The logic of non-alignment
Once political freedom was achieved, India had to be developed into an autonomous entity that would determine its own economic and foreign policy. To be able to achieve such autonomy in the long term, India had to develop her own industrial and technological capabilities.
Therefore, while India would accept defence, technology, aid and trade inputs from both the West and the Soviet bloc, it had to keep away from superpower conflicts and concentrate on her own development. That was the logic of Nehru's foreign policy of non-alignment.
More than on any other issue, Nehru's uncompromising fight for India's strategic autonomy comes through clearly when one considers how he initiated and ran India's nuclear programme.
Nehru and Homi J Bhabha began planning for the Indian nuclear programme in 1946, a year before India even became free. After independence, Nehru gave Bhabha full freedom and resource support. He protected the programme from the efforts of the Superpowers to kill it or co-opt it by making the nuclear establishment answerable only to himself.
What attracted Nehru to Bhabha's three-stage nuclear plan was again the promise of 'energy nirvana', freedom from dependence on external energy sources, although he knew that he himself would not be around when that stage came.
Nehru accepted the slow, difficult and untried path because he had the guts to chart his own path. His reward would be Indian autonomy.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964) (center) shares a joke with Yugoslav President Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) (right) and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918 -1970) in July 1956 at Brioni Island during a Non-Aligned Movement summit.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Also see: 'Nobody believes Nehru was beyond mistakes'