Racism and Indian-U.S. Relations, 1947-1953: Views in the Indian Press

Abstract

MANY THIRD World nations, predominantly nonwhite and nonaligned, became the focus of Soviet-American rivalry after 1945. Their emergence as new national entities, whether in Asia or Africa, was not exclusively a struggle of nationalism against colonialism, but was also an intimate, integral factor in the worldwide competition between East and West. The two behemoths, the United States and the Soviet Union, as leaders of their respective power blocs, sought to win Third World support because much was at stake. Third World countries possessed large quantities of strategic raw materials vital to the industralized nations of the East and West; these countries provided markets for the products and technology of the nations of the East and West; and equally as important, the two giant powers looked to the new states of the Third World for support in the fledgling United Nations. Both powers, aggressively and unblushingly, courted these new arrivals to the international community in several ways, including foreign aid, technical assistance, and good-will visits by some of their most outstanding and respected leaders at the various socio-economic, humanitarian, and political levels. The three-week visit of Eleanor Roosevelt to India in 1952 illustrates