Indians in general know very little about Indonesia, and this ignorance is preventing relations between the two countries from blossoming to their full potential, a former Indian ambassador to Indonesia says.
Navrekha Sharma, ambassador in Jakarta between 2006 and 2008, said this ignorance prevails although more and more Indians are now travelling to Indonesia, with many of them happy to settle, live and work, or even invest their money in the country.
"But when they return to India, their impressions of Indonesia are lost," she said in a discussion at the Paramadina Graduate School on Thursday.
"Books about Indonesia are hard to find in India. You'll be lucky to find the Lonely Planet guide to Indonesia in bookstores. In public libraries and in universities, the only book you will likely find on Indonesia is on the Bandung Conference.
"It seems as if our knowledge of Indonesia stopped with Bandung," she said referring to the historic Asia-Africa conference in 1955 that brought together for the first time countries that had just then freed themselves from European colonial rule.
"We just don't get enough information on Indonesia," she said, adding that there are not many English-language books on Indonesia to begin with.
Although now fully retired from the diplomatic service, the former ambassador aims to change that. She is currently working on a book that looks at the relations between the two countries, the history and the prospects.
She certainly has the right credentials, serving not only as ambassador here between 2006 and 2008, but also as deputy chief mission at the embassy in Jakarta in 1993, and overseeing the larger Southeast Asian region at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in between her two Indonesian stints. She is currently visiting Jakarta as part of the research for the book that she hopes to publish next year.
"I don't keep a diary. The book will be more about my impressionistic accounts of Indonesia," she told the discussion organized by Paramadina's Consortium of Indonesia's Foreign Policy attended by diplomats, scholars, students and journalists.
She recognized however that relations have strengthened in the last 10 years, particularly with greater contact between people in the two countries.
"As far as people-to-people relations are concerned, there is greater warmth and friendship, but the engagement is not as intense at the diplomatic level as the two countries and two peoples deserve."
Changes in India and Indonesia in the past decade bode well for stronger relations, she said.
India has become more open in terms of its growing economy and is now engaging more and more with the international community, including with Indonesia, which in the meanwhile has chosen to take the democratic path in its development model.
"There is now the potential for engaging with each other at more meaningful levels," Sharma said.
She recalls that the two nations did have intense relations in the 1950s and 1960s under the leadership of Nehru and Sukarno. The two men collaborated during the Bandung conference and the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement, before their countries chose different models and paths of development in the mid-1960s that essentially kept the two countries separate.
While not neglecting the role that business plays in augmenting relations ahead, Sharma pointed to many other areas for mutually beneficial collaboration, including in education (tie-ups between universities in the two countries, she says) and tourism, through the opening of direct flights linking major cities in the two countries.
She sees potential for India's Bollywood to contribute, for example through joint film production. Indians could produce a movie with an Indonesian setting, and vice versa, she said. While Indonesian films have been screened at many film festivals, she would like to see some of them being featured at mainstream cinemas.
"I'd like to see a more holistic engagement," Sharma said.
At the international stage, India and Indonesia can collaborate, although one is a country with the largest Hindu population in the world and the other is a country with the world's largest Muslim-majority population.
"Where we come together is through our respective constitution," she said referring to the secular nature of the two states that essentially guaranteed equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their faith.
"We have a common platform for dialogue.
"We see Indonesia as a mirror to India," she said, adding that she would devote an entire chapter to this issue in her book.
"Your approach to secularism, through Pancasila *five principles*, is somewhat different," she said, pointing at the different ways each country treats atheism, banned in Indonesia but respected in India .
Sharma has a very good reason why India and Indonesia must collaborate more and understand each other better today.
"As the world is becoming more Asia-centric, with the emergence of India, China and Indonesia as well as a few other countries, we need to get to know each other better for our survival."
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