In the Shadow of Great Power Politics: Why Nehru Supported PRC's Admission to the Security Council

In early 1950s, India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru turned down suggestions that India become a Security Council Permanent Member. As per suggestions, India would either take China's seat occupied by Republic of China (RoC) or become the sixth member alongside RoC. Nehru turned down these overtures arguing that People's Republic of China (PRC) should occupy China's seat at the Security Council. This study ascertains why India turned down apparently good offers and instead championed PRC's cause at a time when there existed marked political differences between them. While some have analyzed India's stand strictly in bilateral terms, this study casts the net wider. By closely examining Nehru's writings and correspondences, it argues that Nehru's support was based on his understanding of PRC and its position as a great power in international relations. Early twentieth-century developments had taught him that great powers that were ostracized became a source of instability. In an era that saw the unveiling of nuclear bombs, the cost of a dissatisfied PRC would be tragic. To stabilize the system, it was necessary to accommodate PRC within the Security Council and provide it with the veto. This would assuage PRC and check its revisionist tendencies.     

Collective Trauma and the Evolution of Nehru's Worldview: Uncovering the Roots of Nehruvian Non-Alignment

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Nehruvian non-alignment often assumes an artificial continuity between Jawaharlal Nehru's pre-independence thinking and post-independence decision, as India's prime minister, to pursue a policy of rejecting any international blocs or military alliances. This article demonstrates that, in fact, the ideas that constituted Nehruvian non-alignment were largely absent from Nehru's pre-independence thought – during the decades before India's independence Nehru articulated a strong willingness to cede India's sovereignty to international groupings for idealistic aims. To explain Nehru's shift from idealistic internationalist to professed internationalist but de facto isolationist with regard to alliances and blocs, I advocate a first-image, constructivist approach which considers the impact of collective trauma on Nehru's worldview. Drawing upon a novel, synthesized approach to theorizing collective trauma's impact on national identity, this article argues that the collective trauma Nehru witnessed and experienced during the decades before Indian independence profoundly impacted his trust in international institutions and views on representational diplomacy. In turn, this trauma affected his interpretation of various ideational and strategic considerations, contributing to the formulation of Nehruvian non-alignment.     

Mountbatten and India, 1948–64

This article brings to light Lord Mountbatten's continuing links with India after 1948 - a neglected aspect of his life and career. It probes his involvement and influence in Indian affairs through his personal relationships and professional experience. In doing so, it presents Mountbatten as the personification of the change in Indo-British ties from those of empire to dominion and beyond. On the three key issues of Hyderabad, arms sales, and Kashmir, this article evaluates his role as a ‘friend of India’ in the West as well as a conduit for the British government(s) of the day to reach out to Nehru. Considering the scope and limits of ‘influence of friendship, it shows that Mountbatten remained characteristically involved in India after his departure and this was appreciated by both Nehru and his British counterparts. Mountbatten epitomised the old ties, which continued to bind India to Britain, after the empire and through the Commonwealth. His views were offered and sought; how much they influenced remains a matter of emphasis, but that he was involved cannot be denied. The weakening of Mountbatten's involvement and influence after Jawaharlal Nehru's death in 1964 represented the wider, generational weakening of Indo-British association.     

Public Diplomacy in the U.S. Supreme Court: The Warren Years—Part I

The Prime Minister of the Republic of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his daughter, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, wandered down the hallway adorned with portraits of Justices in the U.S. Supreme Court building before entering the East Conference Room. There, they were warmly greeted by Chief Justice Earl Warren and his wife, Nina, who had been the Prime Minister's guests in New Delhi only four months earlier. In Washington, Nehru was the special guest of the Warrens, the first ruling head of state to be honored with a formal dinner at the Supreme Court. In attendance were a small but powerful delegation of Indian diplomats and most of the Justices and their wives. In the crisp evening of December 16, 1956, the temperature had dropped to 39 degrees, and the Prime Minister wore a black achkan, the South Asian coat that Americans came to call “a Nehru jacket,” adorned with his trademark red rose in the breast pocket and a white Congress cap. The Indian ladies dressed in striking saris, while the Western women wore long formal gowns.     

Walking the Thin Line: India's Anti-Racist Diplomatic Practice in South Africa,Canada, and Australia, 1946–55

Historians of India's foreign policy have often failed to see beyond the ‘Great man’ Jawaharlal Nehru. This Nehru-centric vision is not only misleading, but also unfair to Nehru. Here, we seek to take the gaze off Nehru and New Delhi so as to view Indian foreign policy from different locations. We examine the ways in which India's diplomats in Australia, Canada, and South Africa resisted racial discrimination. India's anti-racist diplomacy has most often been viewed as pointless moralistic ranting: the domain of the ‘hypersensitive, emotional’ Indian. We argue, however, based on largely unexamined archival material and an emphasis on the practice of Indian diplomacy, that India's diplomats in these bastions of settler-colonial racism were tactful, strategic, and effective in challenging racist, colonial practices and bringing an anti-racist discourse to international politics. Nehruvian foreign-policy discourse, and its goal of an anti-racist world order, then, was tempered by its diplomatic practices. In particular, this occurred outside of New Delhi in places where India's hopes for productive international relationships clashed with its Nehruvian worldview.     

‘A Local Terrorist Made Good’: the Callaghan government and the Arab–Israeli peace process, 1977–79

The British government had played an important role during the 1950s and 1960s as a mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict, most notably through the development of Project Alpha between 1954 and 1956, and through the negotiation of United Nations Security Council resolution 242 in 1967. Between 1977 and 1979, British Prime Minister James Callaghan played a supporting role to US President Jimmy Carter as he negotiated the Camp David Accords of 1978. Callaghan adopted a pro-Israeli stance, cultivating close relations with the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and defending Begin’s position over key issues, particularly his reluctance to remove settlements from the occupied territories. In this respect Callaghan’s government departed from established British policy, even abstaining over United Nations Security Council resolution 446 in March 1979 which condemned continuing Israeli settlement activity. This resulted in damage to Britain’s relations with moderate Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan.     

‘Keeping a Line Open’: Britain and the 1979 Coup in Grenada

On 13 March 1979, the first unconstitutional change of power in the Eastern Caribbean occurred in Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, when the radical New Jewel Movement overthrew Prime Minister Eric Gairy. This article examines the policy of the British government towards the new People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) during the first month of the ‘revolution’. It demonstrates that in contrast to the alarmist reactions of some of Grenada's neighbours, and the United States' intense concern about the PRG's pro-Cuban leanings, British policy was more optimistic and relaxed and designed to ‘keep a line open’ to Grenada.     

The fateful Indian recognition of West Germany, 1949

India’s recognition of West, but not East, Germany was the foundation of an inconsistent policy on Germany from India and many other non-aligned countries. It was the outcome of a lack of professionalism, indecisiveness, the pragmatic considerations of a junior Indian diplomat in Berlin, and the laconic approval of the anti-communist secretary-general of the Ministry of External Affairs, Girja Shankar Bajpai. Neither Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nor his advisor V.K. Krishnan Menon were involved at all. Officials around Foreign Secretary K.P.S. Menon held that the GDR should also be recognised in due course, but did not exercise sufficient influence. India would stand by its decision for 23 years and thereby set an example for other non-aligned countries.     

Australian-African relations 2002: Another look

Various recent developments and events in Africa, including the involvement in 2002 of the Prime Minister of Australia in Commonwealth initiatives in relation to Zimbabwe, have made it timely to review the nature and extent of Australia's relations with African countries. This commentary describes current Australian policies on Africa, including trade relations and aid programs, against the background of the political and economic situation in Africa in the new millennium. In conclusion, the comment is made that Australia's dealings with African countries might have more significance to its own interests than is generally acknowledged. This is so particularly in respect of common standpoints on multilateral trade issues, and the future of the British Commonwealth.     

Shattered Dreams: The Longing for “Post Independent India”

For Dalits in rural India, Nehru's vision of an Indian nation-state devoid of caste prejudice stimulated dreams and hopes of a better future. As a people who regularly experienced social and economic marginalisation by the upper castes over the centuries, they saw independent India as a transformed space, one that would accommodate the needs and aspirations of all its citizens, especially the oppressed and downtrodden. By the end of the 1950s, however, such dreams had been shattered, as Dalits increasingly came to realise that they had been mostly excluded from development programs launched by the postcolonial state. Dalit exclusion from the process of nation-state building constitutes an injustice that ignores their contribution to the national project. In this paper I examine some of the narratives that were told to me by second- and third-generation Dalits. Their oral histories celebrate the Dalits' vital role in India's freedom movement and the period that followed. Pride in their contribution formed the basis of the new Dalit politics that developed in the 1980s through the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which has become an extremely powerful political force at the national level.     

The road from serfdom: economic storytelling and narratives of India in the rise of neoliberalism

Abstract

Studies of neoliberalism’s rise in the second half of the twentieth century have focused on influential US and European thinkers and global economic institutions. They rarely mention India. This article argues that, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Nehru’s India served as both a central laboratory and a discursive field for international economists debating the proper role of the state in economic development. US economists like John Kenneth Galbraith held up India planning as a proxy for the ‘American way’ of capitalism in Asia; neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman and B.R. Shenoy excoriated Nehru’s ‘road to socialism.’ As India’s economy stumbled in the late 1960s, neoliberal economists used Indian foundations to build an empirical and rhetorical case against scientific planning. Their cautionary tales about India’s ‘Permit-License-Raj’ helped to construct and sustain the project of delegitimizing state action and celebrating markets.     

Fortuitous Consequence: The Domestic Politics of the 1991 Canada-United States Agreement on Air Quality

Following more than a decade of negotiations, the Canada-United States Agreement on Air Quality entered into force on March 13, 1991, with the signatures of then-Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and US. President George Bush. Why was it so difficult for Canadian and US. negotiators to reach agreement? I argue that Canadian and U.S. domestic politics were the primary impediments to resolving the U.S.-Canada acid rain dispute. This article thus casts the dispute in terms of a pair of domestic environmental policy problems, whose timely and complementary solution, furthermore, required executive initiative as the handmaiden of ecological crisis. Heightened public concern about the threat of acidic air pollution in Canada prompted Mulroney's efforts to reduce acid rain. In the United States, a likewise critical change in the public's perception of air quality as a national emergency created the mass support necessary for Bush's federal acid rain control initiative     

India's policy on Diego Garcia and its quest for security in the Indian Ocean

ABSTRACT

The ongoing contention between Mauritius and the UK over the sovereignty of the Diego Garcia presents a difficult challenge for Indian foreign policy-makers. New Delhi's principled opposition to colonialism and its historical relationship with Port Louis has made it steadfastly support the Mauritian claim. However, such principled foreign policy militates against India's quest to balance the growing Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean. Insofar, Diego Garcia allows the US Navy to maintain an active presence in the Indian Ocean, thereby keeping the Chinese naval power at bay. Balance of power considerations notwithstanding, the expanding trajectory of the Indo-US strategic partnership also demands New Delhi to weigh the burden of its policies on Diego Garcia carefully. This article juxtaposes India's historical record on Diego Garcia during the Cold War with its contemporary approach to the issue. In doing so, it sheds further light on India's strategic decision-making in the Indian Ocean, its dilemmas in confronting a genuinely hostile maritime power in the region, and deliberates on potential options for dispute resolution which can not only satisfy Mauritian demands but also ensure a healthy balance of power in the Indian Ocean.     

The Causes of Iran's 1953 Coup: A Critique of Darioush Bayandor's Iran and the CIA

This article presents a detailed criticism of Darioush Bayandor's book Iran and the CIA. Bayandor argues that certain Shi'a clerics, rather than the US Central Intelligence Agency, were the main actors responsible for overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953. Bayandor presents no major new evidence to support this claim. He gives too much weight to certain statements, draws unwarranted inferences from others, and discounts or disregards a wealth of evidence that conflicts with his account. He overemphasizes the role of civilian crowds in the overthrow of Mosaddeq and underemphasizes the role of Iranian military units organized by the CIA. And he fails to acknowledge the importance of US and especially British efforts to foment opposition to Mosaddeq before the coup.     

Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: India,Britain and Imperial Preference, 1903–1932

This article examines the dialogue between British tariff reformers and Indian nationalists over the application of imperial trade preference in India from Joseph Chamberlain's 1903 Birmingham address to the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference. For both groups, this issue was a focal point to assess India's constitutional status and national participation within an emerging British Commonwealth and international system after the First World War. Specifically, it marked a comprehensive challenge to the orthodoxy of free trade and liberal empire seen increasingly as a determent to reconciling national prosperity and imperial unity. It is argued that prominent tariff reformers’ well-studied criticism of an ‘unpatriotic’ cosmopolitan free trade made them also sympathetic to longstanding Indian grievances that this fiscal policy exacerbated economic exploitation and racial discrimination. After 1919, Indian nationalists, including ‘historical economists’, utilized metropolitan advocacy for imperial preference to demand fiscal and political autonomy from Britain and national, as well as racial, equality in collective imperial decision. At the 1932 conference in Ottawa, India's voluntary and negotiated acceptance of preferential trade with Britain, beside the white self-governing Dominions, helped transform the British Commonwealth into an egalitarian organization recognizable after 1947.     

The Making of a Non-Aligned Nuclear Power: India's Proliferation Drift, 1964–8

The article examines the strategic circumstances leading to non-aligned India's safeguard of its nuclear option during a crucial period in its proliferation trajectory, when it was one of the states closest to nuclear-weapons development, and faced US pressures to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that was being negotiated at the time. Based on Indian, US, and French primary sources, this paper demonstrates that India's regional strategic insecurities and bilateral tensions with the United States were too great for it to sign the NPT. Yet, New Delhi's capability to successfully reprocess weapons-grade plutonium permitted the developing country substantial leverage that it exploited through advancing on a slow dual-use nuclear programme.     

Interview with Romano Prodi

On the occasion of the Conference on the State of Italy, held at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies on 29–30 October 2013, David Kertzer interviewed former two-time Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Their focus was on the evolution of Prodi's involvement in Italian government and politics. This first in what is planned to be two such interviews examines Prodi's initial move from an economics professor at the University of Bologna interested in the study of political economy and industrial policy, to a major figure in implementing industrial policy in Italy. It looks at his brief stint as Minister of Industry under Giulio Andreotti, his founding of the influential industrial study group Nomisma, and then his presidency of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), Italy's giant holding company. With the crisis of the Italian political system in the early 1990s, Prodi was central to the creation of a new centre-left coalition, named L'Ulivo (the Olive Tree), an experience he recalls here, along with his first experience as Prime Minister, from 1996 to 1998.     

周恩来赴印度三次规劝十四世达赖喇嘛

西藏和平解放后,1956年4月成立了西藏自治区筹备委员会,着手进行民主改革。西藏上层分裂分子大为恐惧,在西康地区发动武装叛乱。1956年11月,印度邀请十四世达赖喇嘛参加释迦牟尼涅槃2500周年大会。国外敌对势力和流亡的西藏上层分裂分子包围达赖,鼓动"西藏独立",策反随行官员,致使达赖和随行官员思想混乱并滞留印度。1956年底,周恩来在访问印度期间与达赖进行了三次谈话,阐明了党的方针政策,教育随行官员和达赖的家人,争取印度总理尼赫鲁的支持,为达赖最终安全返回西藏起到了关键作用。     

Churchill's ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech in Context: The Attempt to Achieve a ‘Good Understanding on All Points’ with Stalin's Soviet Union

More than 70 years ago, on 5 March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his ‘iron curtain’ speech at Westminster College in Fulton. The speech immediately attracted worldwide attention and proved to be highly controversial. Most contemporaries in East and West and the vast majority of subsequent historians interpreted the speech as Churchill's call for western resistance to Stalin's expansionist policies and the continuation of the wartime ‘special relationship’ between Washington and London. This article argues, however, that Churchill's speech has been misunderstood. When set in the context of Churchill's other pronouncements on world affairs during his time as leader of the opposition between 1945 and 1951 and in view of his vigorously pursued ‘Big Three’ ‘summit diplomacy’ with Moscow and Washington after he returned as Prime Minister in 1951, the ‘iron curtain’ speech must be seen in a different light. It becomes clear that this famous speech was not Churchill's sabre-rattling call for commencing or energizing the East--West conflict with the Soviet Union. Quite to the contrary, his speech was meant to prevent the escalation of this conflict and avoid the dangerous clash between the world's greatest powers that soon became known as the Cold War.     

Elite migrations in modern Italy: patterns of settlement,integration and identity negotiation

Abstract

Francesco Crispi has often appeared a paradoxical figure. In the earlier part of his life he was a revolutionary republican and a friend of Mazzini. After 1860 he accepted the monarchy, but remained very much a man of the Left and in many ways a quintessential democrat. Yet he ended his career as an authoritarian Prime Minister, a vigorous opponent of the Far Left, and an imperialist, who prorogued parliament and contemplated dispensing with representative government altogether. This article contends that Crispi's career has more coherence than is commonly suggested; it focuses on an important but hitherto neglected aspect of his thinking, namely the problem of how to achieve a sense of national consciousness in Italy through ‘political education’. The article traces the development of the idea of national political education throughout Crispi's career and argues that his two terms as Prime Minister in 1887–91 and 1893–6 can only be fully understood in the context of his long‐standing concern with this problem.