MGG Pillai Commentary View

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India in South-East Asia

INDIA IS STRONG BECAUSE it is backed by a strong power, the USSR (as it was) then, the US now. Indians can rail all they want in their newspapers that it is not so, but the fact is India is not in Southeast Asia these days as it was 500 years ago. One Indian high commissioner to Malaysia about ten years ago, talking of India's roie in the region, said it ended when Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498. It was an important speech for which many policymakers had attended, and they left confused. But what he said is the truth. The Tamil newspapers, almost all owned by the MIC president or his family, carries out in detail developments in Tamil Nadu, followed by attacks on his political enemies, and reports on Malaysia only as it affects the Tamils. The insular attitude makes it difficult for the Indians to be members of the larger Malaysian community. The high commission spends too much time on the affairs of the Indian community, missing the larger developments in Malaysia as a result.

India does not wield the big stick when it should. The Indian overseas tries to keep himself apart from the local Indian, and is usually arrogant, even dismissive of the Indian here. Elsewhere in the region, the Indian is tolerated by the local governments, even if they themselves are Indian in their culture. Many Indonesians have Sanskrit names, Bali practices a Hinduism that disappeared with Adi Sankaracharya in the 8th century. The Rama legend is theirs too, and the Balinese often say the Indians took it from them. As one Indonesian professor of Sanskrit once explained to me: "Islam is my religion; Sanskrit my culture." The state is guided by the Panchashila, the five principles, and a take off from the Panchatantra, the five arts. The former Indonesian president, Megawati, was given her name by an Indian politicians, Biju Patnaik. The present president's name, Yudhoyono, is Sanskrit although he is a Muslim.

The diplomats New Delhi sends out do not try to understand the local situation, and often is seen by the locals as bulls in a china shop. In the Philippines about 25 years ago, the press ate out of the Indian ambassador's hand. News reports of anything Indian that he or his embassy send out got into the local newspapers. The Philippines government consulted him frequently. All because he studied the Philippines situation before he took his post, made his diplomatic calls according to protocal, when almost every ambassador in the country did not. I had hardly checked into a hotel in Manila when a visitor whom I did not know called me for a cup of coffee. It puzzled me a bit as I had told few outside my contacts in Manila. It turned out the Philippines foreign ministry had told him. This is not what happens today, where an Indian of whatever citizenship visiting the Indian embassy puts him in a bad light.

An Indian, the grandson of sugar workers, became his country's ambassador to Malaysia. His wife was a Chinese from his country. He is now a cabinet minister at home. He would have nothing to do with the Indian missions overseas, and he told me that what escaped him from their clutches was that he had no links with India, and does not believe India was beneficial to the region. India is back in the region, this time as a US proxy, mainly to stop China from being a force in the region. China has never conquered beyond its borders, and that too to maintain its security, and was in the region about the time India was, before 1498. You would see on the floor of the Jewish synagogue in Cochin, tiles that were given by Admiral Cheng He. They had no designs on the region, as India did not then. They set up settlements in all of Nanyang, its name for Southeast Asia. An island in the South China Sea, which surfaced in the 1920a but sunk for hundreds of years, off Bintulu, in East Malaysia, had Chinese artiifacts, including graves, on it, that China made a claim for it.

The area was known by the Greeks more than 2,000 years ago as the Golden Chersonese. The Indians called it 'Swarna Bhumi', a rough translation of the Greek word, or is it the other way around?. The region was part of Bharat Varsh (India then). In the Indian classic, Panchatantra, there is a tale of a Brahman preparing to leave for Swarna Bhumi to look for his missing son. It is possible that Indians of those days have kept their culture to this day. Kedah, the state in north Peninsular Malaysia, is from 'kedaram', the Tamil (or Sanskrit) word for scepture. Sanskrit became the court language, and is very important foreign language in the Malay language. Once, Malaya sought the Sanskrit equivalent first and then the other languages when a Malay word cannot be found. Now Arabic has that pride of place.

Indian culture has set root in the region. There was an Indian temple up the Kedah River, which was excavated in the 1920s, so big that its spire could not touch its outer walls at 3 pm, when its shadows were the longest. The people living up river has legends of Indian presence. A Hindu temple mid-way up the Kedah Peak, built about the 7th century but which was a Buddhist temple for about 1,500 years before that, was vandalised by a group which believed Malaya should be Islamic and Malay. The temple also acted as a lighthouse for ships coming to Kedaram, as no doubt the Buddhist temple was for 1,500 years before that. But all that is forgotten in this mad Indian desire to be in the region as a proxy. It has taken the US views of the war of terror against Muslims as its own. It is taken for a ride by the Singaporeans, a clear example of this is the visit recently of the Indian president.

Except for Vietnam, the countries in the region has had Indian influence, brought no doubt by early travellers and business men from India. The Sanskrit they brought along has been corrupted to local parlance, but it is Sanskrit nevertheless. Prince Souvanna Phouma is a former Laotian politician, who told me in the 1960s that his name means Swarna Bhumi in Sanskrit. Tengku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first prime minister, had thought of naming his country Langkasuka, as the capital of ancient Indian empire was known, but he was dissuadid because the area was now part of Thailand. The cultural links still continue. When a Thai priest in the palace dies, his replacement is from south India, even today. India had many points in its favour But it has spoiled all that in its mad rush to be tops in the region.

[This is my column in Thejas, a Malayalam newspaper in Calicut, India, which appeared this week.]

M.G.G.Pillai