The Indian Civil Service and Indian Foreign Policy, 1923–1961

Amit Das Gupta

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000244588
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an authoritative account of the first significant overseas diplomatic missions and forays made by Indian civil servants. It recounts the key events in the formative decades of Indian foreign policy and looks at the prominent figures who were at the centre of this decisive period of change.

The book explores the history and evolution of the civil and foreign services in India during the last leg of British rule and the following era of post-independence Nehruvian politics. Rich in archival material, it looks at official files, correspondences and diaries documenting the terms served by the pioneers of Indian diplomacy, Girja Shankar Bajpai, K.P.S. Menon and Subimal Dutt, in Africa, China, the USSR and other countries and their relationship with the Indian political leadership. The book also analyses and pieces together the activities, strategies, worldviews and contributions of the first administrators and diplomats who shaped India's approach to foreign policy and its relationship with other political powers.

An essential read for researchers and academics, this book will be a useful resource for students of international relations, foreign policy, political science and modern Indian history, especially those interested in the history of Indian foreign affairs. It will also be of great use to general readers who are interested in the history of politics and diplomacy in India and South Asia.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1
INTRODUCTION

Jawaharlal Nehru left a strong imprint on global affairs. Charismatic, handsome and a brilliant orator and writer, he led the largest decolonised country, setting examples with state-driven industrialisation and efforts to establish a new style in foreign affairs. He gave those a face and a voice who, until the end of the Second World War, had been denied looking after their own affairs and having a say in international politics. As Nehru was a towering figure at home and abroad, the years between 1947 and 1964 are rightfully termed the Nehruvian era. Accordingly, books on Indian foreign policy mostly start with the assumption that Nehru was its main or even sole architect. It appears to be self-evident that a country’s first prime minister would set everything on the right track, all the more so as Nehru was considered a foreign affairs expert even before India attained independence.

Nevertheless, foreign policy never is a one-man show. Apart from Nehru’s main advisor, V. K. Krishna Menon, ministers like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel or G. B. Pant exercised a certain influence. At least equally important was the support and the counsel of officers of India’s Foreign Service (IFS), who enabled Nehru to pursue his goals in the international arena. The vast majority of them were neither mere tools to implement decisions nor men or women of Nehru’s making. Instead, many of them looked back on distinguished careers in British-trained services of the colonial period. Those formative years, when politics and foreign policy had taken place in a different setting and under partly different predominating political views, had left a lasting impression. What is rightfully termed Nehruvian foreign policy as part of an era, therefore, is not necessarily Nehru’s foreign policy but the outcome of the interaction of several actors with diverse ideas and attitudes.

Suranjan Das has criticised Nehru for talking leftist while permitting free rein to rightist forces in the Congress Party.¹ If so, the exception from the rule was foreign affairs, where neither parliament nor party was involved. On this field of policy, the well-known, somewhat leftist and idealist views of the prime minister and Krishna Menon interacted and partly clashed with what might be termed an Indian Civil Service (ICS) school. Indian officers of that service formed the core of the IFS, established and ran the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), represented India abroad and counselled the prime minister. This was more than continuance in terms of personnel: Over the quarter century before independence, they had developed a distinct worldview of their own which was rather ‘conservative’, staunchly anti-communist, sceptical vis-à-vis the US and deeply realist. Around the turn of 1945/1946, the mastermind of the ICS school, Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, had authored a conclusive concept for the foreign policy of independent India, the outcome of through and through realist thinking. The conclusion was striking: ‘Sentiment must serve, not master the national interest’.²

This distinguished the ICS school from Nehru who, when he came to power, confessed that he had not much of an idea about what foreign policy to pursue.³ Contemporaries drew an even darker picture of the prime minister’s capacities in general. According to one of his closest aides, M.O. Mathai, the prime minister lacked an ‘original mind… . He was all heart and less mind’.⁴ Durga Das, a journalist in close touch with politics during the Nehruvian years, characterised Nehru as ‘tormented … by the spirit of self-questioning. Nehru’s genius lay in romanticising politics’.⁵ Historian Harish Kapur follows the same line, adding that Nehru’s ‘irresolute (Hamletian) character always made him question what he really believed in… . Nehru was an impulsive intellectual, who liked living with ideas, while playing with them’.⁶ This study strengthens these assessments of his pursuit of foreign affairs.

The second established truth to be questioned is that colonies for lack of sovereignty cannot pursue a foreign policy of their own. The British Indian Foreign and Political Department (FPD) appears to confirm this point for being mostly a branch of the Foreign Office in London, its personnel near exclusively European. British India, however, was an unusual colony in many ways. Among others, it was the only member of the League of Nations which lacked sovereignty. It also participated in various international organisations like the International Labour Organisation (ILO), wherefore it has rightly been termed as an ‘anomalous international person’.⁷ In 1942, Under Secretary for India and Burma David Taylor Monteath lamented that British India’s ‘international status and functions not justified by its constitutional position’ had resulted in ‘25 years of skating over very thin ice and occasionally putting one’s foot through it’.⁸

British India’s activities on the international floor during the interwar period had various facets. Historiography has, first, highlighted the impact of the Congress Party, which, however, was negligible with a most notable exception. Typically, utterances of politicians are overrated as guidelines for post-independence foreign policy. Indeed, statements from those prior to attaining power are often not much in touch with reality, and this is true for India, too. Nehru was living proof of this. His long-lasting interest in international affairs proved to be of little value when he took office in September 1946. As a matter of fact, he had to learn on the job and relied heavily on ICS officers, who had been trained in classical diplomacy.

The notable exception was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, although he was no systematic thinker and has not left any rules for the conduct of foreign affairs. Nevertheless, means and aims of his South African campaigns became guidelines for the interwar policy around Indians overseas and, to a lesser extent, post-independence foreign policy. Therefore, the Government of India (GoI) attached greatest importance to the Mahatma’s approval of its activities abroad. Obviously, this paid tribute to Gandhi’s enormous influence on Indian public opinion. Furthermore, the viceroys and their subordinates understood that British India had no more efficient means at hand.

Allegedly, imperial tradition, second, had a tangible effect on the foreign affairs of independent India. Robert J. Blyth has investigated British India’s extended neighbourhood policy from Tanganyika over the Gulf and the northern Himalayas to Southeast Asia.⁹ Whether this policy as pursued by the FPD has laid down any tradition for independent India is questionable. British Indian foreign and security policy had started from the axiom that the colony was safe behind the walls of the Himalayas. With partition, the Indian Union – with Pakistan – faced an archenemy within the enclosure, and with the Chinese occupation of Tibet four years later, it lost its buffer in the north as well. The coordinates of the colonial period together with its representatives from the FPD had disappeared, with the notable exception of K.P.S. Menon.

What so far has been mostly ignored is the third aspect: a foreign policy pursued by Indians for Indians for two decades by means of classical diplomacy. It began with moderate Indian politicians like Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri or Tej Bahadur Sapru representing the colony at international conferences and bodies.¹⁰ From 1923, unconnected with the FPD, British India established a few missions abroad, called agencies, and employed indigenous proto-diplomats. The agents were all recruited from the civil service; only with the third mission in South Africa, created in 1927, an anomaly occurred. This is the aspect of pre-independence foreign policy the first part of this book focuses on.

After the Great War, Great Britain faced a ‘crisis of Empire’ with unrest in numerous colonial territories and Ireland.¹¹ Therefore, the British had to concede to public demands; in South Asia, this meant helping the case of Indians overseas whenever they were denied equal rights or fair wages. For that purpose, under a completely misleading name, the Department of Education, Health and Lands (DEHL) was established with predominantly Indian personnel, tacitly rivalling the FPD. While the latter kept busy with the Great Game, the former ran agencies in Ceylon, Malaya and South Africa. Moreover, with the notable exception of Europe, it kept an eye on developments in territories with Indian minorities. Deputations were sent to investigate conditions on the ground and to negotiate with the authorities. This covered large parts of the Empire, including the dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand and colonies like British Guiana, East Africa and Fiji. Furthermore, the DEHL observed developments outside the Empire, for example, in the US or Brazil. Indian officials represented the interests of their countrymen abroad, partly against representatives of the same colonial power ruling South Asia. This undoubtedly qualifies as indigenous Indian foreign policy.

Such policy willy-nilly threatened the very foundations of the Empire, which was implicitly built on the assumption of the superiority of the white race. The creation of the DEHL was meant primarily as a gesture to appease the feelings of Indians in British India. They were disappointed for not being rewarded with reforms towards self-governance despite their immense contribution to the Great War. Against the success of the Gandhian campaigns, London and Delhi wanted to demonstrate resolve to support Indian claims, at least abroad. Indeed, the British were jumping from the frying pan into the fire. In particular in South Africa, the official policy in the name of Indians overseas in essenc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of photographs
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Set-up
• Part II Interwar years – The Department of Education, Health and Lands
• Part III Nehruvian foreign policy
• Bibliography
• Index