India-Australia: A partnership a long time coming

There are important lessons from the last time Canberra and New Delhi sought to forge common cause.

Anondeeta Chakraborty

10 July 20255 min read

It’s 1963, and the India-China war in the high mountains of the Himalayas the year before has left Delhi searching for a way of backfilling a military deficit exposed by the fighting.

India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, formally non-aligned in disposition, turned to Australia.

“It was encouraging to learn,” Nehru wrote in a private letter to his Australian counterpart Robert Menzies, “about the generous announcement of the Government of Australia that the entire assistance of £2.2 million … [is] a gift in support of the Indian defence [effort]. We all deeply appreciate this magnanimous gesture.”

But most startling was the assessment Nehru offered about China’s intentions.

“The Chinese aggressiveness and desire for domination is not confined to India or the countries in South East Asia, but is also a bid for world domination,” Nehru told Menzies.

“All of us, India as well as other countries in Asia, have to prepare ourselves to meet the long-term threat that China, with its 700 million people, a totalitarian and expansionist regime and a land army of several million, poses.”

This letter can be found in Nehru’s selected works and is a remarkable early example of a desire to see India and Australia find common ground in resisting China.

More than 60 years later, the concern about China’s intentions still animates the desire for closer ties between India and Australia – a relationship that despite the ambition has in decades since been defined by false starts and frustration.

At the UN General Assembly in 1960, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies, left, and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (Getty Images)

Nehru turned to Australia not merely for its ability to help India with military needs, or because of Commonwealth ties, but with faith that both nations shared a common view about the threat from China.

It has taken a long time. This year marked the fifth year since signing the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which both countries would deny is aimed at China, but nonetheless was forged in the aftermath of another outbreak of conflict in the Himalayas. Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles visited India in June and complimented the progress in enhancing “defence ties” between the countries, prompted by the mutual desire to realise “a peaceful, stable and prosperous [Indo-Pacific] region”. Echoing the view, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar pronounced Australia as India’s “strong security” partner and acknowledged the “real transformation” in the defence ties.

While such official statements leave the impression of an unprecedented elevation in ties, the strategic alignment between India and Australia has deeper historical roots, which should be acknowledged.

Shared assumptions concerning the China threat may not be enough alone to secure enhanced ties.

Documents uncovered in archival research illustrate that the potential for strategic coordination between the two countries was very much discussed following the 1962 India-China war.

In a secret briefing prepared by the Ministry of External Affairs, M J Desai, India’s then foreign secretary, reasoned that the Australian government’s “stake in Asia” makes it “desirable to cultivate” relations with Canberra. It was advised to maintain “high-level contact” with Australia to pursue political and defence relations, in addition to the approved “emergency assistance of about 120 million dollars worth of arms and equipment” from Western partners. (The source material for these comments can be found in T. T. Krishnamachari Private Papers, Secret MEA, From MJ Desai, FS, 21 March 1963, Subject file no. 37 PMML.)

With the primary motive of embedding Australia as a potential defence partner, T. T. Krishnamachari, India’s Minister for Economic and Defence Coordination, visited Australia in 1963 following the India-China war – a trip Nehru had flagged in his letter to Menzies. This visit aimed to explore Canberra’s assistance in the production of defence equipment, as well as to emulate and adopt in India the best practices of Australia’s defence organisation. In a secret memorandum to Nehru, Krishnamachari outlined calibrated policy proposals he discussed with Menzies. Krishnamachari identified tapping into Australia’s advancements in “industrial production” and “aircraft industry” for exploring potential collaborations in augmenting India’s defence production, setting up “production plants”, and ensuring “supply and reserves”. Krishnamachari also suggested coordination at the “Chief of Staff level” to revamp India’s air defence. (Letters exchanged between T. T. Krishnamachari and Jawaharlal Nehru dated 26 April 1963 – two documents).

Correspondingly, this visit by Krishnamachari was cautiously interpreted by Australia’s Department of External Affairs as an attempt to forge a “regional defence alliance”. This reinforced the prevailing diplomatic efforts of James Plimsoll, Australia’s then High Commissioner to India, and Garfield Barwick, Australia’s External Affairs Minister, to leverage India’s predicament by amplifying the communist threat and garnering sympathy for the West in New Delhi. Fearing “serious consequences for India and for this area [Pacific region] as a whole” and “a [weakening of] Southeast Asia”, Menzies agreed to pursue bilateral assistance or collaboration for a push-back against China.

The Canberra Times, 27 April 1963, Page 3 (Trove/National Library of Australia)

However, Krishnamachari was upfront in noting that there would not be any changes in India’s non-alignment strategy. He viewed “fixed military alignments” and “military pacts” as counterproductive against the “Chinese juggernaut rolling South [Southeast Asia and Pacific region]”.

Following Krishnamachari’s visit to Australia, efforts were undertaken in India-Australia ties to work jointly on defence production. To that end, four Australian defence production experts visited India in July 1963, and five senior Indian defence officials made a visit to Australia in September the same year. The purpose of those visits was to identify mutual areas of defence production.

India and Australia also signed a Defence Aid Agreement, providing India with military aid and other supplies to assist India in self-defence. Accordingly, £675,000 of aid was expedited to India. Perhaps more importantly, for the first time, along with the United States and United Kingdom, Australia and India participated in a joint air exercise, Shiksha. In this, Australia’s Canberra bombers were airborne with India’s Gnat and Hunter fighter squadrons alongside UK and US jets.

Despite the military aid and assurance of joint air defence, it took India and Australia almost a decade to take up joint defence procurement. In 1977, India received the N-24A Nomad transport aircraft from Australia. This suggests that the initial momentum for enhanced ties dissipated, owing to India reverting to its non-alignment posture and Australia’s diversion caused by support for Britain’s involvement in Malaysia and the US war in Vietnam.

But this history is nonetheless telling and offers lessons for the present. Shared assumptions concerning the China threat may not be enough alone to secure enhanced ties. Tangible defence collaboration must follow. Decades later, the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index reveals defence trade between India and Australia is practically non-existent. Policy suggestions made decades ago, such as cooperation in defence and security, still find limited application.

The scope for defence production, assistance in leveraging strides in defence technology, and co-producing by exploiting comparative advantages, are some contemporary policy prescriptions resembling past ambition. More effort is needed to ensure progress is made, lest history repeat.

About the author

Anondeeta Chakraborty

Anondeeta Chakraborty is currently researching a project focusing on India’s strategic culture during the Cold War, and completed her Masters in International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Topics

India Australia