New Delhi: Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto arrived in New Delhi Friday as the chief guest for India’s Republic Day celebrations on 26 January—the fourth leader from the Southeast Asian country to grace the occasion. To be invited by India as a chief guest for Republic Day indicates the closeness in ties between the two countries.
Prabowo is the third democratically-elected president of Indonesia to be the chief guest at the celebrations, following in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
India and Indonesia, two countries colonised by European powers, gained independence within years of one another, and shared an extremely close relationship in the early years.
Biju Patnaik, the former chief minister of Odisha, personally flew to Indonesia and brought its prime minister and vice president to India at a time when the Netherlands was attempting to reinstate its colonial control over the Southeast Asian nation. However, by the 1960’s Indonesia supported Pakistan, during the 1965 war, laid claims on parts of Indian territories in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which sent ties in a tailspin.
But things have gotten better.
Sukarno, the first President of Indonesia, was the chief guest at India’s first Republic Day celebrations in 1950. He was one of the organisers of the Bandung Conference in 1955, alongside New Delhi, and joined hands in the early days of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
However, a decade later, Indonesian mobs damaged India’s embassy in Jakarta, breaking every window and going so far as to destroy every document and furniture in the premises, and also burning the tricolour.
ThePrint takes a look at the evolution of India-Indonesia ties, as Prabowo makes his first state visit to New Delhi this week.
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Barter deals
At the end of World War II, the food situation in India was extremely bleak, following the Bengal famine. Freedom leaders of Indonesia had proclaimed their independence on 17 August 1945 following Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces on 15 August 1945. An Indian journalist at the time (and later a foreign service officer) P.R.S. Mani during a conversation with Indonesia’s first prime minister Sutan Sjahrir suggested that Jakarta could potentially export rice to India, in exchange for textiles.
The mooting of a barter agreement marked the end of the colonial rule over these two countries and redrew the rules of international trade in the region, notes Kallol Bhattacherjee, in his book Nehru’s First Recruits.
Indonesian vice president at the time Mohammad Hatta in a radio address delivered on 22 June, 1946 noted that the barter deal with India was rooted in the special relationship the two countries shared.
A year later, both Mohammad Hatta and Sutan Sjahrir were brought to India by Biju Patnaik and his wife Gyana Devi, who flew a Dakota plane to Java, at the request of Jawaharlal Nehru. At the same time, as the Netherlands attempted to re-establish its colony in present-day Indonesia, India raised the issue at the United Nations Security Council, and sought the international organisation’s aid in terminating the Dutch colony.
Sukarno was chief guest of India’s first Republic Day parade on 26 January 1950. On 3 March 1951, a treaty of friendship was established between the two countries, which declared: “There shall be a perpetual peace and unalterable friendship between India and the Republic of Indonesia.”
By 1955, the two countries were communicating with one another on global affairs, and Indonesia even hosted the Bandung Conference, which was attended by leaders of 29 countries from Asia and Africa. The conference was co-sponsored by the governments of India, Indonesia, Burma (present-day Myanmar), Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
It laid the foundation for the NAM, which has continued in some form till this date.
However, by the end of the decade, serious differences emerged between the “unalterable” friendship, especially over the future role of China in global geopolitics.
End of the honeymoon
Two major friction points arose between New Delhi and Jakarta in the late 1950’s, ties with China and a second Bandung conference, notes L.P. Singh in his paper titled “Dynamics of Indian-Indonesian Relations”.
While India was one of the earliest nations to recognise the People’s Republic of China, by the late 1950s, issues surrounding the demarcation of the border with Tibet strained ties between the two neighbouring countries. For Jakarta, Beijing remained an important anti-imperialist Asian power, noted Singh.
Sukarno, the then president, pushed for a second Bandung Conference. Bandung is located in Indonesia, and the first conference in 1955 brought international prestige to the government in Jakarta. Nehru, however, was not in favour, according to Singh.
In 1961, Belgrade was host to the first NAM summit.
A year later, New Delhi and Jakarta came to blows about the Asian Games being hosted by the latter. India batted for Taiwan and Israel’s inclusion in the games, according to reports, which led to furious protests in Jakarta. Mobs were seen outside the Indian embassy in the Indonesian capital.
In September 1965, as war broke out between India and Pakistan, the Sukarno government came out in support of Islamabad, going so far as to issuing a statement that the emerging countries of the world should support the latter in its war with New Delhi.
According to media reports, there was some fear of Indonesia sending its submarines to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands during the 1965 war with Pakistan. However, that did not occur. By 1967, Sukarno was forced out of office and his successor Suharto engineered the reestablishment of ties between New Delhi and Jakarta. In 1974 and 1977, the two countries signed agreements demarcating the continental shelf boundary.
Modern day ties
Since the turn of the millennium, relations between the two countries have deepened. In 2005, during a state visit by then Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, New Delhi and Jakarta established a strategic partnership.
In 2011, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyuno returned to New Delhi as chief guest for India’s Republic Day celebrations—the first by an Indonesian president since Sukarno in 1950. In 2018, Jokowi was a part of the 10 leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) who were chief guests for India’s Republic Day celebrations.
However, Sukarno, Yudhoyono and Jokowi all visited Pakistan after state visits to India. Prabowo’s visit will not see the Indonesian president visit Islamabad after New Delhi.
This has been a part of New Delhi’s efforts over the decades to de-hyphenate India and Pakistan. Indonesia has become one of India’s biggest trading partners in Southeast Asia with trade touching nearly $30 billion in goods in 2023-2024.
In 2018, the two countries established a Defence Cooperation Agreement, further strengthening the sensitive security partnership in a region contested with China. A number of defence deals, including the sale of BrahMos supersonic missiles to Jakarta by New Delhi, are pending, and expected to be discussed during Prabowo’s visit. Furthermore, a deal over Indonesia’s port of Sabang has been a long-pending one between the two governments.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2023, two days before hosting the G20 Summit in New Delhi, visited Jakarta to participate in the ASEAN mechanisms—a fact appreciated by then chair of the regional bloc, Jokowi.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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Muslim is always a muslim
Indonesia is Pakistan’s ally. It always has been.
To expect it to pivot away from the China-Pakistan axis is wishful thinking.