New Delhi Letter
Everybody loves India
Nayar
India is pleased with herself. She always Wanted both Washington and Moscow to accept her as a non-aligned country. After Dr Kissinger's recent visit to New Delhi, desire has been fulfilled. He has given a public certificate to India that she has conducted an independent foreign policy and that her treaty with the Soviet Union "as it exists now, and the manner in which it has been implemented" is not "an Obstacle to improved relations with the US." (The twenty-year Indo-Soviet Treaty, signed in August 1972, lays down among other things that in the case of attack on either of the two countries, they *will consult each other on how to ward it off jointly.)
Of still greater satisfaction to New Delhi is Dr ICissinger's. apology for the US tilt towards Pakistan during the Bangladesh struggle in 1971 and for the undertaking that America will not encourage an arms race in the subcontinent. There is some disappointment that he has not given any categorical assurance on not scrapping the three-year-old embargo .ou arms supply to Pakistan. But it is rationa
lised on the ground that he could not have done so because he was flying from New Delhi to Rawalpindi. Instead, great significance is attached to his evasive reply in a press conference in New Delhi: "I do not think it is appropriate for me to make statements that affect other countries of the sub-continent."
The fact that Dr Kissinger took a low profile on India's nuclear device has pleased her all the more. All that he reportedly said was that India should see to it that the know-how or the raw material was not passed on to other nations which might not be as responsible as India. New Delhi suspects that Dr Kissinger has entrusted the task to Moscow (where he stopped earlier) because even in 1966 it was the Soviet Union which exerted the maximum pressure on India to sign the non-proliferation treaty. Probably 'peaceful' underground nuclear explosions would be kept out of the treaty's purview. New Delhi has a debt to pay to Moscow in this respedt. A few weeks ago, when Mr Swaran Singh visited Moscow to obtain food, he reportedly told Soviet leaders that they should raise their voice against Pakistan's proposal to declare South-East Asia a nuclear-free zone; India's alternative suggestion was that the whole of Asia should be made a nuclear-free area knowing well that Rawalpindi would not accept it because that would mean Peking, too, going non-nuclear. Russia supported India on this.
There was a time when Washington told New Delhi that America had to have a pro-Pakistan stance because Rawalpindi was acting as a bridge between the US and China. Dr Kissinger was frank enough to say that they were not hitting it off well with Peking. He said that the "US would he happy if India could improve relations with China but his information was that the chances were limited.
In fact, so vituperative has been Peking's attack on India following her decision to accord Sikkim the status of an 'associate' and to provide representation in the Indian Parliament that New Delhi does not expect any dialogue with Peking for a long time to come. Till recently Mrs Gandhi was thinking of sending back unilaterally the Ambassador to China (both countries have been working through their charges d'affaires for the last twelve years). But now New Delhi says that Peking must first realise that it takes two to make friends. Even if there is no conciliation with China, India does not seem to mind, because, one by one, all countries in the world are coming round to having friendly relations with her. The Shah of Iran recently stopped last month at New Delhi to reassure her that Teheran has straightened its tilt towards Rawalpindi. Mr Bhutto, Pakistan's Prime Minister, himself affirmed his support of the Simla agreement (which forecloses the option of hostilities to settle matters with India) before both the Soviet leaders
when he was in Moscow two months ago Rawalapnindcli,E:Ir Kissinger when he later visited
India feels that even Prime Minister Wilson, who had blamed her for the 1965 war in the sub-continent, wants to make up with New Delhi now. Even though he subsequently tried to mollify the feelings of India by saying that he was led up the
impression persists that Mr Heath is more garden path by bureaucracy, the favourable to India than the present Prime Minister. This is due to the fact that for the first time after the Bangladesh struggle in 1971, London gave up the policy of 'balance of power' in the subcontinent and openly stood on the side of India Which, in contrast to Pakistan, had a democratic free press, a free structure, judiciary, free elections and all those values which Britain itself cherished.
At times inflation and high prices do bother the Indian government, but then it consoles itself with the argument that it is a world phenomenon and no country can do much about it singly. However, the downward trend in the price of certain commodities in the country, convinces New Delhi that the worst will be over soon. Mrs Gandhi puts the period at two years. Famine conditions in certain parts of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Gujarat, and deaths by starvation — under-played by the Indian press — have been a source of worry but not much. After all, Dr Kissinger has promised food aid; the EEC has given 300,000 tons, part of it as a gift. And pressure is being exerted on the Soviet Union to loan at least three million tons more than the two million tons it advanced last year. ,
What pleases India is not so much the possibility of her tiding over the crisis — she is short by six to seven million tons as the fact that governments of different complexions, including the US and the USSR are proferring their assistance. And it once again proves the strength of her policy of non-alignment.
Kuldip Nayar, The Spectator's correspondent in India, is political editor of the Statesman, New Delhi and Calcutta.
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