what was nehrus view about non alignment
Answers
Well, he was the architect of NAM. One can question many of his supposed qualities, but cannot deny that he was a keen and bright student of history and International Relations. One can judge even by his early letters how much of an attention he invested in studying international affairs. When freedom seemed not too far, he had already begun articulating and putting in place a foreign policy for independent India.
What pushed Nehru to non-alignment? The brief answer is his distrust of both the Americans and the Soviets (more so of the Americans). This insured that he viewed their maneuvers—and there were maneuvers—with caution.
Keeping such views in mind, it is not surprising that Nehru chose a middle course—creating a separate bloc where newly independent countries (or heretical ones — Yugoslavia) disillusioned with—or simply alert by— neo-imperialism could convert their individual insecurity to collective security.
Nehru’s personality also added the moral dimension that led to a foreign policy that was stridently anti-colonial and pro-independence. In cases like Indonesia, Nehru was ready to stick his head out and help the country to overthrow the burden of Dutch colonialism.
However, Critics like B. Zachariah have commented that even though “Nehru’s India now had an independent international standing of its own, and Nehru was highly regarded as a world statesman of principle and talent…in time, it would create some resentment among newly-emergent independent ‘nations’ who felt that Nehru was claiming a dominant role wholly unwarranted by the mere fact that India was the earliest country to achieve independence from colonial rule.”
To conclude, one can say that in the world struck between the materialism of the cold war ideologies, Nehru brought in the possibility of a humanitarian outlook. Realizing the Korean soldiers’ dilemma in 1953: that they’d be tortured if they chose to stay back in the enemy’s territory, and might be treated as traitors and capitulators if repatriated to their motherland after the war, Korean Prisoners of War were given a 3rd destination to settle in: India