Nehru's World-View: An Alternative to the Superpowers' Model of International Relations

Abstract

Jawaharlal Nehru's keen sense of history and his intense nationalism played a key role in the evolution of his world-view which pioneered to give new direction to international politics in the post-Indian independence period. This world-view had developed gradually but formidably over a span of half a century entailing and synchronising the turmoil at the national and global level and finally leaving a profound impact on Nehru's mind.¹ The vulnerable Western colonial domination of the world; the gripping struggle between the fascist and the liberal forces within the West itself and the confrontational poise between the Communist Soviet Union and the non-Communist Western countries were all considered to be the basic issues by Nehru, on the outcome of which would emerge a new world order. Nehru was ambitious enough to envisage top grading of India in the comity of nations following elimination of its colonial subjugation as a part of the well construed basis of the new order and it rhymed perfectly with the broad contours of his world vision.

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References

Nehru's writings of the pre-Independence period, especially his Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India are discernible manifestations of his national and world view.

Nehru

Jawaharlal

, India's Foreign Policy, Selected Speeches, September 1946-April 1961 (Publications Division, New Delhi, 1961), p. 13.

Ibid.

He once categorically declared that “the fate of the world dependsmore on the USA, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China than on the rest of the World put together.” Selected Speeches 1949–53 (Publications Division, New Delhi, 1954), p. 178.

Nehru

Jawaharlal

, Selected Speeches, n. 2, p. 271.

Range

Willard

, Jawaharlal Nehru's World View—A Theory of International Relations (University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1961), p. 102.

Nehru

Jawaharlal

, Selected Speeches, n. 2, p. 270.

Ibid., pp. 271–72.

Ibid., p. 240.

10.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha on 22 September 1954, Nehru cited the NATO example whose membership had been extended to non-Atlantic countries in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. Moreover, Portugal raised the Goa question in NATO thereby extending the scope of the treaty to Indian shores. See Ibid., p. 90.

11.

In the Parliament, 12 June 1952, Ibid., p. 58.

12.

Nehru in the Lok Sabha, 25 February 1955, Ibid., p. 67.

13.

See Singh

Baljit

, Indian Foreign Policy: An Analysis (Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1975) pp. 25 and 32.

14.

Nehru

Jawaharlal

, Selected Speeches, n. 2, pp. 78 and 594–95.

15.

Statement made in the Lok Sabha, 30 September 1954, Ibid., p. 305.

16.

For instance, India did not openly denounce the Soviet role in suppressing the Hungarian uprising in 1956 partly because it would have adversely affected the newly started flow of Soviet aid and technology to India. Similarly the Indian criticism of the American involvement in Vietnam was very mild in the Special Report (1962) published by International Control Commission for Vietnam of which India happened to be the Chairman, because of the American support that India sought to neutralise the massive pressure being generated by China at its Indian border.

17.

Nehru

Jawaharlal

, Selected Speeches, n. 2, pp. 578–79.

18.

For details see Munro

Ross H.

, “Super Power Rising Propelled by an Arms Buildup: India Asserts its Place on the World Stage,” Time, (Chicago), Vol. 133, no. 14, 3 April 1989, pp. 6–13.