The Dutch had simply crumbled when the Japanese invaded their colonies in the East Indies and had put up very little resistance. For their own interests, the Japanese had in turn encouraged a number of nationalists like Sukarno during their occupation. So, two days after Japan surrendered, the Indonesian leaders made a proclamation of independence. There were a number of groups that had emerged in the political vacuum including Islamists and Communists but Sukarno’s Republicans were the strongest. The problem was that the Dutch had every intention of returning and claiming back their colonies. For the moment, however, they did not have the resources to reoccupy the islands and so they asked for help from the British who landed a large contingent of Indian troops near Surabaya.23 This resulted in heavy fighting and the British commander, General Mallaby, was assassinated. The Indonesians were eventually pushed out but there had been significant casualties on both sides. The episode further added to growing dissatisfaction among the Indian troops who did not see why they should risk their lives for such a cause. Some of them switched sides. As the unrest continued to spread across the islands, the Allies were forced to deploy surrendered Japanese troops in order to maintain control.24
An important factor that bolstered Indonesian resolve was that events seemed to be playing out an ancient prophecy. The twelfth-century Javanese king Jayabaya is said to have prophesied that three centuries of rule by white men would end with the coming of short yellow men who would leave after just one harvest. Other than the minor discrepancy that the Japanese had stayed for three harvests, the prophecy seemed to be coming true.
In early 1946, the Dutch began to land thousands of troops on Bali backed by support from the air. They faced fierce resistance from a small guerrilla force organized hurriedly by Ngurah Rai. The guerrillas were eventually cornered and Ngurah Rai ordered the Puputan. Yet again, the Balinese fought to the last man. The international airport in Bali is named after the guerrilla leader who was killed during the last stand.
Over the months, the Dutch managed to take over many of the main towns with the support of Allied troops but the Republicans continued to control the countryside. Realizing that the Republicans were too well entrenched to be wished away, the Dutch finally accepted the Linggadjati agreement on 15 November 1946 which gave the Republicans authority over the islands of Sumatra, Java and Madura. The two sides also agreed to work towards the establishment of the United States of Indonesia. Unfortunately, the Dutch were merely buying time in order to organize themselves. In May 1947, their troops occupied large parts of Java and Sumatra and cut the Republican forces into small enclaves. The country descended into war. An attempt by the United States to force a compromise also failed.
Amidst the chaos, a daredevil pilot from Odisha called Biju Patnaik flew secret missions into Java and rescued two key Indonesian rebel leaders from being captured (he would later go on to become the chief minister of Odisha).25 Prime Minister Nehru, meanwhile, organized the Asian Conference in New Delhi that pressured the UN Security Council to take action against the Dutch. It is remarkable that the first foreign policy action taken by newly independent India was to support Indonesia’s freedom movement. It was as if an ancient civilizational kinship had been suddenly rekindled. It was also appropriate that someone from Kalinga had played an important role in the sequence of events. It is said that Sukarno named his daughter Megawati, meaning ‘Goddess of the Clouds’ in Sanskrit, in honour of Biju Patnaik’s heroics in the sky.
The UN had forced a ceasefire but the Dutch were still not prepared to leave. They tried to instigate different parts of the archipelago against the Republicans using the bogey of Javan domination. Finally, the United States threatened the Dutch with cutting off Marshall Plan aid and forced them to accept a provisional government with Sukarno as President and Mohammad Hatta as Prime Minister on 27 December 1949. Sukarno would spend the next decade securing the territorial claims of his fledgling country against secessionists, communist rebels and the continued interference of the Dutch. It is said that he was driven by a vision of re-establishing the Majapahit empire and that a map of the medieval empire hung in his office.26 It is another example of how current events are often influenced by civilizational memories that reassert themselves after being buried for centuries.
The Unravelling
Once India gained independence in 1947, the whole colonial project in the Indian Ocean began to unwind. One by one, all the countries in the region began to demand independence and the Europeans were soon reduced to fighting a rearguard action. Their reduced status was clearly demonstrated by the Suez Crisis of 1956. The sequence of events was triggered by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser who nationalized the Suez Canal Company. The British, with support from the French and the Israelis, invaded Egypt in order to take control of the canal. Although the invaders succeeded militarily, they faced severe criticism from the United States and the Soviet Union and were forced to withdraw meekly. The episode can be said to mark the end of Britain’s reign as a world power.27
Within the next fifteen years, the British and other colonial powers would free virtually all their colonies in the Indian Ocean rim. The withdrawal was far from peaceful and involved many conflicts including anti-communist operations in Malaya and the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Tens of thousands of Europeans went back ‘home’, including those who had been born in the colonies and many of mixed parentage. Nevertheless, there were exceptions. In South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a dominant white minority was strong enough to remain in power for several years after the departure of colonial backing. In Australia, of course, those of European origin had replaced the indigenous population as the majority.
Perhaps the most determined attempt to retain colonial possessions was made by the French in Vietnam. In the political vacuum left by Japan’s surrender, the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh had taken over Hanoi and declared independence. Nonetheless, the country was occupied by Allied troops—British in the south and Chinese in the north—and the French were soon given back control of the administration. The French made several promises about granting freedom but it became apparent that they had no intention of leaving. Things dragged on till 1954 when the French assembled a large military force, backed from the air, in order to expel the Viet Minh from the north of the country. However, the Vietnamese outwitted and trapped the colonial army in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and inflicted a devastating defeat. After this, the French departed quickly leaving the north of the country in the hands of Ho Chi Minh and the south with a puppet regime backed by the Americans.
The departure of the Europeans unfortunately did not mean that the Indian Ocean rim became a postcolonial utopia. Instead, the region would experience years of war and genocide. The Vietnam War would consume the country till North Vietnamese tanks finally crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon in April 1975. Next door in Cambodia, almost two million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1978 in a brutal attempt to create a communist agrarian paradise. In East Pakistan, the West Pakistani army perpetrated a genocide that killed as many as three million Bengalis and pushed ten million as refugees into India. This resulted in the Indo-Pak War of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh. In the western Indian Ocean, Ethiopia and Eritrea would fight a long, bitter war that only ended in 1991. Yemen would be locked in a civil war between the north and the south.
The Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia had outlived the Arab and the European expansionism but it did not survive the social forces unleashed by modernity. An aging Haile Selassie was removed from the throne in a military coup in 1974. Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, in his classic book The Emperor, has left us a vivid account of the last days of a medieval court struggling to cope with changing times.28 A few years later, Kapuscinski would witness the Iranian revolution and write about the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.
The unwinding of the European empires also disrupted the commercial and human networks that had been c
reated under the colonial umbrella. The Indian communities scattered across the region were particularly vulnerable. For instance, there were over a million Indians in Burma and they accounted for more than half the population of Rangoon in the 1930s. After the military coup in 1962, their businesses were forcibly nationalized and large numbers were expelled. The Indians in Uganda were similarly given ninety days to pack up and leave by Idi Amin in 1972. They were allowed to take only 55 pounds with them. Some went back to India but many went to the United Kingdom where they would rebuild their lives.29
Under French rule, Saigon too had been home to a significant number of Indians. They were not expelled but as economic conditions deteriorated during the war, they gradually drifted away. There are still two prominent Hindu temples in the middle of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). They have been maintained quite well by the government. There was a lady official deputed to act as the priest at the Mariamman temple when I visited it in 2015. She took her job quite seriously and, despite the language barrier, solemnly carried out her own interpretation of Hindu rituals. I wondered if she was a descendant of Kaundinya and the Naga princess.
Singapore, Alone
The first subregion in the Indian Ocean rim to witness rapid economic change was the Persian Gulf. Commercially viable oil was first discovered at Well Number One at Masjid-e-Suleiman, Iran, in 1908. Bahrain was producing oil by 1932 followed by Dammam in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait by 1938.30 By the 1970s, the wealth accumulated from oil exports had transformed the economic and social fabric of the region. The boom sucked in construction workers, engineers, clerks, corporate managers, nurses, teachers and other service providers from the rest of the world, particularly the Indian subcontinent. The small port of Dubai, once known for the pearl trade, did not itself have much oil. Nonetheless, it positioned itself as the key commercial hub in the region and evolved over the next few decades into the glitzy city we see today. In contrast to the oil-driven success of the Gulf states, nevertheless, the most remarkable economic transformation in the Indian Ocean rim was arguably achieved by a tiny, crowded island with so few natural resources that it even had to import water: Singapore.
In 1963, the British colonies of Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah) agreed to enter into a federation with the states of the Malay peninsula in order to form Malaysia.31 The main objection came from Indonesia’s Sukarno who saw it as a ‘neocolonial plot’ to thwart his plan of rebuilding the Majapahit empire. Trouble began to brew soon afterwards as the Malay politicians in Kuala Lumpur looked with suspicion at the Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) led by a firebrand socialist called Lee Kuan Yew. They worried that he would leverage his base in Singapore to gain inroads into Sabah, Sarawak and the Chinese population in the peninsula. Matters were further complicated by widespread race riots in Singapore that killed twenty-three people. Dr Mahathir Mohamad, then a young backbencher, accused the PAP of being ‘positively anti-Malay’.32 Many readers will be surprised to know that this champion of Malay rights was himself not a pure Malay but of Indian origin; a Nandi Varman in reverse!
Given this atmosphere of suspicion, the Malay politicians decided to squeeze Singapore out of the federation and, on the morning of 9 August 1965, the city state’s proclamation of independence was announced over the radio. Later that day, Lee Kuan Yew broke down in tears at an emotional press conference. The future of the tiny, slum-ridden island looked grim. The British added to the prognosis by announcing that they would be shutting down their military base—they no longer had an empire and had no need to control the Malacca Straits.
Lee Kuan Yew, now Prime Minister, knew that he needed to quickly find a new economic engine for his city state. He decided to ask multinational companies to set up their manufacturing hub in Singapore by offering them rule of law, ease of doing business and low taxes. This was not only a break from his early socialist rhetoric, but was very different from what other newly independent countries were doing at that time (and much more in tune with the ideals of Stamford Raffles). Foreign capital financed capacities in sectors ranging from ready-made garments to oil refining. The Singaporeans also used the naval facilities abandoned by the British to build out a shipbuilding and repair cluster. The economic strategy was so successful that, despite a setback during the Oil Shock of 1974, Singapore soon needed to import workers!
Nonetheless, the experience of the Oil Shock taught the government that the economy needed to be diversified and upgraded. Thus, in the 1980s, new industries like electronics and pharmaceuticals were brought in. Meanwhile, the government invested in top-quality infrastructure and public housing. All of this turned Singapore into a first world country by the time Lee Kuan Yew stepped down as Prime Minister in 1990 (although he would remain in the Cabinet as a mentor). This was a truly remarkable achievement.
Things went well till the Asian Crisis of 1997 devastated the economies of South East Asia. Although Singapore was not itself in crisis, it was impacted as the main financial centre for the region. This was followed by a series of shocks—the bursting of the information technology bubble in 2000, the 9/11 attacks in New York and the panic over the SARS epidemic in 2002. All of these events hurt Singapore and there were many observers who argued that Singapore had run out of luck and would face long-term stagnation. Singapore was too expensive to compete in most traditional sectors and a new growth dynamic was needed.
The government decided to take a gamble and turn Singapore into Asia’s ‘Global City’.33 It was an audacious idea. Other global cities like London and New York had evolved organically over a very long time but Singapore would attempt to deliberately turn into one by strategically encouraging sectors like higher education, entertainment and international finance. Within a decade, the skyline was transformed by iconic towers and ‘super-trees’ while the influx of professionals for the new sectors pushed the population to 5.5 million (more than double the 1.9 million at independence). Somehow the plan worked. When Lee Kuan Yew passed away in 2015, he left behind a city that was arguably the most advanced in the world. Those unfamiliar with Singapore’s history tend to assume that its success is due to the efficient implementation of a grand plan. Far from it, modern Singapore is the result of constant adaptation and tinkering in order to deal with a complex and evolving world.
A New Dawn
The years 1990–91 witnessed major shifts in world history. The Soviet Union, till then considered a superpower, collapsed without a shot being fired. The Indian Ocean rim too saw major changes. After decades of being stifled by the socialist economic model imposed by Nehru, India finally began to liberalize its economy. As discussed in my first book, The Indian Renaissance, this would have profound implications for India’s economic and social trajectory.34 Meanwhile in South Africa, the apartheid regime finally began to crumble. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990 after twenty-eight years. He had been sent to prison in 1962 and at one point had faced execution for fomenting armed rebellion. Yet, he had kept the faith for all those years and on three occasions had rejected conditional offers of release. After his release, he took over as the leader of the African National Congress and began the difficult process of negotiations that would finally end white minority rule.35
My first visit to South Africa was in the tumultuous summer of 1993.36 I was then a student at Oxford University and had somehow managed to get myself funded to work on a development project in a remote tribal ‘homeland’ for three months. My passport still read ‘Not valid for the Republic of South Africa’ although the Indian government had removed restrictions just a few weeks earlier. My visa was not stamped on the passport but given on a separate sheet of paper. The South Africa I visited was still heavy with the remnants of the apartheid era. Racial segregation had been abolished only a few months earlier but public toilets still read ‘White’ and ‘Coloured’. Nelson Mandela had been freed but the white-run government was still in place. I lived and worked in the tribal homeland of KaNgwane along the Swaziland border—one of t
he many nominally autonomous reservations created for the black population (it is now part of the province of Mpumalanga). However, even in the remote savannah grassland and hills of the Low Veld, there was palpable tension in the air.
To the outside world, South Africa’s internal tensions appeared as black-versus-white but the situation on the ground was much more complicated. The white population was split between those who favoured the changes and those who clung on to hopes of some form of return to segregation. There were also the old suspicions between English-speaking whites of British origin and Afrikaans-speaking Boers of Dutch origin. The wounds of the Boer wars of 1880–1881 and 1899–1902 had still not been completely healed. The black population was similarly divided on tribal lines. The Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party was suspicious of the African National Congress (Nelson Mandela and many ANC leaders are from the rival Xhosa tribe). As the apartheid regime crumbled, these rivalries increasingly spiralled into bloodshed. In just one of the incidents, dubbed the Boipatong massacre, forty people were killed and many more were injured. By the summer of 1993, all sides were stockpiling arms. The camp where I stayed was on the route used to smuggle arms from nearby Mozambique and on one occasion my pick-up truck (locally called a Bakkie) was hijacked at gunpoint. Luckily I was not driving it at that time but my co-worker had to walk back many miles to camp. The vehicle was found abandoned a few days later, probably after being used to smuggle guns.
As if this was not complicated enough, there were still other groups including Indians and those of mixed race. The latter formed a large segment of the population in the western half of the country, but found themselves stuck in a cultural and political no man’s land. The Indian population was scattered but formed a significant concentration around the eastern city of Durban. Although it had faced discrimination under apartheid, the industrious community had come to control much of the country’s retail and wholesale trade and had become fairly prosperous. Not surprisingly, all other groups resented them. In fact, virtually every group suspected that the Indians were funding its rivals!
The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History Page 27