Neutral India

Report Outline
Conflicting Attitudes Toward Neutral India
India's Independent Stand on World Issues
Political Role of India in Southeast Asia

Conflicting Attitudes Toward Neutral India

India is becoming an important factor in East-West relations and in the balance of forces competing for supremacy in Asia. The new republic's position between East and West may give it a significant role to play either in the enforcement of a truce in Indo-China or, if the Geneva conference fails to produce any agreement on Indo-China or Korea, in determining the future balance of power between Communism and democracy in the Far East.

The so-called neutralist policies of Prime Minister Nehru have been sharply criticized in the United States, and Congress now is considering whether to 421 continue economic aid to India notwithstanding Nehru's opposition to many American foreign policy objectives. At the same time, Soviet Russia and Communist China have condemned India's stand on some East-West issues and bitterly assailed the steps the country has taken to curb the spread of Communism within its own borders. Other countries in Asia and the Middle East regard India as a spokesman for their common aspirations and look upon Nehru as the possible leader of a third force between the two great power groups headed by the United States and the Soviet Union.

Differences Between India and the United States

Differences and misunderstandings between India and the United States have arisen over many issues of foreign policy since the outbreak of the Korean war. India in June 1950 supported the original American proposals for United Nations resistance to the North Korean aggression, but on numerous subsequent occasions it has differed with the United States over U.N. Korean policy. The Indian government was the first to recognize the Communist regime in China, late in 1949, and has consistently championed the right of the Mao Tse-tung government to supplant the Chiang Kai-shek government as the representative of China in the United Nations.