SOA Files: Lot 57D373
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. John Foster Dulles, Consultant to the Secretary of State
| Participants: | Madame Pandit |
| John Foster Dulles |
I called on Madame Pandit at the Indian Embassy to say goodbye to her.1 I said that my hope was that she would use her influence in India to get the Indian Government and people to accept the possibility of cooperation between the East and West, rather than to assume that this is impossible and that there needs to be a gulf between us, such as is reflected by the slogan “Asia for the Asiatics”, which implies more than an end to colonialism, but the elimination of future cooperation in cultural, economic and political associations as peoples.
I said that no one could guarantee that a country as materially powerful as the U.S. had become would conduct itself properly but I had every reason to believe that we would. If India assumed that that was impossible and itself contributed to creating a gulf between us that would be unfortunate. I said that the U.S. was committed not to withdraw its influence from the Western Pacific and to leave that area a vacuum of power, and that the problem was to work out free cooperation. I said that nations, like individuals, tend to live up to what is expected of them, and that if India expected useful cooperation with the U.S. that was more likely to happen than if India assumes that there cannot be such cooperation.
Madame Pandit said that she saw the problem precisely as I did and that she hoped that she would be able to exert an influence in India which would be more effective than the influence she had been able to exert as Ambassador. She also hoped that through United Nations associations, and otherwise, that she could maintain her contacts with the U.S.
- Madame Pandit resigned as Indian Ambassador effective December 21.↩