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- PublicationRestrictedStrategic entente or non-alignment : a refinement of India's foreign policy (1946-1955)(1996)Amarjit Singh GrewalThis study on India's policy of non-alignment was a learning experience in many ways. The interviews with Indian scholars and former policymakers is one illustration of why this is true. They showed that unofficial information does have a quality that at time supersedes official sources in research.
The views of non-alignment discussed in Chapter One after a preliminary introduction also had much to offer. Information on non-alignment is no doubt massive. But unknown to most is what seems to be an on-going debate between two camps comprising scholars and policymakers. One camp supports non-alignment while the other camp consists of its critics.
From the views of both camps, it was learned that non-alignment is a misconstrued policy. It is mistakenly referred to as Nehru's policy when it is not. Nehru not only disliked the negativity in the term "non-alignment", he also hardly used the word as India's Prime Minister from 1946 to 1964.
Rarely have studies of non-alignment also explained whether non-alignment is the means or ends of Indian foreign policy. For those that do, non-alignment is said to be the means of Indian foreign policy. Some scholars call it India's "foreign policy strategy" in the belief that it is an instrument or means of a state policy.
However, scholarly definitions do have a bias in the way they are formulated. Such definitions, being academic in nature, are also not always easy to fathom. Literal definitions are more useful in this regard. They may not be entirely objective, but they are at least universal enough to cater to a larger audience.
There is a consensus among scholars that non-alignment is India's foreign policy. In a literal sense, a "foreign policy" refers to a plan of action that normally has its own set of goals and means. Seen from this perspective, non-alignment is not just a means of Indian foreign policy. It becomes the action plan of Indian foreign affairs or the foreign policy itself. Non-alignment will then have a set of goals and means that also represent the goals and means of Indian foreign policy.
Central to the idea that non-alignment is India's foreign policy was yet another lesson. It was noted that the factors influencing Nehru's background in Chapter Two are essential to a study of India's foreign policy. This had been ignored in most of the earlier studies of non-alignment.
After examining documents from 1946 to 1955, when India's foreign policy was in its infancy, two more new themes surfaced in Chapter Three. The first is that the goals of Indian foreign policy have one strategic concern, namely her national interests. Nehru also stressed a second theme on "friendly and cooperative relations" or entente as the means of India's foreign policy to achieve its goals. Thus, India's foreign policy was not non-alignment. It was in effect a policy of "strategic entente".
The policy of strategic entente also brought with it a new dimension to India's relations with three countries from 1946 to 1954. These were the United States, China and Indonesia, all of which had active bilateral relations with India at that time. The nature of Indo-US relations discussed in Chapter Four, revealed that their conflicts on several issues were not due to India's so-called policy of non-alignment. With an entente policy, there was no reason for the US to have differences with India. These differences resulted mainly from a misreading of India's foreign policy by US policymakers and Nehru's inability to make US officials see the Indian viewpoint.
India's relations with China covered in Chapter Five showed that entente with China did not mean that Nehru was a communist sympathiser. The argument that he compromised the sovereignty of Tibet to China is also naive. His decision to be friendly to China was purely due to strategic considerations.
Finally, India's relations with Indonesia examined in Chapter Six refute the claim that Nehru had personal ambition in befriending the Indonesians. He was not interested in the leadership of Asia as some critics suggest. Neither did he have any intentions of forming an Afro-Asian bloc. His main concern was to free Indonesia from colonial rule. Freedom, like avoiding blocs and staying independent, was a key goal of India's policy of strategic entente. Ultimately it was this entente policy that mattered most to him.124 13