Rajiv Dogra on how the eight PMs shaped India’s foreign policy

Sandeep Dikshit

Books by diplomats, as they are wont to do in service, generally mask their true feelings. The exceptions include books by Chinmaya Gharekhan where he laid bare the harsh truth about how and why the UN Security Council will never be expanded, or JN Dixit’s take on Indo-Pak ties where he gives arguments from both sides of the fence to establish that the relationship can only be managed, never forcefully superimposed. Rajiv Dogra joined these ranks with his ‘Durand’s Curse’, laying bare the British designs behind the vilification of the Pathans (as with every community the British fully or partially colonised) and the massacres portrayed as civilising missions.

Dogra’s third book also opts for a no-holds-barred approach. Archival documents, facts on the ground and his rich experience rather than loyalty to service or trans-Atlantic lecture tours and fellowships guide the writing between the covers.

Tracing the foreign policy successes and disappointments under eight Prime Ministers, barring Lal Bahadur Shastri, who served their full terms (IK Gujral, VP Singh and HD Deve Gowda also recorded modest successes in their all-too brief tenures as PM), Dogra admits their true feelings will never be known because the mask of a celebrity hides the real face from the public.

As Dogra traces the many well-known and often-recounted episodes during the tenures of these PMs, interesting vignettes that are usually overlooked in didactic tomes on foreign policy crop up. As he wistfully records in an epilogue that is extremely relevant in the challenge thrown by China on the LAC, “the more it changes, the more it remains the same”. Despite Narendra Modi’s arsenal of spontaneity, sudden surprises and frenetic activity emanating from South Block, India, which is viewed as a “swing power”, is still to grease its hinges.

Nehru, like Fidel Castro, was not enamoured of non-alignment or the socialist bloc at the start of his innings. Rather, being the prima donna of non-alignment, he initially found his peers, Tito and Nasser, too radical and unpredictable. If non-alignment was a compulsion, Dogra takes apart Nehru for compounding the folly of Article 370 with Article 35-A both and upholds Modi for scrapping these.

Twice, goes the lore, Nehru was offered membership of the UN Security Council, first by the Russians and then by the Americans. The basis for both is reproduced for the readers to draw their conclusions. From appearances, both offers were hooks at the end of a string; as hard-boiled survivors of two world wars, Moscow and Washington were unlikely to give a free ride to a distant neighbour when they were remorselessly squeezing their near allies to subscribe to their worldview.

Dogra answers several subsidiary queries that have not been adequately addressed, besides studding the books with delicious tidbits — of how Modi went to meet Merkel (in Berlin), who was away in Latin America watching the football World Cup finals! Or that there was no shady business behind Shastri’s sudden passing away in Tashkent. In frail health, Shastri had a near-definite heart attack. Attacked from within (mostly by Nehru acolytes), he ran into foreign policy sandstorms right from the start. China tested its first nuclear device, his invitation to visit the US was withdrawn and finally hostilities with Pakistan broke out.

Dogra holds his own views and is convinced Pakistan will be irascible and petulant for all times to come. Hence, no PM is spared for softening towards Islamabad. These are the portions that need to be carefully pursued to get a fix on the Modi regime’s approach to Pakistan and Kashmir, for their views coincide. Each PM had a unique style and while Indira Gandhi’s exploits in Bangladesh need no retelling, a common thread that ran through her tenures was the concept of non-reciprocity with neighbours, which perhaps forced them to swallow her imperial style.

What of Modi, the master of surprises, spontaneity and drama in the conduct of foreign policy? Unlike most books, the epilogue here is focused on him. A country that aspires to become a stabiliser on a global scale, he feels, needs to heed that now-departed wise old man of Asia Lee Kuan Yew: India has to solve its economic and social problems before it can play a major role in Southeast Asia.