By any reckoning the time was crucial when in December 1998 Inder Kumar Gujral, known both for his penchant for and wide experience in diplomacy, aptly filled in the slot of External Affairs Minister in the National Front government led by Viswanath Pratap Singh. It was a time when, at global level, a bipolar structure of international system was crumbling down and at home India had reached a new peak of tension of with her South Asian neighbours. In 1987, under a controversial Indo-Lankan accord she dispatched peace-keeping troops making the situation still more messy in that strife-torn island. Barely a year later she carried an airborne rescue operation in the Maldives in a clear display of her burgeoning military might. The year 1989 witnessed the Indian blockade of transit points into landlocked Himalayan Kingdom and the expiry of the memorandum of Bangladesh and India causing fresh uncertainty in the Ganges water sharing arrangements. During the late 1989 there ensued another spell of Indo-Pakistan bitterness over renewed violence in Kashmir. Against this dismal backdrop, Gujral took his office on the second December 1989.

During his first stint in the South Block Gujral deftly handled India’s adaptation to the newly emerging realities of global politics and was able to forge totally new relationship with the West after its conquest of the Cold War. Under his stewardship India went along with the West during Gulf crisis and even permitted over flights and refueling by the US combat aircraft en-route to the Gulf. India’s South Asian neighbours were in a state of exasperation, expecting more relaxation in the regional politics from a non-Congress government like it was during the ‘Janata’ interregnum of 1977-80. That hope was soon dampened and they were curtly told that there would not be broad changes in India’s foreign policy and there was a consensus on it.

When the national government fell after a year Gujral however left an impression of being a credible practitioner of India’s external affairs to best protect its interest. So much so that his views were sought on foreign policy issues even when he was out of the office. And five years later when a fractious united front was catapulted to power he was again the choice for his old office.

A year before when Gujral was back to his turf surrounded by a familiar team he moved to bring about a set of changes in the inter-state relations of South Asia with an unusual alacrity. I K Gujral embattled for a while with the polities of CTBT, switched on to the neighbouring front and seemed determined to put the intra-regional relations in a new mould. He seemed to have held out olive branch to the estranged neighbours of India in South Asia. Within a short time he was credited with producing a few simple principles’ which later came to be termed as Gujral Doctrine.

It’s no wonder that a patriarch of his stature and experience would evolve a policy doctrine which had by then been reinforced due to his own upgradation as India’s Prime Minister. What is surprising was why and how after all another policy could be evolved when there had been no dearth of such doctrine in the past. What was its compulsion? Does it contain anything new? It is worth going a little back to the past of India’s quest of security to find an answer.

Ever since Independent India’s inheritance of a body of strategic doctrines evolved by the British as the basis of its own defence and security. The founding fathers of India developed a kind of paranoia for ‘strategic unity’ of all South Asian countries the way the British wanted to treat the entire South Asia as one single strategic unit. At independence with the loss of strategic North West frontier — the invaders gateway — the safeguard of which was one of the ramparts of British India’s defence. India now moved to prevent other areas in the neighbourhood from falling under the control of any other foreign power and consolidate her influence, particularly Sri-Lanka in the strategic Indian Ocean as well as Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim in the Himalayas. India brought these countries under a number of treaty obligations the way the British did with her.

Soon after the British exit India also delineated for her smaller neighbours the line beyond which the sovereign manoeuvres of those countries would be restricted by India. Later when Bangladesh came into being in 1971 the new republic was promptly drawn into India’s fold with a friendship treaty and carefully cultivated politico-cultural ties.

This being the state of intra-regional relations in South Asia, IK Gujral enunciated five principles as the basis of his doctrine. Firstly, with India’s neighbours like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lank, India does not ask for any reciprocity but gives and accommodates what it can in good faith and trust. Secondly, India believes that no South Asian country should allow its territory against the interest of another country. Thirdly, no South Asian country should interfere in the internal affair of another regional country. Fourthly all South Asian countries must respect each others’ territorial integrity and sovereignty. And finally they should settle all of their disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiation.

I K Gujral’s doctrine when closely viewed is nothing extraordinary except he, for the first time put India’s penchant for the country’s defence of the region’s strategic unity in diplomatic framework.

Brig (retd) Hafiz is a former DG of BIISS.