Look East, Talk East but not Act East!

Look East, Talk East but not Act East!

Sunanda K Datta-RayUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 08:43 AM IST
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Jaswant Singh, the now bedridden and out of favour Bharatiya Janata Party veteran, was once holding forth on Hindu influence in Indonesia when Paul D Wolfowitz, then George W Bush’s Bahasa-speaking deputy defence secretary and a future American ambassador to Indonesia, murmured Rabindranath Tagore’s enigmatic comment on that country, “I see India everywhere but find it nowhere.”

Hopes of finding and rescuing an elusive India before the Chinese banished it forever probably explained a series of high-powered Indian visits long before Narendra Modi. Sensitive to past and future alike, Jawaharlal Nehru, who makes all his successors look and sound so dehati, paid four visits to Indonesia. Indira Gandhi paid two as did Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Charged with P V Narasimha Rao’s vision, and too honest to tinker with the Look East wording and pretend it was his own, Manmohan Singh went three times. All five went for India. Modi went for the BJP. His speeches, especially to Indians in Indonesia, could have been part of the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign.

The man who started the Look East ball rolling and was dubbed India’s Deng Xiaoping by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew went just once. That too only for the 1992 non-aligned nations summit. As external affairs minister, Narasimha Rao could not attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ 1980 ministerial meeting in Kuala Lumpur where its engagement with India was to be announced because his mother fell ill. He never forgot the unflattering constructions placed on his absence. Nor could he forgive Indonesia’s foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja for declaring patronisingly that Asean was talking even to “developing countries” like India.

Only three weeks before Mr Modi’s kite-flying visit, Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, received China’s premier, Li Keqiang, with similar warmth and ceremony. China is Indonesia’s biggest trading partner, the region’s largest investor and a strategic partner for five years. But as in Vietnam, China’s bullying has obliged a loyal regional ally to look with renewed enthusiasm at alternative links. Indonesia’s first president, the flamboyant and bombastic Sukarno, claimed his country was a modern incarnation of the Srivijaya empire (7th to 12th century) but, in practice, he was often both anti-India and stridently pro-China.

Visiting Japan last year, Mr Widodo and Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, agreed to strengthen maritime defence ties to repulse China’s pretensions in the South China Sea. Indonesia’s normally quiet president calls China’s so-called “nine-dash line” illegal, and has renamed part of the South China Sea the North Natuna Sea to demonstrate his government’s determination to resist Chinese intrusion. Any anti-China feeling cannot but revive memories of Indonesia’s 1965-66 bloodbath when up to three million Chinese, members of the world’s biggest communist party, may have been butchered. The purge took place against the background of China arming Sukarno’s personal militia after he met Zhou Enlai and of Indonesia’s generals conspiring with the American Central Intelligence Agency. However, Indonesia’s Chinese still matter. Even if it’s an exaggeration that 3.5 per cent of the population controls 70 per cent of the economy, ethnic Chinese own most top conglomerates. Given its interest in West Bengal, the Salim Group, founded by Indonesia’s “richest and most influential Chinese businessman”, might have provided a major bridge between the two countries.

Sukarno’s ridicule of Nehru’s pronunciation of Allahabad covered more serious objections that the Chinese exploited. Lee thought Sukarno had a “megalomaniac streak” which made him see himself as Asia’s paramount leader and a global power broker. China and the Soviet Union instigated him for their own ends. The Chinese must have been gratified when Sukarno threatened to seize the Nicobar Islands (92 nautical miles away) and send a submarine, two air force squadrons and a million “volunteers” to fight India. Rampaging mobs ransacked India’s embassy, consulate and information centre and Air India’s Jakarta office. Air India and Garuda suspended flights, and Indonesia closed down its Calcutta consulate.

But China did India a service. Initially, Indonesia snubbed Singaporean efforts to induct India into regional groupings, convinced it alone should dominate the region. It was only when Sukarno’s successor, Suharto, discovered the Chinese were entering South-east Asia in a big way that he changed his mind and decisively supported Goh Chok Tong’s “India fever”.  Indonesia is wary of any hint of hegemony, and Goh’s warning about India’s naval build-up reflected Indonesian fears about reports of Russia using the Great Nicobar naval base. Lee explained to Rajiv Gandhi that if the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation hoped to emulate Asean, it should remember that “Suharto set out by letting it be known he was not going to be the big boss”. Later, Indonesia allowed restive East Timor to secede. Not many Afro-Asian powers would have done that.

The East Asia summit in December 2005 reflected Indonesia’s altered perceptions. Malaysia wanted an Asean plus Three — China, Japan and South Korea — summit, and China promptly offered to host it. But Asean decided to invite India, Australia and New Zealand. It also felt a summit in China would move the centre of gravity away from South-east Asia and make some countries anxious. “We agreed we should keep the centre in Asean” Lee explained. “India would be a useful balance to China’s heft”.

Mr Widodo has the delicate task of healing the wounds of history while building a new future on the foundations of the past. China’s Mr Li is a familiar. He visited Indonesia in 2008 as deputy prime minister. High on the agenda when the two met before Mr Modi arrived were China’s Belt and Road Initiative, plans for a Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train and enhanced sales of Indonesian palm oil to China. Mr Widodo also gently reminded his guest that the world’s most populous country (China) and the fourth most populous (Indonesia) should be able to provide the benefits of peace, stability and welfare to the world.

Not much that was new happened during Mr Modi’s visit. The Shared Vision document he and Mr Widodo endorsed recalled Narasimha Rao’s pledge that “the Asia-Pacific region will be our springboard to the global market-place”. The 30-day visa scheme fell far short of Nehru’s dream of “a common nationality for India and all these regions of South-east Asia”. Even the name game had lost its novelty. If Mr Widodo’s grandson is Srinarendra, Biju Patnaik suggested Megawati, Goddess of the Clouds, for Sukarno’s daughter. She, in turn, called her daughter Orissaputri, Daughter of Orissa. Muslim Indonesia has so thoroughly internalised the Ramayana through its wayang kulit puppeteers that there’s an old story about a visiting Indian dignitary being asked after a performance, “I believe you have something like it in your country too?”

It was a friendly query. But Narasimha Rao’s Look East is in danger of becoming not Act East but Talk East. And the talk is only kite-flying about the BJP’s hopes in India’s next election.

Sunanda K Datta – Ray is the author of several books and a regular media columnist.

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