How did former Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru react to the mutiny in a newly independent Congo in 1960?

The Congo gained independence from Belgian rule on 30 June 1960, when the First Republic was established with Joseph Kasavubu as President, and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. Soon after the first constitution of the new republic was promulgated, a mutiny erupted on 5 July 1960 amongst the Congolese troops of the Force Publique (the Congolese Army) against their Europeans officers, leading to the Africanisation of the army, its renaming as the Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC) and the appointment of Victor Lundula as the Chief of Army Staff with Joseph-Désiré Mobutu as his deputy. As the mutiny spread throughout the Congo, Belgian authorities sent paratroopers beginning on 9 July 1960, and continued to initiate military action, killing black civilians in the process and intensifying racial violence. Soon, another crisis erupted when Moïse Tshombe declared Katanga an independent state. Léopoldville was now faced with the two-pronged problem of Katangan secession as well as Belgian intervention in the affairs of the Congo.

Nehru wrote to Indian Chief Ministers barely a month after the Congo had become independent, saying that the Congo was “as a result of Belgium’s policy in the past… almost wholly lacking in educated and trained personnel” and that “before the...

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