ABSTRACT
Britain had brought the sub-continent a measure of political unity, though it mixed territory held in sovereignty with states in a subsidiary relationship. The independence secured in 1947 was, however, accompanied by division between two states, India and Pakistan, the latter itself divided into two separate parts; states, moreover, built on different principles, and, though both becoming members of the Commonwealth, at odds, above all over the postpartition future of Kashmir. The division hampered India’s foreign policy, hampered also by its poverty and economic backwardness. Arguably it was guided by the view that it had the potential to be a major power. But, accepting that ‘judged by modern standards we are weak, militarily weak, economically weak and so on’,1 its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, believed that it could and should in the meantime act like a major power through diplomacy and through the exertion of moral authority, echoing and developing in his ‘non-alignment’ some of the ideas earlier put forward by representatives of some of the smaller European states. Non-alignment implied a greater readiness to act than neutral states had often displayed, though some had come to stress the role of ‘good offices’ and mediation and moral example. It was more appropriate to a large state than simple neutrality, but it also implied an avoidance of taking sides in the Cold War that coincided with and shaped decolonisation. To the extent that general and regional peace was definitely in India’s interest, the objectives of his policy were realistic as well as idealistic. But its weakness was shown up, with the weakness of India itself, in the early 1960s, when, despite their agreement on the five principles, it clashed with the PRC.
