Foreign Policies Of India’s Prime Ministers

The book is on the Prime Ministers of India since Jawaharlal Nehru. A chapter is devoted to each of them with a focus on their foreign policies. The broad organisational framework, designed and deployed in this publication, begins with a brief analysis of their formative years, their perceptions of the international system, and the architecture of their foreign policies, before delving into their decisional process, and before concluding with an evaluation of their role.

All the Prime Ministers were obviously not interested in international affairs. Though the dimensional size of the country had unavoidably pushed all of them to deal with foreign affairs, their role was variegated and their performance was unequal.

1. Jawharlal Nehru: 15 August 1947–27 May 1964

2. Lal Bahadur Shastri: 9 June 1964–11 January 1966

3. Indira Gandhi: 24 January 1965–24 March 1977

4. Morarji Desai: 27 March 1977–22 July 1979

5. Charan Singh: 28 July 1979—14 January 1980

6. Indira Gandhi: 14 January 1980–31 October 1984

7. Rajiv Gandhi: 31 October 1984–1 December 1989

8. Vishwanath Pratap Singh: 2 December 1989–7 November 1990

9. Chandra Shekhar: 10 November 1990–21 June 1991

10. P.V. Narasimha Rao: 21 June 1991–16 May 1996

11. Atal Behari Vajpayee: 16 May 1996–28 May 1996

12. H.D. Deva Gowda: 1 June 1996–21 April 1997

13. Inder Kumar Gujral: 21 April 1997–19 March 1998

14. Atal Behari Vajpayee: 19 March 1998–22 May 2004

15. Manmohan Singh: 22 May 2004—

16. The Summing Up