The Hindu : India returns to the Mekong

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 31, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

India returns to the Mekong

By C. Raja Mohan

PHNOM PENH May 30. When the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, arrives here next month for an intensive round of consultations with the South East Asian leaders he will find that India has returned to the Mekong basin after a long gap, but is yet to make a decisive impact. The principal objective of Mr. Sinha will be to partake in the annual gathering of the Regional Forum of the Association of South East Asian Nations.

After the consultations of the ASEAN Regional Forum, he will also review progress on another front close to New Delhi's heart — the Ganga-Mekong initiative.

Even as India revived its contacts with South East Asia through the "Look East" policy of the early 1990s, Indo-China had a special allure.

This was expressed in the Ganga-Mekong initiative launched by the Government in 2000 to build on the special historic links with Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar.

India's cooperation with the Mekong Basin countries has focussed on a number of projects related to education, tourism and transport links.

India has talked big about the future of the Ganga-Mekong initiative. The time has come for New Delhi to put its money where its mouth is.

India's new activism in the Mekong Basin has often been seen in terms of a putative rivalry with China. But there is much India can do here in terms of commercial and political cooperation without positing a competition for influence in what China sees as its backyard.

Just as the Chinese economic and political presence in the subcontinent has risen in the last few decades, so will India's in the Mekong basin if it begins to act on its enduring interests in the region.

For, few regions in the world are as welcoming as Indo-China and as comfortable with Indian presence — economic, political and strategic.

* * *

One of the many great Asian rivers rising out of western Tibet, the Mekong runs through China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, and becomes a gigantic mass of water in the delta that covers Cambodia and southern Vietnam. As colonisers and preachers from the West found the majestic river a few centuries ago, it became a source of a magnificent obsession. The French explorer, Francis Garnier, who spent a lifetime in the late 19th century in the region wrote a book, "Une monomanie du Mekong".

India's links with the river are much older and deeper. The Mekong derives its name from Ma Ganga. Many Europeans might question this interpretation; but the Mekong has since long drawn Indian travellers who enriched their homeland and the region through an extraordinary cultural fusion.

Both Buddhism and Hinduism travelled from India to the Mekong right from its source in Tibet to the delta in the Indo-China. Legend has the origin of Cambodia tied to an intrepid Indian Brahmin who came here two millennia ago.

And there is monumental evidence at the Angkor in Cambodia that records the cultural interaction between India and Indo-China in the middle of the last millennium. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who came here in 1954 said "every blade of grass" in Cambodia speaks of Indian culture.

India has crawled back to the Mekong basin but is yet to stoke up a genuine passion for the region.

* * *

As the flight into Phnom Penh penetrates the cloud cover, the majestic Mekong comes into view. Glistening on its banks are the many gold-plated spires of temples and palaces. The red tiled roofs of Phnom Penh form a captivating pattern amidst a verdant green. On the ground, the French style boulevards and the colonial facade on the river-front give a special touch to the city. From the terrace of what used to be the foreign correspondents club, the sight of the Mekong is breathtaking.

Phnom Penh is at the confluence of four rivers which is called Chakotmuk — four faces. As it comes into the heart of Cambodia the Mekong is joined by the Tonle Sap river and then they break up into two water bodies, one of which is the Bassac.

Watching the boats plying on the Mekong at sunset, it is impossible not to reflect on Cambodia's recent tragic history and renewed hopes. A decade of peace has let this nation overcome the trauma under the genocidal Pol Pot regime in the late 1970s.

The liberation of Cambodia from the brutalities of Pol Pot by a military intervention from Vietnam, however, meant restrictive socialism at home in the 1980s and political isolation abroad.

But the people here are smiling again as Cambodia has begun economic liberalisation and is now a full member of the ASEAN. The changed geopolitical context and internal reforms have opened up the prospect of prosperity and social advancement that Cambodia has been denied for so long. India's new enthusiasm for Cambodia is reflected in the fact that the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, visited the country twice last year. But the challenge is to give this political enthusiasm some genuine commercial and strategic content.

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