New Chapter Opens After Six Decades?
Relations between Australia and India crossed an important milestone when early in September an Agreement was signed between them on the peaceful uses of Nuclear Energy. Following the lead of the United States, Australia, as The Hindu (September 8) noted was one of the countries that strongly opposed the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests, joining western nations in imposing sanctions against India. What is more, even after US-India relations underwent a sea-change, culminating in the signing of a civilian nuclear deal in 2005, Australia’s opposition to India’s nuclear programme continued. It was only after 2011 that Australia’s then Prime Minister Julia Gillard was able to over-turn her Labour Party’s long-standing opposition to uranium sales to India, paving the way for the signing of the 2014 Agreement during Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s visit.
Says The Hindu: “With this, the once forsty and later lukewarm relations between the two countries are poised for a transformation.” As the paper put it: “Underlying this change is, of course, India’s economic rise, its emergence as an important market as well as a source of capital and the Australian realisation that crossing the nuclear hump is key to accessing these.” The feeling, as the paper noted now is that “as well as economic ties, the agreement on selling uranium is certain to improve the strategic relationship between India and Australia”. To which it added: “Mr Abbott has made no secret of his view that India’s partnership is essential to sustaining the US-led push to maintain the strategic balance in East Asia vis-à-vis China.”
However the paper warned that “as Australia and India prepare to open a new chapter in their bilateral ties, neither can afford to overlook the crucial economic relationship both have with China and in India’s case a border dispute that still awaits resolution”.
The Times of India (September 8) also noted that India’s nuclear deal with Australia “signals a new phase in regional diplomacy”. The paper pointed out that Tony Abbott is the third Australian Prime Minister to visit India since 2009 and the civil nuclear deal that his government has signed with India is the first that Canberra has inked with a country that isn’t a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Significantly the paper drew attention to the fact that “the return of two stolen ancient statues – of Nataraja and Ardhanarishwara – set up the atmospherics for this latest round of diplomacy”. The paper felt that “with India looking for energy security and Australia bigger markets, the strategic partnership makes sense.”
Currently coal, gold, copper and petroleum account for 80 per cent of Indian exports from Australia while India primarily exports gems, jewellery and passenger cars down under. This pattern, the paper noted “should change”. Leading Indian companies are now investing in Australia and the USD 17 billion two-way trade between both countries must increase substantially.
Writing in The Times of India (September 8) Amitabh Mattoo, Director Australia India Institute made the valid point that after six decades characterised by misperception, lack of trust, neglect, missed opportunities and even hostility, a new chapter in India’s relations with Australia “has well and truly begun”. As he put it: “The visit of another Liberal Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, to India… has well and truly brought the past to a closure”.
Why didn’t India and Australia get along well all these years? The reasons are not difficult to identify, according to Mattoo: They were: “The White Australia policy, the Cold War, the Nehru-Menzies discord, India’s autarkic economic policies, Canberra’s strident response to New Delhi’s nuclear tests and attacks on Indian students in Victoria. But there has apparently been a tectonic change in Australia in recent times of which Indians are unaware. Writes Mattoo: “Today there are few countries in the Indo-Pacific which share so much in common in both values and interest than India and Australia… There is a world of opportunities that awaits the two countries if they work in close coordination with each other.”
As Mattoo sees it, India’s Ministry of External Affairs…. lacks the capacity to give the relationship the attention it deserves. Mattoo may be exaggerating, but he has made an important point. And his suggestion deserves attention from the new government in Delhi.
(The writer is a senior journalist and former editor of Illustrated Weekly)
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