The following is an excerpt from Negotiating India’s Landmark Agreements by A.S. Bhasin.
History, as Professor E.H. Carr, the distinguished historian put it, is ‘anunending dialogue between the past and the present’. It is not a one-time event as most people think. Its impact is often felt from generation to generation. Eventually, history becomes the on-going story of a nation.
The lessons learnt and the conclusions drawn from the past often determine the course of future events. If history describes the events, historiography helps us understand them in their broader perspective and overlying characteristics that shape the events. It is important that we keep studying the phenomena, their shapes and colours, to ensure that changes do not bewilder or mislead us.
For more than two centuries before Independence, the British who ruled over us decided who would be India’s friends and what would be good for us. India and its peoples’ interests were subordinated to the larger interests of the colonial ‘mother country’. This inevitably meant that India’s foreign policy and relations with other countries, even in the neighbourhood, were seen through the prism of British interests. The starkest example was of Indians being offered as cannon fodder in battles across the world for the benefit of the imperial power.
Negotiating India’s Landmark Agreements, A.S. Bhasin, Penguin Random House, 2024.
Independence opened up new vistas and horizons. The entire foreign policy was seen through a new perspective and had a new look. India emerged into Independence in a world which was different than when they had lost it. The world that existed prior to the arrival of the British in India was one of empires and imperial rule. Colonialism, foreign control and racism were the phenomena of the eighteenth century world. Post Independence, India fought to secure independence, self-governance, freedom and non-discrimination for all colonized peoples. It was an emerging new order that demanded a more nuanced and sophisticated diplomacy with a new lexicon of its own.
A free India found itself grappling with multiple challenges, both at the domestic and diplomatic level. Being a successor to the British Raj, India could not forsake the inherited legacy though imperialist, negative and often disruptive. The Partition of India created another country, and another challenge, in the form of Pakistan. The emergence of communist China in our neighbourhood was a most disruptive phenomenon and a new challenge to contend with. As it happened, India found itself not fully prepared to meet it.
The agreements which have been discussed in the aforementioned pages were spread over several decades. Some were rooted in history, and some, the product of history. Each one posed a new challenge, and the experience gained in each case, provided some direction for the nation’s journey in diplomacy.
The India-China Agreement on Tibet, 1954, was then India’s most important agreement and the first agreement of any significance that India negotiated. It exposed India’s lack of preparedness and experience in negotiations. The trust displayed on the other party during negotiations was out of proportion to what was warranted. India made erroneous presumptions that it held the initiative to set the terms of the agreement and that China would pander to its diktat. No attempt was made to study and evaluate the strength of China and the extent to which it would accommodate India’s agenda. Too much reliance was laid on factors which were outside India’s control. The people asked to negotiate were given a vague, but negative brief, and were found deficient in experience. Relying on the friendship of another country in matters of state was a fundamental flaw which spilled over even after it was found to be misplaced. It was forgotten that an agreement is the product of give-and-take and while giving away something, it needed to be balanced with something gained which was of vital interest to us. No such attempt was made, and on the contrary, all efforts were toward gaining the goodwill of the other party.
The Soviet Union, suo moto, offered India a Treaty of Friendship, Peace and Cooperation. The Soviet Union was a superpower of the day and India was still struggling to come out of its third world status. The treaty offered by Moscow was neither for India’s economic development nor social amelioration. The underlying character was defence or security. India was quietly sailing through after the disastrous events of 1962, trying to build its economy, security apparatus and the morale of the nation. It had been adjusting its relations both with the West and the East, though leaning toward the latter, while trying to maintain a balance. The Bangladesh developments were then nowhere on the horizon.
As far as the Soviet Union was concerned, its motives in offering a treaty of this kind in 1969 remained shrouded in mystery. India did drag its feet on the treaty offer for two reasons: (i) the right wing of the ruling Congress party was quite strong and would not allow it to happen, and (ii) it would be a violation of non-alignment—India’s fundamental principle of foreign policy since the days of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. If India did finally accept the treaty, it was under the circumstances which developed much later, and not when the treaty was first offered.
As the narrative shows, its offer was neither unselfish nor philanthropic, but for a purpose. It wanted to involve India in its ideological and political dispute with China, taking advantage of India’s strained relations with Beijing. And later, when India would not bite, the Soviets denied India vital weaponry to replenish the war losses of 1971.
If a big nation and a superpower at that, was being magnanimous toward a developing country and a less powerful country, to the extent of offering to jump into a war in its favour, it should have aroused some suspicions in Delhi. Due diligence was called for. At the end, given India’s desperate need for Soviet assistance to meet a developing situation, New Delhi’s reluctance for a treaty reflected in the external affairs minister’s talks with the Soviet leaders, should have given some clue of Soviet intention. But it was too late and also perhaps New Delhi had been left with no option. India decided to go ahead. Such situations do arise but not too frequently.
A.S. Bhasin retired from the Ministry of External Affairs in 1993 after three-decade of service as head of the Historical Division.
