When most Indians think of the country’s neighbourhood they think of the defunct British India and its territories around. This is what the United States named and classified as South Asia. When the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) was formed, it first included countries that shared land borders with India. That would include Sri Lanka too, in a way. While the distant archipelago of the Maldives was a founding member of Saarc, a very close maritime neighbour, Indonesia, did not seem to enter the mind space of the founders of Saarc.
When Saarc morphed into BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), as part of India’s “Look East Policy”, and subsequently as a means to exclude Pakistan from the idea of neighbourhood, it brought in two more land neighbours, Myanmar and Thailand. Both civil society and the Indian State rarely think of Indonesia, merely 80 nautical miles away from the southeastern tip of India, as a neighbour.
The arrival this week of the President of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, as chief guest at the Republic Day parade will hopefully help recharge our interest in our maritime neighbourhood. The very first chief guest at Independent India’s Republic Day parade in 1950 was President Sukarno of Indonesia. He then spoke of how “in the veins of every one of my people flows the blood of Indian ancestors and the culture we possess is steeped through and through with Indian influences”.
There is an enduring cultural connect as well as the more recent history of Asian solidarity. Both have laid the foundation for the relationship. The cultural connect runs deep. In the modern era Europeans referred to both countries in a similar way for, after all, Indonesia means “Indian islands” in Greek.
The Indonesian scholar O. Abdul Rachman wrote eloquently about the religious links between the two when he recalled how “from their birth places in India the great religions of Hinduism and Buddhism found their way to Indonesia, where they mingled with the indigenous belief systems to become an enduring and integral component of Indonesian culture. Islam also arrived in Indonesia by way of the Indian sub-continent and the Indian Ocean”.
In the heart of modern Jakarta, Indonesia’s Muslim-majority nation has paid a handsome tribute to its Hindu inheritance by building one of the most majestic depictions of Lord Krishna and Arjuna on a chariot, the Krishna Wijaya statue, with eleven bronze horses in virtual flight. Unlike the bigoted barbarians of Afghanistan who destroyed the majestic and imposing statue of the Buddha at Bamyan, the devout Muslims of Indonesia have carefully preserved one of the greatest Buddhist monuments, the Borobudur Temple in central Java, built in the 8th century CE.
Indonesia presents to the world the most secular and modern face of Islam. An identity under constant challenge by communal forces.
Sukarno and Jawaharlal Nehru were the great leaders of Asia and joint organisers of the Bandung conference of Asian and African nations hosted in Indonesia in 1955. The two, along with Egypt’s Gen. Abdel Nasser, founded the Non-Aligned Movement. While history and culture had ordained that the two would come together, geopolitics and New Delhi’s”ocean blindness”, as many admirals of the Indian Navy have often described, has often warped our perspective.
Last week Prime Minister Narendra Modi echoed the views of his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, to speak eloquently about India’s emergence as a maritime power. India has had a long maritime history that many historians are now re-discovering and yet India’s official definition of neighbourhood, including when the external affairs ministry talks about “Neighbourhood First”, is mysteriously restricted to South Asia.
It is not just geographical proximity that makes Indonesia a special neighbour.
As Southeast Asia’s biggest nation, Indonesia has emerged as an independent voice in the region, working both with the West and with China. While its outreach to India is pegged on both ancient roots and recent history, the fact is that in the emerging contestation of power between the United States and China, Indonesia and India will find working together of great value.
Given the growing engagement between the Indian and Indonesian navies and armed forces, that entered a new phase after the tsunami of December 2004, it is not surprising that a large contingent of Indonesian soldiers will march down Kartavya Path on Republic Day. President Subianto will be the third Indonesian head of state to be reviewing the parade in the past few years.
The Indonesian polity has worked hard to remain a liberal democracy, battling both Left extremism and majoritarian communalism. Indonesian elites have had to work at protecting their democratic institutions in a region where the roots of democracy do not run very deep. Indonesian society has had to deal with religious extremism and majoritarianism, and so far, the nation’s traditional pluralism and respect for diversity have held sway.
Apart from its religious tolerance, Indonesia holds many lessons for India. It has been able to industrialise rapidly, increasing the share of manufacturing in national income to almost 20 per cent, and the share of manufactured goods in its exports to close to 80 per cent. At the same time, Indonesia has improved its human development indicators, especially fertility rate, female literacy and child mortality rates and suchlike, with its rank in the United Nations Human Development Index at 114, compared to India’s 134, out of 193 countries.
When the United States, Japan, India and Australia launched the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad”, there was some concern within Southeast Asia if the region was being left to its own devices in the emerging US-China rivalry. It is interesting to see that all four Quad members have reinvested diplomatic energy in the region even as the Quad itself has been adrift. It is just as well that India has been pursuing defence relations with several Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore.
Southeast Asia has sought to maintain stable relations with both China and the United States while at the same time working with both and trying to benefit from the West’s “China+1” trade and investment strategy. This balancing act has enabled the region to stabilise itself and regain momentum. India must remain engaged with the region.