Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist January 2019 | Page 39

INSIDE EUROPE
of republics, Switzerland more than 500 years ago and India
70 years ago. Today it is the relationship between 8.4 million
people and 1.3 billion people.
Economically both countries are very different.
Switzerland´s little but effective economy is based on
banking and highly specialised production and India has
a broad specter of economic activities. But there might be
one interesting point which is worth detailing on how both
countries expanded or are going to expand the economy.
Switzerland started its economic independence and the
creation of wealth with exporting mercenaries. They could
be found in many armies and battlefi elds in Europe at that
time and one relic of it is the so-called Swiss Guard of the
pope doing their service in the Vatican state in Rome. In
early modern history, Monarchies in Europe rented Swiss
mercenaries, paid them well with the eff ect that they brought
a lot of money back to Switzerland. One may fi nd this a dirty
business but probably it was more honorable than the piracy
and robbery the British Empire had been erected on. This
business can be seen as one fundament for the creation of a
fi nancial market as a precondition for the banking business for
which Switzerland became famous later. India, of course, did
not and will not follow this way. But what is comparable is the
export of services, not of course for war, but for the big and
growing demand for IT services on the global market. Via the
internet, India´s hundreds of millions of educated people have
good chance to compete successfully with other providers,
earning money in the endless distances of the cyberspace and
reinvest this money in India for creating wealth as the Swiss
mercenaries did.
But the most directly comparable issue is, of course,
the fi eld of foreign policy. Indeed, Switzerland established
diplomatic relations with India soon after independence. A
Treaty of Friendship between India and Switzerland was
signed in the capital of the new republic on 14 August 1948.
It was one of the fi rst treaties which the new government of
independent India signed and it was an important milestone
in the relationship between both countries. Soon both
countries opened diplomatic missions in Berne and Delhi.
Consulates in Mumbai and Bangalore and Geneva followed
some months later.
Some years later India was one of the main initiators and
supporters of the unifi cation of non-aligned countries which
did not join one of the two blocs that arose in the aftermath of
the Second World War. Later this initiative and the outcome
of the conference of Bandung in 1955 was called the Non-
Alignment Movement (NAM). The movement had been
created in the icy environment of the Cold War. The time of
the Cold War is unquestionably seen as the division of the
world in two hostile powers, those of the East and the West.
However, anybody who has made himself informed about
this period after World War Two knows that this is only half
of the truth. Because there existed a third infl uential group of
states, i.e. those which did not belong to any of the two blocs.
From the beginning, India was part of this movement offi cially
founded at a conference in Belgrade in 1961 for the purpose of
unity and bundling the interests of non-alignment states. Soon
NAM formed an umbrella for a majority of states in the world
and of course for a good deal of the world´s population. The
group was formed guided only by the conviction of getting
international relations reformed by self-determination and
equality. They saw themselves on the side of all who fought
against imperialism, colonialism, and racism but never joined
one of the two blocs.
Switzerland successfully defended the policy of neutrality
in confl icts between its neighbours which included both
World Wars in the 20th century. The country is fi xed in
its relationship to the
European Union and Switzerland established
of course, the country
diplomatic relations with India
was never a member
of the Eastern or the soon after independence. A
We s t e r n b l o c . T h i s
Treaty of Friendship between
country seemed to be
a natural born member India and Switzerland was
of the NAM. But this signed in the capital of the
was astonishingly not
enough for Switzerland. new republic on 14 August
I t t o o k a b i t m o r e 1948. It was one of the fi rst
than two decades
b e f o r e S w i t z e r l a n d treaties which the new
gave attention to this government of independent
movement which
assembled mainly Asian, India signed and it was an
A f r i c a n a n d S o u t h important milestone in the
American countries.
relationship between both
Had this something to
do with Switzerland as countries.
a European country? Did
the Swiss government have problems with anti-imperialistic
statements of the NAM or its support for the process of
de-colonisation in the world? No, three times now, all
this was not the reason. But the Swiss foreign ministry,
the Confederate Political Department (Eidgenössisches
Politisches Departement, EPD) in Bern felt a bit annoyed
that it had lost its uniqueness since its policy of neutrality
was distinct from more or less every country in the world
for centuries. The irritation increased when the country was
not invited to the NAM conference in Cairo in 1964 contrary
to Austria, Sweden, and Finland. So the EDP stayed in the
cool reservation and this continued up to the conference of
Algiers in 1973 when the other neutral European states made
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 7 • Issue 1 • January 2019, Noida • 39