Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume VI

845.002/10–1949

Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Joseph S. Sparks, Adviser to the United States Delegation at the United Nations

top secret

[New York,] October 19, 1949.

Participants:	Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian Delegation Sir Girja Bajpai, Secretary-General of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs
	Ambassador Warren R. Austin, United States Delegation
	Ambassador Philip C. Jessup, United States Delegation
	Mr. Joseph S. Sparks, United States Delegation

Withdrawing to the study in his apartment from a small reception in honor of Prime Minister Nehru, along with the participants listed above, Ambassador Austin opened the conversation by saying that whereas he certainly did not wish to impose upon the Prime Minister’s time we were anxious to be of any service which we could and to discuss any matters which the Prime Minister might care to raise or on which he might have questions in this early portion of his important and memorable visit to the United States.

The Prime Minister immediately launched into a full discussion of Indian and United States relations with Russia as he understands them. He did so in a tone and attitude of equality and partnership of understanding and purpose between India and the United States. He said that he did not know that he could say that all of the people of India felt toward Russia as the people of the United States do but that India has lost all faith in Russia and in the dependability of Russia’s words. He traced in detail the Indian experience with Communism, saying that prior to the Second World War there was little or no Communism in India but that during the war the British, in their search for some element of popular support among the people and at a time when the Congress leaders were in jail, encouraged the development of a strong communist party which would assist in the war effort because of Russia’s involvement in the war. Although he said that the British now regretted their actions, their result was that the Communist party in India emerged from the war greatly strengthened and expanded. He stressed that Communism had enjoyed a great deal of good will in India because of the progress which Indians understood had been made in Russia and particularly in Central Asia, because of the poverty in India, and because of the agrarian nature of India’s population. Following the gaining of India’s independence, however, the Communists had turned on the Indian Government under guidance from Moscow and had alienated the people by resorting to large scale violence. The reservoir of good will which the Communists had enjoyed had thus been dissipated as the Indian people came to realize that the Communists stood not for the pure Marxist Communist theories but for destruction and violence.

The Prime Minister said that his Government had sufficient strength to deal with the physical threat to its existence which the Communists posed, and that already the Communist party was splitting within itself between those who wish to continue its program of violence and those who realize what they were losing by such violence. In this connection, he mentioned that the situation in China did not represent a real danger to India in the sense of external aggression which India was already strong enough to withstand but was a danger in the degree to which Communist victories in neighboring countries encouraged the Communists in India and led others to believe in the possibility of their success.

Pandit Nehru said that he felt the important element in dealing with Communism was the nature of “our approach” to the problem and that he felt this approach should be psychological and indirect instead of direct. Ambassador Austin asked if he meant education by “indirect approach”. The Prime Minister replied that education was important but that that was not quite what he had in mind. He said that if the Ambassador would pardon him for being critical of the United States it was his feeling that we too frequently dealt with the Russians in their own chosen weapons of name-calling, deprecation, and verbal belligerency and that the Russians were very hard to beat in this field because of their adeptness in the utilization of the weapons. He believed that such direct approaches should be avoided and that a sort of “mental jiujitsu” would be more productive. He added that of course in case one were faced with actual aggression, it would be necessary to resist, but that was not the situation now.

When Ambassador Austin asked if Pandit Nehru felt that grounds for cooperation existed with Russia, Nehru said that he thought there was very little basis for cooperation under the present circumstances, but that for the sake of our own public reactions we must never admit openly our belief in the lack of a basis for cooperation and must make every gesture possible of apparent cooperation. He said that the United States policy of attempting to contain Communism had not been without its success and mentioned in particular and approvingly both the Berlin incident and the Marshall Plan, but he felt that in the ideological realm we should make a greater show of attempted cooperation. Ambassador Austin said that he was in complete agreement with the Prime Minister, but believed that we did make every such show of cooperation. He said that we repeatedly stated and that it is true that our objective is the promotion of agreement and not the promotion of disagreement and that our policies and actions are in accordance with this objective of agreement. In particular the Ambassador told of his experiences in the last few days in the meetings of the Permanent Representatives to the United Nations of the five major powers which he had called in his capacity of President of the Security Council.¹ He told of the problems encountered with Mr. Malik in these meetings which were held for the purpose of encouraging the cooperative approach to problems before the Security Council and of how Malik had finally agreed to the idea of the meetings only to launch a vicious attack on the participating members a few hours later before the Security Council. The Ambassador asked “What can you do with such people?”

Ambassador Jessup said that he felt that we were following very much the suggested line of the Prime Minister in our recommended handling of the Chinese complaint to the General Assembly. We hope that a resolution will be adopted by the General Assembly which will reassure the Chinese people that the world has not forgotten them and is dedicated to the evolution of a truly representative government in China without interference from any external sources. At the same time the resolution should avoid any overt condemnation of the role played by the Russians up to the present time in China.²

Nehru said that according to his information, which he believed to be reliable, there was already a very real split among the Communists in China between those more ideologically subservient under Mao Tse Tung’s leadership who sought to hue strictly to the Moscow line and those under Chou-En-Lai who wanted to build up international contacts and cooperation in trade. He said that he felt that China was experiencing a comprehensive agrarian revolution quite aside from the Communist influence and that it was only the weakness of the national leadership which permitted the Communists to capitalize on the agrarian revolution to seize leadership.

It was the Prime Minister’s opinion that the objective should be to divert the Communists away from Moscow leadership as quickly as possible. Because of the distance of China from Moscow, the size of the country, and most of all the phlegmatic characteristics of the people who were poverty stricken rather than Communistic, hungry rather than nationalistic and politically insensible rather than conscious, it was Nehru’s belief that Russia in any event could not long dominate China and that a situation “stronger than a Titoism” would grow up. He did believe, however, that the difficulties being experienced by the Communists which were outlined by Ambassador Jessup should be augmented as much as possible. In this connection he felt that as long as recognition was withheld and the Communists had not taken all of China (though he felt nothing could prevent them from doing so in the near future if they wished), the Communists could blame the failure to achieve fulfillment of the many promises which they had made for an improved life on the state of war that existed and on the “foreign devils” who were responsible for it. Once they were unable to do this, he felt that their problems would be increased and fissiparous tendencies among them would grow.

Ambassador Jessup wondered if it would not be a mistake to recognize the successes of the Communists so readily and if such recognition might not be discouraging to the forces opposing Communism elsewhere. He mentioned in particular the situation existing in the border areas such as Manchuria, Sinkiang, Korea, Mongolia, the agreement which the Russians had already made with Manchuria, and the return of the machinery, in its original crates to Manchuria, as evidences of Russian confidence in achieving domination over the area. Pandit Nehru thought that the successes of the Communists had already been considerable and that it would not be possible to postpone their recognition indefinitely though it might be possible for a few months.

Ambassador Austin raised directly the question with which the United Nations might be confronted in the near future with the appearance at Lake Success of a Communist Chinese delegation sponsored by the Russians and seeking to oust Tsiang in order that a Communist might be representing China when the Chinese complaint against Russia came before the General Assembly. Nehru said that he felt that if the Chinese Communists asked to be heard on the subject it would be very difficult to deny them the privilege of being called as witnesses. Ambassador Jessup said that we might well face this problem when the Communist delegation applied for visas to come to the United States. He said that if we denied these visas on the basis that we had already issued visas to representatives of China to the United Nations, the matter might well be referred by the Russians to the Secretary-General. This would place the Secretary-General in an extremely embarrassing position. Nehru felt it would be difficult to postpone the recognition of the Communists very long and referred to the rapidity with which the new government in Syria had been recognized after its recent coup d’ état. Ambassador Jessup pointed out that the cases were not analogous and that there were still many territories in China under the control of the government recognized by the government of China. Nehru felt that the United Nations would have to recognize the Communist government when a large number of its Members had done so, but he spoke of the Communists only in the capacity of “witnesses” in the consideration of the Chinese charges against Russia.

Ambassador Austin spoke of his personal experiences in China and said that it was his belief that no government could live in China without external assistance and support and that whereas this support had formerly meant that of one or more of the Western European powers today it was the United Nations as a whole whose recognition and support any Chinese government must have if it is to survive. Pandit Nehru did not fully accept this point of view as he felt that the fundamental change in China was the agrarian revolution. He did not think that there was any possibility of disintegration of central administration into the type of war lord heterogeneity possible before the agrarian revolution and that whereas a new government might not be able to subsist over an extended period of time without external recognition and assistance it probably could so exist for a period of at least a few years. The Prime Minister did not speak once of a seated delegation of Chinese Communists in the United Nations, and it would appear that he was not thinking in terms of recognition in a matter of days or perhaps even weeks or months.

Ambassador Austin referred to the Russian resolution and the substitute resolution which the United States and the United Kingdom would submit, and concerning which we strongly hoped that there would be a minimum of abstentions. He explained the important difference in the nature of the current Russian resolution and that of any previous attack which had been made by the Russians. For the first time the Russian Government was directly accusing the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom rather than isolated groups within Russia or the United States. The Ambassador explained the strong psychological cooperative nature of the substitute resolution which would be submitted, and said that it was a fundamental statement of principle which should attract and justify the support and faith of all peoples everywhere.

1. For minutes of these meetings of October 17 and 18, see vol. ii, pp. 324 ff.
2. For documentation regarding the resolution on China, see ibid., pp. 144 ff.