Recently declassified documents reveal what Nixon and Kissinger thought about Indira Gandhi, with Nixon calling her a “witch” and a “bitch” and Kissinger referring to all Indians as “bastards.” Gandhi had come to the US in the period just before the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971. At that point, the US had a “special relationship” with Ayub Khan, the dictator of Pakistan, and India was flirting with the Soviets. The US did not want East Pakistan to form an independent Bangladesh.
Here are some snippets of the discussion between Nixon and Kissinger, just after Indira Gandhi left:
Nixon: This is just the point when she is a bitch.Kissinger: Well, the Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there. It’s–to them East Pakistan is no longer the issue. Now, I found it very interesting how she carried on to you yesterday about West Pakistan….
Kissinger: While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too. You very subtly–I mean, she will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn’t give her a warm reception and therefore, in despair, she’s got to go to war.
Nixon: We really slobbered over the old witch. [US State Department]
This wasn’t just about Indira Gandhi herself, they had a pretty low opinion of Indians in general:
Indians are “a slippery, treacherous people,” Nixon said.“The Indians are bastards anyway,” Mr Kissinger replied. “They are the most aggressive goddamn people around.” [Guardian]
Nixon was also mad at his ambassador for ‘going native’ —
In a White House conversation with Mr Kissinger on 4 June, 1971, President Nixon berates his ambassador to India, Kenneth Keating, for wanting to, as Mr Kissinger puts it, “help India push the Pakistanis out”.President Nixon says: “I don’t want him to come in with that kind of jackass thing with me… Keating, like every ambassador who goes over there, goes over there and gets sucked in.” [BBC]
US opposition to an independent Bangladesh was quite deep:
Mr Kissinger then says: “Those sons-of-bitches, who never have lifted a finger for us, why should we get involved in the morass of East Pakistan?“If East Pakistan becomes independent, it is going to become a cesspool. It’s going be 100 million people, they have the lowest standard of living in Asia.”
President Nixon replies: “Yeah.”
Mr Kissinger: “They’re going to become a ripe field for communist infiltration.” [BBC]
Nixon even went to far as to encourage China to intervene on Pakistan’s behalf:
President Nixon then openly courted China to try to turn the tide of the war Pakistan’s way. With the Indian army and armed Bengali separatists winning, the US on 10 December 1971 urged Beijing to mobilise troops towards India, saying the US would back it if the Soviet Union became involved.China declined and on 16 December the war ended with the Indian army and Bengali separatists taking Dhaka. [BBC]
The first casualty of the “great game” was principle. It is very useful to remember how far the US has been willing to go in the past, and how little concern it has shown for the rights of hundreds of millions, while still claiming to be fighting for freedom. It’s also useful to remember how wrong its calculations were. With July Fourth around the corner, maybe it’s time for us all to embrace a quintessentially American value, one celebrated by the founding fathers, that of skepticism.
“I don’t want him to come in with that kind of jackass thing with me… Keating, like every ambassador who goes over there, goes over there and gets sucked in.”
WOW!! This statement is as shocking as the *itch ones.
Nixon called Indira Gandhi something that she never had to confess. “I am not a crook!”
To put this into context though Nixon talked like that about EVERYONE. He even made repeated derogatory statements about Jews, even though his best buddy Kissinger was a Jew. Even after finding out through tapes Kissinger didn’t mind and didn’t feel offended. Both exhibited Machiavellian genius and extreme hubris.
This SOB Kissinger has a Nobel peace prize … WTF???
Nixon was pretty damn paranoid (um, watergate?) and his paranoid delusions flowed into decisions of the administration.
Pre-1971, India was testing the waters with what the Soviets could offer. After that, India went very Pro-CCCP. This not only hurt India economically, but also has rippling effects on South Asian geo-politics today. Undestandably, everything was seen through a cold war myopic view, since Pakistan and China were anti-soviet that made the US happy. Sending the Enterprise battle group to the Bay of Bengal was seen as a grave insult and security threat. Hence, almost all military equipment post 1971 procured by India has been soviet. Prior to that Great Britain was still the largest arms supplier to India.
I’m really not going to side with Indira Gandhi either, she was an Iron fisted maniac who brought India to the collapse of its young democracy.
Nixon’s paranoia was on full display on these tapes, both in reference to India and to anyone who opposed him. And while Indira Gandhi should be lauded for her decisive action vis a vis Bangladesh, keep in mind that she and all her predecessors tried to play off the Americans and the Soviets to get the best deal for themselves. And by themselves, I mean only Indian leadership – very little aid reached the average Indian.
If there was ever a time that “Unity in Diversity” was on full display, it was during this time. Here you had Indira Gandhi, a Hindu woman as Prime Minister, Sam Manekshaw (a Parsi) as Chief of the Indian Army, Lt. Gen. Jagjit Arora (Sikh) who was regional commander of Indian forces in Bengal, and his Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob (a Calcutta-born Jew) who led Indian troops into Dhaka.
Also, moves by Nixon have only put the United States in a weaker position in the area. I am not ablsoving Indira Gandhi for her misplaced foresight either, but still, Nixon screwed up royally. Strategically, courting India would have been the logical step. This cold war episode set both countries back by 30 years in terms of developing their relationship as the the largest and most powerful democracies on the planet. What a shame.
I agree – Nixon was a paranoid bastard, spoke in this tone of everyone. And Kissinger…what is left to be said?
Let’s NOT get misty-eyed over Indira though. The Nehru/Gandhi dynasty’s corruption and insular thinking/policies did little to help the average Indian and stunted progress in the country for several decades. Points of light are only now starting to emerge if the current politicians can stay away from old bad behaviors.
I wonder what kissinger will comment on this? As I understand it, he still makes public appearances.
In anycase, Indira Gandhi had ‘balls’ second to none !
Chicks with balls get me all hot and bothered…
It’s pretty much agreed that Nixon and Kissinger were bastards, and they pretty much screwed whoever they wanted to; they messed with South America, South East Asia (i.e. allowing Indoenisa to invade East Timor), India, and Pakistan. Not to mention Nixon plans to prolong the Vietnam war.
it’s friggin Nixon, a crook, a liar, a fraud and a racist, paranoid bastard. What else would you expect? I want to see the transcripts where Indira Gandhi goes back to Delhi and refers to Nixon as a “bhanchod”
I take it as a compliment. Only good friends are loved. Only good enemies are hated.
To put this into context again, this disdain wasn’t just some personal disrespect hidden in the White House. It had a very strong impact on the elections of East Pakistan and subsequent massacre of millions of not-yet-Bangladeshis. It’s one of the best reported aspects of Hitchen’s book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
Sure, she was kind of not a very good leader. But at the time she was the democratically elected leader of the world’s biggest democracy, one one of the few others that was trying hard to encourage freedom of religion at the time. America’s disdain for India and preference for penny dictators may haunt us well into the future. It’s one of many of Nixon’s crimes, but it’s not one to be dismissed or forgotten, and definitely not by patriotic Americans.
A recent interview of Kissinger in Indian Express.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=58921
Indira was a great leader. I am astonished I am sharing this view with the RSS leadership but she was one of the best prime-ministers India had had. A lil decisiveness and abrasiveness can be excused,
Saheli,
don’t you know? We Americans love us some dictators when it serves our needs but then we quickly repaint history to label them as menaces when their usefulness runs out…aka Saddam, Taliban, Ayub Khan, Saudi Arabia (coming soon), Iran..the list goes on and always will
There is this belief in a lot of Americans that a President is very busy “working”. I think a President is a 4 year King. Kings rule. Ruling is not the same as “working”. Working is what we do. Same way Kings are irrevarant to the subjects and other Rulers. Democracy or no-Democracy a ruler is a ruler. Its more so in case of “Presidential Democracy”. George Bush’s transcripts are not available so we dont know whats going on there….
1) Indira Gandhi was a bitch. She’s at fault for most of India today. 2) Nixon was a bastard. 3) Indians are slippery, treacherous bastards, as are any other big country when it comes to diplomacy. 4) I would hardly call Indians aggressive…well ok maybe on the streets of New Delhi, when they drive…. 5) Hopefully those of y’all of Indian-American origin (because nobody else-in America-cares about what Nixon had to say about India) can receive an answer to the post-9/11 question: “Why do they hate us so much?
6)Most of what I write is correct, except when it’s wrong.
Indira Gandhi was not the best Prime Minster India had. She was the most heavy handed and powerful India had.
Her unconstitutional attempt at consolidating power by calling an emergency, forced sterilization of the poor and minorities, over aggressive tactics at repressing dissenting opinion, etc. have harmed India in the long run.
Couldn’t have been said better.
By the way, I met Sam Manekshaw as a part of a school field trip almost 17 years ago. A very gracious, brave, well spoken, and impressive man. In WWII he was awarded a military cross on the battlefield, if I remember correctly, while seriously wounded. He also has a spectacular home in Ooty where he is retired to where he gave us schook kids a personal tour. Great guy.
Wonder what choice desi gaalis Indira and Swaran Singh had for the Americans.
Scene 1:
Scene 2:
Scene 3:
Gawd, I just can’t, like, understand why our foreign policy is so unpopular with the haters. Freedom is on the march!
Kissinger sounds like such a jerk. I heard that he hated Indians as well.
But then why should it bother us? We arent living in India anyways. In 1971, our papas were on their way to the US, and we were born here or bringing us in diapers over here. We shouldnt be shocked. Thats how it was so deal with it.
Indira Gandhi’s great contributions to India include
i) The emergency: suspension of free speech, elections.
ii) Forced sterilization.
iii) Centralization: State governments dismissed at will.
iv) Open and institutional corruption.
v) The inclusion of “socialism” into the constitution. Nationalization of banks, Airlines etc.
vi) The complete emasculation of the Congress party into one of chamchagiri.
It is only after her death that the great darkness that clouded India began to be lifted.
If as a leader, the only way to inspire people to get behind your vision is to intimidate, threaten and terrify them… well it’s not really good leadership is it. Indira Gandhi was a horrid delusional megalomaniac, and I’m being nice about it. Bas.
The only good thing IG ever did was take India to war against Pakistan and break it up. But the Govt. of India did nothing publicly to highlight the anti-Hindu aspect of the genocide. Today, people think it was primarily Punjabis against Bengalis. But it really was primarily West Pakistani Muslims against Hindus, and at a secondary level, Punjabis against Bengalis.
I hate to put it like this, but it would have been better for India if IG had been assassinated in Jan 1972 rather than 1984. India’s development would not have been retarded by 15 disastrous years.
The less said about the crook Nixon and his crony Kissinger, the better. I find it hard to believe that Nixon was willing to allow such atrocities just because Yahya was his intermediary to Mao. Couldn’t Nixon/Kissinger have picked up a phone themselves, or found a different intermediary?
as I am a total ABCD, can someone please give me a brief synopsis on this whole sterilization of the poor and minorities (ie examples?) I find this practice absolutely horrid? Why would she do this?
Here’s another photo of Nixon with Gandhi.
Lovin- check here or for fiction accurately set against a terrible time in history, here.
By the way, this isn’t really new news, except for the exact quotes being declassified. It’s been known all along that Kissinger and Nixon disliked Indira (some old Richard Reeves columns like this one (from 2001) detail the antipathy. See the Nixon quote 4 paragrapsh from the bottom).
And I don’t think Kissinger and Nixon were best buds either. Nixon knew Kissinger was covering his rear with leaks to newspapers that made Nixon look bad, but Kissinger look goode.
And for those students of history, I finally found this page that has the Keating cable. It’s document 3, and very interesting – if I remember correctly from a history class, I think it was the first time “genocide” was used to describe the situation in Bangladesh/East Pakistan.
Now that three people have cited this page, has anyone noticed who the author is?
The Mutiny has agents in high places 😉
Interestingly my pops loves Indra. He said she was able to control a country that was spiraling out of control, and keep people in check as they should be. She restored a sence of power for the government, albeit being a despot. Its really the local governments, and police that need to be rid of corruption, beacause to him corruption is almost guaranteed at levels as high as a central government. However if you were able to keep bribery to a low, and keep the police and small time leaders in line then the grander corruption can be ignored as the price of centralizing. However it was not his balls that she decided to render useless. And I for one am glad of that.
And here is an excerpt from Kissinger’s memoirs. Straight from the horse’s mouth, including commentary on him and Nixon’s personal views of Indira. Btw, I didn’t see the link posted already in this thread 🙂
Lovin,
The sterilisation of poor was primarily carried out by Sanjay Gandhi ( IG’s younger son ). Mr. SG had a vision so to speak of a clean delhi. With tons of power at hand he went about new delhi essentially forcing family planning on the poor and sometimes whoever came on the way. Now dont mix him up with some sword carrying villain. He forced people into sterilisation.
Can we at least include a mention of
“Bangladeshis” in their own genocide and war for independence? Otherwise, I’m just going to start referring to 1947 as “that time the British decided to leave this place.” Also, here’s some background from Wikipedia.
Look, as everyone has pointed out, we all knew (or should havce known, if we had read any history) that Nixon and Kissinger were bastards, and for more than just Watergate and Vietnam. And we also knew (or should have known) that Indira Gandhi was inclined towards heavy-handed, top-down, dynasty-promoting moves.
So at what point are we going to say that the question of which ones were worse is not as important as the point that state power is all bad in some ways (Nixon and Kissinger being grotesque examples and Indira Gandhi being not much to write home about either). The people of Bangladesh, Chile, India, Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, South Africa, and many, many other places have suffered (meaning they were tortured, raped, killed, and systematically disempowered) because there are a few people with a lot of power and lot of people with tiny amounts of power.
Saurav,
Any reason you left out Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Russia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Lithuainia, Estonia, Latvis, Ukraine, North Korea?
Forced sterlizations might be considered vile. But I think the idea just went sour? The worst problem of India is it’s overpopulation. Nothing else contributes more to India’s downfall. There should have been a better way to educate the people into the “We one–our’s one” thinking.
How many siblings do your parent’s have? My mom has 7 other and dad has 7 others too. Imagine that. Wish my grandparents were taught some self restraint. Calm down Daadima.
All said and done, we must be one of the most hated races on earth. There’s no denying it folks, I was checking these travel/flight attendants forums…overwhelmingly the least favorite passenger was of Indian descent. Common complaints include lack of hygeine/bad smell/demanding personalities. Its kinda sad really.
Sonal,
I can’t comment about the hygiene part. But I have seen some obnoxious behavior from Indian passengers. The last time I had the misfortune to fly Air India (1998), I had this annoying little boy running across my legs, cause his half-wit mother could not get him to sit still.
It seems Indians only are on good behavior when white people are around. Then, it becomes a matter of making a good impression. Having good manners when white folks are not around seems to be of little concern.
This is rather applicable –
With the Soviets out of the way, it’s about time for a bit more idealism.
The rest of that quote is:
So Condi’s saying that:
Both of which are false.
Sigh. Just as a cold virus creates headaches, she was saying that terrorism is one of the symptoms of not supporting freedom.
Iraq was one place w/ a cold virus. 9/11 was a (major) headache.
Cruel, calculating, cold-war policy towards Bangladesh is another example of life amongst the virus.
It’s time we started going after the virus itself – even if it means less aspirin for the headache symptoms…. (ok.. this analogy has probably gone as far as it will go 😉
patrick,
thanks for the info, it is really sad that this happened, and I can’t imagine how someone could enact something like this w/o any remorse or feeling.
overwhelmingly the least favorite passenger was of Indian descent. Common complaints include lack of hygeine/bad smell/demanding personalities. Its kinda sad really.
unfortunately this is too true, i cannot stand flying w/ indians in a plane….The attendant calls row 9-20 for seating and every indian is in a rush to get on the plane, even though they’re sitting in row 30. Then there’s the requisite coke-hoarding, walking against the flow of traffic in boarding the plane, frequent requests for trading seats, kicking, opening of tiffins full of sabji and achaar, annihilating the bathroom, getting up and removing luggage anytime the plane slightly descends, and of course, the requisite farting.
A lot of what you ascribe to culture is actually due to overpopulation and competition for resources. I’ve seen some insane scenes during flight delays at U.S. airports where (non-desi) people skirmish for free potato chips. The savagery makes tiger vs. crocodile fights look like gentle noogies.
Lovin / Manish Vij,
The film Empire of the Sun teaches the story well about how limited-resources could turn even the British elite into depraved, ravaging thugs in the PoW camps of Japan-occupied China. The desperation of erstwhile Lords and Ladies to tackle each other just to be served maggot-infested rice soup before the cauldron ran dry was a vivid example. Human beings are animals, no matter which race you talk about. A satisfied stomach and a serene environment are all that separate us from the beast within.
Sonal, do you exist in a vacuum? Has not your own personal past affected your present, or do you forget everything that has happened to you? The policies that Nixon and/or Gandhi implemented or espoused have affected the lives, and/or futures of millions, not hundreds not thousands.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana.
Considering the policies (or lack thereof) of the current administration, you can see how they have ignored the history of Iraq and the middle east, and are essentially creating something worse than Vietnam.
Wow, do you hate yourself? How old are (or were) your grandparents? Did they live during a time when prenatal care was available? Do you realize the amount of children that died either during childbirth or after? There was no gurantee, and often people had much larger families to make sure their children survived during those times. My grandparents lost three of their son’s due to illness or other causes, after childbirth. And I doubt that we are most hated race on the planet. I don’t appreciate the way many Indians behave also, but it’s due to the fact that if you didn’t move to get what you wanted someone else would. Not everyone is a philanthropist. Makes me wonder if your simpleton or not.
Vinod, considering the way in which this administration takes actions against those that disagree with it? No dissent is tolerated, and Patriot Act essentially giving license to fascist like tactics: Would you consider this a lack of freedom, and if so will this lead to people becoming terrorist in the US? Sure the administration constantly talks about freedom and all the rhetoric, but their actions sure bely it…
So why are we propping up dictatorships in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?
Precisely because we’re prioritizing stability over cure.
Thanks for the correction, KXB. Contrary to what you might think (for whatever reason), I have no fondness for the USSR or for any form of abusive state power. You might also throw in there Greece, Spain, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Armenia, Albania, and countless other countries. For surely we can all agree that building a grassroots movement of people, whether in “communist” China or “capitalist” India, is the most important thing.
And yet, I find that we often don’t. Why is that, do you think?
Overpopulation is indeed a huge problem–Here’s the cure:
“‘Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Jomtien marked the emergence of an international consensus that education is the single most vital element in combating poverty, empowering women, promoting human rights and democracy, protecting the environment and controlling population growth’ (UNICEF, 1999, p. 13).
In the years since [the Jomtien conference in 1990], a number of international conferences have been held that strengthen the consensus regarding women’s education as the primary solution to complex development problems, such as overpopulation, HIV/AIDS, and environmental degradation.”
source (pdf)