Abstract

This article focuses on the pre-history of the Non-Aligned Movement and of the friendship between Pandit Nehru and Tito from Yugoslavia. It explores the various levels of contacts between Indians and Yugoslavs in the second half of the 1940s, among communists, diplomats, United Nations delegation members and participants of a Yugoslav trade delegation to South Asia. Special attention is given to the question of why Yugoslavia was a rather uninteresting or even hostile country to India in the years immediately after the end of World War II, but grew to be an attractive partner in the aftermath of Tito's break with Stalin, when the country tried to survive between the Anglo–American and Soviet blocs.