Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Indonesia on July 6-8 as part of a three country trip was timely. Indonesia is the largest ASEAN country and is also the largest Muslim state in the world. It should have been natural for India and Indonesia to develop close, cooperative and multifaceted relations. However, that has not been so. As both countries emerged from colonialism in the 1940s there was a period when the leaders of the two countries–Jawaharlal Nehru and Sukarno–were in collaborative contact but the promise of the bilateral relationship was never realised.

Indonesian sympathies for Pakistan in the 1965 war and its lukewarm approach towards Indian difficulties in 1971 created a distance between the two countries. On its part, Indonesia strongly resented India’s support to Malaysia when the two states were in conflict. Later, the international priorities of India and Indonesia and differing approaches to domestic challenges, including developmental, led to the two peoples no longer occupying any great space in each other’s consciousness. This was despite many Indians knowing the strong cultural and religious contacts between India and Indonesia in the ancient past. Before the Indonesian people embraced Islam they were Hindu and Buddhist. Large numbers among them continue to be proud of their cultural traditions derived from their interaction with India in olden times. For many Indonesians, the Ramayana in their own version, is an inspirational cultural text. Hence, it was........

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