Under Nehru’s leadership, India adopted a political system
on the British model, with a figurehead president and
a parliamentary form of government. A number of political
parties operated legally, but the Congress Party, with
its enormous prestige and charismatic leadership, was
dominant at both the central and the local levels. It was
ably assisted by the Indian civil service, which had been
created during the era of British colonial rule and provided
solid expertise in the arcane art of bureaucracy.
Nehru had been influenced by British socialism and
patterned his economic policy roughly after the program
of the British Labour Party. The state took over ownership
of the major industries and resources, transportation,
and utilities, while private enterprise was permitted at the
local and retail levels. Farmland remained in private
hands, but rural cooperatives were officially encouraged.
The government also sought to avoid excessive dependence
on foreign investment and technological assistance.
All businesses were required by law to have majority
Indian ownership.
In other respects, Nehru was a devotee of Western materialism.
He was convinced that to succeed, India must
industrialize. In advocating industrialization, Nehru departed
sharply from Gandhi, who believed that materialism
was morally corrupting and that only simplicity and
nonviolence (as represented by the traditional Indian village
and the symbolic spinning wheel) could save India,
and the world itself, from self-destruction (see the box
above). Gandhi, Nehru complained, “just wants to spin
and weave.”
The primary themes of Nehru’s foreign policy were anticolonialism
and antiracism. Under his guidance, India
took a neutral stance in the Cold War and sought to provide
leadership to all newly independent nations in Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. It also sought good relations
with the new People’s Republic of China. India’s neutrality
put it at odds with the United States, which during the
1950s was trying to mobilize all nations against what it
viewed as the menace of international communism.
Relations with Pakistan continued to be troubled. India
refused to consider Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir, even
though the majority of the population there was Muslim.
Tension between the two countries persisted, erupting
into war in 1965. In 1971, when riots against the Pakistani
government broke out in East Pakistan, India intervened
on the side of East Pakistan, which declared
its independence as the new nation of Bangladesh (see
Map 14.1).
World History
