India’s disengagement from South-East Asia is one of the most important developments in the country’s external relations in recent years. But New Delhi still refuses to recognise that it is so. It in fact strenuously denies the suggestion.
This refusal to recognise reality is the result of two factors. First, it is assumed that since the region once borrowed its religion and culture from India, New Delhi can legitimately claim a special relationship with it. The fact of the Hindu and Buddhist influence in the area was discovered at the height of the nationalist struggle and helped to restore the Indian intelligentsia’s faith in the country’s heritage.
Mr. Nehru’s Discovery of India illustrates this point. In his case even the appeal of Buddhism can partly be explained in terms of its historical role as a vehicle of Indian influence. The scale on which the 2500th anniversary of Lord Buddha’s parinirvan was celebrated under Mr. Nehru’s auspices in 1956 cannot but strengthen the impression that he believed that Buddhism could still fulfil that role. He has by no means been alone in entertaining this illusion. It continues to influence Indian thinking.
Realism
Secondly, it is widely assumed that irrespective of the history of almost a thousand years when this country had only limited contact with the region except with fellow members of the British empire like Burma and Malaya and its present limitations in terms of economic and military power, it can provide leadership in the common struggle against Chinese expansionism. This is largely an American contribution to India’s self-image. Mr Chester Bowles has been hammering away at this theme for almost two decades and so have many other American scholars, publicists and politicians.
The concept of the leadership of South-East Asia in competition with China enhances India’s self-respect and has therefore readily been swallowed even by those who swear by the policy of non-alignment. The opposite viewpoint that New Delhi can play a leading role in excluding the dominant American influence from the area is equally flattering and equally misleading. The Soviet bloc has sought to encourage New Delhi in this role.
But in fact realism has had the better of the myths. Even after the bitter experience of 1962 with China, India has studiously kept away from all attempts to promote an anti-Peking alliance in South- East Asia. The country’s leaders have from time to time gone through the motions of making proposals regarding Viet Nam, but they have lacked the conviction that they can influence the course of events. These two illustrations should suffice to establish the point that New Delhi is not involved and has no intention of being involved in the affairs of the region in any meaningful sense.
South-East Asian leaders have drawn the necessary conclusion and India does not figure much in their calculations. Among them the Singapore Prime Minister is perhaps the only one who continues to urge New Delhi to pursue a more active policy. A better indication of the prevalent mood in the region is that the anti-Chinese and anti-communist leadership of Indonesia should have been anxious to exclude India from the newly formed Association of South- East Asian Nations. This anxiety has been unnecessary. New Delhi would have in all probability stayed away from the Association even if there was a unanimous and pressing invitation from all its sponsors.
The disengagement, in my view, is the logical result of the failure of the policy of non-alignment. Lest there is any misunderstanding, let me state that I do not regret the withdrawal. In fact I do not think India has any alternative in the foreseeable future.
Mr. Nehru was a highly complex person. The growth of the policy of non-alignment was undoubtedly influenced by his pride in the country’s past and confidence in its future as by a variety of other factors like anti-colonialism and vague faith in pan-Asianism. At the core of the policy, however, lay the sound realisation that two empires – the United States and China – were competing for hegemonistic influence in South-East Asia under the garb of ideology and that India could serve its own and the region’s interests best if it along with like-minded countries could reduce if not eliminate their encroachments on the region’s freedom to manage its own affairs.
Influence
If in the ‘fifties he adopted a more critical approach towards the United States than towards China it was not because of anti-Americanism and love for China. He knew that despite Peking’s propaganda claim, Washington and its Western allies continued to command far greater influence. In retrospect it cannot be disputed that his assessment was correct. There is hardly a country in South-East Asia apart from North Viet Nam where the Chinese can claim much influence. It is doubtful if even Hanoi can be described as pro-Peking.
The success of Mr Nehru’s policy was dependent mainly on four conditions – the willingness of Washington and Peking to recognise that it served their long-term interests, internal stability in the region so that neither America nor China was tempted or forced to intervene, adherence of a sufficiently large number of countries to the concept of non-alignment so that the two contestants for hegemony could not ignore their susceptibilities, and finally India’s relative immunity to external aggression.
All these four factors were not fulfilled at any time. In the ‘fifties Washington under the influence of Mr. Dulles was as possessed by a crusading spirit as Peking under Mr. Mao Tse-tung. It first backed the French effort to re-establish its rule in Indo-China and then came in directly through bilateral pacts and SEATO. The consequences are there for everyone to see. That Peking also did not sincerely adhere to the concept of non-interference and thus attracted American intervention does not need elaboration.
The struggles in former Indo-China have been the principal source of instability and cause of Chinese and US intervention. There have also been other factors of instability like President Sukarno’s wholly unjustified “crush Malaysia” campaign, Pakistan’s claim to Indian Kashmir, border disputes between Thailand and Cambodia, Cambodia and South Viet Nam and the minority and communist revolts in Burma.
Substitute
Apart from the behaviour of the United States and China, five developments destroyed the credibility of the policy of non-alignment – U Nu’s overthrow in Burma and Gen. Ne Win’s decision to opt out of the world as it were, Dr. Sukarno’s steady drift into a world of fantasy and irresponsibility leading him to make the absurd distinction between the so-called newly emerging forces (China, Pakistan, Indonesia) and old established forces (the USA, the USSR, India), the adoption of a pro-China and anti-India posture by Mrs. Bandaranaike’s Government in Ceylon, New Delhi’s diplomatic isolation even before 1962 and finally the Chinese invasion of India.
It has since been argued from time to time that India should join with Japan and Australia to form a regional military alliance which can serve as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism. This is a substitute for a direct alliance with the United States. It would be far more honest to advocate that but Washington has not been looking for allies for almost a decade now. The proposal for a tie-up with Japan and Australia has unavoidably been attacked by communists and other left-wing elements.
The Government of India has also behaved as if it would go in for this proposal if it was not inhibited by commitment in the past to the policy of non-alignment, the opposition of the leftists at home and the fear of reprisals by the Soviet Union. This has put it on the defensive in its dealings with the United States. New Delhi has no reason to adopt such a defensive posture. Apart from the fact that no country in Asia is bearing so much responsibility for the containment of China as India, the proposal regarding an Indo-Japanese-Australian defence tie-up is wholly unrealistic.
Behind the American-sponsored proposal lies the assumption that Japan is finally beginning to overcome its inhibitions and is about to embark on a role which is in keeping with its present economic strength. Mr. Sato’s recent visit to a number of countries in South-East Asia, the treaty with South Korea, the anticipated expansion of the country’s defence forces and the occasional references to the need for nuclear weapons are cited to sustain the view that Japan has more or less overcome the pacifism produced by the shock of defeat and Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is ready to join with other countries in organising a common defence against China.
Nothing can be farther from the truth. The American assumption repeated unthinkingly by well meaning people here is wholly unwarranted. Japan is more than ever pre-occupied with domestic problems. Public opinion is wholly averse to an active foreign policy. For the Government even to attempt to secure an amendment of the Constitution to provide for a suitable rearmament programme is to risk dividing the nation deeply.
In Tokyo, China does not appear to be the kind of menace it does in Washington and even in New Delhi. That would explain why opinion in Japan has been more critical of the US policy in Viet Nam than that in any other South or South-East Asian country. There is no support for strengthening the defence forces. Japan is not prepared to participate even in UN peace-keeping operations.
The Japanese are fully protected against unexpected Chinese adventurism by the treaty with the United States and there is no particular reason, apart from the American pressure, why Tokyo should go in for a costly rearmament programme. The American policy itself is self-contradictory in the sense that while it wants to arouse Japanese ambitions for regional leadership, it is determined to deny it the essential tools for the fulfilment of those ambitions – nuclear weapons.
Three points bear mention. First, modernisation in Japan is not the painless process it appears from a distance. It has created serious social and cultural problems and the Japanese elite is fully preoccupied with them. The restructuring of a deeply traditional society is not a simple matter. Secondly, domestic requirements like schools, roads, housing and education are bound to have prior claim on the Government’s resources and not the defence forces. Finally, there is no leader and no party which is capable of leading Japan into a leadership role in South-East Asia.
On this analysis, it is wholly unlikely that China’s military power can be matched by a regional power or group of powers in the foreseeable future. As before the United States and China will remain the principal competitors for influence in the region for many years. It is in this broad context that Mr. Dean Rusk speaks of one billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons in connection with the war in Viet Nam. Japan has a role but as America’s junior partner and not as leader of an independent alliance system. New Delhi can only be an interested spectator so long as China does not choose to end the confrontation in the Himalayas and enable it once again to take the initiative in promoting peace and stability in South-East Asia on the basis of its old policy.
The Times of India, 27 December 1967