By Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
June 29, 2007
The Straits Times

INDIA'S External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in Singapore recently: 'India is not just a motor for regional growth, it can equally be the bulwark of regional security.' I wonder how many people realised that many opportunities for both roles had been missed repeatedly in the past. If India is now integrating with South-east Asia, it is largely because of Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's efforts since the 1960s to balance Japan's economic might and China's growing military strength with the world's largest democracy in a triangular equation.

Ironically, the West was responsible for India's estrangement from and rapprochement with a region where its ancient footprints are still visible in language, religion, institutions and even controversial political concepts like Malaysia's bumiputera policy. Bumiputera means son of the soil in Sanskrit.

Colonialism drove a wedge between the inheritors of 'the Indianised states of South- east Asia' (to cite French historian George Coedes) and the fountainhead of inspiration. Only the end of the Cold War, which shaped perceptions and determined policies, made re-engagement possible.

There is no record of India being invited to be an Asean founder-member but the legend persists that then-premier Indira Gandhi had spurned any link with what she dismissed as 'Coca-Cola regimes'. The sneer is sometimes attributed to the world's first woman premier, Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike.

Perhaps the story spread because of the belief that Sri Lanka's (then Ceylon) prime minister Dudley Senanayake had backed out from signing the Bangkok Declaration. Mrs Bandaranaike's protest that Asean members were 'errand boys and running dogs of US imperialism' was attributed to Indian influence.

Yet, India was not consistently hostile or even distant. Ex-prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's continental vision inspired the pioneering 1947 Asian Relations Conference.

It was the Philippine diplomat Carlos Romulo who mooted the idea of an Asiatic Organisation at Nehru's forum on Indonesia two years later. Then-president Elpidio Quirino changed the name to Pacific Union and India was at the meeting he called to discuss the move in May 1950. Nehru's commitment culminated in the 1955 Bandung conference.

But India continued to blow hot and cold. There was no response in September 1966 when Singapore's then- premier Lee Kuan Yew mooted - according to a Straits Times report under the heading 'Lee to urge guardian role for India' - 'a possible future role for India as guardian of South-east Asia' after Britain's troop withdrawal.

He had reportedly said India should enforce a 'Monroe Doctrine for Asia' because it conducted its foreign policy 'on a basis of equality and not on a basis of power relations'.

One reason for India's resistance may have been that Malaysian leader Tengku Abdul Rahman flew unannounced into New Delhi during Mr Lee's visit to urge Mrs Gandhi to keep the Singapore leader at arm's length.

Mrs Gandhi was not politically secure in 1966. She had strong ideological reservations about countries (Thailand and the Philippines) that had joined the South-east Asian Treaty Organisation. Being also preoccupied with Pakistan, she could not ignore a Muslim nation that had befriended India at the United Nations.

There were slight signs of rethinking three months before the Bangkok Declaration when India's external affairs minister M.C. Chagla proposed a Council of Asia while touring Singapore and Malaysia. A veteran Indian diplomat sees the surprise offer as no more than 'an ad hoc response to please the local hosts', and South-east Asians did not take it seriously.

Mr Lee made another attempt two years later by inviting India as an observer to the Japanese-organised Ministerial Conference on the Economic Development of South-east Asia. But there was no follow-up, and the Indochina war killed the initiative.

Even so, high commissioner Maurice Baker, Singapore's first envoy to India, told a Delhi University audience that India's cooperation in guaranteeing South-east Asia's security would 'be a great contribution to world peace', though he knew it was 'merely wishful thinking to expect it'.

But India was again changing tack and in December 1976, Mrs Gandhi sent a message seeking a dialogue with Asean. Her successor, Mr Morarji Desai (and external affairs minister Atal Behari Vajpayee) pursued the matter with zeal. There was much coming and going between New Delhi and the Asean capitals, and talks with Asean secretary-general Ali bin Abdullah in November 1978.

Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, and China's of Vietnam in February 1979, changed everything. There could be no question of a dialogue when Mrs Gandhi returned to power in January 1980 and recognised Cambodia's Heng Samrin regime.

Perhaps realising this, her external affairs chief P.V. Narasimha Rao backed out from attending Asean's June 1980 ministerial meeting in Kuala Lumpur after Malaysia's premier Hussein Onn announced India's participation and Indonesian foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja noted that Asean was entering its first dialogue with a developing country.

The relationship was an idea whose time had not come. The wasted years are to be regretted, but fundamentals have not changed. Growth and security are as vital today as when India and Asean began their minuet. Japan's economic power is less awesome compared with the region's Tiger economies and booming India, but China's rising military spending, anti- space satellite missile, incipient blue water navy and 'string of pearls' stretching from the South China Sea to West Asia make it even more formidable.

Confident of India's performance as a 'motor for regional growth', South-east Asians may wonder how Mr Mukherjee plans to deliver on his promise of being 'the bulwark of regional security'.

The writer is visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. He is working on a book on Singapore-India ties, focusing on Mr Lee Kuan Yew's role.

Copyright: Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

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