China may have concluded that India is tilting towards the U.S. “rather than maintaining relative neutrality” on China-U.S. rivalry, according to Vijay Gokhale, former Foreign Secretary, Ambassador to China, and author of the new book Crosswinds: Nehru, Zhou and the Anglo-American Competition over China which examines various aspects of India’s relations with the U.S., Britain and China in the 1950s. The book was released on January 22, 2024. In a recent interview with The Hindu, Mr. Gokhale said there are many lessons from history as India confronts geopolitical challenges including its currently difficult relations with China amid growing Sino-U.S. competition. Edited excerpts:
What prompted you to re-examine the first decade of independent India’s diplomacy, and what lessons can we draw from how India managed relations with great powers during that period?
I wrote this book because I wanted to know the answers to a few questions which were in my mind for many years. One, of course, was why India did not seek any quid pro quo or guarantees on issues of our national interest from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in the process of recognising it. After all, we were an established democratic government, and India enjoyed a certain standing and influence in the world, whereas the PRC was in a sense a pariah government, not recognised by too many countries in the world. In these circumstances, why did India not leverage the advantages it had to secure its national interests or address its concerns? That was one set of questions that arose in my mind.
Another was, how did our relationship with China impact another very important relationship of ours, and that is the relationship with the United States of America. The U.S. was the world’s most powerful country in the late 1940s. It had consistently supported India’s democratic aspirations during our freedom struggle. Post independence, it had reached out to India and tried to build a partnership. Did our perception of China and our relationship with China have any impact on India’s policy towards the U.S.? That was the second question.
The third question, which has always intrigued me is, was Indian foreign policy at any time truly non-aligned? Is it the case that non-alignment was more slogan than practice? These questions and others led me to begin research on this book, and took me to the national archives and archival material in three countries, that is India, Britain and the U.S. The book is a product of that.
On Nehru’s decision to recognise the PRC, and more broadly his initial China policy, you write that he was sound on strategic instinct, but less so when it came to planning and the actual conduct of diplomacy.
If you look at Nehru’s speeches right from the end of the Second World War, he continually refers to the necessity of shaping a post-war Asian order, in which he is of the view that it is Asian countries that must have a say in the shaping of that order. That was a very fundamental sense that Prime Minister Nehru had, that if India was to really exercise influence and to emerge out of the century of colonialism, then it had to not only gain independence from the British, but it also had to create an environment around it which would allow India to exercise independent policy, whether it was domestic or foreign.
There is no doubt that Nehru felt that other Asian countries would need to be India’s partners. In his speeches, some of these countries were mentioned. One was Indonesia, which had also just become independent in 1945, and another was China. Now China in 1945, and up to 1949, was not the China of today, but the National government of China, of which Chiang Kai-shek was the leader. Nehru and President Chiang Kai-shek had a relationship which spanned many years, and began in the 1930s, first through correspondence, then Nehru himself visited China. Then, during the Quit India movement period, Chiang visited India. So there was a personal angle to it, and there was a broader strategic perception as well. Both these encouraged Nehru to believe that China would play a role.
We also have to give Nehru credit for the fact that well over a year before the Communist government was established, as I show in my book with a lot of archival material, Nehru was quite clear in his mind that the Communists were going to prevail, and that India would have to deal with them, one way or another. That again was foresight, because at that stage, the Americans were still betting on Chiang Kai-shek and although the British were sceptical, they were not ready to openly question American policy on China. If you see the correspondence that Nehru has with his own officials, as well as with the Indian ambassador in China, he is quite clear that the government of Chiang Kai-shek was going to fall and India should be preparing to deal with the new Communist regime. That’s why I say that Prime Minister Nehru was quite astute in his observations regarding China in the period when the National government was disintegrating, and the possibility of Communist rule was becoming more and more real.
You write that Nehru’s observations on China were not as on the mark subsequently, specifically regarding the assumptions he made about the new PRC government.
One of the main conclusions I would reach in my book is that while on the strategic plane Nehru had great vision, when it came to actual diplomacy and tactics, he fell short. There is more than one reason for this. One of the reasons is because he had differences of opinion with the West, particularly the U.S., about the nature of the Communist regime in China. The U.S. saw Communism as a monolithic threat to the Western world. Nehru had a more nuanced view. He felt that Communist movements in Asia, whether it was China, or Vietnam or Malaya, were more nationalist and less classically Bolshevist, and that these were expressions of national sentiment, which in India had been expressed by the Indian National Congress movement. Therefore, China needed to be dealt with a priori and not as part of a larger Communist plan by the Soviet Union to subvert the world.
So there was a difference in the approach that India and the U.S. had towards China. Added to that was the fact that India itself had just come out of a great struggle against a colonial power. There was empathy and sympathy for what the Chinese Communists were fighting for. They were not seen as a threat to India in the same way that the West saw them as a threat to its own interests.
I add a third element in this, and this is the element which has not really been explored. This is the extent to which continuing contacts and relations between senior officials of the government of India and officials of the British Empire led to the influence of the British over India’s foreign policy, not only towards China, but also towards the U.S. This is the most intriguing part, because even though these were our foes because they had colonised us, we gave greater weightage to what they said about international relations than we gave to U.S., which was not only the most powerful country in the world, but which was democratic, had supported anti-colonial and nationalist movements across the world, was ready to partner with India in its development, and give it the stature of a significant power in Asia. This aspect in particular has not been brought out previously to the best of my knowledge. This is where the book really hopefully changes perceptions in India about how our China policy was shaped, and for that matter, how our Western policy, specifically towards the U.S., was shaped in the first decade of India’s independence.
In your examination of India’s response to the two Taiwan Strait crises, you mention China’s message to New Delhi then that its real problems were to the east, and not with India to the west. How, in your view, has that line of thinking from Beijing since evolved?
The book deals with both the Taiwan Strait crises, and one of the interesting narratives that comes out of the research that I did was that contrary to public understanding, India actually played a significant role in both the Taiwan Strait crises. In the first crisis, India tried to mediate between the U.S. and China with the objective that peace in the Taiwan Strait would serve India’s national interest because it would create a larger area of peace in the Asia Pacific or the Indo-Pacific. By the time of the second crisis, relations with China were already beginning to turn sour. But nevertheless, there was an attempt by at least some part of the Indian establishment, mostly V.K. Krishna Menon, the Defence Minister and Nehru’s troubleshooter on foreign policy, to see whether some sort of reconciliation could be attempted between China and the U.S.
What is important is that there should not be an impression any longer that India has not played its part in ensuring peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, because in the 1950s, we played a very active part. That was not because we wished to interfere in the matter, but because what happens in the Taiwan Strait is India’s geopolitical, and increasingly, India’s geo-economic, business.
The Chinese outreach to India was not really as a result of our assistance or our intervention during the two Taiwan Strait crises. As I bring out in my book from the very limited amount of Chinese firsthand archival material that is available, China had suspicions about Indian motives in both these crises. They felt that essentially India was a handmaiden of the West. But they were willing to give India some space, because at that stage, we alone among all the major countries of the Global South had good relations with the U.S., and China’s ultimate objective was to improve relations with the U.S. They felt that they could use India.
When Sino-US relations began to solidify into a sort of very cold war after 1958 and after the second crisis, and when India’s relations with China began to simultaneously deteriorate, the fear in the Chinese mind was over a two-front conflict. In other words, they were facing the Americans along the eastern seaboard with all their allies and the possibility of an adversary, or of a challenge now being mounted, on the southwestern border with India. This two-front challenge has been a problem which China has dealt with by reaching out to India at such times, and suggesting to India that the real adversary is not India but the U.S., therefore, hoping that India will lower tensions and try to reach some kind of a modus vivendi.
In my opinion, this is a tactic, and I don’t think it reflects a great desire on the Chinese side to befriend India, or even a genuine wish to resolve outstanding issues. Such outreach to India occurs at times when it is facing intense pressure from the U.S. We should therefore judge their approach correctly. The book itself does bring this out that China reached out to India on this matter only when it felt pressure from the U.S., and not previous to that.
On the early phase of the India-China relationship, you write how there was no real direct contact between the leaders at a high level, yet serious assumptions were being made that would have long-lasting consequences. Do you see lessons from that period that hold relevance today?
Those times were different compared to the current situation, because both governments were newly established. In our case, we had been cut off from exercising diplomacy, or handling national security issues directly, for over 100 years. Therefore, when we became independent, it took us a while to find our feet. I do, however, bring out in the book that there was no real attempt by the newly established government of India to build out a system of foreign policy. It was very much confined to a small group of people, mostly Nehru’s political associates and a few bureaucrats who had had some exposure to international diplomacy. Beyond that, the wider consultation was absent.
I do mention, for instance, that even though Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel had urged Nehru to consult the Cabinet, and a number of other senior leaders including Rajagopalachari had done the same, there was really no effort for instance, in consulting Parliament or public opinion before recognising the PRC. The same was the case when we started negotiating the 1954 agreement with China on Indian privileges in Tibet. There, too, it was a decided in a very small group. There was no larger Cabinet consultation. As a result, there was no strategy that was drawn up, and there was no oversight of that strategy, of that policy, or even of the tactics. This cost us quite clearly, in terms of our relationship with China.
On the question about not talking to the Chinese, of course, the 1950s was a period when international high-level summitry was not so intense as it is today. In fact, it was rather rare for leaders to visit each other’s countries. But the point I was making was that we were dealing with China and making agreements with them, compromises with them, accommodation with them, without a face-to-face meeting between the top leadership of the two countries. That to my mind was strange, because normally agreements are done after leaders have met, understood each other, explored the possibilities, and so on, and then you reach or conclude important agreements like the 1954 agreement on Tibet. We did it without virtually any high level contact, and that, to me, is a matter of concern. More generally speaking, I think dialogue is always important. So far as China is concerned, we should walk on two legs, those being dialogue and deterrence. I think both are equally important for maintaining peace and stability in the broadest sense between the two countries.
Coming to the present stalemate in India-China relations, what do you see as the way forward?
If I were to put it very succinctly, we have moved from a position of peaceful coexistence before the incidents in eastern Ladakh in 2020 to what I now characterise as the phase of armed coexistence. What this means is that there is a strong military buildup on both sides of the border region, which is likely to continue for a certain period of time until both countries work out a new modus vivendi or a new framework for the relationship. When that can be worked out is something which I cannot predict. That is part of government policy, and I have no doubt that people in New Delhi are thinking about this. When that happens, the strategy should still be talking and deterring.
There is no substitute to deterrence. The history of the past several decades has shown that China understands the language of strength. Therefore, building a credible deterrence along the India-China border region must be a part of national policy. The government has certainly taken significant steps in that direction in recent years, including on the infrastructure side, as well as on the equipment and technology side. You can see this in the fact that this is the fourth winter when Indian forces are stationed in sizeable numbers in inhospitable terrain in the north. Discussion is taking place at the military level, but it would be helpful if this was also complemented by a dialogue at a political level. There are plenty of mechanisms already in place for that. It’s not as if there is a want of mechanisms. When dialogue will resume is a matter of timing and that’s for the government to decide. But I feel that it will resume. The question is how and when.
Finally, how in your view will the intensifying China-U.S. competition we are seeing today impact India-China relations, especially with the U.S. appearing to be the major preoccupation for Beijing.
The fact remains that China increasingly not only sees the U.S. as its existential threat, but is becoming more open in articulating this point of view. Therefore, because these are the two major powers in the world today, China tends to judge other countries’ actions, or look at other countries policies, from the prism of Sino-U.S. rivalry. The closer you are to China in geographical terms, the more concerned China becomes and the more carefully it looks at you through a microscope, in an attempt to discern the extent of the tilt, or perceived tilt, as well as what implications it may have for China.
There is no doubt that a number of significantly important neighbours surround China. Many of them, however, have traditionally been American allies and China is fairly clear about their position, simply because many are treaty allies of the U.S. or the U.S. has stationed military forces in many of these countries.
India, however, is a different case. We have not only continually maintained our strategic autonomy, but our own relationship with the U.S. has been cautious for most of the past seven decades.
But there’s no doubt that there has been in the last 10 years a very significant change in that relationship. It has become a truly strategic partnership, where the common elements outweigh the differences. Of course, there are still differences. There are differences in interests, as well as differences in values. But the congruence of interests and values now outweighs the differences, and I think it is this aspect that China is most focused upon.
In my personal view, Beijing may have concluded that India is tilting towards the U.S. rather than maintaining relative neutrality on the Sino-U.S. question. If that assumption is correct, and only China can validate that assumption, then we need to understand that certain actions which China takes against us diplomatically, as well as in terms of grey zone warfare, might be intended to nudge us or even coerce us towards correcting that tilt or rebalancing. This is just my view and a hypothesis, but if you will look at the broader set of developments, it is a hypothesis which has some amount of credibility.
