Choices—Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy

Author: Shivshankar Menon
Publisher: Penguin 2016

Menon served as National Security Advisor and as Foreign Secretary of India. He wrote this book while working as a Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In this book he talks about the “choices” India made during his tenure in various domestic and international issues. In particular he talks about choices India made during the following crises.

(1) 1962 Sino-Indian war and the “1993 border peace and tranquility agreement with China”.

(2) 1998 Indian nuclear test and the “civil nuclear initiative with the US”.

(3) 2008 Mumbai attack and the choice of “restrain” rather than “riposte”.

(4) “Choices” India made when Sri Lanka eliminated Tamil Tigers in 2009.

(5) Why India pledges “no first use of nuclear weapons”.

I do not know much about the 1962 war or the Indian nuclear tests to be a critical reader. I was with Menon during the first two chapters. But while reading the third chapter about the Mumbai attacks and about the subsequent “choices” India made, I began to question his side of the story. It sounded too good to be true. Since we are more familiar with the civil war in Sri Lanka, let me stay with the 4th chapter for the rest of this short note.

Menon claims that India had two main worries. The first was the rise of Tamil separatism. India feared that Tamil separatism would spread from Sri Lanka to India. The other concern was that an outside power or powers—other than India, of course—could interfere in Sri Lanka. India’s RAW was therefore tasked from the 1970s on to keep an eye on Tamil separatists.  Sounds like he knew what the Indian government was doing. However, he did not know about RAW training insurgents. He got this information from “other accounts”.

Most accounts say that RAW also trained and supported these groups between 1983 and 1987.

Now he tries to spin this observation.  

The logic was that a degree of contact and control over them would be useful to further the peaceful evolution of a solution to the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka”.

The following is his version of the "Parippu incident".

By mid-1987, the population of Jaffna was under siege and without supplies and food. On June 5, 1987, the Indian air force air-dropped 25 tons of medicine and food in Jaffna.

So it was not parippu (dhal).  Apparently, 25 tons of medicine and food were meant for the millions of people in Jaffna who had “no supplies and food”.

Manon says that the Indian Army (IPKF) has always believed that it was forced to fight in Sri Lanka with one hand tied behind its back. 

But then he gives credit to JR for the “choice” India made.

JR who signed the India-Sri Lanka Agreement that brought IPKF, was known as the Silver Fox of Sri Lanka politics. He used the IPKF to fight the LTTE in the north and east.

Then he admits that the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka was an inexorable tragedy. He also says that India had very few “choices”, and not good ones in 1987.

The second statement of the section titled “the end game” is the following.

In December 2006 the government began an offensive in the Eastern Province clearing and holding territory, irrespective of the cost in lives.

According to Menon, India was “naturally” worried at the widespread civilian casualties when LTTE were squeezed in to a small area as they restored to their standard tactic of using civilian populace as human shields, as they had done against IPKF. (That is probably why IPKF did not succeed in finishing LTTE.) (However) this tactic was hardly likely to deter a “Sinhalese army” under Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Fonseka and President Rajapaksa.

Manon was involved in the talks between India and Sri Lanka during the last few months of the war. He gave credit to “Rakapaksas” for agreeing to allow safe passages to civilians and not to use heavy-caliber weapons. He also says that “more importantly, the Rajapakasas implemented these commitments in practice.”

He ended the 4th chapter with the following two sentences.

… But, no matter what one might think of its internal politics, Sri Lanka today is a better place without the LTTE and the civil war. And India contributed to making that outcome possible.

It is not a bad book. His Indian bias is quite obvious from the start. He gives credit to Indian leaders who stubbornly resisted western attempts to influence Indian “choices”. Yet, he does not seem to like any resistance from Sri Lankan leaders. He even used the derogatory word “regime” to identify the democratically elected Sri Lankan government that ended the war.