© The Author(s) 2019 11
P. R. Kumaraswamy, Md. M. Quamar, India’s Saudi Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0794-2_2
CHAPTER 2The Nehru Era
More than any other leader, Jawaharlal Nehru had a profound and lasting
impact upon India’s policy towards the outside world. His imprints on
foreign policy can be traced to the freedom struggle, and as Jayantanuja
Bandyopadhyaya observed, since the 42nd annual session of the party held
in Madras (now Chennai) in December 1927, Nehru became the “recog-
nized spokesman of the Congress on foreign affairs.” Indeed, with the for-
mation of the Foreign Department of the party in 1925, “practically every
resolution of the Congress on foreign affairs was inspired, drafted and
piloted by Nehru” (Bandyopadhyaya 1984 , 286). Nehru’s influence and
domination became overwhelming after India’s independence and he con-
currently held the foreign ministry until his death in May 1964. As prime
minister cum external affairs minister, he defined not only the direction of
India’s engagements with the outside world but also its priorities.
At the time of partition of the subcontinent, India had a colonial-
diplomatic legacy, especially in the Middle East. Since the early nineteenth
century, the British policy towards the Persian Gulf was primarily directed
from India, first from Calcutta and later on from Bombay when Delhi
became the British capital in December 1911. Many elites of the future
Gulf Arab sheikdoms were educated in India or had spent a considerable
amount of time in the Western shores of the country for holiday or busi-
ness (Onley 2007 ), and the Indian rupee remained the legal tender in
some of these countries until the early 1960s. Above all, Indian soldiers