Spectre of India: (Mis) Perceptions, (Mis) Representations and Racialized Ideology in US Foreign Policy during the Cold War



Introduction: Contextualizing Racialized Ideology and American Foreign Policy
The main thrust of this paper is to highlight the intersection of racialized ideology, found in popular images in cinematic productions and textual discourses, and American foreign policy making. Veering away from the mainstream and traditional theories on foreign policy and international studies[1], I specifically look into the images and iconography of India and its people prevalent in American popular media, as manifestations as well as reproducers of culture, during the Cold War, and how these influence the perceptions, belief system and attitude of American policymakers toward India and consequently, determine their choice of diplomatic policies with India. I argue that the lack of knowledge of the Americans about the country, its history and its people, or more precisely, the distorted image of India within the American society, as evidenced by the predominance of negative images and derogatory narratives about the Indians, juxtaposed with the sentiments of "white supremacy" vis-à-vis “Indian backwardness" inexorably resulted to poor US policies in India and eventually to the rupture of Indo-US relations during the Cold War.
This paper largely draws from Michael Hunt’s proposition that ideology, which compromises of the notion of racial hierarchy, fear of revolution and the quest for “national greatness”, plays a crucial role in the US foreign policy.[2] Focusing particularly in the element of race, I shall, in the following section, present the racialized images, representations, and imaginations, about India based on two key sources: [1] Harold Isaacs’ classic survey on American images of India and [2] the British and Hollywood productions’ cinematic portrayals of India. I shall subsequently explain how these racialized notions found their way into US foreign policy making process during the Cold War by pointing out the parallel relationship between the popular images of India and the descriptions of India utilized during the formal deliberations among American legislators and key politicians concerning particular foreign policy issues relating to India. In the last section, I shall provide the implications of the inevitable permeation of (misconstrued) ideological framework of race into foreign policy making to the study and practice of foreign affairs.

Images of India through American Eyes
                Beginning with the late 19th century until the end of the Second World War, American diplomatic relations in Asia focused mainly on China, Japan and Southeast Asia while India was pushed to the sidelines. During this period, the American public’s gaze towards India was not as direct as it should be but rather India was persistently seen as a fragment of the British Empire, a vantage point that was inescapably filtered through the colonial lens. Graham Spry, who travelled to India with Stafford Cripps, mentioned that “the interest [of the American public] is not primarily founded in India as India, but in British relations with India.” Ulysses Grant, after his presidency, and Theodore Roosevelt, during his incumbency, both regarded India as the most significant example of the success of the British imperial supremacy. Roosevelt’s stance about India’s inferiority and hence, the necessity of white intervention to bring about progress, civilization and order in India is evident in his statement, “if the British control were withdrawn from India, the whole peninsula would become a chaos of bloodshed and violence.”[3]  For the majority of the Americans, including leading legislators and politicians, knowledge about the distinctive culture and traditions of India was meager – it was a mere “scratch in American mind” and as Harold Isaacs mentioned, “the marks left in the past by India [in American society] are many fewer and much fainter,” - that is in comparison with the marks left by Chinese images in the American social memory.[4]
This lack of adequate comprehension about India was precisely because of the paucity of, or the weakness in, contact between the two countries – that ranges from the minimal diplomatic relations, the mere snapshots of India as reflected in popular media either those produced in the US or by the British, up to the invisibility of the Indians in American soil.[5] Given this void in epistemic linkages, the predominant imaginations of India within the American public sphere necessarily revolve around and formed out of sparse sources including literatures by Rudyard Kipling and Katherine Mayo, British and Hollywood cinema, among others. Given the elusive characterization of India for the American public, it is then imperative to ask exactly who or what was India through the American eyes during the years leading to and throughout the Cold War?
The majority of the Americans during this period imagined India as a distant exotic place, a mysterious foreign land, culturally divergent from the US, full of mystics and ascetics, a place where poverty is widespread, people are uneducated, undecipherable, and difficult to deal with, to name a few. In Isaacs’ survey among 181 American respondents belonging to the educated class, several indications of American imaginations of India emerge: the fabulous Indians, the Indians as religious devotees and philosophers, as benighted heathen, the lesser breed, the India based on the Gandhi and Nehru images.
The notion of the “fabulous Indians” was rooted in the age of European explorations, where the treasures of the Indies attracted many adventurers to navigate the high seas. The films The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and The Bengal Brigade (1954) presented images of the opulent maharajas turbaned and adorned with jewels and gold and their magnificent white palaces and many servants. Juxtaposed with this is the image of the religious and mystics of India - the people deemed as motivated by their inexplicable religion in their everyday life, as philosophical in nature, and contemplative; the images of Buddha and various deities of Hinduism stirred the imaginations about India as the land of impractical, irrational and illogically devout ascetics, starving themselves to death and squandering hours in meditation. India was also viewed by the Americans as the benighted heathen – the fanatics, who worship a sacred cow, phallic symbols and bizarre idols; believers in superstitions and members of religious cults. In Isaacs’ survey, out of the 181 respondents, 137 Americans revealed negative attitude towards the religious practices, rituals and belief system of the Indians.
Accordingly, the Americans looked at the Indians, relative to themselves, as the lesser breed – Kipling’s poems and short stories depict the white supremacy over the dark-skinned, backward and subhuman Indians and in his own words, the Indians as “half-devil and half-child.”[6] Katherine Mayo’s published book also became a prominent source of American images of India and the India that she constructed was one of “helplessness, lack of initiative, lack of initiative and originality, lack of staying into power, and sustained loyalties, sterility of enthusiasm, weakness of life vigor itself.”[7] In that same book, Mayo presented images of India that is full of misery and extreme destitution - that a newly born Indian child’s first feeding is in fact consist of “crude sugar mixed with the child’s own urine.”[8] These vivid narratives became deeply entrenched among the American public.
Finally, India was remembered and understood based on the two important personalities that, to a certain degree, came to be the faces of India. They are none other than Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The political influence of these two personas need no further explanation, suffice to say that they became the essential and memorable icons that represented India not only to the American public, but to the whole world as well. On the one hand, the Gandhi image, Isaacs explained, was generally positive. In fact, 141 out of 144 interviewees agreed that Gandhi was an admirable man – the symbol of non-violence and passivity of India, the leader of India’s independence movement, a man of devotion, strong conviction, dedication, wisdom, profound spirituality, humility, and the list goes on.
On the other hand, the Nehru image was depicted as more human than Gandhi. His name and face emerge as the vital representation of the post-independent India – triumphant in their struggle for freedom but held back in the numerous crises and dilemmas during the early years as an autonomous nation. Nehru carried with him the aura of being a strong statesman, advocate of freedom, an intellectual and perhaps, more significantly, the leader of the non-aligned movement and since he took the reins of running the affairs of India in the emergent context of the Cold War. I will discuss more details about American views of Nehru’s India in the succeeding section, what is noteworthy as this juncture is that Nehru, as the key political figure of India to the international affairs, partially determined how the rest of the world saw India, consequently, how the Americans view Nehru also determined how they view India.
To establish congruence and corroboration between Isaacs’ findings and the prevailing representations of India that circulated and therefore influenced American beliefs about the Indians, I utilize the overriding images from British and Hollywood cinemas about India and its people. I specifically chose films because of its capacity to generate lucid portrayals or images that can be almost immediately absorbed by the audience, its power to reach as many audience or observers as possible, and its faculty to create images that would form a part of the observer’s consciousness and understanding and simultaneously reinforce the society’s dominant ideologies. A brief survey of widely held films screened in the US reveal the perpetuation of the same unrelenting impressions of India as remote, exotic, spiritual, mysterious, and so on.
In his book, Ananda Mitra probes into Western created cinemas and the emerging images of India embedded in them to capture how Westerners perceive India and how they choose to represent in cinematic pictures what they perceive about India.[9] Using British and Hollywood films, the earliest were from the 1930s and the most recent from the 1990s, Mitra examines four elements or what he calls the set of crisis that help constitute the image of India – in terms of geography, religion, tradition and the history of colonization. The representations of these elements do not necessarily correspond to the realities of India but they do correspond directly to the dominant ideology within which the cinema was produced.[10]
Firstly, India, based on films, is constantly portrayed as a place characterized by duality – on one hand, it is full of picturesque mountains, waterfalls, jungles full of wild predators and virgin forests, as seen in The Man Who would be King (US, 1975) and on the other hand, of crowded cities, swarming thugs and dangerous urban spaces as in the film Salaam Bombay! (UK, 1988) – either way reflecting the sense of precariousness of its geography to outsiders.[11] Secondly, India is depicted as the abode of, yet again, exotic, peculiar and sinister religions as seen in Gunga Din (US, 1939) and Around the World in 80 Days (US, 1956).[12] In illustrating India as such, Western filmmakers not only produce a strange representation of the foreign and alien society that was India but creates the necessary space by which Western audience can immediately establish their position in relation to the subject, a process of othering, of building the image of the other relative to the self and in so doing, defining the role of the self. Thirdly, the images of specific traditions to capture India is inherently linked to religion – India’s images in films corresponds to the practices and rituals that highlight the primitiveness of the Indian society, the immoral values that results from their strange religious beliefs, their idiosyncratic lifestyle such as eating of snakes and monkey’s brains, as demonstrated in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (US, 1984).[13] Finally, India is depicted as inseparable from its colonial past and consequently, its white masters - in this case, the image that form India emerges from the binary characterizations of the colonizer and the colonized, of the superior British and the inferior Indians as evidenced in the film Heat and Dust (UK, 1983), Bhowani Junction (UK-US, 1956), and A Passage to India (UK, 1984).[14]
At this juncture, it is important to point out that the perceptions about India prevalent based on Isaacs’ survey and an analysis of British and Hollywood cinemas, as I will explain further in the next section, were not divorced from the dominant ideology (of racial hierarchy) of the American society and the formal political processes of the state. The emergent representations of India are manifestations of the racialized ideology of the Americans while at the same time bearing the power to reproduce that very same racialized ideology. For the American audience who knew very little about India, popular media such as films, newspapers, and music, produce particular patterns and regularized images that subsequently form part and parcel of the American society’s notion about the “genuine” Indian identity and as a consequence shape their belief system, behavior and attitude towards India and the Indians. Policy makers and legislators are not impervious from these webbed processes of ideological constructions and consistent perpetuation of coherent images. As aforementioned, prior to the Cold War, the American public, including their foreign policy decision-makers were unacquainted about India, it was  an epitome of foreignness and the exotic other and they rely on the images of India that were recurrent in public culture to the understand it, make sense of it and thus, behave toward it. In the next section, I shall establish how the popular American images of India pervade the debates and deliberations about three specific US foreign policy issues pertaining to India: the American economic aid to India, the Non-Alignment Movement and finally India’s nuclear weapons build-up.
From Racial Discourses to Policy Outcomes
                In his book, Hunt contends that the elements of race, national greatness and fear of revolution that constitute American ideology shaped the discourse of the country’s foreign policy. He asserts that the Americans utilized the notions racial hierarchy to “build protective walls against the threatening strangeness of other people”[15] and that very same ideology, as complemented by the two other aforementioned elements, influenced US policies in China, Japan, Latin America and the annexation of the Philippines. Despite his disclaimer that there is no clear-cut connection or guaranteed direct correspondence between ideology and the policy outcomes, acknowledging that while policies may, at the outset, be determined by ideology, other non-ideological factors shape the final form of the policies as well, he nevertheless emphasize the relevance of understanding the ideological foundations of US foreign policy.[16]  It is within this framework that I ensconce my analysis of how racialized ideology of India affects American policy outcomes – the persistence racialized images and descriptions of India in policy debates during the Cold War strengthen Hunt’s proposition.
                American Economic Aid to India: Saving the Lesser Breeds from Starvation
It is imperative to note at this juncture that post-independence India faced a multitude of political, economic and social predicaments and that one of the direst of its problems was that of economic stagnation and severe poverty. The sporadic skirmishes against Pakistan aggravated by a series of adverse calamities escalated India’s problem, pushing the country to confront a huge deficit in food grains of up to two million tons by 1951. Given the gravity of the situation, India had to look towards the US for assistance. Since the US did not immediately respond to Nehru’s first informal request for food assistance in 1949, a decision that was perceived not only by the Indians but by Americans as well as a failure of American humanitarianism, India’s second appeal for assistance in 1951 was keenly considered. Should the US once again fail to respond positively to the request, it would immediately renegade the US as epitome of greed and cold-bloodedness. Furthermore, Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee pointed out that public support would be clearly stimulated on humanitarian grounds than the strategic reasons for granting aid to India. As such, US assistance to India was described as a “generous project to prevent starvation in a country plagued by natural disasters.”[17] On December 1, 1950, the Department of State issued a policy statement which states categorically that India had to necessarily depend on outside help, that being the US, to quell what they described as “grinding poverty, starvation and sickness.”[18]
Despite this, the deliberations in Capitol Hill concerning US aid to India were still beleaguered with conflicting positions as legislators such as Sen. Tom Connolly found it a waste to send aid to a country who clearly did not side with the US on various international issues.[19] He claimed, “Of course they are to say that there are a lot of people that are going to starve if you don’t hurry up and give them some wheat.”[20]  Nehru’s opposition against American actions in Korea further raised criticisms and questions whether to grant 2 million tons of food grain to India. A number of American legislators felt that it would be better to grant aid to other poorer nations who openly sided with the US than to India, who seemed to be working against them. Alexander Wiley suggested that US take a practical stance, “we are going to do charity where charity is done, but when there is no need for charity, when our own people had to pay the bill, we owe our people some responsibility.”[21]
Nevertheless, there was an impetus as well to provide aid on the ground that it was morally imperative for the US to “save” the starving Indians which was consistent with the image that the Americans held about the country. In order to sway the opinion of American policy makers, Acheson even compelled the US Embassy in India to provide graphic materials that capture deaths, sufferings, the impacts of food deficiency as well as distraught areas.[22] Through American eyes, India was an image of sheer destitution, of people dying of hunger or sickness, beggars, fleas, and millions of homeless sleeping on the streets. President Eisenhower confirmed this image and described how he witnessed what poverty was like in India. “Dwellings were constructed of mud. Modern sewage, lighting, and running water were, of course, nonexistent. Houses were virtually unfurnished.[23]  Mr. Robert Fluker vividly illustrated how “the last hopes for good harvest…vanished” due to a series of calamities - heavy rains in Bihar, earthquakes in Assam, locust infestations in Rajputana and floods in Punjab.[24] There were repeated cautions that millions would starve in India and this strikes at the heart of American humanitarian idea that no man should be allowed to starve, more importantly given that the US had the capacity to help out India.
This appealed to American sense of morality and white man’s burden, from the public to the legislators, that if they do not extend help and “if, as is probable, millions die of starvation, we shall find it difficult to live with our own consciences.”[25] For Dean Acheson the refusal of grant to India would run counter to American traditions.[26] Newspaper editorials as well various American organizations, including YMCA, the Friends Service Committee, and the National Council of Churches, supported the aid measure.[27] The Washington Post stated, “If a catastrophe is to be prevented, aid will have to be forthcoming from the United States…The food ought to be granted and quickly.”[28] The lucid representations of deprivation in India as well as the threat of millions dying of hunger, in fact, further strengthened the carried perceptions of the American society about India as a land of perils and penury. This image compelled the Americans to bestow aid. From the 1950s up until the 1960s, India became the biggest recipient of American aid, amounting to $10 billion.
The Non-alignment Policy: Symptom of India’s Immorality
                One of the most critical issues that fractured Indo-Us relations during the Cold War was Nehru’s decision to declare the non-alignment policy and to keep “as far as possible…away from the power politics of groups, aligned against one another.”[29] Nehru advocated for countries in Asia to adopt a non-aligned stance so that the region would never again be an arena for Western power’s competition. He asserted that, “The countries of Asia can no longer be used as pawns by others; they are bound to have their own policies in world affairs.”[30] Although in theory, non-alignment entails the autonomy of India in determining its own foreign relations, in practice, India, during Nehru’s leadership tilted towards the Soviet Union.[31] This decisive move on the part of India was skeptically viewed by the Americans as a major impediment to US efforts to assemble nations of Asia in the struggle against the Soviet world domination. More so, neutralism, as much as it clashed with US policy of containment, was in fact deemed as immoral. American officials could not comprehend why a seemingly moral Indian person, based on the image of the Indians as spiritual and devout people, as Nehru could not realize morality of the US position in the context of the Cold War.[32]
Furthermore, India’s non-alignment was often used as an indisputable exemplar of the “flexible Indian mind.”[33] For the American society who viewed the Indians as passive, illogical and irrational people, non-alignment was a result of the ambiguity and weakness of the “Hindu mind.”[34] Chester Bowles said that India’s opinion about the Communist threat was partly due to the “illogical sense of security” led them to rationalize that the conflict formed out of American fear and inexperience.[35] For the American society, “people in India could not think straight, and could not move logically from one from to another.”[36] President Eisenhower himself described Nehru as someone who is more persuaded by personality than by a logical argument.[37] Moreover, for the Americans, non-alignment was not only unreasonable, it is also demonstrated the supreme, unfounded idealism and childishness of India.[38] Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who was known as for his unsympathetic perceptions about India, disputed that non-alignment itself was impossible. He contended that the defense treaties that the US signed and concluded with other countries, in actuality, negate the notion of neutrality. He further claimed that neutrality “has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and short-sighted conception.”[39]
                India’s non-aligned stance stirred criticisms in the US particularly during the deliberations for additional economic aid to India. For some legislators such as Sen. William Knowland, it would not be good for the reputation of the US to remunerate the non-aligned stance of India. Similarly, William Jenner questioned the proposed aid to India “when India is admittedly neutral in the irresponsible conflict between human dignity and human slavery.”[40] Washington was even more annoyed when some countries under Nehru’s Non-aligned Movement were parading a “distinct pro-Moscow slant.”[41] Washington’s detest against India’s non-aligned policy was seen in US continued support to Pakistan and that further widened the gap between US and Indian relations. Secretary Dulles defended Pakistan’s special status because it was the largest Muslim country that was a reliable defense against the spread of Communism to Asia.[42] This view was confirmed by a Pakistani diplomat who assured the Americans that “Pakistan will fight to the last man against Communism.”[43] Rather than deal with India properly, US chose to favor Pakistan who was more than willing to be America’s “ally” in South Asia – a move that further embittered the relations between India and the US. Pakistan became a member of the Baghdad Pact (later known as CENTO) and it received significant amount of American economic as well as military assistance until the mid-1960s.[44]
                India’s Nuclear Build-Up: Wayward Mutiny of Begging Bowls
                India’s nuclear detonation which occurred on May 18, 1974, and its continued weapons build-up thereafter, was another throbbing strain to the faltering Indo-US relations during the Cold War. Despite the clear statement in a telegram from Charge d-Affaires Schneider to the Secretary of State, that the incident was characterized by the Indian government as a “peaceful nuclear explosion,” it stirred negative reactions from the American populace. The American public’s opinion was one of dismay and incredulity that a country facing massive poverty wasted their meager resources to develop nuclear devices. A New York Times editorial stated that it was as unacceptable that India “squandered on the vanity of power, while 600 million Indians slip deeper into poverty.”[45]  The US threatened to cut all aids to India, a resolution to totally abscond assistance to India was even introduced in Congress, and fuel shipments to a nuclear plant in Tarapur were brought to a halt until international safeguards have been secured.
For the US Congress it was ridiculous that a country begging for surplus wheat and food grains, decided not only to arm itself with nuclear capabilities but to flaunt it to the world by detonating it. Some of the members of the US Congress saw that there was absolutely no reason for American tax payers to give assistance to India. There were initiatives from Rep. Stanford Parris and Sen. Marlow Cook to end all foreign aid to India until it became an official signatory of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Clearly, Katherine Mayo’s India was still powerfully engrained in the minds of the Americans. The Indian’s mind, Mayo states, has a very limited capacity, “their minds as a rule do not turn to the accumulation of things. They are content with their mud huts…given ample space, they crowd into a closet…rather than work harder for more food, they prefer their ancient measure of leisure and just enough food for the day.”[46]  They stereotyped the Indians as lazy, slothful, indolent and irresponsible – precisely the kind of people who are not entitled to acquire a weapon as critical as a nuclear bomb. India remained to be an image of extreme poverty and overpopulation, and as Paul Erlich described, “The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging.”[47]
Although the US government recognized that the cost of India’s nuclear testing was minimal, the further development of nuclear weapons would, in fact, be very expensive and would divert limited resources that could be spent more efficiently in their badly needed social and economic developments.[48] US had made it clear to India that it will not tolerate any testing of nuclear weapons including those termed as “peaceful nuclear explosion.” It was seen not only as a destabilizing factor in South Asia but also poses a concern for the US who was practically ignored the views of the US. The test also comes at a time when India was seeking for additional economic and food grain assistance from the US. The sentiment that any assistance given to India would be diverted to nuclear build-up and that contradicts their image of India – they are poor and miserable therefore, they could not afford to be armed with nuclear.[49]
Conclusion: (Mis) Perceptions, (Mis) Representations, and Foreign Policy-Making
                I have demonstrated, albeit succinctly, how racialized discourse about India shaped the way the American society behave towards the Indians, and in the realm of foreign policy making, how (mis)perceptions and (mis)representations about the Indians influenced policies and attitude of American decision-makers. It has been my purpose to contribute to literatures by authors such as Michael Hunt, Servando Halili, Kristin Hoganson, Rubin Francis Weston and Akira Iriye who have explored more extensively and more profoundly, the function of culture and ideology in studying foreign relations.[50] Through this paper, I concur with their findings that foreign policy decisions are not wholly carved out of realist objectives or is it a mere product of the structural framework of the state, but it is in point of fact, not divorced from ideology and culture (or social psychology which is still embedded within culture). I do not, however, make a case that ideology is the fundamentally the one and the only factor that determine foreign policy decisions. As Hunt explicated, and I surmise, non-ideological considerations form part as well in the process of diagnosing and selecting policies that the state implements in world affairs. It is however, crucial to emphasize, for the purpose of this paper, that adequate attention must be given to the examination of ideologies that permeate the society and the state and consequently determine foreign policy decisions. The reasons for this are simple. First, understanding the ideological processes at work within a state gives a better insight of how the state and its people generally perceive other people in relation to their self, and in so doing, we get a better sense of the reasons for their attitude and behavior. Secondly, ideology as inherently entrenched within a culture provides a narrower tool by which one can identify the distinctive nuances and peculiarities of a specific country’s demeanor in international affairs. Thirdly, it is imperative for policy makers to realize and comprehend how their personal ideology can, as a matter of fact, influence the way they evaluate issues and problems so that they would be better equipped to question where their opinions and judgments on foreign policy matters are coming from and thus, they would be more prudent and cautious in their decisions.
               














Bibliography

Books/Journals
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Chaudhry, Praveen K. and Marta Vanduzer-Snow (eds.). The United States and India: A History through Archives         The Formative Years. Washington, DC: Sage Publications, 2008.
Chaudhry, Praveen K. and Marta Vanduzer-Snow (eds.). The United States and India: A History through Archives          The Later Years Volume 1. Washington, DC: Sage Publications, 2011.

Chaudhry, Praveen K. and Marta Vanduzer-Snow (eds.). The United States and India: A History through Archives          The Later Years Volume 2. Washington, DC: Sage Publications, 2011.

Cohen, Stephen. India: Emerging Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Crabb, Cecil. “American Diplomatic Tactics and Neutralism” in Political Science Quarterly Vol. 78 No. 3 (Sept. 1963),     pp. 418-443.

Desai, Jigna. Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. London: Routledge, 2004.

Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Images: Essay on Representations. London: Routledge, 1993.

Ganguly, Sumit, Brian Shoup and Andrew Scobell (eds.). US-Indian Strategic Cooperation into the 21st Century:             More than Words. London: Routledge, 2006.

Halili, Servando. Iconography of the New Empire: Race and Gender Images and the American Colonization of the          Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2006.

Hunt, Michael. Ideology and US Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

Isaacs, Harold. Scratches on our Minds: American Images of China and India. New York: The John Day Company,          1958.

Jhaveri, Shanay (ed.). Outsider Films on India 1950-1990. Mumbai: The Shoestring Publisher, 2009.

Krenn, Michael L. (ed.). Race and US Foreign Policy during the Cold War. London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998. 

McMahon, Robert. “Food as Diplomatic Weapon: The India Wheat Loan of 1951” in Pacific Historical Review, Vol.        56 No. 3 (Aug. 1987), pp. 349-377.

Mitra, Ananda. Through the Western Lens: Creating National Images in Film. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999.

Rotter, Andrew. Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Rubinoff, Arthur. “Changing Perceptions of India in the US Congress” Asian Affairs. pp. 37-60.

Talbott, Strobe. Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution              Press, 2004.

Totman, Sally. How Hollywood Projects Foreign Policy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

Public Documents




[1] Mainstream IR theories include realist, liberalist, neo-realist, economic interpretations, and bureaucratic politics, among others.
[2] Hunt defines ideology as “an interrelated set of convictions and assumptions that reduces the complexities of a particular slice of reality to easily comprehensible terms and suggests appropriate ways of dealing with that reality.”
[3] H.W. Brands, India and the United States: The Cold Peace (Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1990), p. 3.
[4] Harold Isaacs, Scratches on our Minds (New York: The John Day Company, 1958).
[5] The only significant contact between India and the US before the Cold War occurred in the 1830s. There was an influx of American missionaries to various places in the subcontinent who were committed to proselytizing the Indians, whom they described as heathens, backward and uncivilized. Brands (1990), p. 2.
[6] Charles H. Heimsath, “The American Images of India as Factors in US Foreign Policy Making” in Michael Krenn (ed.) Race and US Foreign Policy during the Cold War (London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998), p. 274.
[7] H.W. Brands, India and the United States, p. 7.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ananda Mitra, Through the Western Lens: Creating National Images in Film, (New Delhi, Sage Publications, 1999).
[10] Ibid., pp. 152-179.
[11] Ibid., pp. 155-161.
[12]. Ibid., pp. 161-166.
[13] Ibid., pp. 166-167.
[14] Ibid., pp. 172-177.
[15] Hunt
[16] Hunt, p. 16.
[17] Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of the State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs (McGhee) to the Secretary of the State, Washington, DC, January 30, 1951. Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 6, p. 2106.
[18] Department of State Policy Statement, Washington December 1, 1950. Foreign Relations of the United States 1950, Volume 5, pp. 1477-1478.
[19] Arthur Rubinoff, “Changing Perceptions of India in the US Congress” in Asian Affairs, p. 42.
[20] Brands, India and the United States, p. 56.
[21] Ibid., 57.
[22] Telegram of the Secretary of State to the Embassy in India, January 24, 1951. Foreign Relations of the United States 1952, Volume 6, p. 2090.
[23] Charles Heimsath, “The American Images of India as Factors in US Foreign Policy Making” in Michael Krenn (ed.) Race and US Foreign Policy during the Cold War (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1998), p. 279.
[24] Foreign Relations 1951, Volume 6, p. 2085.
[25] Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of the State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs (McGhee) to the Secretary of State, January 30, 1951. Foreign relations of the United States, Volume 6, p. 2097.
[26] Foreign Relations, Volume 6, p. 2110.
[27] Robert McMahon, “Food as a Diplomatic Weapon: The India Wheat Loan of 1951” in Pacific Historical Review, Volume 56 No. 3, (Aug. 1987), p. 359.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Brands, India and the United States, p. 47.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Brian Shoup and Sumit Ganguly, introduction to US-Indian Strategic Cooperation into the 21st Century: More than Words. (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 2.
[32] Antony Best, et al., International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond Second Edtion, (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 318, 320.
[33] Heimsath, “The American Images of India,” p. 275.
[34] Ibid., p. 274.
[35] Memorandum by the Ambassador in India (Bowles) to the Secretary of State, New Delhi, December 6, 1951, Foreign Relations of the United States 1951, Volume 6, p. 2192.
[36] Rotter, Comrades at Odds, p. 83.
[37] Letter from the President to the Secretary of State, Washington, March 23, 1955, Foreign Relations, 1955-1957, Volume VIII.
[38] Best, International History, p. 320.
[39] Cecil Crabb, Jr. “American Diplomatic Tactics and Neutralism” in Political Science Quarterly, Volume 78, No. 3 (Sept., 1963), p. 426.
[40] Ibid., p. 83.
[41] Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb (Washington DC.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), p. 10.
[42] Ibid., p. 422.
[43] Brands, India and the United States, p. 73.
[44] Stephen Cohen, India: Emerging Power, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 270.
[45] Heimsath, “The American Images of India,” p. 286.
[46] Rotter, Comrades at Odds, p. 80.
[47] Heimsath, “The American Images of India”, p. 286.
[48] Response to National Security Study Memorandum 156, Washington, Sept. 1, 1972, p. 10.

[49] 62. Telegram from the Department of State to the Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, May 18, 1974.

[50] See: Servando Halili, Iconography of the New Empire Race and Gender Images and the American Colonization of the Philippines. (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2000); Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); and Rubin Francis Weston, Racism in US Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy 1893-1946, (US: University of South Carolina Press, 1972).

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