File 3839/1916 Pt 1 'Persia: - Incidence of expenditure in - question of revising the agreement of 1900' [‎324v] (661/880)

In short, all that India desires is to see sufficient stability in the Central Govern
ment to ensure a modicum of law and order in Eastern Persia, provided that such
stability is not secured at the cost of the consolidation of a potential invader of India
on her borders. The potential invader indeed is still Russia, but Russia in a ner|
guise. The danger India apprehends from present day Russia is not the military
aggression of Czarism, but the insidious penetration of Bolshevism. T1 e natural
pathway of Bolshevism lies throrngh disorder and anarchy, and India’s best
safeguard in Persia against Russia in its present stage of development would be
a friendly Persia with sufficient stability in her finances to maintain her integrity
and keep up some sort of administration* on her eastern borders, A policy which
aims at anything beyond this, so far from being necessarily in accord with India’s
interests, may even prove actually opposed to them. This was brought out
clearly in the controversies evoked by the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919.
We were opposed to that Agreement because we felt that it went far beyond
India’s requirements; that it might involve her in serious financial, polit cal and,
very possibly, military commitments; that it would arouse such nationalist
hostility to us in Persia as might make our position m Persia itself untenable,
and would give Bolshevism a dangerous stimulus, adding to the unrest in Central
Asia and to the agitation in political, and especially Moslem, India. It was
these considerations that led us even prior to the inception of the Anglo-Persian
Agreement to advocate the encouragement of American personnel in the Persian
administration. For we felt that the intervention of the United States in Persia
would tend powerfully towards the stabilising of the Central Government, the
maintenance of the integrity of Persia, and the introduction of some semblance of
law and order in the outlying provinces. We felt that access to India would thus
be denied to Russia whether in the form of Bolshevism, which would be deprived
of its pathway through lawlessness and anarchy, or in the form of a militant
Russia, if the future has such in store. Perhaps nothing could more pointedly
illustrate the cleavage that has been gradually widening between Indian and
Imperial interests in Persia than the fact that His Majesty s Government found
themselves constrained to reject this policy we advocated in the interests of
India and to pursue in wider Imperial interests a policy that was calculated to
place on India a serious financial burden.
10 . .But there is another factor. The emergence of Iraq as a State under
British mandate has increased Imperial as distinct fro a Indian interests in Persi
If India must admit to special and preponderating interests in Eastern Persia, Iraq
has special interests and apparently, for the moment at any rate, even greater
interests in Western Persia. The Kurdish problem on the Perso-Mesopotamian
frontier is to India a matter of as much indifference as the barhad problem is to I rac b
Soviet Consuls and influence in Kermanshah and Ahwaz would prove as nun
a matter of concern to Iraq as their counterparts in Nasratabad and Bampur to n ’
if unrest in Sistan and Persian Mekran and Meshed must react on India, unres^ ^
Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Luristan and Arabistan must react no less indeed, it m g
be argued, will react a great deal more—on Iraq. Even in the Persian Gul, r
supremacy, so long regarded as all important for India, has become at least as p ^
tant for the security of Iraq. Hence, if a ratio is still to be employed for the ^
of Diplomatic and Consular expenditure in Persia, we hold that it is no
justifiable to insist on India’s continuing to bear half and that India s share,
be based more nearly on the real proportion which India s interests bear to