Abandoning the ideological prism

KS ‘SHANKAR’ BAJPAI, who passed away at the age of 92 on August 30, joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1952. Constituted in 1946, the IFS was to be the instrument for India’s diplomatic global engagement. Bajpai retired, after a long and distinguished innings of 34 years, in 1986. His period in service saw changes in the cadre and approaches of the IFS. He contributed to the latter through the pursuit of professionalism and realism.

After retirement, Bajpai took an active scholarly interest in India’s foreign policy and quietly insisted on the adoption of realistic policies rooted in a clear understanding of national interest and of energising domestic institutional mechanisms needed to achieve them. These years witnessed, as Bajpai would have wanted, further transformations in the attitudes of the IFS, including the almost complete abandonment of ideological prisms and rigid positions in a changing world and a far greater reliance on professional realism as the only guide to assist political decision-makers to identify India’s interests and the means to attain them.

Bajpai’s contribution to the making of foreign policy has been recalled by members of India’s strategic community over the past few days. What may also be worthwhile is to place them in the context of the formation of the IFS and the evolution of its approaches and attitudes. To do so is not to appropriate the primacy of the political class in decision making in matters relating to India’s external engagement.

A professional foreign service advises the political leadership and thereafter implements their instructions through the instruments of diplomacy — persuasion, discussions, negotiations — to find congruence of interests with other members of the international community. The domestic civil services also perform an advisory role regarding internal policies and implement decisions too but they have at their disposal the legal powers of the state, including its lawful coercive apparatus which is not available to a diplomatic service. It is true that the use of coercion and even force is part of the diplomatic tool-kit but their invocation is the last resort and rarely used.

It is important to recall these differences between a foreign service and the domestic civil services because they indicate the difficulties that India faced in the early years after Independence as it began to engage with the world. The domestic civil service structure was inherited from the British Raj. It had to be transformed but it did not have to begin from scratch as the diplomatic service.

The initial core of the IFS came from officers of Indian Civil Service (ICS). Also, a number of professionals and some members of princely families were recruited to constitute a cadre. Regular recruitment through competitive examinations conducted by the UPSC began, with the first batch joining the cadre in 1948. Bajpai came through the UPSC exam route but till the mid-1970s, the ICS core led the service. The first regular UPSC recruited officer to head the service did so only in the early 1980s.

Some of the ICS officers became excellent diplomats as did some of the special recruits. They earned international recognition. However, some of the former brought with them the reflexes of working in the domestic arena while some of the latter carried their ideological, in many cases, leftist leanings, with them. These ideologies found a resonance with the country’s socialistic policies put in place by Nehru and which dominated India’s development strategy till the early 1990s. More importantly, while India navigated through the ideologically opposed camps of the Cold War, the US-led alliance systems which embraced Pakistan, inevitably led to India’s greater affinity with the Soviet-led camp. This became reflected in India’s foreign policy and impacted on thinking in the IFS. This became more pronounced in the 1970s after the US showed open hostility in 1971 and gradually began to impose restrictions on technological flows to India after the 1974 nuclear tests. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 and the US’s use of Pakistan continued suspicions against the US-led alliance system.

During these years, there were only few diplomats like Bajpai, who advocated, howsoever indirectly or tangentially, that despite the greatly troubled relationship with the US in particular, and the West in general, realism demanded a more supple approach towards them to seek at least niches which would provide chances, however slim, for working together. They had to go against rooted thinking to do so. This required courage. It was only during Rajiv Gandhi’s period that they were able to make a dent. By this time, it was also evident to the more perspicacious that the Soviet Union was domestically in grave trouble. Nevertheless, the entrenched reflexes continued till the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.

By this time, Bajpai had retired but the realism that he stood for now came in handy as Indian diplomacy had to grapple with a completely new world order. By now, the IFS had more than four decades of experience and the cadre had consolidated and the leadership was in the hands of those who were professional diplomats from the very beginning. Ideologies did not influence the thinking of the vast majority of its members. Their approaches were guided more by pragmatism and a realistic appraisal of power. This also coincided with the country virtually putting aside Nehruvian socialism and the inhibitions it had generated in looking towards the world to secure India’s interests. This was most clearly seen in the evolution of the India-US relationship.

Now, the rise of China is imposing new challenges for India’s diplomacy, but these have to be tackled with sober realism. The legacy of diplomats like Bajpai will be instructive and worthy of reflection and emulation.