From Nehru Creed to Indira Doctrine

The late Jyotindra Nath ('J N') Dixit belonged to the old guard of South Block bureaucrats who could chide their political masters without appearing to be discourteous. He is reported to have once asked Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, "How come, sir, Nehru was foreign minister for 17 years and still there was no Nehru Doctrine? You were prime minister for 13 months and there was a Gujral Doctrine." Gujral could not have missed the malice in the question; Dixit's sympathies for the Nehru-Gandhi family were, after all, quite well known. He probably wanted to ridicule Indira Gandhi's meek ambassador in Moscow, who emphasised non-reciprocity in India's relationship with neighbouring countries once he became prime minister. Dixit had served in Islamabad and Colombo, and was considered a foreign-policy hawk of the 'establishment' in New Delhi. There could be no other reason behind his seeming ignorance of the Nehru Creed of Indian foreign policy – an intentional slight to Gujral is the only explanation.

The more than five decades that father Jawaharlal Nehru and then daughter Indira governed India were pivotal in defining India's relationship with its smaller neighbours, in some cases even reshaping the political boundaries of the Subcontinent. M P Koirala's memoir, A Role in Revolution, and A C Sinha's analysis, Sikkim: Feudal and democratic, though unrelated in and of themselves, link the divergence and continuity between India's neighbourhood policy in these two eras. That drawing this connection is not the goal of either book only serves to highlight how greatly the policies of these two leaders impacted the region at that time, and continue to do so today.