Sino-USSR Split Drew India Closer to Latter
Indian foreign policy after independence was dominated by the concept of Non-Alignment, the belief that the world should not be drawn into a military alliance with either superpower.
In fact, India was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Nonetheless, the USSR and India had historically shared cordial relations from 1947. The USSR provided India with significant economic and military aid, to the extent that in the 1960s, it was believed that the USSR had invested more in India than it had in Communist China. Soviet aid enabled India to set up its first technical universities and dams.
Because of the Sino-Soviet split, the Sino-Soviet War (1969), and the Sino-Indian War, the USSR and India drew even closer together and further strengthened their relations. Indian soldiers travelled to the USSR for training and learned Russian, which was used in military operations, and the USSR provided India with its first aircraft carrier and many of its frigates. For example, during Operations Trident and Python, Indian sailors communicated with each other in Russian, which confused Pakistani intelligence, inhibiting it from providing correct information about the Indian Navy to its armed forces.