Of Nehru’s Foreign Policy

A tul Bhardwaj in his article “Modi’s Multi-alignment and Nehru’s Non-alignment” (EPW, 25 January 2020) makes an interesting argument about the similarities between the foreign policy of the present Prime Minister and that of the first Prime Minister of the country.

The article makes two statements: First, that Asaf Ali’s appointment as the first ambassador of India to the United States was probably a reward for the services he rendered to the British during World War II. It would be interesting to note that Asaf Ali spent the bulk of the war in Ahmednagar Fort as a prisoner of the British. Jawaharlal Nehru and other Congress leaders were his fellow prisoners. One wonders, then, what was the nature of the services that were rendered to the British?