Opinion The letters and the lore

Next morning Chavan was sworn in at 9 am,and I started functioning as his private secretary. Krishna Menon’s staff showed me the latest telegrams. There was nothing about messages sent by the PM on the evening of the 19th. That afternoon,after a briefing from Foreign Secretary M.J. Desai,Chavan told me of an appeal made by the PM to the US president and the UK prime minister. In response to that,US Assistant Secretary of State Averell Harriman and Defence Secretary Duncan Sandys were to visit Delhi on the 22nd.

What is in the second letter is not totally new information. S. Gopal,Nehru’s official biographer,has described in detail the assistance sought in that letter. However questions about non-alignment were raised when,over the next few months,two high-level Indian missions visited the US. One under S. Bhoothalingam,secretary at the ministry of economic and defence coordination,and the second one led by his minister,T.T. Krishnamachari. These reports caused controversy: had India and the US entered a joint defence agreement? And had India has asked for an “air umbrella”?

Nehru’s efforts to downplay this were not helped when the Peking People’s Daily said “the (joint air) manoeuvres were proof that the Indian government was deliberately creating tension on the Sino-Indian border under its own fabricated pretext of Chinese aggression…. The description of India as non-aligned was sheer mockery to countries which really pursued the policy of non-alignment.” Within hours,Prime Minister Nehru told Parliament he had no intention of asking for a Western “air umbrella.” He deftly side-stepped answering whether he had asked for such an “air umbrella” in the past. Now we know from the second letter how precisely Nehru’s request was worded.

In his article (‘That night of November 19’,IE,November 18)

K. Subrahmanyam mentions that Sudhir Ghosh an MP from West Bengal,stated in the Rajya Sabha in March 1965 that,in the hour of our peril in 1962,Pandit Nehru,the apostle of non-alignment,had solicited American air intervention,and a US aircraft carrier was in the waters of the Bay of Bengal. According to Prime Minister Shastri,Ghosh’s statement was incorrect. Ghosh was greatly upset,and requested Shastri try to seek confirmation from the US ambassador,Chester Bowles. If he refuted the statement,Ghosh would resign. Foreign Secretary C.S. Jha got in touch with Bowles,who replied that the US government did have the document (Nehru’s appeal to Kennedy for air protection) and it could be produced if the government so wished. Apparently on learning this,and knowing that any continuation of the controversy would further damage Indo-US relations,Shastri made a statement denying that any request for an aircraft carrier was made,or that any such carrier was in the Bay of Bengal at the time. He did not say that it was heading towards the Bay.

The PM’s statement made Ghosh very unhappy. He felt that Shastri had told a half-truth and compared that to the old story from the Mahabharata: “The Pandavas played a trick on the great warrior Dronacharya,by making the announcement that Ashwathama (his son) was killed in battle — but it was an elephant called Ashwathama. Dronacharya heard the first half of the announcement. and was tricked into believing that his son Ashwathama was killed and in grief desisted from fighting,” (Gandhi’s Emissary,The Crescent Press,London,p. 332). Ghosh failed to understand how Parliament had accepted that kind of explanation. B.K. Nehru,the Indian ambassador in Washington who had delivered Nehru’s messages personally to President Kennedy,and was in a position to confirm or deny the matter,was not asked by the Foreign Office.

Now that the letters are published,two questions demand explanation. Who drafted the letters? And was Nehru ready to give up non-alignment?.

On the second,it seemed that as a practical politician Nehru was moving towards what is described as bi-alignment with the US and the Soviets. We knew about it. In a public meeting at Pune on November 14,1962 Chavan said,“There were people in India who believed Russia would help us in the present crisis… but,I am firmly of the opinion that Russia would ultimately be on the side of China,because the Russians had recently described the Chinese as their brothers while Indians were their allies.”

On November 16,1962 Chavan received a letter through a special courier. Nehru had written: “whether your opinion or belief is wholly justified or not,it is certainly unfortunate that you should have made these statements.” He explained why it was desirable not to comment on such a sensitive matter at this critical stage of international relations,because to say anything which would push Russia more into the arms of the Chinese would be “disastrous.” Pandit Nehru had sensed the new developments and he was indeed moving towards bi-alignment. In fact in a television interview in New York in December 1962,he confirmed that “there was no non-alignment vis-à-vis China.” So Subrahmanyam is right in pointing out how Nehru’s use of non-alignment as a concept was a strategy to safeguard India’s security and not a third-worldist ideology.

Inder Malhotra too is right when he states that Nehru drafted his own letters. But reading the second letter one should not doubt what Gopal had stated. The letter is precise and too detailed about the assistance that India was expecting,and even a foreign secretary as experienced as M.J. Desai could not have done that. My guess is that John Lall,the joint secretary in charge of the air force,must have assisted Desai,because I found the same noting in his brief to the defence minister for discussion with US and UK dignitaries.

Congratulations,Inder Malhotra and K. Subrahmanyam,for throwing light on the darkest hour.

The writer is a former Union home secretary and governor of Arunachal Pradesh