India’s external relations China, and the beginning of decolonisation. So India’s leadership had to pursue its national interests within the prevailing international context. Nehru’s role The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru played a crucial role in setting the national agenda. He was his own foreign minister.
Thus both as the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, he exercised profound influence in the formulation and implementation of India’s foreign policy from to . The three major objectives of Nehru’s foreign policy were to preserve the hard-earned sovereignty, protect territorial integrity, and promote rapid economic development. Nehru wished to achieve these objectives through the strategy of non- alignment. There were, of course, parties and groups in the country that believed that India should be more friendly with the bloc led by the US because that bloc claimed to be pro-democracy.
Among those who thought on these lines were leaders like Dr Ambedkar. Some political parties, which were opposed to communism, also wanted India to follow a pro-US foreign policy. These included the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and later the Swatantra Party. But Nehru possessed considerable leeway in formulating foreign policy.
Distance from two camps The foreign policy of independent India vigorously pursued the dream of a peaceful world by advocating the policy of non-alignment, by reducing Cold War tensions and by contributing human resources to the UN peacekeeping operations. You might ask why India did not join either of the two camps during the Cold War era. India wanted to keep away from the military alliances led by US and Soviet Union against each other. During the Cold War, the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact came into existence.
India advocated non-alignment as the ideal foreign policy approach. This was a difficult balancing act and sometimes the balance did not appear perfect. In when Britain attacked Egypt over the Suez Canal issue, India led the world protest against this neo-colonial invasion. But in the same year when the USSR invaded Hungary, India did not join its public condemnation.
Despite such a situation, by and large India did take an independent stand on various international issues and could get aid and assistance from members of both the blocs. While India was trying to convince the other developing countries about the policy of non-alignment, Pakistan joined the US-led military alliances. The US was not happy about India’s independent initiatives and the policy of non-alignment. Therefore, there was a considerable Our general policy is to avoid entanglement in power politics and not to join any group of powers as against any other group.
The two leading groups today are the Russian bloc and the Anglo- American bloc. We must be friendly to both and yet not join either. Both America and Russia are extraordinarily suspicious of each other as well as of other countries. This makes our path difficult and we may well be suspected by each of leaning towards the other.
This cannot be helped. Jawaharlal Nehru Letter to K .P. S. Menon, January .