From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

Wells of Power: The
Oilfields of South Western Asia: A Regional and Global Study,
British
Indian civil servant Sir Olaf Caroe echoed Curzon and Churchill. He
argued, in the context of the cold war pitching the West against communist
Russia, that control of India (and Pakistan, after Partition) was critical to

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control of the Gulf region. Caroe also argued that the stability of the Middle
East depended on British control of an undivided India, and with its break-
up Pakistan would have to take over this role.
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On the other hand, India’s founding fathers had a different vision for
India’s engagement with the rest of the world. For Nehru, India, as one of
two main Asian civilizations, would symbolize the rise of Asia. A few
months before Independence, in March 1947, he championed the Asian
Relations Conference that was held in Delhi and was attended by delegates
from many parts of Asia, even from countries that were still under colonial
rule. Nehru believed that India had been forced to participate in imperial
adventures against its will and that independent India would not send its
troops out of the country. Indian reluctance to send its troops, except under
UN mandate, is a legacy of this colonial past in addition to being influenced
by its ancient isolationist history.
Some Indians, like Panikkar, saw Independence as an opportunity for
India’s rise and embraced the views of British strategists about India’s
centrality in influencing the Near and Far East. Panikkar saw benefits for
India in associating closely with Britain and maintaining, as a sovereign
country, the policies of regional primacy that had been devised for the
British Empire. He described a Triune Commonwealth: ‘a reconstituted
Indian empire, on the basis of the freedom of India, Pakistan and Burma’. 
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In a 1919 pamphlet 
Indian Nationalism
, Panikkar and an unnamed British
colleague had called for the need to ‘knit India to England and England to
India in a free partnership’. 
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Decades later Panikkar explained his view thus: ‘The old Indian empire
as a common defence area had much in its favour. It included Aden, as an
outpost, kept the Persian Gulf and the Oman coast within the orbit of Indian
policy, neutralized Tibet and held strongly to the Eastern frontier of Burma.’
For Panikkar, the ‘surrender’ of Aden to the colonial office was ‘the first
short-sighted step’ that led to the breakup of this scheme. Other drastic

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steps were the transfer of the Persian Gulf to the foreign office, the
separation of Burma in 1935, the weakening of Indian policy towards Tibet
and British Indian influence in Kashgar. ‘What seems to be required in the
light of the experience of the present [Second World] war is the
reconstitution of the old Indian empire on a different basis.’
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Panikkar spoke of a ‘fourth British empire’ which would be ‘a world
commonwealth in a true sense and one which will be justly entitled to claim
the moral leadership of the world’. 
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Panikkar believed that since, in 1947,
a newly independent India was too weak to defend herself and needed to
build her military and economic strength and obtain modern technology,
and the best way to do so was through cooperation with Britain.
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In his 1943 book 
The Future of South-East Asia
, Panikkar had already
argued that in history India had been the ‘only’ power able to control South-
East Asia or what he called ‘Further India’.
56
Panikkar saw India as the
security provider as well as the key economic power for the region because
of its ‘geographical position, size, resources, manpower and industrial
potential’.
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He even cited President Quezon of the Philippines who
declared: ‘Without a free India, no nation in South East Asia can be free.’
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That Panikkar was not alone in this view is seen in the 1946 book titled