The Asia we inhabit is transitioning a period of peace, ever so tenuously, after a century of turbulence seen in the two World Wars and the wars in Indochina, the detritus of national liberation struggles, and the replacement of the European, American, and Japanese colonizer by an indigenous neo-colonial spawn, whose own history was one of neo-oppression. It is an open question whether the peace, within and across borders, will hold. We take issue with these matters in our new volume.
We present our Distinguished Annual Foreign Policy Lecture, delivered by Indonesian Ambassador Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, who argues that the Asian Century is riven with paradoxes. In pursuit of the idea of an Asian Century, Dr. Dino believes Asia needs to be mindful of becoming a greater theater for conflict and strategic mistrust. That, he says, is a paradox that must be avoided. Then, he draws our eye to a minefield of ironies, that at a time when Asia’s soft power and smart power is rapidly expanding, Asia becomes embroiled and entrapped. At a time when Asia is connected and integrated, it risks becoming more enmeshed in divisive and oppressive narrow nationalism and identity politics. At a time when Asia is potentially reaching its best century, Asian countries bungle the opportunity and descend into more division, exhibit an inward-looking attitude, and narrow nationalism. Such are the paradoxes that Asians need to avoid, evade, circumvent, elude, shun, or side-step, each in their own way, in order to pull off what could potentially be “Asia’s best century.” In the end, this journal believes that Dr. Dino is accurate in his observation that while we may not ever see an Asian Century emerge as a competitive world-beater, what we may get is Asia’s Best Century.
The scholar Por Heong Hong, who teaches at the School of Social Sciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia, explains the long history of proposals to reform the Malaysian healthcare system. Yet, she argues, no clear plan has ever been finalized, and the two-tier public/private structure, and financing mechanism of the public health sector stays unchanged. A reformist proposal to create a scheme based on contributions from the public has met with resistance from the private healthcare sector and private health insurers, both with their vested interests, as well as public interest groups that worry about the impact on the general public. The author argues that a financing scheme to raise funds from the public as mandatory contributions would relieve the Ministry of Health from internal budget competition with other governmental departments, but it would also entail extra taxation, which is unlikely to gain popular support in a time of worsening global and local economies induced by both the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
The conflict in Vietnam ended in 1975, leaving its permanent imprint on the diaspora of Vietnamese people. The Tufts University scholar, Carina Vo-Ta, a second-generation Vietnamese-American born in California’s Orange Country nineteen years after the end of the Vietnam War, writes about the personal histories of her family, and of the war through her parents who had witnessed the conflict first-hand. The author, now a student in the United States, has confronted issues of identity—personal, cultural, and historical—astride both worlds, of her motherland that her family departed, and the adopted American homeland, and has discovered great resiliency in her life of diaspora.
Harish C. Mehta, who reported on the Philippines from 1987-1992, reflects on the Philippine presidency—from the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 to the election of his son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., as president in May 2022. Soon after the fall of the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the author began reporting on the Philippines as a correspondent for the Business Times (The Straits Times Group of Singapore, a historic, storied newspaper of Southeast Asia). Traveling to Manila and the provinces, he interviewed President Corazon Aquino, Vice-President Salvador Laurel, as well as Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos, and Senator Joseph Estrada, both of whom later became president, and senior officials and media persons in Manila and in the barrios. The author argues that the hard-won national stability instilled by Presidents Aquino and Ramos was repeatedly shaken by successive presidents, leading to the return of the Marcos dynasty to the presidency.
Our research articles dwell on the impact of conflict on South Asia and the Southeast Asian spill-over. In his article, Dr. Binodkumar Singh, a lecturer at Manipur University, examines the relationship of Bangladesh and India that, he argues, has grown from “highs and lows to a Golden Era.” Since the emergence of Bangladesh during the Cold War as an independent, sovereign republic on December 16, 1971, a liberation in which neighboring India was a principal actor, the two countries built a special relationship rooted in a common cultural heritage, principles and values, forged by shared aspirations and sacrifices of their people. The relationship, however, suffered cyclical phases of highs and lows, owing to the changing governments in Dhaka and New Delhi. The author explains that Bangladesh is, at times, hesitant and finds it uncomfortable to function under a bilateral parameter as it prefers multilateral arrangements. India has been constrained to singlehandedly take the relationship forward because Bangladesh views bilateral ties through the prism of a younger brother that expects the bigger brother to do more. In this milieu of progressiveness and prickliness, the author examines the positive engagement between the two countries since 2007, and their handling of the pending issues such as sharing the waters of the Teesta River, and the killings on the India-Bangladesh border, arguing that “out of the box agreements” are required to resolve the remaining bilateral issues in a timely manner.
To examine the spill-over security threats within the countries of South Asia, and into Southeast Asia, the independent scholar from Bangladesh, Md. Nasir Uddin, conducted a special study of the structures of the transnational terrorist outfits Al-Qaeda (AQ) and Islamic State (IS) that have notable strongholds in South Asia, and their propaganda campaigns in India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. By employing a synchronic approach and content analysis, the author gathered data through targeted selection of topics and news from domestic national newspapers, books, diplomatic websites, analytical websites, online news agencies, official websites of AQ and its official Facebook and Telegram sites, as well as the pages and magazines of AQ and IS from January 2015 to July 2021. The author, in his innovative study, has found that through an Islamic apocalyptic narrative known as Gazwatul Hind, AQ and its linked groups are bolstering their strongholds in South Asia in order to attack their stated targets in India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. As well, the IS-inspired groups’ geographical closeness poses a significant threat to these areas. Their propaganda campaigns aim to exploit the instability of Rohingya refugees, and to undermine the loyalties of the population of India and Bangladesh by means of communication materials.
Turning to cinema studies, Prasanta Mahanta, an Assistant Professor at Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankaradeva Viswavidyalaya in Nagaon, Assam, argues in his article that color plays a large role in the Bollywood film industry. The author explains that the Indian audience’s obsession with fairness of the feminine skin, especially women appearing on the silver screen is a significant factor behind the casting of fair-skinned female actors even for roles best suited to women of color. The prejudice, however, is not just against colored women but also against men of color, especially members of the Black community, in particular those whose origins are in Africa. The author explores the subtle racial prejudices that some Indian filmmakers hold against members of the Black population, resulting in the de-humanization of the characters on screen. To make his case, the author cites scientific studies showing that racialized cinematic representations can produce copycat crimes in society.
In our books’ section, Koushik Goswami, who teaches English at Malda College, West Bengal, and is concurrently enrolled in a PhD program at Jadavpur University’s Department of Comparative Literature, looks at a recent book by the eminent scholar, Himadri Lahiri, entitled, Asia Travels: Pan-Asian Cultural Discourses and Diasporic Asian Literature/s in English. Pan-Asianism as a discourse developed organically out of interaction between Asian intellectuals who traveled beyond the nation and initiated cultural, and often political, dialogue. Lahiri explains that a defining reason for the consolidation of pan-Asian solidarity lay in the desire to resist the European imperialist ambition of territorial expansion and colonialist oppression in many parts of Asia. As historians have shown, Japan and the United States were the two nodal points of pan-Asianist activism. Students, intellectuals, and exiles from Asia traveling to the United States and Japan during the early decades of the twentieth century often established political platforms for anti-colonial activities which generated pan-Asianist sentiments.
The scholar Vinod Kumar Pillai reviews Gurjit Singh’s, The Harambee Factor: India-Africa Economic and Development Partnership. The reviewer backgrounds his review by observing that the rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies had brought the focus to Asia, but while Asia’s growth story was winning applause, the world was turning its attention to another continent with significant potential for growth—Africa. The former Indian diplomat Gurjit Singh explains in his timely book why India needs to review its engagement with Africa, which had been a successful partnership, traversing the political solidarity period and through the period seeking a better international role. In the current phase of transactional diplomacy, however, the value of partnerships is often only as good as the last project, or sharing of prosperity.
Rising Asia Journal adheres to a commitment to publish deeply researched original articles, perceptive columns, book reviews, and book excerpts. The journal, published three times a year, encourages authors to submit their articles. Authors will find submission guidelines and policies at www.rajraf.org.
