Eric Gonsalves was one of India’s first diplomats. | Photo credit: The Hindu Archives
At the height of India’s preparations for war in 1971, Indira Gandhi visited Washington DC to meet with US President Richard Nixon. However, the meeting did little to change the Nixon administration’s focus on the Pakistani government, which was committing atrocities against civilians in East Pakistan. Bangladesh was liberated the next month, but relations between India and the US deteriorated sharply as the Nixon administration’s policy towards Pakistan failed to produce the expected results.
Indira Gandhi had a difficult task as the US was one of India’s major partners and ties had to be mended. At this juncture, Eric Gonsalves, a 1950-batch Indian Foreign Service mid-level officer, was posted to the Indian Embassy in Washington DC as Minister (Political) of Embassy.
Gonsalves began a back channel interview with important US emissaries at a coffee shop in Washington. One of the officials he met with was Vernon A. Walters, Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. These informal talks kept Indo-US relations alive in those critical months of 1972-74, even when there was no lack of political warmth.
Gonsalves, 97, was born in May 1928 and died on Sunday (March 22, 2026) at a hospital in Bengaluru.
Gonsalves joined the newly launched Indian Foreign Service through a competitive examination on 24 May 1950. By March 1953, he had completed probationary training and was sent as an attache to the Neutral National Repatriation Commission, chaired by India, which was tasked with overseeing the repatriation of prisoners of war from the Korean War.
Gonsalves next was posted as vice consul in New York from March 1954 to August 1955 at the height of the McCarthyism-marked Cold War witch hunt. Gonsalves, as Assistant Secretary for the Establishment of the MEA, drafted the Indian Foreign Service PLCA (Pay, Leave and Compensatory Allowance) Rules, 1961, 1958–1961, which are still in use in the 21st century. The first edition of this PLCA book bore his signature, Gonsalves told his oral history interviewer Kishan S. Rana at the Indian Council of World Affairs.
Gonsalves met with history in 1962-64 when he was appointed as the first secretary of the Indian Embassy in Myanmar. This was a tense phase in Myanmar’s history when, under the rule of General Ne Win, Myanmar (then Burma) took radical measures to solve its economic problems, and as part of this, Burma began expelling Indians.
In an oral filing with the Indian Council on World Affairs, Gonsalves said that about 3,00,000 Indians were repatriated from Myanmar in 1962-64, and he and his fellow, lower-ranking officials at the time had to manage a crowd that came to deposit gold and precious items at the embassy for safekeeping, fearing they would be robbed by the Myan authorities.
As Minister of Eastern MEA from 1979 to 1982, Gonsalves put his connections to good use when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wanted to revive relations with the US to send a message to the Soviet Union that India did not appreciate the invasion of Afghanistan, which had implications for India’s security in Punjab and Kashmir.
Gonsalves retired in 1986 after serving as India’s ambassador to Belgium, the EEC and Luxembourg. After retirement, he remained a regular at the India International Center in Delhi, but moved to Bengaluru a few years ago.
Published – 25 March 2026 04:39 IST
