US President Richard Nixon called Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi an "old witch" while his trusted aide Henry Kissinger referred to Indians as "bastards" in a private 1971 conversation, according to transcripts released this week.
The Oval Office transcripts detail a meeting between President Nixon and Kissinger in the White House on November 5, 1971, shortly after a meeting with Gandhi.
The strong-willed Indian leader had come to Washington to discuss the growing possibility of war with neighbouring US-backed Pakistan. India was a close ally of the then Soviet Union.
"We really slobbered over the old witch," Nixon told Kissinger, who was then the national security adviser, of his meeting with Gandhi the previous day. Indians are "a slippery, treacherous people," the president said.
Kissinger told Nixon: "The Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there."
"They are the most aggressive goddamn people around there," he was quoted as saying in the build up to the 1971 India-Pakistan war, which led to the creation of Bangladesh.
The transcripts and other newly declassified material were released Tuesday, ironically as visiting Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed a landmark military pact.
The United States froze all military ties and imposed sanctions on India after it conducted nuclear tests in 1998.
Comments
Comments are closed.