8.5   India’s Foreign Policy

The founding principles of independent India’s foreign policy were, in fact, formulated at least three decades before independence. It evolved in the course of the freedom struggle and was rooted in its conviction against any form of colonialism. Jawaharlal Nehru was its prime architect. India’s foreign policy was based on certain basic principles.

They are: anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, anti-apartheid or anti-racism, non-alignment with the super powers, Afro- Asian Unity, non-aggression, non-interference in other’s internal affairs, mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the promotion of world peace and security. The commitment to peace between nations was not placed in a vacuum; it was placed with an equally emphatic commitment to justice. The context in which India’s foreign policy was formulated was further complicated by the two contesting power blocs that dominated the world in the post-war scenario: the US and the USSR. Independent India responded to this with non-alignment as its foreign policy doctrine.

Before we go into the details of non- alignment, it will be useful to look at India’s relationship with China since independence. China was liberated by its people from Japanese colonial expansionism in , just two years The makers of the Constitution did not qualify the reorganisation of the States as only on linguistic basis but left it open as long as there was agreement on such reorganisation. The idea of linguistic states revived soon after first general elections were over. Potti Sriramulu’s fast demanding a separate state of Andhra, beginning October , and his death thereafter on December , .

Article , reads as follows: Parliament may by law- (a) form a new State by separation of territory from any State or by uniting two of more States or parts of States by uniting any territory to a part of any State; (b) increase the area of any State; (c) diminish the area of any State; (d) alter the boundaries of any State; This led to the constitution of the States