ABSTRACT
There was an Indian foreign policy before there was an independent India. During the Second World War, India declared war on the Axis powers and was, in 1945, one of the founding members of the United Nations (Wolpert 1997: 329; Cohen 2001: 67). It was the government of the viceroy that took these steps in the name of India. But the viceroy was the longer arm of the British government— de facto and de jure. Everything that happened in the name of India on the world stage until 1947 was only an echo of British policy.
