Nehru’s
Impact on the World ,1946-1964 III
The excerpts from the last Section of Chapter Five of the book Nehru
and World Peace:
Nehru’s Influence in the World
“Jawaharlal Nehru’s personality exercised a
lasting impact on international relations. His thought and action had
tremendous influence in Afro-Asian countries. Among the non-aligned countries
India’s approaches to crucial international questions were seen as some kind of a
standard or a model for other nations. India’s politics and stand on issues
invariably had many positive aspects and its contribution to the lessening of
tensions, to the cause of world peace, to the political and economic development
of the Third World has been manifold.
The Director General of the UNESCO, Rene Maheu, echoed the sentiments of
millions of people the world over, when he paid a tribute to Pandit Nehru on
his death: ’Jawaharlal Nehru radiated over the world like a beacon of tolerance
and understanding among the peoples.’ In the UNESCO’s 13th Session
of the General Conference held in 1964, its 120 member states unanimously
resolved to organize a round table conference on Nehru’s role in the modern
world. It was for the first time in its history of 20 years that the UNESCO had
decided to so honour a statesman. Nehru’s activity in the world arena as a
statesman and his direct and indirect influence on the development of
international relations often affected solutions to problems concerning mankind
as a whole.
(a)Impact on Africa
Nehru had deep sensitivity to the vitality and creativity
of Africa. The awakening of Asia was his making. Right from the moment of India’s
Independence, he threw the weight of free India on the side of the fight against
racial discrimination in Africa and, for eighteen years, under his leadership, India
remained in the vanguard of opposition against the policy of apartheid in
Africa. Because of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, a unique relationship and close
affinity had grown between the freedom struggle of India and the freedom movements
of Africa. The matchless heroism of the Algerians in their struggle for freedom
evoked Nehru’s deepest interest and support. He extended every cooperation to the UN in maintaining the unity, integrity
and independence of Congo. Nehru’s Government took a consistent stand against
racial discrimination in Africa, in general, and the policy of apartheid in
South Africa, in particular, in the Commonwealth meetings, forcing South Africa
to quit the Commonwealth in 1961, making herself further isolated from the
community of nations. Nehru’s unflinching
support for independence of African countries, for racial equality and his
concern for justice and dignity of African people had exercised a deep impact
on Africans.
Nehru’s Autobiography- which was translated into
more than 30 foreign languages- had tremendous impact on African youth and
leaders. Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, was inspired by Nehru’s writings to
launch a national liberation struggle in his own country. Nehru interpreted
Gandhi to the outside world through his writings. And ‘Gandhism’ and ‘Nehruism’
had inspired many a freedom movement in Africa.
According to Chester Bowles, Africans were of the
opinion that ‘the only non-communist people who sincerely champion the cause of
racial equality and independence in Africa are the new leaders of independent
Asian, men like Nehru.’ Basil Davidson, a prominent British journalist and an
expert on Africana affairs, opines that the influence of Nehru on the colonial systems
in Africa could be likened to the lever and the weight. Enormous is the weight
and small is the lever. And ’if the picture
of Africa differs radically from that of a dozen years ago, it is in no
inconsiderable degree because of Nehru.’
The world got used to consider Africans as naturally inferior and deprived
people. But this opinion about the people
of Africa had changed. The whites who perpetuated the apartheid, began to
accept Africans as equals and as people capable of governing themselves. This change in white attitude towards Africa
was because of India and Nehru.
Basil Davidson asserts that ‘if India opted for dictatorship
of a type of her neighbours and embraced the extremist interpretation of
nationalism, the world would not have cared for India’s opinion.’ Nehru’s influence in Africa and in the Third
World had checkmated despotism by tyrants. This was ‘the great force of the first thrust of Nehru’s impact: India
elevated her national policy and action above the common coin of mere nation-state
rivalry…the quality of Nehru’s thought about humanity has had a liberating effect,
so far as Africa is concerned both on rulers and ruled.’
India’s moral fore of the non-alignment and her
leading role in world affairs also had influenced Africans. ‘The notion that
the new states of Africa could stand outside the East-West conflict - or could
stand, at any rate, on the fringe of it by no means fully and automatically
committed – was India’s gift, Nehru’s gift.’ This possibility that they
could stand independent of the Western and the Eastern blocs, gave these new
African states and their leading men some breathing space to sort out where
they stand and consider the world through independent eyes.
Nehru’s influence in Africa, thus, provided check against
extreme form of nationalism, fanaticism, ready-made solutions and against cliché
views of where and how one’s loyalty should lie. Paying tribute to Nehru, Kenneth Kaunda , while accepting the 1970
Nehru Award for International Understanding, acknowledged: ‘Had Nehru accepted
the invitation to join bloc politics, then many countries in the Third World in
Africa, Asia and Latin America would have found not guaranteed security under
the nuclear umbrella…We would have more often than not stood ranged against one
another, brother against brother, deeply involved in ideological conflicts to the detriment of
our national interests and our sovereignty…The tendency would have been to settle the scores of
major powers in the Third Word regions which would have been turned into
theatres of war…That there is much less evidence of this today is the result of
the understanding and cooperation among the Third World countries…Nehru’s
contribution to international peace and cooperation is, therefore, inestimable.’
(b) Impact on the Arab World
When Nasser met Nehru for the first time in 1955, he
was struck by the personality of the Indian Prime Minister. Nasser’s biographer,
Mohammed Hessanein Heikal, has described the impact of Nehru on the young
Egyptian leader in a poetic language: ‘It was rather like a man looking across
a crowded room and falling in love with a woman he has never seen before. The
bond between Nasser and Nehru was as intimate and as strong as that.’ Nasser came
to believe in Nehru’s vision of the world. He attended the Bandung Conference
at Nehru’s instance. To Nasser, Nehru was a wise elderly statesman who could
look at the supreme problems and challenges facing the world from all their
manifold perspectives, reason out their origins, effects and offer bold solutions. It was under the influence of Nehru that
Nasser refused to join the Islamic Pact which Pakistan was proposing at that
time, as ‘Nehru’s ideas were gaining ground through the newly liberated countries.’ Heikal tells us that John Foster Dulles tried
to pressurize Nasser into global military alliance system of the West against
the Soviet Union. But, Nasser, owing to the influence of Nehru, and under the
wave of new awakening in Asia and Africa, kept out of the Western alliance
system. Dulles’ attempt to prevent Egypt from participating in the Bandung
Conference because ‘he saw it a betrayal of his anti-communist crusade’ also
failed.
Edward Atiyah- a leading Arab intellectual and author-
considered Nehru as ‘a guide of the Arabs.’ The Arab states, recently freed
from the Western rule and wishing to be completely and genuinely independent
were extremely averse to the alignment with Britain or America or NATO in the West-East
cold war. They had no reason to quarrel with Russia. In the Arab world, Russia
was generally regarded as a potential friend, being the opponent of Western
Imperialism- the only imperialism the Arabs had ever experienced. The Arabs, therefore,
wanted to remain neutral between the power blocs, in order to preserve their
independence. But by themselves the Arab countries would have found it
difficult to make their neutralism a positive force in the word. They needed a
great power to link themselves with this attitude, and Nehru provided them with
what they needed. His policy of non-alignment had become an obvious choice and
was adopted by Arab states. Nehru, thus, provided an identity and a sense of
pride to Arabs.
(c) US-Soviet detente
Nehru also contributed to the US-Soviet détente for
it was in South Asia that the China policies of the two super powers converged. According to Michael Brecher, India’s foreign
policy helped bridge the gap between the anti-communist and the communist
blocs. The moral imperative of Nehru’s non-alignment was to rule out the war to
concentrate on the formidable task of relaxing tensions. The ideological
conflict between communism and anti-communism only added to tensions. The task of statesmanship was to moderate the
conflicts. As Krishna Menon, Nehru’s spokesman on international relations, put
it: ‘You cannot negotiate unless you are yourself prepared to be persuaded that
was part of India’s armoury. I think it
was largely brought about through the personality of Prime Minister-not in the
sense that the world would accept him as a great Solomon or Plato or Aristotle or
anything of that kind, but he was a man who had behind him the love and support
of vast number of people. He was accepted as a man who was responsible and who
was respected by other countries. The Americans may have disliked him sometimes
but they know the Russians liked him; Russians may have been irritated and suspicious
but they knew about his influence with America.’
India was the only country at the UN that could
speak separately to the Russians and the Americans on a problem that affected
both of them.The Indian Philosopher-Statesman, Radhakrishnan, has vividly
summed up Nehru’s impact on the world. He called him’ a servant of suffering
humanity.’ To him, Prime Minister Nehru was a great emancipator of the human
race as one who gave all his life and energy to freeing of men’s minds from
political bondage, economic slavery, social oppression and cultural stagnation.
“
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