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A History of Cooperation
Strategic Vision vol. 11, no. 52 (May 2022) A History of Cooperation
Long history of India-Japan relations shows significant room for growth
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Raviprasad Narayanan
The amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA 7) prepares to dock at the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan.
photo: Isaac Orozco
Asia’s most successful democracies, India and Japan, are, after seven decades, cognizing reality of a bilateral relationship that has alternately flattered and fallen short of what could have become determinants of Asia, in economic, political, social, and strategic terms. This article will critically examine a bilateral relationship that has been shaky for decades, but which now may be finding its moorings.
On 28 April, 1952, the two countries signed a peace treaty establishing diplomatic relations. This formal recognition of Japan by India came nearly five years after Japan became one of the first countries to recognize the sovereignty of an independent India in 1947. Was this time lag indicative of a gulf between the two sides, owing to domestic factors in each country?
After the devastation caused by the Second World War, Japan wanted to revive its industrial potential, with newer political arrangements at home. The new political system facilitated economic growth, with innovation fostering industry, and the beginnings of an electronic age.
India’s path was very different, with independence achieved after a long period of opposition to colonial rule, policies of residual internal fragmentation— fragmentation that was visible politically, socially, and economically. Apart from being a beacon to new democracies, India was striving hard to write, discuss, and adopt a constitution; one that would be noteworthy for its liberalism and entrenched wisdom of legal order being the standard of a new country looking beyond the practices of the past. Opinions in the country were oscillating between democratic centralism and a fractured polity, with federalism expressed, but not practiced.
These democratic departures, of India and Japan being strikingly different, perhaps played a role in efforts to fashion a bilateral relationship with no creases in the overall texture of relations between the two countries, each of which had gone through its collective privations. The early decades of both countries were contrasts in most aspects. Japan, under the tutelage of the United States, was an anchor of democratic stability during the Cold War years.
India had embarked on a course where national identity was exemplified by creating an ethos in which the will of the people would be heard through regular balloting. Democracy and its various processes were thus enshrined in a manner where the ancient Latin adage Vox Populi, Vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of the divine) was—and is—a living reality. Seven and a half decades later, the country enjoys a dynamic democracy with multiple domestic expressions. These may be witnessed in regions where local social permutations and combinations make for a complex electoral arithmetic, which may be puzzling to outsiders. Unlike Japan, where the Yamato majority is dominant, India is a mélange of ethnicities, languages, cultures, histories, and memories. Democracy has become enriched by these causative determinants.
Cold War paradigm
International relations and politics during this initial phase were dominated by the Cold War. Japan, with its new political expression as a democracy, was firmly with the United States, and still is. As an anchor, the United States is the lodestone for Japan’s security. The institutional links that the Pentagon has forged with Japan’s Self-Defense Forces is regime-neutral on both sides. Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington maintain exceptionally close ties with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and other Japanese political formations, the latter of whom, while they may differ with the LDP, do not want to fall afoul of Washington.
To Japan, the objective for India as a democracy was to strengthen internal political structures, complemented with soft loans from abroad to build its economy. It was to this end that the Overseas Development Agency (ODA) provided its first yen loan in 1958, following Japan’s then Premier Nobusuke Kishi’s visit to India in 1957. This revealed Japan’s stalwart economic fundamentals being strong and the country having the wherewithal to provide economic loans to countries seeking development assistance. Perhaps this was when the early seeds of long-term economic cooperation were sown.
F-16s from Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea, wait to take on fuel from a KC-135 in the Indo-Pacific region.
photo: Yosselin Perla
A US Marine launches an RQ-20 Puma drone at Camp Fuji, Japan.
photo: Sydni Jessee
Commonality of purpose
This phase shows that these two proud countries could, despite their different traits, embrace a commonality of purpose, as new democracies with curious tempo: one post-colonial; the other, post-WWII. Japan’s early interactions with India were marked by cultural influence, in particular, on Japan’s spiritual continuity with myths and legends from India. As far back as the 1940s, India’s quest for freedom was noted in Japan by the powerful Minister of War Hideki Tojo, a former General and Chief of Staff with the Imperial Army. While reporting only to Emperor Hirohito (Showa), bypassing the cabinet of Premier Fumimaro Konoe, Tojo became premier in 1941, and was executed for war crimes in 1948.
Japan’s rapid economic success was celebrated by advanced Western economies, as it was geared toward supplementing those economies during the Cold War era. In those decades, India was striving to make an imprint as an economic alternative. This was largely owing to the implementation of the rupee-rouble mechanism in the Soviet era, along with all important economic activity being subsidized by state-owned Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs). In India, PSUs would come to dominate every aspect of the economy, and the wheels of economic progress rolled, albeit slowly. Private enterprise was considered profiteering, and efforts by entrepreneurs were stymied by bureaucratic rules and taxation beyond belief.
This self-limiting model of economic growth ended in 1991 when comprehensive economic reforms were introduced. The domestic economy since that year grew by leaps and bounds in various segments, many of which have made an imprint on the entire political spectrum, plumping for more market-oriented reforms to be made and no reversal to the past decades following independence. Japan has been a very keen participant in India’s economic arrival, coinciding with the World Trade Organization becoming regulator and mediator of matters economic globally. Japan, being a firm, long-standing ally of the United States and the guardian of US interests, especially strategic interests in East Asia, viewed the foreign policy adopted by India as illusory. India’s statements of non-alignment were seen by Japan as a smokescreen for the country’s sympathies with Soviet interests, both political and strategic. At that time the bilateral relationship became a casualty, where mutual suspicions did not give space to rational choices being made. Of course, over time, policies and perceptions change. India’s economic reforms were most welcomed by corporate giants in Japan, impressed by the success of its automobiles, with Suzuki being at the forefront. Kasumigaseki, where the bureaucracy of Japan is located in Tokyo, was nonplussed owing to India’s record of being a waffler at international forums, sympathetic to the erstwhile Soviet weltanschauung.
It was the visit by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in 2000 that created a new ballast in bilateral relations. Mori’s visit established a global partnership, with annual summits held between prime ministers. In 2006, Asia’s two most successful democracies revealed an acknowledgement of commonalities by establishing a Strategic and Global Partnership. India’s growing economy was a determinant, as automobiles, telecom, electronics, and pharmaceuticals were sectors that welcomed investment from Japan. High-level interest in India from Japan continued under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, grandson of the aforementioned Nobusuke Kishi. Abe was the chief guest at the 2014 Republic Day, and was the first Japanese prime minister to be honored so by India. His personal equations with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was highlighted by upgrading bilateral relations to a Special Strategic and Global Partnership, which can be considered a precursor to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, in which Japan, the United States, Australia, and India banded together to create an informal strategic alliance of democracies, with a shared concern over China’s current expansionist trajectory.
The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Charlotte (SSN 766) departs Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
photo: Amy Biller
International participants pose for a photo at the 2022 Raisina Dialogue, India’s flagship forum for contemporary geopolitical issues.
photo: Anthony J. Rivera
India-Japan relations reveal several dichotomies. The current prime minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, visited New Delhi in March this year bringing investment plans of around US$42 billion from Tokyo, earmarked for the coming five years. This reveals that bilateral strategic-economic relations are getting deeper owing to rapid geopolitical shifts in Asia. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ongoing stalemate in Syria, tensions in the Middle East with Iran, and China busily establishing its economic and strategic dominance: all these issues have discomfited established democracies. The economic aspects of the bilateral relationship are embarrassing. India and Japan are not on the same page when it comes to the RussiaUkraine conflict. Despite the 2011 Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, bilateral trade is just US$18 billion, with Japan’s trade surplus being US$5 billion. In contrast, China-India bilateral trade has just surpassed US$125 billion, with India’s trade deficit nearing US$100 billion—this with a neighbor whose expansionist agenda considers India a light economic competitor. The state of India-Japan trade reveals a deep institutional prevarication on both sides, sidestepping political bonhomie.
For Asia’s two paramount democracies not to have commercial depth in bilateral relations is advantageous to China. Japan’s hesitancy to share technology, plus a wariness with India’s bureaucratic nightmare, ignores Japan’s own red tape. It is here that India has to take the initiative by encouraging fiscal decentralization and permitting states to establish trade bureaus, inviting investment, and permitting technical training with fewer taxation formalities. If all investment decisions have to get the nod from New Delhi, it will defeat the domestic economic aim of becoming one of the world’s largest economies by 2024.
In conclusion, India-Japan relations have not reached the level of camaraderie expected, in spite of the stated political desire to do so. The two countries must work to solve the bureaucratic hurdles and unnecessary regulations that inhibit trade and commercial relations. Neglecting commercial relations between the two countries will impact bilateral ties even more in the years ahead.
Dr. Raviprasad Narayanan is an associate professor at the Center for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
