Republic Day Celebration

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's attendance as chief guest at this year's Republic Day celebrations was significant. The last Indonesian chief guest to attend these celebrations was President Sukarno in 1950. With the passing of the Nehru-Sukarno era, India's relationship with Southeast Asia ceased to be a priority in our diplomatic agenda. This was unfortunate.

Indonesia is a major emerging market economy like India and China, and a G20 member. Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are also important players in Asia. Vietnam is another emerging power and potential strategic partner. Reinventing India's relations with countries of the ASEAN region is a critical factor in the new global power balances that is now evolving. It lies at the heart of India's Look East policy. This recent doctrine is in fact a rediscovery of an ancient relationship - India's deep engagement with Southeast Asia well over a thousand years ago - that offers many lessons as well as opportunities for our own times.

This ancient relationship is perhaps best reflected in Angkor Wat. This remarkable temple is the national symbol of Cambodia, but it is also a Hindu temple dedicated to the worship of Vishnu. Built in the 12th century, Angkor marks the pinnacle of Khmer art and civilisation, but the origin of Khmer rule goes back to the eighth century. At its peak, this empire included not only Cambodia, but also large parts of Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia. It was ruled by Hindu god kings, and by their Buddhist descendants from the 12th century onwards. Travel further east to Vietnam, and on the shores of the Pacific you will find the ruins of the Hindu kingdom of Champa. Travel further south to Indonesia, and there you will encounter in central Java the great temple complex of Prambanan, built in the eighth century by Hindu kings of the Sanjaya dynasty.

Like Hinduism, Buddhism too had taken root in Java by the eighth century. The Buddhist Shailendra kings built grand Buddhist temples in Borobudur and also in the environs of Prambanan. Today, Buddhism is the main religion in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, while Islam predominates in Malaysia and Indonesia. Hinduism, Buddhism and later Islam, along with the cultures in which these great religions are embedded, flowed to Southeast Asia from India, led by the growth of trade. There were no Indian military campaigns or conquests, no Indian empires were built. But as trade relations grew, Indian art and iconography, its religious practices and its way of life spread across the region through a process of cultural osmosis.

These relationships were ruptured by the European colonisation of Southeast Asia. With the pendulum of economic power now swinging back from the West to the East, led by China and India, both countries seek to deepen their engagement with the region. As in the past, India's re-engagement with Southeast Asia will be led by economic interests, including trade. India's high growth requires high growth of exports. For that, India has to look to the dynamic ASEAN economies, China and South Korea, not the slow growing economies of the West. Intra-regional trade in ASEAN countries is growing much faster than their trade with the rest of the world and India needs to link itself to this growth.