According to the Asian specialist Maaike Okano-Heijmans of the Clingendael Institute, the same mistake made with China must be avoided with India. “China is already a great power, India is not yet,” he says. “Like China, we shouldn’t look at the country too long without strategic vision and only as a market, only to wake up and go too far in our response.”
“We shouldn’t look at India without strategic vision for too long”
He thinks it’s good that India is already being considered geopolitically, because there are certainly signs that India will gain more influence soon. “They want to take on that role too, and it’s important that we realize that.”
Knowledge
Okano-Heijmans says India’s case has more prior knowledge and shared history than with China. Especially since India gained its independence from the British not too long ago. “There’s an important story behind it, but also a lot of knowledge,” he says. ‘In the Netherlands there is relatively little knowledge of India and in the United States they are also slowly learning it. She really has a long way to go.’
This is in stark contrast to the knowledge gathering of the Indians, who invest heavily in the knowledge of the West. This is why Okano-Heijmans believes it is important to think from a European point of view when it comes to policy towards China. “The Netherlands itself is quite small compared to India,” he says. So we have to look at it on a larger scale. And then the EU is very important.’
Feeling
Think India has the same kind of sentiment as China. While the Chinese still speak of the ‘century of humiliation’, a certain sentiment seems to predominate in India as well. Okano-Heijmans mainly observes a high degree of self-confidence and strategic thinking among the Indian population, as well as their criticisms of the European world view that the European Union has.
He cites as an example the Indian Foreign Minister, who a few months ago during a visit to Brussels said that Europe should stop thinking that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems and that the world’s problems are not the problems of being ‘Europe. “It’s something they really put an emphasis on. The colonial past is in the mind and you taste it sometimes,” says Okano-Heijmans. “They don’t want to talk with the raised finger, but they pronounce it very differently.”