Soft power, hard facts

Along with the 15 other Asian leaders participating in the summit, Manmohan Singh will visit a special exhibition in Singapore that showcases the rich history of the spread of Buddhism from Nalanda — probably the world’s first university, in Bihar — to different parts of East and Southeast Asia.

Among the many priceless exhibits, donated by different collections in Asia, is a rare relic of Buddha’s bones sent by India and a copper plate that records the transactions between the Pala rulers in eastern India during the 8th to 12th centuries AD and the Srivijaya Kingdom in Southeast Asia.

Away from the hustle and bustle of the Third East Asia Summit in Singapore this week, there is another equally important event. The city’s oldest think-tank, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) is bringing together, for the first time in recent years, historians and archaeologists from around the world to reflect on the “early Indian influences” in Southeast Asia. There will be a special focus on the maritime trade and cultural links between the Chola rulers of South India and Southeast Asia.

These events mark a major departure from the unwritten rules of India’s recent engagement with Southeast Asia. Since the launch of the Look East policy in the mid-1990s, India has consciously avoided highlighting the deep cultural sources of its relationship with the region. New Delhi had good reasons for this underwhelming attitude. The earlier iterations of India’s cultural diplomacy turned out to be disastrous. India’s nationalist historians were right in drawing attention to the newly discovered evidence at the turn of the 20th century of the past interaction between the subcontinent and Southeast Asia. They were utterly wrong, however, in projecting the Southeast Asian kingdoms as India’s “cultural colonies”. Singing the glories of ancient India might have boosted self-esteem in a subjugated nation; but it played badly in the rest of Asia, itself in the new thrall of nationalism.

Equally unsuccessful were independent India’s early foreign policy initiatives on Asian solidarity. The decolonised nations had no desire to subordinate their emerging national identities to the notion of Asian unity; nor were there any takers in East and Southeast Asia (EAS) for the Indian claim that it was the “mother of all civilisations” in Asia.

An India that turned insular from the late 1950s had little to offer to Asia other than irritating homilies about ancient civilisational links or the modern virtues of non-alignment. As it returned to Asia in the mid-1990s, a pragmatic India recognised the value of focusing on economic cooperation, restoring physical connectivity, and shedding the earlier notions of cultural superiority.

A number of new factors now allow India to craft a new cultural diplomacy and rebuild its soft power in East Asia. For one, the initiative on cultural diplomacy has come from Southeast Asia and not India. After all it was the foreign minister of Singapore, George Yeo, who first promoted the idea of a new Asian university at Nalanda over a year ago.

While India talked endlessly about developing a Buddhist circuit of tourism, it was not part of political imagination in either New Delhi or Patna to think of big new ideas about India’s cultural heritage. Thanks to Singapore’s efforts, the Nalanda project is now on the agenda of the EAS.

The celebration of the past is now very much part of an Asian renaissance. As the continent turns prosperous, expands its weight in global affairs, and embarks on building a regional identity, culture and history have inevitably acquired a new salience. And India is an integral part of Asia’s heritage. While it reinvents its cultural diplomacy in Asia, New Delhi needs to focus more on the two-way interaction between South Asian and East Asian cultures and avoid the past crude emphases on what India ‘gave’ to the rest of Asia.

Second, in many parts of Southeast Asia, domestic politics often prevents an acknowledgement of a common cultural past, let alone building on it. It is up to India to make it easier for these countries to explore, discover and preserve the shared history. This would necessarily involve New Delhi’s return to greater cultural openness, which is at the very heart of India’s soft power tradition. Mutual cultural rediscovery can only be one part of rejuvenating India’s soft power in Asia. The rejuvenation should also include India’s readiness to share its emerging strengths in technology and education. This too would demand a radical reorientation of India’s university system towards openness and globalisation.

The new emphasis on culture and higher education does not imply that India’s Look East policy is turning sentimental. It is based on a hard-headed assessment that reclaiming India’s Asian past is necessary for establishing its role in the continent’s political future.

The main contestation in Asia today is whether its new institutions should be exclusive or inclusive. The former (exclusive) defines the ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea) as the core of a new Asia. The latter (inclusive) will put the EAS — with additional participation of India, Australia and New Zealand — in the driver’s seat.

If India does not rise to the occasion, Asia will inevitably drift towards a Sino-centric future. An India that seizes its opportunities will help anchor Asia in its richer and more diverse past.

The writer is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore