I've been reading Cold War on the Periphery and McMahon's book about US, India, and Pak. IT has me curious about all the missed opportunities for the US to have won india over before the Carrier incident in 1971. I would appreciate your insight and reading recommendations.
India after it got independence, started a “non-alignment policy”. They didn’t want to be in American or Soviet camps but they did have friendly contact with both of them. They were also not really fond of “the West” since they just became independent from being a Western country’s colony. India was also socialist (not communist) and received help from the USSR in setting up mechanized farming, five years plans, etc.
Pakistan on the other hand was seeking allies since India was economically and militarily stronger than them. US saw an opportunity to have a foothold in South Asia and thus they started selling arms to Pakistan.
The balance started to shift US to India when India and China went to war in 1963. Weapons deals and intelligence sharing were active at this time. IIRC this was the Kennedy era and he was generally friendlier to India.
After this, two things happened. Nixon got elected and Sino-Soviet split was intensifying. Nixon wanted to be close with China to act on their mutual distrust of Soviet Union. Since PRC wasn’t actively represented, he used Pakistan as a proxy to talk to China and make deals. Pakistan and China was also cozying up because of their mutual distrust of India. India also had a strong Prime Minister at this time (she was called the Iron Lady). She worked on a friendship and defence treaty with Soviet Union.
Then 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war happened, Pakistan was losing and US didn’t want it’s ally losing it’s foothold in South Asia. US and China threats were countered by Soviet Union who had a Defence treaty with India (thanks to the said prime minister). It also seemed like US was going to use nuclear weapons against India (during the carrier incident).
This made India paranoid and they accelerated their Nuclear weapons research and finally produced the bomb in 1974. Soviet Union did not care about this (as one of the primary reasons of India going nuclear was to counter the Chinese nuclear capability) but the West condemned this and issued sanctions soaring relations even further.
The relations were not good until the fall of Soviet Union and India liberalizing it’s markets in the early 90s.