Why Bharat Matters Chapter 10: Recalling Leaders, Revisiting History

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Recalling Leaders, Revisiting History

The Contingent Inheritance of Early Foreign Policy

India’s early foreign policy was not a settled canon but a product of contingent choices made under the towering influence of Jawaharlal Nehru. For nearly two decades after Independence, Nehru’s personal predilections were projected as national tenets, even as peers who differed ideologically mounted sustained critiques. These were not differences at the margins: they were substantive disputes over the very logic of statecraft, the scope and direction of India’s international commitments, and the balance between abstract internationalism and concrete national interest. Re-examining this inheritance on its own terms is essential, not to discount the constraints of the time, but to discern where preference masqueraded as principle and where dissent offered alternative routes that were dismissed too readily.

Three Axes of Contestation: Pakistan, China, the United States (and Israel)

Three relationships structured the most acute historical debates—those with Pakistan, China, and the United States—with Israel often entangled in the arguments around Pakistan and the Arab world.

  • Pakistan (and Israel). Nehru’s critics argued that his approach to Pakistan conjoined an appeasement-prone posture with domestic political calculations. The Delhi (Nehru–Liaquat) Pact of 1950 was defended as a moral necessity to protect minorities, yet was condemned by dissenters as insufficiently attentive to security signals and refugee realities. A similar critique extended to Israel: though India recognized Israel in 1950, it withheld full diplomatic relations for decades. Critics linked this stance to a calculus of domestic sensitivities and a quest for Third World and Arab solidarity, contending that these considerations diluted the clarity of India’s strategic signaling—both to Pakistan and to the wider Middle East—at key moments.

  • China. The contention here turned on the limits of idealism in the face of hard power. Nehru’s emphasis on Asian solidarity, Panchsheel, and a belief in the tempering effect of shared postcolonial aspirations was assailed for sidelining the structural drivers of state behavior. Dissenters warned that signs of strategic divergence—from Tibet’s absorption to cartographic claims and road-building in Aksai Chin—were being downplayed or rationalized. As ties deteriorated, intra-governmental differences grew more visible, revealing hardening concerns within parts of the Cabinet and bureaucracy that India’s posture toward China prioritized sentiment over preparedness.

  • The United States. In the telling of his critics, Nehru’s distance from the United States was not merely the principled non-alignment he articulated, but was colored by an aversion to American power shaped in part by left-wing antipathies then prevalent in certain British intellectual circles. While non-alignment sought strategic autonomy, detractors argued that habitual suspicion of the U.S. foreclosed potential convergences that could have served India’s developmental and security needs. This was particularly salient as Pakistan pursued U.S.-backed security pacts, altering the subcontinental balance.

These debates were not academic. They questioned whether India’s early posture was ideationally over-determined and whether diplomatic capital was being expended in directions insufficiently tethered to national interest.

Dissent Inside and Outside Government: Salience and Standing

Disagreement with Nehru’s strategic judgments was widespread across the political spectrum and within government. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as Deputy Prime Minister, articulated a sterner realpolitik, most notably on China, where his cautionary assessments contrasted with Nehru’s optimism. Cabinet colleagues Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar resigned—Mookerjee over issues tied to Pakistan and national security; Ambedkar over constitutional and social reform but with a publicly expressed concern that foreign and defense policy needed a more security-centric orientation. Outside the Cabinet, Opposition stalwarts—J.B. Kripalani, Ram Manohar Lohia, Deendayal Upadhyaya, and Minoo Masani—regularly challenged the government on foreign policy.

The gravitas of these dissenters mattered. They were not peripheral voices; many were eminent freedom fighters and contributors to constitutional deliberations. Patel’s central role in integrating princely states directly shaped India’s map; Mookerjee’s political interventions around Bengal’s partition and his later mobilization over Jammu & Kashmir are likewise seen as consequential to territorial outcomes. Their critiques drew authority from lived statecraft and nation-building, not merely from ideological opposition. As China ties worsened and the security environment grew more complex, intra-governmental fissures—especially on assessment and preparedness—underscored that foreign policy was neither consensual nor insulated from domestic political realignments. Indeed, these debates helped crystallize political alternatives within and beyond the Congress, eventually nurturing formations that would later come to power.

The Ideology of Third-World Solidarity: Assumptions and Consequences

At the heart of the critique was skepticism about a Third World–centred solidarity—an expectation that postcolonial affinities could override material contradictions among newly independent states. Dissenters argued that treating transnational sentiment as stronger than nationalism introduced peril into policy, particularly when applied to immediate neighbors. Two pathologies followed. First, India tended to downplay hostile indicators—whether in Pakistan’s strategic alignments and subcontinental conduct or in China’s consolidation of positions that impinged on Indian interests. Second, New Delhi invested diplomatic capital on behalf of neighbors it presumed to influence, only to discover that shared anti-colonial narratives did not translate into congruent security preferences. A related analytical error, critics averred, was projection: assuming that counterparts with similar intellectual pedigrees or ideological tropes would prioritize the same supra-national commitments. When these assumptions collided with the primacy of nation-state imperatives elsewhere, India bore the costs—in foregone leverage, delayed hedging, and misplaced reassurance.

The argument was not to deny the moral or normative value of Afro-Asian cooperation or non-aligned engagement, but to insist that such solidarities be filtered through a clear-eyed recognition of power, interests, and incentives. Subsequent events—the Sino-Indian conflict, oscillations in subcontinental stability, and the strategic ramifications of extra-regional alignments—lent retrospective credence to the concerns of those who had urged sharper realism.

From Contestation to Contemporary Policy: Roads Now Taken

One reason to revisit these earlier arguments is that they ultimately reshaped political outcomes. Competing viewpoints—crystallized in parties that challenged Congress orthodoxy—gained ground over decades; one of them, the BJP, now governs. The very relationships at the core of mid-century disputes remain today’s principal vectors of risk and opportunity. Contemporary policy has, in significant respects, explored roads once rejected or delayed: more explicit alignment of interests with the United States and other like-minded partners; normalization and later deepening ties with Israel; a less permissive approach to Pakistan that prioritizes counter-terrorism and deterrence; and a more sober, competition-aware posture toward China.

Because Nehruvian assumptions long enjoyed normative status and their alternatives were framed as deviations, a fair reassessment is overdue. This is not a call for iconoclasm; it is a methodological injunction to evaluate choices against outcomes, to ask where different emphases might have altered trajectories, and to mine dissenting analyses for usable insights. The stature of the dissenters, the seriousness of the issues they flagged, and the mixed record of early policies together justify a fresh reading, not as an exercise in retrospective blame but as a resource for contemporary statecraft.

Allegory and Strategic Culture: Jatayu’s Loyalty, Sampati’s Vision

A Ramayana parallel illuminates the virtues of loyalty and foresight in strategic decision-making. When Ravana abducted Sita, Jatayu—the elderly, near-blind eagle-king—nonetheless challenged him. In the struggle, Jatayu tore at Ravana with his talons, shattered his bow with his beak, and brought down the chariot before being overpowered, his wings severed. Found by Rama and Lakshmana, Jatayu revealed the abductor and died, honored by Rama’s last rites as a symbol of noble sacrifice. Later, as Prince Angada’s monkey contingent despaired of finding Sita, Jatayu’s elder brother, Sampati, overheard them and, with his extraordinary sight, located Sita in Lanka’s garden—providing the over-the-horizon visibility that made a credible plan possible.

India’s mid-20th-century dissenters embodied both traits. Some were Jatayu-like—willing to pay political costs to oppose prevailing policies they deemed hazardous, placing fidelity to national security above personal or partisan comfort. Others were Sampati-like—supplying the far-sighted intelligence of statecraft: warnings about China’s intentions, cautions about overestimating postcolonial solidarity, and arguments for recalibrating ties with the United States and Israel to serve India’s interests. Together, their sacrifice and insight established a moral and analytical foundation for policy correction. In the present, to recall their counsel is not merely to honor dissent; it is to recover the strategic acuity that loyalty and foresight, in tandem, make possible.

Patel’s Renewed Relevance in a Shifting Strategic Landscape

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s re-emergence at the center of contemporary strategic debates is not accidental. It reflects a political moment marked by uncertainty, contested norms, and the premium on coherent statecraft. Patel is read today as a composite symbol: strategic clarity over drift, decisiveness over equivocation, nation-building over ideological abstraction, and systemic reform over bureaucratic continuity. In that sense, he offers a native vocabulary for “New India,” grounding present-day ambition in an indigenous repertoire of statecraft rather than imported paradigms.

The backdrop against which his leadership matured was one of systemic rupture. Seventy-five years ago, the Second World War had reshaped global power hierarchies and produced new centers of gravity with divergent interests. Anti-colonial movements—in some cases predating the war—accelerated decolonization, releasing long-contained political energies. In India, independence arrived with the trauma of Partition, forcing an untested government to cope simultaneously with internal displacement, communal violence, and external pressures. It is against this turbulent canvas that Patel’s methods and choices acquire special salience for strategic culture.

Already established as a pre-eminent national leader admired for political vision and organizational skill, Patel took up the heaviest governance portfolios after independence—most notably Home and States—while setting aside personal ambition. Though widely regarded as the organizational consensus for the top executive office, he deferred to Mahatma Gandhi’s preference for Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister. This ethic of institutional discipline and responsibility amid personal sacrifice—when crisis might have tempted factionalism—renders his leadership a particularly instructive case for contemporary policy elites.

State Integration as Grand Strategy

Patel’s reputation often pivots on the high-profile accessions of Jammu & Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Junagadh. Yet those episodes rested on a broader, earlier groundwork: a dense web of negotiations with numerous Princely States whose outcomes, cumulatively, determined the geographic and political coherence of the Union. This was not an administrative afterthought; it was grand strategy. By forging a contiguous and governable federal space, Patel and his colleagues created the territorial platform without which India’s strategic autonomy would have been compromised at inception.

The process was fraught. Elements within the outgoing British Political Department, acting from sympathy for the princes and out of institutional inertia, encouraged rulers to hold out, including by imagining aggregative arrangements as a “third force” between the two Dominions. Several rulers—especially in parts of the south—initially resisted accession; others flirted with independence as a bargaining tactic. States contiguous to West Pakistan attracted particular attention from Mohammad Ali Jinnah, whose overtures—sometimes framed in generous terms—sought to complicate India’s contiguity and security. Smaller principalities, often egged on by larger neighbors, attempted to raise the price of accession. Patel’s method combined constitutional clarity, continuous engagement, calibrated pressure, and a willingness to take decisions at the brink when necessary. The tide turned decisively in early August 1947, as the bulk of rulers signed Instruments of Accession limited to defence, external affairs, and communications, enabling political consolidation to proceed apace.

Two negotiations that Patel personally directed—Junagadh and Hyderabad—illustrate his doctrine. In both, he refused to allow internal security crises to be internationalized. Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan by its Nawab, despite the state’s geographic inaccessibility to Pakistan and the preferences of its largely Hindu population, triggered economic and political measures that culminated in a plebiscite endorsing accession to India. In Hyderabad, the Government of India first pursued exhaustive diplomatic avenues and internal reform before authorizing a limited police action to restore order and integrate the state. In each case, as V. P. Menon’s account underscores, the prospect of resorting to the United Nations was floated and just as firmly rejected by Patel; he insisted that the nature of the problem—internal to the logic of decolonization and Indian nationhood—foreclosed external adjudication. Too often treated narrowly as episodes in domestic politics, these negotiations were among the most demanding of the period in terms of their objectives, strategy, and tradecraft. They remain, therefore, an underutilized repository for contemporary study in crisis management and coercive diplomacy.

Kashmir, China, and the Nehru–Patel Dialectic

The most cited divergence between Patel and Nehru concerned Jammu & Kashmir. Patel opposed the reference of Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir to the United Nations in January 1948, preferring to consolidate the military and political situation on the ground before courting the uncertainties of international forums. The subsequent administrative reallocation—whereby Nehru removed Kashmir from Patel’s cabinet responsibilities and entrusted it to Gopalaswami Ayyangar—reflected a deeper philosophical difference: Nehru’s inclination to frame disputes through evolving international norms versus Patel’s bias for resolved facts on the ground anchored in sovereign competence. Yet the dispute did not devolve into public acrimony. Governmental and parliamentary discipline held; correspondence remained internal; and Patel reassured the foreign policy–sensitive Prime Minister that he would confine criticism to the cabinet, preserving institutional coherence at a perilous moment.

A second area of divergence lay in the early reading of China’s posture. Nehru invested political capital in Sino-Indian amity as a building block for Asian solidarity and non-alignment’s moral vocabulary. Patel was more skeptical, particularly after developments in Tibet, warning—most famously in late 1950—against complacency about Chinese intentions and the strategic consequences of an altered Himalayan frontier. This divergence was not a binary between engagement and hostility but a disagreement over risk assessment and the speed with which policy assumptions should adjust to shifts in capability and behavior. As India–China relations deteriorated at the end of the 1950s, members of Nehru’s cabinet increasingly articulated foreign policy positions with greater independence, reflecting a stronger assertion of national interest over the abstractions of global solidarity. That evolution, in retrospect, can be traced to arguments Patel had pressed earlier.

Moderation in the Early Cold War: The United States and Israel

Patel’s foreign policy preferences in the late 1940s reveal a pragmatist wary of gratuitous confrontations and allergic to symbolic posturing that produced strategic costs. During the formative years of the Cold War, he was cautious about needlessly antagonizing Western powers where Indian interests were not directly implicated. His discomfort was less with specific votes or positions and more with a general attitude he feared could estrange potential partners without clear benefit. In this, he often converged with C. Rajagopalachari’s contemporaneous criticisms, which urged a realistic assessment of interests over rhetorical leadership of a notional global front.

On the United States, Patel adopted a stance notably less suspicious than Nehru’s. As early as 1948—before Nehru’s first visit to Washington—he publicly acknowledged that the United States held the key to the international situation and that a significant program of Indian industrialization would be difficult without American cooperation. This was not an invitation to bloc politics; rather, it was an India-centric rationale for collaboration anchored in material needs and strategic autonomy. In 1950, in one of his last public interventions, Patel rejected arguments that accepting American assistance would diminish India’s prestige or entail alignment. India, he insisted, could take help while retaining judgment and agency, a position that planted an “India First” outlook long before it was to reappear in later nationalist idioms. The strategic insight—that partnerships are instruments of policy, not determinants of identity—remains salient.

Patel’s approach to Israel similarly reflected a preference for national interest over domestic electoral calculus. He was uneasy with the vote-bank pressures that shaped New Delhi’s hesitation to recognize Israel and to move toward full diplomatic normalization, arguing that such considerations should not determine state policy. While his view did not carry the day in his lifetime, the long interregnum between recognition and full normalization eventually gave way to an open, interest-based relationship. The deepening of ties culminating in the 2017 prime ministerial visit to Israel symbolically closed a hesitant chapter and aligned practice with a realist sensibility Patel had articulated early on.

National Integration, Pluralism, and the Ethos of Self-Reliance

If one imprint of Patel stands above the rest, it is national integration—accomplished with a civilizational sensitivity to India’s unity in diversity. Integration was not homogenization; it was the political nurturing of bonds across an enormous federation composed of regions, languages, religions, and legal inheritances. The consolidation of the Union created the preconditions for collective problem-solving that, over seventy-five years, has enabled India to surmount shocks and conflicts that might have fractured a less resilient polity. That capacity has roots in a strategic culture that prizes order, institutional continuity, and the harmonization of diversity rather than its erasure.

The text also warns against the long-term neglect or rationalization of issues left over from Patel’s era. Catering to vested interests or ignoring ground reality is untenable in a world that is intensely competitive and alert to internal weaknesses. India’s deep pluralism—its ability to align difference with loyalty—is civilization’s comparative advantage; yet parts of the world, including partners and competitors, can misread this heterogeneity as weakness. The appropriate response is not defensiveness but confidence: translating pluralism into policy effectiveness at home and strategic credibility abroad.

An India truest to its roots is strong and resilient because it rests on self-belief and national awareness. Patel’s 1948 counsel—that India must not submit its positions to the interests or judgment of others—was neither insular nor parochial. It was a plea for autonomy of judgment under conditions of pressure. In contemporary terms, this is a call to align external partnerships with internal priorities, manage differences without melodrama, and reform systems that impede national capability. It is also a reminder that strategic culture is not static; it must be renewed by each generation through choices that privilege coherence, competence, and confidence over dependency, drift, and performative rhetoric. In that sense, Patel’s legacy remains not a relic but a repertoire—available, instructive, and, in critical respects, still unfinished.

A counterpoint to Patel: Mookerjee’s alternative nationalism

Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee stands as a contemporary counterpoint to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the formative years of India’s statecraft. An educationist of stature, a political figure with executive experience, a leader in humanitarian relief, an ardent advocate of India’s civilizational traditions, and, above all, a fierce and rooted nationalist, he articulated a holistic worldview that cohered questions of politics, governance, development, self-reliance, and foreign policy. His interventions anticipated later challenges and offered conceptual clarity on Jammu & Kashmir, India’s reading of Pakistan, minority protections, strategic resolve, and cultural diplomacy. The reconfiguration of Jammu & Kashmir’s constitutional status on 5 August 2019, and the consolidation of deterrence against cross-border terrorism thereafter, reflect a strategic turn long argued by Mookerjee toward national integration and hard-headed security.

Jammu & Kashmir: core argument, slogan, and the costs of partial integration

Mookerjee’s signature political intervention centered on the accession and full integration of Jammu & Kashmir. His uncompromising slogan—“Ek Desh mein do Vidhan, do pradhan, do nishan, nahi chalenge” [There cannot be two Constitutions, two PMs and two flags in one nation]—encapsulated a warning against balkanization, competing claims to sovereignty, and restrictions on national symbols. He argued that an incomplete integration—constitutional, political, and administrative—would impose cumulative costs on India’s economy and development and, more gravely, on social cohesion and national security. These were not abstract concerns; they bore directly on law-and-order asymmetries, investment flows, incentives for separatism backed by external patrons, and the diplomatic leverage ceded in multilateral forums. The correction of 5 August 2019, in his frame, restored the coherence of sovereignty and brought state capacity, citizenship, and accountability into alignment with the rest of the Union.

Mookerjee repeatedly stressed a crucial diplomatic distinction: India approached the United Nations in 1947 on the question of aggression rather than accession. He argued that “interested powers” distorted this framing to recast a case of cross-border intervention into a bilateral territorial dispute, thereby legitimizing external meddling and diminishing India’s legal position—concerns that resonated with Patel’s contemporaneous caution about external manipulation of India’s security dilemmas.

Early choices, great-power manoeuvres, and UN dynamics (1947–1965)

Mookerjee’s critique sharpened in his exchanges with Prime Minister Nehru. In 1953 he observed that the handling of Kashmir had neither raised India’s international prestige nor secured reliable support; instead it had created “complications” at home and abroad, necessitating a dispassionate policy re-examination and a rejection of “false internationalism.” Understanding the subsequent policy turn requires recalling the international pressures that accompanied and followed India’s initial recourse to the UN.

  • In December 1947, India referred the matter to the Security Council under Article 35 of the UN Charter, documenting a threat to international peace and security arising from Pakistan’s support to invading forces, even though the Instrument of Accession had been executed and accepted by the Governor General two months earlier. This legal asymmetry became the opening that major powers exploited.

  • The United Kingdom, as the outgoing imperial power with residual interests in the subcontinent and its strategic periphery, drove an early Security Council framing that urged both India and Pakistan not to aggravate the situation—effectively equating aggressor and victim. Declassified Commonwealth Relations Office records reveal a considered strategy to insert Pakistani regulars as a “balancing” force once tribal invaders withdrew—moving the centre of gravity from cessation of aggression to a plebiscitary equilibrium.

  • Under Belgium’s presidency, the Council advanced the idea of a three-member commission; India’s core request—to halt Pakistani state assistance to invaders—fell away. The issue was retitled from the “Jammu & Kashmir Question” to the “India–Pakistan Question,” reframing an internal matter complicated by aggression into a bilateral dispute. Canada further pressed the Western line by proposing the replacement of invaders with Pakistani troops upon their withdrawal, eliciting from India the threat to reconsider its Commonwealth membership rather than accept a coercive parity.

  • The United States and allies ratcheted pressure, including conditionalities on assistance. A decisive inflection came in 1957 when a UK–US draft resolution was vetoed by the USSR, checking a phase of coercive diplomacy.

  • After India’s 1962 defeat by China, interventionist impulses revived. The 1963 Harriman–Sandys Mission sought arbitration on Jammu & Kashmir, but it foundered on India’s resistance and an unfavourable strategic geometry, including Beijing’s illegal 1963 boundary arrangement with Pakistan over the Shaksgam Valley. By 1965, in the run-up to and during the conflict, Western partiality re-emerged in efforts to downplay Pakistan’s initiation of hostilities and to press for outcomes that privileged “balance” over accountability for aggression.

Mookerjee’s assessment was that early internationalization generated a durable structure of ambiguity that incentivized external brokerage, penalized restraint, and weakened the domestic consensus for decisive integration.

External interference after 1972 and the China factor

The 1972 Shimla Agreement sought to confine the issue to a bilateral framework. Yet public and private attempts to shape India’s choices persisted. The Clinton Administration voiced concerns and intervened episodically; after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, Western reactions frequently linked non-proliferation demands to movement on Kashmir. The Bush Administration moderated the tone but continued private exhortations. Barack Obama raised Kashmir during his 2008 campaign, and debates about whether US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke’s remit would include Kashmir revealed a continued appetite to insert external facilitation into a domain India considered sovereign.

Beyond diplomacy, China’s progressive violations of Indian sovereignty and territorial integrity—beginning with the 1963 arrangement and intensifying through connectivity projects culminating in the so-called China–Pakistan Economic Corridor—fused territorial, economic, and military externalities into a single challenge. India read the mainstreaming of Jammu & Kashmir after 2019 as reinforcing national integrity against this combined pressure. While contemporary Western partners have shown greater understanding of India’s red lines and counter-terrorism priorities, the decisive change lies in India’s own strategic stance, long foreshadowed by Mookerjee’s judgment.

Misreading Pakistan: resignation in 1950 and the case for strategic clarity

Mookerjee linked Kashmir’s vulnerabilities to a broader misreading of Pakistan’s intentions. His resignation from the Union Cabinet in 1950 crystallized a critique that the government’s approach was weak, halting, and inconsistent. Restraint, when unaccompanied by visible resolve and credible punishment for transgression, was read in Rawalpindi as weakness. The consequence, he argued, was predictable: increased intransigence, raised costs imposed on India, and a corrosive effect on confidence at home.

He faulted India for remaining defensive, failing to expose or counter Pakistan’s designs systematically. Public reaction after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks—rejecting normalization under coercion and demanding action—echoed the logic he had articulated decades earlier: deterrence requires both clarity of speech and firmness of response.

Partition’s eastern theatre: Bengal, Assam, and the Northeast

Once Partition was accepted as an outcome, entire provinces—Bengal, Punjab, and Assam—faced the risk of whole-scale transfer to Pakistan based on tenuous majorities unless countered by internal partition and political mobilization. In Bengal, Mookerjee organized a cross-sectional agitation to ensure that Calcutta (now Kolkata) and as much of the province as possible remained in India. This decision had direct implications for Assam and the Northeast, preserving contiguity and strategic depth to India’s eastern frontier. In effect, while Patel consolidated the Union in the north and west through principled firmness and negotiation, Mookerjee’s leadership in the east prevented a strategic shrinkage whose consequences would have been lasting.

Minorities, the Nehru–Liaquat Pact, and the problem of sanctions

Mookerjee’s decisive break with government policy centred on the 1950 Nehru–Liaquat Pact. He warned that it underestimated the implications of a State ideology that rendered minority protections precarious and ignored official positions in Pakistan that undermined both minority security and reciprocity. He argued that an ultra-communal administration was implementing these positions in practice, and that India, lacking embedded remedies or penalties, would have little recourse when Pakistan violated undertakings.

He rejected the narrative—often amplified in hostile foreign press—that both India and Pakistan had failed minorities “equally,” calling it a libel on India. The proper diplomatic task, he insisted, was to communicate the truth to “everyone who desire to know it,” including India’s record of constitutional guarantees, plural protections, and remedial action. Crucially, he urged that any bilateral understandings incorporate sanctions or automatic consequences, thereby aligning incentives and avoiding cycles of violation followed by external brokerage.

Hyphenation, false equivalence, and external enablement

The early equivalence between India and Pakistan matured into a policy habit of hyphenation: treating both countries as symmetrical heirs to an unresolved Partition, with differences to be “managed” through external balancing. At various points, Pakistan’s military regimes were presented as developmental models, and even the transformative outcome of 1971 did not decisively durably end this equilibrium mindset.

Pakistan pursued an artificial balance against India, aided by external partners. China provided decisive assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs; Western entities and networks, through tolerance, technology leakage, or episodic indulgence, facilitated the buildup, even as proliferators such as A. Q. Khan exploited global supply chains. As cross-border terrorism escalated to coerce India into talks, elements of Indian policy occasionally appeared to concede equivalence—most notably the “both countries are victims of terrorism” framing at Havana (2006) and the formulation at Sharm el-Sheikh (2009). These were precisely the conceptual traps—false equivalence and moral ambiguity—that Mookerjee had warned would erode strategic clarity.

The last decade: deterrence, cross-border terrorism, and global advocacy

Policy over the last decade signalled a different calculus: cross-border terrorism is unacceptable and cannot be normalized by conducting the rest of the relationship as usual. The surgical strikes following Uri (2016) and the Balakot air operation (2019) communicated that India would respond in ways that imposed costs, expanded the toolkit, and reintroduced deterrence into the equation.

Diplomatically, India mobilized international opinion to delegitimize terrorism and its enablers. The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee’s special meeting in Mumbai, including at a 26/11 attack site, underscored the internationalization of India’s security concerns on its terms. India leveraged platforms from the G20 to “No Money for Terror” conferences and aligned bilateral and plurilateral mechanisms to spotlight state-enabled terror finance and safe havens. The UN 1267 Sanctions Committee’s listings—where entities and individuals based in one country feature prominently—became a sustained pressure instrument, even as India balanced public signalling with quiet, coalition-based diplomacy to overcome procedural obstructions.

Cultural diplomacy and Buddhist connectivity

Mookerjee’s statecraft extended beyond security and law. As president of the Maha Bodhi Society of India, he made culture a vector of diplomacy, strengthening links with Buddhist-majority nations and neighbours. His personal role in retrieving holy relics from the United Kingdom and organizing their exhibition across Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, exemplified a civilizational diplomacy aligned with anti-colonial rebalancing. These gestures forged people-to-people ties, created constituencies of goodwill, and signalled India’s custodianship of a shared heritage.

Contemporary initiatives echo and update that vision. Dharma–Dhamma conferences convene scholars, monastics, and policymakers to frame ethics and statecraft within Asian intellectual traditions. The restoration of the Ananda Temple in Bagan by Indian agencies, the solarification of Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka, and the digitization of manuscripts at Mongolia’s Gandan Monastery expand a network of material and intellectual connectivity. The visit of G20 Development Ministers to Sarnath during India’s G20 presidency symbolically anchored global development debates in India’s Buddhist heritage. In each case, culture operates as a strategic asset—legitimizing India’s leadership, deepening neighbourhood bonds, and diversifying partnership architectures.

Strategic coherence and legacy

By mainstreaming Jammu & Kashmir and reorienting policy toward Pakistan—rejecting false equivalence, embedding deterrence against cross-border terrorism, and mounting global advocacy—India has strengthened national integrity and enhanced security. Improved understanding among Western partners has followed India’s own policy transformation rather than preceding it. Mookerjee’s imprint is thus twofold: in the east, through the political geography secured in Bengal and its implications for the Northeast; and nation-wide, through a coherent template that married sovereignty, security, and culture. Alongside Patel, he is an architect of India’s strategic coherence whose alternative vision continues to inform contemporary policy.

Ambedkar’s “India First” Realism and the Early Republic’s Diplomatic Choices

Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s interventions on foreign policy, though less frequently foregrounded than his constitutional and social reform work, offer a distinct realist strand within India’s early strategic culture. Educated in the United States and long sensitive to questions of power, resources, and material capability, Ambedkar brought to India’s first cabinet an instinct for interest-based engagement. As Minister of Law and Justice for a little over four years after independence, he resigned in September 1951, citing dissatisfaction with the pace and scope of social reform. At that moment, however, he also voiced to Parliament an “actual anxiety and even worry” about the directions of India’s external relations. In Ambedkar’s retrospective assessment, few countries wished India ill in 1947, yet within four years India had managed to alienate many potential partners, a trend he believed was reflected in meagre support at the United Nations (UN).

Ambedkar’s critique was both philosophical and programmatic. Philosophically, he warned against elevating ideals above interests in statecraft, invoking two aphorisms that had impressed him: Bismarck’s dictum that politics is the art of the possible rather than a project for realizing the ideal, and George Bernard Shaw’s caution that good ideals can be dangerous when pursued too unguardedly. Programmatically, he argued for an “India First” orientation, by which he meant a disciplined prioritization of India’s concrete gains—material, technical, and strategic—over the desire to play benefactor or moral tutor to Asia and the world. The keynote of policy, he suggested, appeared to be solving others’ problems before India’s own, a misalignment he considered quixotic, if not suicidal, for a state in the midst of national consolidation and development.

China, the United States, and the UNSC Question

Ambedkar’s most pointed dissatisfaction, elaborated in the Scheduled Castes Federation’s Election Manifesto of 1951, focused on India’s handling of the United States and its simultaneous advocacy on China’s behalf. In line with concerns Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had articulated before his death in 1950, Ambedkar saw Jawaharlal Nehru’s China policy as a strategic blind spot. By 1951, he explicitly linked this view to the health of India–US ties: why, he asked, was India “fighting China’s battle” for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC)? In Ambedkar’s reasoning, this stance antagonized Washington precisely when India needed access to American financial and technical resources for development. He believed that India’s consistent championship of Chinese claims, especially on representation questions at the UN, had yielded little leverage over Beijing while complicating relations with the one power most capable of catalyzing India’s economic modernization.

Ambedkar’s alternative was clear and unapologetically interest-based. If permanent membership in the UNSC was to be debated, he insisted, India should press the case for recognition of her own status rather than serve as the advocate for another Asian power. The failure to assert such claims, for him, reflected not principled restraint but a reluctance to translate India’s civilizational weight into commensurate institutional standing. In this, Ambedkar diverged from Nehru’s belief that Asian solidarity and non-alignment would, in time, deliver diplomatic dividends; he doubted both the reciprocity of others and the strategic wisdom of subordinating India’s tangible needs to regional slogans.

Idealism, Panchsheel, and “Asia for Asiatics”

Ambedkar’s skepticism of Nehruvian idealism sharpened in the mid-1950s. In an August 1954 parliamentary discussion—coincident with the articulation of the Panchsheel principles—he laid out an explicit case for interest-based diplomacy. He did not mistake Panchsheel’s moral appeal; he questioned its political utility. In his view, moral precepts—fine as aspirations—had no autonomous place in the conduct of power politics. He suspected that China “in its heart of hearts” shared this realism notwithstanding rhetorical professions of mutual respect and non-interference. For Ambedkar, India’s unquestioning embrace of Panchsheel reflected naiveté rather than a mature equilibrium between values and interests.

Relatedly, he challenged the catchphrase “Asia for Asiatics.” To Ambedkar, civilizational or regional affinities could not credibly outweigh political values and hard interests—constitutionalism, liberty, and the material prerequisites of national development. Put differently, he preferred that India select partners by the yardstick of common interests and compatible political aims rather than by the bond of geography. This stance did not render him isolationist. On the contrary, Ambedkar was deeply conversant with international affairs and open to wide-ranging engagement; he simply insisted that India’s external posture be anchored in calculable gains, credible alignments, and the steady accretion of national power.

Cause, Effect, and Strategic Diagnosis

Ambedkar’s argument connected principles to outcomes with clarity:

  • Early post-independence idealism, he contended, alienated potential partners and contributed to India’s limited support at the UN within the first four years of independence.
  • Advocacy for China’s UNSC status, he believed, antagonized the United States and thereby jeopardized India’s access to the financial and technical resources on offer from Washington—resources essential to India’s development strategy.
  • Prioritizing broader Asian causes over India’s own claims and capabilities undermined New Delhi’s institutional recognition, including in debates about the UNSC, and diluted the focus required for internal strengthening.
  • The intellectual overcommitment to ideals—of the sort criticized by Bismarck and Shaw—risked outcomes opposite to those intended: diminished influence abroad and delayed capacity-building at home.

This diagnosis framed a pragmatic response: orient policy first to Indian interests, recalibrate relations with major powers to unlock material benefits, and measure all diplomatic activism against the yardstick of national strength accrued.

Prescriptions and Enduring Relevance

Ambedkar’s prescriptions followed naturally from his critique:

  • Adopt an “India First” orientation—assert India’s own standing, including on UNSC questions, rather than acting as a sponsor of others’ claims.
  • Cultivate productive ties with the United States where these advance India’s material and strategic needs, without ideological encumbrance.
  • Rebalance the relationship between values and interests by treating Panchsheel-like principles as diplomatic rhetoric rather than binding doctrine.
  • Resist regionalist slogans such as “Asia for Asiatics” when they conflict with political values and concrete national gains.

Seven decades on, the tension Ambedkar identified between moral aspiration and strategic necessity remains central to India’s national security discourse. Contemporary debates over partnerships with major powers, the management of China, and the proper weight of norms versus interests echo his call for a hard-headed synthesis: a foreign policy that speaks the language of values while budgeting power, capabilities, and institutional leverage first and foremost to the advancement of India’s interests.

History as Guide, Not Constraint

Many contemporary policy dilemmas confronting India have clear antecedents in its diplomatic history. Recognizing these antecedents requires an objective exploration of the past, not a ritualistic deference to inherited narratives. Political correctness—particularly when it elevates received wisdom into orthodoxy—can impede honest reassessment. In Indian foreign policy, this pitfall has often manifested in the treatment of non-alignment: a context-specific strategy that served a particular era was reified into a quasi-theological doctrine. The cost of such doctrinalization is twofold. First, it obscures the changing balance of power and India’s expanding capabilities, thereby encouraging a default to defensive postures even when proactive options exist. Second, it narrows debate, substituting moralistic or identity-driven assertions for pragmatic analysis, and reducing a versatile instrument of statecraft to an end in itself.

Historical experience counsels against allowing dogma to override context. Strategic autonomy is not a synonym for immobility; its purpose is to expand choices, not to avoid commitments. When non-alignment or autonomy is treated as immutable principle rather than adaptable method, flexibility—the essence of autonomy—is lost. Conversely, tactical nimbleness and strategic creativity are enduring Indian strengths; they should continue to guide adaptations to a fluid international environment.

Reassessing Non-Alignment: Masani’s Intervention and Its Echoes

Writing in 1959 as the China threat gathered, M. R. Masani offered a pointed critique of the prevailing non-alignment discourse. He asked whether India’s approach had left it unable to repel an attack on its own territory—an uncomfortable question that exposed the gap between rhetorical positioning and material readiness. Masani contended that India’s deliberate distance from Western partners had impaired the country’s ability to equip its armed forces adequately, thereby weakening both deterrence and warfighting capacity. He further argued that non-alignment, as practiced, dulled India’s capacity to recognize a dangerous neighbour—specifically China—because it discouraged clear threat identification in the name of equidistance. Domestically, he believed the climate of suspicion toward overt nationalism and a preference for abstract internationalism discouraged citizens from openly displaying patriotism, an intangible but real cost when national cohesion is critical.

Masani did not reject non-alignment per se. His central insight was conditional: non-alignment could work in good times—when the international system afforded breathing space—but proved less effective during crises precisely because distance kept prospective partners distant when assistance might be needed. He advocated an interpretation of autonomy that remained flexible and security-conscious, compatible with recognizing proximate threats and taking proportionate measures, including selective partnerships and capability-building with the West.

Much of this critique aligned with developments in November 1962, when China advanced into Indian territory and the vulnerabilities Masani had highlighted materialized. Jawaharlal Nehru’s hesitation to more proactively engage Western powers and build robust military capacity in preceding years underscored the costs of doctrinaire restraint. The episode illustrates the penalty for subordinating hard security to prestige or moral leadership: reputational capital cannot substitute for capabilities and readiness.

From Doctrine to Instrument: Autonomy, Partnerships, and Power

The contemporary relevance of this debate lies in how external actors sometimes praise India’s “independence” and “strategic autonomy” in ways that are intended to constrain New Delhi’s choices. Compliments that appear to validate India’s past positions can serve as pressure tactics, urging India to self-deter from pursuing partnerships or initiatives that would strengthen its leverage. This pattern was evident as recently as 2007 in relation to the Quad, when appeals to India’s historical posture were part of a wider effort to limit its strategic options.

A security-first interpretation of autonomy rejects the notion that independence requires staying at the centre or avoiding commitments. Autonomy is best understood as freedom of action preserved through a diversified portfolio of relationships, credible capabilities, and policy latitude. Partnerships—especially those that enable military modernization, resilience in critical technologies, and joint capacity-building—are entirely consistent with autonomy if they enhance India’s ability to deter, defend, and shape outcomes. The test of a commitment is not whether it is “aligned” or “non-aligned,” but whether it advances India’s interests under realistic strategic conditions and preserves room for course correction.

Two corollaries follow. First, strategic creativity must be coupled with tactical nimbleness: India should be prepared to move laterally between issue-based coalitions, calibrate exposure to risk, and exploit windows of opportunity without conflating flexibility with indecision. Second, external praise should be parsed carefully; it can be genuine recognition or an instrument to influence New Delhi’s calculus. Recognizing exploitation of India’s past to shape its present policy is a prerequisite for protecting option value.

Strategic Clarity and the Primacy of Hard Power

Strategic clarity rests on two pillars: a sound understanding of the international system and a clear-eyed national perspective. Post-Independence India at times fell short on both counts—overestimating the constraining power of norms and underestimating the velocity of threat evolution—imposing a high price on statecraft. The overriding lesson is that national security must never be subordinated to the pursuit of prestige or abstract acceptance. Hard power—credible military capability, industrial depth, technological resilience—will always score over soft power when push comes to shove, even as both should ideally advance in lockstep.

This hierarchy of imperatives does not diminish the value of diplomacy; it reorients it. Diplomacy should not be driven by a desire for acceptance, especially by competitors, because such motivations distort priorities and erode leverage. Instead, it should be anchored in interests, calibrated reciprocity, and measured engagement that preserves escalation control. Within this framework, domestic cohesion and visible patriotism are assets. Policy constructs that inadvertently suppress civic expressions of national purpose may sap resilience; conversely, open, confident patriotism can reinforce deterrence by signaling resolve and aligning society behind necessary costs.

These cumulative realizations inform India’s contemporary approach: security-first pragmatism, diversified partnerships, and calibrated commitments that enhance capacity rather than mortgage autonomy. Autonomy, so conceived, is not defensive isolation but managed interdependence on terms that maximize India’s strategic agency.

Punctuating Moments: 1959, 1962, 2007

  • 1959: M. R. Masani publicly critiques non-alignment amid the looming Chinese threat, warning that India may be unable to repel an attack and is inadequately equipped due to distance from the West.
  • November 1962: China advances into India; vulnerabilities highlighted by Masani are laid bare as India grapples with the consequences of doctrinaire restraint and earlier hesitations to arm and align more robustly.
  • 2007: External pressure tactics succeed regarding the Quad, demonstrating how historical narratives about autonomy and equidistance can be repurposed to constrain India’s contemporary strategic choices.

Operational Takeaways

  • Treat non-alignment as instrument, not doctrine; autonomy is about expanding choices, not avoiding commitments.
  • Parse external praise of “independence” carefully; it may be designed to limit India’s options.
  • Recognize and prepare for proximate threats; selective partnerships and Western-enabled capability-building can be fully consistent with autonomy.
  • Ensure hard power underpins soft power; prestige cannot substitute for readiness and credible deterrence.
  • Pursue strategic clarity through rigorous, unsentimental analysis of the international system and India’s interests.
  • Nurture domestic cohesion and visible patriotism as strategic assets in deterrence and crisis management.

Sustained attention to these principles aligns with the wisdom and foresight of India’s tallest leaders—an inheritance that, properly interpreted, strengthens the project of building Bharat in a demanding strategic age.