132. Telegram From the Embassy in India to the Department of State1
5007. Department pass White House and Attorney General. Circular telegrams 2176 and 2177.2
We are today in receipt of refcircrtels on Civil Rights Legislation and the race problems in the U.S., including the President’s special message and accompanying guidance.3 Since India is often especially in mind in these communications, it occurs to me that you will wish a special comment on the position here. I sense, also, that it is needed.
Were it necessary as the Department suggests to move on the GOI and the various channels of public opinion at this time in order to seek understanding of the race problem in the U.S., we would be in a bad way. And such crash effort would be wholly devoid of conviction. There is at least a chance that it would arouse the suspicion that we were leading from a bad conscience and with some desire to conceal [Page 342] unpleasant truth. At most we would succeed in persuading a few captive journalists and foreign office functionaries whose influence in any case is inconsequential.
In fact the problem of race relations in the U.S. has been a continuing theme of the USIS and the Embassy for the last two years. We have consistently emphasized: (A) that the situation is imperfect; (B) that the administration and the courts are moving as rapidly as our institutions and their built-in rigidities on human attitudes allow; (C) that we are doing so partly out of idealism but partly because the administration presently in power in the U.S. owes both its present position and its hope for re-election to its Negro supporters. I might also add, not without some passing pleasure, that I have attributed our position on colonialism to the same hard political circumstances. Support of white colonialism in Africa would be quite inconsistent with the reliance on the support of ex-colonial people in the U.S. (I might further note with all tact that this line of argument brought a sharp rebuke from the Portuguese Government and a request from Washington that it not be again employed).
Against the foregoing background and with the help of the rather more important fact that the fundamental sincerity of the Kennedy administration is not questioned, our position in India is excellent on the subject of race relations. Not even Blitz, Link or Communist New Age4 seriously flog us for the mistreatment of the Negroes. In the last twelve months, although I am not conscious of having avoided personal public exposure, I have not once been taken to task in any press conference, student audience or other forum with our shortcomings on this issue. In the last few months there have been occasional editorials suggesting that the administration is not pressing rapidly enough on civil rights legislation. But these have been well reasoned and at this particular juncture the administration might itself concede the justice of the argument.
Our comparatively good position here has another cause. South and central Africa where there are large numbers of Indians in subordinate positions, together with Angola and Mozambique which are much closer, all act as lightning rods. Racially aroused editors, writers and other public opinion leaders are impelled to attack these countries first. This is why much more than parenthetically it is important for us to be completely clear in our record on Portuguese colonialism and on South African and Rhodesian white supremacy in Africa. Ambiguity here would have made us seriously suspect. However because of my courtly good manners I do not press this lesson.
[Page 343]As long as it is genuinely evident that the administration is doing its best we need not worry about our public posture on this problem at least in India. I have repeatedly pointed out that were nothing happening in the U.S.—were there complete tranquility on the racial front—it would mean that the Negroes were accepting a subordinate place and the white supremacy was secure. That would be the worst situation. The price of progress is a measure of civil disturbance. In a once caste-ridden country such as India this can be understood.
I note that further guidance on this subject will be forthcoming. It is unnecessary.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Box 295A, Civil Rights 6/19/63–7/9/63. Confidential. Received in the Department of State at 7:44 p.m. Passed to the White House on June 21 at 5:50 a.m.↩
- See Document 131 and footnote 4 thereto.↩
- See footnotes 3 and 5, Document 131.↩
- These are three leftist Indian newspapers.↩