2.2.3. The Simla Agreement

In the aftermath of the war India adopted a magnanimous gesture as reflected in repatriation of more than 91,000 PoWs of Pakistan and the Simla Agreement signed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan on 2 July 1972. It was much more than a peace treaty seeking to reverse the consequences of the 1971 war. It was a comprehensive blue print for good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan. The following principles of the Agreement are, however, particularly noteworthy:

♤ A mutual commitment to the peaceful resolution of all issues through direct bilateral approaches.

♤ To build the foundations of a cooperative relationship with special focus on people to people contacts.

♤ To uphold the inviolability of the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, this is a most important CBM between India and Pakistan, and a key to durable peace.

Thus, even though on the face of it the agreement is criticised by many a lost opportunity, it established the framework that India has continuously put forward as a template to resolve all disputes within a bilateral framework.

A better understanding of the period requires appreciation of the fact that in July 1971, President Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger secretly visited Beijing during a trip to Pakistan, and laid the groundwork for Nixon's visit to China in 1972. This was in the aftermath of a Sino-Soviet rift. Ultimately PRC entered the UN and assumed the seat in the Security Council in October 1971.

In the larger international economic context, India remained at the forefront of the Group of 77, a group established in 1964 comprising of developing nations seeking fundamental changes in the global economic order. Furthermore, the 1973 oil crisis in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war in the same year placed an economic challenge before India. However, even as the leader of the developing countries India failed to obtain any meaningful concessions as a resource- poor developing nation from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It was weakness in the economic capacity that prevented India from pursuing a nuclear weapons program even after it 1974.

The mid 1970s saw India undergoing a period of political turmoil involving emergency and the emergence of the Janata Party government in 1977 under Prime Minister Morarji Desai. The brief period of the Desai government saw many pronouncements about altering the course of India including a move to “genuine non-alignment. However, this period was a brief interlude and marked by much continuity in India’s foreign policy. The visit of Minister of External Affairs Atal Bihari Vajpayee to China and the US president Jimmy Carter to India were key developments of this period.

Events in the cold war dominated world in this period had a long-lasting impact on India. In this context the year 1979 is important as three key developments proved that national interests of India were subject to developments outside. Firstly, in February 1979 the revolution in Iran brought fundamental changes in West Asian region. Secondly, the during November and December the events surrounding the seizure of Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia brought further upheaval in a region key to India. Thirdly, in December Soviet Union invaded USSR in Afghanistan. While the consequences of first two events had an impact on India in the long term, it’s the Soviet entry into Afghanistan that set in motion factors that had important consequences in terms of India’s neighborhood specifically Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States renewed strategic relationship with Pakistan in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion. Under General Zia-ul-Haq Pakistan became the frontline in the US efforts to bog down the Soviets in Afghanistan. This entailed enhanced funding and military aid to Pakistan to be channelled in Afghanistan against the soviets through the Afghan fighters. As a consequence with the objective of maintaining its military superiority over Pakistan, India entered into a closer military cooperation relationship with the Soviet Union. However, this perhaps dented the non-aligned credentials of India as it was forced to maintain an ambiguous stance on Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Nonetheless, the Seventh NAM summit in March 1983 at New Delhi became an occasion for assuming leadership of the multilateral forum of which India was a founding member. However, by this time the membership of the group had grown to nearly a 100 as compared to 25 at its first Summit in Belgrade in 1961. As astutely observed in one of the media reports of the era, “paradoxically, NAM has attained a spatial expansion that would have astonished its founding fathers, including Jawaharlal Nehru; at the same time, it has lost its cohesion and unity of objectives and purposes, and is unable to cope with the critical problems and issues that cry out for urgent solutions.”

The assassination of PM Indira Gandhi in 1984 was followed by a transition to the tenure of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In this period India undertook some steps towards modernisation of the economy and armed forces. In 1988 Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit China since 1954 and establishing contacts with Deng Xiaoping under whom China had ushered in new era of economic reforms. The initiative for regional cooperation materialised in the formation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 1985. This period also saw greater involvement in the neighborhood including the signing of an agreement with Pakistan on not attacking each other nuclear installations, a visit followed in 1989 making it first visit of any Indian Prime Minister after Nehru’s visit in 1960. The India-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987 and subsequent decision to send Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) in Sri Lanka had long lasting impact in the region. India’s assertion in the neighbourhood was further highlighted by “Operation Cactus” that involved military action against the coup in Maldives in 1988.

At the end of this period India experienced greater political and economic instability such as the Bofors scandal, short lived coalition governments of Prime Ministers V.P. Singh and Chandrasekhar as well as the balance of payment crisis. These developments accompanied by changes in the international environment led to the next phase in India’s foreign policy.