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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: archives

India Declassified

28 Sat Jan 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

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archives, China, Cold War, India, Nehru Museum and Memorial Library, NMML, nuclear, Pakistan, PN Haksar, The Nation Declassified, United States, Vivek Prahladan

nation-declassifiedPrahladan, Vivek. The Nation Declassified: India and the Cold War World. New Delhi: Har Anand Publications, 2016. 567 pp.

Diplomatic historians have long complained of the difficulties of doing research on the modern Indian republic due to the lack of proper archival procedures. The Indian government exhibits a strong allergy to the systematic declassification of its files and oral history has its own pitfalls – difficult access, passage of time, and subject to the vagaries of memory. Vivek Prahladan, however, has cobbled together disparate sources – interviews, private papers of Indian bureaucrats, foreign archives, and most importantly, a stash of recently declassified Indian documents  –  to produce an explosive reinterpretation of Indian foreign policy during the Cold War.

The Nation Declassified begins in 1962, a pivotal moment in Indian history. The humiliation of defeat in the Sino-Indian War birthed, according to Prahladan, a realist strain of Indian foreign policy. In his final days, Jawaharlal Nehru tilted drastically towards the United States and initiated a massive expansion of Indian defence. The size of the military was increased, international vendors were approached for armaments, and impetus was given to dual-use technological development. As a result, we see a close parallel in the development of India’s nuclear weapons programme and its civilian energy sector, between its missiles project and its extra-terrestrial ambitions. Undergirding this was allocation of monies to supporting industries such as electronics.

Prahladan touches on the major events in Indian Cold War history to reframe them in the light of his discoveries. This includes the development of the Indian Air Force, the nuclear programme, the Third India-Pakistan War of 1971, and the balance of power in Asia after the Sino-American rapprochement. In this last section is even an interesting bit about how much Indian intelligence knew about the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme. Each chapter starts from the Indian Stunde Null, 1962, and describes the evolution of policy until 1983/4. However, the longest chapter, the one on the Indian nuclear programme, extends until the Pokhran II nuclear tests in 1998. This allows the author to show the continuity of policy from the late 1960s and early 1970s culminating in many of the overt decisions after the Buddha laughed.

Prahladan’s work weaves an interesting narrative of India’s relations with the superpowers. Contrary to the popular, simplistic notions that Nehru was a Soviet “stooge,” Prahladan shows the prime minister swing wildly towards the United States during the hostilities with China but gradually recenter the country before it drifts towards the Soviet Union under his successors. During the war, Nehru frantically requests the United States for military assistance, including 12 squadrons of aircraft. Given the number of pilots the IAF had then, it would have required American pilots to fly the planes. Washington asked for overflight, refuelling, and  basing permission which was given but revoked by Nehru’s death. The real souring of India-US relations, according to the documents Prahladan uses, occurs during the Second India-Pakistan War in 1965 when US-supplied arms were used against India by Pakistan. Delhi had repeatedly warned Washington of this inevitability but had been ignored. Furthermore, South Block realised that Western rearmament of India, even against China, was contingent upon maintaining a balance of power with Pakistan. Even during the Sino-Indian War, the United States kept up the pressure on India to negotiate with Pakistan over Kashmir. Indian officials felt that there was no genuine Western interest in their situation and Washington and London were merely making use of the opportunity provided by Beijing to further their goals in the region.

An interesting structure of Prahladan’s work is that it focusses almost entirely on primary sources. Although there are references to secondary material, it is substantially less than most academic history books would contain. Furthermore, Prahladan reproduces some of the over 10,000 pages of documents he accessed in his endnotes. This is a superb feature of the book because it allows the academic a glimpse the documents and the lay reader gets to experience what it is that historians actually do in those musty archives and libraries! Admittedly, this same bonus can also put off many casual readers. While it is a good habit to read the footnotes in all books, it is not only important but a pleasure in Prahladan’s work.

It is only fitting that the most controversial aspect of The Nation Declassified rests in its longest chapter. Based on documents available at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi, Prahladan argues that PN Haksar, Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary from 1967 to 1973, had articulated in a 1968 memo the case for a robust Indian nuclear arsenal consisting of second strike capability through nuclear-powered submarines and missiles with a range of approximately 2,500 to 3,000 miles. This is a breathtaking vision, especially for half a century ago, and one that India is struggling to achieve.

These revelations threaten to upend the entire understanding of the Indian nuclear programme and have, therefore, been met with quite some incredulity. While no serious scholar denies the Chinese threat to India, there are lively debates about Delhi’s response to it. One school of thought holds that the first Pokhran test in 1974 was not military but political in nature, while another strand of scholarship argues that India was a reluctant nuclear power who drifted to its decision in 1974. The debate over The Nation Declassified is not its interpretation – that would have come later – but the quality of its sources.

Prahladan attributes his most important material to an unsigned memo in Haksar’s files. However, as scholar Yogesh Joshi has pointed out to me in private correspondence, the attribution is invalid. Prahladan does acknowledge that the document he bases his argument on is unsigned and undated yet goes on to declare Haksar as its author, probably because it was found in his files. This memo is supplemented by other documents arguing for an Indian nuclear response to China, from Subramaniam Swamy, CR Palsokar, and especially a memo by former president KR Narayanan from 1964. Former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, MR Srinivasan, has also gone along with Prahladan’s interpretation: in an interview to the author, he said about Haksar, “no one in current memory knows that an Indian thinker as PN Haksar was already thinking in terms of a triad and it has till now remained hidden in the archives,” though it is not clear whether this was before or after Srinivasan was exposed to the author’s controversial attribution or how closely he scrutinised it. This does not fit with the perception of Haksar through every source until now. An email to Prahladan for clarification as gone unanswered as of the publication of this review.

This Haksar episode puts a question mark on all the other sources The Nation Declassified has referred to in its narration. Nonetheless, it does not hurt too much because the broad outlines of the other incidents are already well known – at least to academics – and not disputed. For the lay reader, this means that the book is chock-full of interesting details. Unfortunately, The Nation Declassified is a difficult read because the publisher – Har Anand Publications – has done a shoddy job in editing and producing the manuscript. The final product is printed on low quality paper, bound poorly, and does not look like it has seen the love of a copy editor. Despite this, The Nation Declassified still carries a hefty price tag of ₹800 on Amazon.

For the most part, The Nation Declassified does not refashion the narrative nor break new ground on Indian Cold War history. Rather, it adds details to the already known trajectory of relations in interesting ways. For example, India’s concern over Pakistan receiving supplies of US military equipment from the Middle East is clearly documented, as is the fact that it was the IAF that myopically turned down the Soviet Union’s offer to sell India the nuclear-capable Tupolev TU-22M long-range bombers. The Soviet Union and the United States both supported Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, and depite the United States’ public posturing, Henry Kissinger was quite reasonable in private about India’s nuclear test.

On the issue of nuclear weapons and decision-making, Prahladan’s work clearly supports that of Bharat Karnad (and mine) in arguing not only that India perceived a real threat from China and its nuclear weapons but this perception led Delhi to trudge across the nuclear rubicon. The incompetence of the defence, bureaucratic, and political apparatus should not be construed to mean that India did not feel the need for nuclear weapons except as political weapons or for prestige. Prahladan’s discussion of the documents, even excluding the Haksar memo, show that there was indeed a vocal group in the political as well as technical communities that advocated weaponisation and it was not dominated by “peaceniks” even if they held sway for the most part. The scientific reality that many analysts overlook in declaring India’s nuclear weapons ambitions as not serious because of the failure to test before 1968 is the importance of the Purnima (Plutonium Reactor for Neutron Investigations in Multiplying Assemblies) reactor that went critical only in 1972. From the moment Lop Nur burned brighter than a thousand suns, India’s inexorable march towards the smiling Buddha began.

Despite the shortcomings of the publisher, The Nation Declassified is an interesting and important book well worth reading. At the very least, it makes a strong presentation of the argument for realism and strategic thinking in Indian policy, a view that does not have many takers. This, of course, then raises uncomfortable questions about the failures in implementation of these alleged realist and strategic policies for Indian security remains seriously impaired. In a manner, Prahladan’s work brings nuance to the world of Indian policy-making by transforming binaries of intent and implementation to the greyer world of modern bureaucracy and a weak state. It should, therefore, be on the reading list of anyone with a serious interest in Indian foreign policy during the Cold War.

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Fresh Blood

30 Tue Jun 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

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archives, diplomacy, IFS, India, Indian Foreign Service, library, MEA, Ministry of External Affairs, PP&RD, Public Policy & Research Division, research

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs put out an announcement yesterday, advertising for consultants for its Policy Planning & Research Division. This followed several articles in the past two years criticising the limited manpower and hence expertise of the Indian Foreign Service and some recent speculation about the expansion of the Service via lateral entry into the cadre. The move has been welcomed by most and it can only be hoped that it is only the first in a series of moves that will revamp and energise India’s foreign affairs circles.

As several India observers have remarked already, the size of the IFS is remarkably small for a nation of India’s size and interests. To be fair, it is only recently that Delhi’s role on the world stage has grown; its growing economy has compelled India to make inroads in trade and security in all corners of the world. Furthermore, it cannot help but be more involved as its northeastern neighbour and rival drags the world’s economic centre of gravity back to Asia. South Block’s holiday during the post-Nehruvian slump years ended in the mid- to late 1990s though little was done to boost its capabilities until now.

The announcement, though a step in the right direction, is a short-term measure and leaves much to be desired. First, the advertisement seeks experts for a period of three years. Given that the hire is not into the IFS cadre, hierarchy and prospects for upward mobility on the job are unclear. Most applicants will therefore treat this as a line entry on their resume or a sabbatical from their “real” job. Such a temporal attitude hardly encourages the development of expertise in a field and the PP&RD will effectively be turned into a long workshop on government procedure and thinking.

Reaching out to domain experts – on regions as well as issues – is an excellent idea but the presumption is usually that this expertise is developed elsewhere and brought in on specific projects. In this manner, the MEA can augment its in-house expertise at will from a large pool of experts in industry and academia. Towards this end, as former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao has suggested most recently, an MEA think tank could be created. This group would be tasked with formulating position papers on a variety of key issues to provide the IFS with immediate expertise. The necessity of consultants would not be obviated because the manpower requirements for a think tank to remain at the forefront of research on all topics the external affairs ministry of a rising regional power  might be interested in would be gargantuan.

The Indian government must also understand that the entire system of consultants and think tanks depends on access to information. Policies have an administrative and political history and it is vital to take this into account as well as the contemporary goals of the state. Declassification of government files would greatly assist in developing foreign policy experts but any move on this front has been in dribs and drabs. For some unfathomable reason, every Indian bureaucrat I have met at home and abroad takes great pride in the state of the National Archives and the declassification process. Perhaps a visit to similar facilities in Germany or Britain may be in order to fully appreciate the capability of national archives and freedom of information.

India’s library collections, even in the metros, are also pitiable. Foreign publications are expensive for the Indian wallet and scholars cannot finance all their intellectual needs out of their own pockets. The sheer volume of research generated every year from even just the top institutions would require the salary of an entertainer or sportstar to keep up with. The development of just one world-class national library in each of India’s four or five largest cities – without borrowing privileges – would immeasurably improve access to international manuscripts and journals. As an example, Harvard University’s library system has approximately 19 million books and an annual operating budget of $160 million.

The MEA fails to realise that – or at least has chosen not to act on it yet – a pool of experts it can consult or develop in-house requires a nurturing environment of sound academic institutions, freedom of information, and access to data. These are the larger infrastructural problems that need to be addressed in the long-term. For now, the lateral hiring is a positive step. Let us hope it will be followed by a full spectrum of reforms and development soon.


This post appeared on FirstPost on July 02, 2015.

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Celsius 233*

25 Wed Jun 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia

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archives, Archives nationales, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Britain, British Library, FOIA, France, Freedom Of Information Act, India, Library of Congress, Ministry of Home Affairs, NAI, NARA, Narendra Modi, National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives of India, National Library of India, Ray Bradbury, Right To Information Act, RTI, The National Archives, TNA, United States

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”

– Ray Bradbury

In a development reminiscent of the Dark Ages and the era of marauding barbarian conquerors, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has destroyed some 150,000 files over the past month in a cleanliness drive. Other ministries are reported to have destroyed documents as well though not at the same scale as the MHA. Worse, it is reported that the orders come from the Prime Minister’s Office itself.

There is no way of telling what has been lost in the destroyed files. When asked, officials claimed ignorance of the contents of most files. However, a few nuggets that were revealed included how India’s first president, Rajendra Prasad, refused to take a pension after his term and instead donated it to the government’s calamity fund. The same fund was also the recipient of the salary of the country’s second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.

Another file revealed that India’s last viceroy and first governor general Lord Louis Mountbatten received an astronomical allowance of ₹64,000 via presidential sanction to return to England. Yet another file contained the record of a cabinet meeting held shortly prior to the announcement of the death of Mohandas Gandhi.

What was said in that meeting? By whom? For what reason? What did the tone of the meeting reveal about the attitude of the leaders of a nascent nation regarding its people? What were their concerns? On what basis was Mountbatten given such a generous travelling allowance? These questions have suddenly become harder if not impossible to answer.

Seeing malicious intent in the destruction of the files is not warranted as far as one can surmise from the outside. What is shocking, however, is the unbelievable callousness and obtuseness with which India approaches information management. The proper course of action in any democracy would have been to declassify the files and transfer them to the national archives where scholars and the general public may have access to them.

For example, the US National Archives and Records Administration stores over 127,000 cubic metres of paper records, maps, and audio collections and receives over nine kilometres of records every year. This is in addition to state archives, the Library of Congress, university collections, and the presidential library system. Though the United States came into existence only at the end of the 18th century, NARA records go as far back as 1682 to the Spanish Land Grants.

Similarly, the British National Archives holds millions of files, photographs, posters, maps, and paintings stretching all the way back to the Domesday Book, the first land survey in England, in 1086. Again, this is in addition to several private collections and the British Library.

France has by far the largest national records repository in the world. Set up in 1794, the French archives stores records in excess of 456 km, the oldest document going all the way back to 625; this is in addition to the some 1,800 km of archives at the prefecture level. By 1800, the Archives nationales had become an autonomous body within the French government and launched an active campaign to alleviate cities, churches, and private concerns of the burden of preserving old records by collecting and preserving them in public state-funded repositories.

In contrast, India’s National Archives are poorly funded and maintained and hold a threadbare collection of documents. The stacks of the National Library of India, in Calcutta, hold a mere 2.3 million items (2.2 million books); this is dwarfed by the 40 million item collection (14 million books) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, British Library’s 150 million items (14 million books), and the US Library of Congress’ 158 million items (32 million books).

Until recently, Indians did not study their past methodically as Fabius Pictor, Cato the Elder, or Livy did Rome nor did they bother to preserve historical records for posterity beyond inscriptions and rock carvings. Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni is considered to have written the first history of India, his Kitab ta’rikh al-Hind, around 1030. Arguably, this view overlooks the works of Fa Hien, Huen Tsang, Banabhatta, and the several Greek historians such as Megasthenes, Strabo, and Nearchus in Alexander the Great’s retinue. However, many of these works can be called histories only by the grace of semantic generosity – Fa Hien was the author of a travelogue, Banabhatta wrote a biography, and none of the Greeks attempted a systematic study as al-Biruni did. Of importance is that none of these writers barring Banabhatta are Indian.

Whether neglect for history in India is chalked up to disdain, apathy, or a utilitarian worldview, the fact remains that the subject has been given scant attention. Even as late as 1870s, Indian nationalists were worried that they had no linear narrative history. Bankimchandra Chatterjee is supposed to have exclaimed, “We have no history! – We must have a history!” An Indian narrative was required to escape from Western notions of historical decline, inferiority, and progress, a narrative which would instill pride in Indians of their heritage.

There is a strong case to be made that the same holds true even today – the declassification and preservation of documents will allow scholars and private citizens to study and understand the history of their country better; through empirical records, policies on a host of issues can be analysed and discarded or modified and implemented. A whole pool of experts outside the government will be created that can be called upon for consultation, if so desired, by ministers. This would reduce the size of government by not making it critical to employ several experts in each field of government activity. Relatively unbiased scrutiny will also weaken the hold of the bureaucracy on the flow of information in the country.

Narendra Modi had earlier remarked that he wanted to improve the quality of Indian think tanks. This is indeed a laudable goal that addresses important higher order functions of a state. However, how are think tanks supposed to produce high quality research if the data they require is destroyed or inaccessible? Since India prides itself on being a major player in the international information technology market, a good solution would have been to scan and tag the old files. This would have taken far less space as well as preserved the information indefinitely and easily accessible if and when required.

Oddly, broken furniture was also discarded along with old documents – it is beyond common sense to fathom why old and broken furniture would be stored in government offices at all.

The destruction of the thousands of government files may not be of much consequence to most but to historians, it is comparable to, for example, the destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan in 2001 by the Taliban. The decision to get rid of old and dusty government files was likely without malice but also without thought and with consequences.

The Congress had made it a routine to lose files to mysterious fires or to misplace them permanently; there was no move towards making government records easily accessible to the public either; the Right To Information Act is only a hollow gesture compared to the Freedom of Information Act in Britain or the United States. The stunning election success of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the April-May 2014 general elections has been interpreted as a vote for change; here is hoping that the change will be visible soon and for the better.

*: We use the metric system!


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on June 27, 2014.

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