Historical and Geographical Dimensions of India’s Interaction with Southeast Asia
India’s Look East Policy a Revival of Age-old Ties
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Irrigation S E Asian Agri-history 2005, Irrigation S E Asian Agri-history 2005, Hist. Geog Dimensions India’s Interaction S E Asia, Hist. Geog Dimensions India’s Interaction S E Asia
| India’s Look East Policy a Revival of Age-old Ties It was about the same time that India having been so much disenchanted with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) began considering on the lines of revitalizing its age-old contacts with Southeast Asian countries. If India realised its blunders of neglecting Southeast Asia for over four decades, ASEAN too began shedding its prejudices towards India. Incidentally, the imperatives of new economic order of post-Cold War globalization induced India to embark on a proactive Look East policy (LEP) (1992) to get itself integrated with its eastern neighbours through redemption of the age-old historical, cultural and economic ties with Southeast Asia and thereby forging new partnerships with other eastern neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region. LEP, according to a publication of Indian Government, 10 coincided with ASEAN’s Look West testifying to confluence of interests (Government of India 1997). The Indian initiatives impressed ASEAN so much as to elevate India from the mere status of a Sectoral Dialogue Partner (1992), Full Dialogue Partner (1995), membership in ASEAN Regional Forum (1996), to the ASEAN summit level (A) in 2002. The paradigm shift in India’s outlook towards the extended neighbourhood is well illustrated by the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the Look East policy is a strategic shift in India’s perspective to the extent of intensifying the political dialogue, expanding trade and steadily enlarging people-to-people contacts between all the countries of the region (Singh 2010). But, on the flip side, “India’s lack of response to the 1997/98 Asian economic crisis was as dismal as the nonchalant attitude of the US, notwithstanding its manoeuvers to reemerge as a key player in the Asia-Pacific region, lamented Prof Lakshmana Chetty. With over four decades of association with the Southeast Asian Studies programme, he further termed China’s massive assistance to the desperate ASEAN remarkable and praiseworthy. Another scholar in Southeast Asian affairs, Prof Gopalji Malviya at the Strategic and Defence studies in Madras University viewed that China had stolen the show and runaway with the credit of a Good Samaritan. The crisis which slowed down the process of regional economic cooperation undoubtedly had a direct negative impact on India as well as on Indo-ASEAN trade and investment relations (Baru 2001). Yet, India’s increasing role in the Asia-Pacific and its economic potentiality have qualified India to emerge as an Asia-Pacific power in the form of becoming a founder member of East Asia Summit (2005), notwithstanding the Chinese pernicious efforts to curtail India’s influence. About the same time, India which does not have a historical legacy of invasion, coercion or domination in the Southeast Asian region has had long-proven track of being a soft power, although the term of soft power has recently appeared in the study of international politics 11 (Wardhani 2011). If India is looked upon as an alternative by the ASEAN member countries to reduce their economic dependence on both China and Japan (Acharya 2003/04, pp.150-51), Lawrence Prabhakar Williams, an Indian strategic analyst, who stresses India’s maritime engagement with the region for economic and strategic reasons, looks at Southeast Asia as the strategic bridge that supports India’s naval aims in the Arctic, the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific (Lawrence 2013). The support for India has largely been due to the recognition of India’s strategic needs and economic strengths (Anand 2009); and the much sought after India’s presence in Southeast Asia is very eloquently and widely expressed “India’s presence as being a beneficial and beneficent one to all of us in Southeast Asia. Singapore’s Foreign Minister (Baruah 2007). a dynamic India would counterbalance the pull of the Chinese economy, and offer a more diversified basis for prosperity Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister (Loong 2003). ASEAN countries envisage India as acting as a counterbalance to a possibly over dominant China in the future Singapore veteran diplomat, K. Kesavapany (Kesavapany 2008). India can play in the security architecture of the wider Asia-Pacific region.”....Stephen Smith Smith 2008). India is to become a psychological deterrent to China’s increasing influence and gradual domination of this region Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, the editor of the Jakarta Post (Suryodiningrat 2007). Download 389.05 Kb. Share with your friends:
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