Re-evaluating the First United States—Pakistan Alliance

Thanks to all of you who have commented and read my article. I should mention at the outset that this was a pretty long article--about 35 pages and so some of it had been truncated. However, as I am planning to publish the longer version soon, I would be extremely grateful if some constructive criticism is provided so that I can make it better and more comprehensive.

That said, let me delve a bit into the Nehru debate. I should acknowledge that even though I am a Pakistani I have always had deep respect for Nehru. However, the more I read about him the more it declines..though in my opinion he is still one of the best leaders India ever had and a great leader of the NAM in very important times. I think that his US trip was not really that crucial as some have made it out to be. Yes it allowed Pakistan to develop a close relationship with the US and soured India-US relations, but then India had a lot to gain from the USSR. If one compares the Pak-US and India-USSR friendship, across the board the Soviet Union was a good a faithful friend of India. THis was never the case with the US relationship with Pakistan. When the USSR was helping India industrialise and develop its economy, the US was only allowing Pakistan to import goods, so as to increase Pakistan`s long term dependency on the US market. The results of both these factors can be seen now in the boom in India and the poor economic base in Pakistan.

cheers,
Yaqoob

HP:

The consensus in Congress was often a sham. I recently read somewhere that 19 of the 20 congress councils (DPCC`s) voted in favour of making Patel the Prime Minister of India in the interim cabinet, but Gandhi overruled them in favour of Nehru. For all it`s worth, it was perhaps a right decision as Patel would have been completely unacceptable to India`s Muslims.

fuzair # 19

:)

IIRC, Gandhi`s/Congress`s opposition to WWII was that the Viceroy (Linlithgow?) declared war on Germany w/out consulting any Indian. Gandhi thought that peaceful non-violent resistance would shame the Japanese into leaving India eventually. If you fast long enough, your body eventually consumes the brain for nourishment.

Dost Mittar, Stuka,

Congress policy was approved by both the working and the central committee.(or similar bodies) Raja ji or Patel may have opposed it in various committees but once this policy was adopted, it was congress`s policy and Nehru was just following the party policy, which may have reflected his own leanings too.

Implying that Nehru bypassed the congress is not right considering that mostly Nehru worked on consensus.

There was no opposition to the non aligned policy in India also at that time so Nehru was representing Indian thinking on non alignement and on relations with the US.

stuka:

``Also, it is wrong to say the Congress policy was the same as Nehru policy. Within Congress, Rajaji and Patel advocated more pragmatic politics.``

I agree about the pramatism of the two but am not aware if they contributed to the development of the Foreign policy.

Ordinary Muslim:

Gandhi was a duffer too (as an adminsitrator) and he was brilliant as an agitationist. I think the same about Nehru. Usually agitationists do not make good administrators and that is where India failed, post independence.


HP: The Congress did not oppose the war, it opposed Indian participation in the war till the UK promised Indian independence consequent to the war being over.

Also, the US and UK differed greatly on their perception of India. The US had been very much pro-independence and the Churchill correspondence of the time with FDR reflects that.

Also, it is wrong to say the Congress policy was the same as Nehru policy. Within Congress, Rajaji and Patel advocated more pragmatic politics.

#12 by dost-mittar

“It was not the Congress but the Communists who changed their stance when the Germans attacked Russia.”

I think we both need to brush up on our history! I should have said that congress did not support the war efforts initially and they did that after the Soviet Union was attacked. Communists obviously took a harder line.

“why did he not hold a plebiscite in Kashmir instead of scuttling attempts of all U.N mediators sent for this purpose through one excuse or another?”

You wrote this in a different context but this fits right in to what I wanted to post anyway!

Why did he not hold plebiscite? The answer could be found right in the article above.
IMO, when Nehru first agreed to plebiscite, he genuinely felt that referendum could be a good solution and it would help him save face too in Indian politics, where a group of hardliners on Kashmir and Pakistan was already emerging.

Things began to change as soon as the UN resolution passed and both countries began to drift into different camps. Pakistan, I believe signed a secret defense pact with the US when Liaquat was there or right after he came back. The pact could not have been a secret for Indian government. Looking at the differences in Indian and the US perspective of the world politics and the Soviet Union being the natural ally for the Congress and liberal Indians, this perhaps set international politics in motion and cold war considerations crept into a local dispute.

If you look at Indian positions on Kashmir from 1950 to 1954, you will invariably notice that as Pakistan moved closer to the US -from help in the Korean War to signing the first major anti communist defense pact with the US and its allies, Indian position on Kashmir hardened too.
When Pakistan finally went into Cento or the Baghdad Pact as it was known first, India completely reneged on the referendum issue. Since then the whole thing is in limbo.

So if we re-evaluate the US-Pak relations based on this article, we will see that the Kashmir conflict was seriously impacted by Pakistan’s growing relations with the US and India almost moving in to the Russian camp.

kaalchakra#13:

``I never confuse a man`s admiration for other people`s beautiful wives for the man`s political convictions.``

Even when they compromise his convictions or affect his performance as a leader?

Note that I did not make mention of his affair with Lady Mountbatten or JFK`s remark that the only time Nehru showed any interest in his conversation with him at the White House was when Jackie spoke. AFAIK, they did not compromise his convictions.

Dost-Mittar

I never confuse a man`s admiration for other people`s beautiful wives for the man`s political convictions. A man who can`t admire women should worry us far more.

HP:

You are only partly right!

It was not the Congress but the Communists who changed their stance when the Germans attacked Russia. The Congress, despite its Quit India movement, did not oppose the Allies. If I recall my history correctly, Gandhi opposed Bose`s Azad Hind Fauj. Nehru was strongly against Nazis and Fascists.

You are right that the Congress had taken a anti-colonial, anti-imperial stance before independence. But you should also remember that this policy was almost solely the work of Nehru himself. Moreover, when they talked about anti-colonialism, they did not have the U.S in mind, which had consistently supported Indian freedom struggle in its dealings with Churchill.

You are right on track about Pakistani views about Liaqat not going to the Soviet Union first. In fact, the Russians did not have a high opinion of Nehru whom they called ``Imperialism`s running dog``. Their opinion changed only after Stalin`s death and especially after the Khrushev-Bulganin visit to India. But if India had joined the Western block, Pakistan would almost certainly gone to the Soviet block and the history of the subcontinent would have been completely different.

Kaalchakra:

``But the fact of the matter is that these were leaders of conviction.``

What conviction?

If Nehru had the conviction, why did he not hold a plebiscite in Kashmir instead of scuttling attempts of all U.N mediators sent for this purpose through one excuse or another? Why did he attack Goa while sermonising the rest of the world about solving all disputes through non-violence.
Even socialism! One meeting with fraudulent Teja`s beautiful jewish wife and he gave that so-called ``industrialst``, whom no one had heard of before or since, the permission to start his ``Jayanti Shipping Corporation`` in the private sector.

Re: # 6 Stuka Sahib:

``It shows that Nehru was an idiot and though the US tried its best to have a good relationship with India, the damn socialists in power then wrecked every opportunity.``

Indeed. However, Nehru wasn`t a lone idiot. Another idiot was Grand Ayatollah M. K. Gandhi. Consider a couple of his fatwas:

1. Jews should commit suicide in order to avoid the Holocaust.
2. Britain should fight Germany with spiritual weapons, instead of tanks and planes.

Nehru advised his nation to substitute the spinning wheel for textile machinery. I wonder what his successors will suggest as an alternative to the microprocessor. The abacus?


Cordially.

Well, I love to curse Nehru, but HP is closest to the truth on this.

Nehru (and later, Indira Gandhi with Nixon) have been accused to being arrogant and contemptuous (American authors have been quick to see a `Brahminical` trace in this). But the fact of the matter is that these were leaders of conviction.

They did not wag their tails between their legs, and change their views, a matter of astonishment to American officials. These American presidents and leaders were not always J.F.K. material.

#7 by dost-mittar, #6 by stuka
“The admiration that he had for the Soviet Union and the contempt that he showed for America and Americans when on their soil left the Americans no alternative but to go for their second choice, Pakistan.”

That’s a pretty loaded if I may say so.

I think your criticism of Nehru’s stand on his 1949 US trip is not justified.
In hindsight, we can be judgmental but what Nehru articulated in the US was the cornerstone of the Indian National Congress’s agreed foreign policy. Nehru did not pop this foreign policy up on his own. The Congress’s anti-imperialists and pro-Soviet stand was part of the agreed Congress policy. This policy was not developed in one day but the Congress had this stand for a long time.

Right at the inception of the Second WW, Congress had refused to support Brits in the war effort and when the Soviet Union was attacked, Congress switched its stand to support allies.
If I remember correctly, the quit India movement was launched in the hope that the Brits might lose the war.

Indian policy was appreciated all over the world as the colonialism at time was not completely destroyed and the Soviets were supporting many freedom movements around the world and the US role was not exactly supportive of the colonized nations.

There are always two sides to the coin. For a long time, Pakistanis cussed Liaquat Ali Khan for visiting the US first despite the fact that the Soviets had invited him first. Pakistani attributed Liaquat snub of Soviet Union then to the Soviet Support of India on Kashmir later.


This is an interesting article but there a few gaps and I will try and put together another post soon about the implications of US-Pak defense relations on Kashmir and India Pak relations.

stuka:

Yes, Nehru`s foreign policy was a disaster as much as his domestic economic policy. Even though I am against the BJP, it was Jaswant Singh who undid most of the damage done by Nehruvians in the foreign policy sphere.

I wish Indians had better sense and had listened to a wise TamBram like Rajaji and his Swatantra Party than to an airconditioned socialist dreamer who brought the Asian country with the most advanced socio-economic-administrative infrastructure in 1947 to the most laggard Asian economy at the end of his tenure.

Yakoub:

You have done a fairly comprehensive job of analysing the triangular affair between the U.S, India and Pakistan. As you correctly pointed out, the father of U.S-Pak alliance was neither Pakistan nor the U.S, but the Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. The admiration that he had for the Soviet Union and the contempt that he showed for America and Americans when on their soil left the Americans no alternative but to go for their second choice, Pakistan. As you have put it:

``The Indian Prime Minister’s trip to the US in 1949 was a pivotal moment which made the Truman administration seriously consider alignment with Pakistan as the best option in its South Asian policy. Nehru’s trip was disastrous inasmuch as he made it clear to Truman that India would not, under any circumstances, depart from its neutral position and nor would it support the United States in the Japan Peace Treaty talks.``

The two entered into an alliance with completely different but known objectives - Pakistan did not share the objectives of the alliance as it had no fear from either the Soviets or the Chinese; the U.S certainly did not share Pakistan`s enemity against India. Both were quite aware of why the other was entering the alliance. Pakistan was therefore wrong in complaining that the U.S did not support it against India as it was not an alliance objective. Nor was the U.S honest when it told Indians repeatedly that its alliance with Pakistan should not concern Indians as they knew quite well that Pakistan will use those arms against India and only against India. The only simpletons were those Pakistanis who thought that the U.S would stand by them against Indians and the Indians who thought that the U.S cared more for democracy than it did for its geo-political interests.