Updated: September 5, 2020 7:07:54 am
Indira Gandhi with Richard Nixon in November 1971. (Express File)
A set of recently declassified White House tapes reveal in great detail President Richard Nixon’s deep antipathy toward India and Indians, which, fueled by his national security adviser Henry Kissinger, shaped US policy toward New Delhi through early 1970s.
In a meeting with a group of senior officials in the Oval Office on June 17, 1971, Nixon disparaged Indian women as the “most unattractive women in the world” and Indian women as the “most asexual” and “pathetic” people. .
Kissinger called the Indians “excellent sycophants” whose “great skill” was “to seduce people in key positions.”
The content of the new tapes, which ran in batches through May this year, was reported by Princeton University professor Gary J Bass in an op-ed in The New York Times on Friday. Bass had filed a legal request for their declassification.
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As a deeply polarized American heads into a presidential election that has been compared to that of 1968, in which Nixon successfully tapped into the racial anxiety of white Americans in the wake of widespread urban unrest, the tapes draw a line between personal racism from a country. President and his reflection in his attitudes towards international events and actors.
The June 17, 1971 meeting, held between 5:15 PM and 6:10 PM, was captured by the Oval Office recording system and appears as conversation 525-001 on the White House tapes.
Around minute 50 of the 54 minute 42 second tape, Nixon says: “Without a doubt, the least attractive women in the world are Indian women. Undoubtedly.”
He continues: “The most asexual, nothing, these people. I mean, people say, what about black Africans? Well, you can see something, the vibrancy there, I mean they have a little animal charm, but God, those Indians, ack, pathetic. Uch. “As he says this, there’s laughter.
The new tapes provide further proof of Nixon’s well-known hostility to India and his weakness for Pakistan, leading him to look away from the Pakistani army’s genocide against the Bengali people in what was then East Pakistan.
Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, had detailed the attitude and actions of the Nixon administration in his 2013 book, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide.
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In an email response to The Indian Express on Friday, Bass pointed to a section of the book, in which he had outlined the origins of Nixon’s attitude toward India and Indians. The reasons, according to the book, were many, including India’s policy of nonalignment and its “suspiciously good terms with the Soviet Union.”
“Nixon’s anti-Indian leanings were reinforced when John F Kennedy took a warmly pro-India line,” Bass wrote in the book. “Besides that, there was a mutual hatred between Nixon and Indira Gandhi.” And finally, there was the friendship between him and the then President of Pakistan, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, who acted as his go-between with China.
Nixon and Kissinger had deep doubts about the then US ambassador to India, Kenneth B Keating, who, to the chagrin of the president and the national security adviser, briefed them on the atrocities committed by Pakistan against the Bengalis.
On the tape, as Nixon wonders why Keating was on the side of the Indians, Kissinger says, “They are excellent sycophants, Mr. President. They are masters of flattery. They are masters of subtle flattery. Thus they survived 600 years. They suck, their great ability is to suck people in key positions. “
On The Blood Telegram, Bass wrote about the president and his ambassador to India:
“Nixon made a brief effort to speak kindly of the Indians. It didn’t go well. “Let me tell you this,” he intoned, “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about India.” There are 400 million Indians. ‘ Keating corrected him; actually there were 550 million Indians. Nixon was shocked: ‘I don’t know why the hell someone would breed in that damn country, but they do. Trying to get back to goodness, he said that India had “a semblance of democracy” and that “we want them to succeed.” As there are 550 million people, we want them to do well ”. Then, as if overwhelmed by that kindness, he added: ‘And they always hate us … internationally, we know that.’
In another passage in the book, Bass wrote: “Nixon said bitterly, ‘The Indians need … what they really need is a …’ Kissinger chimed in, ‘They’re such bastards.’ Nixon finished his thought: ‘A massive famine.’
Examples and comments like these were common in Nixon’s conversations about India, and the new tapes show a visceral hatred of indigenous people. Bass, who has accessed these tapes, found that many still had long beeps.
In December 2012, Bass had filed a legal request for a mandatory declassification review with the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. After a long delay, the Nixon Library released a few tapes without bleeding in May 2018 and July 2019, then 28 more in batches from October 2019 to May 2020.
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