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White House tapes show
Nixon's bias against India

Mark Wilkinson in Washington

White House tape recordings released on Thursday show former US president Richard Nixon had little sympathy for India while trying to mediate peace between it and Pakistan in 1971.

"The Indians put on their sanctimonious peace Gandhi-like, Christ-like attitude," Nixon told former U S president George Bush, then U S ambassador to the United Nations on December 8, 1971.

"(They think) we are the greatest and the world's biggest democracy and Pakistan is one of the most horrible dictatorships."

The tapes, containing recorded telephone conversations and meetings from August to December 1971, also captured Nixon advisers such as Henry Kissinger and former speaker of the House John McCormack offering their views on the Indo-Pakistani war that ended with the emergence of Bangladesh.

"The Indians are master-psychologists," Kissinger told Nixon during a telephone conversation on January 1, 1972. "They know they have to deal with us because they are literally now in worse shape than ever."

"I guess they must be," Nixon replied in a seemingly satisfied tone.

Beginning in February 1971, Nixon began taping all his telephone conversations and meetings, the most infamous of which pertained to the Watergate break-in scandal, which ultimately led to his resignation in 1974.

The war between India and Pakistan broke out on December 3, 1971 after years of tense relations ever since the British-sponsored Partition of 1947 which marked the end of British rule in India and the birth of Muslim-dominated Pakistan.

Birth of Bangladesh

The 1971 war lasted 14 days and ended with the birth of a new country: Bangladesh.

But two weeks after the end of the conflict, Nixon was still reticent to endorse the new state and told Kissinger he would announce that the recognition of Bangladesh was premature.

"And of course we have a consul in Dhaka (the capital) with a map calling it Bangladesh already," Kissinger complained to Nixon.

"Yes I know," Nixon replied with obvious irritation. "The bastard who was there before, isn't he? He's really an all-out India-lover, isn't he?"

The Indo-Pakistani war unfolded at the height of the Cold War, thus putting America and the Soviet Union on opposing sides of it.

Nixon did little in conversation to hide what side he was leaning toward.

"We (the US) are doing our best to cool it," Nixon told McCormack on December 8, 1971. "The UN asked both sides to withdraw and has put some of the blame on India where it belongs for not withdrawing."

But for image-sake, Nixon told his advisers it was paramount to convince people he was neither anti-Indian nor pro-Pakistani, but instead "pro-peace."

"Aggression is wrong," he lectured Bush. "Those god damn Communist countries are engaged in it but even if a democracy (such as India) engages in it it's wrong."

In private, however, Nixon denigrated the Indians.

"The Indians just smother you out there with all their devious tricky things," he once told McCormack. "They are really something."

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Washington last month, marking a new era in bilateral relations between the two countries after years of Cold War suspicion during which Delhi had close ties with the Soviet Union.

Washington's relations with Pakistan have soured over issues related to nuclear weapons testing and problems with Islamabad's backing of Muslim militant groups fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir.

Reuters

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