The Congo gained independence from Belgian rule on 30 June 1960, when the First Republic was established with Joseph Kasavubu as President, and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. Soon after the first constitution of the new republic was promulgated, a mutiny erupted on 5 July 1960 amongst the Congolese troops of the Force Publique (the Congolese Army) against their Europeans officers, leading to the Africanisation of the army, its renaming as the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC) and the appointment of Victor Lundula as the Chief of Army Staff with Joseph-Désiré Mobutu as his deputy. As the mutiny spread throughout the Congo, Belgian authorities sent paratroopers beginning on 9 July 1960, and continued to initiate military action, killing black civilians in the process and intensifying racial violence. Soon, another crisis erupted when Moïse Tshombe declared Katanga an independent state. Léopoldville was now faced with the two-pronged problem of Katangan secession as well as Belgian intervention in the affairs of the Congo.
Nehru wrote to Indian Chief Ministers barely a month after the Congo had become independent, saying that the Congo was “as a result of Belgium’s policy in the past… almost wholly lacking in educated and trained personnel” and that “before the Congo can look after its own affairs adequately… there is always the danger of someone else trying to fill that vacuum”, but he was more optimistic about the role of the UN, which he thought “brought a measure of balance” and “prevented the ambitions of some Powers to take advantage of the situation”.
On 12 July 1960, the Congolese Government asked the UN for military assistance and protection of its national territory against external aggression. Accordingly, UNSC Resolution 143 (1960) led to the establishment of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (known by its abbreviation in French, ONUC), initially mandated with military and technical assistance to the Congolese Government. The UN sent a peacekeeping force consisting mainly of troops from Sweden, Ireland, United Arab Republic, Ghana, Morocco, Mali and Indonesia, who arrived in the Congo on 15 July 1960 as a “temporary security force”. Less than a week after the ONUC started its operations, Hammarskjöld approached India to send an official to act as military adviser for the operations. The UN continued to pass resolutions reaffirming its commitment to ending the crisis in the Congo. On the other hand, the Secretary General had travelled to the Congo but met with resistance from Tshombe, who was heading a secessionist movement that would sever the province of Katanga from the rest of the country. On 8 August 1960, under the command of Albert Kalonji, the province of Kasai also seceded from the Congo. The Congo now had two secessions to deal with. Even so, the Security Council continued to commit to non-interference by UN forces in any “internal conflict, constitutional or otherwise”.
Responding to this perceived reluctance on the part of the Security Council to take any action, Prime Minister Lumumba accused Hammarskjöld of acting “in connivance with the rebel Government of Katanga and at the instigation of the Belgian Government”, thereby interfering in the internal matters of the Congo and “retarding the restoration of order in the Republic, particularly in the province of Katanga”. Lumumba and other Congolese seemed to not fully grasp that the UN was not a sovereign entity providing assistance to them, but a body where it was imperative for member-states to agree on each action or decision. Thus, the main question at this point became precisely whether UN operations in the Congo could be allowed to use force against Katanga to end its secession. At the UNSC, the Congo and the Soviet Union voted in favour of a resolution proposing the use of force but the rest of the UNSC members, including the US, preferred using political measures first. African states with troops in the ONUC attempted mediation between the two positions, as they did not want the UN to fail in its mission. It was quite clear that the Soviet Union and the United States had at this point diametrically opposite points of view on the role of UN’s peacekeeping forces, with the USSR in favour of using any means necessary while the US remained against the use of force.
The Congo was becoming a testing ground for this debate between the superpowers. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana wrote to Lumumba to warn him of the Cold War coming into the Congo, which would “become a battlefield between East and West” and emphasised his concern that this could spell “disaster for all in Africa”. However, Lumumba chose to impose martial law on the Congo anyway and declared that the province of Katanga must be taken by force or that the Congolese Government would attack it.
At this stage, India’s role in the management of the crisis was confined to aid and assistance. In fact, India did not even have an embassy in Léopoldville at this point. Nehru had issued a statement saying that India recognised only one state of Congo, that the Belgian troops were the cause of the problem, that the Secretary General had acted with “vision and also wisdom” and that albeit complicated, the situation was also rather straightforward. India had also sent 700 tonnes of wheat flour and 36 personnel from the Indian Air Force (IAF) for logistics support to the UN mission. This, however, did not prevent the anti-Indian sentiment rising in the Congo with Indian personnel providing logistical support finding it hard to work there, given the “unfriendly and rough treatment by members of the Congolese Force Publique” towards them.
In response to this situation, Nehru was keen to underline the importance of the UN, and of India’s support to the UN mission in the Congo by emphasizing his belief that in the absence of the UN, there was “the possibility of a great deal of internal conflict” in the country and “a possibility of intervention by other countries, big and small”. Very soon after, the Indian commitment to the peace operation in the Congo was taken a step further. Nehru issued a statement in the Lok Sabha informing the house that India would send Brig. Indar Jit Rikhye as Military Adviser for the UN Mission in the Congo and Rajeshwar Dayal as Hammarskjöld’s special representative, and Political Head of the ONUC55. Nehru outlined non-aligned India’s role by saying that India’s policy “was not an acrobatic feat of sitting on a spiked fence and balancing between the two sides; it had to be an effort to uproot the fence and throw it away”. At this point, India’s goal was to support the UN in whatever the UN’s objectives might be. It might be noted that India’s contribution at this point was limited only to the contribution of personnel in advisory roles, technical expertise and food aid.
Rajeshwar Dayal, an Indian diplomat, arrived in Léopoldville on 8 September 1960 to replace Andrew Cordier as Chief of the ONUC. Cordier had ordered the closing of radio stations and all airports, giving rise to a great deal of anti-UN sentiment amongst the Congolese. Dayal’s first order of business, thus, was to facilitate the re-opening of the radio stations and airports to reverse the damages caused to the public perception of the ONUC. However, soon after his arrival, he found himself in the midst of an additional constitutional crisis when Joseph-Désiré Mobutu orchestrated a coup, appointing himself Army Chief of Staff, placing Lumumba under house arrest, suspending parliament, while keeping Kasavubu as president. The UNSC was in session when this coup took place, and thus it evoked a great deal of criticism of the UN’s handling of the situation, particularly from Egypt, Ghana and the Soviet Union. Amongst the non-aligned nations, Yugoslavia withdrew its diplomatic mission from the Congo and Nasser expressed Egypt’s deep regret at the events. Nehru sent a letter to Hammarskjöld saying that the situation in the Congo seemed to be extremely unclear and wondering what the UN Force was doing if the constitutional processes could be so easily subverted. Although Nehru was critical of the UN mission at this stage, he did not support the idea of providing direct military assistance to the Congolese, an idea put forth by Ghana’s Nkrumah.
By opposing this initiative, India found itself in opposition to the majority of African and Arab states, many of whom shared its non-aligned outlook on international affairs. From an Indian point of view, it thus became even more imperative that the UN mission in the Congo succeeded and did so quickly. Additionally, Indian troops suffered casualties when, on 13 September, Belgian-led Katangese para-commandos and gendarmerie opened fire on them, killing one Indian soldier and wounding seven others. Thus, when the UNGA convened in October 1960 for an emergency meeting on the situation in the Congo, the head of the Indian delegation to the UN, Krishna Menon, pleaded for “a greater sense of urgency and imperativeness”.
The Indian position at this time as outlined by Krishna Menon was to ask whether the UN would be taking military measures to quell the situation in the Congo or whether a political settlement was still considered possible. Although the Indian delegation had outlined two possibilities for further action by the UN at this stage, Nehru continued to press for a solution “by the people themselves”. In part, this exhortation was brought on by Nehru’s reluctance to commit troops or additional technicians to the Congo although India made no move to recall the Indian personnel already sent. In a key statement, Nehru had categorically rejected the idea that the UN should use force to achieve a solution.
Excerpted with permission from The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment, Swapna Nayudu Kona, Juggernaut.
