India must take a leaf out of China's cultural diplomacy and strengthen research on Beijing

B.R. Deepak

CULTURE

The interconnected history of India and China and the circulatory movement of ideas, people, technologies and commodities are well recorded in the textual as well as oral traditions of both countries. Its footprints could be found throughout the geographical landscapes of present-day India, China and beyond, whether it was the birth of Chinese Buddhism or the dissemination of ancient India’s astronomy, literature, music and languages into China, or technologies such as sugar making, paper manufacturing and silk production coming from China to India and other countries. All of it enriched knowledge systems across the world. The translation industry in China, for example, had people from India and many Central Asian polities supporting it, along with hundreds of Chinese scholar monks. Even today, there are 35,000 Sanskrit words in the Chinese language. The Dai, a minority nationality in the Yunnan province, had its own version of the Ramayana.

It was during the colonial period that contemporary images of India and China found their foundations. As Qing China (1636-1912) became apprehensive of the threat from British India, it sent officials to study the decline of the Indian civilisation and the intentions of the British in the Himalayan states. Qing officials such as Huang Maocai, Ma Jianzhong, Wu Guangpei and Kang Youwei lamented the decline of Indian civilisation. Indians were called “people of a lost century” and “no more than slaves”. Lu Xun, one of the greatest modern Chinese writers, despised Rabindranath Tagore as a “poisonous datura” and Indian people as “inferior slaves”. In his opinion, colonised India had become a defeated country and, therefore, it was impossible for it to produce great writers and works any longer.

British deployment of Sikh policemen in places like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Hankou and their involvement in some of the massacres generated further hatred for Indians. Notwithstanding such negativity, there were also stories of camaraderie, such as Indian soldiers stationed in China switching over to support the Taiping rebels; the memoirs such as Cheen Mein Terah Maas (Thirteen Months in China) by Gadadhar Singh (1902), and Indian and Chinese nationalists supporting each other during their anti-imperialist struggles in Japan and China between 1905 and 1940. Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore made the bonds of friendship even stronger when they supported China during Japanese aggression.

As new nation states, India and China were bound to tread the path of confrontation as both had inherited imperial and colonial legacies. The first confrontation happened during the Asian Relations Conference held in Delhi in early 1947 when the Chinese delegation objected to the map in the conference hall that showed Tibet not as part of China.

Star next door: A group of Chinese women take a selfie with a poster of the Hindi movie Dangal on display at a cinema in Beijing | AP

As the nationalist government retreated to Taiwan, there was a decade of bonhomie between India and the People’s Republic. In October 1951, Ding Xiling, vice minister of cultural affairs, led a delegation of 15 people that included scholars like Ji Xianlin from Peking University and Feng Youlan from Tsinghua University, and writers like Zhen Zhengduo amidst the Korean War, which created a political headache for India.

During their six-week stay in India, the delegation avoided all political references and harped on India’s civilisational greatness and Sino-Indian friendship. The sensitivities of the political relationship came to the fore once again, when the delegation cancelled its visit to Kashmir on account of some Kazakhs from Xinjiang entering Ladakh.

When the Chinese delegation was still in India, an unofficial Indian delegation led by Pandit Sunderlal of the Sino-Indian Friendship Association visited China. Unlike the Chinese, who kept silent on political questions, Sunderlal drew ire when he made political statements pertaining to Korea and Vietnam, much to the embarrassment of the Indian leadership. The visit, however, resulted in increased enthusiasm about China and the translation of its popular writers and leaders, including Mao Zedong.

Eating up the big apple: A dragon-shaped balloon in New York City to mark the lunar new year | Shutterstock

Reciprocating China’s state interventionist cultural diplomacy, India sent its first ever official cultural delegation under Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit on April 26, 1952 that was meticulously briefed at the highest level. There was a flurry of exchanges after the signing the Panchsheel Agreement in 1954. Delegations representing women, youth, economists, agriculturists, jurists, doctors, musicians, trade unionists and students were exchanged.

The climax of these exchanges came in 1955 after the Bandung conference when an Indian film festival was held across China. A delegation led by Prithviraj Kapoor and B.N. Sircar visited China and had an audience with Mao. On September 11, 1955, Beijing celebrated the 1,500th anniversary of the Ajanta cave painting; among the Indian guests were archaeologist N.P. Chakravarti and D.K. Deb Barman, dean of the Academy of Arts of Visva Bharati University. In May 1956, the great Indian classical poet Kalidasa was commemorated in China and in the following year, his play Shakuntala was produced there.

The political objectives of Chinese cultural diplomacy were to win India’s support for China in many international forums and, at the most, secure its neutrality; the idea of pan-Asianism was equally high on the agenda. Economically, the aim was to project China as a development model for developing countries with large populations. Culturally, it played out the interconnectedness between Indian and Chinese civilisations. One of its manifestations was China’s overt support to communists in India and their open support for China on its internal and external affairs of the times. The role of the India-China Friendship Association exerting a pro-China influence in India could be seen in this context.

The political objectives played out very differently for India. Owing to the nature of the social system and political control in China, India’s cultural diplomacy was limited to setting an example of good neighbourliness and peaceful coexistence that was shattered by hostilities along the border, the Dalai Lama’s flight to India in the aftermath of the Tibetan uprising in 1959, and India’s refusal to renew the 1954 agreement on Tibet in 1962. These events led to a brief armed conflict over the Himalayas in 1962 and then a deep freeze for almost three decades.

During the period of equilibrium (1988-2014), cultural diplomacy was resumed, but without the hype of the 1950s. In December 1988 and March 1991, the two countries signed protocols for implementing cultural exchange programmes. These exchanges were renewed every three years. Since then, bilateral exchanges in the fields of culture, art, education, sports, health, information and broadcast grew steadily. The first China Cultural Festival was held in India from December 1992 to January 1993. Chinese opera, film, acrobatics and puppet shows were held in big Indian cities. Painting, handicraft and photo exhibitions were also organised throughout India.

The Indian Cultural Festival was held in China in May-June 1994. Both nations moved towards a détente and concluded many agreements. An agreement to compile an Encyclopaedia of India-China Cultural Contacts was signed during premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in 2010, and an agreement on ‘Cooperation in mutual translation and publication of classic and contemporary works’ was signed during premier Li Keqiang’s visit in May 2013. Subsequently, the two countries agreed to publish 25 classics and modern works of either country in Hindi and Chinese. But the Galwan hostilities have seriously affected the realisation of the agreements.

India’s decision not to pursue cultural diplomacy is unwarranted, for it is extremely important to understand the psyche and the domestic undercurrents of a society through the prism of literary discourse. It must be acknowledged that China has continued the fine tradition of Buddhist sutra translations. The translation and publication of the Bhagvad Gita in the 1940s, the Upanishads in the 1950s, Kalidasa’s works in the 1950s and 1960s, the Valmiki Ramayana in the 1980s, Ramcharitmanas in 1988, Tagore’s works in 2000, the Mahabharata in 2005, various editions of the Manusmriti; Sursagar and Kabir Granthavali in 2018-19 bear testimony to this. Apart from the scattered translation of the Vedas, it could be said that China has translated almost the entire repository of mainstream Indian literature and philosophy including the Panchatantra, Kathasagar, six philosophical schools of India and the Shankaracharya.

Besides, Chinese scholarship on India has rendered the works of Indian writers such as Bharatendu Harishchandra, Premchand, Yashpal, Mirza Ghalib, Mohamed Iqbal, Krishan Chander, Jai Shankar Prasad, Jainedra Kumar, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Aurobindo, Osho, Subramania Bharati, and it may not be possible to list them all here. Chinese scholars have also studied and translated Indian writings in English. The works of Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Manohar Malgonkar, Arun Joshi, Khushwant Singh, Vikram Seth and Anita Desai have been extensively translated and studied. Even though the import of Indian films in China is limited, the translation and dubbing of Indian films, from Raj Kapoor’s Awaara to Aamir Khan’s Dangal, have gone unstopped.

The translation and research of Chinese classics and authors in India remain pathetic. We need to take a leaf out of Chinese cultural diplomacy and strengthen research on China. The ‘trade only and nothing else’ paradigm of the Indian diplomacy with China does not augur well for India’s rise and its cultural confidence.

The author is professor of Chinese Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.