India’s Non-aligned Legacy in Memory of the Korean War: The Role of Its Medical Unit

This study examines how India’s non-aligned foreign policy was concretely enacted during the Korean War (1950-1953) by focusing on its humanitarian deployment of the 60 Parachute Field Ambulance and its mediating role in the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC), rather than the deployment of combat troops. Employing a qualitative research design, the study analyzes a wide range of sources, including existing scholarship, archival materials from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), United Nations documents, U.S. State Department records (FRUS), UN reports, and contemporary media accounts, supplemented by a word-frequency-based word cloud visualization to highlight key themes. The findings demonstrate that India’s medical and diplomatic engagement represented an early practical expression of non-alignment as moral diplomacy-one that balanced ethical responsibility with geopolitical neutrality-and that these contributions helped establish precedents for later UN peacekeeping missions. However, the study also reveals that India’s role has been unevenly remembered or marginalized in Indian, Korean, and Western historiographies due to Cold War-centric narratives. Accordingly, the paper argues for a more pluralistic and de-centered approach to international history that re-evaluates non-Western humanitarian and diplomatic contributions, and it emphasizes the importance of visual and cultural memory practices in addressing these historiographical gaps.