Indian statesman and supporter of a peaceful solution to the Indochina War. Educated at Harrow School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, Nehru became a lawyer in colonial India and worked in a colonial high court. In 1918, he joined the Indian National Congress and, together with Mahatma Gandhi, transformed it into a major Indian independence party. During the interwar period, he met a number of Vietnamese leaders, including the constitutionalists Bui Quang Chieu and Duong Van Giao. The British arrested and imprisoned Nehru on numerous occasions for his nationalist activities. Following World War II, he negotiated India’s independence with the British and, after partition and creation of Pakistan, became India’s first prime minister in 1947, a post he held until 1964. As decolonization moved through the region, Nehru sought to position India at the center of a new Asian era. He even dreamed of creating and leading an Asian Union. To this effect, he organized the Inter-Asian Conference in New Delhi in 1947 and another a few years later.
Of particular concern to him were Dutch and French attempts to restore their colonial control over Indochina and Indonesia. In both cases, Nehru expressed his sympathy for the Vietnamese and Indonesian nationalist movements. He was also distraught at the idea that the spread of the Cold War into the region, especially with the emergence of two Vietnams in January–February 1950 and the outbreak of the Korean War a few months later, would allow other non-Asian powers to interfere in what he felt should be a purely Asian, postcolonial affair.
Significantly, he took a much more active role in support for the Indonesian war than he did for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Despite the DRV’s plea for concrete Indian aid against the French, Nehru would only concede “moral” support. He even made a point of allowing the French-backed Indochinese governments to send delegates to the conferences he organized, thereby according them the same treatment as the DRV. Part of the problem was that Nehru did not want to undermine his negotiations with the French over the return of Pondicherry. Part of the problem was also the communist core running the DRV, unlike the Indonesian Republicans fighting the Dutch. Nowhere was this clearer than in Nehru’s refusal to recognize diplomatically in 1950 either of the two Vietnams led by Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai. This allowed Nehru to renew his calls for a peaceful settlement of the wars in Korea and in Indochina.
Indeed, during the Geneva Conference, Nehru agreed to play an increasingly important role in ensuring peace. During the conference, he met privately with Zhou Enlai at a crucial meeting in late June to support China’s move to neutralize non-communist Asia against the Americans in exchange for a Chinese promise not to export communism outside their borders and to recognize the royal governments of Laos and Cambodia. Nehru also agreed that India would be willing to join a commission to control a cease-fire. Consequently, India joined Poland and Canada as the three members of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam. In part because of the Indochinese question, Nehru intensified his efforts with others in the region to carve out a “non-aligned” course of action. In 1955, he co-organized with Indonesian President Sukarno the Bandung Conference. It was no accident that this historic meeting occurred less than a year after the signing of the Geneva Accords. On 17 October 1954, Nehru visited Hanoi for the first time. See also BURMA; NEUTRALIZATION OF INDOCHINA.