Uncertain Convictions - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 278

on Syrian crisis. India not mentioned - despite being on the UN - India doesn't have a
voice'. That fits with an often-heard view that India is more focused on the prestige and the
glory of joining clubs than what to do when it gets there - 'it has no apparent strategy at
the UN except intervene less,' said another journalist.
President Obama tried, and largely failed, to get India to abandon some of its reticence
when he addressed the Indian parliament in November 2010. 1 In a powerful speech, he
came down firmly on India's side in relation to Pakistan terrorism and involvement in
Afghanistan, and broadly backed its ambition to become a permanent member of the UN
Security Council. 2 But as soon as he had drawn applause from the assembled members
of India's two houses of parliament, he bluntly stated: 'Now, let me suggest that with in-
creased power comes increased responsibility' 3 for those (implicitly, like India) 'that seek
to lead in the 21st century'. He was, however, knocking on a closed door.
Such an approach does not fit precisely into the jugaad concept of turning shortages,
chaos and adversity into some sort of order and success, nor precisely the chalta hai attitude
of 'anything goes'. But, though few in India's foreign policy establishment would agree,
there is a chalta hai sense that India's foreign relations will somehow fall into place,
whatever is said or done. 'We have to change the absurdity that is our foreign service if
we are to help shape the world rather than merely fend the world off,' says Kanti Bajpai, a
leading policy analyst. 4
Nehru's Vision
It all looked so different in 1947, when Nehru led India into an idealistic vision of non-
alignment that was based on each country's right to decide issues as it saw fit and not be-
cause of commitment to either bloc. This was in tune with Mahatma Gandhi's approach of
passive resistance and non-cooperation in India's independence movement, but was deve-
loped separately to handle the foreign policy realities of the time. It caught the mood of
the world's 'whiff of idealism' after the 1939-45 war and led to the founding of the Non-
Aligned Movement (NAM), with India as prime mover of independence for all countries,
which Nehru felt could only be fully achieved if decisions were taken independently and
not under pressure.
'We were accused of putting ourselves on a high moral plane, but we weren't trying to be
better than anyone else - we were groping our way in a world we didn't understand,' says
K. Shankar Bajpai, who was ambassador to Pakistan, China and the US between 1976 and
1986 and chairman of the prime minister's National Security Advisory Board in 2008-11. 5
'Nehru felt that the greater the polarisation of states between the two blocs, the greater the
risk of war. Nonalignment was thus an ancillary to his search for preventing war, with the