Is India a Soviet Ally?

Abstract

AN APPRECIATION of the long-term effects of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of August 9, 1971, requires some understanding of the background of the agreement. Contrary to popular impressions, the Treaty was not related to events at that time in East Bengal, now known as Bangladesh. Thus, T.N. Kaul, then India's Foreign Secretary and now Ambassador in Washington, on the very day of signing the Treaty, said: We have been working for this Treaty for over two years. It has nothing to do with the developments in East Bengal or the attitude of the United States. So, too, Swaran Singh, the Minister of External Affairs, told the Lok Sahba: Treaty has nothing to do with Dr. Kissinger's visit to Peking, but the timing of it has been such that it was very well received by practically all sections of the people. This undoubtedly was a reference to the general expectation that the Treaty was primarily linked with the liberation of Bangladesh. There is no reason to doubt the basic accuracy of these two statements, which appear to reflect reality. Work on the project had been proceeding from some time in the middle of 1969. From the Soviet point of view, it reflected an effort to implement the Brezhnev Plan for collective security in Asia, which was much publicized around that time. Pravda, on its part, corroborated all this on November 25, 1973, on the eve of Mr. Brezhnev's visit to Delhi, when it stated: Treaty not only recorded the achieved level of our relations, but put them on a long-term basis, Why the proposed Treaty was kept a secret during the intervening two years is not possible to guess. But evidently public opinion and the climate were not right; and the developments in East Bengal, as Swaran Singh has admitted, came in handy to facilitate selling the Treaty to the Indian public. In a way, the genesis of the Treaty goes back much further. Speaking in Delhi on the same platform as Brezhnev on November 26, 1973,