “some stray spark may ignite the gunpowder that is lying about.”27 Nehru and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit believed that any major conflict would inevitably entangle India, or at the very least affect the country, given its integration with the world and its potential power and influence. And if war broke out again, Indian plans for progress would be significantly set back.28
This framework linking India’s external objectives with its domestic imperatives also shaped India’s perception of and policy toward China. Near the end of 1948, officials expected China to split up. Nehru did not think a communist victory in China would have an immediate impact on Asia.29 Indian deputy prime minister Vallabhbhai Patel was more concerned, lamenting that “the only bastions of security” left were India and Japan.30 However, as the Chinese communists consolidated their gains, the Indian prime minister reassessed the consequences. A communist Chinese victory, he believed, would have “far-reaching results all over South East Asia and ultimately in the world. India will naturally be affected by it, though there is no reason to fear any direct conflict. The future of Tibet may become a subject for argument.”31 As the GMD’s collapse became imminent, Nehru argued that India could not continue with the status quo merely because of his friendship with GMD leader Jiang Jieshi. His diagnosis of the GMD’s failure echoed that of Acheson, and at least the overall prescription seemed to match as well: “We have to take facts as they are.”32
The Indian prime minister believed Delhi had to deal with the government in Beijing that existed, not the one it wished existed. In addition, if the Indian government “stood up for the bankrupt government in China now … this would give a fillip to communism in India.”33 He also believed that rather than isolating communist China, it was important to integrate and bind it with the international community.
Nehru’s view of China flowed to a degree from mirror imaging, which would continue to affect his perception of China over the next half-decade. He and officials like Bajpai believed nationalism was the key driving force in China, as it was for India.34 Nehru asserted that, much like his own government, a communist Chinese government would focus on internal issues—and it would do so in a pragmatic, rather than an ideological, way. Therefore, it would seek peace in its periphery. The Indian premier would consistently underestimate the effect of ideology on Chinese policymakers, despite the contention of Kavalam Madhava (K. M.) Panikkar, India’s representative in China, that the Chinese Communist Party leadership was “fanatically imbued with a sense of mission to refashion society.”35
India’s limited defense capabilities also shaped the prime minister’s view of China and policy options toward it. Nehru did not appear open to contemplating contingencies like a military threat to India if China took over Tibet because it would “affect the balance we are trying to create in India.” That balance was in terms of both the defense-development balance and the civil-military balance.36
While Nehru was uncertain about China’s external intentions, he was certain that India could not afford to provoke its northern neighbor. Thus it was the premier’s view that “our general attitude to the new China should be a friendly expectation and waiting to see what happens.”37 Nehru’s concern about provoking Beijing showed in his furious reaction to an article that led to Chinese communist press criticism of Indian interest in Tibet.38 It was also evident in his negative reaction to discussions about a US-sponsored Pacific Pact, which envisioned including India, to counter China’s potential “loss.”
Nehru saw pacts as provocative. He believed that the World Wars had demonstrated that pacts did more to exacerbate conflict than to prevent it. Furthermore, entangling alliances restricted freedom of action. Not everyone shared this perspective. His sister, Pandit, believed that at the very least, “inevitably one finds oneself aligned on one side or the other.”39 Nehru had expressed interest in developing a “regional understanding on a broad basis” with Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia.40 But he had no desire to include India in any grouping based on anticommunism. It was important for India to leave the door open to “normal friendly relations” with the Chinese communists. And any suggestion of Indian participation in an anticommunist grouping could “only rouse suspicion and hostility of new China.”41 Panikkar encouraged this approach, noting that Nehru’s refusal to join the pact had somewhat reduced hostility against India among the communist Chinese, who had been accusing Nehru of being complicit in US policy toward Asia.42
Nehru had no interest in a pact, but he welcomed the other option American policymakers were considering to support India vis-à-vis China: economic assistance. He perceived India’s main vulnerability as internal, its primary challenge as economic.43 If his government did not solve this problem “effectively and fairly rapidly,” it would threaten both India’s stability and its political system.44
Developments in China had been instructive; they did not leave Nehru unaffected as some have argued.45 He felt that, “in Asia at any rate, communism flourished only where the economic standards of the people were indefensibly low”46 and where governments “could not deliver the goods.”47 In China, the GMD had failed to deliver and lost the faith of the people.48 There were communists in India too, who