independent foreign policy, and stated that Dulles had showed ‘lack
of knowledge of facts and want of appreciation of the policy we are
pursuing’.^26
Non-alignment with the superpowers did not preclude other forms
of state groupings. Writing in the National Heraldin 1940, Nehru had
stated that the era of small countries was at an end. An ‘Eastern federation’
was a desirable group for the future. Such a group must contain China and
India, and could include Burma, Ceylon, Nepal, Afghanistan, Malaya,
Siam, Iran and possibly others: ‘That would be a powerful combination
of free nations joined together for their own good as well as the world
good.’^27 The idea of pan-Asian solidarity was not a new one in India, and
had once included Japan as a potential member and source of inspiration
as a powerful late industrialiser; but Japanese expansionist tendencies had
alarmed those who had once assumed benign motives on Japan’s part.
In August 1939, Nehru met Rabindranath Tagore – as it turned out,
for the last time – in Calcutta en route to China. The poet asked him to
go to Japan as well to express solidarity with the Japanese people and
to ask them ‘not to lose their soul in the present adventure in China’, while
at the same time condemning Japanese militarism and imperialism and
their atrocities in China.^28 Nehru had had few illusions about persuading
the Japanese to change their minds. But the idea of a pan-Asian fellowship
of nations survived for him as an ideal despite its appropriation by
Japanese imperialism.
In April 1947, Delhi hosted an Asian Relations Conference, organised
by a non-official body – the Indian Council for World Affairs – but with
implications for future policy since it was organised with Nehru’s support.
The conference had a ceremonial value as the first large international
conference organised by an almost-free India. Nehru’s speeches at the
conference made no explicit reference to non-alignment. He spoke instead
of ‘some deeper urge’ bringing Asian countries together. Sarojini Naidu,
minor poetess and sometime Indian nationalist, also mystically invoked
Asian-ness (in the 1920s she had asked, from a Congress platform, that
East Africa be handed over to Indians for colonisation, because as a great
nation India was entitled to colonies – and had been rapped on the
knuckles for it by Gandhi).
Pan-Asian solidarity, however, did not get off to the best possible start.
The Malayan delegate, Dr John Thivy – an Indian lawyer who had been
in Subhas Bose’s movement and who later took Indian citizenship and was
INTERLUDE – ENVISIONING THE NEW INDIA 159