Does anyone know whether there was any inclination that if India got independent then there was a chance of her going towards Russia and may be becoming a communistic country? Therefore America tried to intervene and did best to keep India and Russia relationship at a distance. Was this a truth or a myth? Can anyone help me with this please. Thanks Esther

Esther, You ask <Does anyone know whether there was any inclination that if India got independent then there was a chance of her going towards Russia and may be becoming a communistic country? Therefore America tried to intervene and did best to keep India and Russia relationship at a distance. Was this a truth or a myth? Can anyone help me with this please. > Whole books can be written to answer this question. I shall attempt to do so in this short mail. After independence, India had many economic problems such as food shortages, poor agriculture and industrial infrastructure, poor capital formation, wide-spread poverty and unemployment etc. I am sure given half a chance, the Americans would have come in with their dollars and wrecked the already weak economy with their ill-thought-out solutions as they did all over South America and would have converted India in no time into an Asian Banana republic. I think we were blessed that we had wise leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru who kept India out of a too close an embrace with the USA. You only have to look at the ghosts created by USA-Pakistan collaboration to realize how fortunate India was not to go into the American camp, which several short-sighted people in India advocated in those days. The non-aligned movement that he led along with Nasser and Tito kept India out of the cold war and allowed India to concentrate on its basic problems. It was the Soviet Union in those days that extended a helping hand and helped create the industrial infrastructure for India. The USA was always jealous of this relationship but I do not think it was in their power "to keep India and Russia relationship at a distance" as you put it. India, with its underlying base of Indian philosophy, is by nature, thinking and its diverse population, a pluralistic and liberal country and would never become a totalitarian communist state. The Soviet leadership also understood this and their own limitations and did not make any over attempts to support a Communist insurgency as they did in several other places around the Globe. India's left-leaning stand in international affairs was too precious an asset for them to throw away! The intervention by the State into several walks, while beneficial in the early days, had become an obstacle to progress by the early 80's. It took India a while to realize this but now the process of liberalization is well on its way and, if guided properly, will lead to greater prosperity for all Indians. It is too early to say whether the liberalization is leading India towards this goal or away from it. Arvind Kolhatkar, Toronto, March 12, 2008.