3 - Asia's ‘Coca-Cola Governments’

Summary

Indonesian Foreign Minister Subandrio warned Krishna Menon that an enlarged Malaya would make ‘Konfrontasi’ inevitable. ‘There's no such word in the English language!’ snapped the pedantic Menon who had been an editor with Penguin Books in London. ‘Mr Menon,’ Subandrio replied, ‘in one year's time there will be a word called Konfrontasi in the English language. We will see to it!’ Subandrio was out by only four months. He formally announced Konfrontasi—confronting Malaysia—on 20 January 1963, sixteen months after the exchange with Krishna Menon at the non-aligned nations (NAM) inaugural summit in Belgrade in September 1961.

The decade of the 1960s was a happening time for both India and Singapore. Though both faced problems with neighbours, and Nehru took a liking to Lee, wariness at the official level in New Delhi ensured a restrained response to Lee's overtures and prevented wholehearted support being extended to his cause. For India, those years of change, marking the end of the Nehru era, saw the fading of the Asian dream that had inspired the Indian National Congress soon after the First World War when Congressmen spoke of the ‘Asiatic Federation of Nations’. For Singapore, they witnessed a new beginning in which the brief unhappy interlude of merger with Malaya was a stepping stone to a unique global position.

Friction between Malaysia and Indonesia and reverberations of ‘Ganjam [Crush] Malaysia!’ and ‘Ganjam Indonesia!’ placed India in a quandary. Despite interaction with Malaysia at many levels, India's closer political links with Indonesia were integral to the Asian dream that had inspired Indian leaders long before Narasimha Rao made Look East the apparent centrepiece of his pro-Western foreign policy. Subhas Chandra Bose had reminded the Assembly of Greater East-Asiatic Nations in Tokyo on 6 November 1943 that Indian nationalists ‘nursed the dream’ of a ‘Pan-Asiatic Federation’ before it became a Japanese construct. Nehru was outraged in September 1945 when Britain deployed Indian troops against Indonesian and Vietnamese nationalists. He spoke of ‘a common nationality for India and all these regions of South-east Asia’ during the tour of Malaya and Singapore described in the previous chapter. The British, too, thought of a linkage that may not appear so far-fetched in the light of Rajendra Chola, the Second World War, and Singapore's current defence arrangements with India.