Menon explained how the original idea of the United Nations as the creation of a world order, encompassing rival ideologies, had suffered from Washington`s efforts to create an anti-Soviet alliance and Moscow`s obsession with securing security through an expanding communist belt of control, leading to a world divided into two blocs. „Between these two blocs,“ said Menon, „stands alone, without friendship, melancholy, slowly, India belongs to no bloc and is not sympathetic to both.“ He explained why India was unable to join either bloc and articulated the theme of India`s national interest in peace, independence and respect, which is often repeated. In addition, he cited India`s adoption of the presidency of the Un Commission for Korea as an example of a policy deemed „neutral, passive, weakly bent „… … but no more passive than non-violence“ in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi. Menon`s foreign policy speech was important not only because defence officers had to understand the policy they were called upon to defend, but also because K.P.S. Menon was India`s ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1961. During these eight years, Indo-Soviet relations flourished for the first time and began to bear fruit as Soviet support for India`s freedom of alliance grew. Born with a silver spoon, Nehru was trained in Cambridge, where he resumed his left-hand inclines for the first time.
He did not travel to Moscow until he was 38. On his way back from Europe to India, Nehru, along with his father, sister and wife, visited the USSR in 1927 for the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. You will find a detailed account of this trip in this very informative article by Dr. Arun Mohanty. On September 7, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru, India`s first Prime Minister, in his letter to the nation, as the head of a new transitional government anticipating the handover of power, presented India`s model of independent foreign policy. [1] Nehru`s „Free India`s Role in World Affairs“ speech was delivered before the British government decided to divide India and create Pakistan, before India`s official independence15 in 1947 and before the looming rivalry between the two main winners of world war ii intensified in the Cold War. Believing that the attitudes and objectives of this program were of course based on the geostrategic situation of India, its culture, its history and its national movement, Nehru and successive Indian prime ministers continued to pursue them despite changing international circumstances and skepticism in world capitals such as Washington and Moscow, based on realistic considerations. Some of these early statements on Indian foreign policy, very different from those of the former British government of India and which have repeated and strengthened nehru himself and Indian emissaries over the years, require a quotation here. „Nehru`s visit has become an important geopolitical turning point,“ says Srinath Raghavan, author and military researcher. „He got there after Stalin`s death in 1953 and on the back of the 1954 Indian agreement on Tibet. Although India at the time was heavily dependent on the United States for aid, it became increasingly clear that the United States was now using its chips with Pakistan for a military relationship. The effect of Nehru`s visit is also very clear. India moved closer to the Soviet Union and during the 1962 war, the USSR did not support its former comrades China against India.
„The visit also laid the groundwork for India`s industrialization; While the United States focused on agriculture and food aid, Soviet aid came for power and infrastructure,“ says Raghavan. For Nehru – and Indira Gandhi who accompanied him – it also meant a new closeness with the Soviet leaders, whom India had ignored during Stalin`s time.