India’s Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan’s visit to Malaysia reflects the growing importance of elevating our bilateral ties with India, an area that has long been neglected and less focused.
In the growing regional security challenges and great shifts in the geopolitical architecture, India remains an ever more critical bulwark of stability, trust and dependence in maintaining regional stability and in promoting a value-based engagement and peacebuilding efforts.
Year 2022 marked the 65th year of establishment of bilateral relationship between India and MalaysiaBilateral ties have been a roller coaster over the years, with changes in approaches and level of priority being at the mercy of different leaderships and their affiliations, often to Malaysia’s own long term expense.
It remains a long neglected powerhouse that has and will provide the country with long term support indicators that are value-driven in nature, geared towards the moral high ground and sustainable nexus of ties driven by common interests, needs and vulnerabilities.
Malaysia ranks as the 26th largest investor in India with inflow of US$ 1.12 billion during the period of April 2000 to September 2021.The bilateral trade reached RM91.22 billion during the financial year 2021-22, growing by over 34%, reaching a record new high.
New Delhi remains critical not only in the growing front of the economic realm and future energy, food and high impact technology and climate domains, it remains more than crucial than ever in the arena of joint security partnership and deterrence capacity.
Historical, cultural and people to people connections and engagements have been the cornerstone that formed the backbone of the relations, but the changing regional security framework that presents a new risk setting both in traditional and non traditional threat spectrum has necessitated the compelling need to make up for the lost time and opportunity and to deepen the security and economic ties with India.
People to people enriching exchanges form the quintessence of valuable and long term mutual affiliation and dependence in developing quality human capital and enhancing the pinnacle of education, knowledge creation and critical research with the impact on civilizational progress.
More than 3,000 Indian students are studying in Malaysia, while an estimated 3000 Malaysian students are studying in India, mostly in the field of medicine. The Indian Scholarship and Trust Fund was created in 1946 by PM Nehru and since 2006, more than RM2 million has been provided.
India was the seventh largest source country for inbound tourism to Malaysia with more than 700,000 Indian tourists visiting Malaysia in 2019, while Malaysia was the second largest source country from South East Asia for foreign tourists visiting India.
The new domains of expanding the spillover impact and ripple effects of enhanced partnerships and joint interdependence at various engagement levels will be critical to Malaysia’s new economic transformation that is increasingly based on digital and knowledge economy with the emphasis on securing supply chain, energy and food security.
Trust, confidence and unwavering historical connections will remain the unyielding pillars of faith in both countries’ commitment to safeguard and elevate mutually beneficial returns and to secure joint aspirations of a free, open and a rules based regional order.
India’s existing and growing leadership and role in shaping the regional security discourse and architecture provide a much welcomed new opening for the country and the region in their security calculations and options.
Amidst new arguments on India’s role in shaping regional power parity and in checking China, it is easy to bypass the long ignored fact of Delhi’s peaceful rise and its consistent foreign policy approach that is pillared on normative and contextual pursuit of regional and global stability and peace that is non-confrontational and adherence to the rules-based order.
Being realistic yet pragmatic and strategic with clarity in its past and future trajectory has enabled Delhi to rise with its values and principles intact, although faced with multiple external threat settings.
New Delhi is also seen by some in Beijing as the weakest link in the Quad. Delhi’s role in moulding Quad and in serving as the most important second front in keeping Beijing at its toes in checking its intentions in the region, has been closely debated as to which direction will serve its interests and the region’s desire best.
Although being late in the game in expanding its regional footprint and certainly not as extensive and in depth as what Beijing has formulated for the region, Delhi remains the region’s most important Asian partner in providing the economic and security fallback and assurance in creating the trust and assured confidence needed for both socio-economic and security credentials.
Countermeasures to deal with the rise of India have been picking up steam. Other options to limit Delhi’s power capacity and rise include narratives and strategies that encourage New Delhi to maintain its historical uniqueness of foreign policy independence and strategic autonomy, thus reducing its options to fully affiliate and integrate into the Western core periphery. Through this, the hope is on how the containment capacity of China will be further weakened, and that a direct challenge to its primacy will be further fragmented.
New Delhi has its own “necklace of diamonds” to foil China’s “strings of pearl strategy”. The influence over traditional regional players both defensively and economically remains crucial, and developing a multi-pronged counter-offensive military readiness and resilience.
Its Act East Policy provides the openings to integrate India’s economy with Southeast Asian nations and strengthen military ties with them.The defence and security arena remains ripe for further deepening of cooperation, exchange of expertise and in building shared and common bulwark and arc of joint readiness and capacities. This is more critical and urgent in light of growing threats, which need a more holistic capacity in facing both the ingrained non-traditional challenges of climate and transboundary threats and the ever pertinent traditional risks of rising tensions and unchecked security dilemma and escalating arms race.
Indian Naval Ships and Indian Coast Guard Ships frequently make port calls at Malaysian Ports, with various military exercises including the Exercise SAMUDRA LAKSHMANA and HARiMAU SHAKTI.
These avenues for joint interoperability capacity and in beefing up readiness in addressing existing and new challenges from maintaining maritime awareness and security to tackling transboundary crime and digital connectivity safety, make up the bulk of the new essence of integrated resilience and deterrence. Not only will they create guardrails against further risks to the existing chain of interconnectivity and economic linkages, they form a deeper countermeasure and second front capacity and bargaining chip against potential exploitation and openings for security and economic coercion and tools by other powers.
India is poised to be a future superpower, able to provide a different alternative and growth model and possessing a different and advantageous set of development tools.
Malaysia remains a crucial partner for New Delhi and vice versa, and we should be strategic and wise in further deepening our vital ties with India. We have been late in fully appreciating and capitalising on India’s importance to us in all fronts, as reflected in our flips flops in our approaches and priorities on India over the years. We cannot afford to lose the critical opening and the future potential in India’s rise that will be reassuring for Malaysia.
For this, strategic trust, openness and honesty will continue to drive our bilateral ties and it remains imperative for both countries’ economic and defensive spheres in the future that our cooperation remains pillared on shared values, respect and understanding that have underpinned our historical legacies.
The writer, Collins Chong Yew Keat is a foreign affairs and strategy analyst with Universiti Malaya
