ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the Sino-Indian border war from a wider Cold War perspective. It challenges the widespread notion that India’s neutrality in world affairs was antithetical to American global goals. India was a neutral moored to the liberal international order erected by the Anglo-Americans. Non-alignment was mutually beneficial to both India and America. Neither Nehru nor the Anglo-Americas were under any illusion regarding the purpose of exercising neutrality. Nehru was in fact a part of the Anglo-American strategy to contain communism both at home as well as in the international arena.
Prior to the Suez crisis, Nehru’s policy of recognizing China and advocating its inclusion in the UN Security Council, acting as a credible interlocutor between the US and China during the Korean War, and ensuring a smooth transition of the African continent towards decolonization were much in tune with the British policy. During this phase, India was warm towards China but indifferent towards the Soviet Union.
In the mid-1950s, America replaced Britain as India’s strategic mentor. As a part of its long-term strategy to deal with the non-communist neutrals, America encouraged the non-alignment movement. Initially, America also encouraged India’s engagement with communist China. However, after 1953, America was indifferent to the warming up of the Indo-Soviet ties, but became highly critical of India’s cordiality with China. This was a strategic move to achieve its larger goal of causing the Sino-Soviet split. The India-China war was an important tool to achieve the split.
America nudged India to seek Soviet aid and arms for two reasons. Firstly, to shirk the responsibility of handling India’s economic burden so as to avoid an imperial overreach. Secondly, to make China cringe at seeing Soviet aid strengthening the “free world” rather than supporting the international communist movement. However, before leaving India in Soviet hands, American strategy ensured that the right wing came to dominate Indian politics. This was achieved by using the limited Indo-China war to discredit and divide Indian communists and politically destroy Krishna Menon, the candidate most capable of thwarting the complete dominance of the Congress party by the right wingers.
