The evolution of India’s foreign policy – Part VI

Vishwanath Pratap Singh and his National Front formed a minority government on December 2, 1989 with outside support from Bharatiya Janata Party and the communists from the left. This was not a viable government to begin with. Just the opposition to Rajiv Gandhi was not enough reason to hold these disparate groups of over-ambitious politicians together for long. He lost the vote of confidence in the Indian Parliament on November 10, 1990 and resigned as the 10th Prime Minister of India. Chandra Shekhar with just 64 MPs staked the claim to form the government; he had the tacit support of Rajiv Gandhi, the leader of the opposition. Just like his mother in 1980, Rajiv Gandhi withdrew his support to Chandra Shekhar government on June 21, 1991. Just like the Janata Party (1977 – 1980) this non-Congress experiment barely lasted for 18 months. India was sending bad signals to the world community about the resilience of its opposition parties and its democratic institutions.

Meanwhile, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by Politburo in 1985 in the Soviet Union. He came with a new idea of “Glasnost” (openness) and “Perestroika” (restructuring) and a determination to dissolve the oppressive Soviet Union. Gorbachev pulled out his troops from Afghanistan and ended the “Cold War”. This distant development changed everything for India. The left-leaning mandarins in Delhi were left like orphans and had no fall-back positions. India’s foreign policy drifted for the next few years as the socialist India was pushed into unchartered waters. Neither V P Singh nor Chandra Shekhar was a born-again ideologue like the Nehrus. They both cooperated with the United States of America during the first ‘Gulf War’ and were willing to expand trade and commerce. American establishment was also directed to move forward kicking and screaming under Reagan and Bush.

India’s foreign policy post Rajiv Gandhi looked a bit more humble in terms of its immediate neighborhood, except Pakistan. Prime Minister V P Singh pulled out the discredited IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) from Sri Lanka and extended a hand of friendship towards Nepal. Pakistan as usual was the spoiler and managed to have bad relations with 10 Prime Ministers of India. Relations with China were moving slowly but in the right direction. The most important post independence relationship for India with former Soviet Union was on a more realistic level. India for the first time started looking to develop bilateral relationships with European Union and Japan. The Indo-US dialogue was moving forward as America was looking at the subcontinent with renewed anxiety about the developing nuclear capabilities of India and Pakistan.

Rajiv Gandhi at this time was hell-bent on playing dirty politics. He lambasted Prime Minister Chander Shekhar for allowing the refueling of American aircrafts at Bombay airport for the Persian Gulf. Had he been the Prime Minister at that time, he would have done exactly what the Indian government was doing. But morals have never been the virtue of Nehru-Gandhi family. They are all political animals and would do just about anything to gain power. It was not long before Rajiv Gandhi withdrew Congress Party’s support to the Chander Shekhar government and plunged the nation once again into a costly general elections. This irresponsible action by Rajiv Gandhi was very damaging to India’s relations with the US led coalition against Iraq since Chandra Shekhar government was negotiating billions of dollars from the IMF and World Bank. Mercifully President George H W Bush understood the Indian government’s dilemma and did not make an issue out of it. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991 by LTTE at a rally while campaigning in Tamil Nadu.

The evolution of India’s foreign policy – Part III

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi defined India’s foreign policy like no other politician before her. She was not diffident of openly supporting the repressive regimes of the then Soviet Union, Cuba and any other communist country. She was not much enchanted by the communist China. She projected a robust national defense policy thereby keeping an expansionist China grounded in reality. Indira Gandhi fantasized being the leader of the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’, a group of losers founded by her father Jawaharlal Nehru, former Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. She destroyed India’s financial infrastructure as she was extremely ideological when it came to economic policies. Indira Gandhi and her socialist friends around the world eventually faced national bankruptcies!

Pandit Nehru was a delusional democrat where as Indira Gandhi was an authentic autocrat. She split the congress party in 1969 when she couldn’t get her way and formed an alliance with the left parties to stay in power. Mrs Gandhi signed a security pack with the Soviet Union and then went to war with Pakistan in 1971. She demolished Pakistan and won independence for Bangladesh in 1971. Indira Gandhi signed a peace agreement with Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after a long summit in Shimla. She agreed to return 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war without any concessions from a defeated Pakistan. She lost the golden opportunity to reunite Kashmir and settle the Indo-Pak border dispute once and for all. She might have given a secret assurance to the Soviet Union in that regard and sealed India’s fate!

Mrs Gandhi defied America in every which way and in 1974 India successfully conducted an underground nuclear test. Domestically, her electoral victory in 1971 General Elections was struck down by the courts and she was unseated as the Prime Minister of India. Instead of obeying the law of the land, Indira Gandhi decided to defy the law and imposed a ‘State of Emergency’. She was being advised by her younger son Sanjay Gandhi who had scant respect for the law in any case. The entire world was shocked by her illegal rule and she consolidated her power my putting all the opposition leaders in jail. Mrs Gandhi had converted India into a banana republic. India lost the reputation of being an authentic democracy like the United States or Europe. Indians have to live with this blemish for the rest of their lives!

During the emergency, the independent press was censured and all descent was muzzled. The remaining media was reporting what Indira Gandhi and her goons wanted to hear. She and her son believed the reports and called for elections under international pressure. Mrs Gandhi, her son Sanjay Gandhi and her party was soundly defeated by an angry electorate. My wife and I went out and voted against her. This is the only time we have voted in an election. Janata Party came to power in 1977 thus ending the 30 year long and torturous rule of Nehru-Gandhi family. Morarji Desai became the prime minister and Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Minister of External Affairs. This was the defining moment for Indian democracy and also the role of the Ministry of External Affairs. Vajpayee became the first independent voice!

The Nehru-Gandhi family is culturally Anglocentric

Starting with Motilal Nehru and right down to Rahul Gandhi, the entire Nehru-Gandhi family is the product of the British academia and the ‘English Civil Institutions’. This legacy has not served India and its people in any way. It is tragic that our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues in the Congress Party decided to adopt a Parliamentary Democracy for a diverse country like India. This form of government has undermined our freedom and creativity. Indians have no say in the election of our Chief Executive or the Commander-in-Chief. The ruling party decides as to who would lead the nation of 1.2 billion people and who would be the Commander-in-Chief of one of the largest defense forces in the world. The people of India have no say what so ever in this matter. What could be more outrageous? This is the legacy of Nehru-Gandhi family. We need to THINK long and hard about it!

How many people in the free-world would believe that just one individual in the largest democracy in the world decided as to who would be the next Prime Minister of India? In May 2004, it was left to Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, to decide the next Chief Executive of India and she chose Dr Manmohan Singh to head the coalition government. She also single-handedly decided who would be the next President of India once the then incumbent Dr APJ Abdul Kalam finished his first term in office. The universally respected President of India was not offered the second term because ‘Madame’ did not like the idea. Do you call this form of government a democracy? I don’t! This is an insult to the billion plus people of India. Yet, there is nothing that ordinary Indians can do about it. When the largest democracy in the world is ruled by a ‘Madame’, you know what it should be called!