7 - Goh's Folly to Goh's Glory with Tata

Summary

Indira Gandhi was not at the airport when the Lees landed in Delhi in 1970; she was in the Lok Sabha moving a bill to strip 500 Indian princes of their privileges. This genuflection at the altar of socialism marked the start of a momentous decade during which India cut Pakistan down to size, liberated Bangladesh, invited American sanctions that are in place to this day by exploding her first nuclear bomb, and provoked further recrimination from China by annexing the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim. Banks and coal mines were nationalized and a ceiling clamped on how much town land an Indian could own. At the same time, a pioneering Tata venture set Singapore's industrial ball rolling.

Those years also saw the only serious political disagreement between the two countries. Lee viewed Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia as expansionism by the Soviet Union with which India signed a twenty-year peace and friendship treaty in August 1971. Pranab Mukherjee claims that the treaty pre-empted an American strike from Diego Garcia during the Bangladesh war; but it also gave rise to so many misgivings abroad that Swaran Singh felt obliged hastily to break journey in Singapore and assure Lee at a brief late evening meeting after the National Day rally that the treaty did not provide for Soviet troops. The two men had met last in January 1971 when Swaran Singh led India's delegation to the Singapore Commonwealth Summit and Lee asked Bhatia if the Sikh wore an ice cap under his turban—he was always so cool and composed!

Despite Cambodia, Lee's personal relations with Indira Gandhi remained quixotically cordial. Feeling that Morarji Desai and Charan Singh treated her badly during her months out of power, he even justified her Soviet links in terms of national interests, which were ‘the most reliable guide for the actions and policies of governments’. Jha would have been delighted to hear him argue in the second Blausten Lecture that while the Soviet Union's standing in India had never been higher, ‘it does not follow that, because the Russians have given considerable economic and military aid to India, therefore India will necessarily be in bond.’ Jha himself assured Kissinger that ‘India was not going to be anybody's diplomatic satellite.’