Southeast Asia in Indian Foreign Policy: Some Preliminary Observations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make a preliminary attempt to locate the position and importance of Southeast Asia in the broader framework of Indian foreign policy concerns. A major assumption behind this exercise is that Southeast Asia has in recent years begun to look increasingly important from New Delhi's per spective and that many Southeast Asians have also begun to re-evaluate their earlier perceptions of India as at best a marginal actor as far as the Southeast Asian region is concerned. While such a re-evaluation of Southeast Asian perceptions does not form a part of the subject matter of this paper, it would be correct to assume that it does have a positive feedback effect on the making of Indian policy towards this region and to that extent is relevant as an input into the Indian foreign policy making process. While India's cultural and religious links with Southeast Asia go back to ancient times, and while there had been great sympathy among the Indian intel ligentsia during the colonial period for the anti-colonial movements in the British, French and Dutch colonial possessions in Southeast Asia, independent India's interest in the region seemed to wane soon after the heady days of the Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955. There were many reasons for this relative neglect of Southeast Asia by New Delhi. These included India's preoccupation with the conflict with Pakistan as well as its attempt, largely unsuccessful, to minimize external, principally superpower, intervention in the affairs of the subcontinent. Moreover, with Southeast Asia, specially Indochina, emerging as a major arena of contention between the two superpowers in the 1960s, non-aligned India's capacity to influence events in the strategic region was extremely limited. India's military humiliation at the hands of China in the border conflict of 1962 further circumscribed New Delhi's capacity to act outside its borders. It not only forced the government to look inward in order to better under stand the reasons for the debacle, but it also had very adverse effects on India's standing abroad, particularly among Southeast Asian countries who, as close neighbours of both the Asian giants, were extremely sensitive to any change in the balance of power between India and China. Although the harm done to India's military credibility, and therefore its standing as a major Asian power, by the 1962 debacle was partially overcome by