445. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in India1
197663. Eyes Only for Ambassador from the Secretary. I have just received a FBIS excerpt (embargoed until morning May 19) reporting a message for Ho Chi Minh’s birthday from Prime Minister to Ho Chi Minh, expressing the hope that “the Vietnamese people will have the good fortune of having Ho Chi Minh’s wise and dedicated leadership to guide them.” We cannot, of course, expect India to agree with every view of ours in international affairs. But we do expect, where vital interests of the US are concerned, that India would at least take a non-aligned position. If Mrs. Gandhi thinks that we are just good guys and will take a lot of punishment without reaction, she is underestimating the mood of the American people while we are carrying such heavy burdens. If she feels that she must slant her “non-alignment” in favor [Page 860] of the Communist world in order to keep her credentials clear with Moscow, she cannot maintain her credentials with the US. The general mood in this country does not permit us to act like an old cow which continues to give milk, however often one kicks her in the flanks. No one has spent more time and energy and political capital in trying to help India than has President Johnson. No one is carrying a greater burden in serving one of India’s vital interests, namely, in organizing a durable peace in Southeast Asia, than the President and the young men in this country who are being killed in Viet-Nam.
If Mrs. Gandhi’s message to Ho Chi Minh is as I have reported on the basis of preliminary information, I do hope that you will find some way to let her know that the interests of this country are not being served by this kind of cringing and that the US can be just as tough as everybody else in deciding whether relations are to be friendly, correct and cool, or on a basis of active opposition. I hope our early information is wrong. I have met with Congressional groups five times during the first three days of this week trying to carry some of the burdens of such policies as supporting India. Just today I faced in the House Foreign Affairs Committee a demand for a full debate on the floor of the House of Representatives of the exact amounts and terms of our aid to India in the light of India’s own policies.
Perhaps my struggle here makes me a bit edgy but I really do think that those who pretend to be non-aligned should in fact be non-aligned and stay away from questions on which they are not prepared to take any serious responsibility. Mrs. Gandhi has no constituency in North Viet-Nam and Ho Chi Minh has no constituency in India but Mrs. Gandhi surely does have a major constituency among the American people and she had better give some thought on how to nurse it from time to time. Her own personal relations with the President of the US are perhaps the most important single aspect of India’s future safety and viability. The President has not spoken to me about this but you and I know that this, too, is something which Mrs. Gandhi should think about.2
- Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1967–69, POL INDIA–US. Secret; Immediate; Nodis. Drafted and approved by Rusk.↩
- Bowles cabled in response that he understood and appreciated Rusk’s strong reaction to Gandhi’s birthday greetings to Ho Chi Minh. He characterized the decision to send such greetings as “silly, stupid, and misguided.” Bowles felt, however, that it would be a mistake to take up the issue with Gandhi, who he said was in a tense mood with a variety of problems pressing upon her. Desai was unavailable, so Bowles took up Rusk’s complaint with P.M. Harsar, who had become Executive Assistant to the Prime Minister following the resignation of L.K. Jha. Harsar agreed that the dispatch of such a message and its public release were embarrassing errors, which he attributed to disorganization and bias in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He anticipated taking action that would prevent similar incidents in future. (Telegram 17034 from New Delhi, May 19; ibid.) Rostow sent copies of Rusk’s cable and Bowles’ reply to President Johnson on May 24. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, India, Vol. IX, Cables, 3–7/67)↩