After former Prime Ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it is Narendra Modi’s turn to take India’s ‘look East’ policy up a notch and make it the ‘Act East’ policy, writes RUP NARAYAN DAS
How much significance India attaches to Singapore can be gauged from the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Singapore to pay tribute to the builder of Singapore, lee Kuan Yew, when he passed away in March this year. Now, within less than eight months, he will be revisiting next week to elevate the relationship between the two countries to a strategic level. The volume, Singapore and India: A Shared Future was launched in February this year in New Delhi to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the two countries.
This unpriced publication, though looks like a coffee-table book, only betrays the first impression. Brought out by the Institute of South Asian Studies, National Singapore University, this is a veritable treasure trove of the fascinating Singapore-India relations. The volume is well researched based on authentic primary source documents and rare photographs. The observations and conclusions are objective and unbiased.
The volume, thematically divided into five chapters, gives a kaleidoscopic view of the entire gamut of Singapore-India relations, starting from ethnic and historical linkage, diplomatic, trade and economic relations, cultural linkages. The concluding chapter on prospects for India-Singapore relations is like icing on the cake. The migration of ethnic Indians begun during the time of the British East India Company. Writing about the cosmopolitan nature of the city-state, the volume mentions, “in recognition of the importance of the Indian community in Singapore, Tamil is one of the nation’s four official languages. Besides Tamil, the study of other Indian languages, namely Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, have also been incorporated into Singapore’s school curriculum”. It further states that in 1824, Indians in Singapore numbered 756 out of the island’s total population of 10,683. A demographic change was soon brought about by the arrival of a new group of Indians who later literally built much of early Singapore.
The volume further chronicles that during the Second World War, when Japan occupied Singapore from 1942 to 1945, Indian nationalist aspirations dovetailed with Japanese imperialist ambitions to bring an end to British dominance in the East. It was in this backdrop that Singapore became the base from which efforts by overseas Indians to jettison British rule in India were planned and coordinated. The swift surrender of British forces in February 1942 created a temporary power vacuum which allowed new actors to emerge on the political stage. One of the main parties was the Indian Independence league which was established under the Japanese auspices. Rash Behari Bose, who was based in Japan prior to his arrival in Singapore in late 1942, was appointed the leader of the 12,000-strong political organisation. The volume has a rare photograph of Subhash Chandra Bose proclaiming the Provisional Government of Free India at the Old Cathy Hall in Singapore in 1943.
The chapter on diplomatic relations is equally informative and illuminating. Today it may be inconceivable, but it is a fact that when India’s External Affairs Minister, MC Chagla visited Singapore, New Delhi offered a two-seater India-built trainer aircraft for pilot training to Singapore. In the context of India’s growing strategic and defence cooperation with Singapore, the book mentions that in June 1967, a four-man Indian defence delegation had visited Singapore and Malaysia to discuss specific training needs and use of training facilities in India. The volume makes a mention of the foresight of President VV Giri when he raised the idea of forming an Asian Council of Economic Ministers under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Far East during his visit to the island state in September 1971. It echoes India’s persistent security dilemma during the visit of President lee Kuan Yew to India in 1970 quoting from the memoir of the elder statesman.
When President lee asked Prime Minister Indira Gandhi whether India intended its naval interests into Southeast Asia, India’s Foreign Minister Swaran Singh intervened to say that India was interested in increasing economic ties, but the greater interest was keeping its western sea lanes open. lee sensed that India’s primary defence concern was Pakistan, fearing a US-China-Pakistan line-up.
Alluding to the gradual evolution of India’s ‘look East’ policy, the volume notes that India’s recognition of Heng Samrin regime in Cambodia in July 1980 riled the sentiment of the Asean. India’s tilt towards the erstwhile Soviet Union was also resented by the Asean. It was the end of cold war in 1991 and India’s economic reforms and liberalisation that facilitated India’s ‘look East’ policy. Bilateral relations between India and Singapore intensified after the meeting between PM Narasimha Rao and his Singapore counterpart Goh Chok Tong on the margins of the Non-Aligned Summit in Jakarta in September 1992. At his National Day Rally speech in August 1993, Mr Goh said that he would start a “mild India fever”. India’s ‘look East’ policy was officially articulated in the Singapore lecture delivered by Rao during his visit to Singapore in 1994.
It was, however, during the regime of Atal Behari Vajpayee that the policy was consolidated. Besides the economic imperatives, what impelled India’s ‘look East’ policy was China’s assertiveness. Vajpayee was invited to the first ASEAN-India summit meeting in November 2002. Bilateral relations with Singapore also received a boost when he had visited Singapore in April 2002. Now, it is Modi’s turn to give one notch up India’s ‘look East’ policy to make it ‘Act East’ policy.
The reviewer is a Director in the Research and Information Division of the lok Sabha Secretariat. Views are of the reviewer alone