India's participation in the NAM Summit:

Indian bourgeoisie's game plan

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a pointed statement by participating in the Summit of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) held in Havana, Cuba, while choosing not to attend the UN General Assembly Session held around the same time which was attended by various world leaders including the US President George Bush.

The NAM Summit represented a large grouping of countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America in particular. Manmohan Singh chose to attend the Summit at a time when his government has come under increasing criticism both at home and abroad for its “strategic alliance” with US imperialism, and for siding with US imperialism in various world forums, such as its support to US pressure on Iran over Iran's nuclear energy program. By showing that it attaches importance to the NAM, the Indian government was trying to preserve its ties with and its pretensions to leadership of this vast group of countries, and to show that it has a foreign policy not subservient to US imperialism.

However, within the NAM Summit, the Indian government chose to play a role that was in clear contrast to the mounting opposition within this forum to the aggressive, fascist and warmongering drive of US imperialism. Within the NAM Summit, the governments of many countries, notably from Latin America and the Organistion of Islamic States, and also from Africa, came out in a more or less forceful manner in opposition to the US imperialists' offensive. But Manmohan Singh uttered not a word in this direction. Instead, he made the centrepiece of his speech the “war against terrorism”, which is the main plank being used by US imperialism in every international forum, from the UN General Assembly to world and regional trade bodies, to spread its venom, to demonize nations and peoples, and to derail any meaningful debate on issues facing the world's people.

Manmohan Singh elaborated that India's effort in NAM would be to propound a “third” road, which would be different from both the sharp criticism of US unilateralism voiced by countries like Cuba and Venezuela, and also from those countries that focused on the need for a more equitable international economic order. India, he said, would "seek to address the issues of religious and ethnic conflict, the growing divide between the West and the Islamic world, terrorism and its underlying factors."

The Indian position at the NAM Summit reflected the overriding ambition of the Indian bourgeoisie to become a first rank imperialist power sitting on the same high table with the US and other big imperialist powers, while at the same time maintaining that it has an "independent" policy governed by its own “national” (read imperialist) interests. The Indian participation in the NAM Summit was meant to send out a dual message. One was that US imperialism should not worry that India would strengthen the hands of the anti-imperialist forces; on the contrary it would do its best to weaken them. The other was that India would continue to try and build relations with emerging powers in Asia, Latin America and Africa to advance its own geo-strategic interests, and that the US should not take India for granted on this score.

This approach adopted by the Indian bourgeoisie was in fact consistent with its stands ever since it came to power in 1947. During the Cold War Period, India played a role in NAM and international affairs dictated solely by its own imperialist concerns. It never took clear stands opposed to US imperialism or Soviet social-imperialism, but instead tried to utilise the contention between the two superpowers to advance its own strategic aims. As for the countries and peoples fighting to defend their sovereignty from the assault of imperialism, they have never found in India a reliable ally. On the contrary, the Indian state has tried to use its influence to sabotage the development of a genuinely anti-imperialist forum of fighting peoples. Its effort has been to try and reconcile the positions of the anti-imperialist forces within NAM with those of the aggressors, and to use its position in the forum to advance its own imperialist aims.