Book: NEGOTIATING INDIA'S LANDMARK AGREEMENTS

Author: A. S. Bhasin

Published by: Viking

Price: Rs 999

Avtar Singh Bhasin is the country’s leading chronicler of its foreign policy. He has published a vast number of books containing official documents and other pertinent material relating to India’s foreign relations, especially with some of its neighbours. These publications “provide the bulk of material” for this book.

Bhasin has now sought to become a historian. In this quest, he has taken up five bilateral agreements which India signed with foreign countries stretching over a period of fifty-five years: 1952-2008. He competently narrates how the agreements were negotiated and underlines the motivations of India and those of the countries concerned. However, while making some valid observations, he sometimes misses contemporary constraints and difficulties of the Indian leaders who entered
into these agreements. Above all, he does not examine them through the lens of the present. Doing so would have provided an evaluation of how these agreements have advanced or damaged Indian interests in the long term.

This book covers five agreements: the India-China agreement on Tibet, 1954, the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, 1971, the Simla Agreement, 1972, the India-Sri Lanka Accord, 1987 and the India-United States Civil Nuclear Deal, 2008. With the dissolution of the USSR, the treaty could not be renewed though a cooperation agreement with Russia, the successor state of the USSR, was signed in 1993. Relations with Russia remain strong, though not pivotal for India today. While the ingredients of
the Sri Lanka Accord are no longer applicable, the desire for a united Sri Lanka, which was its basis, is a key element of Indian approaches to the island country. The impact of the other three agreements continues to be strong on contemporary Indian interests.

The Soviet Treaty and the Simla Agreement were very different and, yet, part of a continuum. Both arose from the disintegration of Pakistan, a process rooted, as Bhasin notes, in the Partition of India. The immediate cause rose from the West Pakistani Establishment refusing to acknowledge the results of the 1970 election and brutally cracking down on the population of East Pakistan, especially the Hindus. Significantly, in India, both the government and the Opposition, realising the strategic importance of Pakistan’s breakup, kept that under wraps. The crackdown led to 10 million refugees coming into India and as the United States of America and the West were unwilling to compel Pakistan to change course, the only way out for India was military action. For that India had to secure its diplomatic flanks and the result was the Soviet treaty. Bhasin treats the events which led to it well but is wrong in assessing that it meant the abandonment of non-alignment.

Bhasin considers, like many others, that the Simla Agreement was a diplomatic defeat primarily because India did not settle the Kashmir issue. What he overlooks is that just as Z.A. Bhutto claimed that he had to prepare his people for accepting the ceasefire line as a permanent border, Indira Gandhi needed to do so too. Moreover, a settlement would not have necessarily led to peace with a country whose existence is based on the two-nation theory.

Bhasin is very critical of India for forcing Sri Lanka into the Accord. For him, it was a manifestation of interference in its internal affairs and led to an ignominious failure, including the futile death of 1,155 Indian soldiers. What he underrates are the compulsions New Delhi faced because of pro-Sri Lankan Tamil community sentiments in Tamil Nadu. No Indian government could avoid these emotions, which only subsided with Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. It was only then that India could adopt a balanced approach and think of supporting Colombo to defeat the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam.

Bhasin gives an excellent account of the making of the Indo-US nuclear deal and of the leaders and the diplomats who made it possible despite entrenched political and bureaucratic resistance in both countries. It led to the comprehensive and growing bilateral relationship which is important for both countries. Bhasin’s treatment of the idealistic Nehruvian approach to China is harsh but true. The chapter on the 1954 Trade Agreement — a manifestation of Jawaharlal Nehru’s China policy — makes for painful reading. The nation continues to pay a heavy price for the mistakes of that period.

Bhasin’s book deserves a wide audience.