Soft power, hard facts

Although Burma will dominate the headlines and test the capacity of Asian leaders to resolve regional crises, and India will need to push the stalled talks on a free trade agreement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the PM has an opportunity to set the stage for a productive Indian cultural diplomacy in East Asia.

Along with the 15 other Asian leaders participating in the summit, Manmohan Singh will visit a special exhibition in Singapore that showcases the rich history of the spread of Buddhism from Nalanda — probably the world’s first university, in Bihar — to different parts of East and Southeast Asia.

Among the many priceless exhibits, donated by different collections in Asia, is a rare relic of Buddha’s bones sent by India and a copper plate that records the transactions between the Pala rulers in eastern India during the 8th to 12th centuries AD and the Srivijaya Kingdom in Southeast Asia.

These events mark a major departure from the unwritten rules of India’s recent engagement with Southeast Asia. Since the launch of the Look East policy in the mid-1990s, India has consciously avoided highlighting the deep cultural sources of its relationship with the region. New Delhi had good reasons for this underwhelming attitude. The earlier iterations of India’s cultural diplomacy turned out to be disastrous. India’s nationalist historians were right in drawing attention to the newly discovered evidence at the turn of the 20th century of the past interaction between the subcontinent and Southeast Asia. They were utterly wrong, however, in projecting the Southeast Asian kingdoms as India’s “cultural colonies”. Singing the glories of ancient India might have boosted self-esteem in a subjugated nation; but it played badly in the rest of...