Introduction

Speaking at the inaugural India–ASEAN Summit held in November 2002 during the Eighth ASEAN Summit in Cambodia, Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong portrayed India as one wing of ASEAN's jumbo jet, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan as the other wing. Leaving aside whether such a plane could take off, much less land, safely, the comment describes, certainly inadvertently, India's idiosyncratic ties with Southeast Asia both bilaterally and relative to the region's other formal partners. These attributes include: fresh and ancient links; importance and marginality; episodic engagement and occasional estrangement with long spells of detachment; and mutual insensitivity and over-sensitivity.

The erratic connections between India and Southeast Asia mean that a linear review of political, economic, and security ties will yield only a partial picture of current and possible future India–Southeast Asia relations. The approach employed here, therefore, is to briefly review the features of India–Southeast Asia relations, and then examine the manner and extent to which India's domestic politics and economics, its South Asian neighbourhood relations, and its foreign policy generally impinge upon its ties with Southeast Asia. For it is precisely these factors that have both facilitated and constrained India's rapprochement with Southeast Asia beginning in the early 1990s, and are likely to shape relations in the coming decade. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of India–Southeast Asia relations.

The Curious Characteristics of India–Southeast Asia Relations

Though India's membership in Southeast Asia-wide political organizations is quite new (as are these organizations themselves), India's role in regional politics is not. The November 2002 inaugural India–ASEAN summit marks the acme of India's incremental inclusion in a network of ASEAN-driven initiatives that began with the establishment of an India–ASEAN “sectoral dialogue” in 1993. In 1995, India was elevated to the status of a full dialogue partner, and a year later India participated, for the first time, in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).