ABSTRACT
Before 1947, India was a colony of Britain, and its foreign policy was conducted by the British in their own interest. Control over India gave the British access to its vast economic and military resources which enabled Britain to exercise power both within India and outside. Therefore, Britain showed an unflinching determination to hold on to India. This influenced Britain’s relations with Russia, France, and Germany. All policy decisions relating to India’s foreign policy were taken at London, and all treaties with states in the neighbourhood of India were signed in the name of the British Crown or the British Government.
The Government of India conducted day-to-day relations with external states within the framework of policy laid down at London. This made the purview of the Government of India very wide. The need to defend the routes to India created a vast sphere of influence and interference from Cape Town through Aden and Kolkata to Sidney. During the First and the Second World Wars, the considerations relating to the security of the Indian Empire and the routes thereto, especially in the Middle East, remained major constituents of British strategy.
The nationalist leaders in India looked upon India’s foreign policy during this period as ‘Un -Indian’. In 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose, with the cooperation of Japan, launched an armed invasion from India’s eastern frontier.
In short, the determinants of the foreign policy of colonial India were very different from the determinants of the foreign policy of a sovereign state.
