 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are joined today by Ambassador Bhadrakumar and we are going to discuss the recent unbleived record of the tape discussions that took place with Nixon and Kissinger with respect to Mrs. Gandhi's visit in 1971 or his other discussions regarding Mrs. Gandhi. Now this has been public knowledge for some time. Specific words may not have been there, but that they called her a bitch, witch, bastard, Indians is bastard. This has all been there. So in that sense what is only new is the vitriol that has been displayed in, more vitriol has been displayed than we learnt about earlier. But in overall terms is there anything new that you see in this, in this, what has been disclosed recently? I think it was very personal, I think, you know, that part of it. It seems you are threatened by her and therefore a lot of these remarks make sense only in that context. Yeah, but you know the man he is like that, you know, I mean he has a reputation of, you know, speaking, throwing expletives, you know, in his conversation at the rate of, you know, at least half a dozen times a minute, you know. This is a kind of man he is, he was an alcoholic and so it's nothing very surprising in terms of his personality. It's very well known as you said in the beginning. Back to what alcoholic, it's important that Kissinger had given instructions to the military that if he issues an order for any military attack, including nuclear attack at night, it should not be acted upon without being consulted with him because he could do it because he was drunk. And in fact, it said that it did issue orders for certain attacks of the sky. It is drunk and rage at night. He was most of the time under the effect of alcohol, you know, and then in the towards the end, you know, when all that watergate and all erupted, it was uncontrollable. I mean, he was all the time hitting the bottle, you know, this is the kind of thing which we know also from, obviously, you know, Kissinger also remarked later, Kissinger never, Kissinger is a very intelligent man and, you know, his predicament was that, you know, he was dealing with a boss, you know, who was so inferior to him in intellect. So it's very difficult for a man with such high IQ to serve under a man who's an idiotic fellow. So most of the time, Kissinger's problem was that, but Praveer, seriously, one or two things strike me here. Now, I come to the part, one thing, of course, you know, we all at the beginning itself, you know, we all can agree on this, that there is much truth in also what much truth in the sense that, you know, that it is, it is possible also to understand these acerbic remarks completely unacceptable to an Indian, but acerbic remarks from a different perspective, because you cannot deny the fact that this is also their understanding of the Indian bourgeoisie, you know, really. You see, despite the fact that the Americans were never really interested in building up India, and this whole approach to India that you are so long as you are in the non-aligned country, you are on adversary, we are on adversarial terms with you, you are not part of us, you know, you are either with us or against us, that dogma was even at that time there. But despite this, I think it's even going back to Pandit Nawru's time, the Indian establishment always behaved in a sort of craven way, you know, for acceptance by the Americans, recognition by the Americans. And having been a diplomat who served in the Soviet Union, I can tell you this, that I really wonder many times, you know, whether the Indian bourgeoisie was never really, was ever really interested in a friendly co-operative strategic partnership with the Soviet Union, you know. So it was in my judgment, looking back, I can tell you my judgment after reflecting over it for a long time and deeply and knowing a lot of other details which I cannot divulge, I think it was by force of circumstances. And the credit must be given to the Americans that they could fathom this, you know, and therefore they could deal with India as they like. Like even in the case of, you know, non-alignment, Nihru speaks about then, but the fact remains that, you know, in the second half of the 1950s, we had a tie-up with the CIA in regard of Tibet, you know. That's public knowledge now. Yeah, which finally does help the insurrection in Tibet, which was financed and supported by the CIA. Good job, thank you. Well, shall I tell you something, you know, which I don't think you are aware of just because this is still, you know, not very much in the public domain, but, you know, documents have come out, it's been written about. One of the first cables that the American ambassador in Delhi filed to Washington after India became a republic, you know, after the British left and, you know, we are on our own, you know, in 1950. The cable by the American ambassador was, in fact, proposing to the United States, to Washington, to the administration that he saw this great scope after talking to Indian leadership, and he had very free access, that he saw great scope for India and United States, for United States working with India and making use of India's health to destabilize China. And you refer to Tibet, you know, and now this is actually this thing which is in my custody, personal custody in my archives, is in fact, you know, mostly copiously quoting from American sources, you know, from cable traffic and so on between the embassy. So you see, this is what you have mentioned about this Dalai Lama's flight and all that is a culmination of it, you know. And we know very well that this is one template which severely damaged the mutual trust between China and India. This is Mahoba's time we are talking about. So you see the American, we have to see this Nixon remarks in the totality of things in terms of, you know, after all, he was the president of the United States, and he has a complete access to the archival memory about the Indian leadership and Indira Gandhi was not new to them. They knew her, they knew her father and when her father made, you know, his historic visit to the United States, she was actually going with him as, you know, the hostess, you know, so they knew the person very well. So when they visit like this took place, when they visit like this takes place like Indira Gandhi's visit to the White House, naturally the president is very well briefed on it, on the character of the person on her bio profile and on Indian, as Indians as such and, you know, they are our peculiarities and national characteristics and all that. So all foreign offices do this. So we cannot be, because he made, you know, certain type of cheap remarks like this on sex and Indian women and all that, their reproductive capacity and all that, you know, we tend to look at it and, you know, take up a different strand on this. This remark is very similar to for instance what Churchill says about India. Indians breathe too much. How did they become 500 million is what Nixon is supposed to have said. But forget all of that. But let me also talk to you about something else that there has been something which we have not seem to have understood about the United States that there is a deep streak of white supremacist or racial superiority with which it also foreign policies in view. And it's a part of the larger colonial enterprise with which it is itself after the Second World War, supporting the ex-colonial powers. There are still colonial powers. In fact, the French in the China, you have the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Portuguese, of course, in India as well. And the Spaniards and Portuguese in Africa, the French, we have already discussed, Dutch in Indonesia. And therefore, non-alignment was also an anti-imperialist, at least decolonization project. While they played footsie with the Americans, the Indian establishment did that as you were recounting. But also there was a larger issue that there was a decolonization process and India did take a position using non-alignment in order to support decolonization in different parts of the world, which is what actually sets it in the American policies. Portugal and Goa is of course the classic example, but the Adelaide Stevenson, the liberal American candidate at one point for US Presidentship. He actually presses for the Security Council Resolution, say doesn't mention about colonialism or colonial possessions at all. Saying Portugal and India have to negotiate under the United Secure Nations Council's guidelines. And they cannot decolonize Portugal, but decolonize Portuguese colonies by force. So there is also that history where India does come in or India's international policies come into conflict with how the US wanted it to be played. Without rejecting what you said, let me just sidestep it, that if we purely look at it through that prism, it becomes problematic for us when we recollect that Stalin was much more in a condemnatory tone about the Indian leadership of the time of independence. Let's not forget that. He, of course they were very much aware of the fact of this national liberation movements taking place all over the world. And quintessentially freedom struggle was about evicting the Imperial Britain from this, not only our country, but eventually as it happened from this whole part of the world and subsequent to which the decline of Britain even began. But as I told you, I'm not disowning what you said, but let us face it that sometimes when we look at the mirror, it becomes difficult for us because the image we see there is not the image that we like and what we think of ourselves, what you would like others to think of us. And I looked at it from that point of view, that can you overlook the fact that when Kashmir issue was taken to the United Nations and so on, we never sought Soviet Union's help. All those resolutions which are passed etc, we really didn't take Soviet help. And that was a personal initiative by the then ambassador, Sarvabali Radhakrishnan, who had an arrangement to serve in Moscow for six months and then teach in Oxford for the remaining six months and Nehru agreed with that arrangement. And he used to visit Moscow for his assignment once in a way. And at that time in one of his meetings with Bishniewski, Stalin's famous foreign minister, Radhakrishnan was a subject. And when Bishniewski spoke about the warm feelings towards the Indian people and all that, he was a subject. And then Radhakrishnan said, if you have such warm sentiments, why he said that you don't support us in the Security Council on these resolutions? Don't you see that this Anglo-American conspiracy against us and so on and so forth. And then Bishniewski just looked at him straight and he said, the answer is simple, you never ask for it. And then Radhakrishnan said, I am asking you for this. So he again looked at him and said that, are you sure about this? So he said yes. And then he reported to Stalin and the first Soviet people followed. So you see, there is a whole history. Which year was this? Radhakrishnan's time there, 1950, something like that. And now the point is what I am trying to say is that there was never a time when Americans were suffering from a loss of influence in Delhi. Even amongst, Indira Gandhi's crowd, there were people who were unambiguously pro-American. And if at that time there was anything like Quad, of today's Quadrilateral Alliance, and an offer was made like that, I am sure that a fair chunk of the Indian establishment at that time would have also jumped into that bandwagon. That is the point I was coming to. There are always been a strong element of... You are speaking about it as a man of strong convictions about the flow of history. And in terms of the historical forces that are at work and where India stands in that stream, I told you that I am not rejecting it. It is quite valid. But when we analyze this particular piece of journalism which came in the New York Times, we cannot be oblivious of the fact that we have presented ourselves in a certain way, in these important western capitals, after our independence. And we don't like it, what they are talking about us. Kissing is a remark, for instance. He was not an alcoholic. And he is a very rational man. He is a very intelligent man. And you see what he has said there? He has said about Indian character. And he said, you know, that this is how they survived through this period of Mughal rule and British rule. How? By, you know, sucking up. That's a word he said. It is a very strong expression. Sucking up to more superior forces. This is the flow of Indian history and Indian civilization. And about the national character of the Indian elites. That intelligent, erudite minds in the western world have come to understand in this way. We are saddled with that impression. And I don't think it has substantially changed even now. Now look for example, Trump has lots of adversaries in the world. Has he insulted any adversary like this? Like he has insulted our prime minister. I'm not trying to, you know, impute any motives there. But you know, all these things, you know, whether it is about a party... The thing is, that they take it for granted, even if... They take it for granted and then... Yes, they know that we still go back. And that, you know, that they don't... We don't mind if we are being treated as a doormat. You know, this has been... This has been all along, you know, there's a certain behavioral pattern here. That's what I'm trying to say. Well, you're saying that a section of the Indian elite, or at least in the foreign policy establishment, Indian government, as well as we know in the Indian security establishment has been through Americans right from the beginning. And that, these are the forces who today are actually becoming more powerful. Is there any doubt about it? You know, the Americans, we know very well. The Americans had sources right within the Indian cabinet, all along. Isn't it? Many a time, many a name surfaced. And even today, for example, objectively speaking, you see this, that, you know, that I wrote a couple of days ago about this matter. That they're all rooting for this Quad, Quadrilateral Alliance. And India to chair a meeting, ministerial meeting in Delhi, has there been any national debate over this subject? You know, this is a very profound turning point for Indian foreign policy and diplomacy. Now, is there anything like that? And that too, when we get to know from the Americans, that this is already being discussed like this, and this is going to be this fall. This fall means what? At a time when the American administration is in transition. How do these people know that, you know, that this is going to be, you know, the prioritization of the American foreign policy is going to be on these lines that we conjecture today? There are no certainty. So why do we do this? And then again, we know very well that this Quad has no takers in our region, other than the United States' Anglo-Saxon outpost Australia and Japan. And what about the, what about the nations? Australia is a complete outsider anyway. What about the natives? The natives of the region, if you look at them, nobody has accepted, nobody has shown interest, ASEAN has cold-shouldered this. No, why does this happen? Without a serious national debate in the country, very stealthily this takes place, because this means aligning with the Americans. And I mean, we don't have the time, otherwise, you know, we can also relate this as a factor complicating India's relationship with China. And a number of things which are going on today, which are very depressing for us, you know, patriotic Indians, you know, because the country has come to such a crisis today. And no, a number of these things are only possible to understand, because a clutch of these people still within the Indian establishment can hijack the country in this direction. But this, I don't think this began today. This has been all along the case. And then, as a rational mind, you have explained about the national liberation moments and about the historical forces at work. Similarly, historical forces are at work. And today in Ladakh, I'm 100% telling you, the Americans are not going to fight. The Chinese there for us. Nor are the Australians, nor the Japanese, nobody. We are on our own. So historical forces are at work. And finally, course correction is needed, and course correction takes place. And whether it is in 1971 or whether it is in 2020, this is what is happening in our country. So I only said this, that I do not reject. I have a serious sense of hurt when I read this news site. No, I know what you're saying. As a rational mind. But, you know, while I completely agree with what the broader point you're making, that there have been sections in the Indian establishment who wanted alliance in the United States. The sections are known. Muraj Desai was one of them open about it. There's nothing hidden in what he was positioning himself as. And the huge number of others as well. And also strong sections in the Indian bureaucracy, as I said, the security establishment. But there are, as you said, also the historical forces, which also made it possible or made it difficult for those forces to bring completely India under the US umbrella, as a lot of them wanted. Now, it would be geopolitical reasons, and also the legacy of the Indian national movement, which was a decolonizing movement. So it is, there is a solidarity between, for instance, Sokarno and his fighting the Dutch. I remember Nehru asking Biju Patnaik to go and rescue Sokarno when he was surrounded by Dutch forces. So there are also this physical acts of solidarity which takes place. So the non-aligned movement in that sense had also a certain salience in Indian policy. And it's only now that people have started saying openly there is nothing called non-alignment. It doesn't exist. And we should look at our security interests ourselves. And some total of that is to align with the United States. When the United States is not in Asia, as you said, there are no Asian takers, except for Australia. I don't know how they become in this part of the world, and Japan, and Japan is in that sense a marginal player in the larger Asian chess board. Yeah, you know, the point I want to make is this, you know that at this point in time, when you look back, the experience is not really very different from in 1971. Isn't it? You know, faced with a situation such as here today. Now here, you know, we are also putting, in fact, the Russians in a predicament. And that is because again, a clutch of people are taking India to a camp, which is very difficult for time-tested friends like Russians or Chinese or Iranians are possible to accept. We have all those countries are, you know, looking with a great sense of disappointment and hurt about, you know, this what is happening to Indian foreign policy today. But they're doing that. And the problem is, you know, they are so very cynical about it that this quad, if you look at it today, and you compare it with what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his keynote address at the Shangri-La Conference in Singapore on the 1st of June 2018. You don't know what the Indian policy is. So you see, there is even a kind of a duplicity, a double speak. So you speak one thing and then you quietly go and do something else. That is what it is coming to again. He said, quad is a complete negation of what Prime Minister Modi said in Singapore. And here, so it means that, you know, that there is something going on. We don't know whether there is no daylight possible between Prime Minister and the external affairs minister or some people are pursuing their own agenda. We don't know. But what really struck me from this report, this Nixon-Kesinger report, is this, that, you know, that this is something which is very much in evidence even at that time. And you know, either I've done this visit at that time to the White House, in fact, you know, was to get American help, you know. And when we should have known very clearly that there is no meeting point possible, that they are not going to come to our help. But we are still doing more to neutralize that they don't attack us. And in that, if you remember, this is one month before actual war broke out. And that is when Nixon really ranted and raved about how she has fooled us and so on, and then gave instructions from the Sixth Fleet to proceed towards South Asia. For whatever reasons we are not aware of, but clearly as a threat to India, that was the whole movement. This is this meeting took place a month before actual war broke out. So that was the context. And it's also interesting that Nixon thought that he had dissuaded her from a war. And his basic anger was that she had in spite of that declared the liberation war, war of two free Bangladesh, whichever way you call it. But that India and Pakistan did go to war. And let's face it, India did go to war on this issue of Bangladesh. So that was the real anger. But it's interesting what you are saying is that they expected India to fall in line. And at the moment that that was because of their history and their understanding of the Indian elite, they thought that this is something that would work as America, big brother telling them that India would not dare to do it. Just to sidestep to another piece, for example, the American intervention in Iraq. At that time, that is very difficult to speak these things publicly like this in such a way. But there is at the highest level of the Indian government, batch by government, there was a line of thinking that we should respond to the request made by the Bush administration, Rumsfeld met, in fact, then Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Adwani, that India and Indian contingent and according to our media reports, I have no western knowledge, but according to Indian media reports, Indian army was in fact instructed to get ready for an intervention there. And then from what we know, Prime Minister Bush decided that this is not going to be something which will have national acceptability as an earthy politician who knew his people very well and who prioritized that a nation, he must be able to carry the nation alone. He rejected this idea. But a very powerful section of the Indian establishment and even including our media, and there are some living people, so I don't want to mention, one of them in fact was an editor, he even wrote, and I have still got it in my archives, he wrote that if you don't send Indian forces to Iraq, indifference to the demand made by the Bush administration, wait for a catastrophic outcome in the downstream, they are going to take Kashmir away from us. Did anything of that sort happen? So you see whipping up Jingoism on one side, whipping up Paranoia on one side, because you know, these are all very subjective, impetuous movements and there is no way they can justify this, rationalize this. Now, of course it is the same thing, that you know, that how do you justify a platform that has no local standard in that region among the natives of the region, nations who live there in that region and all because the Americans want a certain type of polarization here. What do you get out of it? Who stands to gain? What does India get out of it? So you know, so interesting, South China Sea is actually, they are the sea coast of China, Philippines, Vietnam, it's not at the borders close to Japan, Australia, India, so and US of course is 9,000 miles away from that. So on what basis are we talking about a quad and supporting South China Sea, American fleet to move in over there, which is what it at the moment is. So this does show Indian, what you said earlier, that Indian vision, whether Shangri-La or a quad does not seem to have geo-strategic coherence. What is our geo-strategic vision itself doesn't seem to be there in the Modi government? Well, you know the tragedy here is this, that you know, that all this would be acceptable, you know, probably in a situation where Congress Party has undergone a change, you know, its character. So you can attribute a number of things to those Congress governments, which pursued this sort of a line. But I cannot understand or I cannot forgive a nationalist government doing this, you know. At least I would imagine that a nationalist government would look at these issues like quad and so on to just one prism. Well, let me share with you what I understood the nationalist prism in the sense of the RSS BJP now and that and Janssen prism to be, which was told to me. I was, as you know, in jail with number of their leaders. And they said that our understanding is Hindus, Christians, against Muslims and communists. This is the basis of our foreign policy. So you have it in absolute brutal terms. Hindus and Christian United States, NATO, European powers have a common interest against Muslims and communists. And extension of that is really channeled today. That's how they proceed. So there is no multiplicity in the world? Not in this prism. That's what I'm saying. So, you know, can you imagine, how can a country, this is why I said that I find it difficult to follow this, you know, this definition of nationalism. My definition of nationalism is different. My definition of nationalism is to, and I'm an incorrigible nationalist, I can tell you, but I insist on looking at anything and everything that appears in front of me on my computer in terms of India's interests. I reduce it down to that, you know. Now I would imagine that an organization like RSS, which is even propagating this ideology, which I subscribe to, you know, ostensibly believing in it. I mean, I can't understand, you know, how they can pursue such a kind of a division of the world, you know, the fact is there is a multiplicity today. And the fact is they are independent centers of power, which have appeared in the world. And the fact is that, you know, India has a lot of space today in the current international environment. If we had wanted to work on it and optimally create space for us to maneuver in terms of the benefits that we can take out of the international situation for the real, real, real agenda, which is development. Lifting hundreds of millions of Indians out of poverty. You know, this is a kind of thing. And now this is a nationalist agenda for India today. And in foreign policy, ultimately, it should be devoted to this completely. We speak about countries, you know, which are close to us, you know, with which we work very closely. Where is a country which, you know, looks at geopolitics as an esoteric pastime like this, like you said, that, you know, if it is against Muslims or if it is against communists, etc. This kind of esoteric pastimes, you know, what happens is these are yesterday's men and they get left behind. And in the process, the country misses the journey. And today what is happening is that the country is going to miss the journey. And we are going to lose something like five to 10 years of the development trajectory. Now, is this nationalism? I think these are anti-nationals, you know, who are missing out on these realities. Thank you, Ambassador Bhadrakopal for being with us and discussing the issues, not to portray it narrowly in terms of Nixon versus Mrs. Gandhi, Kissinger versus X, Y, Z, but really in terms of how we should look at the world, how we should look at national interest and how do you define it with a certain degree of understanding of the world. We'll come back to you on this and other issues. I'm sure that these things will come up time and again. This is all the time we have news click today. Do keep watching news click and do visit our website.