From chanakya to modi evolution of india’s foreign policy

Partition leaders and did not carry the baggage of that tragic episode in the
subcontinent’s history. Both had popular support in their countries and
could accomplish what earlier leaders had not been able to do. Rajiv
travelled to Pakistan in 1989 to attend the SAARC summit in Islamabad
and concluded an agreement with Bhutto on confidence-building measures
between India and Pakistan. In the end, however, Benazir Bhutto’s term in
office was cut short when the president, backed by the military, dismissed
her from office and dissolved parliament.
Sri Lanka was the other neighbouring South Asian country with which
Rajiv attempted to alter relations. Sri Lanka had a large ethnic Tamil
population, which the majority Sinhalese sought to suppress. The Sri
Lankan Tamils, who received considerable sympathy from Tamil-speaking
Indians, sought protection of their rights. Some demanded a federal system
with autonomy for Tamil majority areas within Sri Lanka. All Indian prime
ministers, beginning with Nehru, had attempted to solve Sri Lanka’s Tamil
problem but had not succeeded. In 1983, civil war broke out in northern Sri
Lanka as Tamil hardliners pushed for independence after Sinhalese attacks
on Tamils.
India’s initial role was to ask the Sri Lankan government to protect its
Tamil minority. Then, Rajiv went a step further by using the Indian Air
Force to drop vital supplies for the Tamil population when the Sri Lankan
government blockaded the Jaffna peninsula. As civil war intensified, Rajiv
agreed to send Indian troops for peacekeeping after the 1987 Indo–Lanka

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accord that resulted in ceasefire between the Tamil guerillas and the Sri
Lankan military. Dixit, who praised other policies of Rajiv, observed that
his Lanka policy put Indian troops in the middle of two irreconcilable sides
neither of which liked India’s presence. ‘It has to be acknowledged that he
did not understand the physical complexities of the ethnic conflict in Sri
Lanka,’ Dixit wrote.
105
The Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) had to be
withdrawn in 1990 after it came under attack from both Tamil and Sinhalese
extremists.
Rajiv had as much difficulty as his mother in balancing hard-nosed
realpolitik with noble objectives of global peace and regional cooperation.
For example, as he sought to improve ties with India’s neighbours he also
knew that India needed to protect its interests. Rajiv’s policies towards
Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka reflected his view that while India was
willing to accommodate its smaller neighbours, those neighbours also had
an obligation to bear India’s interests in mind. Unlike Indira, he did not
voice his opposition to external powers getting involved in South Asia but
he still stuck to the Indira doctrine in effect.
Representing a generation that grew up in an independent India rather
than an environment of struggle against colonial rule, Rajiv was
unencumbered by ideological scepticism of the West, including the United
States. He started the process of repairing and rebuilding India–US relations
both on the economic front as well as in foreign affairs. Rajiv’s pragmatism
was also reflected in his policy towards China. He was the first prime
minister after Nehru to visit China, leading the first high-level delegation
since the 1962 Sino-Indian war. Rajiv laid down the policy that has allowed
India and China to deepen economic relations even though their border
dispute remains unresolved.
Non-alignment remained one of the pillars of Rajiv’s foreign policy, just
as it had been for Nehru and Indira. In his 1985 address to the Council of
Foreign Relations in New York Rajiv stated: ‘[Non-alignment] is rooted in

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our belief that the world is and has to be many-hued. It is an assertion of our
own right to look at the world the way we see it. We do not think there is
one and only one infallible path which all must follow. Independence is the
core of the logic of non-alignment.’
106
Forty years after Independence,
Indian leaders still sought to follow an independent foreign policy, and non-
alignment continued to be seen as the way to maintain independence.
For Rajiv, as for his predecessors, non-alignment reflected India’s fervent
desire for independence as well as its quest for international peace.
107
 Like
Nehru and Indira, Rajiv saw non-alignment as the ‘alternative’ to military
alliances and the pursuit of balance of power. 
108
Speaking on the occasion
of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the NAM in Harare, Rajiv echoed Nehru
when he referred to non-alignment as ‘an idea, a reality, a movement’ and a
major force ‘that transformed history’.
109
Like Nehru and Indira, Rajiv
emphasized the need for ‘peaceful coexistence’ instead of a ‘vain and
dangerous pursuit of confrontation and domination’. 
110
The membership of the Non-Aligned Movement had risen from twenty-
two members in 1961 to around 100 in 1986. Even countries that previously
belonged to one of the two cold war blocs now embraced non-alignment as,
in Rajiv’s words, the ‘way out of the impasse in which conventional politics
and civilization find themselves’. Rajiv asserted that India and its fellow
non-aligned friends had not only ‘withstood’ the pressure of the blocs but
also ‘kept faith’ in their principles. According to Rajiv, independence and
non-alignment should be seen as the ‘driving forces’ behind India’s
domestic and foreign policies. This would boost India’s economic strength
that in turn would help India obtain respect.
111
For Rajiv, non-alignment was not simply about uniting developing
countries. It was a path towards economic cooperation and multilateralism.
‘Complementarities of Southern countries offer possibilities of fruitful
economic cooperation: resources in raw materials, manufacturing capacity,
finance and credit, managerial and production skills and range of matching

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technologies,’ he declared, adding, ‘The scale of cooperation is still small
but the potential is great.’ 
112
According to Rajiv, the ‘leitmotif’ of non-
alignment was ‘the assertion of our right to unity, self-determination and
independence’ by virtue of which we have the right to ‘freely pursue’ our
‘economic, social and cultural development without intimidation or
hindrance’
113
 by major powers.
During his five years as prime minister, Rajiv undertook forty-eight
foreign trips. In his speeches and travels to fellow developing countries,
which like India were former colonies, Rajiv would touch on topics which
resonated: history and old civilization, colonialism, imperialism, and
racialism. According to Healy, Rajiv ‘links the Indian heritage of culture
and freedom stymied under colonialism with the prospect of a new
democracy on the march’.
114
He pursued closer ties with the United States
than under Nehru or Indira alongside close identification with the world’s
developing countries.
Rajiv often emphasized India’s key role in the global anti-imperialist
struggle. ‘Long before our independence, we were the first to raise our
voice against racial discrimination in international organizations,’ he once
remarked. 
115
On another occasion he said, ‘When Gandhiji and Panditji
fought for freedom, they did not think of freedom of India only. They were
concerned about slavery and oppression wherever it was present in the
world. Their aim was to get freedom for all these people. India got freedom
and thereafter gradually all other countries got freedom one by one.’
116
Under Rajiv, India sustained its position as a leading nation of the world
without being among the wealthiest or the militarily most powerful. Rajiv
focused on economic issues more than his predecessors, paving the way for
even greater interest in India’s growth by his successors. According to
Raghavan, Rajiv understood that if India sought to grow and become a
modern economy it needed to increase its imports and exports and obtain
access to the latest technology. At the heart of Rajiv’s championing of

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modernization ‘was the need to embrace high technology, particularly
information technology, to transform the Indian economy and society’.
Raghavan argues that Rajiv understood this would require ‘greater and
more adroit engagement with the world and that foreign policy had to be
geared towards securing these objectives’.
117
Rajiv understood the
importance of economic growth not only for domestic reasons but also to
raise India’s status in the world. He also tied this in with the desire to build
‘a more equitable world economic order in which the developing countries
will have a large voice’.
118
In his speech at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Harare in
1986 Rajiv talked about the need for ‘revolutionizing’ the international
economic order by ‘tangible, broad-based cooperation’ amongst the NAM
countries. He spoke about the need to share skills, technology through an
information grid and the need to set up a multinational system like the
Global System of Trade Preferences. Rajiv believed this would strengthen
‘the South’s negotiating power in parleys with the North’.
119
Thus, to the Nehruvian legacy, Rajiv added the need to use deeper
economic and technological ties to create a new global economic order.
Unlike Nehru and Indira, Rajiv trusted the market and did not see the state
as the sole and key actor in the economic arena. Not only did he start
economic reforms that were later taken forward in 1991, but he also voiced
a desire to secure for India all advantages of globalization and the attending
technological and economic changes. He sought an economic order in
which all countries, including developing ones, would have ‘a fair
opportunity’ to become prosperous. 
120
 Rajiv seemed to think that seeking
greater power for the global South would help build India’s global weight.
In Rajiv’s lexicon, words like ‘common humanity’, ‘human dignity’ and
‘peaceful co-existence’ were combined with ‘survival’, ‘security’ and
‘independence’. For him the ideal world was one where ‘each of us,
irrespective of size or wealth or military strength, is the equal of every other

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nation’. 
121
 Unlike his mother, Rajiv was prone to verbose speeches where
he would state that the path India had chosen was ‘unique’,
122
that India’s
‘stock’ in the world was high and that Indian policy was to ‘carve out the
right path and reach the principles and ideology of Gandhiji to all corners of
the world’.
123
 For Rajiv, India’s Weltanschauung was ‘shaped by our history,
our traditions and values of our civilization’.
124
The Nehruvian idealist in Rajiv championed disarmament with a passion,
which echoed his grandfather. In November 1986, India and the Soviet
Union signed the Declaration for a Nuclear-Weapon- Free and Non-Violent
World. The declaration spoke of the need for peaceful coexistence,
supremacy of human life, non-violence, political and economic
independence and using resources for social and economic development,
not military resources.
125
 Still, as a pragmatist, Rajiv also stated that while
India did not want to accumulate arms or build nuclear weapons, the
international system was such that India had no option but to divert
resources to strengthen itself. That is how he justified India’s nuclear test of
1974, under his mother’s leadership, and why India had not unilaterally
abandoned the quest for nuclear weapons.
126
Foreign policy under Rajiv Gandhi was a personalized affair in which the
prime minister was the main actor. This echoed the conduct of his mother
and grandfather. Rajiv changed his foreign minister often, going through
five external affairs ministers and seven ministers of state for external
affairs during his five years as prime minister. His lack of confidence in his
first foreign secretary led him to discontinue the traditional weekly meeting
between the prime minister and the foreign secretary and to even publicly
dismiss his own foreign secretary in the midst of a press conference.
Seeking to implement drastic change in a system that was oriented towards
status quo and with which he was not very comfortable led Rajiv to seek
outside advisers or trust his own views instead of those of an entrenched
bureaucracy.

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For his critics Rajiv was a dilettante who tried to combine what Nehru
and Indira did but lacked the depth of knowledge and steadfastness to stay
on course. His spur-of-the-moment decisions, like his decision to send
troops into Sri Lanka, often created long-term problems. His detractors
critiqued him for listening to a small group of advisers – both bureaucratic
and political – who were concentrated in his office and in India’s external
intelligence services.
127
 Dixit, however, sums up Rajiv’s years in power by
stating that despite lacking in experience and faced with a changing world
Rajiv successfully navigated India’s national interests. 
128
AFTER THE DYNASTY
Rajiv Gandhi turned out to be the last prime minister of the Nehru-Gandhi
political dynasty. Changes introduced by him paved the way for India’s next
steps during the 1990s but these were carried forward under different
politicians who did not inherit the mantle of leadership from blood ties to
Nehru. Internal economic problems, the end of the cold war and collapse of
the Soviet Union led the Indian government to implement a series of
economic measures that led to liberalization and less government control.
The opening up of the economy also forced a rethink of India’s foreign
policy even though the left wing opposed both economic reform and
international realignment. Many politicians, even within the Congress party,
preferred the state-led model of economic development and objected to the
expanded role of the private sector as a harbinger of greater corruption.
They did not consider the emergence of the United States as the world’s
sole superpower as a positive development either. By 1989, Rajiv could not
retain the wide political support that had led to his election in 1984.
Dissidents from the Congress party, led by Vishwanath Pratap Singh
(known as V.P. Singh), joined other left-of-centre factions to form the Janata
Dal, which challenged Rajiv’s Congress in the general elections of
November 1989.

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The Congress failed to secure a majority in parliament during the 1989
election, resulting in V.P. Singh’s ascent to the office of prime minister as
head of a minority government. He lasted in power for only eleven months
(from December 1989 to November 1990). During Singh’s tenure, the
government’s weak grip allowed little room for major foreign policy
initiatives. Singh’s foreign minister, veteran Congressman Inder Kumar
Gujral, ran foreign policy without much guidance from the prime minister.
V.P. Singh was one of those prime ministers who had little knowledge or
interest in external affairs, whereas Gujral was passionate about foreign
policy. Gujral had served as ambassador to Moscow from 1976 to 1980. He
later became external affairs minister again in 1996 and prime minister at
the head of a coalition government in 1997–98. Gujral saw himself as
reviving Nehru’s idealism albeit with a vengeance. He is known most for
his Gujral doctrine, forsaking reciprocity in relations with India’s
immediate neighbours and offering them unilateral concessions. 
129
Gujral’s detractors fault him for his extreme idealism reflected in the Gujral
doctrine as well as his belief that foreign and defence policy only meant
diplomacy, not the hard side of intelligence gathering. Under Gujral, India’s
covert intelligence capabilities were drastically reduced and they hurt
India’s diplomatic potential. India’s intelligence gathering offices in many
countries, not only the neighbours but also beyond, were wound up. One
immediate impact of this was felt when a coup in Fiji took place. India had
a huge diaspora in that country and the winding up of India’s intelligence
capabilities meant India did not find out about the incident till much later.
The defining moment in Gujral’s first stint as Singh’s foreign minister
came when Gujral chose to be photographed hugging Saddam Hussein
while India wavered in supporting the US-led coalition against Iraq during
the war over Kuwait. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 was almost

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universally condemned. Logic and rationality dictated that India too should
have denounced the invasion. Strategically, India would have benefited
from offering support to Kuwait though it also needed to protect 170,000
Indians working and living in Iraq and Kuwait.
Under Gujral’s influence, V.P. Singh’s coalition government appeared
flummoxed and unsure of what to do. India chose to be neutral in the
ensuing conflict, ignoring that one non-aligned member country had
invaded another. Soon after the invasion of Kuwait, Gujral went to Baghdad
and instead of conveying India’s concerns about Saddam’s actions ended up
creating the perception of sympathy for Saddam Hussein. The government
did succeed, however, in evacuating 110,000 Indian citizens from Iraq and
Kuwait, leaving behind only those who chose to stay there through the war.
India’s response to the Gulf War of 1991 had several consequences.
Saddam Hussein’s military was badly defeated and the Kuwaiti royal family
was restored to power. While Saddam was in no position to advance any
economic or political interest of India, the V.P. Singh government’s
neutrality cost India the goodwill of Kuwait and the Gulf Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states reduced employment opportunities
for Indians and showed their displeasure by withholding investment and job
contracts. It took decades for India to overcome this setback. For an
administration that lasted less than a year, the V.P. Singh government cast a
long shadow on Indian foreign policy, especially in the Gulf Arab region.
V.P. Singh’s short-lived government was followed by one for eight
months headed by Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar (November 1990–June
1991). Chandra Shekhar had been in politics a long time and had a good
understanding of both domestic and global issues. Presiding over a weak
coalition government, he still managed to make major decisions. One such
decision was to allow refuelling facility to US aircraft during the Gulf War,
which served as some mitigation for the V.P. Singh government’s errors.

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Chandra Shekhar was not an intellectual like Gujral with high- flying
ideas. He was a hard-nosed politician who had knowledge of global issues
thanks to long parliamentary experience. According to a former confidant
of his, Chandra Shekhar was a quick decision maker who did not like to
dither. For example, he decided to allow refuelling facilities to US aircraft
in exercise of his executive authority without seeking a decision from the
cabinet committee. Even after criticism, Chandra Shekhar stuck to his
decision as he believed it was in India’s interest to help a friendly country.
Once he took the decision he was strong enough to stand up to any criticism
by parliament and public opinion.
130
It helped that he knew he could not
survive in office after another general election, which was forced by the
instability of coalition politics in the summer of 1991.
The 1991 election might have yielded another hung parliament had it not
been for the tragedy of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination during the course of
the election campaign. A sympathy wave catapulted the Congress party to
power and a veteran Congress politician from India’s south, P.V. Narasimha
Rao became India’s next prime minister. Rao was a consummate insider
who had served as minister for external affairs under both Indira and Rajiv
Gandhi (1980–84 and 1988–89). Now he led as prime minister at a critical
juncture in Indian politics as the first person outside the Nehru-Gandhi
family to govern for a full five-year parliamentary term (1991–96).
Dixit refers to Rao ‘as one of the most effective and creative influences’
on Indian foreign policy.
131
Rao became prime minister at a time of
domestic upheaval. Rajiv Gandhi had just been assassinated, the Congress