- India's 1962 war with China was a failure of China policy, not non-alignment policy, the ex-diplomat said
- India received extensive global support during the 1962 conflict, including from the US, Menon said.
- Menon further added that China's reputation in the third world was severely damaged after the 1962 war
The 1962 war with China was not a failure of the non-alignment policy but that of China policy and this can be gauged by the amount of support India received from across the world, irrespective of ideologies, according to former diplomat Shivshankar Menon.
He said this while speaking at the launch of Swapna Kona Nayudu's book "The Nehru Year: An International History of Non-Alignment" Friday evening.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was created and founded during the collapse of the colonial system and the independence struggles of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions of the world and at the height of the Cold War.
Menon said that India received support from a whole host of countries, including the US.
"In 1962, look at how much support we got across the world. And what it did to China's reputation in the third world was quite devastating. So I don't think it was a failure of non-alignment policy, it was a failure of China policy," Menon said.
"People take stands based on their interests. India got support from across the world. Some of it was ideological, from the US and so on. Whatever the reason, but you did get support across the world from a whole host of countries," he added.
The former Indian ambassador to China noted that the success or failure of a policy "should be judged by the outcome, not what others say about it".
"So I think we need to be a little careful in how we judge these things. And we shouldn't judge the success or failure of a policy by what other people are saying, or whether they are saying what we are saying. Ultimately it's the outcome that matters. You should measure what happens on the ground, what results were actually achieved," he added.
The book, published by Juggernaut, traces the origin of non-alignment and its relevance in India's foreign policy since Jawaharlal Nehru's conceptualisation of it at the height of the Cold War.
Nayudu explores Indian diplomatic influence in four major international events: the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, and the Congo Crisis.
Former ambassador Shyam Saran noted that the system Nehru had put in place emphasised "India has to stand for something more than itself".
"Nehru and the system that he put in place always emphasised India has to stand for something more than itself. That there is a certain larger space that needs to be occupied and when we talk about the UN, when we talk about international cooperation, or working together for different causes, what is very important is the spirit of international solidarity," Saran said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
