Finding Their Voice: The Indian Press and Nikita Khrushchev’s 1955 Visit to India

 This paper considers Nikita Khrushchev's 1955 visit to India. It demonstrates a correlation between India's foreign policy of non-alignment and peaceful co-existence and domestic concerns about the plight of the majority of its citizens, as Indian elites apprehensive about potential social unrest sought to navigate a course for the nation that would allay such anxieties. It highlights how Khrushchev's trip to India heightened such anxieties among Indian elites, as his rhetoric on development, colonialism, and the West engendered the appeal of socialism among India's poor. This paper argues that Indian elites reacted to the Soviet visit so as to alleviate their domestic concerns about potential social unrest (and the consequent loss of their privileged position) triggered by the widespread poverty afflicting the country, and to further their foreign agenda, as they responded to the oratory of their guests so as to advance their own aims. It suggests that they were not affected by Khrushchev's ideological rhetoric or political agenda, but rather by his language that conveyed sympathy for India's poor. In other words, they had their own understanding of decolonization and did not abide by the dictates of the Soviet Union and its leadership. This paper proposes that Indian elites, as representatives of an emerging democracy gradually moving beyond colonial Orientalist perceptions, sought recognition of India as an emerging power and thus welcomed Khrushchev as he assuaged their postcolonial anxiety to be acknowledged in a global context. This further enabled them to challenge the colonial practice of infantilizing Indians and thereby deeming them incapable of self-governance. In doing so, they were seeking to secure Soviet aid for their large-scale development projects.