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Sandeep Dikshit
WHEN Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the Indonesian President Joko Wikodo earlier this month, they were trying to finish the work started by the previous regimes of turning the clock back on 50 years of polite estrangement.
The Manmohan Singh government accelerated efforts for closer ties between the world's second and fourth most-populated nations. Modi had picked up the threads and met Wikodo within months of becoming the Prime Minister.
Meeting Modi after two years, Wikodo's aim was to cast off Pakistan's shadow that has dogged their ties. During the Cold War, both Indonesia and Pakistan had tilted towards the West. They conducted economic business in the D-8 grouping that accounted for 60 per cent of the world's Muslim population. Indonesia also supported Pakistan's venting on Kashmir at the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC).
India also had strategic reasons to be wary of Indonesia because the latter had signed a Friendship Treaty with China in 1961, just when Sino-India ties were going downhill. A military pact with Pakistan some years later buried the Nehru-Sukarno bonhomie of the 1950s. Indonesia then opted to side with Pakistan in the 1965 and 1971 wars.
The Manmohan Singh government began the process of de-hyphenating India-Pakistan ties by inviting an Indonesian President as the chief guest for the 2011 Republic Day parade. India then ended the practice of its envoy in Jakarta doubling up as the Ambassador to ASEAN. Indonesia too had realised the importance of partnering India, the regional naval heavyweight, after the 9-11 attacks with a series of coordinated naval patrols in the region.
Manmohan Singh, however, was unable to find the glue that has held together India's ties with Vietnam and Japan. The last summit with an Indonesian President in 2013 was unable to produce a common vision statement. The backing of the Indian strategic community was also lacking as it tends to overlook Indonesia and prefers the more exciting and fruitful relationships with Vietnam and Japan, which have an element of common cause against China.
But Indonesia offers opportunities that are vastly different. The practice of liberal democracy in both countries resoundingly negates the common narrative about its incompatibility with Islam. The combined Muslim population of Indonesia and India outstrips that of the Middle East and North Africa whose strands of fanatical jihadism have shaped the stereotypical image of Muslims the world over. As their approach to China is not the chronic antagonism of the West, they can both act in concert as balancers, if need be. India has maintained a peaceful border with China but is not averse to verbal skirmishing on issues like the Dalai Lama, NSG and Hafiz Saeed. There is an in-built wariness towards China in Jakarta's political calculus as well.
Modi seems to have tied up the loose ends during his meeting with Wikodo: they agreed to meet annually on the sidelines of multilateral events and raise bilateral trade to $ 50 billion. Modi also ensured a joint panel held three sittings before Wikodo's arrival and came out with five strategic focus areas. The icing on the cake was the statement on maritime cooperation that used the code for expressing annoyance at Chinese naval activity in disputed waters.
But the proviso for annual summits was not a new initiative. Manmohan Singh had worked it out during his interactions with the Indonesian leadership. The trade figure of $ 50 bn by 2025 is an overstatement: in 2005, both countries had fixed the bilateral trade target at $ 25 billion but the actual achievement in 2015 was $ 9 billion. It will be impossible to achieve a four-fold increase in trade in 10 years on the back of such an unimpressive performance.
The five focus areas are not a Modi innovation. They were an exact copy of the priority areas mentioned during Manmohan Singh's visit to Jakarta in 2013. Modi's contribution thus gets reduced to the joint statement on maritime security and India's launch of two Indonesian micro satellites.
Indonesia could have avoided getting embroiled in the formulation on South China Sea. Its approach on China's maritime claims has been to bank on its military strength and political gestures like convening a cabinet meeting on a warship anchored off its Neptune Island.
Indonesia also has a strong card against Beijing its 28 lakh citizens are of Chinese origin. Beijing would not have forgotten how a resolute Indonesian leadership forced it to wring its hands in helplessness when it tried to intervene in the anti-Chinese riots of 1998. If Indonesia still agreed to a statement on maritime security, it is signalling a convergence of views. Indirectly, it is also bidding adieu to strategic ties with Pakistan that is firmly aligned with China.
Both countries need a measure of support in the oceans. Like India, Indonesia has updated its maritime doctrine to venture further out in the seas as well as defend its maritime waters more aggressively. But New Delhi will have to produce concrete deliverables rather than copy-pasting the previous regime's formulations to take the relationship forward.
An energy relationship especially in the petroleum downstream segment could offset the collapse of the coal trade as well as provide a concrete dimension to the strategic relationship. The Pakistani monkey is off their back but both countries still need to add economic ballast to give the relationship a pair of fresh legs.
sandeep4731@gmail.com
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