The Indians, like the Thais, Burmese, and Indonesians, were widely sympathetic to the Demo-cratic Republic of Vietnam’s (DRV) struggle for national independence, but not its communist agenda for Indochina. None of this was lost on Viet Minh leaders upon coming to power.
In 1946, when India gained her independence, the DRV made overtures to Jawaharlal Nehru in the hope of securing the support of one of Asia’s “awakening giants”, and a vocally anti-colonialist one at that. In March 1946, a DRV editorial lauded Nehru’s plans for building an Asian Union, one which would uplift the “small and weak nations” in Asia. A year later, keen to tap into the Indian leader’s pan-Asianism, the DRV sent representatives to the Inter-Relations Conference organized and hosted by him. Nehru’s opposition to the landing of French warships and planes in Indian ports impressed the Vietnamese, as did his critique of the British use of Indian soldiers to crush the nationalist insurrection in southern Vietnam. However, in the end, all that Pandit Nehru would offer the Vietnamese nationalist movement during the Indochina War was “moral” support. He refused to accord military aid, for fear of jeopardizing Indian negotiations with the French over Pondicherry and widening the conflict in Indochina and Asia. He tried to steer a neutral path. For example, Nehru allowed the French high commissioner for Indochina, Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, to send the delegate of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Cochinchina to the Asian Relations Conference in 1947, much to the DRV’s disappointment. Nor did Nehru bring up the Vietnamese question effectively in the United Nations, despite just such a request from the DRV’s diplomat-at-large Pham Ngoc Thach in 1948.
Nehru’s direct involvement in pushing the Dutch to end the war in Indonesia stood in contrast to his refusal to take concrete measures to help the DRV. There are several reasons for this. The arrival of the Cold War in Asia in force in 1950, symbolized by the outbreak of the Korean War, saw the West increase pressure upon India to choose between one of the two Vietnams – either the Associated State of Vietnam led by Bao Dai or Ho Chi Minh’s DRV, which had been recognized by the communist bloc in early 1950. As a major non-communist post-colonial Asian state, India became the scene of intense diplomatic pressure. Backed by the French, Bao Dai sent his first emissaries to New Delhi in 1949 to try to convince the Indian government to recognize the State of Vietnam. Fluent in English and one of the DRV’s future top diplomats, Ngo Dien left for New Delhi to do the same. To no avail. Nehru refused to recognize either of the two Vietnams. In a press conference on 6 January 1950, even before the Sino-Soviet recognition of the DRV, he explained that his government would not align itself with any side in the building Cold War: “India’s policy is to give no official recognition in Indo-China to any government, as authority there is divided. For the present we are just to watch developments there and let the people of Indo-China decide”.
There was more to it than that, however. At odds with communists inside India and upset by communist China’s hard line on Tibet since 1950 and its criticism of Indian non-communist leaders, the Indians had their own reasons for wanting to see communism contained at the Indochinese pass. Indians such as Nehru were suspicious of the DRV’s revolutionary ambitions in Laos and Cambodia, which were considered to share a common cultural heritage with India.
Chinese statesman and diplomat, Zhou Enlai, clearly understood that improving relations with India was vital to implementing his policy of peaceful co-existence as the Korean War came to an end in 1953 and negotiations to end the Indochina War intensified. In April 1954, the Indians and Chinese reached an agreement to remove Tibet as a point of contention between the two sides and the Chinese promised that they would not export communism outside their borders. During a trip to New Delhi during the Geneva negotiations, Zhou Enlai reiterated China’s peaceful intentions and its refusal to export communism outside its borders. Zhou also reassured Nehru that he did not support the Vietnamese communist attempts to push an Indochinese revolution on the Lao and Cambodians. Neutrality is what Zhou wanted. To this end, he agreed with Nehru that the royal governments of Laos and Cambodia were legitimate, and not the resistance governments of the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Issarak. This meeting with Nehru and the joint communiqué issued at its closure allowed Zhou Enlai to move negotiations forward at Geneva and to “neutralize” non-communist Asian states such as India, Indonesia, and Burma against the Americans. This détente with China also explains why Nehru was willing to invite Zhou Enlai to take part in the Bandung Conference of 1955. See also GENEVA ACCORDS; INDIANS, INDOCHINA WAR; NEUTRALIZATION OF INDOCHINA.