Road to Indonesia’s heart lies through Bollywood’s films

The young people in the city, however, know India as the land of the legend — not Ram but Amitabh Bachchan. At least five television channels — RCTI, TPI, SCTV, ANTV and INDOSIAR — telecast a Hindi movie daily. This is apart from the regular shows playing to a public which can’t comprehend the dialogue but doesn’t care as long as there is a song and dance. Dialogues are redundant because there is rarely a story to support, they say.

Bollywood also has a new USP: “I like Indian movies because people sing a song even when they are sad,” says a young woman heading for the Bollywood-special 21 Plaza theatre in the heart of Jakarta.

That Indonesian music, Dangdut, copies Indian movie tunes doesn’t come as a surprise in a country where the language is an amalgam of every possible tongue spoken in the archipelago. Bollywood apart, India is everywhere in Indonesia. The last person one spoke to was called Hari and the National Museum seems to have more Ganeshas and Shiva statues dating to the 12th and 13th centuries than all the carved caves in India. All this, of course, helped to endear Vajpayee to the people and the media here gave Vajpayee’s visit superstar billing.

The local joke about the Indian premier coming to RI notwithstanding — which stands for rigorous imprisonment but in this case means Republic of Indonesia — the mood was upbeat. Vajpayee stared out from a larger-than-life poster at the centre of the city. Indonesia’s largest daily Jakarta Post front-paged Vajpayee’s arrival despite a heavy news day, reporting a short truce between the Indonesian government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement.

It even carried a rather sentimental first edit on his visit. Using a filial metaphor, the edit said Vajpayee’s visit should be seen “as a brief sojourn to a family member’s home at a time when the family member is overwhelmed with political and economic problems”.

The media, which is taking its first sighs of freedom after the overthrow of Suharto in 1998, generally greeted the Indian visit with a great deal of optimism. Having recently lost east Timor, they were overwhelmed by the support coming from the northern neighbour, on Aceh being a part of Indonesia. Media Indonesia carried a two-page advertisement greeting the PM and an article on the booming infotech industry in India. Jakarta Post has consistently reported on the Prime Minister’s visit to Vietnam and is clearly flattered by India’s belated “emphasis towards the Far East”.

Vajpayee’s visit was crucial to India’s designs for the ASEAN. As the largest ASEAN nation, Indonesia is known as its “engine” in the region. You can’t have trade with ASEAN without Indonesia is the popular belief. If Vietnam is India’s route to ASEAN, Jakarta is its most important port of call. And increasingly, Bollywood is looking like the passport.