NEW DELHI, April 13. /TASS/. Relations between New Delhi and Moscow from the very beginning were determined by India’s totally unbiased attitude to Russia, in contrast to that of the West, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, Nandan Unnikrishnan, told TASS in an interview on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
India and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations on April 13, 1947, four months before India gained independence from Great Britain, which was officially proclaimed on August 15, 1947. Unnikrishnan recalled that two decades before that, in 1927, one of the leaders of India’s national liberation movement, Jawaharlal Nehru, who would later became the first prime minister of independent India (1947-1964), paid a visit to the Soviet Union.
"At that time, for the leaders of our liberation movement the Soviet Union was not a totally unfamiliar country. Nehru had already been to the Soviet Union and he liked many things he saw there. Our leaders were well aware that the October Revolution of 1917 had served as a trigger that caused colonialism to collapse. In a word, India, unlike the West, felt no bias against the Communist country. On the contrary, there was a rather friendly attitude," the source said.
In his opinion, that benevolent attitude determined the nature of bilateral relations for many years to come. The Soviet Union built metallurgical plants in India and helped it develop the national industry in other ways. Indian goods, in particular, tea boxes with the still very familiar elephant logo, took a worthy place on the shelves of Soviet food stores. The Soviet Union also played an important role in training specialists so much needed for the development of the Indian economy.
"India in the 1960s was an agrarian society. Even light industry enterprises were few. The Soviet Union helped create heavy industries and mechanical engineering. It also helped train personnel - thousands of Indian students received instruction in the Soviet Union: engineers, physicists, power engineers, aircraft industry specialists and others. The Soviet Union played an important role in this respect. Now many people tend to forget this," Unnikrishnan said.
Moscow in the 1950s realized that India was becoming a leading country in South Asia, he went on to say, and began to actively develop relations with it. "Moscow’s rifts in relations with China played a role. India’s relations with that country worsened, too. In the 1960s, military ties were established and the deliveries of the legendary MiG-21 fighter began. In 1971, an agreement on friendship and cooperation was signed between the Soviet Union and India," Unnikrishnan recalled. "Our countries then reached a level of trust that rarely exists between two states," he said.
After the collapse of the USSR
At the same time, Unnikrishnan believes that, today's relations between Russia and India cannot be compared with those in the Soviet era.
"Today’s India is not what it was before 1991. And Russia is not the Soviet Union at all. Of course, our relations will differ significantly. Here is just one example: in 1991, the Soviet Union was India's largest trading partner. Our annual trade now is about $12 billion, while trade with the United States stands at $150 billion, and with China, $100 billion," Unnikrishnan said.
He stressed, though, that Russian-Indian trade turnover was gradually growing. Moscow and New Delhi maintain close partnerships in a number of areas: military-technical cooperation, space, nuclear technology and the construction of nuclear power plants.
"It is crucial that India and Russia maintain good political ties. Amid the volatile world environment India and Russia will need each other, if in the modern conditions they succeed to find ways of fitting with each other’s economic agenda," Unnikrishnan said. He noted that Moscow might help New Delhi develop a national military-industrial complex. India has vast experience in creating and developing small and medium businesses and could cooperate with Russia in this area.
"The main thing is that the parties are looking for ways of developing relations, because they do not want to lose the political and economic ties that they have built over 75 years," Unnikrishnan emphasized.