Word: nehru
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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India has posed special problems for U.S. policymakers ever since Jawaharlal Nehru adopted his policy of mildly Moscow-oriented neutralism. Almost invariably the Indians were more sensitive to Moscow's reactions than to Washington's. They relied heavily on receiving forbearance and understanding from the U.S. These qualities were not always forthcoming from U.S. officials who had little use for nonalignment and none at all for New Delhi's sometimes patronizing and irritating moral preachments...
...expand but to legitimize its borders. With barely a quibble, Peking negotiated border agreements accepting the postwar status quo with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Mongolia and Burma. The author believes that the Chinese were ready to settle the fuzzy frontier between India and Tibet in roughly the same way. But Nehru was supersensitive to charges from the Indian right that his policy of nonalignment meant "appeasement" of Communism. Gradually, Gandhi's white-capped protege became a hardhat on the Tibetan border question; that meant siding with those who thought that India should press its extremely doubtful claim to Chinese-held...
...short order, India's shamefully ill-prepared troops were retreating at full tilt on both border fronts, the world's largest working democracy was paralyzed with shock and humiliation, and the Western world had new reason to fret about the Chinese menace. Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru, the great apostle of nonviolence, thundered that Communist China had proved itself "a wholly irresponsible country that does not care about peace." In the White House, John Kennedy quickly agreed to New Delhi's urgent request for U.S. arms. Explained Phillips Talbot, Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of State...
Only Aksai Chin, which lay along the shortest route between China's Sinkiang province and Tibet, was really important to Peking; neither area meant much to India. In 1958, when an Indian patrol confirmed rumors that the Chinese had built a road across Aksai Chin, Nehru felt compelled to act. He reiterated angrily that India's borders were "not negotiable" and dispatched troops to the disputed areas with orders to establish Indian outposts and "clear out" the Chinese. Evidently, Maxwell says, Nehru believed that Peking was too timid, weak or unconcerned to do much about the "forward policy...
...time comes when a whole people become full of faith for a great cause, and then even simple, ordinary men and women become heroes, and history becomes stirring and epochmaking. Great leaders have something in them which inspires a whole people and makes them do great deeds." Nehru's daughter has inspired India's people to give her an extraordinary mandate. Now she faces the far more difficult task of charting a program to lift an ancient burden of poverty from her land, and of inspiring her people to follow that program...