What is the issue?
- The Indian political establishment is brought up on the notion that Europe and Asia are different.
- India is hardly interested Eurasia ideology unlike Indo-Pacific.
What is the ideology of Indo- Pacific?
- Marine bio-geographers use the Indo-Pacific to describe the large stretch of tropical waters from the east coast of Africa to the Western Pacific that has many common features.
- Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who imagined the Indo-Pacific. Australia was quick to adopt it.
- India along with Indonesia dreamt of Asian unity and founded the non-aligned movement in the middle of the last century, was enthusiastic in its embrace of the Indo-Pacific.
- It was President Donald Trump who ended American ambivalence by consistently using the term “Indo-Pacific”.
What is Eurasia ideology?
- For geologists, Eurasia refers to a tectonic plate that lies under much of what we know as Europe and Asia.
- In political term Eurasia is supposed to represent a unique cultural, spiritual and geographic space that is neither East nor West.
- For many in Russia, Eurasia invokes either the memories of the vast Russian empire or rekindles nostalgia for the Soviet Union.
- There is a Eurasia Division in India’s ministry of external affairs that deals with a significant part of the post-Soviet space.
What instance proved India’s aversion from Eurasia?
- Recently a consequential event held in Budapest, Hungary which was went entirely unreported in India.
- It was the annual summit of an organisation called C-CEEC that promotes cooperation between China and 16 Central and East European Countries.
- It is more popularly known as “sixteen plus one”.
- That India is hardly interested in this new forum underlines the problem it has in dealing with a changing Eurasia.
What are the concerns for India on Eurasia?
- At present China is breaking down the idea that Europe and Asia are two different continents.
- It is about the expanding Chinese economic and political influence in spaces that were once dominated by either the West or Russia.
- China is exporting large amounts of capital for infrastructure development, drawing its economies east ward, and creating new political groupings.
- It also widens the strategic options for Central European states. Fed up with bullying from both Germany and Russia, the Central Europeans are quite happy to join hands with China.
- India’s stand of irreconcilable tension between “Europe and Asia” is becoming unsustainable as China’s massive Silk Road Initiative begins to integrate Europe with Asia.
- If the concept of “Indo-Pacific” survives the Trump Administration, the existence of Eurasia is a little more complex.
What measures India needs to take?
- India has now revamped its ideology and puts itself back in play in the maritime world by accepting the Indo-Pacific idea.
- But Delhi is yet to come to grips with continental Eurasia.
- India needs to focus as it is on bilateral relations with France, Germany and Russia.
- At the same time India needs to maintain a balance between the European Union and Central Europe.
- Correcting this imbalance is the first step towards a more purposeful Indian engagement with Eurasia.
Source: Indian Express
