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3 India rediscovers East
Asia By Chietigj Bajpaee
The visit of Japanese prime minister
Shinzo Abe to India in August; India's
multi-nation military exercise with the navies of
Australia, Japan, Singapore and the United States
in September following the trilateral naval
exercises with Japan and the United States in
April; and the planned visit of Indian Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh to China following China's
and India's first joint counter-terrorism training
in November were all events confirming
that
India's "Look East" policy is in full swing.
While India has a long-standing history of
engagement with East and Southeast Asia, which has
been couched in shared values, history and
culture, it has now been embedded in pragmatism
and shared interests, such as resource
interdependence and economic integration, to build
a more solid foundation.
Fueled by
globalization, the liberalization of India's
economy and the rise of transnational security
concerns, India's "Look East" policy has also been
tied to broader interests such as meeting India's
energy security and development needs, the ongoing
rapprochement with the United States,
counter-terrorism, maritime security, combating
Islamic extremism and stabilizing India's
periphery.
History and culture bind
India to East Asia India has a long history
of trade and cultural exchanges with East Asia.
Trade links with East Asia stretch back two
millennia to the Silk Road and Calicut emerging as
a major trading port in South Asia. Meanwhile,
cultural and religious bonds date back to Emperor
Asoka's spread of Buddhism beyond the
sub-continent in the third century BC.
Other notable periods of contact between
pre-independence India and East Asia include the
Kushan Empire, which built extensive trade
networks with China, and the Chola Dynasty, which
ruled over much of Southeast Asia during which
Rajendra I conducted a naval expedition to
Srivijaya (present-day Indonesia) to protect trade
with China and Rajendrachola Deva I (Parmeshwara)
named the island of Singapore (Singapura) in 10th
century AD.
The exchange of pilgrims,
explorers, and traders continued until the onset
of British rule over India in the 18th century,
after which India ceased to be an independent
actor on the international stage. India's contact
with East Asia became subordinated to colonial
rivalry as Indian opium and soldiers were used to
gain markets and quash rebellions in other parts
of Asia such as China (the Opium War) and Malaya.
During World War II, the Stilwell Road served as a
vital transit route to shuttle supplies from India
to the anti-Japanese forces in China, and Subhash
Chandra Bose's short-lived Indian National Army
formed an alliance with Imperial Japan.
Under India's first prime minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, India reengaged with East Asia.
The Asian Relations Conference held in New Delhi
on April 2, 1947 served as one of the earliest
attempts to form a pan-Asian identity under the
context of the modern nation-state system. Forming
a common cause with Asian leaders such as
Indonesian president Sukarno and Chinese premier
Zhou Enlai on decolonization, Western imperialism,
socialism, national sovereignty, equality and a
developing-world solidarity, Nehru helped to forge
the "Bandung Spirit" of 1955, which became the
precursor for the Non-Aligned Movement and the
Asia-Africa Summit.
Nehru also offered to
serve as a mediator during the Korean War and
French-Indochina War, supported communist China's
claim to a seat at the United Nations, expressed
pride in Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War
in 1905 and opposed punishing Japan at the
post-World War II Tokyo trials. The spirit of
Asian brotherhood was most visibly manifested in
the slogan of "Hindi-Chin bhai bhai" (Indians and
Chinese are brothers), which attempted to forge a
familial bond between Asia's two oldest
civilizations and Panchsheel (or the Five
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence), which formed
the basis for Sino-Indian relations and China's
and India's relations with other countries.
However, this phase of India's engagement
with East Asia perished with India's border war
with China in 1962, preoccupation with Pakistan,
and inability to meet its development needs, which
caused India to turn inward. Coinciding with these
developments was the regional architecture in Asia
separating along the Cold War divide with the
formation of organizations such as the
anti-communist, US-led Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization.
India rediscovered East Asia
in 1992 when it launched its "Look East" policy in
the aftermath of the end of the Cold War and the
start of India's economic liberalization policy.
What distinguishes the present engagement with
East Asia from previous ones is the fact that it
is operating on multiple fronts; India's
historical, cultural and ideological links are
being complemented by growing economic
interdependence and multilateral cooperation from
the movement of capital and human resources and a
growing number of free trade agreements and
cooperative security dialogues.
Former
external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha, in a
speech at Harvard University in 2003, noted the
transformation in India's attitude toward Asia:
"In the past, India's engagement with much of
Asia, including Southeast and East Asia, was built
on an idealistic conception of Asian brotherhood,
based on shared experiences of colonialism and of
cultural ties. The rhythm of the region today is
determined, however, as much by trade, investment
and production as by history and culture. That is
what motivates our decade-old Look East policy.
Already, this region accounts for 45% of our
external trade."
Economic
interdependence Economically, India has
emerged as Asia's third-largest economy after
Japan and China. It has forged numerous free trade
agreements with East Asian economies, including a
Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement with
Singapore and an Early Harvest Scheme with
Thailand, while it is negotiating agreements with
Japan, South Korea, and Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states.
India
needs to add as much as US$500 billion in
investment into its infrastructure and Japan,
Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have expressed
interest in diversifying their investment beyond
China. South Korea is India's ninth-largest source
of foreign investment, with Korean companies such
as Daewoo, Hyundai, Samsung and LG having a
significant presence in India. POSCO is investing
$12 billion to construct an integrated steel plant
in Orissa in India's single-largest inward
investment. Meanwhile, Singapore has emerged as
India's seventh-largest source of foreign
investment with Temasek Holdings making
significant investments in India's financial,
pharmaceutical, logistics and information
technology sectors.
There have also been a
number of Japanese investments in India, most
notably in New Delhi's metro subway system and
Maruti. The Japanese government and corporate
sector will also provide one-third of the funding
for the $100 billion, 1,500 kilometer Delhi-Mumbai
freight and industrial corridor, which is to begin
construction in 2008 and be completed by 2012.
Discussions are also proceeding on reaching a
bilateral currency swap agreement between India
and Japan. India is already the leading recipient
of Japanese aid, receiving over $1 billion in
2005.
Numerous infrastructure projects
also serve to tie India closer to East Asia. India
is participating in the UN Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacific initiatives
for an Asian Highway Network and the Trans-Asian
Railway Network. Discussions are also proceeding
on reopening the World War II-era Stilwell Road
linking India's Assam state with China's Yunnan
province through Myanmar. This follows the
reopening of a direct overland trade route along
the Nathu La Pass on the border between Sikkim and
Tibet in July 2006 after 44 years.
Soft
power Influence India is also attempting to
reassert its soft power influence over the region.
Notably, India is attempting to draw attention to
its role as the birthplace of Buddhism and a
center for learning through the Pan-Asian Nalanda
Initiative, which aims to revive its 3,000-year
old Nalanda University.
India's democratic
credentials have also been a catalyst for India's
integration with East Asia. Notably, Japan and
Taiwan have sought closer relations with India in
the context of their "value-oriented diplomacy".
In his speech before a joint session of India's
Parliament in August, Japanese prime minister
Shinzo Abe described India as part of "broader
Asia" that spans "the entirety of the Pacific
Ocean, incorporating the US and Australia". Abe
noted that these states comprise an "arc of
freedom of prosperity" of "like-minded countries"
that "share fundamental values such as freedom,
democracy and respect for basic human rights as
well as strategic interests".
Abe is the
third successive Japanese prime minister to visit
India after Yoshiro Mori in 2000 and Junichiro
Koizumi in 2005, and India is the only country
with which Japan will have annual prime
ministerial level talks. Singh's visit to Japan in
December 2006
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