The Roots of India’s Foreign Policy: From Colonial Rule to Independence

Most countries write their foreign policy after they gain control of their own affairs. India did the reverse. Decades before the British left in 1947, Indian leaders were already debating how a free India should deal with the rest of the world. They formed committees, attended international conferences, and took public positions on global issues, all while still living under colonial rule. This unusual head start explains why India’s foreign policy felt so confident and fully formed almost from the moment of independence. To understand where Indian diplomacy comes from, we have to go back to the freedom struggle itself.

Foreign policy under colonial control 🔗

During British rule, India had no independent foreign policy of its own. As a colony, its external relations were managed entirely by the British Raj, which represented India at international forums and signed agreements on its behalf. Decisions about war, trade, and diplomacy were made in London to serve British imperial interests, not Indian ones.

This created a strange situation. India was often dragged into global conflicts and conferences without any real say in the matter. British representatives spoke “for India” while taking positions that frequently clashed with what Indian leaders actually believed. Indian soldiers fought in both World Wars, and Indian resources supported British strategy, yet ordinary Indians had no voice in these commitments.

The frustration this caused was important. The colonial experience taught Indian nationalists exactly what they did not want: a foreign policy decided by someone else, designed for someone else’s benefit. That lesson would later harden into a deep commitment to sovereignty and independent decision-making in world affairs.

The Congress finds its voice 🔗

The Indian National Congress began asserting an independent view on world affairs long before it had any power to act on it. In 1921, an All India Congress Committee meeting in Delhi passed a landmark resolution declaring that the existing government of India did not represent Indian opinion on external matters. In 1927, the Congress session in Madras went further, stressing that India should conduct its external relations independently.

Congress also consistently condemned colonialism and imperialism wherever it appeared, not just in India. It expressed solidarity with freedom movements across Asia and Africa, positioning the Indian struggle as part of a wider fight against foreign domination rather than a narrow national grievance. This early outlook, formed while India was itself colonised, became one of the lasting pillars of its later diplomacy.

The 1932 foreign affairs department 🔗

A turning point came when the Indian National Congress set up a dedicated foreign affairs department. This was a striking move for a political party that did not even hold power and was still fighting for basic rights within colonial limits.

The department was chaired by Jawaharlal Nehru, who would later become independent India’s first Prime Minister, with Ram Manohar Lohia serving as its secretary. The decision to create it grew out of a clear realisation. Britain kept taking positions on India’s behalf that contradicted India’s own ethical and political outlook, so the Congress decided it needed its own machinery to think through international questions and articulate an independent stance.

The department did real work. It built contacts with anti-colonial and progressive movements around the world, published material about India’s freedom struggle for international audiences, and sent unofficial representatives to international gatherings. In effect, the Congress was practising a form of diplomacy years before it had a government. This early institution-building meant that when independence finally arrived, India was not starting from scratch. It already had ideas, contacts, and a worldview ready to put into action.

India on the world stage before 1947 🔗

One of the most remarkable features of this period is that colonial India gained international representation even before it was free. India was admitted to the Imperial Conference in 1917, which gave it a foothold in international meetings for the first time. It became a founding member of the League of Nations, and later took part in the conference that created the United Nations.

The San Francisco Conference and the UN Charter 🔗

From 25 April to 26 June 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco at the United Nations Conference on International Organization to draft the charter of a new global body that would replace the failed League of Nations. India was among them.

On 26 June 1945, India formally signed the United Nations Charter along with the other participating states, and it ratified the document on 30 October 1945. This made India a founding member of the United Nations. The catch was that the Indian delegation was still appointed under British authority, led by Sir A. Ramaswami Mudaliar, rather than chosen by an elected Indian government.

Even so, the significance was enormous. India had acquired an international identity and a seat at the table of the most important new institution of the post-war world before it had even won its freedom. The Charter came into force on 24 October 1945, a date now marked as United Nations Day. India’s early membership gave it a platform it would use vigorously in the years to come.

Nehru and the guiding principles 🔗

If the Congress provided the institutional foundation, Jawaharlal Nehru provided the ideas. He is widely regarded as the main architect of India’s foreign policy, and the principles he shaped were rooted in the experiences of the freedom struggle itself.

The clearest early statement came in a radio broadcast from New Delhi on 7 September 1946, when Nehru was serving in the interim government. In it, he laid out the basic direction of Indian foreign policy: an end to colonialism and racism, distance from rival power blocs, and friendly ties with Asian neighbours. He famously declared that India would keep away from the power politics of groups aligned against one another, which had already led to one world war and threatened another.

Anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism 🔗

Having suffered under colonial rule, India naturally opposed it everywhere. Anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism became guiding values, expressed through consistent support for the liberation of dependent nations across Asia and Africa. India saw itself as a natural spokesperson for newly emerging and still-colonised peoples, a role that drew directly on its own long fight for freedom.

The roots of non-alignment 🔗

The principle most closely associated with Nehru is non-alignment. As the Cold War split the world into two hostile camps led by the United States and the Soviet Union, Nehru insisted that India would not tie itself to either military bloc. This was not the same as neutrality or staying out of world affairs. It meant judging each international issue on its own merits and taking an independent position, rather than following the line of a superpower patron.

This idea grew straight out of the colonial experience. Having just escaped control by one foreign power, India had no intention of surrendering its freedom of action to another. Non-alignment was, at its heart, a way of guarding the hard-won independence that the freedom movement had fought for. The formal Non-Aligned Movement would come later, but its philosophical seeds were planted in this foundational period.

Standing against racism and apartheid 🔗

India’s commitment to racial equality was not an afterthought. It was central to its early diplomacy, and India acted on it almost immediately upon gaining a voice at the United Nations.

In June 1946, the Government of India formally requested that the treatment of Indians in South Africa be placed on the agenda of the UN General Assembly. This followed discriminatory South African legislation, often called the “Ghetto Act,” which restricted where people of Indian origin could live and trade. The Indian delegation to that 1946 session was led by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister.

This complaint mattered far beyond India. According to scholarly accounts, it was the first occasion when anti-racist sentiments received a significant international airing at the new world body. India did not let the matter drop. The “Treatment of Indians in the Union of South Africa” became an annual item on the UN agenda, kept alive year after year until it eventually merged with the broader question of apartheid in 1962. Through this persistent campaigning, Indian diplomats worked to mobilise global opinion against racial discrimination.

This early stance set a clear moral tone. India presented itself not just as a defender of its own citizens abroad, but as a champion of racial justice and human dignity worldwide, themes that connected naturally to its anti-colonial outlook.

Why this foundation still matters 🔗

The genesis period gave Indian foreign policy a character that has proved remarkably durable. Several core commitments were already visible before independence: a fierce protection of sovereignty born from the colonial experience, solidarity with oppressed and decolonising peoples, opposition to racism, faith in multilateral institutions like the UN, and a refusal to surrender independent judgement to any foreign power.

Because these ideas were developed over decades of struggle rather than improvised after 1947, independent India entered the world with a clear sense of identity and purpose. The committees, conferences, resolutions, and principles of the colonial era were not just preparation. They were the actual beginning of Indian diplomacy. The freedom movement and the foreign policy grew together, each shaping the other, which is why so many of the values from that period continue to echo in how the country engages with the world today.

What do you think? Does forming a foreign policy outlook during the freedom struggle, rather than after independence, give India a stronger or more rigid diplomatic identity? And how relevant are principles like non-alignment, born in the Cold War era, to the very different world order we live in now?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_and_the_United_Nations
2. https://lotusarise.com/indian-foreign-policy-upsc/
3. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/history-of-the-un/san-francisco-conference
4. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/united-nations-charter
5. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/history-of-the-un/preparatory-years
6. https://www.thebookreviewindia.org/nehru-and-nonalignment/
7. https://sahistory.org.za/article/united-nations-and-apartheid-timeline-1946-1994
8. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/abs/family-quarrel-the-development-of-the-dispute-over-indians-in-south-africa/C43F8E48AF6231B1AB63794411F0C1F1
9. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14736489.2017.1346425