A Civilizational Reading of India’s Southeast Asia Policy

Keywords: India, Southeast Asia, Foreign Policy, Civilization, Great Power Aspirations

Date: 13th May 2024

Invoking civilizational arguments has been a consistent feature of India's foreign policy. Such statist accounts of civilization are constructed and borrowed selectively from diverse sources of academic and public history. Interestingly, despite disagreements and deviations across regimes in defining Indian civilization, the Indian state has invoked civilizational greatness for two goals.

First, India uses civilizational arguments to justify its rightful place in the world order. The attempt is to culturally accommodate and appreciate the civilizational attributes of the erstwhile colonial and non-western world in an otherwise West-dominated world order. The larger objective is to achieve a culturally inclusive, just and equitable world order.

Second, the Indian state's use of civilizational arguments is aimed at regime legitimation. Invoking civilizational greatness is inextricably linked with nationalist pride and exceptionalism. The remembrance and projection of civilization helps in mobilizing a populace affected by the history of colonial subjugation and at the same time pursuing great power aspirations. Such policies seek to invoke respect, solidarity and even hierarchy in the international order where its domestic claimants would take pride in being nationals of the civilizational-state.

Southeast Asia features as an important region in India’s foreign policy read in civilizational terms. In several accounts, it is considered a part of India's civilizational expanse. In some cases, it is referred to as the geographical extent to which India's civilization traveled. Particularly since the 1920s, there have been strong interpretations from the Indian academic and political circles of a civilizational appropriation of Southeast Asia.

However, with the sovereign moment in Asia, the civilizational rhetoric became untenable and ultimately subsided owing to the changing context of Asian politics. The civilizational arguments were picked up in the post-Cold War years when India rekindled its relationship with the region through its ‘Look East’ Policy. This civilizational rhetoric was considerably toned down because of the contentions of the past.

Civilizational ties were also a bystander to much more significant security and economic relations with the region that had emerged. Nevertheless, it remains a component of India's policy and the Indian state has been in an ongoing reflection of its attempt at crafting an acceptable and effective civilizational argument in the context of Southeast Asia.

The Indian political elite initially understood Southeast Asia as an extension of India's civilization. This is evident from the usage of terms like ‘Serindia’, ‘India Minor’, ‘Greater India’ and ‘Further India’ to denote the region in India academic and diplomatic circles during the immediate post-independent years.

This narrative of the Indianization of Southeast Asia corroborates with the Dutch and French historians of the colonial period who advanced military, trade and cultural interpretations of rising Indian influence in the region from the first century till the 13th century. Excavated remains of Indian colonies and traces of India's mainland culture in Southeast Asia were seen as markers of the extension of Indian civilization that was interrupted by the arrival of Islam and finally severed by colonization.

Inspired by this scholarship was the home grown attempt at discovering the Indian civilizational glories in Southeast Asia. Led by prominent historians like Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, UN Ghosal, Kalidasa Nag and Nilkantha Sastri was the creation of the Greater India Society in 1926. It served several purposes.

First, it informed the opinion of India’s political elite and nationalist thinkers about Indian civilization and Southeast Asia. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru in his work, The Discovery of India borrows from this line of thought. Similar accounts are present in works of India’s prominent diplomat and strategic thinker KM Panikkar.

Second, it invoked pride and prestige for the Indians in a fight against colonial subjugation. They provided tangible markers for the people to connect to an imagined past and shape national consciousness.

Finally, they served a hefty Indian population in defending their claims in Southeast Asia. This population had been struggling against nativist claims that had broken out in parts of Malaya, Burma, Sri Lanka and Indonesia which tagged Indians as outsiders. Historical context provided that they were never foreigners in this land.

However, the civilizational rhetoric had its pitfalls too as it started resembling a colonial project in itself. It often tagged native Southeast Asian cultures as barbaric and that Indian colonization was a civilizing force. For the Indian state, culturally hierarchical relations were untenable among new sovereign equals. India’s civilizational rhetoric was a mismatch with its post-independent strategies of pan-Asian unity that rested on sovereign equality and bonhomie between Asian states.

The arrival of sovereign statehood and territorial citizenship was complete with the emphasis on nationalist histories. Any attempt of civilizational superiority amongst sovereign equals smacked of cultural hegemony. Civilizational histories were sidelined in favour of nationalist accounts and culture became a domestic subject.

The secular Indian state hesitated in furthering religious elements in its diplomacy. The Hindu Right which was sympathetic to this project could not muster any political salience. As a result, after an initial surge of civilizational rhetoric, India’s civilizational claims in Southeast remained eschewed or at best subtle in bilateral and multilateral platforms.

Civilizational arguments resurfaced when India sought to rekindle its relations with Southeast Asia in the post-Cold War years. When India imagined its ‘Look East’ policy, civilizational ties served a precursor to India’s linkages with Southeast Asia. To its advantage, India’s civilizational influences narrate a relatively peaceful history and do not bore extra-territorial ambitions.

This is one of the central reasons why India could afford to project a civilizational argument with much ease compared to China whose civilizational history is contentious in the region owing to the Tribute System. However, India had to carefully avoid the traps of the post-independent years of being interpreted as a cultural hegemon. Therefore, the challenge was to frame civilizational arguments in more equitable terms.

Furthermore, India had more lucrative political and economic gains to derive from an emerging Southeast Asia than focusing on civilizational arguments. At present, strategic and financial considerations are crucial drivers of India’s Southeast Policy compared to civilizational arguments. To its advantage, it has used civilizational arguments to further historical associations and familiarity that would pave way for greater political and economic relations.

India’s great power aspirations and its rising civilizational arguments go hand-in-hand. This makes it hard to resist the temptation of articulating civilizational arguments toward Southeast Asia. Furthermore, under the Modi regime, the revival and the branding of the Hindu past has been a central element.

In 2022, Jaishankar stated that India is restoring Angkor Wat and linked it with the larger idea of how India intends to engage with the region in civilizational terms. He stated, "When we are restoring, rebuilding, and re-energizing Indian civilization, our task is not only in India. Our task is all over the world. But, it is not only where our civilization went, it is also where our travelers went, our traders went, our people of faith went."

Civilizational arguments tend to function like a double-edged sword. While they have the potential to shape the international order abroad and seek regime legitimation at home, civilizational claims may be contested by other states on ground of cultural hegemony. There are temptations for India to raise civilizational claims as its great power aspirations are on the ascendancy.  

This makes room for such arguments deployed particularly for Southeast Asia as it has always been a potential theatre for India’s civilizational claims. However, they must avoid repeating the pitfalls of overt cultural ambitions that might be counterproductive to its overall relations.

Udayan Das is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Political Science, St. Xavier's College, Kolkata.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above and the information available  are those of the author/s and can therefore in no way be taken to reflect the position of Asian Confluence