India's Future
Wofford, Harris Jr.
India's Future Free India in Asia, by Werner Levi. University of Minnesota Press. 161 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by Harris Wofford, Jr. WHEN a U.S. Secretary of State considers India an...
...However, Levi reports that the Cold War is closing in on Nehru, and that Indians are polarizing toward the two camps, although few Indians have yet made a decision...
...No foreign power should have any colonial territory in the continent of Asia," Nehru declared in 1948...
...Levi poses the Indian Socialist alternative of a third camp based on a South Asian federation and on taking the world ideological initiative...
...If his book is not exciting, it is objective, honest, and suggestive...
...In Werner Levi's Free India in Asia Americans are given a good guidebook for this understanding, and Nehru is given reason to believe that perhaps Americans can learn...
...in this book he is a good teacher because during his stay in India he was a good student...
...America can only "assist and encourage," "tactfully and humbly...
...The highwater mark of Indian initiative in this regard seems to have been reached that year, when Nehru convened the Asian conference on Indonesia, and India adopted sanctions against the Netherlands...
...On far away North African issues where no British interests happen to be involved, Nehru has been militant in the UN...
...By the flexibility thus gained she has been enabled "to exert an influence in international councils which she could not otherwise have had...
...He suggests that hope may lie in a close association with America on economic development, along with a South Asian-Arab coalition for development of the UN...
...Applying his test to Nehru's third aim—non-attachment to either Russian [Communist] or American [Free World] camps, India has succeeded...
...Levi points out that although opportunity has not been lacking, Nehru has steadfastly refused to repeat this feat...
...Levi returned from India with faith in the Indian people and leaders, on whom, he wisely reminds us, the major share in shaping India's future naturally must rest...
...Until then, the test of self-interest must prevail...
...Here is a first-hand account, compact and carefully documented, of the forces on the Indian scene which determine that policy...
...What course would be best for Indian democracy...
...The price meant, of course, is usually at some other's expense, and not something so vital as the loss of Kashmir...
...press to the contrary...
...Levi does not answer...
...In general, Levi believes that compromises with ideals in foreign policy, such as Nehru has made, "are inevitable as long as the nation-state system persists...
...John Foster Dulles ought to read this book, too...
...Here, in a calm, short study is a description of what Indian foreign policy has actually been, much of the U.S...
...Levi sees three main aims of Nehru's foreign policy...
...The first is peace, which India needs for a chance to develop, and which he believes sometimes almost amounts to a demand for "peace at any price for one generation...
...Secretary of State considers India an "international busybody" for proposing the Arab-Asian resolution on Korea, as Dean Acheson was reported to have told his associates, one begins to see what Pandit Nehru means when he complains that Americans have no understanding of the mind and heart of Asia...
...The Indian government has been relatively quiet about the independence of Malaya," Levi notes...
...Levi is a popular professor of political science at the University of Minnesota...
...On the New Guinea dispute in 1950, he took a moderate position between the Dutch and the Indonesians...
...So, too, about Indo-China, Iran, and the Suez Canal...
...Second is the ending of imperialism and racism...
Vol. 17 • April 1953 • No. 4
