Betrayals, quarrels, indifference—Indian leaders' scepticism towards US, from Nehru to Modi

0:00 Indo-ous relations have reached their nad. The US is losing India. The shocking rift between India and the US. Over the last few weeks, news of the increasingly tense relations between India and the US have dominated headlines. Upset with India for buying and processing oil from Russia and not providing adequate market access to the US, the Trump administration has slapped 50% tariffs on Indian goods. Meanwhile, much to the shagrin of common Indians, the US administration has been investing deeply in its relationship with Pakistan. General Asamanir's recent visits to the US, including a lunchon meeting with President Donald Trump just weeks after India and Pakistan emerged from a short yet intense aerial conflict has been emphatically noted just by

0:46 foreign policy observers but the Indian public at large. speak to old-timers in India and one knows the recent spate of events have resuscitated a deeply embedded suspicion of the Americans despite three decades of closeness and cooperation which peaked with the historic 1 to3 agreement in 2006. The feeling that one cannot trust the Americans after all seems to have made a decisive comeback. But where does this feeling come from? Like most things in politics, this feeling too has a long history. The year was 1953. A tall, handsome man with a shortworldled mustache barged into the US assistant secretary of state Henry Bro's room. For Christ's sake, I did not come to the United States to look at barracks, he entreated him. Our army can be yours if

1:32 you want us. But let us make a decision soon. The man was Pakistan's General Aay Khan. His demeanor, the Americans felt, was charming and his ask for military aid desperate. The then Secretary of State John Foster Dallas who famously called India's neutral foreign policy immoral assured the restless general that the aid would surely come. Later the same year a report in the New York Times said the American president D. Eisenhower was indeed in favor of a defense deal with the Pakistanis. The report quoted an anonymous source as saying the time has come to put an end to Washington's patience with Nehu. the US should have a firmer course with Neu who has often embarrassed the US.

2:18 Writing about the incident decades later in the introduction to the book India in the United States a strange democracies 1941 to 1991 published in the early 1990s. Late US Senator Daniel Moy Han said the anonymous quote in the piece was presumably Richard Nixon then the US vice president. By 1954, a defense treaty was signed between the US and Pakistan. Anticipating the Indian anger, Eisenhower wrote Nehu a letter to allay his concerns. US weapons to Pakistan was solely for the purpose of thwarting the communist expansion. He had said they would never ever be used against India. As the then US ambassador handed over the letter to NU, the Indian prime

3:03 minister smiled understatedly and looked at his cigarette for a few seconds. It was not the US intentions that troubled him but the consequences of this action writes author Dennis Cox in his strange democracies in India where foreign policy was hardly a matter of public concern there was a loud outcry as Moihon wrote for most Indians the differences over the containment policy and non-alignment involved abstract concepts that were of interest mainly to the educated elite anything touching on the relationship with Pakistan however just 7 years after the trauma of partition was a different matter striking a deeply emotional nerve throughout the Indian body politic more than 70 years and many moments of

3:48 hard-earned reconciliation later the story of the estrange democracies has seemingly reached a near identical point as former minister of external affairs Salman Kushi told the prints have always been skeptical of the US and the US has given good reason for this skepticism they have always said this is the line follow it and India has refused to do that because its self-esteem has not allowed it how accurate is this sentiment what are the factors that have shaped Indian skepticism towards the US for the last eight decades especially before the cold war ended has the US really taken India for a ride as many commentators believe or is there as a prominent foreign policy strategist had told us an inbuilt bias against the Americans that the Indian elites have

4:36 the print traces this long history of estrangement. Neu's immediate response to Eisenhower's letter had hardly betrayed the extent of his anger. In a memorandum issued in 1954, he wrote, "I dislike more and more this business of exchange of persons between India and America. The fewer persons that go from India to America that come from the US to India, the better." The year after the US Pakistan deal, Nehu was off to the Soviet Union, addressing its people on state television, the first non-communist leader to do so. Months later, the then communist party general secretary came to India. The Soviet policy of neutrality on Kashmir was officially dropped. Kashmiris have already

5:21 expressed their desire to be a part of India and no plebeside was therefore needed. The Soviets said for all practical purposes, the dire was cast. India and Pakistan's rivalry now had clear poles on the international stage. If Pakistan had the US, India had its own superpower ally. The most immediate benefit for India was a veto in its favor at the United Nations Security Council on the question of Kashmir. India's foreign policy under Neu was already showing signs of steering away from his carefully crafted non-alignment. By this time the friendliness with the Soviet Union and skepticism towards the US were not just the preoccupation of the elite say Salman Kushid. By the 1950s he says it was quite clear that the US was not on

6:07 India's side even though it could not do anything to prevent India from achieving its objectives. This was seen by all Indians. He said the song of the time that resonated was Japani topi. He said the lal top to rusei was the critical thing. It was not the cowboy hat. But by the late 1950s, the US increased its foreign aid to India substantially, arguing that such an increase was in its interest so as to not let communism spread in the subcontinent. That's the crucial thing about Indo-ous relations. No friendship or no instrangement between the two has been total. When a communist government came to power in

6:52 Kerala through the majority vote, the Americans were particularly alarmed. If they did not give aid to the Nehu government, they would risk the break up of India and its orientation towards the communists. Eisenhower thought arms, economic assistance, and diplomatic support. India received all from the US. As argued by foreign affairs analyst Ashley Telis in an essay published in the book critical issues in India's foreign policy, the US soon became during this period the largest donor to India and Washington viewed India as an important theater in the struggle against global communism despite New Delhi's reluctance to become formally allied with Washington in its anti-communist crusade. Yet the fact that the US was still not willing to

7:39 risk its relationship with Pakistan for India became clear in 1960 when Indian defense minister Krishna Menon asked the US if India could buy the Sidewinder missiles from them. Despite President Eisenhower's initial willingness, the US finally decided against according the same benefits to India and Pakistan given that Pakistan had taken real responsibilities and risks to be an ally. After all, just a few months ago, the Pakistanis had provided the US facilities for sensitive intelligence operations near Peshawar. Despite the Pakistanis, India US relations during the difficult years of the cold war reached their zenith in 1962 when the US strongly supported India politically, diplomatically and militarily during its

8:26 war with China. As argued by US diplomat Kak in his strange democracies, India's non-alignment seemed to be a thing of the past. In the face of India's glaring military weakness, Neu reversed policy 180 degrees to seek military assistance from the US, Great Britain, and other Western countries. By November 1962, panic reigned in New Delhi. NU's ask of the Americans became more surreptitious and desperate. India feared the loss of Assam and possibly all of the northeast. Without showing their copies to cabinet ministers or marking a copy to the Ministry of External Affairs as was the convention, Neu wrote two letters to the then US President John F. Kennedy asking for a dozen squadron of US fighter

9:12 aircraft, air defense radar, two squadrons of B-47 bombers and asking American pilots to fly them till Indians could be trained to replace them. The US ambassador to India at the time suggested that the US Navy dispatch an aircraft carrier task force to the Bay of Bengal. But before the US could fully calibrate its response, the Chinese announced a ceasefire. The Americans generosity, however, was short-lived. The aircraft carrier they were going to send was USS Enterprise. The warship which the Nixon administration would send into the Bay of Bengal in less than a decade to pressure India during the war with Pakistan. The spectre of the enterprise would haunt the psyche of the Indian elite for decades to come.

10:00 Less than three years after India's humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese, serious clashes broke out on the run of Kutch, after the Pakistanis began to send military patrols into the disputed area of the Kutch. A brigadiz battle ensued between the Indian and Pakistani forces. India admitted to losing about 100 people. Part of the Indian was directed at the US. that the US would not allow its military aid to Pakistan to be used against India was the bedrock on which India US relations no matter how precarious had hitheru stood. The 1965 war was therefore a blow again in a starkly similar hyphenation of India and Pakistan which the Indians are protesting even now in the aftermath of operation Sindur. The Americans

10:47 placed an arms embargo on both the rivaling nations. In the mid60s, India seemed on the verge of a famine. Desperate, it had to look to the US for wheat. In 1966, when then Prime Minister Indra Gandhi met US President Lyndon B. Johnson, a newspaper from Alabama ran the following headline. New Indian leader comes begging. The US administration's response was only marginally more diplomatically appropriate. Johnson refused to commit food aid under the nation's public law 480 also termed food for peace program if India did not agree to adopt the green revolution package foreign aid was cut off in a stark parallel with what is

11:32 happening now India the US said had to liberalize its trade restrictions before foreign aid could be made available again at one more point Indra phoned Johnson herself her press adviser Sharda Prasad who was present during the call later recalled the prime minister being friendly and charming on the phone but after she hung up he remembered her angrily saying I don't ever want us to have to beg for food again. The coercive American attempts to make India fall in line when it risked a famine prompted then agriculture minister Cis Brahmanyam to say even a week's failure in supply would create grave difficulties that from far off people could not recognize. This is why I have said the United

12:18 States always gives but not graciously. If Indian attitudes towards the US had been deeply soured by the twin blows of the Pakistan war and scars from the ungracious use of public law 480 as a diplomatic tool, India's significance too had declined for the US which once saw it as a powerful bull work against communism. By now, as Kak wrote, India was just a country full of poor people for the United States. that in this climate the Indians would refuse to be party to the nuclear non-prololiferation treaty was only a further irritant for the Americans. By 1969, Richard Nixon, who had lesser patience for Indian claims of moral

13:03 leadership than most of his predecessors, became the American president. The US at this point wanted to distance itself from the whole of the South Asian region. Except as the Bangladesh liberation war broke out in March 1971, the exact opposite happened. Even as public opinion in the US and indeed within the government turned against Pakistan's atrocities in East Pakistan, Nixon sent angry messages, including one to his national security advisor Henry Kissinger. to all hands don't squeeze yaya at this time he said arms to Pakistan flowed few not even the US secretary of state knew what Nixon was covertly planning keen to now

13:50 establish diplomatic relations with China as a counterbalance to the Soviets Kissinger was to surreptitiously fly to Beijing via Islamabad after visiting Delhi in July 1971 Kissinger left for Islamabad for what was proposed reportedly a routine visit. On 15th July, Nixon announced that Kissinger had been to Beijing. Indians were infuriated. Not only was the US supplying weapons to the Pakistanis at a time when it was at war with India, but also using Delhi as a stepping stone for a secret trip to Beijing. Weeks later in August, India signed the friendship treaty with the Soviets. With evident poetic hyperbole, Singinja described the treaty in his memoirs as a bombshell and as throwing a lighted match into a

14:35 powder keg. Indra's visit to Washington in November 1971 did little to improve the situation. It was famously called the dialogue of the deaf. When Nixon offered the Indian prime minister peruncter sympathy for the floods in Bihar, Indra shided him for ignoring a bloody man-made tragedy of humongous proportions. The next day, Nixon made her wait at the White House for 45 minutes. Military sales to India stopped. Even economic assistance froze. But the worst was yet to come. On 10 December 1971, as India and Pakistan officially broke into war, Nixon directed the same aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal. As Cassena put it many years later, its

15:22 purpose was to give emphasis to our warnings about West Pakistan. While India won the war and announced a ceasefire, for decades to come, the US carrier became a symbol of American duplicitousness for Indians. As Kak writes, sending the enterprise never really left the Indian psyche. It became tangible evidence of the suspicion that Indians had always harbored that Americans sought to thwart Indian ambitions and aspirations. Pro-s Soviet and anti-US voices in India had their rhetorical ammunition for decades to come. In an interview given to the New York Times in 1975, US ambassador to India William Saxpay sounded defeated. In the aftermath of the IndiaPakistan war,

16:08 Nixon had made several gestures of reconciliation but to no avail. The most one could expect from India, he said, was grudging respect. If India is determined to make an enemy of the US, there is not a whole lot we can do about it, he said. But he pointed to an important paradox of India US relations. When I call on cabinet ministers, he said the president or governors, they all love to talk about their sons, sons-in-law and daughters in the United States and how well they're doing and how well they're liking things, he said. The next day in the newspapers, I read the same people denouncing the United States. By 1980, the number of Indians in the United States was over three lakhs. Indian immigrants with high-tech

16:53 degrees and fluency in English were the most successful ethnic group in the country. As cultural ties became closer and closer, diplomatic frostiness began to give away to reconciliation. Movies, literature, food and travel, increasingly everything that was aspirational for educated hep Indians was American. By this time, Indra too wanted friendly relations with the US. When the Americans began to heavily arm the Pakistanis in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, she did not attack them as vituperatively as she had in the 1970s. Ronald Rein who came to power in 1981 too made a concerted effort to heal the breach between the two democracies. As Telis argues, the 1982 to91 period thus witnessed

17:41 delicately gradually warming US India relations. It helped that by 1984 a young unpreachy and tech-savvy Rajiv Gandhi was in the seat of power in India. He was unlike any preachy, arrogant or moralistic Indian leader of the past. Most of his advisers were US- trained. India US relations were about to witness highs they had never experienced before. As the cold war came to an end in 1991, India and the US were in a way ready to establish a relationship on their own terms for the very first time. As the Indian economy matured and opened up, it gave an added impetus to the United States to invest diplomatically in this big emerging market. The 1991 to98 period which witnessed an

18:28 unprecedented strengthening of India US relations however quickly ended with a bang literally. writes telis. New Delhi was frustrated by this time by Bill Clinton administration's carve out policy which basically sought to segregate its disagreement with India on nuclear weapons while strengthening bilateral ties in all other spheres. Refusing to tow the line, New Delhi tested a series of nuclear weapons in 1998 and went on to declare itself a nuclear weapon state prompting an American meltdown. Sanctions and admonitions followed. Sanctions and admonitions followed even if they meant little in terms of India's strategic program. They resuscitated past Indian memories of US opposition to India.

19:16 Telis writes but as former Indian diplomat Shamsarin explained to us 1998 was not was a break and not a break point for India and the US. India US relations since the time of Indian independence had suffered on account of three factors from the American perspective. India's closeness to the Soviet Union, New Delhi's economic underperformance and Delhi status as a nuclear weapon state. By the time George Bush came to power in the US, the first two factors had been eliminated by history. He decided to eliminate the third himself. When Condisa Rice came to India in 2005 as Secretary of State, she transformed the debate completely by revealing that the Bush administration was willing to consider civilian nuclear energy

20:01 cooperation with India. India's relationship with the world had already been undergoing fundamental changes, said Kushid. The USSR was gone, the rupee trade came to an end. And there was a feeling that India is missing out by not engaging with the US. All this came to a peak with the civil nuclear agreement. There were some old-time Soviet hands like former diplomat and minister of external affairs Nadwar Singh who were extremely ambiguous about how India could shift entirely from Russia to the US. Koshid said but the ground reality had changed completely. The nuclear deal changed perceptions of ordinary Indians especially middleclass Indians towards the US completely. He said, "I don't think the US has ever received the kind of empathy and support from India that it did in 2006.

20:50 But what does this long history of India US relations tell us about the current moment? Has the long history of Indian suspicions of the US got a new lease of life or is this a transient moment?" It depends on who one talks to. Skepticism or the absence of it are not genetic values, says former diplomat Pavan Warma. or reactions are a product of the then prevailing set of circumstances. While acknowledging the recent spate of events as serious affronts to India, he argues that this moment is a transient disruptor, one that cannot undo the dividends of the long Indo-American relationship. However, sentimentality that is a front has no space in foreign policy and strategy argues the prominent strategist quoted in the beginning.

21:36 Indians have had a suspicion of Americans for decades, which stems more from a prickly nationalism than any grounding in reality. One would think that it had been eliminated after the 1:23 agreement, but it is always lingering below the surface. He said it is that suspicion and hurt pride which sometimes does not allow India to respond practically to a crisis such as the present one because the Indian position has always tended to stem more from an emotionality and postcolonial inferiority complex of the elite than the practicalities of foreign policy. over the decades, the preponderance of the left, India's radical economic policies, the scientific community's apprehensions because of the West's implacability towards India's nuclear

22:22 program and the security establishment suspicions because of US's ties with Pakistan have altogether contributed to this deep Indian skepticism towards the US. However, even in the absence of all these factors which have resolved themselves over these years, the suspicion remains and that comes from the inferiority complex and lovehate relationship of the Indian elite with the US. The strategist said you can read a longer version of this story on the print.in. Thank you so much for watching. [Music] [Applause] [Music]