Mainstream Weeklyby Duryodhan Nahak
Over the last four years, in a host of writings India’s new neighbourhood policy or neighbours first appears to be the dominant theme. Mean-while, India’s neighbourhood policy is essentially a continuity and change since the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who laid the edifice of Indian foreign policy in the initial years of India’s independence. Indeed, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister-designate, surprised many by inviting all the SAARC leaders, particularly Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to his swearing-in ceremony against which he was vehemently campaigning in the run-up to the 16th Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Now for several years, improving relations with neighbours is being debated more vigorously in political quarters than academia and intelligentsia.
Despite the fact that India has fought several wars and low intensity conflicts with its arch rival Pakistan and come across conflictual situation with the neighbours many a time in the history of its independence, it has also been able in resolving some of the crucial boundary and water disputes through negotiations and discussions. While India is the dominant power in the region, it has conceded the demand of neighbours on a friendly basis irrespective of bigger and smaller ones. More significantly, India shares geographical boundary, socio-economic similarities and cultural resemblances with the neighbours. Historically, most of the countries in South Asia were part of the Indian subcontinent. With India, countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal are members of the SAARC. Though Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives are relatively smaller countries in South Asia, for India, they assume greater significance from the geo-strategic and political point of view. Further, in Myanmar, though it is not a part of SAARC, demand is increasingly growing for its inclusion in the SAARC. China, India’s another closest and large neighbour has deeper ramifications on Indian political establishments and in the economic sphere even if paucity of space prevents it from being discussed in greater detail. However, its role would be briefly argued as its influences India’s neighbourhood policy considerably.
It is very much evident that in the post-war world, the world got divided into two power blocs led by the United states and USSR. It is to be noted the while Pakistan became a member of SEATO and CENTO and a part of the US-Pakistan defence arrangement concluded in 1954, India advocated NAM. Most of the neighbours joined the NAM as they wished to refrain from superpower rivalry. The personality of our first Prime Minister Nehru, his close association with freedom struggles, his Western education and participation in a number of anti-imperial conferences and struggles prior to independence enabled the country to have a better experience in the sphere of foreign policy and command respect from several peace-loving countries of the world as a whole.
Individually, India had developed friendship and cordiality with various countries of the region like Bhutan, Nepal even China. In the meantime, India was grappled with numerous daunting challenges from different neighbouring countries. In the beginning, it was an abstruse task for India to survive as a nation-state. Nehru’s farsightedness helped the country to build up relations with the nations of Europe, and especially with the USSR, in the close vicinity, He was successful in resolving water and boundary disputes to some extent. The Indus Water Treaty of 1960 with Pakistan, Indo-Nepal friendship agreement in 1950, Nehru-Kotelewal agreement of 1954 concerning the problems of Tamils in Sri Lanka were the initial break- throughs between India and its neighbours. The mixture of realism, idealism and complex interdependence essentially guided India’s foreign policy during the Shastri and Indira era. The Indira Doctrine enunciated in the 1980s was an appeal that neighbours should look first towards the largest power in the region. That provided an opportunity for India to intervene in Sri Lanka. Of course, it was proved to be an utter failure.
It is to be noted that till recently, there has not been any major change particularly in the matter of India’s neighbourhood policy. In other words, irrespective of regimes, India was not lacking in a grand strategy in dealing with the major compelling issues. Even non-Congress governments were following the path paved by earlier leaders with little alteration. Most notably, I.K. Gujral, who became the Prime Minister for a brief period in 1997 in the United Front Government, launched a major initiative, the