Connecting the dots
Pallab Bhattacharya takes us on a historical journey
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India and Malaysia: Intertwined Strands
Veena Sikri
Manohar Publication Diplomat-scholar Veena Sikri rues that not much research has been done on centuries-old multi-dimensional linkages, ethnic, trade, religious and cultural, between South Asia and South East Asia. And her latest book, India and Malaysia: Interwined Strands (Manohar Publication) is sure to be a source of inspiration for young researchers to look deeply at links between the two contiguous regions that had existed for two thousand years before European colonial powers like the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British came and disrupted them. The nearly 500-page book talks of civilizational links between India and Malaysia. But that is just a microcosm for the much large picture of relations between South Asia and South East Asia. And that comes out best when it talks about an intermingling of race, language and culture across South Asia and South East Asia. It says the Mon-Khmer languages are spoken in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Northeast Thailand, parts of Malaysia, by the Nicobarese in Nicobar Islands and by the Khasis in Meghalaya state of India. The Munda languages, distantly related to Vietnamese and Khmer, are spoken in by Munda tribe people who live in parts of Bangladesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Assam. Chittagong port has seen settlements of Persian merchants involved in pepper trade with what is now Malaysia, then known as Malay. The most important facet of contacts between South Asia to South East Asia, as Prof Sikri's book points out, is that it was not characterized by conquests in any form, military or commercial, and there was no victor-vanquished relationship. The success and longevity of trade between the two regions as it evolved over two millennia stemmed from complementarity rather than competitiveness, a well-balanced trading process based on mutual benefit rather than domination through conquest or subjugation, says the book. Given these commonalities and non-adversarial ties, the book builds up a convincingly strong case for much greater interaction between South Asia and South East Asia. Readers are further enthused when the book, quoting a scientific study initiated by Prof Edison Liu, Executive Director at the Genome Institute of Singapore, tells us that "Dravidians and Chinese had common ancestors" and "the people of South, South East Asia and East Asia are linked by a unifying genetic thread". The study challenges the long-held belief that Asia was populated by two waves of migration—one from South East Asia to and the second from Central Asia and claims it was just a single wave of migration from Africa to India and South East Asia and East Asia. Prof Sikri, a former High Commissioner of India to Malaysia and Bangladesh, has chosen to devote a considerable section of the book in analysing the India-Malaysia ties and the plight of Indians who migrated to and settled in Malaysia (known as Malay before its independence in 1957) through the perspectives of three leading personalities of India—Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (Tagore and Nehru had visited Malaysia between 1927 and 1937) and their influences on relations between India and Malaysia as also on Indian migrants, many of whom were indentured labourers taken by the British to work in rubber plantations, in that country. Tagore's journey to Malaya was a "voyage of rediscovery" of the "intense cultural and commercial linkages between South and South East Asia that had existed in the pre-colonial era", says the author adding "it was Tagore's ardent hope that the rediscovery of India's historical links with the east would form the bedrock of the revival and strengthening of India's linkages with all Asian countries", a view all scholars agree inspired Nehru's thoughts on Asian unity and convening of the Asian Relations Conference in Delhi in 1947. During the Second World War and Japanese occupation of Singapore when India has been fighting its own independence battle, Bose had "exerted the foundational influence" on a "whole generation" of youths in Malaya and Singapore. Netaji's impact on Indian immigrant community was "transformational" as his calls for freedom, equality and an end to injustice and exploitation "touched a sensitive chord" among the immigrants subjected to discrimination and maltreatment in rubber plantations under British rule. A fascinating feature of Veena Sikri's book, based on her extensive research for three years as a visiting Senior Research Fellow at Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies from 2008 and 2011 and her own experience as India's Ambassador to Malayasia earlier, is that it is written in such a manner that it has kept in mind a cross-section of readers--scholars, students and laymen. It is in the fitness of things that the book concludes with a poem by Rabindranath Tagore he composed after his visit to Malaysia and Indonesia in 1927. One of the lines of that poem is "the old that has been lost, to be regained and made new". As we finish reading the book, one ends up convinced by Sikri's conclusion that the poem remains as much "strikingly relevant today as" 86 years ago to not only India's but on a larger picture: South Asia's links with South East Asia. Pallab Bhattacharya, a Delhi-based senior Indian journalist, represents The Daily Star in India.
India and Malaysia: Intertwined StrandsVeena Sikri
Manohar Publication Diplomat-scholar Veena Sikri rues that not much research has been done on centuries-old multi-dimensional linkages, ethnic, trade, religious and cultural, between South Asia and South East Asia. And her latest book, India and Malaysia: Interwined Strands (Manohar Publication) is sure to be a source of inspiration for young researchers to look deeply at links between the two contiguous regions that had existed for two thousand years before European colonial powers like the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British came and disrupted them. The nearly 500-page book talks of civilizational links between India and Malaysia. But that is just a microcosm for the much large picture of relations between South Asia and South East Asia. And that comes out best when it talks about an intermingling of race, language and culture across South Asia and South East Asia. It says the Mon-Khmer languages are spoken in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Northeast Thailand, parts of Malaysia, by the Nicobarese in Nicobar Islands and by the Khasis in Meghalaya state of India. The Munda languages, distantly related to Vietnamese and Khmer, are spoken in by Munda tribe people who live in parts of Bangladesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Assam. Chittagong port has seen settlements of Persian merchants involved in pepper trade with what is now Malaysia, then known as Malay. The most important facet of contacts between South Asia to South East Asia, as Prof Sikri's book points out, is that it was not characterized by conquests in any form, military or commercial, and there was no victor-vanquished relationship. The success and longevity of trade between the two regions as it evolved over two millennia stemmed from complementarity rather than competitiveness, a well-balanced trading process based on mutual benefit rather than domination through conquest or subjugation, says the book. Given these commonalities and non-adversarial ties, the book builds up a convincingly strong case for much greater interaction between South Asia and South East Asia. Readers are further enthused when the book, quoting a scientific study initiated by Prof Edison Liu, Executive Director at the Genome Institute of Singapore, tells us that "Dravidians and Chinese had common ancestors" and "the people of South, South East Asia and East Asia are linked by a unifying genetic thread". The study challenges the long-held belief that Asia was populated by two waves of migration—one from South East Asia to and the second from Central Asia and claims it was just a single wave of migration from Africa to India and South East Asia and East Asia. Prof Sikri, a former High Commissioner of India to Malaysia and Bangladesh, has chosen to devote a considerable section of the book in analysing the India-Malaysia ties and the plight of Indians who migrated to and settled in Malaysia (known as Malay before its independence in 1957) through the perspectives of three leading personalities of India—Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (Tagore and Nehru had visited Malaysia between 1927 and 1937) and their influences on relations between India and Malaysia as also on Indian migrants, many of whom were indentured labourers taken by the British to work in rubber plantations, in that country. Tagore's journey to Malaya was a "voyage of rediscovery" of the "intense cultural and commercial linkages between South and South East Asia that had existed in the pre-colonial era", says the author adding "it was Tagore's ardent hope that the rediscovery of India's historical links with the east would form the bedrock of the revival and strengthening of India's linkages with all Asian countries", a view all scholars agree inspired Nehru's thoughts on Asian unity and convening of the Asian Relations Conference in Delhi in 1947. During the Second World War and Japanese occupation of Singapore when India has been fighting its own independence battle, Bose had "exerted the foundational influence" on a "whole generation" of youths in Malaya and Singapore. Netaji's impact on Indian immigrant community was "transformational" as his calls for freedom, equality and an end to injustice and exploitation "touched a sensitive chord" among the immigrants subjected to discrimination and maltreatment in rubber plantations under British rule. A fascinating feature of Veena Sikri's book, based on her extensive research for three years as a visiting Senior Research Fellow at Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies from 2008 and 2011 and her own experience as India's Ambassador to Malayasia earlier, is that it is written in such a manner that it has kept in mind a cross-section of readers--scholars, students and laymen. It is in the fitness of things that the book concludes with a poem by Rabindranath Tagore he composed after his visit to Malaysia and Indonesia in 1927. One of the lines of that poem is "the old that has been lost, to be regained and made new". As we finish reading the book, one ends up convinced by Sikri's conclusion that the poem remains as much "strikingly relevant today as" 86 years ago to not only India's but on a larger picture: South Asia's links with South East Asia. Pallab Bhattacharya, a Delhi-based senior Indian journalist, represents The Daily Star in India.
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