India ‘eager’ to build closer ties with RI

Visiting Indian scholars believe that shared cultural heritage and strong economic growth have made India very eager to strengthen ties with countries in Southeast Asia, and especially Indonesia.

At a seminar held at The Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Centre in Jakarta over the weekend, leading Indian academics shared findings of research they had conducted and their own personal views on India and Indonesia’s relationship.

“India’s ties to Indonesia constitute a wide range of factors that go beyond political or economic spheres,” explains Shankari Sunderarman from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.

“Be it religion, our shared experience of colonial rule or how both of our countries are melting pots for such incredibly diverse local populations, our countries are far more similar than many usually think.”

Uttara Sahasrabuddhe, Associate Professor at the Department of Civics and Politics at the University of Mumbai, believes that many of these ties from the past still manifest themselves in a myriad of ways in present day Indonesia.

“Pancasila is at its core an Indian concept,” she explains, citing the official philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state. “When one looks at the origins of Islam or Hinduism here, one can trace much of this cultural heritage back to India, which then spread to Indonesia over the course of centuries.”

Sahasrabuddhe also emphasized how many people in India presently look at Indonesia as an increasingly important future partner.

“India knows that most economic growth in the future is not going to come from America or Europe, but from Asia, and in particular Southeast Asia,” she pointed out.

“As a consequence, there naturally are a lot of people in India who are very eager to build closer ties with Indonesia and other ASEAN members that are experiencing phenomenally high growth rates.”

There was also talk of the need to resolve the cultural tension between Indonesia and Malaysia through regional leaders coming to realize that their current mindset is out of touch with the modern world.

“Governments have to realize that territoriality is becoming redundant in our day and age,” Swaran Singh Professor for diplomacy & disarmament at JNU explained.

“Both the public and government leaders need to realize that culture is tied not to a country, but a region.”

India’s own situation with Pakistan was brought forward as a good example of how two countries can acknowledge mutual ownership of a culture without inciting conflict.

It was however acknowledged that India’s difficulty with their neighbor constituted a problem in India’s own regional organization, the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

“India is increasingly finding that SAARC is becoming dysfunctional,” Singh stated. “This however provides further incentives for India to work more closely with other regional organizations, especially ASEAN.”