The following essay is an example of the work I wrote during my MA (International Political Economy) at King’s College London in 2023. I am sharing some of my academic work partially to share with those interested in the same topics as me, but also to add to my portfolio and share with potential employers. This essay was the final piece for a module outside of the IPE programme, taken instead within the King’s India Institute. My thanks goes to Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, who guided the course with skill, backed by formidable knowledge.

The original question for this essay: “How far would you agree with the suggestion that non-alignment, at its foundation, was a realistic response to India’s strategic environment?“, referring to the strategic environment after gaining independence.

Introduction

This essay takes a sympathetic stance towards India’s non-alignment strategy, arguing that while it was naïve and left India unprotected from aggressive neighbours, it also gave India unprecedented clout at the multilateral level. It thus finds that although non-alignment was no realistic stance to independent India’s nascent security environment, it has shaped India’s international standing and championed a valuable facet to international relations past crude realpolitik.

The essay is divided into three parts, designed to analyse non-alignment as a policy in both principle and practice. The first considers the link between non-alignment and the multilateral world order as India gained independence. It then proceeds to analyse what this stance meant for India in security and diplomatic terms firstly during the Cold War and secondly after the collapse of the USSR.

India’s strategic environment

Due to space limitations, India’s strategic environment is only briefly explained with key dynamics in mind. India gained independence as the Cold War began, compelling countries to align either to the US or the USSR. India chose neither, organising instead on utopian ideals. Pakistan and China represented the key regional security concerns of the newly independent India. The former ideologically was still perceived as part of India – especially the contested territory of Kashmir – and the latter emerged as the major military border threat. India chose to pursue its ideational non-alignment foreign policy at a time with clear military threats and global power-politics between major powers, a high-risk strategy from a realpolitik perspective. The question is whether the moral leadership of Nehruvian ideals balanced these threats.

Non-alignment and multilateral politics – international gains and losses

Non-alignment, idealism and the UN

India was one of the UN’s 51 founding members and has been highly active in the organisation since. There is an intrinsic link between the emergence of non-alignment and Nehru’s hope for the UN (Bhagavan, 2010), but India’s experience of it has been mixed. India thus grew gradually to perceive decisions within the UNSC were based off individual national interests rather than intrinsic merits in each case (Gharekhan, 2007).

Nehru’s hopes for the UN concerned little with putting India in competition with and in balance with other sovereign states, instead envisioning a world post-liberal order, a progression towards One World (Bhagavan, 2010). Acknowledging that this would be an ideal for the distant future, the UN represented a move towards it. Non-alignment was a factor in attempting to realise this. Indeed, the UN was where India developed its reputation as a proponent of peaceful settlements (Schleicher and Bains, 1969) and it played an active role in providing UN peacekeeping forces and humanitarian aid to conflicts globally (Bullion, 1997).

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister, became the first female president of the UN General Assembly in 1953. Bhagavan (2010) argues the family connection with India’s leader assured “a symbiotic relationship between the making of the post-colonial by the new Indian state, and the making of the ‘universal’ by the new world body”. Regardless of family links, to have an Indian leader as a UN figurehead so early in the organisation’s existence and after independence shows India’s commitment to the UN’s early ideals and the position India had successfully already claimed in the international community.

There are two common representations of non-alignment. Some consider it a counter hegemonic critique of the existing world order, while others see it as a rhetoric tool to maintain maximisation of national interests (Abraham, 2008). The first of these – and the view of this essay – finds the roots of non-alignment in non-violent struggle, linking India’s anti-colonial movement directly to non-alignment. In the early UN, non-alignment did not represent a third way as it is often presented but attempted to “build harmony and consensus, in order to make One World real” (Bhagavan, 2010). Quoting Nehru in 1956: “I hope that, gradually, each representative here (…) will begin to think that he is something more than the representative of his country, that he represents (…) the world community. (…) The only way to look ahead assuredly is for some kind of a world order, One World, to emerge” (Nehru, 1956).

India’s relationship with the UN, from its initial steps with the interactions between it and Nehru, Pandit, and Hansa Mehta, marked an opportunity for idealism and questioning of the existing order, but gradually brought a degree of wariness as it failed to deliver on the expectations of these visionary leaders (Bhagavan, 2010).

Fruits sown and fallen through multilateralism and non-alignment

Aligning to a great power would have been no simple task for India. Its political position after independence was determined by more than realpolitik. Having just freed itself from a colonial power, it was expected to become subservient to a different power, yet it did not fit neatly into any one camp. Domestic and regional conditions interfered with its viability to align to one side , and its political ideals had become something unique to itself.

The international system retains much of the logic of colonial times. Non-alignment challenged, broke away from, and shifted part of the prevailing world view away from the colonial system and postcolonial response. Even if the movement has dissipated, its critique of existing systems and vision of a radically different international society has left its legacy (Abraham 2008). Part of this was India’s newfound ability to stand up to imperialism. Alongside its natural desire to protect its earned sovereignty, it became a leading light in opposing racism and imperialistic activities in the world. India’s opposition to apartheid (Harshe, 1990) and its pro-Arab stance on the Arab Israeli war (Mukherjee, 2014) indicates the ‘liberal democratising tendency’ (Abraham, 2008) India’s non-alignment strategy presented. The protection of Indian interests in South Africa was one of Gandhi’s core hopes from Pandit’s new position as UN delegate (Bhagavan, 2010). It is thus clear that India was able to take strong moral stances on issues in the UNSC that other countries could not due to their self-interests and alignments. India also opened the way for other countries to take a non-aligned stance (Raghavan, 2017).

Non-alignment was more complex when India needed political and military support. Potential diplomatic isolation for India in 1971 was avoided only through Soviet support. The USSR Vetoed three ceasefire resolutions in the UNSC (Mukherjee, 2014), highlighting the role the USSR played in balancing India’s own international position in a form of non-alignment with benefits. The soviet veto in the UN on Kashmir highlighted non-alignment’s ability to gift India an outweighed presence in multilateral negotiations. When the USSR-China relationship turned sour, soviet support enabled India to balance China (Menon, 2015). The relationship was however double-edged. Soviet arms aid to Pakistan and the Prague Spring in 1968 reminded that the USSR was indeed a world power intent on defending its interests (Rothermund ,1969).

India was able to play the same game with the US, though without avoiding critique. Seeking assistance from the US during the Sino-Indian war in 1962 led some contemporary critics to question India’s status as a truly non-aligned state. This happened again in 1971 but this time with Soviet ties at the signing of the Indo-Soviet treaty (Harshe, 1990). The question however is what leeway a foreign policy of non-alignment allows. Non-alignment originally meant not picking a side in the Cold War. This does not rule out appealing to the major powers occasionally. In the case of the Sino-Indian there was no choice for which power to appeal to due to the closeness at the time of the USSR to India’s aggressors. In this logic, non-alignment gave India the autonomy to appeal to whoever was suitable for the given moment.

India’s defining regional dispute is with Pakistan over Kashmir. This is a realm where non-alignment has done little for India, resolution attempts by the UN and various bilateral partners failing. In 1948 during the invasion of Kashmir, India was disappointed that the UNSC did not support it (Mukherjee, 2014). Where Pakistan has often welcomed UN resolution attempts, India has seen them as falsely legitimising the dispute as an international issue instead of an infringement of sovereignty and territory (Mukherjee, 2014). This suggests that while India’s commitment to non-alignment enabled it to have a positive influence in multilateral discourse, it did little to cover its regional position and security.

Non-alignment as a national strategy after independence – reason without rationality

Concerns and interests at independence – building a new strategic culture

Post-independence India had secured its freedom from the British Empire, but in trade for the responsibilities of autonomy and the security concerns that arise from sovereignty. With independence also came the violent rift of partition, and in the newly founded Pakistan a security and political concern from the outset.

Yet early post-independence India pursued an almost entirely ideational foreign policy, severely neglecting security concerns (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2009). This was guided by strong anti-colonial sentiment and the hope of a kinder, more equitable international system that culminated in non-alignment (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2009).

Harshe (1990) argues that non-alignment was a strategy to “survive and negotiate with a world that was getting dragged into the politics of the Cold War, (…) and an unconventional approach to power politics.” Yet understanding non-alignment purely in realpolitik terms misses contextual nuance and distorts the vision of non-alignment. It is hard to see how in security terms non-alignment ‘protected’ India more than aligning to a power. Bhagavan’s (2010) analysis shows how the kindle of non-alignment existed well before the Cold War, and as such it would be narrow-sighted to see non-alignment as a purely power-based decision.

The challenges faced by newly independent states post World War 2 in asserting their sovereignty in the face of the Cold War’s bipolar politics was precisely the context India needed to pursue non-alignment (Alam, 1977). The threat of military conflict between major powers, with memory fixed on the repercussions of World War 2, necessitated an alternative world view oriented towards ensuring peace and freedom from colonial rule. India ideologically fell between the major powers, and picking sides was problematic. Nehru, having been educated in the British tradition, was deeply sceptical of the US and his social democratic leanings made him more ambivalent to the USSR. The opportunity costs of defence spending and determination to keep India’s independence inspired Nehru’s intent on non-alignment. (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2009).

Harshe (1990) argues that India’s domestic political structure predetermined India’s inability to unequivocally ‘pick a side’ in the Cold War. On one hand, India’s standing as a large democratic state aligned it with the US, but its partially planned economy brought it closer to the world view of the USSR. While this is an insightful point, a degree of political difference has never stopped alliances forming on grounds of convenience. There is little evidence that the US or the USSR would refuse to cooperate with a country without completely aligned principles.

Bajpai (2002) takes Nehru’s stance seriously enough to consider it a specific strategic culture, separate from more conventional realist logic. One may initially doubt how a political stance shunning military security could be considered strategic, but Bajpai is correct to posit that Nehru saw it as such:

“It is this communication and contact between governments and peoples rather than force that will end conflict and make India more secure. International organizations and interstate negotiations are ways of institutionalizing communication and contact. The threat or use of force, particularly in a coercive, offensive way, is counterproductive and will generally be reciprocated by the adversary (…). Both parties can only be weakened and harmed by a relationship built on force.” (Nehru, 1956)

Here peaceful negotiation is clearly put forward as a security-ensuring logic. The force of realpolitik is indeed presented as destabilizing, not as balancing. Aggression begets aggression, and Nehru evidently hoped to break away from this downward spiral.

Hits to idealism

Neglecting security comes at a cost and India’s ideational foreign policy came to haunt India in 1962 when border disputes with China arose and India was unprepared (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2009). Alam (1977) argues that the idealistic stance of non-alignment could never fully account for the conflicting interests of different states. “Peace does not come simply with statesmen’s smiles or with their enunciation of principles” and non-aligned countries still have their own interests. Non-alignment thus leaves states split between their principles which they cannot realise and their own interests which become difficult to justify on non-aligned principles.

Alam is correct that peace is not won by smiles alone but is also naïve to conflate non-alignment with only niceties. As Bajpai (2002) suggests, non-alignment was a policy response to the great powers. It was not neutral. The ‘Nehruvian system for managing relations with great powers’ was concerned with balancing, mediation, autonomy and institutionalism. In dealing with the global poles, India proved weaker countries can secure more autonomy through leveraging diplomacy and moral suasion (Mukherjee, 2014). Managing great powers does not however eliminate regional threats.

In the context of cold-war global polarisation, non-alignment was believed to be the only policy that would give India space to pursue national interests autonomously (Mukherjee, 2014). In 1962, the US provided military support against China, but in the 1971 war with East Pakistan the US supported India’s opponent. This pushed India to stronger ties with the USSR, with whom they signed a defence treaty (Mukherjee, 2014). This emphasises that while non-alignment gifted India a greater degree of foreign policy autonomy, it also reduced its security stability. In 1971, autonomy enabled India to pragmatically play the USSR off the US.

Yet this also meant the great powers could easily treat India as a pragmatic tool. After the PRC came to power, the US needed a balancing power to China in Asia. This lifted India in the minds of US intelligence from insignificant, to the only realistic regional balancer of the PRC (Madan, 2019). From India’s perspective this strategic pitting country against country led India to see the US as a meddler who was part of the security problem in Asia (Madan, 2019).

Non-alignment after the fall of the Soviet Union

Loss of a partner: Non-alignment without the USSR

Non-alignment was initially a response to the Cold War bipolar order and the demise of the USSR in principle should have signalled the end of non-alignment. In practice, remnants of non-alignment remain, if predominantly in mindset.

During the Cold War, India opposed security through alliances and western dominance of global governance. To a degree it maintained these reservations after the Soviet collapse (Prakash, 2013). India thus maintained its non-alignment ideals over the transition into the post-soviet era. As the UNSC increasingly took interventionist measures in response to emerging conflicts, Delhi kept away from both unilateral and multilateral interventions (Mukherjee, 2014).

The fall of the USSR represented the end of a power protecting Indian interests, as had been the case since 1971 (Tellis, 2015). At its height, USSR strength had laid a backbone for Indian security, but as Russia quickly descended into unstable and violent domestic politics and cronyism, India’s security was reduced (Menon, 2015). The friendship had lost strategic value as the crossover between India’s non-alignment strategy and the USSR’s objective to counter US containment disappeared (Menon, 2015). The US containment strategy was meanwhile incompatible with non-alignment (Tellis, 2015).

Changing principles

India’s strategy would be forced to change after the demise of the USSR. The international order which non-alignment challenged remains in place, but India’s circumstances changed. India’s relationship with the international system has thus shifted from early enthusiasm to ‘cautious prudence’. This alludes to India’s unwillingness to use force or act overtly overseas – as is the heritage of non-alignment – but while harbouring an acute awareness that realpolitik is integral to international relations (Mehta, 2009). Directly after the Cold War, India entered a period where its Nehruvian foreign policy transformed into an increasingly neoliberal one, dropping idealism for market forces (Bajpai, 2002; Mukherjee, 2014).

However, since 9/11 it has shifted again towards an increasingly realist approach (Bajpai, 2002). Former Indian Ambassador to Russia, Pankaj Saran Raghavan, for example explicitly takes a realist stance in a paper on tenets of Indian foreign policy. Raghavan (2017) states that the role of membership in multilateral organisations has little do with pursuing ‘One World’ as per Nehru, but rather is predominantly to “ward off intrusive prescriptions for [India’s] policies”. Foreign policy is firstly a matter of sovereignty and territory, not the bettering of the world community.

India’s ‘quest for strategic autonomy’ remains at the core of India’s foreign policy, but gradually the stance has become more pragmatic. India has become less a rule subverter in the international system and pushes its own interests more assertively (Mukherjee, 2014). Prime Minister Modi has brought more striking change to India. The country’s normative strategy has changed, with Modi calling for India to act a ‘world guru’, acting in the interests of human welfare. Foreign Secretary Jaishankar stated in 2015 that India should aim not to be a ‘balancing power’ but rather a ‘leading power’ that does more than merely respond to global events (Hall, 2016).

The Panchsheel principles are however still present, with non-interference becoming a convenience for India and a frustration for the international community. This has resulted in India and Russia mutually ignoring each-others domestic abuses of power – Russia overlooks the emergence of extreme ethnocentrism in India, while India refuses to pass judgement on Russia’s annexation attempts (Manon, 2015) and the war in Ukraine: India abstained on a UN vote to condemn the invasion (Traub, 2022).

Conclusion

This essay has argued that although non-alignment was not a realistic response to the strategic environment the newly independent India faced, it has proven valuable and understandable given the wider context. Non-alignment is best understood as an ideational stance to international relations that prioritised international cooperation over Hobbesian power. India’s commitment to the non-alignment movement was a result of its colonial experience and reluctance to hold a dependency to a global superpower again. It was however also optimistic, holding the belief that humanity could overcome violent self-interest.

Optimism underplayed hard security. Independence coincided with partition, which represented an immediate and existential security concern. Aside from Pakistan, border conflict with China proved that total neglection of security was a grave mistake. In this strategic environment, peaceful non-alignment was at best a gamble in what India holds most dear – sovereignty. Under the charm of Nehruvian foreign policy, India was willing to subvert realist logic despite the risks. The result was the autonomy that Nehru desired and a voice on the international stage, but the cost was unpreparedness for regional conflict. Non-alignment was thus curiously a stronger policy for managing relationships with the great powers it rejected, than with weaker but more immediate threats.

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