After the 1962 War with China, there was a demand to forge greater defence cooperation between India and the West.
One such voice was that of Sudhir Ghosh, a distinguished MP, to tie up strategic cooperation with the USA immediately after the Chinese attack on India, recalls Rup Narayan Das.
The elephant in the room in the diplomatic platform Quad consisting of democracies like the US, Australia, Japan and India is palpable.
China's belligerence, be it on the land frontier in the Line of Actual Control on the India-China border or in the oceanic dimensions in the South China Sea, East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait or in the Indian Ocean are disconcerting and jeopardise regional peace and stability and freedom of navigation.
India has been bearing the brunt of Chinese belligerence ever since the Communist regime assumed power in Beijing on October 1, 1949.
It is intriguing that while China has solved its territorial issues with all its neighbours, it has not been able to resolve the border dispute with India and Bhutan.
India was the second non-Communist country to recognise the Communist regime within less than three months on December 30, 1949 and establish diplomatic relations on April 1, 1950.
China's massive attack on India in October 1962 was premeditated to debunk India's nascent democracy.
The Chinese attack on India was also an attack on democracy and it was indeed a wake call to democratic countries to rally around India.
It was not a coincidence that the Chinese attack on India coincided with the Cuban Missile crisis bringing the world to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe enabling China to fish in troubled waters.
John Kenneth Galbraith, then the US ambassador to India and a Harvard University economics professor, was quite empathetic to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's predicament.
When the war was at its peak, Professor Galbraith met Prime Minister Nehru on October 23, 1962 and strongly urged him to see how sensitive the issue of the Cuban Missile Crisis was and to support US efforts at the United Nations to have UN inspectors visit Cuban missile sites.
While the Chinese attack aroused trenchant criticism of Nehru's deferential policy towards China in the political spectrum and also India's policy of non-alignment, Western democracies led by the USA rallied around India for its defence against China.
The USA, the UK and Commonwealth countries promptly responded to India's requirements for military aid.
In December 1962, at Nassau, then US President John F Kennedy and then British prime minister Harold Macmillan agreed to provide military aid to India to the extent of $120 million of which $60 million would be from the USA and the balance from the Commonwealth countries.
In 1964, there was another agreement Kennedy and Prime Macmillan, at Birch Grove, where they agreed for a package of military assistance of $50 million each to India.
During this period, it was found that that the United States was unwilling to provide lethal military items to India fearing that it would often Pakistan.
At the same time, a large body of American personnel were stationed at New Delhi to supervise that the equipment provided by the USA was solely deployed on the northern border.
It was against this backdrop of growing strategic convergence between India and the USA that there was a demand in the political spectrum in India to forge greater security and defence cooperation between India and the West led by the USA.
One such voice was that of Sudhir Ghosh, a distinguished member of Parliament of the hallowed years and a close confidant of Nehru to tie a sort of strategic cooperation with the USA immediately after the Chinese attack on India.
This recollection is based on his enduring work Gandhi's Emissary, originally published in 1967 and republished in 2008.
After the debacle of 1962 when Nehru was crestfallen and anguished, Ghosh in a memorandum submitted to the prime minister in January 1963, proposed a diplomatic arrangement between India and a group of democratic countries including the USA, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand so that these countries agreed to supply military equipment necessary for empowering the Indian Army and Indian Air Force.
One can discern the streaks of the idea of the Quad and the Indo-Pacific in the strategic edifice proposed by Ghosh more than sixty years ago.
In his memorandum Ghosh didn't propose the kind of military involvement that existed between Pakistan and the USA, with American military installations located in Pakistan territory, nor did he envisage military pacts like SEATO or CENTO.
What he suggested was an exchange of simple letters between the prime minister of India and the prime ministers of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and also between the prime minister of India and the president of the USA.
In response, Nehru replied to Ghosh that his proposal '...is almost tantamount to a military alliance' and 'that it will be be bad for India as well as from the point of view of world peace'.
Subsequently, Ghosh discussed the matter further with Nehru.
Having regretted his inability to endorse the proposal, Nehru, however, acceded to Ghosh's request that he (Ghosh) visit the USSR and the USA to canvass support for India to deal with the challenges emanating from China.
Ghosh paid three visits to Moscow and Washington during 1963-1964.
First he visited Moscow and then proceeded to the United States, where he interacted individually with more than forty key men in the US Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Kennedy administration over a month in March 1963.
Finally he had a talk with President Kennedy himself. He found the month long interaction with US lawmakers quite an experience.
Members of the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a joint discussion with him on India-China relations at a luncheon on March 4, 1963.
After the lunch he was given a seat on the Senate floor to to watch the proceedings. He was pleasantly surprised to find the whole House officially welcoming him into their midst.
Drawing the attention of the Senators to Ghosh's presence, Senator Hubert Humphrey introduced him as one of the distinguished and able leaders of the Parliament of India and a true friend of democracy and freedom.
Ghosh was given a standing ovation.
Senator John Sparkman said he had the pleasure of knowing Ghosh since 1952 when he first met him on a trip to India. He found him to be an active, alert, patriotic Indian, and a very fine and dear friend of the West.
Senator John Sherman Cooper joined other Senators in welcoming Ghosh. He also met the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Some Senators suggested that he see President Kennedy, whom he had already met earlier, before he returned to India.
He discussed the matter with Senator John Sherman Cooper who offered to write to Kennedy seeking an appointment with Ghosh.
The US State Department, however, advised against the proposed meeting.
Ghosh gave up the hope of meeting Kennedy and went to see McGeorge Bundy -- Kennedy's national security adviser -- at the White House on March 27, 1963 before returning to India.
Bundy was impressed with Ghosh and strongly felt that he must see Kennedy before he left for India.
Thus he hurriedly arranged Ghosh's meeting with Kennedy the next day, March 28.
Ghosh reasoned with Kennedy that he did not understand the logic of the American argument that the United States could not get too deeply involved in raising India's military power to deal with the situation created by Communist China until there was a Kashmir settlement between India and Pakistan.
He pleaded that whatever military assistance Kennedy decided to give or not to give India to resist China is a question that should be settled on its merits.
He didn't see its connection with the settlement or absence of a settlement of the Kashmir problem for the past years.
Ghosh was thus successful in convincing President Kennedy about India's defence needs to deal with India's security dilemma with its northern neighbour.
His outreach to the US Congress and administration was certainly the precursor to the present bonhomie between two of the world's largest democracies.
Drawing a lesson from the outreach of Ghosh, as an erudite and articulate member of Parliament, to the members of the US Congress and administration, it is time that the government encourages informed and intelligent members of the current Parliament cutting across party lines as interlocutors to engage and educate the members of important foreign legislatures like the US Congress, the British House of Commons and the European Parliament.
Dr Rup Narayan Das is a former senior fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and the Indian Council of Social Science Research at the Indian Institute of Public Administration. Views are personal.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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