Foreign Relations: The Nehru Visit

By Kennedy standards of hospitality, the program planned for Jawaharlal Nehru’s official U.S. visit this week is as austere as vegetable curry. Wryly mindful of the pomp and circumstance unlimbered for his old foe, Pakistan’s Ayub Khan, India’s Prime Minister expressly requested Washington to forgo “medieval splendor.” From a private luncheon with President Kennedy at Newport to an address before the U.N. General Assembly, from Broadway’s Camelot to California’s Disneyland, Nehru’s crowded schedule barely left him time to change the perennial red rose on his achkan tunic.

Nehru, who last visited Washington in 1956, complained only a few years ago that he was “flat and stale.” But Nehru who will be 72 next week, has lately radiated energy and good health. His ivory-tower idealism has also been pierced by a new sense of realism in world affairs. Russia’s violence and Red China’s aggressions have left him no illusions about Communism’s world ambitions. Thanks largely to able U.S. ambassadors, including Kennedy-appointed John Kenneth (Affluent Society) Galbraith, Nehru has gained new understanding of U.S. aims. Says he: “As far as we are concerned, there are no problems between India and the U.S.”

Turning the Corner. Never has U.S. prestige stood higher in Nehru’s country. With massive Western aid, nearly $4 billion of it in U.S. loans and gifts, India since 1951 has gone far along the road to becoming a stable, economically viable democracy. Its faith in continued U.S. assistance has been confirmed by commitments of $1 billion for the first two years of India’s third five-year plan; with its completion in 1966, Indians hope they will have turned the corner, in Nehru’s words, “from an underdeveloped to a self-developing nation.”

India is still capable of some strangely irrational attitudes, notably in the U.N., where Nehru’s delegates still urge an immediate, uninspected, unenforceable nuclear test ban. Defense Minister V. K. Krishna Menon argues that Khrushchev was forced into the new Russian bomb tests by the U.S., an attitude that U.S. Delegate Arthur H. Dean acidly describes as pro-Soviet neutralism. In view of Menon’s rantings, the U.S. particularly wants to explain to Nehru the military realities in Laos and South Viet Nam.

While loyal to Menon—who is not accompanying him on the trip—Nehru is plainly troubled by U.S. criticism. He even had a lavish—for Nehru—compliment for his hosts: “The U.S. has done much to advance human civilization. It has something much more than materialism. It has spiritualism and idealism and many things in common with India.”