In June 1938 Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), a Indian National Congress (INC) leader, one of the earliest INC members calling for full independence in 1927, and the main responsible for INC’s foreign relations, took a ship to Europe. This trip was not a first for India’s inaugural prime minister (1947-1964) to be. Already in 1905 he had left India to enroll at the elite British boarding school of Harrow, going on to study at Cambridge and work as a lawyer in London before returning home in 1912. And the last time he had sailed was in 1935, staying until 1936 as the INC representative in meetings with fellow Asian and increasingly also African anti-imperialists in Britain and Europe. Sure, by then the League against Imperialism (LAI), whose Comintern-organized foundational conference Nehru had attended in 1927, was defunct. (For the LAI see the 1927 document on Messali Hadj in this collection.) Even so, Nehru continued to see his secularist Indian nation-statist goals within an international leftist-anti-imperialist and now anti-fascist framework and web, as Michele Louro’s Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (2020) argues.

Hence, when on the ship en route to Europe in 1938 he received an invitation from Egypt’s leading nationalist wafd party and agreed to meet their leaders. Having been in contact with Egyptian nationalists before, a story told in Noor Khan’s Egyptian-Indian Nationalist Collaboration and the British Empire (2011), and having detailed their anti-imperialism in Glimpses of World History (1934), he saw the wafd as INC’s appropriately leading anti-imperialist counterpart in Egypt. Sure, in confidential INC memoranda, he criticized the wafd’sinsufficient attention to the masses, especially the peasants, which cost them an election in early 1938, he thought; indeed, the wafdistswere liberal nationalists whereas Nehru was a leftist nationalist. Nonetheless, sitting down with the wafd and exchanging views about world politics and anti-imperialist strategies was called for, in his and the wafd’s view,at a time when fascism was rising and Britain continued to rule India and be very present in Egypt. Reproduced in the massive compilation Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, this text is a letter by Nehru, the first to the INC while he was on the ship en route to London.

Zhou and Nehru continue to discuss the regional situations in Asia and Africa and the overarching foreign policy views of China and India.

Zhou Enlai and Nehru discuss French and Portuguese colonialism in India and China, the Sino-American conflict, conflict in the Taiwan Straits, and the China issue at the United Nations.

Zhou Enlai and Nehru discuss Sino-Indian relations, as well as China and India's views toward Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

Zhou and Nehru ponder American foreign policy and whether the US wants "to create tension."

Zhou and Nehru cover a large range of topics relating to China and India's international relations. The conversation begins by discussing the issue of Taiwan, in relation to China, then moves to the "adverse effects" of American involvement in the Afro-Asian region. The two then discuss the upcoming Afro-Asian conference.

Nehru gives a detailed report on his visit to China and Indo-China. He first gives a summary of the issues and topics he covered in discussions in China with Zhou En-Lai and Mao, which covered a broad range of subjects including China's Five Year Plan, and various foreign policy issues. Nehru then describes his visit to Indochina, where he speaks with Ho Chi Minh (five days after he takes control of Hanoi) in North Vietnam, and also tours South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Memorandum of conversation between Adam Rapacki and Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru discusses difficulties between India and China, and aid received from the United States and Great Britain.

Mao Zedong and Nehru discuss Sino-Indian relations, the political situation in Asia, and the role of the United States in world politics.

Mao Zedong and Nehru discuss Chinese foreign policies toward war and peace.