INDIA FOREIGN POLICY

Introduction

In the following paragraphs I have attempted to make a capsule assessment of India's foreign policy from 1974 to 1977, the period when I was the external affairs minister of India. I like to share with the readers my appraisal of the main premises of India's foreign policy and of the major developments during this period.   

During India's struggle for freedom, Mahatma Gandhi had laid down the basic ideals of independent India's foreign policy —the ideals of peace, friendship and co-operation with all, and an unequivocal anti-colonial and anti-racial stance. After India attained independence, in the first seventeen years, Jawaharlal Nehru gave concrete shape to Gandhi's universality and huma­nism. Having formulated creatively, definitively and with utmost sensitivity the fundamental premises which governed India's res­ponses to international events, Nehru became the acknowledged architect of free India's foreign policy. The principles enunciated by Nehru and inspired by Gandhi continue to serve as beacon tights to India whenever crises occur.

The content of India's foreign policy, with non-alignment as its creed, is the trinity of peaceful co-existence, self-reliance, and co-operation with immediate neighbours. The non-aligned movement is against colonialism and racialism in all forms. It has strengthened the political will of developing nations to grap­ple with problems which may be historical in origin but have been aggravated in the postwar period due to inequitable dis­tribution of the benefits generated by industrial and technological revolutions in the world. The urgency of reducing the widening gap between the affluent few and the poverty-stricken multitude of nations has been repeatedly discussed in international forums. For affluence amidst poverty is a threat to peace.

Another premise of India's foreign policy is that each coun­try as a sovereign nation under its own leadership has to be given the fullest scope to develop its resources and potentialities in accordance with its own national genius under a system of inter-dependence of the nations of the world.

As stated earlier, the grand design of India's foreign policy was given a tangible form by Nehru. With his wide grasp of international affairs, he placed before India a world view which holds good and is relevant to this day. Indeed he gave a new dimension to the ancient precepts of India in international rela­tions. As I see it, the primary responsibility of a foreign minister of India is to translate Indian ideals and principles into action by taking into account the developing situation and by articulat­ing in current idiom India's hopes and aspirations in the inter­national field and to interpret and implement in letter and spirit the ideology of Gandhi and Nehru in a dynamic way.