December 5, 2004

This book is an interesting analysis of the process and institutions of decision making in shaping India’s foreign policy and the crucial role various prime ministers have played in it since independence. Former Indian prime minister, I.K. Gujral, whose personality has also been examined by author Harish Kapoor, has written the foreword of the book which deals extensively with Indian regional hegemony and trans-Himalayan geostrategic and political interests and ambitions.

An interesting chapter on regional hegemony gives an insight into New Delhi’s grand old design and the factors that helped India project its power to become a “regional bully”.

Analyzing the personality factor in shaping foreign policy, Harish Kapoor says that Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, and Rajiv Gandhi were interested and controlled varyingly all aspects of foreign policy, whereas Morarji Desai, V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, and Deve Gowda had a minimal interest in routine and global matters but took interest in visible affairs. He has put Narasimha Rao, I.K. Gujral and Atal Bihari Vajpayee between the two categories. Their interest and capacity to contribute to foreign policy making was as great as that of Nehru and the two Gandhis. But their weak and uncertain political position, like that of Desai, Singh, Shekhar and Gowda, restrained them from becoming too dominant in the realm of foreign policy.

The Indian leaders, according to Kapoor “invariably reverted to the carrot and stick approach of making the smaller neighbours conscious of India’s giantism”.

Parliament’s role in foreign policy formulations which had increased with the emergence of coalition politics in India has also been discussed by the author. He maintains that a manifestation of the Lok Sabha’s influence in foreign policy making was the establishment of the consultative committee on external affairs in 1994 to monitor foreign policy and interact continuously with the ministry of external affairs.

In view of Kapoor’s analysis India’s neighbours should be more watchful of “the growing power of the Indian military bureaucratic complex, also greatly contributing to the expansion of India’s military clout. India’s intervention in East Pakistan in 1971, compounded with other military initiatives has given the armed forces the appropriate basis to constitute themselves into a powerful lobby — much more powerful than ever before in post-independence India. It is possible that this pressure group will become even more important in the future... the chances are that its involvement in the region is going to increase”. The emergence of coalition politics and minority governments at the centre has helped this military lobby.

The author maintains that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy of egalitarian and a balanced approach was seriously undermined after the 1962 border war with China. Its image was tarnished and it could no longer play, for some time, that role. But under Mrs Indira Gandhi the situation was reversed. India became powerful and domineering. It had developed an image of a “regional bully”.

While discussing regional hegemony the author maintains that the “defining moment” in this ongoing process was India’s military intervention in East Pakistan in 1971.The author argues that military victory in this war also gave India a chance to push for bilateralism while projecting itself as a regional power. In this context he refers to the bilateral Shimla Agreement. According to Kapoor, the negotiations leading to the Shimla Agreement were a “clear recognition of the new power reality”. But the Indian military initiatives in Goa, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives projected it as an expansionist power.

The author has also dealt with the “accelerated expansion” of religious, ethnic, and political violence; development of greater regionalization; emergence of coalition politics at the centre, increasing injection of criminal and corrupt practices into the realm of politics and accentuation of the process of “Hindustanization” in the country and greater “marketization and globalization” of the economy.

He is not oblivious of the causes of discontent in India and in this context cites Kashmir and Punjab as the most striking and visible examples of this growth. “Kashmir,” Kapoor maintains, “is indeed a microcosm of a larger issue that India has always faced — the issue of Muslim integration into what was and indeed is essentially a Hindu society. They have hardly ever been integrated into the Indian mainstream as a result of which a society parallel to that of the Hindus was established.”

Indo-Pakistan relations have a “confrontational” aspect while China’s future plans are to project its power outside the Pacific Rim and South of the Himalayas. The Indian concern is to reduce, if not eliminate, the Chinese influence among the states of the region.

In the context of the nuclear deterrent between India and Pakistan, the ball-game has changed. India cannot possibly afford to ignore this new development. The author has also hinted at the scenario of Indian embroilment on a two front conventional war, particularly now that the Soviet deterrence has been removed with the demise of the Soviet system.

“The only hope that India now has is to either avoid such an eventuality or to raise the Tibetan card as the bargaining chip in order to deter China from allying with Pakistan,” the author maintains.

At the same time, however, he is also concerned over an “increasingly unstable, violent, and guerrilla-like situation that has developed within its own boundaries with no apparent hope of any let-up. The secessionist movements in Kashmir and the northeast and the growing left-wing armed Naxalite opposition in five states (Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and Bihar), have generated an unprecedented level of violence in Indian politics, which the Indian armed forces are having serious difficulties in controlling”.

This is an instructive book which our own policy makers would do well to read.

Diplomatic Journey: Emerging India
By Harish Kapoor
Manas Publications, 24 Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110000
ISBN 81-7049-188-6
408pp. Indian Rs695.00

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