The World: Two Strong Women Speak

INDIA AND ISRAEL

Indira: “Difficult Stage”

Of all the women in the modern world, few have achieved the special status of Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir. As national leaders, they have proved to be as headstrong and capable of wielding power as any male President, Premier or potentate on the modern scene. Each in her own way is a superb diplomat, and has when necessary gone to war to make the point that her country will not be dominated or threatened by its neighbors. In other respects, however, they are as different as their countries. TIME’s Chief of Correspondents Murray Gart interviewed both leaders and sent this report:

Mrs. Gandhi, very much Nehru’s daughter, displays her elitist background in everything from the way she fusses with her sari to the manner of her speech. She nevertheless has shown a remarkable compassion for the wretched poor of her country. While the world watched her prosecute the war with Pakistan a year ago with great success, her mind was on the real war she is waging in India today—the war on hunger and poverty that continues to be so pervasive in her country of 550 million people. When she talks about security on the subcontinent of Asia, of India’s role in the world, her words are firm and her ideas practical, but her voice is low and displays little emotion. When she talks about improving life in her country, and about how India must become self-reliant while performing that monumental task, there is genuine passion in her voice and in her aristocratic, expressive features. During the interview, Prime Minister Gandhi expressed the hope for better relations with the U.S. and China—a bid that was publicly repeated by Foreign Minister Swaran Singh late last week.

ON INDO-AMERICAN RELATIONS: I sincerely wish they were better. There should be greater friendship. What is required is a basic understanding of India as a very complex country with so many contradictions. Whenever we do anything, the U.S. Administration has felt it was directed against them. Then there is this constant feeling—or so we are told—that we are pro-Russian. We are certainly friends. They helped us in difficult times. But we pay for whatever we get from them. The Soviet Union does not influence policy decisions in Delhi and does not try. Geography alone dictates some of our actions, of course.

ON AID: We want to do without aid, but this is misunderstood. It is not U.S. aid alone we want to do without, but all aid. We must learn to stand on our own feet.* We can’t do it 100%, but we must have the desire to do it. The giver-receiver relationship is never a happy one. We still need help, but without any strings. Trade is always better than mere credits.

ON PRESENT DIFFERENCES: The U.S. has supported Pakistan. We don’t want to isolate Pakistan, nor can we dictate with whom the U.S. should be friends. Then there was the Bangladesh situation. I don’t think the U.S. faced up to the realities [India’s crushing burden of 10 million refugees and Pakistan’s brutal but doomed suppression of East Bengal], and this didn’t help Pakistan.

ON THE U.S. AND CHINA: This is a relationship that we have been advocating. We were not unhappy when President Nixon went there. After all, we have been saying for years that whether one approved or disapproved of the Chinese government, one had to recognize the realities.

ON INDIA AND CHINA: I wouldn’t say we feel threatened. But one can never be quite sure what they are going to do. Our relations have been up and down. When I became Prime Minister there were small indications of improvement. Then came the Cultural Revolution, the attack on the Indian embassy, and there was a setback. Things were again improving, and then came Bangladesh. Now we are back to Square 1. They say that the Soviet Union and India together are attempting to encircle China. This is utter nonsense. We are not attacking anyone, and I don’t think the Soviet Union wants war with anyone. Then there is the matter of Tibet. We are said sometimes to be encouraging revolt, but we have neither the capacity nor the resources to do so. We have always recognized China’s sovereignty there.

ON INDIA AND PAKISTAN: [Relations] are not normal. We have been trying to normalize them. It is my personal belief and the conviction of the government of India that our interests are complementary. What happens in the subcontinent is important for all of Asia. We hope for an improvement. We certainly have left no stone unturned. Mr. Bhutto [President of Pakistan] told me in Simla that he was the architect of confrontation with India, but that it had got Pakistan nowhere. He admitted that there was nothing to be gained from confrontation, and so many advantages from friendship.

ON POPULATION CONTROL: Obviously we view it quite seriously. By its nature, of course, it’s a very private sort of question. It must be accompanied by education and a higher standard of living to make it work. We have had a big success in the cities but not in the villages. We had a little setback in Kerala, where there is a large number of Catholics, when the Pope made his [birth control] statement, which was unhelpful.

ON ECONOMIC PROGRESS: I think we are going ahead quite fast. Now had we been going nowhere, could we have managed to take care of 10 million [Bengali] refugees—feed them, house them? When a country is so large, you also have large problems. This year is an especially bad year. It would have been anyway as a result of the war and its aftereffects. There was the need to reconstruct the economy of eastern India [where the refugees fled]. On top of all this, we have had a severe drought over two-thirds of the country. We have had sufficient food grains, but the real difficulty is drinking water. In Maharashtra we are trying to use all means, including petrol tankers, to take water to the villages, but there are not enough of them to do the job. Because of the war and world conditions, we have this problem of inflation and that of the uneducated unemployed. Our progress, however, has got its own momentum and nothing can stop it. People here are highly politically conscious. They are not interested in the rate of growth but in something now. When there is great misery there is apathy. But when things begin to happen [the gross national product has more than doubled in the past decade], expectations rise. If you do not satisfy these expectations, then there is trouble. There is more impatience and more frustration all at the same time. We are at a very difficult stage and we just have to go through it. Yet there is a far greater feeling of self-confidence.

Golda: A Stong Israel

In contrast with Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir is much more earthy and direct, a woman who quite happily displays her humble Milwaukee background. When she talks about her Arab neighbors, she bluntly takes the same hard line that she and her negotiators have generally displayed toward a possible Mideast settlement. When she insists on her willingness to negotiate a durable peace with her neighbors, on her terms, she speaks without much emotion. But when the subject is her retirement—and the subject is Topic A, B and C among the lesser men who hope to succeed her—she sounds very much like a weary Jewish grandmother of 74 who fervently hopes at long last for a little private time of her own.

ON ISRAELI-ARAB RELATIONS: One of the legends that has arisen is that Israel is obstinate and very inflexible. The facts prove the opposite, right down the line. History has proved that every time a plan for peace has been offered, we have accepted it. We accepted the partition of Palestine [November 1947], even though it included the internationalization of Jerusalem. When we signed the armistice agreements [in 1948], we accepted their provisions. Maybe we were wrong after the 1967 war. Maybe we should have told the Arabs, “You had the armistice lines, you did not want them. In May 1967 you went out to destroy them. Now the cease-fire lines are the new borders.” But we said instead, “Let’s sit down and negotiate for secure and agreed borders.”

ON NEGOTIATIONS: We can come to an agreement with our Arab neighbors if the principle is accepted that the 1967 borders will not be restored. We are ready to negotiate like grownup, serious people. We won’t do anything to put [Egypt’s President Anwar] Sadat out of power.

ON THE SUEZ CANAL: Sadat can open the canal any time of day or night. But Israel cannot accept Sadat’s demands for returning to the 1967 borders as a precondition. When Sadat in February 1971 suggested a Suez Canal agreement we immediately agreed to negotiate the partial Suez agreement. Israel is prepared to pull back a bit to a certain line which naturally will not be the final line. The final borders will be negotiated. We, of course, are not prepared to accept any of Sadat’s preconditions, as for instance a commitment that we will return to the 1967 border or that we should agree to have his army cross the canal.

ON EGYPT’S LEADER: President Sadat expects things to be solved for him by others. He thought that once he sent out the Russians, the Americans would squeeze Israel. Sadat is always depending on someone else to solve the problem for him. Anything can happen. He may even try renewing the war even though he knows he cannot win it. Either he can try to defeat us in a war or he should have the courage to say to his people, “This is it. They [the Israelis] are here, we have to live with them.” He does not have the courage for the second and he is not capable of the first. The result is frustration and confusion.

ON JORDAN’S KING HUSSEIN: Hussein must, like Willy Brandt, although Brandt personally had no part in it, accept the fact that those responsible for making war against people must accept the consequences. For this Brandt received the Nobel Prize.

ON PEACE FORMULAS: The Rogers plan [for an Israeli pullback from the Suez Canal] has been put out of the way, and if it is not revived that will be all right. We asked [the U.S.] not to force us and they did not do it. We have not felt any pressure; there is no sign of it. One of the most important things the U.S. has done is to keep this area out of a shooting war. President Nixon has accepted the principle that the best guarantee for no shooting is to have Israel strong enough so that our neighbors will hesitate to start shooting. The best guarantee for peace in the area is a strong Israel. I don’t know when we’ll have peace. To my sorrow it does not depend on us.

ON HER PLANS TO RETIRE NEXT AUTUMN: Enough is enough. I owe it to myself. I want another few years to live as a normal human being. The difficulty is that there are so many good people fit for the post; the problem is whom to choose [as a successor]. But I am determined.

*For fiscal 1973, U.S. aid is set at $50.5 million, most of it food. Russian and European aid for 1973 is $22.5 million.