Indonesia may trade with China but it sings and dances with India. If Gandhi and Nehru or Indonesia’s Founding Fathers, Muhammad Hatta and Sjahrir were alive today, they would say that India and Indonesia have a moral duty to create a vision of  a democratic and pluralist Asia.

India is the largest democracy in Asia and Indonesia is the largest democracy in ASEAN. Democracy has not always been considered an Asian value.  

At the “India-Indonesia New Strategic Partnership” seminar last week, Dr. Raja Mohan, strategic
affairs editor of the Indian Express, described how in the late 1990s the Singapore government spoke about Asian values as opposed to Western values, but how the discussion came to an abrupt end, when the people of Jakarta poured out into the streets demanding democracy in 1998.