Political Science · Ch 11 — India’s External Relations
In this chapter…
In this chapter…
The earlier chapters of this book examined India’s domestic politics and internal challenges. This chapter shifts the focus outward, to the external challenges India faced after independence. The central theme is the interplay between foreign policy and domestic politics — how international events shaped India’s internal affairs, and how domestic compulsions influenced the country’s external choices.
India’s leaders responded to the Cold War world with an innovative foreign policy: non-alignment. But this did not mean avoiding conflict. India fought three wars with its neighbours — in 1962, 1965, and 1971. These wars, and the broader pattern of external relations, both shaped and were shaped by politics inside the country.
The chapter is organised around four key themes:
- The global backdrop against which India's foreign relations took shape
- The working principles behind India's approach to foreign policy
- India's long relationship with China and Pakistan, spanning both cooperation and conflict
- How India's nuclear policy evolved over time
A photograph in the textbook shows Jawaharlal Nehru with four other leaders — Nkrumah of Ghana, Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Tito of Yugoslavia — at a meeting of non-aligned nations in New York in October 1960. These five leaders formed the core leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
The photograph shows five world leaders standing together outdoors, likely on the steps or forecourt of a building in New York. From left to right are Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia. The men are dressed in formal suits — Nehru in his characteristic achkan, the others in Western-style jackets and ties. They appear relaxed, engaged in conversation or posing for the camera, with the urban backdrop of New York City in October 1960.
This image captures a historic moment: the core leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. These five leaders — from Asia, Africa, and Europe — represented newly independent or non-aligned nations that refused to formally join either the US-led Western bloc or the Soviet-led Eastern bloc during the Cold War. The photograph is not merely a group portrait; it is a visual statement of the political solidarity that defined NAM's early years. Each leader brought the weight of a decolonising or recently decolonised nation: Nehru (India), Nkrumah (Ghana, independent 1957), Nasser (Egypt, post-1952 revolution), Sukarno (Indonesia, independent 1945), and Tito (Yugoslavia, a communist state that broke with the Soviet Union in 1948).
The setting — New York, October 1960 — is significant. It places the meeting during the UN General Assembly session, where these leaders could coordinate their stance on global issues like disarmament, decolonisation, and economic development without aligning with either superpower. The photograph thus teaches that NAM was not a passive stance but an active, collective diplomatic strategy. It also illustrates the personal diplomacy that Nehru championed: building trust and shared purpose through direct, informal meetings among leaders.
For a student, this image is a concrete reminder that India's policy of non-alignment was not isolationist. It was a positive, principled position that sought to create a third space in world politics — one where newly independent nations could assert their sovereignty and influence global affairs without being pawns in the Cold War. The five leaders in the photograph are the architects of that vision.