Colonial India and External Affairs

Abstract

This essay relates the Indian National Congress's struggle against British imperialism to the global politics of the mid-1930s. While contextualizing the Congress's anti-colonialism as a world view intending to combat imperial systems of exploitation, this article postulates that the foreign policy of the post-colonial Indian state originated in the Congress's anti-imperialism and anti-fascism of the 1930s. Drawing on published sources that chart policy decisions and illustrate the attitudes of leading actors in the formulation of official policy, this article hypothesizes that the principles generated by inter-war exigencies proved to be incompatible ideologies for the construction of India's post-colonial foreign policy.