The Foreign Policy Paradox: Part 2.
How Nixon Called Indira Gandhi a "Bitch" While Supporting Genocide, and Why India Still Hasn't Forgiven America
This is part B of the twentieth in a series exploring India’s unique approach to human diversity. In Part A, we met the contrarian — my father, a one-man pro-American lobby in socialist India. Now we explore the historical arc that made his position so lonely: the Kennedy promise, the Nixon betrayal, and the schizophrenic “non-alignment” that pretended to be neutral while clearly taking sides.
The Kindergarten Party
December 1971. I’m five years old. My parents are planning a party in our Delhi garden — some kind of kindergarten celebration. Cake, balloons, games. The usual.
Eight thousand miles away, the USS Enterprise — 75,000 tons of floating American diplomacy — is steaming into the Bay of Bengal. Task Force 74: one nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, ten warships, seventy fighter jets. Nuclear weapons on board.
The message was clear: India, stop winning this war.
The war in question was the liberation of East Pakistan — what would become Bangladesh. The Pakistani Army had launched Operation Searchlight, killing somewhere between 300,000 and 3 million Bengalis. Ten million refugees had fled to India.
India did NOT start the war.
For months, India absorbed refugees, supported the Mukti Bahini resistance, and waited. On December 3, 1971, Yahya Khan — Pakistan’s military dictator — launched Operation Chengiz Khan: preemptive airstrikes on eleven Indian airfields. Pakistan attacked India first.
A word about Yahya Khan, since this is who Nixon and Kissinger were supporting. Pakistan’s own post-war inquiry — the Hamoodur Rahman Commission — condemned his “moral degeneracy.” He was notorious for heavy drinking and womanizing; his famous mistress, Akleem Akhtar, was known as “General Rani.” Around late November 1971, a drunk Yahya reportedly told an American journalist that war with India was coming within ten days. He was right. This was the man Nixon called an ally. This was the regime Kissinger protected.
Only then did India respond. And India was winning.
America’s response to a country that had been attacked while trying to stop a genocide was to send nuclear weapons.
I learned what to do when the air raid sirens went off. Which happened several times.
We were living in an apartment complex with a garden right outside. The drill was simple: as soon as the siren sounded, one of the men around — my father or the cook — would run outside, lie flat on the grass, and put me underneath them. The theory, as I understood it, was that if a bomb leveled the apartment block and a large piece of rubble fell on top of my father, I would be protected underneath him.
That I too would be crushed seemed to be of less concern. Because, well, what can you do? It’s a war.
We also had to make blackout shades. Take pieces of paper and black paint. Paint them all black. Stick them on every window in the place so that Pakistani pilots couldn’t use our lights to target us at night.
Presumably this had some effect, but since other lights were on all around us, I never quite understood the point. But then, I was five, so what did I know.
The only modification to the party plans: if the Americans bombed Delhi, we’d relocate to the servant quarters. They were allegedly more blast-resistant. I didn’t understand why we might need to move the cake, but I was very clear that the cake should not be damaged. [And, at this remove, I now wonder who paid for the cake? I wonder if that was a gift from my mother’s brother? Hmmm.]
The party went ahead as scheduled. I got my cake. The Enterprise sailed around menacingly for a while, then went home. East Pakistan became Bangladesh. India won.
But nobody forgot. Certainly not my father, who spent the rest of his life explaining that Nixon was an aberration, not the norm. And certainly not a five-year-old who’d been told, in terms vague enough to avoid nightmares, that the country he’d been raised to admire might bomb his party — and who’d practiced being crushed under his father in case the Pakistanis got there first.
The White House Tapes
Thanks to Nixon’s obsessive recording of his own conversations — the man literally bugged himself, which tells you something about his judgment — we know exactly what the President and his National Security Advisor thought about India.
Nixon on Indians: “Bastards.”
Nixon on Indira Gandhi: “Old witch.” “Old bitch.”
Kissinger on Mrs. Gandhi: “That bitch.”
Kissinger on Indians: “The most aggressive people around.”
Nixon’s assessment of Indian women: “The most unattractive women in the world.”
And the most stunning — Nixon to Kissinger, about Indians needing “a mass famine.”
A sitting American President, discussing mass starvation as a policy outcome. For a country that had just experienced actual famines within living memory.
When these tapes became public in 2005, Kissinger’s defense was essentially: “Nixon made me do it.” The man who navigated Cold War diplomacy with China and the USSR blamed his boss for bad vocabulary.
Even my father — the eternal optimist about American rationality — couldn’t spin this. “Nixon is an idiot” was about the kindest thing he said. His assessment of Kissinger was less printable, which is saying something for a man who crossed out “gotten” in detective novels.
The Road Not Taken: Kennedy and 1962
To understand the betrayal, you have to understand what almost was.
October 1962. China invaded India across the Himalayan border. Indian forces were reeling. The timing was exquisite: the same month as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy was juggling potential nuclear annihilation and a land war in Asia simultaneously.
His response to India was immediate and generous:
An emergency airlift of weapons and supplies
USS Kitty Hawk dispatched to the Bay of Bengal — in support of India, not against it
American reconnaissance planes providing aerial photographs
Here’s the detail that captures Indian unpreparedness: India had no maps of its own border areas.
Let that sink in. The government that lectured the world about colonialism and imperialism, that positioned itself as the moral conscience of the developing world, that never missed an opportunity to criticize Western cartography as a tool of oppression — that government had never bothered to survey its own frontiers.
American U-2 spy planes provided the intelligence because India literally couldn’t. The country that wouldn’t fully recognize America’s closest ally in the Middle East was asking America’s spy planes to tell them where their own country ended.
Nehru — the proud architect of non-alignment — wrote desperate letters to Kennedy begging for “12 squadrons of supersonic fighters” with American pilots. “2 squadrons of B-47 bombers.” This was Nehru, the man who built his entire foreign policy on not choosing sides, essentially asking American pilots to fight India’s war.
Non-alignment, it turns out, was negotiable. As long as the Chinese weren’t actually shooting at you.
Kennedy didn’t give him American pilots. But he gave him everything else he could.
By 1963, Nehru was writing in Foreign Affairs: “Indo-American relations have seldom been as close and cordial as they are now.”
Kennedy was planning a $500 million military aid package for India. The final approval meeting was scheduled for November 26, 1963.
He was assassinated four days earlier.
Bruce Riedel, the CIA veteran who wrote the definitive account of this period, argues the counterfactual: If Kennedy had lived, India might never have developed nuclear weapons. A US security guarantee against China would have eliminated the need. India might not have tilted so heavily toward Moscow for weapons.
History turned on a bullet in Dallas. And India got Nixon instead.
Why Nixon and Kissinger Sided with Genocide
The Pakistani Army killed somewhere between 300,000 and 3 million people in East Pakistan in 1971. The US Consul General in Dhaka, Archer Blood, documented it in real time.
His “Blood Telegram” — the most famous diplomatic dissent cable in American history — reported:
“Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities... Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy.”
Twenty diplomats signed it. The State Department ignored it. Blood’s career was destroyed. His reward for moral clarity was professional exile. The man who wrote about atrocities became an atrocity of personnel management.
Why did Nixon and Kissinger support Pakistan despite documented genocide?
One word: China.
Pakistan was their secret channel to Beijing. “Only Nixon could go to China” — and only through Pakistan. Kissinger made his secret trip to Beijing through Islamabad in July 1971.
Kissinger admitted it decades later: “To condemn these violations publicly would have destroyed the Pakistani channel.”
Translation: Access to Mao was worth more than stopping a genocide. The diplomatic equivalent of “I was just following orders,” except the orders were his own memos.
So when India intervened to end the killing, Nixon and Kissinger saw it as a threat to their China opening. India was “a Soviet stooge.” Mrs. Gandhi was “that bitch.” The Indians were “bastards.”
They sent the Enterprise. They asked China to make threatening military moves against India. They illegally shipped weapons to Pakistan during an arms embargo.
All to protect a diplomatic channel. While hundreds of thousands died.
Kissinger’s retrospective assessment: “A case history of political misjudgment.”
No shit.
The moral reprobate, Kissinger, lived to 100, feted by Washington as an elder statesman. The genuinely moral Archer Blood died in 2004, his career never having recovered. There’s probably a lesson in there about the rewards of moral courage in diplomacy, and it’s not a cheerful one.
The Non-Aligned Fraud
India’s response to the Nixon betrayal was to double down on the policy that had never actually existed: non-alignment.
The Official Story: India led the Non-Aligned Movement — neither with the West nor the Soviet bloc. A proud third way. Moral leadership. Standing above Cold War divisions.
The Reality:
On August 9, 1971 — months before the war — India signed the “Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation” with the USSR. The State Department called it “a significant deviation from India’s previous position of non-alignment.”
The weapons told the real story:
By the early 1990s: 70% of Army equipment was Soviet-origin
80% of Air Force platforms
85% of Navy vessels
800+ MiG-21 fighters delivered
2,400+ T-72 tanks
India leased a Soviet nuclear submarine in 1988
India’s voting record at the UN coincided with the USSR 70-80% of the time during the Cold War. With the US? 20-30%.
Non-aligned, my ass.
The Non-Aligned Movement itself was a joke. The 1979 Havana summit, hosted by Castro, saw Cuba try to declare the USSR the “natural ally” of the non-aligned nations. Cuba. Hosting Soviet troops. Leading the Non-Aligned Movement. You can’t make this shit up.
Vietnam joined while hosting Soviet bases. Yugoslavia participated while playing both sides. The movement’s membership criteria seemed to be “any country that wants to lecture the West while doing business with Moscow.”
At the 1983 NAM summit in Delhi, Indira Gandhi studiously avoided any mention of the 100,000 Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan — while condemning every other “imperialist” intervention on the planet. Afghanistan, for those keeping track, shares a border with Pakistan, which makes it next door to our next door neighbor. The Soviet occupation wasn’t happening in some distant abstraction. It was right next door. But the non-aligned nations were very carefully not noticing. [If you believe India’s maps, and not the line of actual control, guess what, India shares a border with Afghanistan!]
As I wrote in an earlier post: “The Non-Aligned Movement was essentially poor countries telling rich countries how to behave while begging them for food aid.”
Ship-to-Mouth: The PL-480 Humiliation
Speaking of begging for food aid.
India survived the 1950s and 1960s only because of American wheat under the PL-480 program. Over 50 million tons shipped. By the mid-1960s, India lived “ship to mouth” — each American ship arriving just in time to prevent mass starvation.
The quality was terrible — low-grade, reddish American wheat called “lal gehun.” Made dark, hard chapatis. Reportedly contaminated with parthenium weed seeds that spread across India and are now called “Congress Grass.” Thanks, socialism.
India’s response to this life-saving aid?
K. Kamraj, Congress President: “I would prefer to starve than receive wheat from the Americans.”
He did not, in fact, starve. The wheat kept coming.
LBJ put India on a “short tether” — approving wheat shipments month by month to extract policy concessions. When India criticized the Vietnam War, Johnson reportedly said: “The Pope and the UN Secretary-General don’t need our wheat.”
Indira Gandhi, in a moment of private honesty, told her aides: “If food imports stop, these ladies and gentlemen won’t suffer — only the poor would starve.”
Exactly. The socialist elite who denounced America were never going to miss a meal. It was their constituents — the actual poor — who needed American grain. But that didn’t stop the denunciations.
My favorite detail: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister and India’s Ambassador to the US, once briefed Speaker Sam Rayburn about India. Rayburn, a Texan, listened patiently to her explanation of Hindu-Muslim relations, then interrupted:
“Oh, you have Muslims in India! Honey, why didn’t you say so earlier?”
For Rayburn, this changed everything. Muslims meant potential Cold War allies. He became friendlier immediately.
India’s sophisticated non-aligned diplomacy, decoded by a Texan through the lens of “who’s got Muslims.”
The 42-Year Farce: India and Israel
The India-Israel relationship deserves its own absurdist play.
September 17, 1950: India recognizes Israel. One of the earliest countries to do so.
1950-1992: India refuses to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel.
For 42 years, India maintained the fiction that it recognized a country it wouldn’t actually talk to. There was a consulate in Mumbai, starting in 1953. Its purpose: issuing visas to Indian Jews who wanted to emigrate and Christian pilgrims heading to the Holy Land. Not diplomacy.
In 1982, the Israeli Consul gave a newspaper interview criticizing Indian policy. India’s response: shut down the consulate for six years.
Six years. For an interview.
The covert reality was different. Israel secretly supplied weapons to India during the 1962 war with China, the 1965 war with Pakistan, and the 1971 war over Bangladesh. All without formal relations. All without acknowledgment.
There’s a story — I haven’t been able to fully verify it, but it circulates among diplomatic historians — that during the 1962 crisis, India asked Israel to ship weapons without the Israeli flag visible. They wanted the arms, but not the acknowledgment.
Ben Gurion’s alleged response: “No flag, no weapons.”
India accepted ships flying the Israeli flag.
Then went back to pretending Israel didn’t exist. For another 30 years.
In 1992, the Cold War ended, the USSR collapsed, and India suddenly discovered that Israel was a “natural partner.” Billions in arms deals followed. Intelligence sharing. Technology transfer. Modi and Netanyahu as friends.
From “we acknowledge you exist but won’t talk to you” to “natural partners” — 42 years of theater followed by instant friendship.
As the Foreign Secretary told me over drinks in 1985: “Of course they are natural allies. We just don’t admit it.”
Today’s Paradox: Non-Alignment 2.0
The polling is unambiguous. In 2023, Pew found that 65% of Indians have a favorable view of the United States. Higher than Germany. Higher than France. Higher than Japan.
The “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston drew 50,000 Indian-Americans. The Prime Minister of India quasi-endorsed Donald Trump on American soil: “Ab ki baar, Trump sarkar” — “This time, a Trump government.”
The Quad alliance — US, India, Japan, Australia — is a de facto anti-China coalition. Joint military exercises. Defense technology transfers. “Interoperability.”
My father’s vision, finally realized. Forty years late.
But.
India still buys Russian weapons. Decades of dependency can’t be undone overnight, and besides, Russian equipment is cheaper.
India refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Modi to Putin: “Today’s era is not an era of war” — the most diplomatic non-condemnation in history.
India expects American help against China while buying Russian oil at discount prices.
Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has built an entire intellectual framework around this: “strategic autonomy.” Not the old non-alignment — “multi-alignment.” Working with everyone, committed to no one. “Convergence with many but congruence with none.”
It’s non-alignment with better branding. And a better tailor.
When European diplomats criticized India’s Russian oil purchases, Jaishankar shot back: “Probably our total purchases in a month are less than what Europe buys in an afternoon.”
Touché.
And the Constitution still says “socialist” in the Preamble. Added in 1976 during the Emergency — when democracy was suspended. Never removed.
Here’s the genius part: nobody wants to remove it.
Not the BJP, despite being pro-business. Not the Congress party that inserted it. Not even the actual socialists, who know it’s their only remaining victory.
Why? Because keeping “socialist” in the Constitution is another piece of Indian strategic brilliance. It keeps the moron intelligentsia satisfied — the JNU professors, the leftist commentators, the ideological purists who need their symbolic victories. Meanwhile, the rest of the country quietly gets on with capitalism.
India has nearly 300 billionaires now — third-most in the world. The IPL is worth $18.5 billion. The economy is $3.5 trillion. Mukesh Ambani is worth over $100 billion.
But the Constitution says “socialist,” so the professors can write their papers about constitutional socialism, the politicians can invoke it in speeches, and everyone can pretend the Nehruvian consensus still matters. It’s segmented pluralism applied to ideology: maintain the symbolic space for the ideologues so the practical people can do the actual work.
The Supreme Court upheld the word in November 2024. Nobody appealed. Why would they? It’s working exactly as designed.
Any statement you make about India is true. As is its opposite.
The Legacy
My father died believing India would eventually come around. That the “morons blinded by ideology” would eventually see sense. That India and America were natural partners — two democracies, shared values, common enemies.
He didn’t live to see Howdy Modi. He didn’t live to see India become one of the most pro-American countries in the world according to Pew polling. He didn’t live to see Israeli Prime Ministers visiting Delhi openly, or American Presidents being greeted by a hundred thousand people at cricket stadiums.
But he would have been insufferable about being right. I can hear him now: “I told you. I told everyone. Did anyone listen? No.”
In many ways, he was right. Today’s India is closer to America than ever. The visceral anti-Americanism of his generation has faded. Young Indians want to study in America, work in America, partner with America.
But the hedging continues. “Strategic autonomy.” The refusal to choose sides even when sides have been chosen. The official position that has nothing to do with the private understanding.
The Foreign Secretary knew in 1985 that India and Israel were natural allies. It took seven more years to admit it.
Everyone in Delhi knows today that India and America are natural allies. How long before they fully admit it?
“Yes, yes, someday.”
The Nero Wolfe Return
Maybe my father had it right all along.
Love American ideology. Consume American culture. Partner with American power.
Just don’t accept “gotten” as a legitimate word. The fact that it’s a perfectly normal, if now archaic, British English word — or that “got:gotten” follows the same pattern as “forgot:forgotten” — doesn’t seem to matter. Standards, old boy, standards.
He loved a country with zillions of faults because he could see past the faults to the underlying decency. He hated its grammar because grammar mattered — standards exist for reasons. He was pro-American in substance and anti-American in the details that didn’t matter.
India, officially, did the opposite. Anti-American in substance — the treaties, the weapons, the UN votes — while happily consuming American culture and sending children to American universities. Hating the things that mattered, loving the things that didn’t.
My father was right about the big stuff and eccentric about the small stuff.
India was wrong about the big stuff and indifferent to the small stuff.
Forty years later, India has quietly adopted my father’s position on the big stuff. Mostly. Kind of. With hedges.
The grammar wars continue.
Final Line
Any statement you make about India is true. As is its opposite.
My father was pro-American and anti-American-English.
India is pro-American and anti-American-commitment.
The contradictions don’t cancel out. They coexist.
Like everything else in India.
If you like this, you will like my book, The Science of Free Will. I have a lot of interesting stuff in it from why we can’t trade with ants (they can detect cancer) and what does that have to do with the future of AI to why we need a Supreme Court if the world is deterministic. You can get it on Amazon or anywhere else that books are sold.
The India Paradox is a series exploring how the world’s most diverse democracy somehow functions despite — or perhaps because of — its beautiful contradictions. Past posts can be found at https://www.substack.com/@samirvarma.
Curious to know the extent of India’s hedging now? I guess it’s just about big enough to play both sides, buying Venezuelan oil and reducing its dependency on Russian oil? There is also some real affinity between India & Israel which goes beyond the transactional.
This would be believable if you pointed out even one instance since 1947, when India has supported the USA unequivocally, no relationship is built on all give and no take!