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The Intellectual Dimensions of India's Nonalignment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

A. P. Rana
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Extract

Nonalignment today is a protean international phenomenon, accommodating a host of national impulses and identities. This paper, however, is chiefly concerned with this phenomenon as it was nurtured on Indian soil: it seeks to interpret India's nonalignment by probing its rationale as a security policy during the Nehru years.

The pages that follow attempt to answer two questions: (1) why was it that the issue of India's security evoked a particular type of response which came to be identified as nonalignment; and (2) what were the peculiar characteristics of this identity?

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , February 1969 , pp. 299 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1969

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References

1 These quotations have been rearranged and juxtaposed from Nehru, , India and the World (Allen and Unwin, 1936), pp. 218–24Google Scholar.

2 Nehru, , Eighteen Months in India (Allahabad, Kitabistan, 1938), pp. 14, 159–60Google Scholar; Nehru, , The Discovery of India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966), pp. 511–12, 556Google Scholar.

3 Nehru, , A Bunch of Old Letters (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1960), pp. 141–43Google Scholar.

4 Nehru, India and the World, pp. 62–63; Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 445–47, 574.

5 Mehrotra, S. R., India and the Commonwealth, 1865–1929 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965), p. 133Google Scholar.

6 Gandhi, , An Autobiography, London (Cape, 1966), Chapters 10, 24, 38.Google Scholar

7 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 573.

8 Mehrotra, India and the Commonwealth, p. 124.

9 Nehru, , Glimpses of World History (New York: John Day, 1942), pp. 955–56Google Scholar; Nehru, , The Unity of India (New York: John Day, 1941), pp. 117–20Google Scholar, 343–45, 564–71; Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters pp. 362–63, 508–10; Nehru, , Toward Freedom (New York: John Day, 1941), pp. 264–68Google Scholar, 393–95, 400–02, 413–14.

10 Nehru, The Unity of India, pp. 268–77.

11 Nehru, Toward Freedom, pp. 306–08, 343–44; Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters, pp. 43–44.

12 Nehru, India and the World, pp. 133–34; Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 379–81; Nehru, Toward Freedom, pp. 309–11.

13 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 443.

14 Nehru, , Independence and After, 1946–1949 (Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1961), p. 245Google Scholar.

15 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 380.

16 Ibid., p. 534; Nehru, The Unity of India, pp. 117–20.

17 Nehru, , Recent Essays and Writings (Allahabad, Kitabistan, 1934), pp. 72–73Google Scholar; Nehru, Toward Freedom, pp. 314–26; Nehru, The Discovery of India, pp. 511–12.

18 Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters, pp. 424–25.

19 The relevant parts of this article in Young India, Sept. 24 and Oct. 1, 1931, are conveniently found in Prasad, Bimla, The Origins of Indian Foreign Policy (Calcutta: Bookland, 1960), Appendix IIGoogle Scholar.

20 Nehru, The Unity of India, pp. 326–28; Nehru in The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 1946.

21 Nehru, The Discovery of India, p. 574.

22 Ibid., pp. 575, 582–84.

23 Quoted by Joll, James, ed., Britain and Europe: Pitt to Churchill, 1793–1940 (The British Political Tradition), Volume 3 (London: Kaye, 1950), 14Google Scholar.

24 For Nehru's appreciation of such circumstances see Nehru, The Unity of India, pp. 23–24; Nehru Independence and After, pp. 215–19.

25 Ibid., pp. 200–05, 210–19, 229–44; Nehru, , India's Foreign Policy, 1940–1961 (Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1961), pp. 35, 61Google Scholar; The Hindu, August 16, 1954.

26 The “threat to align” must not be understood merely as a formal linking-up with one or the other side. It would be equally simplistic to regard such a potential threat as a form of blackmail.

27 Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters, pp. 508–10.

28 Today, the pressures organized by nonalignment are taken so much for granted, it seems a little alarmist to suggest that the great powers, in their conflicts with each other, could expand over large areas of the world as they once did. But in an age dominated by the balance of terror such a possibility is latently more present, and would be morally more supportable, than was empire-building of the old sort. Also, a country may be aligned today and receive aid from the other bloc; moreover its alignment need not curtail its independence. Yet, in relation to the weaker aligned nations at least, it needs to be said that had important countries like India, Egypt and Yugoslavia chosen to be aligned too, the former would have had little chance to maneuver outside their blocs as they are doing today.

20 For the “evolution” of this “tradition” see Bozeman, A. B., Politics and Culture in International History (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar. See also Butterfield, Herbert and Wight, Martin, eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966)Google Scholar.

30 It would appear that Nehru countered by diplomatic means, the possible increase in influence of China in certain strategic areas of S. E. Asia. See Thien, Ton That, India and South-East Asia, 1947–1960 (Geneva: Droz, 1963)Google Scholar.

31 A. P. Rana “The Nature of India's foreign Policy; an examination of the relation of Indian nonalignment to the concept of the balance of power in the nuclear age,” India Quarterly, April-June 1966.

32 Although Nehru had a tenable security policy, it was politically (not defense) oriented. His nonalignment must be understood as an attempt to avoid commitment, as much as possible, to a defenseoriented security policy, for fear that the sort of power politics that would then be generated would do the world grave harm, and would ultimately lead to subjection, in a new form, of Afro-Asian countries in the circumstances of the Cold War.