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The Domestic Roots of Indian Foreign Policy Author(s): Walter K. Andersen Source: Asian Affairs, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Fall, 1983), pp. 45-53Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30172981Accessed: 12-01-2016 10:03 UTC

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Symposium

The Domestic Roots of Indian Foreign Policy

WALTER K. ANDERSEN

Indian foreign policy, like that of every other country, is influenced by domestic concerns, institutions, and the political elites that articulate demands.' However, India, in common with other states that emerged from colonial status after World War II, has not developed institutions that can effectively mobilize popular support for specific foreign policy positions. Consequently, foreign policy has largely been shaped by the chief executive, who has the added burden of approximating what domestic groups want and balancing his or her perception of domestic political concerns with other foreign policy interests. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, asserted, according to V.K. Krishna Menon, Nehru's closest political confidant, that "so far as the public was concerned, the presentation and handling (of foreign policy) was his." The situation today is not markedly different.2

Nehru established the precedent of an activist prime minister in foreign affairs during his seventeen-year tenure. He enjoyed foreign policy, dominated the policy-making process, and served as his own foreign minister. His foreign policy featured nonalignment as its cen- tral principle. His foreign economic policy focused on pragmatic development goals aimed at reducing dependency so that India would have greater flexibility in dealing with external powers. This broad policy orientation underscored efforts to give India an independent

45


RAVI RAJ KAMAL


46 Asian Affairs

and influential role in world affairs. It represented the aspirations of the generation that struggled for independence and still remains the ideological framework that governs foreign policy.3

Undergirding this outlook has been the consistent Indian foreign policy goal of reducing foreign influence in the subcontinent or at least orchestrating such influence so that it serves Indian interests. A recent example of this effort is the Indian approach to the ongoing nonaggression talks with Pakistan. In those talks, India has proposed that the two powers sign an agreement rejecting foreign bases and strategic links with outside powers, a stand India has taken since the 1950s.

Regarding economic foreign policy, the government has sought to reduce dependence by laws that specify majority Indian control over private firms, limits on foreign management, and defining of areas where foreign collaboration will be permitted. The government also uses import controls to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition. India, in addition, has generally preferred loans from international financial institutions rather than investment from foreign private companies. However, India's rapidly growing import bills, chiefly for oil, have recently made New Delhi more liberal in in- terpreting investment regulations for foreign firms bringing in high technology that will make Indian industry more competitive on world markets. These policies are generally supported by Indian business, and regulations of implementation are issued only after extensive consultations with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the premier organization of Indian business, and other business associations. Businessmen, for their part, often pressure the government for changes in particular tariff or licensing rules, but dissatisfaction with details rarely has an impact on foreign policy. One exception, perhaps, is the lingering resentment on the part of many businessmen toward the U.S., which was blamed for exerting pressure on India to devalue the rupee in 1966-a step then advocated by the World Bank and many donors. This lingering resentment may have made the government careful not to give the ap- pearance of caving in to the International Monetary Fund during the 1981 negotiations for a 5.7 billion dollar loan.

Still another area that has had a continuous domestic impact on foreign policy considerations is the ethnic, religious, and geographic linkages between India and its South Asian neighbors. Across the borders from India are people with ethnic ties to groups within India. Some 20 percent of Sri Lanka's population is Tamil-speaking; about



Symposium 47

15 percent of Bangladesh are Bengali-speaking Hindus. The population of Nepal's southern Terai districts are ethnically similar to groups in contiguous areas of India. These overlapping ethnic ties have generated pressures on New Delhi to safeguard interests of these groups-in part to forestall cross-border migration into India. The 1971 Indo-Pakistani War would probably not have taken place were it not for the 1971 mass migration of some ten million Hindus from what was then East Pakistan. Regarding Tamils in Sri Lanka, an all- party conference met in early 1983 in Madras to discuss Sri Lankan Tamils and urged the government not to renew the Shastri- Bandaranaike Agreement that involved repatriation of Tamils to India. The mid-1983 communal rioting in Sri Lanka generated unex- pected intense concern among the Tamil-speaking population in India. The state government of Tamilnadu requested that the Indian government take steps to help Sri Lankan Tamils. This was followed by a flurry of diplomatic activity between India and Sri Lanka. New Delhi wanted to convey its concern, although it was careful to deny any interference in Sri Lankan affairs. Columbo, for its part, assured New Delhi that the government was attempting to protect Tamil interests. In the 1950s and 1960s, politicians in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh supported activities of the Nepali Congress party. In both cases, however, it is difficult to determine how much influence these concerned groups have had in the formulation of foreign policy in New Delhi. The presence of a large Muslim minority in India (some 12 percent of the population) has influenced India's stance toward Pakistan and the Muslim states of West Asia. Amicable relations with Pakistan (and with the Islamic states of West Asia) at least in part reinforces Indian efforts to buttress its secular credentials with its own Muslim population.

Overlapping water resources in the eastern part of the subcontinent shapes Indian policy toward Bangladesh and Nepal. Growing domestic demands within India for irrigation and hydro-generated electricity have played a role in India's policies toward those states. The Janata government in 1977 signed a generous five-year water sharing agreement with Bangladesh over the protests of the Com- munist party-Marxist government of West Bengal. That agreement was also criticized by Mrs. Gandhi's Congress party as unduly generous and at the expense of Indian interests. (However, Mrs. Gandhi's government in late 1982 extended the agreement for eight- een months.)



48 Asian Affairs

The potential for foreign exploitation of domestic tensions is a third area that has aroused domestic foreign policy concerns. Allega- tions of Chinese assistance to tribal insurgency movements in north- east India was a major stumbling block to improved Sino-Indian relations during the 1960s and 1970s. Former Foreign Minister Vajpayee, during his February 1979 visit to Beijing, was told by his hosts that China had terminated all such assistance. This assurance helped pave the way for a normalization of relations, but Indian politicians are still concerned about a "foreign hand" in Assam, in the Punjab, and among Muslims. The strategic location of the Punjab and Assam has made the government of India extremely sensitive to developments in those two border states. Concerns about external Islamic support for India's Muslims have triggered renewed efforts to foster greater solidarity among Hindus and to shut off external financial support.

Still a fourth area of domestic concern are the issues of remittances from Indian guest workers in the Middle East and a steady supply of oil from that region. There is little doubt that the important domestic impact of the remittances and oil has induced India to im- prove its relations with the moderate states of West Asia. This was underscored by the visits Mrs. Gandhi made to Persian Gulf states in 1981 and 1982. On several occasions, efforts by India to restrict migration because of alleged mistreatment of migrants were aborted due to political pressures within India for continued migration to the Middle East. For example, the government of India for a period banned migration of uneducated women to Kuwait, where there were allegations that Indian domestics were being mistreated. But after a barrage of protests, India quietly permitted renewal of migration.

While there are important domestic interests regarding specific foreign policy actions, Indian prime ministers have generally had a free hand in the conduct of foreign policy. In part, this is due to the lack of effective parliamentary restraints on the prime minister; to the inability of associational groups to mobilize popular support on foreign policy questions; to the lack of a bipartisan tradition between the ruling party and the opposition; to the pervasive view that criticism of official policy is somehow illegitimate; and, finally, to the dominance of a single party at the center. There are, however, some notable examples of domestic pressures forcing the prime minister to act, and they have usually occurred under two circumstances: when the dominant party at the center was threatened by internal fac-



Symposium 49

tionalism, and when foreign policy moves were at variance with the ideological consensus of political elites.

Let us first consider the latter situation. Nehru's handling of relations with China in the late 1950s is a classic Indian example of the government moving out of step with political elites. Voices of concern were expressed regarding Chinese intentions in the mid-1950s after its occupation of Tibet and the publication of official Chinese maps showing as Chinese some fifty thousand square kilo- meters of territory considered Indian. When official confirmation of the Chinese occupation of the Aksai Chin of Kashmir and their con- struction of a highway across the area leaked out, B.R. Ambedkar resigned from the cabinet, citing appeasement to China for his action. By 1959, the Chinese activities in Aksai Chin were in the public domain, and the political opposition attacked the government for not taking action to effect a Chinese withdrawal. The rightist Swantantra party and the Hindu nationalist Jana Sangh even questioned the utility of nonalignment-the cornerstone of Nehru's foreign policy. Despite the growing criticism, the 1959-60 defense budget called for a reduced expenditure on the military.4

Public pressures, however, began to influence the prime minister. In 1960, the government decided not to cosponsor a resolution proposing the admission of the PRC to the United Nations; Nehru publicly stated that his decision was due to the adverse popular reac- tion to the Sino-Indian border dispute. His decision to move troops into disputed territory along the Sino-Indian boundary may also have been influenced by severe criticism of Indian passivity. But not until after the defeat suffered by the Indian military in the 1962 Sino- Indian War did the ruling Congress party make a collective effort to shape Nehru's handling of policy. Krishna Menon, associated with a limited defense and appeasement, was blamed for the defeat, and Satyanarayanan Sinha, expressing the mood of the executive committee of the Congress party in parliament, bluntly told Nehru that "either Menon goes or you will have to go." Menon resigned as defense minister the next day. He was demoted to minister of defense production and then forced out of the cabinet. After Nehru's death, he was forced out of the party. Still another example of effective pressure on the prime minister was Nehru's change of stance in 1963 regarding his initial backing of a proposal to construct powerful transmitters in India for VOA broadcasts to China. According to subsequent statements of his cabinet members, Nehru was forced to



50 Asian Affairs

reverse his stand in the face of strident criticism within parliament and its consultative committees that such VOA broadcasts would constitute an unacceptable breach of India's nonaligned policy. More recently, the adverse press and opposition party criticism to India's hesitance to accept the Pakistani proposal for nonaggression talks may have affected the timing of India's acceptance of President Zia's offer.

The brief period of Janata rule (mid-1977 to mid-1979) demon- strated how factionalism can undermine a prime minister's control over foreign policy. The Janata was a loose federation constantly threatened with the secession by its constituent units. Foreign Minister Vajpayee, former president of the Jana Sangh-the largest element of the Janata, and Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who had been a prominent figure in the Congress party for two decades before parting company with Mrs. Gandhi in 1969, often disagreed on policy (e.g., on preserving a nuclear option, on the importance of the border issue in the Sino-Indian normalization process). Each was suf- ficiently powerful to resist the policy preferences of the other. Other prominent Janata party figures-Defense Minister Jagjivan Ram, H.N. Bahuguna, Subramaniam Swamy, to name only three of the more outspoken-were often at odds with the official line. Ram wanted the government to take a more strongly pro-Arab line on Arab-Israeli issues; Bahuguna favored closer links to the USSR; and Swamy wanted looser ties with Moscow.

Under such circumstances, the government was less able, or less willing, to orchestrate public and parliamentary opinion. The fragile cohesiveness of the Janata party made it necessary to build a consensus within the party on individual issues. For the first time, the views of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Foreign Affairs, which included such luminaries as former Foreign Ministers Y.B. Chavan and Dinesh Singh, had a real input on foreign policy decisions. The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, the cabinet's most important deliberative body, was involved in the formulation of policy such as the controversial decision to purchase Jaguar deep- penetration strike aircraft from Great Britain.

Like its predecessors, however, the Desai government saw no need to develop a bipartisan approach to foreign policy. This virtu- ally guaranteed an opposition effort to portray Janata policy as a sharp departure from the foundations laid by Nehru, which was not the case. Because some major Janata figures themselves joined the



Symposium 51

attack, the opposition charges were given greater credibility. For ex-

ample, the Janata's policy of "genuine nonalignment," suggesting diminished reliance on the USSR and greater diplomatic flexibility, was not a departure, although some people at the time argued that it was. Mrs. Gandhi had initiated steps in that direction before she left office and pursued that policy after she returned to office in 1980. On certain fundamental stances in foreign policy-opposition to U.S. military arms to Pakistan, withdrawal of superpower military presence from the Indian Ocean (and its hinterland), not antagonizing the USSR--there is a broad consensus to which the Janata government

adhered, as have governments both before and after it. With Mrs. Gandhi's return to office in January 1980, foreign

policy shifted back firmly into the hands of the prime minister. Her party won a solid majority in parliament and no Congress (I) national politican is willing to contest her authority. Mrs. Gandhi makes the important foreign policy decisions-and a number of minor ones as well. Assisting her are a small group of advisors-chief among them are P.C. Alexander, the principal secretary of her secretariat; G. Parthasarathy, a former senior official in the MEA and special advisor in the prime minister's secretariat; L.K. Jha, chairperson of the Economic Administrative Reforms commission; and K.N. Kao, former head of RAW and presently an advisor on strategy within the secretariat. The secretariat has again resumed the role it had between 1964 and 1977 (under Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi) as an initiator of options and a coordinator of policy, perhaps even sup- planting the MEA as the major source of foreign political and economic policy options. In contrast, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, as far as I can tell, no longer plays a significant ad-

visory role. The same is true of the various consultative committees of parliament and the Congress (1) itself.

Since 1980, the government has not considered it necessary to mobilize widespread popular support for its major foreign policy moves: the Afghan policy, the decision to initiate a dialogue with the PRC on the disputed border question, the nonaggression talks with

Pakistan, the diversification of arms purchases, and the decision to

assume the presidency of the nonaligned movement. This under- scores the prime minister's dominant role in foreign policy; it also demonstrates the success of the prime minister to manage foreign policy in a way generally acceptable to political elites.

The one recent unanmbiguous case of successful overt domestic



52 Asian Affairs

influence on foreign policy has grown out of the demand of the Assamese speakers to expel from Assam allegedly illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The movement, involving the periodic shutdown of government offices and the closure of the oil pipeline from Assam, forced the government to postpone the 1980 elections in twelve parliamentary constituencies. Negotiations between the All Assamese Students' Union (AASU), the umbrella organization of student ac- tivists, and the government over the past three years have so far failed to reach an acceptable compromise.

The key problem is the inability of the government and the AASU to agree on a cut-off date specifying the base year for legal en- try of the immigrants. The government argues that it will accept March 25, 1971, coinciding with the date of Bangladesh's declared independence. The government points out that India and Bangladesh had agreed that New Delhi would accept all migrants who had entered India prior to that date. The AASU, which originally sought 1951 as the cut-off date, eventually compromised by moving the date to 1961. The government, in late 1981, agreed under apparent pressure to push back the cut-off year to 1966, but the AASU refused to even consider this date, and it is now not clear if the government is still willing to consider 1966 as base year.

In balancing opposing interests-domestic stability in a stra- tegically sensitive border state and bilateral relations with Bangla- desh-the government's decision to push back the cut-off date to 1966 underscored its conclusion that reduced domestic turmoil in Assam was the more important consideration. In any case, it is not likely that many people will be expelled from Assam whatever the eventual decision, although the government has begun to patrol the border more closely to prevent still further illegal migration.

This quick overview suggests a low level of effective domestic restraint on the prime minister's conduct of foreign policy over the past thirty years. In part, this is due to lack of institutions both within and outside government which are capable of mobilizing support for specific foreign policy issues. It is also due to generally successful efforts of the prime ministers to remain within the foreign policy consensus of political elites. Strong executive control could break down, however, as it did during the Janata period, if there were to emerge a coalition government or one with a thin parliamentary majority-conditions which would threaten it with a loss in a no- confidence vote. Foreign policy would not necessarily suffer as a con-



Symposium11 53

sequence, for one of the major achievements of the Janata period was in the foreign policy area.

N()TEIS

I. For a sur\cy, see A. Appadorai, Dolnesti Roots of India's Foreign Policy, 1947-1972 (New Delhi: Oxford, 1981).

2. See Michael Brtecher, India and J'orld Politics: Krishna Menon's View of the W'orld (New Delhi: Oxford, 1968).

3. For two recent surveys, see Indian Foreign Policy:. The Nehru Years, ed. B.R. Nanda (Delhi: Vikas, 1976) and India's Foreign Policy: Studies in Continuity and Change, ed. Bimal Prasad (Delhi: Vikas, 1979).

4. The best survey of India's defense budgeting process through the years remains that of Raju G. C. Thomas, The Defence of India (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1978).



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