Asia | Asian geopolitics

Fear of China is pushing India and Japan into each other’s arms

Asia’s biggest and richest democracies are close. They could be much closer

This handout photograph taken on March 20, 2023 and released by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) shows Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (L) listening to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi during their visit at the Buddha Jayanti Park in New Delhi. - Kishida on March 20 called India vital to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific after talks with his counterpart touching on shared concerns about China. (Photo by PIB / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO/Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB)" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS (Photo by -/PIB/AFP via Getty Images) — Image: Getty Images

Mar 19th 2023|DELHI and TOKYO

THE MUGHAL PRINCE Dara Shikoh was beheaded in 1659 after publishing a scandalous book, “The Confluence of the Two Seas”, in which he identified a spiritual affinity between Hinduism and Islam. In 2007 Abe Shinzo, then Japan’s prime minister, borrowed the book’s title for a stirring speech to India’s parliament in which he called for the Indian and Pacific oceans to be seen as one strategic space, and for Japan and India to recognise their shared interests. Those ideas, the basis for taking an expansive Indo-Pacific view of Asian security, are now widely accepted among Western strategists. “Without the Japan-India relationship, there is no Indo-Pacific,” says Kenneth Juster, America’s ambassador to India from 2017 to 2021. “That relationship is vital to why we have this concept, and to the future of the region.”

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Under a bodhi tree”