That part of the BJP you refer to were just hoping for the US to drop support of Pakistan.
India is no ally of the US, never has been. It's never been an ally of the Soviets either. (Funnily, I've encountered that opinions quite a few times coming from the US, though never from anywhere else.)
I remember reading a text by -was it Nehru?- from about 1947 on the question of Socialism and Capitalism, as economic concepts rather than as power blocs, and he basically said India needed every rope and would try both at the same time. Which is pretty much what they did.
Well, America tried to be nice to both sides after their independence, but India had a snit and so Pakistan reaped the benefits for decades...but given recent years I can see why the BJP thought they had a shot (and a good one at that after 9/11!).
First part, true enough - we almost made up enough in the past few years, but not quite. As for the U.S. viewpoint: even a highly pro-India source like P.M. Rosenthal (who, several years back, wrote a column for the New York Times) said that Nehru's first Foreign Minister (or the appropriate position) was highly anti-U.S., which influenced India's policies. Remember, the Congress Party
opposed helping the Allies in WWII (something they
should bear as a mark of shame, but don't), and I doubt that was forgotten on either side. Nehru's "nonalignment" movement was really the "anti-Western" movement...I mean, Communist China and Communist Cuba as members? Get real! And borderline-Communist and pro-Soviet Indonesia (under Sukarno, not Suharto) was also a member.
In any event, the "nonaligned" movement was rather anti-U.S. and anti-Western, even after China stabbed Nehru in the back in 1959. This lasted until Indira arrived, and things got more hostile after the 1967 India-Pakistani War, when India decided to sign a de facto alliance with the Soviet Union (to counterbalance China's support of Pakistan, in part, but also due to ideological affinity) and became even more hostile toward the U.S. Then after the bloodbath of the 1971 Civil War-War of Independence-3rd India-Pakistan War, things remained very cool well into the 1990's. Now, although Nixon did some dumb things in 1971 (yeah, that aircraft carrier he sent into the Bay of Bengal really impressed the Indians
), the viewpoint goes beyond that. How often, Lewis, has India
ever backed the U.S., especially during the Cold War? Who did they side with in their voting patterns? Somehow I doubt it was with the U.S.
And while Nehru didn't go communist (I think you need capital
to nationalize to do that) he certainly created the huge, sprawling, parasitic bureaucracy that is such a drain on India - and this is coming from someone who is not a laissez-faire capitalist! He didn't do much to encourage capitalism...no one did, until the 1990's, but you covered that in other posts.
