$Unique_ID{COW01696}
$Pretitle{221}
$Title{India
Chapter 9C.   Relations with the Super Powers}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Surjit Mansingh}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{soviet
india
united
states
india's
indian
union
relations
foreign
military}
$Date{1985}
$Log{Zubin Mehta*0169601.scf
}
Country:     India
Book:        India, A Country Study
Author:      Surjit Mansingh
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1985

Chapter 9C.   Relations with the Super Powers

The United States

     Observers of Indo-American relations have frequently commented on the
fluctuations of warmth and coolness that characterized them. Expectations of
mutuality in national interests have been generated by many similarities
between the two countries, such as democratic political systems, pluralistic
societies, and similar legal traditions. Many disappointments have resulted
from the fact that although the long-term objectives of both states in world
peace, prosperity, and stability were the same, they have seldom agreed on how
to pursue these ends in specific areas or in a given time frame. Although a
search for commonality continued in the mid-1980s, their diplomacy remained
one of misunderstanding and missed opportunities. The world's two largest
democracies were separated geographically, were at different stages of
economic and political development, and were strongly asymmetrical in terms of
power and immediate salience to each other. Both were given to viewing their
acts as moral and the acts of those who differed, immoral.

     Most Americans were ignorant of and indifferent to the nationalist
struggle in India, and the image they received of Mahatma Gandhi was a
confused one. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to persuade Britain to
accelerate movement on Indian independence were frustrated by Winston
Churchill's obduracy on the subject, thus producing both goodwill and
bitterness among Indians. The contrasting experiences of the United States and
India in the twentieth century gave the leaders of the two countries after
World War II very different perceptions on major issues confronting the
contemporary world.

     The United States stood as head of a victorious but rapidly crumbling
alliance, and India stood as the largest and most populist nation to emerge
from colonial dependency. Divergent perceptions could have been expected from
their leaders, but these were often described as misunderstandings or
wrong-headedness. Each side endeavored, but without success, to convert the
other to its own way of thinking. Each adopted a style of making commentaries
on the other's foreign policies in a tone of moralistic and self-righteous
criticism. Moreover, key decision-makers in the two countries frequently found
their counterparts personally difficult to deal with. The antagonisms aroused
in the 1950s by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in India and Defense
Minister Krishna Menon in the United States, for example, were strong and
long-lasting. In contrast, the exceptionally cordial meetings between
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Nehru in 1956 and 1959 and
between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981 and
1982 did much to mitigate outstanding problems of the times.

     Generally speaking, major problems in Indo-American bilateral relations
have arisen from different attitudes on the issues of greatest concern to
them: communism, colonialism, economic development, and international order.
At no time did India subscribe to United States strategies of containing
communism through military alliances or security arrangements. In Nehru's
view, Asian nationalism was a sufficient antidote. India's policy of
nonalignment precluded it from forming military alliances and was the basis
of its brief friendship with China and enduring ties with the Soviet Union.
Moreover, Pakistan's inclusion in American security arrangements had severe
repercussions on India not only because external military assistance was
perceived as encouraging Pakistan's leaders in adventurism on the subcontinent
but also because the regional imperatives of South Asia tended to be
overlooked by Washington's policymakers, who were preoccupied with global
strategies. On the issue of European colonialism, the United States did not
support India's anticolonial stands in international forums, was closely
identified with West European allies, and reacted sharply to India's military
takeover of the vestigial Portuguese colony of Goa in 1961. A common concern
with promoting economic development drew India and the United States into a
closer relationship based on aid in the 1950s and 1960s (see Foreign Aid;
Foreign Trade; Balance of Payments, ch. 6). However, their prescriptions for
developmental strategy and international economic cooperation varied, and
since 1971 direct United States aid to India has been negligible. Underlying
issues of international order surfaced in the 1970s on questions relating to
multilateral financial institutions and, with equal or greater cogency, on
questions of nuclear nonproliferation. They remained pertinent in 1985.

     India's refusal after independence to commit itself to either side in the
Cold War had a dual effect on United States policies in South Asia. On the one
hand, consideration of India's importance and potential power called forth
tangible American support for its economic and political stability, partly to
counteract the appeal of communism and the influence of the Soviet Union. On
the other hand, India's nonalignment made it difficult for United States
officials to justify such support within their own competitive decisionmaking
process and led many of them to prefer countries such as Pakistan, Iran, and
Turkey, which appeared to support Western security interests. One result of
this duality was the United States-Pakistan alliance of 1954, renewed in 1959
with accompanying assurances from Eisenhower to Nehru that the arms supplied
to Pakistan would not be used in any aggressive war. When Pakistan and India
went to war in 1965, the United States government refused to support India but
suspended military transfers to both countries. The United States-Pakistan
alliance had an adverse effect on the peace of the subcontinent and on United
States influence, which declined sharply in both countries after 1965.

     An exhaustive literature exists on the intertwining of great power
rivalries and Indo-Pakistani conflicts. The events of 1971 provide a classic
example of how this intertwining dragged Indo-United States relations to their
nadir. United States leaders were preoccupied with their initiation of a new
relationship with China. They became involved in a crisis they had not
anticipated on the side of Pakistan's military regime, which was using brutal
measures against its own people, and against the stronger and more democratic
power in the region, which was backed by the Soviet Union. India launched a
successful campaign from April to November to raise international
consciousness on the plight of people in East Pakistan and the pressures on
India created by the presence of 10 million refugees who had fled East
Pakistan. A succession of official and nonofficial dignitaries pleaded with
the United States not to send more arms to Pakistan but to persuade the
generals to reach a political settlement with East Pakistan's chosen leaders,
thus allowing refugees to return home. Disputed quantities of arms continued
to enter Pakistan despite assurances from the United States to the contrary
and over the objections of various United States legislators and
administration officials.

[See Zubin Mehta: Zubin Mehta conducting New York Philharmonic Orchestra,
September 1984 Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington]

     In November 1971 Gandhi visited Washington. She praised the press,
restated the Bangladesh case, and decried that "once again, we see the old
habit of underestimating the power of nationalism in Asia." Her two meetings
with President Richard M. Nixon brought no understanding. (Her subsequent
letter to him of December 17 expressed her regret that the United States
had not used its leverage to bring about a peaceful solution of problems but
had made "innuendos and insinuations" blaming India for the crisis.) When war
was formally declared after Pakistan air strikes occurred in the west, the
United States and Chinese delegations in the UN Security Council took a
decidedly pro-Pakistani stand and called for a cease-fire. The Soviet Union's
veto prevented any resolution from coming into effect. On December 8 a United
States naval task force, spearheaded by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
U.S.S. Enterprise, was dispatched to the Bay of Bengal. Although its
appearance there was brief and inactive, the incident left deep scars on the
Indian psyche. In the words of Professor Norman Palmer, "for the first time,
even in informed Indian circles, the United States was regarded as a major
security threat by India."

     Indo-United States relations remained cold and verged on the antagonistic
for years. Nixon's abrupt termination of US $82 million in economic assistance
quickened India's decision to close down a large United States Agency for
International Development (AID) establishment altogether. The Indian
government placed numerous restrictions on the easy flow of American scholars
and students to India, whose number had increased dramatically in the
mid-1960s. A consequence was that programs for the study of India in American
universities suffered serious reverses. Other educational, cultural, or
scientific groups of Americans in India, many of whom were unabashedly
pro-Indian, became suspected of connection with the United States Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). India's criticisms of United States policies in
Vietnam and Cambodia increased, and it upgraded its representation in Hanoi.
When the United States expanded its naval support base on the island of Diego
Garcia and engaged in naval exercises in the Indian Ocean with Pakistan in
1974, Indian protests were loud. India saw its security threatened by any
escalation of great power military presence in the ocean and had endorsed
Sri Lanka's earlier proposal to declare the Indian Ocean as a "Zone of Peace."
The same differences that had marked Indian and United States approaches
to land-based security were evident with respect to the seas. The
militarization or otherwise of the Indian Ocean remained an active issue of
contention between them in 1985.

     Damages began to be repaired by both governments. A potentially explosive
problem of United States rupee holdings was defused in 1973 by a detailed and
carefully negotiated agreement that, in effect, wrote off more than one-half
the debt and directed use of the remainder to mutually acceptable programs.
In 1974 an Indo-United States Joint Commission with three, and later four,
subcommissions was established. It served to insulate a cooperative core of
bilateral dealings in education and culture, business and economics, science
and technology, and agriculture from political controversy and provided
mechanisms for regular exchanges at high levels of public life. The detente
between the United States and the Soviet Union undoubtedly eased United
States-Indian problems, too. High hopes of improved relations were expressed
when Jimmy Carter became president of the United States and the Janata
government led by Morarji Desai took over in New Delhi. If these expectations
were not fully realized, at least hopeful new beginnings were made. These
came to an abrupt end, it seemed, when events originating outside India
triggered Cold War reflexes in the United States and these invariably resulted
in a denigration of India's concerns.

     Promulgation of the Carter Doctrine, creation of the Rapid Deployment
Force (later called the United States Central Command) and an Indian Ocean
fleet, planned expansion of the naval base at Diego Garcia, arrangements to
supply Pakistan with US $3.2 billion in military and economic aid over five
years, other related actions, and a sustained rhetoric of power were justified
within the United States as counteracting Soviet aggression. All of these
actions were perceived in India as being a pretext for intervention in the
littoral countries of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, of being a source of
instability in the region, and of threatening India's security. In short, the
differences between India and the United States on how to cope with the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan in their own best interests were as profound as
their differences on the Korean War had been. This time, however, the arena
of possible United States-Soviet confrontation had shifted close to India.
Americans condemned Gandhi's government for initially giving the benefit of
the doubt to the Soviet Union and for failing to join in denunciations of that
country, and numerous Americans recalled India's failure to condemn Soviet
oppression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Indians criticized
United States policies as being not conducive to any political settlement in
Afghanistan in the near future.

     Gandhi and Reagan took initiatives to surmount their differences and
deployed diplomats as envoys in this task. The leaders met in 1981 and 1983
at the international venues of an economic conference at Cancun and at a
General Assembly meeting at the UN. In 1982 Gandhi made a state visit to the
United States that stimulated more favorable publicity for India than on any
previous occasion. The visit was followed by a series of high-level exchanges,
including the visits of Vice President George Bush and Secretary of State
George Shultz to India. Some bilateral matters in dispute (such as supplies
of fuel and spare parts for India's Tarapur atomic power plant) were resolved,
at least on paper, and the relationship improved. The official United States
contingent to Indira Gandhi's funeral rites in November 1984 included men
who could establish a warm rapport with Rajiv Gandhi, the new prime minister.
It seemed possible in early 1985 that the two governments had learned to live
with their differences on strategies.

Relations with the Soviet Union

     In early 1985 the Indo-Soviet relationship remained one of considerable
importance to both countries. Since the early 1950s the two governments have
taken pains first to create a friendly relationship, then to extend it, and
constantly to keep it in good repair by minimizing in public their
disagreements on specific issues. Their relationship was constructed on the
basis of unsentimental, nonideological realpolitik. It had the benefit of
neighborly proximity without actually policing a common land frontier. Close
and cooperative ties have been forged in particular sectors of Indian
industrial development and defense production and purchases. But the
relationship continued to be circumscribed by wide differences in domestic
and social systems and the absence of substantial people-to-people contacts-in
contrast to Indo-American relations. The activities of India's communist
parties have occasionally complicated government-to-government relations.

     India's nonalignment enabled it to accept Soviet support in areas of
strategic congruence, as in disputes with Pakistan and China, without
subscribing to Soviet global policies or proposals for Asian collective
security. The Indian governments, both Congress and Janata, regarded the
Soviet link-epitomized in the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation
signed in 1971-as advantageous. They have, however, stressed its nonexclusive
character by moving to strengthen ties with other countries, especially in
Western Europe, in the late 1970s and 1980s.

     India's relations with the Soviet Union evolved in distinct phases but
have been stable since the late 1970s. Nehru's first visit to the Soviet Union
in 1928 evoked admiration for the Soviet Union's rapid transformation but
revulsion for its violent methods; these reactions were reflected in his
writings. The Soviet Union remained aloof from and contemptuous of India's
nonviolent nationalist struggle, and during World War II the Communist Party
of India (CPI) collaborated with the British. Although Nehru sent his sister
to Moscow as ambassador immediately after independence, she was not received
by Stalin. Her successor, S. Radhakrishnan, fared better, and his successor,
K.P.S. Menon, was the last foreigner to meet Stalin before his death.

     In August 1953 a major shift in Soviet policy was announced, and hopes
were expressed for "friendly cooperation" with India. This was prompted by the
Soviet decision to broaden its international contacts and to cultivate the
nonaligned and newly independent countries of Asia and Africa. Nehru's state
visit to the Soviet Union in June 1955 was the first of its kind. It was
followed by the trip of Premier Nikolai Bulganin and General Secretary Nikita
Khrushchev to India in November and December of 1955. The Soviet leaders
endorsed the entire range of Indian foreign policy based on panchasheel and
supported its positions on Kashmir and Goa. The 1956 edition of the Great
Soviet Encyclopedia showed revisions in the section on India by praising
Mahatma Gandhi; this represented a significant ideological shift dictated by
national policy. In India the CPI began to support Nehru's "peaceful" foreign
policies and the "progressive" elements of his domestic policies. The Soviet
Union and East European countries offered new avenues of trade and economic
assistance.

     Between 1956 and 1960 economic cooperation between India and the East
European communist countries was consolidated. By 1965 the Soviet Union was
the second largest national contributor to India's development, albeit at a
much lower total than the contribution from the United States. The advantages
to India of these new arrangements were manifold. They contributed to India's
emergence as a significant industrial power through the construction of plants
to produce steel, heavy machinery, coal mining equipment, foundry forges,
heavy electrical equipment, machine tools, precision instruments, and power.
They enhanced India's public sector oil companies and their ability to extract
and refine petroleum. Soviet investment went to India's public sector
industry, which the World Bank and Western industrial powers had been
unwilling to assist until spurred to do so by Soviet competition. Soviet aid
was extended on the basis of long-term, government-to-government programs,
which covered successive phases of technical training for Indians, supply of
raw materials, progressive use of Indian inputs, and markets for finished
products. As such, Soviet aid was less susceptible than United States aid to
market fluctuations or shifts in public opinion. Financial terms were soft,
and bilateral arrangements were made in nonconvertible national currencies.
This helped to expand and diversify trade in new markets as well as to
conserve India's scarce foreign exchange. Moreover, the Soviet Union refrained
from criticizing India's Second Five-Year Plan (FY 1956-60) and so reinforced
its self-esteem. Although numerous problems arose later in the management and
production of public sector industries and in the exchange rates between
rupees and rubles, the Soviet contribution to Indian economic development was
generally regarded as positive.

     The years 1959-65 appeared at the time to be uncertain ones in
Indo-Soviet political relations. Although their interests were parallel in
anticolonialism and denunciation of United States-sponsored military pacts
(conveniently ignoring the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact), the main issues
confronting India were its conflict with China and its foreign exchange
crisis. Both led India to seek, and find, substantial improvement in relations
with the United States. Because Nehru had not made the mistake of regarding
China and the Soviet Union as one monolithic bloc, he counted on and worked
for Soviet neutrality on the Sino-Indian border differences and war of 1962.
It later emerged that the Soviet Union and China were experiencing differences
that became irreconcilable and led to a breakdown in their military and
economic alliance. Because China's position with respect to its borders with
both India and the Soviet Union was similar-both borders were the product of
"unequal" treaties and must be renegotiated-Indian and Soviet interests in
upholding the sanctity of traditional borders converged. The Soviet Union did
not give explicit or cartographic endorsement to Indian claims on the border,
but its diplomatic support for India was later cited by China as an important
cause of the Sino-Soviet rift. Moscow tried to straddle the Sino-Indian
conflict by calling on its "fraternal ally" and its nonaligned friend to
adjust their "misunderstandings" and by placating China's sensibilities in
public pronouncements on the war without breaking ties with India.

     Meanwhile, in FY 1959 India decided to accept earlier Soviet offers of
military sales and to negotiate the purchase of transport aircraft and
helicopters capable of efficient operations at high altitudes (see Foreign
Military Relations, ch. 10). The importance of India's initial purchases of
Soviet military equipment was far greater than their quantity. Purchases were
made against deferred rupee payments, a major concession to India's chronic
shortage of foreign exchange. Simultaneous provisions were made for licensed
manufacture and modification in India, one criterion of self-reliant defense
on which India placed increasing emphasis. Soviet sales were made without any
demands for restricted deployment, adjustments in Indian policies toward other
countries, adherence to Soviet global policies, or acceptance of Soviet
military advisers. Therefore, they did not offend Indian sensitivities on
matters of national autonomy-already badly ruffled by the policies of Britain
and the United States. The Soviet image in India improved.

     A conspicuous result of Soviet policies was greater involvement in Asia.
The Soviet Union tried to neutralize CENTO members Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan
in the early 1960s. In April 1965 Pakistan's president, Ayub Khan, visited
Moscow for the first time and obtained a modification of Soviet support for
India on Kashmir and the offer of Soviet arms. During the Indo-Pakistani war
of 1965 the Soviet Union acted together with the United States in the UN
Security Council to bring about a cease-fire. Soviet leader Alexsey Kosygin
went further by offering his good offices for a negotiated settlement, which
took place at Tashkent in January 1966. Until 1969 the Soviet Union took an
evenhanded position on the subcontinent and supplied a limited quantity of
arms to Pakistan in 1968. Gandhi described this in Parliament as posing a
"danger to India's security and peace on the subcontinent." She made her
displeasure known in Moscow. Her displeasure was deepened by regular criticism
in Soviet journals of the persistence of "feudal tendencies" in her political
party and other scathing descriptions by Soviet news agencies of the
"degenerate, parasitical, speculative and bureaucratic capitalism" practiced
in India. The 1965-69 period was a cool phase in Indo-Soviet relations.

     When Kosygin visited India in May 1969, he made strong efforts to regain
Indian confidence by reiterating Soviet support. Moscow had been disappointed
at India's ambivalence and hesitation in making comments on the Sino-Soviet
armed clashes in Xianjing and on the Ussuri River in March 1969. Thereafter,
the Soviet Union tried to construct a "collective security system in Asia"
with the subcontinent as its linchpin. It offered India (and Pakistan)
attractive bilateral treaties. Neither the idea nor the nomenclature of a
collective security system arranged against China appealed to India. Prime
Minister Gandhi avoided giving a direct answer on the offer and during her own
tour of Australia and Asian capitals spoke only vaguely about the
possibilities of regional economic cooperation. Soviet proposals for greater
economic cooperation between it, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India were equally
abortive.

     The most intimate phase in the Indo-Soviet relationship was the 1971-76
period; its highlight was the 20-year treaty of August 1971. The immediate
stimuli were the deepening crisis on the subcontinent since March 1971 caused
by Pakistan's civil war and, more important, the opening of the United
States-China link accompanied by Washington's frank communication to New Delhi
that should China intervene in the subcontinent, the United States would be
unable to support India as it had in 1962. Gandhi acted with speed, and high
officials commuted between New Delhi and Moscow. Draft treaties were worked
and reworked; both governments were reluctant to commit themselves in advance
to specific actions of a military nature. Thus, although articles 8, 9, and 10
of the treaty relate to defense, they are deliberately limited in scope. They
commit the parties "to abstain from providing any assistance to any third
party that engages in armed conflict with the other" and "in the event of
either party being subjected to an attack or threat thereof ... to immediately
enter into mutual consultations."

     India benefited at the time from dramatic affirmation that it was not
alone in the struggle that loomed ahead-as a deterrent for China. It received
accelerated and augmented shipments of military equipment in the last quarter
of 1971 from the Soviet Union and was able to change a cautious Soviet
position on the Bangladesh crisis to one of support for India's stand. The
price paid by India for these gains showed later, when it was universally
perceived as having made a compromise in its practically nonalignment,
which tarnished Gandhi's image among some circles at home and abroad. The
Soviet Union gained both from the friendship of the largest noncommunist power
in Asia and from a widespread perception that it had gained influence in
Asia- even as that of the United States was declining. The first state visit
of Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev to India in November 1973 was conducted
with tremendous fanfare. The theme of economic cooperation was stressed, and
tangible arrangements were made to further it. By the late 1970s the Soviet
Union was India's largest trading partner.

     Nevertheless, Gandhi was not prepared to alter important principles of
Indian foreign policy. In her typically oblique fashion-well understood by
Soviet officials-she warned Brezhnev about pursuing his collective security
proposals or from putting any pressure on her. She made it clear that the
Soviet Union would not receive any special privileges-much less base rights-in
Indian ports, despite their major contributions to the construction of
shipbuilding and ship-repairing facilities in Bombay and Vishakhapatnam.
India's advocacy of declaring the Indian Ocean a "Zone of Peace" was directed
against aggrandizement of Soviet naval presence as much as that of other
extraregional powers. By repeatedly emphasizing the nonexclusive nature of its
friendship with the Soviet Union, India kept open the way for normalizing
relations with China and diversifying military purchases in Western Europe.
Progress in both directions commenced in 1976 and continued through 1984.

     The Janata government did not repudiate the Indo-Soviet treaty or make
any substantial changes in foreign policy. Moscow made hasty alterations in
ideological tracts so as to condemn Gandhi's Emergency rule (1975-77) and to
win favor with Janata. The style of operation chosen by Prime Minister Desai
and Foreign Minister Vajpayee lent credence to the view that India was
distancing itself from the Soviet Union, for example, in attitudes toward
Africa, Southeast Asia, and West Asia. As a consequence of the disintegration
of the Janata government and the reelection of Gandhi to power, top Soviet
officials hastened to mend their fences with her.

     By 1980 relations between the two countries had achieved a high degree
of stability and predictability. The Afghan crisis, therefore, did not have
as strong or as negative an impact on official Indo-Soviet relations as many
observers expected. Indian diplomacy followed a course similar to that
adopted on previous occasions, such as the uprisings and Soviet occupations
in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Indian representatives
at the UN avoided condemnatory language and abstained on condemnatory
resolutions as useless Cold War exercises that could only antagonize the
Soviet Union and postpone political settlement. India reiterated its basic
precepts for withdrawal of all foreign troops and negotiation among concerned
parties. In joint communiques with the leaders of other countries, such as
France and Indonesia, stronger views were expressed in correct phraseology. In
the Indian press and public, sympathy for the Afghans was strong, and some
criticism of government action-or inaction-was heard. In meetings with Soviet
leaders in New Delhi in 1980 and in Moscow in 1982, Gandhi pressed harder for
the withdrawal of Soviet troops and for the restoration of Afghanistan's
traditional nonalignment and independence. Her words were not reported in the
Soviet press; neither was the subject mentioned in joint statements.
Throughout 1984, however, numerous members of the Nonaligned Movement-both
Islamic and non-Islamic nations-sharply criticized Gandhi's failure as
leader of the movement to speak out forcefully and consistently on the
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and suggested that her near silence reflected
the "Soviet connection."

     It appeared likely in 1985 that past trends would persist in Indo-Soviet
relations. Despite the absence of mutual security arrangements, the
sophistication and quality of Soviet military equipment sold to India has been
upgraded consistently. At times when India appeared inclined to favor certain
items of West European or American manufacture, as in 1982 and 1984, Soviet
delegations descended on New Delhi and offered generous terms on equivalent
or superior items. Negotiations on bilateral trade, exchange rates, commodity
lists, and joint production in industry continued to be hard and detailed.
Friendship between the two governments has generated goodwill, cultural
exchanges, and linguistic and educational facilities in both countries. The
relationship remained essentially unsentimental, however, and calculated to
meet specific shared interests.

International Organizations

     India has participated actively in the UN and other international
organizations since before independence. Although not a permanent member of
the UN Security Council, India has been elected periodically-for the fifth
time in 1983-to serve in a nonpermanent seat. India's membership in the UN
Economic and Social Council has been practically uninterrupted through regular
reelection. In 1985 India was also a member of the 20-nation UN Disarmament
Committee and served on the Board of Governors of the International Atomic
Energy Agency.

     From the time of the Korean War to the present, India has attempted to
resist the imposition of cold war alignments and East-West disputes on UN
General Assembly debates. It has consistently supported the institution of the
UN Secretary General, however, as well as the negotiating and peacemaking
activities of successive secretaries general. In the early 1960s India opposed
the attempt made by the Soviet Union to have the secretary general replaced
by a three-person directorate, or "Troika." Equally, India has opposed
measures designed to use the UN as an anti-communist instrument. Several
Indians have served with distinction as international civil servants.

     In 1983 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi took the initiative of inviting
heads of government or state to join her at the thirty-eighth session of the
UN General Assembly and to make a collective appraisal of some of the
major problems facing the world. Some 30 leaders did so, and their
consultations were described as being wide-ranging and useful. Gandhi led the
Indian delegation, and her speech addressed the issues that most concerned
India at the time: peace, disarmament, and development. She repeated India's
concern that peripheral matters were detracting from efforts to reduce and
eliminate nuclear weapons. India was among the first to sign the 1963 partial
test ban treaty but refused to sign the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons, considering it discriminatory against development of
peaceful nuclear technology in nonnuclear weapons countries and inattentive
to the escalation of weapons production by the great powers. In 1983 India
renewed its call for moves toward a comprehensive test ban treaty, and in
early 1985 it welcomed the proposed renewal of bilateral United States-Soviet
talks on arms control.

                                     * * *

     The study of Indian foreign relations is facilitated by documents
published in English by the Indian government in the form of annual reports of
the Ministry of External Affairs, written replies to questions asked in
Parliament, and articles in the Foreign Affairs Record. Published speeches of
prime ministers are easily available, and there is no substitute for the
speeches and writings of Jawaharlal Nehru for understanding the rationale
and direction of Indian foreign policy.

     A large number of books and articles are published each year on such
subjects as nonalignment, foreign aid, nuclear weapons, or specific bilateral
relations. Norman D. Palmer's The United States and India and Robert C. Horn's
Soviet-Indian Relations are both detailed and analytical studies of India's
relations with the global powers. Comprehensive surveys of Indian foreign
relations are found in Charles Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh's A
Diplomatic History of Modern India for the period 1919-65 and Mansingh's
India's Search for Power: Indira Gandhi's Foreign Policy, 1966-1982. Two books
that deal admirably with India's foreign policy decisionmaking and the
domestic political structure underlying it are Jayant Bandyopadhyaya's The
Making of India's Foreign Policy and Shashi Tharoor's Reasons of State. (For
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)