KUALA LUMPUR: India believes that Malaysia serves as an important gateway for India to make its presence felt in Asean, Indian High Commissioner to Malaysia Vijay K Gokhale said.He said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that Malaysia had a great advantage over many other countries in the Asean region or East Asia because English was widely used by its people.
“Our prime minister believes that Malaysia is the gateway to Asean for India. We have so much in common, including being English-speaking (society), having a formal British colonial system of law and the education (system) is the same.
“When there is a different culture in another country, it is difficult to do business with them,” he said after launching a book entitled ‘Mahatma Ghandi: Imaging Peace, Truth and Ahimsa’ .
Therefore, Gokhale said, the Indian Culture Centre (ICC) was set up at Capsquare, Jalan Munshi Abdullah to promote Indian culture to visitors.
“We want to substantively upgrade the quality of India-Malaysia relations,” he said.
“We will also arrange a lot of cultural activities here to develop the relationship between the two countries.” — Bernama