“The most basic was the Cold War: presidents of the US since Harry Truman had been frustrated by India's policy of nonalignment, which Nixon, much like his predecessors, viewed as Nehruvian posturing. India was on suspiciously good terms with the Soviet Union,” the book says.
Another reason was realpolitik.
“Some Americans romanticised India's democracy but not Nixon. He was unimpressed with the world's largest republic, believing to the end of his days that the US should base its foreign policy on what a country did outside its borders, not on whether it treated its people decently at home,” the author says.
