Foreword

Summary

1. After meeting Rahul Gandhi in October 2007, Lee Kuan Yew remarked thoughtfully to some Singapore ministers that he knew Rahul's father, grandmother and great grandfather. Having lived so long and observed at close range India's complex recovery of its sense of self after independence in 1947, Lee Kuan Yew has a unique longitudinal perspective of India's development in the last 60 years. He was happy to give extended interviews to Sunanda Datta-Ray for this book,

2. Singapore's relationship with India of course goes back much longer, The name Singapore itself is of Sanskrit origin. Singapore is at the heart of Southeast Asia. Located at the southernmost tip of Eurasia, it is where ships sailing beneath the trade winds between the two oceans have to turn, As the flows of trade ebbed and flowed over the centuries, they left on the shores of Southeast Asia aspects of lndian civilization. Southeast Asia is where the traditions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata remain alive and thriving outside India, albeit in somewhat different forms. It was through Southeast Asia that Buddhism travelled by sea to China, Korea and Japan. It was for the China trade that the British East India Company established Singapore as a trading post in 1819, Modern Singapore is a daughter city of Kolkata from where Singapore was administered until 1867. That Bengali link was reactivated when Subhas Chandra Bosc established the Indian National Army in Singapore during the Second World War, In a new age of globalisation in the 21st century, it should not be surprising at all that an old but persistent relationship should be refurbished and refreshed. When explaining the reasons for the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement with India, I tell my Indian friends half in jest that all it does is to restore the position of the Raj when trade flowed freely, standards were similar and professionals were able to move across jurisdictions with relative case.

3. In Lee Kuan Yew's India, Datta-Ray chronicles Singapore's reengagement of an India which, after decades of introspection, is once again looking outwards.