6 - India's Engagement with East Asia

Summary

India has been engaged with East Asia throughout its history. The depth of this engagement has been very profound. Even if we look only at the last two thousand years, it becomes clear how intensely it has been engaged with the East Asian region. The relationship between India and East Asia is therefore a very unique one in the annals of world history. The main themes of the narrative that follows are the historical background of the engagements, their scope and content, their current status and the future possibilities.

THE UNIQUENESS OF INDIA'S RELATIONS WITH EAST ASIA

There are probably no other historic examples where the depth, scale and intensity of the interactions and relations have reached the order of magnitude that existed between India and Southeast Asia. What is even more remarkable is that we are not talking of a colonial power relationship, where it was easier for the colonial power to impose its will over the country/countries which it ruled. The concomitant “ruler-ruled” relationship had its own paradigms, which was obviously in favour of the ruling power, and disadvantageous or even deleterious or incapacitating for the subjugated country.

Occasionally, between immediate neighbours, the nature of interaction can be very intense and broad-ranging. If the countries do not share common borders, whether they are land borders, or riparian, or even maritime borders, the intensity of these interactions is lessened, and these can also be limited to areas of overlapping or shared interests or constrained by issues of common concern.

In the case of India and the East Asian countries, though the common border with India, whether land or maritime, was limited to just a few of these countries, the spectrum of relationship was extremely wide and broad-ranging.

This historical relationship has been continuously studied and analysed by scholars from all over the world, but the true extent and nature of engagements are still not fully explored or understood. New facts keep emerging, and new insights are unravelled as more and more original manuscripts, and other important sources, such as inscriptions are discovered.