Finding Their Voice: The Indian Press and Nikita Khrushchev's 1955 Visit to India

This thesis considers Nikita Khrushchev's 1955 visit to India. It demonstrates a correlation between India's foreign policy of non-alignment and peaceful co-existence and domestic concerns about the plight of the majority of its citizens, as Indian elites apprehensive about potential social unrest sought to navigate a course for the nation that would allay such anxieties. It highlights how Khrushchev's trip to India heightened such anxieties among Indian elites, as his rhetoric on development, colonialism, and the West engendered the appeal of socialism among India's poor. This thesis argues that Indian elites reacted to the Soviet visit so as to alleviate their domestic concerns about potential social unrest (and the consequent loss of their privileged position) triggered by the widespread poverty afflicting the country, and to further their foreign agenda, as they responded to the oratory of their guests so as to advance their own aims.