'Less Rosy View if We Were More Bharat': What Jaishankar Said in Fresh Attack on Nehru's China Policy

In a fresh attack on former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policy, external affairs minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday said if India had been “more Bharat”, it would have had a “less rosy view” of relations with China. He said there was an exchange of letters between Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, which show that both had starkly differing views about it.

“Regarding the three countries Pakistan, China and US which were actually three debated relationships in our early years… If we had been more ‘Bharat’, we would have had a less rosy view of our relationship with China…this is not my fantasy, there is a kind of record of that, there is an exchange of letters between Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru on China and they had a starkly differing views about it…” he said during the launch of his latest book Why Bharat Matters.

The foreign minister further said Nehru wrote to then US president John F Kennedy asking for help during India’s war with China, but there was hesitation as to how it would be looked at. “Even when the 1962 conflict war was taking place where Nehru actually wrote to Kennedy saying ‘look I need your help’ but am hesitating as how it would be looked at. What happens is in a sense there is a certain, I would say, a kind of left-wing ideology which was strong in that period… in China and similarly there is very ingrained hostility towards the United States…” he said.

He echoed his feelings about the topic from a day before when he hit out at Nehru’s “romaticism” in dealing with China. “The alternative strain which starts with Nehru’s China first policy, which says first let China take the security council seat… from China first policy ends up as Chindia policy,” the minister said in an interview.