'Indians are slippery, treacherous people': US [merged]

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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‘Indians are slippery, treacherous people’
Sunday, 1 Jul, 2007

NEW DELHI: The recently declassified US official records throw new light on the anger and frustration that seized President Richard Nixon during the 1971 Indo-Pak war and how Washington secretly pleaded with China to “menace” India by moving troops to the Indian border.

Poring over thousands of pages of national security files and telephone transcripts of the then US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and 2,800 hours of Nixon tapes, well-known American author and historian Robert Dallek recalls the events in the White House during the December of 1971 in a just-published book Nixon and Kissinger-Partners in Power.

Nixon’s infamous tilt towards Pakistan is well known but the author reveals many other facets of how Nixon and Kissinger were upset with India and how they tried to rope in China in a bid to prevent the formation of Bangladesh.

Nixon describes Indians as “a slippery, treacherous people” and his National Security Adviser calls the Indians “insufferably arrogant”. The story began in the fall of 1971, when differences in the administration and the country over White House China policy posed little threat to a major transformation in Sino-American relations.

A larger danger to rapprochement with Beijing and detente with Moscow came from rising tensions in South Asia. Long standing tensions between the Punjabis, who dominated the central government in West Pakistan, and the Bengalis in the East now erupted into a full-scale crisis.

The President and Kissinger had less interest in what the Indians or Pakistanis did to each other than in assuring that nothing sidetracked Kissinger’s trip to China and the revolution in Sino-American relations.

Our objective should be to “buoy up Yahya for at least another month while Pakistan served as the gateway to China,” Kissinger told Nixon at the beginning of June. “Even apart from the Chinese thing," the President replied, “I wouldn’t …help the Indians, the Indians are no good.”…

Times of India

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Re: 'Indians are slippery, treacherous people': US

THe title of the thread is inaccurate. Presenting "politically incorrect" views of Nixon and Kissinger as views of US in general is disingenuous.

Nixon was personal friend of Yahya and had a personal dislike for Indra Ghandi. He did all he could to help Yahya in 1971. His hands were tied by a Congress that was against Pakistan because of public pressure due to the reports of massacares and rapes by Pakistan army in Bangadesh. He could not supply weapons and planes directly to Pakistan because of restrictions by Congress, so he got Jordan to send their US supplied planes to Pakistan, getting Israel to promise to not attack Jordan in the absence of these planes. He also saw through the motivations of Indra Gandhi with her "humanatarian" support for Bangladeshi's and called it a blatant attack and dismemberment of a UN member state.

Things have changed a great deal now as evident in Clinton's visit of India/Pak and with the Nuclear deal offered to India by Bush.

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Re: 'Indians are slippery, treacherous people': US

^^

why waste time in trying to make him understand. Tomorrow he might quote some idiot in Africa and say that the whole of Africa hates India. If this is what he wants to believe, I dont think any evidence to the contrary is not going to make any difference. One more thing, Nixon is the only president in the recent history to leave office unceremoniously..

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Nixon, Gandhi, Khan, Mao

Nixon's dislike of 'witch' Indira

Kissinger and Nixon opposed an independent Bangladesh

Ex-US President Richard Nixon called Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi an "old witch", according to recently released documents from the 1970s.

His national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, said "the Indians are *******s anyway" in the run-up to the India-Pakistan war of 1971.

At the time, the US saw India as too close to the then Soviet Union.

The US state department has declassified many documents this month on US foreign policy of the time.

One key conversation transcript comes from the meeting between President Nixon and Mr Kissinger in the White House on 5 November 1971, shortly after a meeting with the visiting Indira Gandhi.

[quote]

MAY 26 1971
Kissinger: They are the most aggressive goddamn people around there
Nixon: The Indians?
Kissinger: Yeah
Nixon: Sure
[/quote]

"We really slobbered over the old witch," says President Nixon.

"The Indians are *******s anyway," says Mr Kissinger. "They are starting a war there."

He adds: "While she was a *****, we got what we wanted too. She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she's got to go to war."

'Special relationship'

The Indo-Pakistan war took place between November and December 1971.

Richard Nixon
The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line
Richard Nixon

It had its roots in demands in 1970 by East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, for independence.

In March 1971, Pakistan's military acted to put down the secessionists there. Millions fled to India's West Bengal state.

India supported an independent Bangladesh and ties with the US plummeted in August 1971 when Delhi signed a treaty with the Soviet Union that included mutual military assistance in case of war.

President Nixon, on the other hand, had developed a "special relationship" with Pakistan's then military dictator, General Yahya Khan.

In a White House conversation with Mr Kissinger on 4 June 1971, President Nixon berates his ambassador to India, Kenneth Keating, for wanting to, as Mr Kissinger puts it, "help India push the Pakistanis out".

President Nixon says: "I don't want him to come in with that kind of jackass thing with me... Keating, like every ambassador who goes over there, goes over there and gets sucked in."

Mr Kissinger then says: "Those sons-of-*****es, who never have lifted a finger for us, why should we get involved in the morass of East Pakistan?

"If East Pakistan becomes independent, it is going to become a cesspool. It's going to be 100 million people, they have the lowest standard of living in Asia."

President Nixon replies: "Yeah."

Mr Kissinger: "They're going to become a ripe field for communist infiltration."

President Nixon then openly courted China to try to turn the tide of the war Pakistan's way.

With the Indian army and armed Bengali separatists winning, the US on 10 December 1971 urged Beijing to mobilise troops towards India, saying the US would back it if the Soviet Union became involved.

China declined and on 16 December the war ended with the Indian army and Bengali separatists taking Dhaka.

Exiled leaders had declared Bangladesh independent on 26 March 1971 and, in 1972, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returned to become the country's first prime minister.

**
The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line
Richard Nixon
**

BBC - stupid thing doesnt allow me to link.

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Re: Nixon, Gandhi, Khan, Mao

so what?

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Re: 'Indians are slippery, treacherous people': US [merged]

Now here's something that should unite Indians and Pakistanis - considering that both nations were insulted by a slimebag like Richard Nixon, both nations need to consider his dislike for them as a compliment!:D

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Re: 'Indians are slippery, treacherous people': US [merged]

the report basically states Indians are smart and Pakistani leaders are dumb. And as facts have proven since that seems to be an apt assessment...even though Nixon and Kissinger are hardly the kind of people who should be given any credibility

The Random Thread
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Re: Nixon, Gandhi, Khan, Mao

I could not agree more.

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Re: 'Indians are slippery, treacherous people': US

very interesting.