Writing Capitalism (and Capitalists) into the History of India and the United States in the 20th Century

The role of capitalism is largely missing from both the diplomatic and development histories of Indo-American relations. The history of Indo-American relations is peopled with leaders and diplomats; foundation officers and university professors; scientists and other experts; artists, activists, and intellectuals. With the exception of the Tatas and the Birlas, Indian industrialists and other business leaders, as well as their American counterparts, are rarely mentioned. It’s a curious absence. US companies have been operating in India since the early twentieth century. US involvement in the project of Indian development and planning during the Cold War took as its premise the hope that a transformed Indian economy would serve as a non-Communist exemplar to other developing nations. In its rhetorical frames and increasingly in policy during the Shastri and Gandhi years, the US government made private enterprise a core feature of its development work in India.

While gesturing at the larger frame of the twentieth century, this paper focuses on the fertilizer industry in the late 1960s and 1970s, an era when US policies reoriented development aid toward private enterprise; the governments of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi negotiated with US companies to fulfill the “input” and factory demands of the emerging Green Revolution; and Americans and Indians debated both the appropriate level and kind of American capitalism—either corporate or cooperative—that would be appropriate in India.