514. Memorandum of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Meeting between the President and Morarji Desai, Deputy Prime Minister of India2
PARTICIPANTS
- President Lyndon B. Johnson
- Morarji Desai, Deputy Prime Minister of India
- His Excellency Nawab Ali Yavar Jung, Ambassador of India
- Ambassador S. Jagannathan, Economic Affairs at Indian Embassy and Executive Director for India at the World Bank
- William J. Handley, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs
- Harold E. Saunders, NSC Senior Staff
Deputy Prime Minister Morarji Desai called on the President for a twenty-minute conversation at 12:40 p.m. on Friday, October 4. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the President and Deputy Prime Minister exchanged remarks on the following subjects:
When the Deputy Prime Minister commented that the President had had a difficult time since they last met, the President said that we [Page 1018] had had lots of problems but that we had also found lots of answers. We had not found answers for all of our most difficult problems but we had been blessed by progress in a number of fields. For instance, just this week, the President had had occasion, on signing several bills, to review our progress in the field of conservation, and he was very proud of what had been accomplished during his administration. On the other hand, we have still not been able to find an answer to the difficult problems of Vietnam.
Continuing on Vietnam, the President said that others had a different view of the problem from his but he felt, after looking at the problem from every possible angle and hearing every possible viewpoint that doing anything other than what we have done would have led to conditions far more difficult than the ones we face now.
He said Czechoslovakia had been a disappointment—indeed frightening—and he was quite concerned. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had been just on the verge of sitting down and making progress on limiting offensive and defensive weapons, on Vietnam and on the Middle East. “Then just before we got on the elevator, they invaded Czechoslovakia.”
The President said the Middle East is quite troublesome. “We can’t get either side to cooperate.” At home, the economy is in excellent condition. People are expressing discontent, but a lot of this is artificially stirred up.
In sum, the President said there are pluses and minuses on our record. Then he asked the Deputy Prime Minister to tell him about conditions in his country. The President particularly inquired about the recent rainfall and the condition of the next Indian crop.
The Deputy Prime Minister said that the rain last year had been good and the crop a record one. The rains this year are less and the crop will be smaller, though it will be the end of October before anyone can make a sound estimate of just how big it may be. He noted that the industrial sector of the economy had begun to recover. In response to the President’s inquiry whether India’s changes in agricultural policy have paid off, the Deputy Prime Minister said that they definitely had. In spite of the possibility of poor rains this year, he tentatively estimated that the crop would not fall below 90 million tons because of the stronger production base that had been established as a result of changes in agricultural policy. There followed a brief discussion of the nature of what the October rains contributed to each of the Indian crops in comparison to the relation of the rains to harvesting and planting in Texas.
The President asked about Prime Minister Gandhi, B.K. Nehru, and former Agriculture Minister Subramaniam. The Deputy Prime Minister replied that Mrs. Gandhi was well into her Latin American [Page 1019] tour but would have to cancel her scheduled visit to Peru because of the coup. He said that B.K. Nehru was in Assam and that Subramaniam was now head of the Committee on Aeronautics and had been in the United States a few weeks ago. The President said he was sorry he had missed Subramaniam and expressed admiration for the job Subramaniam did as Agriculture Minister.
The President said that a lot of problems had come together in the past few months—the war, Congressional difficulties, and the United Nations. The Deputy Prime Minister responded by saying that he doubted the President’s successor could change many of these problems and that he would be confronted by pretty much the same pressures. He also said that he had the greatest admiration for the way the President had stood up to his problems.
The President said he was concerned over the turn in recent months in the American people’s attitude toward other nations. He said this has been a familiar pattern in American history. After World War I we had had the Washington Naval Conference and scrapped a lot of our war material. Then we got into World War II and after that we demobilized and then came the Korean War. Now we are in Vietnam. Throughout this period, we have had other problems such as Greece, Turkey and the India-Pakistan war. A lot of the American people say that we should not try to be the World’s policeman. The President did not feel that was the issue. If a child was sick with smallpox next door, he didn’t see how anyone could justify not going to its aid on the ground that one shouldn’t “mess with other people’s business.”
The President also said that his “enemies” say that we are “messing” too much in other people’s affairs. What they mean by this, the President said, is that our policies are costing too much money. He felt that this was unrealistic and he was proud of how we have worked with a number of other countries, especially India. He said that India was doing better and so was Latin America and Africa. He said that some people were talking about bringing our troops back from Europe and he thought this had been an invitation for the Soviets to do what they had done in Czechoslovakia. He could not understand the new mood of isolation in the United States. It is in both parties, but his own party was worse than the other.
The Deputy Prime Minister asked whether it would be possible to release the remainder of this year’s PL 480 shipments now. The President said he was not going to make many decisions on consequential matters between now and the election, which is just a month off. Then we would have a new President-elect. “Anything you do in your last few days in office, people suspect you of ulterior motives.” The President said anything the new President could do, he wanted to let him handle.
[Page 1020]The Deputy Prime Minister responded by saying that this decision “has already been done earlier by you; it is not a new decision.” The Deputy Prime Minister went on to say that the President had already sent 3.5 million tons, and 2.3 million tons of the total approved remained. He said it would “come in handy” right now. India needs to build its buffer stocks, and it now appears that it has to look forward to a crop smaller than last year’s.
After a noticeable silence, the President asked how long the Prime Minister was going to be in Latin America. After the Deputy Prime Minister’s short response, the President asked whether India was any closer to the solution of the Kashmir problem. The Deputy Prime Minister responded that they were “neither closer nor farther” from the solution. The President asked how President Ayub was. He said that Ayub was “very distressed with us.” Ambassador Jung said, “Why?” The President said Ayub felt that we haven’t treated Pakistan fairly. We have helped India more than we had Pakistan. The President said he felt Ayub was “disillusioned and disheartened.” The President said he was “sad about this.”
When the Deputy Prime Minister said that he couldn’t understand Ayub’s feelings since we had done much more for Pakistan than for India, the President pointed to a photo of his family and said in essence that the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks make him think that while member of a family loved each other and worked together, there were times that each child thought the other was getting more than its share.
The Deputy Prime Minister presented the President with an album of Gandhi commemorative photos and, after a picture-taking session around the gift, the meeting broke up with an exchange of best wishes. The President hoped that Mr. Desai would have a good visit to Washington and said that he had lots of admirers in this country, especially Secretary Rusk who had been “vociferous” in praising him.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, India, Vol. XI, Cables, 2/68–10/68. Secret; Exdis. Drafted by Saunders and Handley on October 30. Approved by the White House on November 22. The time of the meeting, which was held at the White House, is from the President’s Daily Diary. (Ibid.)↩
- Desai visited Washington September 28–October 5 to attend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. While in Washington he met with Freeman, Fowler, and Rusk, in addition to President Johnson. A memorandum of his conversation with Rusk on September 28 is in National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1967–69, POL 1 INDIA–US. The results of Desai’s visit were summarized in telegram 251579 to New Delhi, October 8. (Ibid., POL 7 INDIA)↩