From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

Defending India
(1999), Jaswant Singh joined criticism of India’s early

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leaders, including Nehru, for personalizing foreign policy and for not
developing and institutionalizing ‘strategic thinking, policy formulation and
implementation’.
7
 Subrahmanyam asserts that in matters of national security
India followed the instincts of its leader rather than practising democracy in
debating and determining policy. ‘Monocracies of all prime ministers of
India from Jawaharlal Nehru to Atal Bihari Vajpayee in matters of national
security appears to be largely due to this absence of strategic culture and
tradition,’ 
8
he wrote. To some extent this remains true to this day. Despite
the creation of a National Security Council with a national security adviser
and secretariat, India’s strategic decision-making process is still centred on
the personality of the prime minister.
Jaswant Singh criticized Nehru for simply managing a system of external
relations inherited from the British instead of defining clear underlying
principles for India’s foreign policy. This criticism contrasts with the view
that Nehruvianism represented a strategic vision for India. The 1998
presidential address spoke of the need to follow the path laid down by
Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, of India recovering ‘her traditional, historical
place in the vanguard of human civilization’.
9
 By then thirty-four years had
passed since Nehru’s death and a half-century had gone since Gandhi’s
assassination. Critics such as Jaswant Singh saw much of Nehru’s
contribution to India’s foreign policy as grandiloquence rather than
substantive strategic decisions.
High-sounding oratory has definitely been a strong feature of India’s
approach to international relations. The 2003–04 presidential addresses to
parliament talked about India forging ahead in the world by ‘drawing on the
strength of our civilizational and historical ties with countries across the
globe’. Ignoring the large number of poor in the country, the huge gap in
GDP and other indicators with China and the serious lag in maintaining a
modern military force, India’s president declared the twenty-first century as

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‘India’s century’ and insisted that strategic autonomy and independent
decision making were the hallmark of Indian foreign policy.
10
Using poetic language, President K.R. Narayanan described India’s
foreign policy as ‘alchemy’ of ‘the thirst for Independence, the desire to
safeguard our national interest, the desire to pursue peace and cooperation
in our environment and in the world as a whole’.
11
In reality, however,
India’s approach was one of maintaining the status quo while, in the words
of a retired Indian official, ‘preaching to others what we don’t practise
ourselves’. 
12
Over the years, critics point out, India has generally only
reacted to whatever the rest of the world does instead of taking many
initiatives. Indian leaders and diplomats take pride in India being ‘one of
the few countries that is able to talk on reasonably friendly terms with
everybody in the world’, 
13
a reflection of policies designed to muddle
through instead of charting a new course.
PRIME MINISTERIAL PRE-EMINENCE
After Independence, India chose not to discard or disrupt the structure of
state created during British colonial rule. Instead, the existing institutions of
government were only slightly modified and adapted to work for a
sovereign nation instead of serving a colonial regime. India’s decision
making on foreign policy too rests on the set of institutions most of which
can be traced back to the Raj.
Within two years of the departure of the British from the subcontinent,
India adopted a constitution in 1949 modelled on the Westminster form of
parliamentary democracy. The first general elections on the basis of
universal adult franchise were held in 1951–52. As in most democracies,
members of parliament reflected their constituents and were more
concerned with local issues than global ones. As prime minister, Nehru was
the country’s chief executive and, in effect, provided continuity from an era
that vested all authority in the office of the viceroy. Thus, the office of

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prime minister in India started out wielding even greater clout than in other
parliamentary democracies. In conduct of foreign policy, Nehru
concentrated authority in the prime minister’s position, which continues to
be the focal point of India’s international engagement to this day.
Almost all Indian prime ministers have sought to leave their mark in the
arena of foreign policy. Some of them were powerful enough to craft and
implement the policies they wanted; others had to learn how to take the
system along with them. Even prime ministers lacking in knowledge of
bureaucratic functions quickly mastered the art in order to push for their
initiatives. Nehru and his early successors conveyed their decisions through
the various ministries while maintaining relatively smaller staff directly
working for the prime minister. Over the years, the Prime Minister’s Office
(PMO) has emerged as a bureaucratic machine in its own right that has
helped cement the prime minister’s centrality.
In addition to the PMO, several other key institutions and offices are also
engaged in Indian foreign policy. These include: the Ministry of External
Affairs (external affairs minister, foreign secretary, Indian foreign service
and diplomatic missions), the recently created National Security Council
(national security adviser, Strategic Policy Group and National Security
Advisory Board), the parliament (standing and consultative committees),
and the Cabinet Committee on Security. Several ministries, especially the
Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Finance,
and the Ministry of Commerce also weigh in on matters that relate to their
portfolios. India’s military and intelligence services, political parties, media
and think tanks have, in varying degrees, influenced India’s positions on
international affairs at different times in India’s recent history. The input of
professional civil servants and specialists outside the formal bureaucracy,
however, does not change the fact that the prime minister remains the final
decision maker.

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The Westminster system has an in-built tension between elected
politicians and the permanent civil service. Most Indian civil servants
would argue that they are implementers of policy and not policymakers.
According to a senior diplomat, every prime minister has his or her own
ideas and when they ask for advice from civil servants they pick up what
they want and ignore what they do not wish to hear. Realistically speaking,
the prime minister has strong views on a handful of issues and limits the
permanent bureaucracy’s input to methods of implementing his/her ideas.
On most other issues, proposals originate in the relevant ministry and move
up the hierarchy to the PMO for a decision. Most diplomats interviewed by
the author stated that issues relating to India’s immediate neighbours or
critical countries such as the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom,
China or major European Union states are often personally considered by
the prime minister.
Even the decisions on non-critical issues depend on how much
prominence the prime minister is willing to allow to the external affairs
minister. Nehru did not appoint a Minister of External Affairs, preferring to
maintain total policy control. Subsequent prime ministers have calibrated
the level of freedom of their external affairs ministers depending on
personality and political circumstances. Normally, if the prime minister gets
along well with the external affairs minister or if a matter does not interest
the prime minister, the external affairs minister would have the final say. No
prime minister would have an external affairs minister in whom he or she
does not have implicit trust though sometimes there is an unwillingness on
the part of prime ministers to allow decision-making autonomy to ministers,
especially in strategic matters.
Jaswant Singh described the relationship between the prime minister and
the external affairs ministry with a pithy anecdote. The external affairs
ministry and the PMO in Delhi are both housed in the same building,
known as South Block. The prime minister’s office is connected to the

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offices of the Ministry of External Affairs by a small door. ‘If the door is
open,’ Singh observed, ‘they are working closely together. If the door is
closed they are not.’
14
As prime minister, Nehru used that door frequently as
he was his own foreign minister. The door continues to be used but the
frequency with which foreign ministry officials can access the PMO, or vice
versa, through that door has come to symbolize the extent of cooperation
between the two bureaucracies.
In some ways, interaction between the Indian chief executive’s political
team and the cadres of permanent state functionaries resembles the
relationship between 10, Downing Street and Whitehall in Britain. India’s
adaptation of the Westminster model was heavily influenced by the
towering personality of Nehru, who led India as prime minister for
seventeen formative years. Nehru overshadowed his cabinet, the parliament
and the permanent bureaucracy. He also saw himself as his own best civil
servant. Impatient by nature, Nehru often took decisions on his own and
even sent replies to diplomatic cables.
Nehru’s passion for and interest in foreign affairs meant that by the time
he became prime minister he had rather firm views on international affairs.
Other leaders of the Indian independence movement paid much less
attention to foreign affairs than Nehru. Although he consulted some of his
top officials, Nehru tended to make decisions on the basis of his own
knowledge and instincts. According to Jayantanuja Bandyopadhyaya, who
served in the Indian Foreign Service for several years, the advisory role of
the missions and the foreign office under Nehru was minimal for two
reasons. The first of these was Nehru’s belief that he seldom needed advice.
The second, and more significant, was the fact that Indian foreign policy
was still being crafted in the early years of Independence and dealt more
with ‘broad generalities and problems of international relations rather than
with detailed and specific problems’ requiring an Indian response.
15

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Nehru’s handling of foreign affairs on a daily basis is described in detail
by former foreign secretary, Yezdezard Dinshaw Gundevia, whose memoirs
offer details about the prime minister’s routine. Nehru would start his day
by meeting the public who had gathered in the lawn of his official
residence, Teen Murti House, the former palatial home of the commander-
in-chief of the British Indian Army. He would then go to his office in South
Block where for the first twenty minutes he would meet with four
government secretaries: the Secretary General, foreign secretary,
Commonwealth secretary and special secretary. According to Gundevia,
‘Each of us carried his own sheaf of pink and yellow telegrams on which
we wanted instructions or orders. Jawaharlal had his own collection of
telegrams and sometimes one or more letters with him properly sorted out.’
Nehru would ask questions and then the officers would be allowed to ask
theirs.
16
Among his political peers, Nehru had to contend mostly with the views
of his deputy prime minister and home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
whom many saw as a potential prime ministerial candidate in his own right.
Although Patel was primarily concerned with domestic politics and with
integrating the princely states into the Indian Union, he disagreed
vehemently with Nehru’s foreign policy in relation to China. Cabinet
members other than Patel rarely questioned Nehru on foreign policy and a
saying of the era was, ‘Panditji [Pandit Nehru] knows best.’
Nehru maintained the appearance of formal consultative mechanisms
even when he made decisions individually. Other prime ministers have also
used cabinet committees to share responsibility for decisions, based on the
idea of collective cabinet responsibility in parliamentary governments. The
number of cabinet committees has varied over time but the key cabinet
committees are: Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, Cabinet
Committee on Security, Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, Cabinet
Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, Appointment Committee of the

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Cabinet and Cabinet Committee on Accommodations. For many years the
Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs also dealt with foreign affairs but in
recent years the Cabinet Committee on Security has emerged as the key
formal body.
Under Nehru, the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Affairs comprised the
prime minister, defence minister, home minister and finance minister. There
were Cabinet Committee on Defence and Cabinet Committee on Economic
Affairs as well though none of them were ‘particularly effective’ in
influencing the formation of policy.
17
Not only did Nehru dominate the
proceedings but he often came to meetings already having decided the
policy. According to Krishna Menon, Nehru ‘was not a person who sought
consultation’ and at cabinet meetings would first lay down the issue and
then in the end state ‘everyone was agreed’ on the policy.
18
Many non-
Congress ministers in Nehru’s first cabinet, like B.R. Ambedkar, resigned
because they felt he took crucial policy decisions outside of the cabinet.
Seeing himself as an educator for his people, Nehru was impatient to make
decisions and viewed the committee process as laborious.
Currently, the Cabinet Committee on Security is the key decision-making
body with respect to foreign and security policy. It is comprised of the
prime minister, external affairs minister, defence minister, home minister
and finance minister. It is the prime minister’s prerogative to invite other
cabinet ministers to these meetings. Depending on the issue being
discussed, other ministers can be invited as well. The services chiefs