37activist like Nasser’s Egypt, Riyadh was “active in Afro-Asian, Arab League
and non-aligned forums. They consistently championed the cause of
Palestine and Algeria, staunchly opposed the formation of any US-sponsored
military alliance, heavily contributed in money and morale towards wean-
ing Jordan away from the Baghdad Pact, and established an Arab defence
alliance against the Pact” (Dhanani 1981 , 362).
As Saudi Arabia was moving closer to the West, India was gravitating
towards the USSR. Beginning with the Khrushchev-Bulganin visit in
November 1955, India’s approach towards Moscow underwent a trans-
formation. It benefitted from the Soviet willingness to take part in its
developmental programmes in the areas of defence, space and atomic
energy and in setting up public sector undertaking (PSU) companies such
as BHEL, ONGC and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. Moscow was
ready to see non-alignment in friendlier terms and this brought political
synergy between the two. This was in contrast to the if-you-are-not-with-
me-then- you- are-against-me approach of the US (Jain 1983 ; Dietl 1985 ).
The Indian shift in favour of Moscow manifested clearly in 1956.
Though Nehru was unequivocal over the tripartite aggression against
Egypt, he settled for a near silence over the Hungarian crisis which blew
out only a few days earlier.^2 His unqualified support for Egyptian sover-
eignty was in contrast to his tacit endorsement of the Soviet aggression
against Hungary. Indeed, Nehru’s confidant V. K. Krishna Menon (then
Minister Without Portfolio) depicted the Soviet action as ‘an internal mat-
ter’ of the Warsaw countries (Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second
Series, vol. 35). This pattern continued over a host of international issues,
including the Czech crisis of 1966, nuclear disarmament, decolonization,
Vietnam War and extra-regional presence in the Persian Gulf and the
Indian Ocean. In these crucial international developments, the Indian
position was closer to Moscow’s than neutral. The culmination of the
process was the Havana Summit which viewed Moscow as ‘the natural
ally’ of the NAM (Vanden and Morales 1985 ).
The Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 weakened India’s strategic calcula-
tions. If it accepted Soviet mediation in the aftermath of the Indo-Pakistani
War of 1965 and concluded the Tashkent agreement (Bindra 1981 ), it
(^2) Soviet tanks entered Budapest in the early hours of 24 October 1956, hours after popular
protests were held in the Hungarian capital whereas the Israeli aggression against Egypt
began on 29 October.
DRIFTING APART