BY SWAPAN DASGUPTA

Doctrine of the Past

Bilateralism and Security Council aspirations don't gel.

There was visible relief in the foreign policy watering holes of Delhi when Prime Minister I.K. Gujral confined his discussion with President Bill Clinton last week to "bilateral" matters. Of course, the pundits weren't entirely happy with Clinton's continuing obsession with the ctbt, but any nagging suspicion of Gujral's vulnerability was dispelled by his breakfast speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. Here, Gujral bravely reaffirmed his commitment to India's traditional nuclear ambivalence. There was further elation that there was no accidental tripartite encounter between Gujral, Clinton and Nawaz Sharif in some New York hotel lobby, and that the letter of the Shimla agreement wasn't violated. Indeed, there was convivial consensus that the America visit was a hugely successful non-event.

The only sour note was injected by an editor quoting from the declassified minutes of Jawaharlal Nehru's meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower on December 14, 1956. Far from confining themselves to the interminable troubles in Kashmir, Nehru and Ike discussed the Hungarian uprising, developments in China and even exchanged notes on the future of communism. Bilaterism was happily given the go-by. Why, he asked, has the agenda truncated so miserably in 41 years?

It could be, as Sardar Patel used to say, that Nehru was most at ease discussing Indonesia, Palestine and China -- in fact, everything that didn't remotely concern India. Not knowing whether he will be on Race Course Road to welcome Clinton when he arrives in India next year, Gujral isn't so happily placed. Therefore, even if he has remarkable insights into the future of nato and wto, Clinton just isn't interested. From being the flavour of the season three years ago, India has now become an irritating bore.

The problem is not merely a 14-party ramshackle coalition but the national mentality. To put it bluntly, Indian foreign policy has become inward-looking. It is not that Nehru's status as the non-aligned pontiff necessarily yielded the country grand results, but at least it put India in the reckoning as a "quality" in world affairs. When Indira Gandhi injected bilateralism into the Shimla agreement she was being tactically savvy in the face of a hostile Washington. Therefore, India could refuse to involve Bangladesh in negotiations with Nepal over water and could tell the US to keep its paws off Kashmir. Bilateralism worked well as a neighbourhood doctrine, but cost India its influence in the wider world.

Today, the dogma is yielding diminishing returns. It may keep Clinton out of Kashmir, but the approach does not square easily with either membership of the wto or the globalisation of the economy. Bilateralism has introduced a mindset that makes it possible for Murasoli Maran to tell Suzuki to go take a walk without being mindful of the consequences and for cussed babus to tell Rupert Murdoch who not to appoint in India. It also makes India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council untenable. You can hardly tell the world to keep out of our backyard and at the same time presume to have a say in what is happening in the Balkans or Rwanda. The world does not owe India its destiny.

India has a choice: remain an oddity in South Asia or assume a global role. Abandoning bilateralism is an important shift that goes with acquiring global self-confidence. We need the world more than it needs us.

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