On China by India: From Civilization to Nation-State [1 ed.] 1604978066, 9781604978063

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On China By India

On China By India From Civilization to Nation-State

EDITED BY

Chih-yu Shih, Swaran Singh, and Reena Marwah

Copyright 2012 Cambria Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to: [email protected], or mailed to: Cambria Press 20 Northpointe Parkway, Suite 188 Amherst, NY 14228 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data On China by India: from civilization to nation-state/ edited by Chih-yu Shih, Swaran Singh, and Reena Marwah. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-1-60497-806-3 (alk. paper) 1. China—Study and teaching--India. 2. China—Research—India. I. Shi, Zhiyu, 1958- II. Singh, Swaran, Dr. III. Marwah, Reena, 1960-. DS734.97.I4O62012 951.0072’054—dc23 2012009953

Table of Contents

Introduction: Connecting China Studies in India Chih-yu Shih .......................................................... 1 Chapter 1: China Studies in the Indian Context Swaran Singh .................................................... 27 Chapter 2: The Role Of Cheena Bhavan Avijit Banerjee ................................................... 47 Chapter 3: Buddhism and Chinese Studies in India Anita Sharma .................................................... 59 Chapter 4: Chinese Studies in India B. R. Deepak .................................................... 71 Chapter 5: Rural Industrialization in China Studies in India Sanjeev Kumar .................................................. 93 Chapter 6: Indian Studies on the Chinese Development Experience T. G. Suresh .................................................... 109 Chapter 7: Developments In Tibet Sharad K. Soni and Reena Marwah ......................... 123 Chapter 8: Taiwan in Chinese Studies in India Abanti Bhattacharya .......................................... 145 Chapter 9: China Studies in Indian Think Tanks Jagannath P. Panda ........................................... 159 Interviews Section .......................................................... 179 Mira Sinha ................................................................... 181 Diptimoy Bhattacharya ..................................................... 205 Ravi Bhoothalingam ........................................................ 227

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Govind Deshpande ......................................................... 253 Lokesh Chandra ............................................................. 273 V. P. Dutt .................................................................... 297 Reena Ganguly .............................................................. 325 Govind Kelkar .............................................................. 351 Manoranjan Mohanty ....................................................... 373 Biswadeb Mukherjee ....................................................... 395 Vasant V. Paranjape ........................................................ 425 C. V. Ranganathan .......................................................... 445 Harprasad Ray .............................................................. 469 Narayan Sen ................................................................. 495 Tushar Shah ................................................................. 519 Shri K. Natwar Singh ...................................................... 545 Amitendra Nath Tagore .................................................... 565 Tan Chung ................................................................... 603 Patricia Uberoi .............................................................. 613 Bibliography ................................................................. 633 Index ......................................................................... 647 About the Editors ........................................................... 657

On China By India

Introduction

Connecting China Studies in India Epistemological and Ethical Reflections Chih-yu Shih In the twenty-first century, academics, practitioners, and policy makers around the world share the view that India and China are two rising states in the global political economy. In the eyes of the rest of the world, however, the obvious contrast between Indian democracy and the Chinese one-party rule is likely to result in very different national images. Both countries are proud of their civilizations’ long histories. Their views of each other, informed by their civilizational trajectories, are far richer than their institutional differences. This book explores how civilizational knowledge about China, specifically among Indian academics, has continued to influence contemporary Indian scholarship on China as nation-state. To the extent that contemporary scholarship on China elsewhere lacks such civilizational sensibilities, and given the need for epistemological reflexivity in a multicultural world, this is a particularly urgent inquiry.

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China Studies Challenged Epistemological issues do not attract much discussion in China studies communities. Nonetheless, sporadic reflections raise several challenges that merit serious examination. Earlier challenges were primarily concerned with the relationship between area studies and social science.1 Recently, debates have arisen regarding the connection between scholars and the subject matter of their studies, which are vaguely considered to represent China. The debates suggest an inevitable connection between scholarship and politics, which questions the legitimacy of the problématique of mainstream social and area study agenda.2 Though the academic community has not yet responded systematically to any of these epistemological critiques, a few recent PhD theses have taken up epistemological issues, and pressure to respond is still mounting for those who endeavor to promote social science in area studies. There are at least three sources driving this pressure—cultural-studies perspectives, Chinese diasporic scholars, and globalization. These factors compel social scientists to recruit new scholars to delve into China studies and to tackle epistemological and ontological self-evaluation. Some cultural-studies perspectives displace Cartesian certainty as the basis of scientific knowledge; interpreted meanings replace universal theories as the new focus of scholarship in these cultural studies. The earliest effective intruder from cultural studies to social science was probably feminism, followed by postmodernism and postcolonialism. Despite its various and diverse analytical interests and approaches, the field of cultural studies has developed a minimal consensus among almost all scholars, focusing commonly on identity. Students of cultural studies—whose epistemology seeks to deconstruct knowledge—perceive a research agenda as no more than another text to reproduce or another identity invented by scholars. Cultural studies accuse the social sciences of being essentially political constructions. The national identity of Chinese scholars is undergoing drastic changes as more overseas Chinese social scientists join the English-language China studies community.3 This

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development inspires pressing discussions on the ethical relationship among China scholars, China scholarship, and China itself. Finally, globalization, which brings scholars and others of Chinese identity into and out of China, further obscures the country’s borders, lines of demarcation that scientists used to simply take for granted. Once China as a research object was opened up, the mutual constitution of scholars and scholarship could no longer be hidden easily. Interactions among identities of China, China scholars, and China scholarship cast doubt on the validity of knowledge in this community. If knowledge is an identity statement of those who produce knowledge, should past studies, which presume the objectivity of China knowledge, be disregarded as mere products of identity politics? Or is knowledge still knowledge, though it is not universal, law driven, or time neutral? This is not the first time that this kind of challenge has appeared in China studies. The earlier denouncement by the social science community of area studies as counterproductive once threatened to discredit China research that was not oriented toward universal theory building. However, the earlier challenge was largely methodological, not touching the issue that intrinsically links the identity of scholars to their scholarship. This ontological reconceptualization has prompted some responses from the social science community,4 but it has not yet led to similar reflections on the China field. The challenge lies in research design. How would scholars, after recognizing their subjective intervention in the production of knowledge through the problématique that motivates their research, feel about a result that to a certain extent responds to their own identity needs? Such recognition implies that one’s scholarship represents, at best, another’s relative truth.5 Scholarship is therefore more than a representation of truth; it is a simple text through which readers collect evidence that reveal the scholars’ inner worlds. Scholars examine China, whereas readers examine scholarship. Indeed, the social science community has responded to the challenges of cultural studies in various ways. The result is not encouraging—the two

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epistemologies find no ready platform for engaging in dialogue. Similar challenges appear in China studies indirectly, though for the most part they are not presented in epistemological terms.6 These epistemological and ontological challenges question the moral foundation of China studies; hence, the need for a framework which can accommodate knowledge of a completely different nature seems present and urgent. Without such a framework, mutual estrangement between scholars of different identities will surely affect negatively the process of learning, as well as the quality of intellectual exercise.7 Moreover, scholars need a sense of certainty or security regarding the place where they engage in intellectual activities, but the upcoming ontological controversy will certainly destroy that sense.8 A framework that is epistemologically tolerant enough to bring together scholarship based on different philosophies of knowledge can clarify the ethical relationship among all fields of knowledge. Such a framework allows each research agenda to have its own identity and enables scholars to read knowledge of a nature different from their own without feeling threatened. Establishing such a framework is the purpose of the following discussion and of the compilation of interviews in this book.

Epistemological Dimensions of China Knowledge How should China scholarship be divided into categories that are not only epistemologically and mutually related but are also respectful of the distinctive identities of scholars? No deductive method can do justice to the ever-changing ways of organizing knowledge. For example, the familiar level-of-analysis debate in international relations is becoming decreasingly relevant in today’s literature. To organize different kinds of knowledge, to address the evolution of a specific problématique, and to inform the meanings of scholarship require social science philosophers to attend to those sensibilities that are actually present in the literature. In this chapter, three dimensions emerge from a quick glimpse at a selected portion of the literature. The first is Eurocentric versus China-centric

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knowledge (or looking in versus looking out), a dimension derived from reading Paul Cohen,9 Phillips Kuhn,10 Wang Hui,11 Gan Yang,12 Mineo Mizoguchi,13 and Phillip Huang,14 among others. The second dimension, synchronic versus diachronic knowledge (or ahistorical versus evolutionary knowledge), appears for instance in the works of Harry Harding,15 Andrew Nathan,16 Yang Kuo-shu,17 Kuo Hua-lun,18 Naito Konan,19 and Jin Guantao.20 The third dimension, structural versus agential knowledge (or materialist versus interpretive knowledge) is evident in the writings of Lucian Pye,21 Stevan Herral,22 Chow Rei,23 Prasenjit Duara,24 Joseph Needham,25 and David Wang Der-wei,26 and other scholars. All these dimensions (and others not mentioned) suggest the division of knowledge into different kinds. These dimensions lack channels of communication to the extent that when communication takes place, it questions the legitimacy of any particular research agenda by destabilizing the ontological foundation of each particular kind of knowledge. Paul Cohen recorded the origin of criticism toward the Eurocentric knowledge of China, attending especially to the stimulus–response mode of analysis, which portrays China in a backward, passive position that can be alleviated only by western enlightening forces. In contrast, for example, Cohen encouraged a historiography that discovers the forces of modernization from within Chinese history. Similar reflections come from Philip Kuhn, who painstakingly traced the evolution of Chinese history from the fall of regime capacity in the late Ming Dynasty. In the same vein, Mineo Mizoguchi argued that social changes in the past century are primarily products of China’s own history. He denounced Japanese China scholarship as much too Japan-centric and as dominated by the false assumption that China would take the same path Japan has taken. He likened Japan’s modernization to the development of a two-legged tadpole maturing into a four-legged frog, criticizing Japanese scholars for mistakenly thinking of a mature two-legged chicken—that is, China—as a retarded frog. Phillip Huang likewise explored the different meanings of the rise of civil society in China, defending Chinese folk society from some Eurocentric interpretations. Interestingly, Wang Hui contended that

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these critical reflections may continue to carry the Eurocentric problématique. For Wang, these critical analyses are still embedded in modernization teleology. He is particularly sensitive to Naito Konan’s historiography, which treats China as an empire whose breakup would eventually serve as the origin of modernization, which would necessarily rely upon internal forces.27 China-centric knowledge denies the validity of Eurocentric knowledge; the validity of China-centric knowledge itself is questioned for retaining the Eurocentric problématique. Is the mutual denial of validity the only solution to this competitive relationship? The second dimension of China studies literature involves the familiar debate regarding theory-driven research and history-driven research. The focus is whether the behavior under study is a result of spatiotemporally neutral laws or is a specificity produced by conjectural historical streams. The difference between science and history in China studies is similar to that between neorealism and the English school in the international relations literature. Law-driven research produces knowledge that penetrates the disguise of local specificity or connects seemingly unrelated phenomena to disclose underpinning causalities. In this view, knowledge does not change with time, but it does change in terms of relationships among variables without time tags. Mainstream social science expects area studies to contribute to the discovery of laws. Harry Harding responded with a mixed feeling, confident, on the one hand, that China studies may generate law-like hypotheses ready to be tested elsewhere instead of always testing propositions imported from abroad. On the other hand, however, he has expressed concern about overdependence on Chinese authorities as sources of wisdom when composing theoretical hypotheses.28 According to Andrew Walder, Chinese scholars who join the Englishlanguage China studies community may alleviate this ambivalence because they are fluent in the languages of both scientific studies and area studies. However, universal laws have yet to dominate the China studies agenda because many, such as Yang Kuo-shu and his team on Chinese

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indigenous psychology, continue to believe that the pursuit of universal laws is either premature at this point or completely meaningless to China scholarship. There is a view that living according to the lifestyle of those under study is the key to knowledge. In short, China is not a case of comparison for the sake of finding universal laws. This epistemological position can be presented two ways: first, there exist China-specific laws not ready for translation into universal laws, and second, no such law governs so-called Chinese behavior. The rise of cultural studies introduces the third dimension of China studies. Ontologically, knowledge is not certain; those under study exist in forms that are fluid, contingent, and coincidental. The possibilities of switching and cycling are results of simulation and practices over time. The key organizing theme is identity, a term that has no fixed definition. Knowledge, which incorporates concerns for identity, is interested in strategies for adapting or responding to changes, as well as in the practice of agency or self-empowerment. In this regard, knowledge is situational. In addition, knowledge connects scholars and China. Knowledge is not an intellectual instrument by which scholars access the analyzed object but rather a process of mutual constitution between scholars and the China under study. Knowledge relates to the ways living people interpret the situation and to their responses and their desires; scholars cannot escape the same scrutiny that alludes to the identity strategy that they themselves practice. Here, the psychological condition of scholars and their derived needs become intrinsic parts of knowledge. In terms of the cultural studies agenda, methodologically, all texts are meaningful, making an obsession with the statistical design of random selection irrelevant. Peripheral or marginal voices are among the best topics on the agenda, including Duara’s in-depth research on modernity in a puppy Manchurian regime torn between its ethnic Chinese and Japanese identities; Chow Rey’s upside-down strategy, which trivializes a grand discourse while amplifying feminine sensitivities; and David Wang Der-wei’s deliberate overinterpretation, which demonstrates how the self-

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empowering possibilities of modernity can exist between lines of feudal literature through the imagination of tacit resistance or adaptation. Even if material conditions are relevant, they are certainly do not comprise the major attribute of knowledge from the standpoint of cultural studies. Arbitrarily categorizing each research agenda according to its position on these dimensions seemingly commits the fallacy of reductionism. In fact, categorizing is often the strategy of criticism when one intends to stereotype a particular research agenda. Different readers will obviously place the same products of knowledge in different positions. It is unlikely that there is a total consensus among scholars on how a particular piece of China knowledge should be categorized. It is not even clear whether the author of an academic work would categorize that work in the same way at any given time. The aim, then, of framing the products of knowledge according to three dimensions is not categorization. Rather, this framework is a map of imprecision, as well as a flow, that allows each scholar to see the relativity of his or her epistemological positions vis-à-vis those of others by comparing how differently each one categorizes the same research agenda. Over time, it becomes possible to trace one’s movement by comparing one’s current position with positions adopted in the past. Consciousness of a scholar’s epistemological relativity enables each to empathize or sympathize with different epistemological positions. Thus scholars could appreciate the mutual constitution among China scholars, China scholarship, and China.

China Scholars on the Ethics of Knowledge In addition to clarifying the epistemological position of research agenda and scholarship to mediate meanings among them, comparing the epistemological identities of scholars also facilitates intellectual communication—an equally important endeavor. Scholars with different epistemological identities may produce completely different kinds of knowledge, even if they share similar research agendas. For example, the probléma-

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tique that opens research with the rise of China may lead to either the materialist agenda of power competition in the international system or the interpretive agenda of the clash of civilizations. Both research agendas may represent different identities for different scholars, and because scholars may see themselves in identity positions different from those others attribute to them, it is possible to locate particular scholars relative to themselves, judging from their different positions. This means that one’s decisions on another scholar’s epistemological identity and the identity of another’s research are fundamentally self-revealing of one’s own epistemological identity.29 Just as each research agenda can find specific identities on three epistemological dimensions (i.e., Eurocentric/China-centric, synchronic/diachronic, and structural/agential dimensions), scholars can do the same. There are two subdimensions according to which scholars can be identified: the research community with which scholars identify themselves and the research institution with which scholars affiliate themselves. The affiliation of scholars with research institutes has to do with personnel training, research funding, and resource allocation among projects and between research and personnel. In the background are the macrostructures of funding, which may be composed of either Eurocentric or China-centric problématiques. Both problématiques reflect the cultural hegemony that serves to reproduce certain political-economic forces: Eurocentrism primarily reproduces those research agendas on modernity and globalization, whereas China-centrism reproduces agendas on local institutional support to remain indigenous and independent. Regarding the identity of research institutes, the materialist quality is a more important reference than the interpretive quality. The materialist quality mainly addresses the sociology of knowledge. In contrast, the identity of the research community can be different from that of the research institute. Scholars may identify themselves with other groups—such as disciplinary communities, ethnic communities, national communities, religious communities, media outlets, policy

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circles, and nonprofit organizations—that are beyond their institutional affiliations. Moreover, the primary community of scholars, which relates to scholars’ inner conditions, provides motivation for research. This motivation, in turn, mainly addresses the psychology of knowledge. The research agenda, the research institution, and the research community form a triangle along the three epistemological divides, and the knowledge produced reflects the balance among these three forces. The triangle is the spatial identity that scholars assume in the epistemological ethical network. For scholars, more than one triangle competes in their identification within the epistemological cube, and everyone else may have an opinion about how this triangle should be placed in the cube with respect to a particular scholar. For any particularly keen reader seeking to establish a dialogue with scholars, an additional triangular identity may emerge. In order for scholars to understand their own identities comprehensively, consulting different decisions on the identities of their communities, institutional affiliations, and agendas is necessary. Hence, Mineo Mizoguchi may place himself much closer to the China-centric plane than Wang Hui would place him. The gap enables scholars to ponder their identities and adjust their research agendas, communities of primary identification, and even institutional affiliations accordingly. Implicitly, a change in affiliation, rank, funding, or training (among other factors) affects the sociology of knowledge. Similarly, how well the scholarship is received, how strong the nationalist mood grows, and how integrative a discipline becomes all affect the psychology of knowledge. The combination of changes in the psychology and sociology of knowledge reshapes and relocates the triangular identity of scholars.

The Evolution of China Studies in India China studies are gaining growing attention as the impression of a rising China dominates headlines everywhere. It is already late to start reflecting

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upon how the study of China contributes to the reproduction of self-understanding in one way or another. A transnational project on the comparative epistemology of China studies, which initially involved Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and India, was launched in 2004. In 2012 the project had already covered Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Germany, Poland, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Mongolia, in addition to the original countries. The project aims to reflect on the nature of knowledge in general and of China studies in particular. Specifically, it is a reflection on the mutual constituting relationship among China, China scholars, and China scholarship. David Shambaugh edited a volume on China studies in the United States of America in 1993. Later in 2007, he coedited with Robert Ash and Seiichirō Takagi another volume comparing China studies in America, Europe, and Japan. Both books are generally introductory.30 They have also been well received in the textbook market. However, neither book seems to appreciate the evolution of China studies elsewhere in the world. The second volume is limited, furthermore, to political and economic studies on China, overlooking important cultural and historical studies, and it is biased toward the policy side of research. Nomura Koichi summarized China studies in Japan before World War II,31 whereas Chia-ning Huang and I tackled the European character of Japanese perspectives on China before and after the same war.32 But no parallel effort was made in either book to conduct oral history interviews, an approach that contributing scholars have taken in this book. Books dealing with Asianism in Japan, as well as works on specific scholars, are abundant. All these are useful references. In a short paper, Michael Luk presented an impressive summary of ten different strings of concerned China scholars in Hong Kong, but the work provided no analysis.33 I analyzed the China studies of Chinesespeaking communities but covered only a limited number of studies and authors.34 Chang-hung Chen used both an institutional approach and oral histories in his overview of China studies in Singapore, but he did not

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review the contents of the literature produced by scholars in Singapore.35 Dohee Kim and I applied a survey method to assess the tension between area studies and disciplinary studies, but again, there is no literature review in the piece.36 Geremie Barmé separated China studies in Australia and elsewhere into Sinophone research and work in other languages. His critical view of non-Sinophone research deserves some comparison with similar reflections in other national communities.37 Finally, Huaiqiu Ruan (Nguyen) reviewed the literature on Sino–Vietnamese relations in the decade after rapprochement.38 Nevertheless, none of these books simultaneously relies on oral history interviews with senior China scholars. Despite the limited literature, some distinctions can be observed between national communities. Nguyen used the notion of a “shadow” to characterize Vietnamese perspectives on China, in which some senior scholars ironically feel comfortable sharing their history and humanity with China for over one thousand years. Chang-hung Chen and Yuanning Yang argued that China studies in Singapore are deliberately separate from any indigenous issues, desensitizing Chinese ethnic politics in neighboring countries of Southeast Asia.39 All these writers seem to agree that Japan’s studies on China respond to a single ultimate question: what does Japan represent in the world? In contrast, Australia’s China studies community is composed of international scholars who are used to treating China as an entity comprising many different parts, each with its unique characteristics. Yen-chung Tseng thus portrayed the Australian approach to China as a “commonwealth” perspective.40 Together, these works indicate a rising awareness of the mutual constitution of China scholars and China scholarship. They also complement this book, which contributes to the field in terms of both oral history methodology and an expansion of geographical scope. In India the project has moved smoothly and systematically. This volume is a report of the first stage of findings on how views on China and the intellectual history of China studies have been embedded in India’s modern history and its evolving self-knowledge as a nation-state. The

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parallel rises of India and China have made intellectuals of both countries increasingly conscious of each other, and their contemporary relationship still carries the legacy of the border clash of 1962. How Indian intellectuals, specifically, view China should be of great concern to all schools of international relations and to policy and business practitioners everywhere in the world. The changing Indian perspectives that reflect the rise of India and the changing object of China studies together render images of China complicated and shifting. The immediate question is this: how can China be studied when the space inside is not socially or culturally distinguishable from that outside? In the decades after World War II, China studies have been shifting between social science and area studies, preoccupied with the traditional Sinological concerns regarding humanity. Some religious underpinnings, which are based on the Huntingtonian prediction that China’s civilization is bound to clash with Christianity, remain powerful. As globalized China loses the clarity of its boundaries, a practice and strategy of self-identity emerges for those who carry the Chinese identity and for those who do not. The objectivist social science assumption about knowledge on China can no longer hold. Moreover, China as “other,” staying outside of the range of scholarly and subjective self, is regarded as a doubtful prospect. Neither teleology toward a liberal end of history (as political science literature desires) nor a world government (as globalized literature hopes for) offers a promising approach. Some changes are necessary in order to cope with the loss of China. Given the rise of India and China in the global political, economic, and cultural space, the India project of comparative epistemology on China studies is extremely informative, especially now, amid intellectual disarray. First of all, the study of China in India has not clearly been a discipline of social science. It is therefore relatively free from disciplinary thinking, and it tends to be issue oriented. India has no territorial ambition, despite its border disputes and civilizational differences with neighboring areas. It is therefore relatively free from the intelligence nature of area

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studies. And needless to say, no clash of civilizations from the Christian point of view is relevant in the Indian context. The significance of China studies in India rests precisely on the historical fact that it has nothing to do with what is popularly considered to be China studies in English literature. Granting that the field of China studies in India has been heavily influenced by western social science theorizing and area studies since 1962, Indian academics remain a viable force promoting postcolonial reflections that show a strong potential for something different in the rediscovery of the mutual constitution of India’s knowledge on China and India’s selfknowledge. Contrary to the orientalist critique, which demonstrates how the Oriental world (China included) sees the Orient as something opposite the universal, Indian China scholars see China as ontologically similar. There is little interest in how China staggers along a teleological path toward the liberal and modernist destiny of history. There is instead a tendency to see anything mundane as rooted in China’s historical and cultural past. Those who treat China as a civilization usually perceive India as a civilization, as well. Those who analyze China as a modern nation-state typically long for a modern India respected as an equal nation-state. Those who find China composed of a variety of parts—each with its own local traits—generally appreciate India’s hybrid composition. A nascent interest in China’s developmental path since the end of the Cultural Revolution represents a third alternative whereby civilizational and national comparison gives way to the gathering of nuanced practices. This book represents China studies in India as a choice of China scholars regarding their understanding of India, a choice that comes from both larger social and historical backgrounds and individual decisions. It is therefore important to consider Indian China studies from the viewpoint of personal knowledge history, in addition to examining the literature.

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Civilization Meets Nation-state If China is a civilization, as Indian scholarship on Chinese Buddhism, art, literature, and language suggests, China’s social, cultural, and political conditions and behavior should not change easily. This implies that India must cope with Chinese phenomena when encountering them, instead of trying to transform China to fit an Indian agenda. The apparent Indian passivity stemming from this civilizational longevity contrasts sharply with the active engagement of a Christian world determined to spread a liberal democratic gospel to the Chinese people. Western academics seek to study ways to make Chinese conditions right for such a liberal democratic result, as well as ways to measure the success of such an endeavor. Once one delves into the premodern or even looks for wisdom from the past, however, mundane present-day conflicts appear less significant. This is how Rabindranath Tagore was able to overcome his abortive appeal to Chinese tradition during his disappointing trip to China and go on to launch the first Institute of Chinese Studies in India. It was this imagined civilizational affinity and mutuality that has undergirded a string (albeit a weak one) of cultural appreciation toward and intellectual interest in China. This interest has created a potential in Indian China studies to transcend both the Sino–Indian border issues and the Tibet issue, both of which have plagued bilateral relations between the governments for over half a century. In contrast, whereas Chinese civilization powerfully modernizes without westernizing, the only way to engage with civilizational China is through the Chinese government. In the twenty-first century, with the spread of globalization and the Sinicization and Indianization that accompany China’s and India’s ascents, it is increasingly important that the Indian government find ways to engage the Chinese government. If Sinicization means adaptation that makes things easier for those acting in the name of China, Indianization pushes for adaptation that makes things easier for those acting in the name of India. When Indianization encounters Sinicization, both Indian intellectuals and practitioners have to make

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sense of the encounter and decide how to adapt in terms of teaching, learning, and resisting. Nevertheless, Indian religion and history provide an extremely long-term view of the world that does not demand immediate answers in the way that a typical market-oriented capitalist society usually would. Learning is pertinent to civilizational exchanges and is the flip side of teaching. Specifically, civilization refers to a way of life that can be acquired or dispersed through learning and teaching. Learning is most vividly seen in language programs and field studies. Any aspect of China studies requires language skill and, for truly valuable Sinological scholarship, reading in Chinese is particularly crucial because translation is always a prelude to civilizational sympathy. In acquiring the Chinese language, one presumably encounters both Chinese culture and Chinese affairs. The former is an aspect of civilization and the latter, of the nation-state. In practice, unfortunately, despite Indian scholars’ repeated calls for strengthening Chinese language programs, institutional support in this regard is poor. The recent push in Chinese language education has stemmed from social demand attracted by the profits to be gained from acquiring Chinese language skills—not from academic planning. As a result, the current rising enrollment and spread of Chinese language programs in India cannot truly sustain the level of appreciation for Chinese culture that can reinvent a civilizational imagination deeply enough to move beyond the most mundane concerns, such as the job market and business opportunities. Learning associated with field research is limited to the work of a few Indian investigators but it may be long lasting. This pertains particularly to Indian scholarship on Chinese rural development. Field research subscribes to pragmatism and therefore constitutes another platform, other than the language program, that enables China as civilization to meet China as nation-state. Firsthand research in the field confirms the critical relevance of the local as well as the central governments in rural development, a critical issue on the nation-state’s agenda. At the same time,

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field research touches upon every possible corner of Chinese rural life, from gender relations to state-society interaction and productive culture, providing a variety of snapshots of Chinese civilization and a pool of cases comparable with various, differing Indian rural practices. Field research carried out by Indian scholars in China reproduces the Chinese national boundary by recognizing the role of the government, on one hand, while multiplying Chinese local possibilities that obscure the significance of that boundary, on the other. Resisting takes place mostly in think tanks that explore Chinese political, economic, and—most significant—diplomatic and defense policy issues. If one has the impression that the Chinese government fails to respect the Indian government, one could assert equal status by intellectually conceptualizing China as representing simply another nationstate, development route, or hegemonic power. A watching India and a watched China together create epistemological equality between them. However, China cannot be merely an undisputed object out there; Tibet and Taiwan are two conspicuous cases that belie China’s objectivity. But Tibet and Taiwan, which essentially raise the issue of Chinese sovereign territorial integrity, fare differently. From the Indian perspective, Taiwan is unquestionably a distant land, meaningful only in strategic and business terms. Tibet, by contrast, is rooted in India’s civilizational imagination. Indian scholarship on Tibet, in connection with China studies, moves far beyond a security calculus. Tibet is the quintessential subject that demonstrates that civilization and nation-state are not two separate agendas in Indian China studies. To understand China from a Tibetological perspective transcends national borders and territorial concerns but dangerously constrains the policy options available to the two national governments.

On China By India Swaran Singh begins this volume with “China Studies in India—A Critical Review,” introducing the origins of the book and providing quick reviews

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of the later chapters’ topics. These topics have been gathered from interviews with senior China experts. Some divided views, such as the use of original Chinese language material, imported social science theories, and the abhorrence of Chinese nationalism and its effects on Chinese culture, are discussed. Singh’s introductory chapter also reviews constraints on the study of China in India before making few suggestions for improving the situation. Later chapters take up these topics, discussing issues of language, institution, and the profession. Avijit Banerjee’s chapter on “The Role of Cheena Bhavan in India’s China Studies” acknowledges Rabindranath Tagore’s contribution to the establishment of India’s first Institute of Chinese Studies in Shantiniketan. Throughout the twentieth century, Cheena Bhavan continued the civilizational interflow despite the interruption of the Sino–India border clash in 1962. The institution itself is a testimony to the mingling of two civilizations because its earliest leadership (Tan Yunshan), as well as its finances and world-famous Sanskrit collection represent Chinese contributions. Tagore’s pursuit of universal love and peace continues to echo in contemporary pedagogy. The teaching of Cheena Bhavan focuses consistently on humanities, ranging from philosophy, literature, Buddhism, and language to history; translation is one of its strengths. Anita Sharma’s “Buddhism and Chinese Studies in India” introduces a number of significant institutions, scholars, and their contributions to comparative studies of Buddhism in China. A large and perhaps the most challenging portion of the scholarship is the translation of Chinese Buddhist texts, enabling the further study of historical and social issues that generated them. Complementing the history of Buddhism are the literature and philosophical aspects of the texts. Special attention is given to ancient interactions that shaped both Chinese and other East Asian civilizations. These include research on the Silk Road, through which Indian influences extended eastward. A note on the emerging Buddhist perspective on postmodern issues, such as environmentalism, is worth following in the future.

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B. R. Deepak’s chapter, “The Chinese Language and China Studies in India,” records the four movements that began with the Shantiniketan movement, which concentrated on language and the classics. This civilizational focus gave way to a national security concern after the border clash in 1962, when the area study approach was introduced. Reflections on the difference between area and disciplinary studies marked the third movement, followed by the fourth, which witnessed China fever. Language training remained limited in the second and third movements. Without the language vehicle, an understanding of one’s neighbors would have to rely on disciplinary methodology, and the integration of area and disciplinary approaches would be unlikely. Sanjeev Kumar’s review of the literature on Chinese rural development justifies a separate treatment for his topic. In “Rural Industrialization in China Studies in India,” Kumar points to the puzzle that India has no township and village enterprises (TVEs). Given the national difference, he argues, the literature shows that most studies on TVE in India are pragmatic and policy oriented. Disciplinary departments, as well as research institutes, are less interested in theorization than in practice. Economics and political science have yet to contribute to the research agenda. As a result, economic research lacks any fieldwork for support, and the analysis of the role of local governments in developing TVEs is basically nonexistent. Research on TVEs is neither civilizational nor statist, and it represents an additional dimension of China scholarship in India. T. G. Suresh’s chapter, “Indian Studies on the Chinese Development Experience,” touches on contemporary China studies in India. Early views on the Maoist strategy of development included a component of romantic feeling. The growth trajectory and the rise of China greatly enhance the academic interests of nascent global economic players. Scholars conduct research primarily with an eye on India, hoping to explain the difference between the two most agrarian societies (i.e., China and India). With the multidisciplinary nature of development studies, empirical methods —including field visits—are more frequently employed. As a result,

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the study of provincial uniqueness gradually substitutes for comparison between India and China, which is based on state-level statistics. Between romance and provincialization, the statist paradigm is short lived. Sharad K. Soni and Reena Marwah’s chapter on “Developments in Tibet: The Effect on India–China Relations” is an anatomy of the mutual constitution of Tibetology and India–China relations. The authors trace the evolution of Tibetology, as well as the ways scholarship and practices inform each other. Conceptualizations of Tibet in terms of religion, identity, language, culture, geography, and the myth of the Himalaya in India’s Chinese studies literature intertwine with the evaluation of the historical patron–priest practice, the contemporary Panchsheel agreement, the Indian refugee state in practice, and Tibetan demonstrations in both China and India. The mix of civilizational discourse and the statist calculation show the widely acknowledged Tibetan consciousness and its political repercussions. Specifically, it is registered in the Dalai Lama’s civilizational soft power. Abanti Bhattacharya’s chapter on “Taiwan in Chinese Studies in India” begins with the ruling Kuomintang’s India policy during World War II before moving to Taiwan and proceeding ironically to consider how Nehru was able to recognize and speak for communist China. The implication that India’s policy on China is independent from China’s internal politics indicates that India’s policy toward Taiwan has not been about Taiwan but about the myth of civilizational intimacy between India and China. Although India’s “one China” policy disallows treatment of Taiwan as a state, the contemporary study of Taiwan, since the border war with China in 1962, has increasingly been embedded in statist management as it reflects India’s “look East” policy, which supports think tank–based, conference-driven, and security- and economics-oriented research. Jagannath P. Panda’s chapter on “China Studies in Indian Think Tanks” provides a critical and younger-generation view of the state of India’s China studies. The realist-oriented Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and the idealist-oriented Institute of Chinese Studies

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(ICS) come under scrutiny here. Particular grievance points to the incapacity of each institution to develop the specialties of its researchers owing to structural inertia and the commissioned nature of the Ministry of Defense’s sponsorship. Lack of training, personal rivalry at the senior level, and xenophobia are perceived factors that plague Indian think tanks in China studies. Note that security and foreign policies comprise only 15 percent of the total scholarship; this means that China policy has no sound knowledge foundation. Though not civilizational, think tank scholarship is only nominally statist. The oral history scripts of interviews with Diptimoy Bhattacharya, the late Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, Ravi Bhoothalingam, Lokesh Chandra, G. P. Deshpande, the late V. P. Dutt, Reena Ganguly, Govind Kelkar, Manoranjan Mohanty, Biswadeb Mukharjee, Vasant Vasudev Paranjape, C. V. Ranganathan, Harprasad Ray, Narayan Sen, Patricia Uberoi, Tushar Shah, Natwar Singh, A. N. Tagore, and Tan Chung (whose interview is presented in Chinese) are included in the book. These chapters and interviews provide invaluable insights in a range and depth that have never before been undertaken. This volume is thus a much-needed first step toward illuminating critical perspectives on China by India.

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Figure 1. Identity of Knowledge.

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Endnotes 1. David Shambaugh, ed., The American Studies of Contemporary China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993). 2. Bruce Cummings, “Boundary Displacement: Area Studies and International Studies during and after the Cold War,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29, no. 1 (January–March 1997): 6–27. 3. Andrew Walder, “The Transformation of Contemporary China Studies, 1977–2002,” in The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, ed. David Szanton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 314–340. 4. Anthropology and international relations represent the most contested fields in social science. See, for example, Marshal Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997). 5. See the discussion by Sandra Harding in Is Science Multi-cultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 6. In these studies, there is no such extant “objective China” to be studied. Specifically, China is not simply China. See, for example, S. G. David Goodman, ed., China’s Provinces in Reform: Class, Community, and Political Culture (London: Routledge, 1997); Lily Ling, Postcolonial Learning between Asia and the West: Conquest and Desire (London: Palgrave, 2001); Chih-yu Shih, Collective Democracy: Political and Legal Reform in China (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press of Hong Kong, 1999); Tani Barlow ed., Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). 7. James Glass has equated postmodern writings with delusional scripts of psychotic patients suffering from paranoia; see Power and Psychosis: Threats to Democracy in the Self and the Group (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); David Campbell accused the international relations literature of violence; see National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).

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8. This controversy is encapsulated in the debate between Jurgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard. See Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995). 9. A. Paul Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 10. A. Philip Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). 11. Wang Hui, The Empire, the State and the Identity of China (Diguo, guojia yu zhongguo rentong), lecture given at Chinghua University, Hsingchu, Taiwan (18 December 2003), mimeograph. 12. Gan Yang, We Are Creating Tradition (Women zhengzai chuangzao chuantong) (Taipei: Lianching, 1989). 13. Mineo Mizoguchi, China as a Method (Zuowei fangfa de zhongguo), trans. Youchong Lin (Taipei: National Institute of Compilation and Translation, 1999). 14. C. Philip Huang, The Crisis of Paradigm in China Studies: On the Paradox of Social Economic History (Zhongguo yanjiu de guifan renshi weiji: Lun shenhui jingji shi zhong de beilunxianxiang) (Hong Kong: Oxford, 1994). 15. For efforts to establish universal law, see Harry Harding, “The Study of Chinese Politics: Toward a Third Generation of Chinese Politics,” World Politics 36, no. 2 (1984): 284–307. 16. Andrew Nathan, “Is Chinese Culture Distinctive?—A Review Article,” Journal of Asian Studies (November 1993): 923–936. 17. Kuoshu Yang. “Why Do We Want to Establish Chinese Indigenous Psychology?” (Women weisheme yao jianli zhongguoren de bentu xinlixue), Indigenous Psychology 1 (1993): 6–88. 18. Hua-lun Kuo, Collected Work on Chinese Communist Issues (Zhong gong wenti lun ji) (Taipei: Chengchi University, 1976), ch. 4. 19. Naitou Konan, “On the Demise of the Qing Dynasty” (Qing chao shuaiwang lun) in Naitou Konan, Chinese General History (Zhongguo shi tong lun), trans. Qian Wanyue (Beijing: Social Science Literature Press, 2004). 20. Guantao Jin and Qinfeng Liu, Collected Work on Issues and Methods (Wenti yu fangfa ji) (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1986). 21. Lucian Pye, The Mandarin and the Cadre: China’s Political Culture (Ann Arbor: Centre for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988). 22. Stevan Harrell, ed., Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995).

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23. Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 24. Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 25. Joseph Needham, Moulds of Understanding: A Pattern of Natural Philosophy, ed. Gary Werskey (Aldershot, UK: Gregg Revival, 1974). 26. Der-wei David Wang, Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 27. Stefan Tanaka made a similar observation in his Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Chih-yu Shih criticized Benedict Anderson in the same vein because the latter tried to draw analogy between a Eurocentric understanding of nation building and Taiwanese nationalism. See Shih, “Darling, I’ve Made a State out of Taiwan” (Qinaide wo ba tiawan bian minzu le), Straits Review (June 2000): 49-55. 28. Also see Harry Harding, “From China, with Disdain: New Trends in the Study of China,” Asian Survey 22, no. 10 (October 1982): 934–958. 29. Richard Madsen, China and the American Dream (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Tanaka, Japan’s Orient. 30. Robert F. Ash, David L. Shambaugh, and Seiichirō Takagi, eds., China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan and the United States (New York: Routledge, 2007). 31. Koichi Nomura, The China Knowledge in Modern Japan (Jindai riben de zhongguo renshi) trans. Xuefeng Zhang (Beijing: Central Translation and Editorial Press, 1999). 32. Chia-ning Huang and Chih-yu Shih, No Longer Oriental: Self and European Characteristics in Japan’s Views on China (Bus hi dongfang: Riben zhongguo renshi zhong de ziwo yu ouzhouxing) (Taipei: The Research and Educational Center for China Studies and Cross Taiwan-Strait Relations, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University, 2009). 33. Michael Y. L. Luk. “A 60 Year Overview of China Studies in Hong Kong” (Liushi nian lai xianggang zhongguo xue gaikuang) Mainland China Studies Newsletters (Zhongguo dalu jiaoxue yanjiu tongxun) 91 (2009): 23–25. 34. Chih-yu Shih and Teng-chi Chang. “The China Studies that Defend China: The Im/possibility of China Centrism in the Divided Sino-phone

26

35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

On China By India World,” in China’s Rise: Threat or Opportunity, ed. Hebert S. Yee (London: Routledge, 2010), 280–296. See Steve Lee, The Malaysian Kwong Wah Newspapers’ View on China: Between the Chinese Overseas and Guest Chinese (Malaixiya guang hua ribao de zhongguo renshi: Zai huaren yu huaqiao liang zhong shenfen zhi jian) (Taipei: The Research and Educational Center for China Studies and Cross Taiwan-Strait Relations, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University, 2009). Dohee Kim and Chih-yu Shih. “China Studies and Political Science in Korea: Reflections on Academic Institution and Disciplinary Division” (Hanguo de zhongguo yanjiu yu zhengzhi xue: Xueshu tizhi yu lingyu guishu de xingsi), Prospect Quarterly (Yuanjing jikan) 8, no. 4 (2007): 131–158. Geremie Barmé, “On New Sinology” (Canberra, Australia: China Heritage Center, 2010), http://ciw.anu.edu.au/new_sinology/index.php. Huaiqiu Ruan (Nguyen), A Peripheral Perspective on the Central Power: The View of Sino-Vietnamese Relations in the Vietnamese Journal “China Studies” (Cong bianyuan kan da guo: Yuenan zhongguo yanjiu qikan dui yue zhong guanxi de renshi) (Taipei: The Research and Educational Center for China Studies and Cross Taiwan-Strait Relations, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University, 2008). Chang-hung Chen and Yuan-ning Yang. “Two Diasporic Approaches to China among Chinese Overseas” (Huayi liaun renshi zhongguo de liangzhong tujing), Southeast Asian Journal (Dongnanya xuekan) 6, no. 2 (2009): 135–176. Yen-chung Tseng. Away from Centrism: Jonathan Unger, Baogang He and the Multiple Agendas of Australia’s China Studies (Aozhou zhongguo yanjiu de duoyanxing: Yi ange ji he baogang de xuexi lichen wei li) (Taipei: The Research and Educational Center for China Studies and Cross Taiwan-Strait Relations, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University, 2010).

Chapter 1

China Studies in the Indian Context A Critical Review Swaran Singh This chapter is the result of my participation as a co-convener in an oral history project on China studies in India. This project was jointly undertaken by the Association of Asia Scholars (AAS, New Delhi) and National Taiwan University (NTU) from 2008 to 2009. Its aim was to audio record in-depth interviews with India’s senior experts on China studies. In all, eighteen senior experts took part, including retired officials, diplomats, businessmen, politicians, and academics from across different social sciences subbranches (e.g., history, political science, economics, sociology, and international relations). About two-thirds of those interviewed were dedicated China scholars from various universities throughout India. The criteria for selecting these experts included the following broad parameters: (a) the experts must have demonstrated decades of sustained interest dedicated to understanding China; (b) they must have already reached the peak of their careers (i.e., they were no longer in the race

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to establish themselves as China scholars); and (c) they had to be in a position to contemplate the past, present, and future of China studies in India. After the list of names was finalized, interviews were conducted by a team of eleven midcareer China scholars from India. This team held two preparatory workshops in New Delhi in March and September 2008. A third workshop brought together select members of this team with China’s experts in Chinese studies overseas in Guilin (Guangxi, China) in March 2009. In addition to these frequent and intense deliberations on India’s China studies and the huge amounts of primary materials that resulted from these in-depth interviews, this project resulted in a concluding conference involving all the project’s team members held in New Delhi on 24 November 2009. The culminating papers were presented at that time and were later revised in view of subsequent deliberations. The format of these in-depth oral history interviews with India’s most senior scholars on China—the mainstay of this project—was debated before it was finalized. The two initial workshops in New Delhi were intended to create a level playing field, ensuring that entire team had a common understanding of the outline of and expectations for this project in terms of shared visions about the broad contours of China studies in India. In addition, I briefed each member of the team in detail about the objectives of this entire project and regarding specific pitfalls and other requirements of conducting an oral history interview. For instance, I conducted a consultation session with interviewers regarding expectations from each senior China scholar to be interviewed. During these discussions, the interviewer was provided with a detailed questionnaire to train him or her in guiding this informal conversation with the expert. However, interviewers did not use the questionnaire while interviewing the senior experts, so as to ensure that the interaction remained an informal conversation. These interviews with select senior scholars were usually conducted at each scholar’s home, ideally in their studies, to allow them to use various photographs, books, gifts, and other mementoes that ignited a

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chain of memories and thought processes. Measures were taken to ensure that the format of conversations remained extremely informal and open ended and that each interviewee remained relaxed and was as unconscious as possible of our tiny audio recorders (although they knew the sessions were being recorded). These interviews collected from two to six hours of recorded conversation and were often completed in a span of several sessions. To ensure continuity in the conversations, the gap between sessions was never more than twenty-four hours. In making all this possible, this team of midcareer experts on China was assisted by a team of four younger scholars who facilitated effective communications, logistics, organization, reporting, and the transcription of these recorded interviews. The results of this series of interviews, spanning over two years, were revealing. Conversations were often very candid and underlined various interconnections of events and ideas that had never been shared before, even in these senior experts’ writings. These represented the very educated and enhanced understanding of both the midcareer team and the younger team of China scholars. Indeed, as the project unfolded, this intense exposure to discussions on China studies in India encouraged the team of midcareer China scholars to plan a one-day conference to conclude this project. This was to be the venue in which these midcareer specialists spoke, presenting papers on predetermined components of China studies in India. This conference was held in New Delhi on 24 November 2009 with the aim of publishing these papers as a full-length volume. In the follow-up discussions amongst editors of this volume and in their subsequent negotiations with the publishers, it emerged that the book could also include in abridged form select transcriptions of the interviews with India’s senior scholars in China studies. In addition, the project enhanced the skills of both the midcareer scholars and the younger China scholars in two aspects: conceptualizing methods and processes for examining the evolution and the current state of China studies in India and organizing logistics and other operations in undertaking an oral history project of this nature and scale.

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On completion of this oral history project, the first thing the team decided was that all materials produced during this oral history project must be placed on the websites of AAS and NTU and made freely available to concerned researchers around the world. As the project was moving towards its conclusion in March 2009, select members of the team met their Chinese colleagues in their third China studies workshop in Guilin, China. It was then decided that the papers discussed in that workshop—which included two papers by three members of the Indian team and three papers written by three experts from China—must be published in a reputable Chinese journal. These papers were eventually published in the no. 2 issue of the summer 2010 edition of the Chinese language journal of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS, Beijing), titled Guowai shehui kexue (Social Sciences Abroad). In that publication, an earlier and shorter version of this essay served as the introductory article titled “The Review of China Studies in India” (Yindu de zhongguo yanjiu pinglun), which I authored jointly with Chih-yu Shih of NTU. As part of their regular deliberations in the presence of invited senior experts as mentors, the team of midcareer China scholars arrived at some broad conclusions about their own collective assessment, which lay at the base of the individual papers in this volume. These conclusions were formed in the process of recording the in-depth interviews with select senior China experts in India. However, whereas each paper addresses specific areas of its author’s specialization, this introductory essay attempts to provide an overview of our collective and critical assessment of the state of China studies in India. In doing so, it especially focuses on examining and highlighting some of the basic flaws and the glaring limitations of India’s China studies throughout the last fifty years. This critical review is presented here with the aim of generating constructive debates on the urgent need for greater rigor in India’s China studies.

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The Gap Between Social Scientists and Linguists First and foremost, most of the visible debates and published works on China in India continue to highlight the gap between social scientists and linguists—something that can be described as a global phenomenon, at least in the developing world. This gap continues to drive a wedge between those who pride themselves on using the original-language source materials and those who produce papers on China studies using the rigorous methodologies, models, and theoretical paradigms of the social sciences. This limited approach continues to make both sides vulnerable and critical of each other, each describing the other’s works as either mere translation (if not transliteration) of Chinese propaganda or a rehashing of western analysis of China with little relation to original Chinese sources or to India’s own needs and perspectives. Epistemologically, the division parallels the two themes of this book: civilization and the nation-state. This, however, is not any new revelation that has dawned only as a result of our oral history project of 2008–2009. Most of India’s senior scholars on China have also tried to fight their share of the battle regarding this issue. But different experts gave up the endeavor of bridging the gap at different stages—some even moving to altogether different specializations—with very few exceptions demonstrating long-term persistence. What this project seeks to underline is that bridging the gap has remained an individual enterprise; no attempt has been made to evolve an institutional response. This gap, therefore, has remained the most counterproductive and glaring limitation of India’s China studies—one that has not yet found any satisfactory answer or resolution. Second, the project highlighted a related problem of duplication, disjunction, and continued lack of coordination in the evolution of institutions and individual expertise; even personal acrimonies and factions that present the most fundamental challenge for China scholars in India resemble a gulf that needs to be bridged urgently. This project finds multiple explanations that explain this persistent dichotomy. My own favorite explanation is the following: better remuner-

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ation is based on one’s expertise in Chinese language. In terms of the level of language skills, tourist guides and translators are the best paid, followed in descending order by interpreters, teachers, and researchers. Thus when classified on the basis of remuneration, those in the higher-education sector in India represent the bottom income earners in India’s liberalizing and rapidly growing economy. In a rapidly opening free-market society, talent follows the law of gravity and flows in the direction of higher remuneration. In this sense, it can be said that India’s China experts have clearly failed to convince the power elite of the need to prioritize China studies. Second, India’s China studies also remain confined to India’s select number of higher learning institutions. At the same time, China studies have not found any place in the curriculums of regular universities or other institutions of higher learning, and the discipline barely exists in school textbooks or in primary-level classroom teaching. It is just beginning to be stressed at the level of institutions, such as the University Grants Commission (UGC) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). There seems to be no hurry in implementing these broad visions of government policy outline. Even in the select institutions of higher learning that have traditionally included China studies, there are very few China experts, although both China and India boast of being home to one-third of humanity and of having the fastest-growing economies in the world. Despite these glaring hiccups and occasional knee-jerk reactions (e.g., government policy outlines) aimed at rectifying these limitations, the limited number of China experts remains an issue that has become a constant refrain among China scholars of every age and color. Nothing substantive has yet been done to rectify this deficit or fill this gulf, which continues to undermine the credibility of China scholarship in India. What are the consequences of this neglect and slow development? Although occasional efforts have been made at coordinating various institutions focusing on China studies and even in bridging the gap between training in Chinese language and China studies—at least by some of the well-known institutions, in principle—no institutional infrastructure has

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been able to overcome the divide between Chinese language and China studies scholars. The establishment of a Confucius Institution at Jawaharlal Nehru University remains an apt case in point. This is not the place to explore its causes, yet negotiations of four years have been extremely slow and have fizzled into inactivity; this is indeed typical of most such initiatives. Therefore even in cases where many combinations of language and studies have been tried, the experts end up pursuing their exclusionary trajectories, with the result that acts of bridging the gap are limited to ceremonial lip service on important occasions. This circumscribes India’s China studies and renders them greatly influenced by western literature and interpretations (almost aping them rather than addressing any indigenous Indian perspectives and needs); they are often hijacked by popular print and visual media debates that tend to sensationalize China analyses that only reinforce negative stereotypes. Perhaps a few select institutions—or rather, a few individual experts— can take pride in having experimented with bridging the gap with some success; yet these efforts have enjoyed only brief moments of glory that are rarely institutionalized to train future generations of China scholars. It is in this context that emerging India must make understanding rising China an imperative, perhaps providing India an opportunity to rededicate itself to strengthening China studies. Most senior experts share the belief that serious deliberation about the field’s limitations should be the first important step in making such a transformation in India’s China studies. This project and the critical overview in this chapter, therefore, are viewed as a trigger to larger debate and to follow-up initiatives in India’s academic institutions with stakes in China studies.

Divisions in India’s Perspectives on China Another issue of critical significance consists of the strong divisions in India’s perspectives on China and its recent rise. Academics and India’s power elite in general remain sharply divided in their evaluations of China,

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which represent a range of viewpoints from Sinophobes to Sinophiles (i.e., from those who consider China an evil empire to those who romantically describe China as a sister civilization, more sinned against than sinning, and so on). The bulk of China watchers, though, has increasingly become more focused on the middle ground, prescribing cautious engagement in dealing with China. These divisions once resulted in a split in the large, left-leaning Communist Party of India (CPI): the pro-China faction formed a breakaway party called the Communist Party of India Marxists (CPM), which has ruled the Indian province of West Bengal for over three decades. All this has a clear influence on India’s China studies, and Kolkata (the capital of West Bengal), in addition to the national capital of New Delhi, has emerged as an important center for China studies— although Bengal has the distinction of being home to important institutions that focused on China studies even in preindependence times. Second, looking at the broad canvas of higher education in India, it seems that with the increasing emphasis on scientific, professional, and vocational courses, social sciences and humanities have become increasingly neglected and marginalized, a phenomenon that partly explains the slow development of China studies even in the wake of China’s recent rise. However, the last three decades of China–India rapprochement have witnessed some changes in India’s official policy perceptions, thereby facilitating changes in perceptions among India’s middle classes and even the masses in general. For instance, in the 1960s and 1970s, India’s debates on China and China studies were largely influenced (if not controlled) by people from India’s armed forces and government with postings either in China or in China–India border regions, along with a very limited number of Chinese language scholars. The nature of their work naturally led to the conceptualization of China more as nation-state than as civilization. Clearly owing to difficult China–India ties, all three groups shared generally negative perceptions about China; exceptions were few and far between. Although this had something to do with the China–India war of 1962, it could well go beyond to other factors, such as China’s Great

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Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the arrival of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, in India. With India emerging and China rising since the early 1990s, this reality has been transformed. Today these three constituencies are witnessing the addition of three new constituencies, including small-town, smalltime business people who are busy traveling to China and who depend on their trade with China for their livelihood; a rapidly rising number of India’s students in China (over eight thousand at the time of writing), as well as academic and tourist travelers, most of whom share a positive view of China; and finally, a heavy traffic of Chinese traveling to and working in India and interacting with ordinary Indian people, among whom the focus on China has certainly increased in last few years. These three constituencies have contributed to building a positive view of China. With increasing opportunities for employment with Chinese companies or with Indian companies doing business in or with China, the study of the Chinese language has suddenly, in last few years, become a far more sought-after vocation. However, there still remain basic limitations. To begin with, the response to an increased interest in Chinese language learning in various academic institutions across India’s universities has evolved to cater to people with only transitory and peripheral interests in China as such. The crash-course style of teaching is becoming especially popular with India’s business schools and business houses, and it has come to include a new class of home tutors. In the traditional format, in addition to academic linguists who pursue Chinese language as a staple of careers in teaching, translation, or interpretation, most China scholars in India now acquire the language skills only during their initial years in academics. Today young Indian learners can watch Chinese television channels in their homes (although these have not yet taken off in terms of popularity), but even those who are oriented toward enhancing their language skills face various roadblocks that discourage and distract young minds from focusing on China studies in India.

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During these early years, for young learners of the Chinese language the levels and methods of acquiring knowledge exhibit shortcomings. Very often the course curriculums and techniques remain dated, and language labs and materials are virtually nonexistent or extremely limited. There remains a visible imbalance between speaking and comprehension, on the one hand, and reading and writing, on the other. Business schools privilege speaking, whereas traditional institutions focus on writing, reading, and grammar. Very few of these have access to Internet services, and there are no radio programs or traditions of Friday park-corner conversations to encourage learning Chinese (or any other foreign language) in India. Some residues of the colonial mindset in India also continue to grant higher status to learning European languages over Asian languages, including Chinese. Even when acquired, these language skills are invariably lost over a period of time as experts and officials move on to other areas of specialization or face a severe lack of opportunities for maintaining contact with the language. Among those who manage to stay within core China studies or official postings, a paucity of institutional incentives prevents any constant, regular sharpening of their language skills. Most Chinese business people, officials, and academics visiting India increasingly speak English, which reduces the opportunities for Indian scholars to maintain and hone their Chinese language skills. In addition, with the increasing number of Internet translation services available, as well as daily translation services (e.g., Foreign Broadcast Information Services series) available online, the social ambience for rigor and slow acquisition of skills feels challenged by quick enabling devices that entice scholars who face the pressure of deadlines or the need to push ahead in their careers. Sometimes younger generations, seen as increasingly cosmopolitan, are not convinced that they should not be using western translation services and interpretations in examining and understanding China. With intellectual inquiries shifting to Internet sources, these free—albeit poor—translation facilities have also affected opportu-

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nities for new learners to practice in their learning process. This deficit of not using libraries, research cards, and character-practicing exercise sheets has become a general limitation of Internet-driven education in general. Finally, even when one can count a few institutions of excellence that have produced generations of Chinese language speakers, these limited institutional facilities remain confined to major cities, particularly Delhi, Kolkata, and Shantiniketan in India’s West Bengal province. Universities have apparently never considered offering orientation or refresher courses in a combined Chinese language and China studies format. China studies have therefore remained part of India’s area studies, in which China is often treated as part of East Asian studies; not much has been done to develop specialized centers for China studies in India. As a result, with the exception of a few bright, self-driven scholars, the institutional infrastructure does not facilitate more than momentary interest in the Chinese language and therefore does not help establish a strong basis for China studies based on language skills.

China Studies Initiatives in India To enumerate some of the initiatives taken to create the infrastructure of China studies in India, one can definitely count Cheena Bhavan (“China house”) in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, as the pioneering institution, although the teaching of Chinese language had preceded it at the University of Calcutta (the city now known as Kolkata), which remains another major center for China studies, part of its Department of Southeast Asian Studies. In New Delhi, both the University of Delhi (DU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have departments of East Asian Studies. At JNU, however, China studies have been bifurcated into discrete courses in the School of International Studies and the School of Languages and Culture. Teachers at these two universities set up an autonomous Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), which remains the exclusive institution on China studies in India and publishes the journal China Report, a pioneering

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research platform for India’s China experts. In addition, such universities as Punjab University (Chandigarh, Punjab) and Sri Venkataswara University (Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh) also have teaching programs on China studies. And an independent Chennai Centre for China Studies (CCCS) has recently been established in Chennai (formerly Madras), in Tamil Nadu in the south of India. The following section briefly reviews some of the efforts and initiatives of these major institutions.

Cheena Bhavan In 1918 the University of Calcutta initiated a Chinese studies program with a course on Chinese language in its Department of Indian History and Culture. This certainly contributed to Rabindranath Tagore’s inspiration to set up Cheena Bhavan following his travels to China in 1924. After consultation with local and foreign experts, Tagore started a program in Chinese studies at his university (Visva Bharati) in 1926. He invited a young Chinese scholar, Tan Yunshan, who later became the founderdirector of Cheena Bhavan from 1928, and then set up a Research Department of Chinese Studies. This continued to be a pioneering and thriving center for China studies until the onset of the China–India war. Even today, Cheena Bhavan remains a treasure of rare manuscripts and materials, several of which are not available even in China, that witness to a period of Indian intellectual history in which China appeared mostly as an inspiring civilization. However, this archive has been neglected, and the institute has failed to attract talent or even to play an active role in building academic excellence or policy studies. The Institute of Chinese Studies First set up in 1969, the ICS evolved as an informal group of China scholars from the DU, JNU, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), the Institute of Economic Growth, the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA), and other institutions in Delhi. It has continued its fortnightly (later weekly) discussions on contemporary topics and has sustained the publication of its flagship journal, China

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Report; in 1990 this group constituted itself as the ICS. The institute, comprising both retired and serving professors, officials, diplomats, and members of the armed forces, has been known for its interdisciplinary focus. With this mix of academics and practitioners, the institute provides a platform that enables the conceptual meeting of civilizational China and nation-state China most vividly. Nevertheless, it remains primarily focused on policy studies and has been a major catalyst in materializing Indian perspectives on the Kunming Initiative and the strengthening of the Russia–China–India strategic triangle. It has also been supported by India’s Ministry of External Affairs and other agencies and is part of CSDS, where it has been hosted since 1978. Similarly, both DU and JNU have had their respective programs on China studies. Whereas the history of DU goes back to 1922, that of JNU can be traced to the Indian School of International Studies (ISIS). ISIS was set up in 1955 as part of New Delhi’s Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), which was formed in 1943, and ICWA remains based in New Delhi’s famous Sapru House, built in 1955. ISIS was affiliated with DU in 1961 and later with the establishment of JNU in June 1970; it was renamed the School of International Studies (SIS) and became JNU’s first institution. SIS has hosted the program of Chinese Studies in its Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), which also includes Japanese and Korean studies. JNU’s School of Language, Literature, and Culture Studies (SLL & CS) has a separate Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS), which offers a program on the instruction of Chinese language and literature. Whereas CEAS offers MPhil and PhD programs in Chinese studies and contributes to the SIS master’s program, the CCSEAS at SLL & CS offers a four-year bachelor’s degree, two-year masters and MPhil programs, and PhD degrees in Chinese language and literature. DU set up its Centre for Chinese Studies in 1964, and this was upgraded into the Department of Chinese and Japanese Studies in 1969. It has since added Korean studies, and it became the Department of East Asian Studies (DEAS) in 2001. DEAS offers three courses: an MA in East Asian Studies,

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an MA in Japanese Language and Literature, and an MPhil/PhD in East Asian Studies. This department, like JNU’s, also offers MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees, as well as diplomas and degrees in Chinese language studies. Some more recent initiatives include the establishment of the Chennai Centre for China Studies (CCCS). It was formally registered on 4 April 2008, although the group had been meeting and deliberating for some time. This is the first initiative of its kind in the southern part of India and comprises mainly retired officials from ministries, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies who share an interest in China studies. Despite its recent origin, CSSS has become a major contributor to China-related policy debates and has created a niche for itself in India’s China studies. Meanwhile, several business schools of private institutions in India have also begun offering short-term and business-oriented courses in Chinese language. This new trend is visible in employment patterns among India’s think tanks and media, which have begun hiring people with backgrounds in China studies. This pattern reflects a slow expansion and transformation of China studies in India. In 2010 the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (under which the Department of Education operates) announced its plan to introduce Chinese language teaching at all levels of general education, marking an important official initiative to train young Indian students in the Chinese language.

Challenges to China Studies in India Yet the more things change, the more they remain the same. Although there has been tremendous conviction regarding the critical nature of China studies in India, problems have often arisen with implementation. In 1988 as part of the golden jubilee celebrations of Visva Bharati’s Cheena Bhavan, the China Study Group (CSG) in New Delhi opened a debate on assessing the direction and state of China studies in India. Even then, one year before the Tiananmen Square incident, this group had already published a research note in China Report highlighting that China’s signif-

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icance for India went far beyond not only its status as the world’s most populous country and India’s largest neighbor but also the trends of hyperactivity in China’s rise and in China–India interactions. What, according to the CSG, warranted focus on China studies was that the development experiences of both the People’s Republic of China and Republic of India have opened new areas of enquiry in theory and policy, as well as practice. The world views of these two countries and the roles they play in international affairs have raised issues relating to the economic, cultural and political transformation of the world. Thus the three broad dimensions of our long term perspective on Chinese Studies in India are: the Chinese Civilisation; the Development Experience; and China and the World. These dimensions can actually be regarded as the central concerns of social science and, therefore, studies in India of these aspects of China can contribute to the generation of a new body of knowledge. This knowledge should be able at once to comprehend the deeper currents spanning long historical periods, capture the meaning of contemporary developments and generate new theories.1 Even in face of this piecemeal transformation of China studies in India, therefore, following the great Indian tradition, Indian scholarship in China studies has been—and continues to be—an individual’s effort done with minimum institutional appreciation and encouragement, not with institutional support or facilitation. As a result, higher education in India remains devoid of the best China studies experts in general. Other than some expertise at JNU and DU and the Foreign Languages Institute and ICS, most other centers—including the paternal Cheena Bhavan—continue to suffer neglect and face the eternal challenge of attracting fresh talent, as well as grooming and (particularly) retaining existing talent, difficulties that have dented the institutions’ capabilities of making any substantial contribution to understanding China from an Indian perspective. Indeed, there are always a few individuals—both within government and outside it— who take pains to study China as their personal passion, and they are not always the most noticeable figures. Very often, even these individual icons

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have not been successful in training the next generation of experts, and this pursuit of excellence remains only an individualistic endeavor. Through my participation in the oral history project on China studies in India, I was brought to the startling conclusion that not much has changed over the years where this topic is concerned. But this project on China studies in India has also resulted in the appreciation and the compilation of some possible solutions; some works have been moving in that direction. What could remedy these perennial problems of China studies in India? The oral history project on China studies in India has brought out some important suggestions. First, the teaching of Chinese language must begin at the primary school level—that is, before young minds become employment oriented and begin to consider the learning process as an investment (of time and money), expecting immediate returns and not driven by desire for acquiring knowledge in the long term. It is only starting at the primary level that the Tagorian perspective on civilizational China can be revived. Second, there is an urgent need for creating institutional infrastructure as well as moral and material incentives, such as awards, field trips, study tours, and regular orientation courses. Competitive events should be established, as well as systems that will encourage rigorous assessment of deserving candidates for career advancement. A rigorous system of “carrots” and “sticks” is recommended, although academia remains opposed to frequent evaluations and assessments. Third, there remain tremendous duplication and waste of resources. This lack of strategic planning and coordination results in the neglect and misapplication of India’s young talent. Most institutions dealing with Chinese language training and China studies must maximize their coordination activities in order to expand their cooperative ventures. Coordination and partnership with private business firms is recommended to provide new incentives and drive. Finally, there is a need for greater interaction among government departments, academic institutions, and private schools, as well as for increased participation of private sector companies to ensure the sharing

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of ideas and greater utilization of national resources invested in India’s academic institutions. Such coordination can also ensure that teaching and research remain oriented toward the changing needs of the market and policy makers, and that they integrate research on China from the civilizational and the national perspectives.

The Importance of China Studies in the Indian Context In conclusion, it is important to underline how the rise of China is making China studies a subject of interest around the world, yet it remains of only limited significance in explaining the need for strengthening China studies in the Indian context. India’s status as a sister civilization and as a peer —a developing, emerging Asian nation with comparable population and growth rates and other development indices—only reinforces the special significance of India’s China studies and highlights the responsibility of the Indian elite to maximize gains and minimize costs by understanding and engaging China and by building partnership with rising China across all sectors. This task requires deeper and sustained examination of the China phenomenon and calls for keeping regular tabs on its changing discourses and other developments. This makes it imperative to train large number of quality experts in China studies from Indian perspectives and to “indigenize” India’s China studies. Indeed, all major powers are currently preparing for similar engagement with China studies, and India will be no exception. What makes India’s needs for strengthening its China studies all the more immediate is its physical proximity to the larger country and the difficult history that has resulted in the complexity of their relations. This circumstance requires a nuanced understanding and focused initiatives toward developing India’s home-grown academic and policy perspectives on China. The oral history project revealed the limitations of available China studies talent in India, as well as how scattered and individualistic

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these pursuits are in engaging and understanding China; this dispersion remains one of most critical issues for the Indian nation as a whole and must be dealt with in an integrated and holistic manner. Greater coordination is therefore urgently needed to maximize results from India’s China studies; this coordination could be expanded to regional and global levels in order to achieve both fine tuning and the strengthening of China studies in India.

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Endnotes 1. China Study Group, “Chinese Studies in India: Perspectives and Programmes,” China Report 24, no. 4 (1988): 473.

Chapter 2

The Role Of Cheena Bhavan Avijit Banerjee

Introduction In 1918 the University of Calcutta initiated a program in Chinese studies by introducing a course on Chinese language and literature in the Department of Indian History and Culture. Unfortunately, the Chinese program did not develop much because of a lack of teachers specializing in the Chinese language. Eventually, Chinese studies in India received a boost with the establishment of Cheena Bhavan in Shantiniketan, which is located 160 kilometers from Kolkata. Rabindranath Tagore, who visited China in 1924, was eager to restore the historical bonds between India and China. He wanted to ensure a continual interflow of cultures between the two great civilizations. To transform his objective into reality, Tagore invited Tan Yunshan to come to Shantiniketan and assigned him the tasks of not only teaching the Chinese language but also developing Chinese studies at Visva Bharati. As founder-director of Cheena Bhavan, Tan

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Yunshan was responsible for creating the so-called center of excellence in Chinese studies. He collected 150,000 volumes of Chinese books for Cheena Bhavan. During his career of thirty years at Cheena Bhavan and Shantiniketan, he was instrumental in helping many universities and institutions in different parts of India develop courses on Chinese studies and language.

Background of the Development of the First Chinese Studies Center: Cheena Bhavan in Shantiniketan Rabindranath Tagore arrived in China in 1924 at the invitation of the Lecturer’s Association of Peiping. He delivered speeches on Indian culture and civilization in various cities of China. During this visit, he discussed the exchange of scholars and professors with members of China’s academic circle. Tagore made a deep impression on the Chinese, and therefore he was given a Chinese name: Zhu Zhen Dan. After his return from China, Tagore started a program for Chinese studies at Visva Bharati in 1926 with the help of the French savant Sylvain Lévi and a Chinese scholar, Lin Wojiang. Tan Yunshan, the founder-director of Cheena Bhavan, came to Shantiniketan in 1928 and made diligent efforts in setting up the Research Department of Chinese Studies at Visva Bharati. Professor Tan went back to China and discussed the ideals and objectives of Tagore with the then vice chancellor of Peking University, Cai Yuanpei, and the then minister of culture in the Kuomintang government, Dai Jitao. These Chinese personalities enthusiastically responded to Tan’s ideas, and in 1933 the Sino–Indian Cultural Society was formally established in Nanjing, with Cai Yuanpei as its first president and Tan as its first secretary. The society aimed to stimulate people’s awareness of the noble ideals of the spiritual cultures of the two nations—that is, peace, universal love, freedom, and equality—and also to promote cultural exchange and friendship between the people of the two countries. The society planned to donate books and manage the funds to build Cheena Bhavan. In 1934 the Sino–Indian Cultural Society was established in Shantiniketan; members

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included important personalities such as Rajendra Prasad, Radhakrishnan, Zakir Hussain, and many others from cultural and educational circles. The society hoped to organize Indian cultural delegations to China and reciprocal Chinese delegations to India in order to conduct research and deliver lectures on Indian and Chinese culture, recommend Indian students to study in China and Chinese students to study in India, establish an Indian institute in China and a Chinese hall in India, publish books and journals, and so on. The work of the Sino–Indian Cultural Society at that time was focused on the establishment of a Chinese studies center. Finally, on 14 April 1937, Cheena Bhavan was established with the following civilizational missions: (a) to conduct research studies in Indian and Chinese learning, (b) to promote the interchange of Indian and Chinese cultures, (c) to cultivate friendship and fraternity between India and China, (d) to unite the two peoples of India and China, (e) to promote jointly universal peace and harmony of humanity, and (f) to help build “the great unity” of the world. The main goal of Cheena Bhavan was to conduct Sino–Indian studies, for which courses on the following topics, among others, were designed: (a) languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Bengali, and other modern Indian languages; (b) Buddhism, including Chinese, Indian, and Tibetan; (c) other religions, including Hinduism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Taoism; (d) philosophy, including Indian and Chinese; (e) literature, including Chinese and Indian; (f) history, including Chinese and Indian; (g) cultural studies, including Chinese and Indian, both ancient and modern; (h) the restoration of lost Sanskrit works from Chinese and Tibetan scriptures; (h) the translation of Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, and Tibetan scriptures; (i) the editing of Chinese, Sanskrit, and other works. These are subjects of civilizational studies that are quite different from the familiar social science approaches that treat China as a comparative case of a developing nation and socialist state. Thus the researchers had a great opportunity to cultivate many rich fields. The Cheena Bhavan that

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was created and molded by Tan Yunshan was, in fact, a multinational institution with an element of cultural infiltration into India from China.

The Initial Development of Chinese Studies at Cheena Bhavan Cheena Bhavan was supported by a large number of Indian and Chinese scholars from its establishment. With few exceptions, these scholars not only distinguished themselves from the academic field but also played a pivotal role in the course of Sino–Indian cultural interaction. All their writings enriched the program on India’s Chinese studies. The time from Cheena Bhavan’s establishment in 1937 to the 1960s was regarded as the golden age of Chinese studies for the organization. In the initial period, various language courses were offered at Cheena Bhavan aside from Chinese, such as Tibetan and Sanskrit. The areas of research were also varied, comprising Sino–Indian studies on Chinese philology, Chinese history, Chinese literature, and Sino–Indian cultural studies. Research conducted at Cheena Bhavan during the 1940s and 1950s can be generally divided into two areas, Buddhist and historical. Buddhist studies included (a) the restoration of ancient Chinese translations of Buddhist texts either in English or Sanskrit, of which the Sanskrit originals are now lost; (b) critical editing of Pali and Sanskrit texts with the help of Chinese translations when available; and (c) comparison of the different versions of the same Sanskrit or Pali texts, using Chinese and other materials with the aim of restoring the archetype of such texts, if possible. Historical studies included (a) the study of ancient and medieval Chinese accounts of India that shed light on the political and cultural history of India, (b) the study and translation of ancient Chinese Buddhist accounts of India, and (c) the study and translation of non-Buddhist historical and geographical texts in Chinese on India, Central Asia, and China. During this period, many books were published, various lectures were organized, and many scholarships were offered for students studying and

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pursuing research on China. Eventually, these people became the nucleus of the research on Chinese studies. Moreover, some scholars came from China’s cultural and artistic circles, such as Xu Zhimo, Xu Beihong, Tao Xingzhi, Zhang Daqian, and Wu Xiaoling, who visited Cheena Bhavan or worked there for a short time. During his stay in Shantiniketan, Xu Zhimo forged a profound friendship with Tagore. On 30 January 1957, premier Zhou Enlai of China specifically visited this university and was honored with Visva Bharati’s highest award, the Desi-Kottama degree. After that, many Indian youths went to China to pursue Chinese language studies; a number of them eventually became famous Sinologists in India.

Contributions of Renowned Scholars in the Development of Chinese Studies Cheena Bhavan was fortunate to have the association of myriad scholars who contributed immensely to the development of the program on Chinese studies at Cheena Bhavan. Most notable among them was P. C. Bagchi, who was not himself a product of Cheena Bhavan but was trained in Hanoi and Paris under such stalwarts as Sylvain Lévi, P. Elliot, and others. The doyen of Chinese studies in India, Bagchi came to the cultural scene at a time when most educated Indians were either ignorant of or indifferent to the legacy of the multifaceted Chinese heritage and its importance to Indian history. Bagchi was connected with Cheena Bhavan from 1945 to 1947; he was a professor at Cheena Bhavan and was also the director of research at Visva Bharati. He was engaged in the study of Buddhism and even taught Indology in China. He knew ancient Chinese, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Nepalese, and several other Central Asian languages. He was dedicated to the study of the India–China Buddhist cultural exchange. His comprehensive and scientific study of China’s culture, as well as the rich results of his research, made him an influential personality among Indian scholars engaged in Sinology in the twentieth century. Bagchi was also the first author in the world to write a special historical survey of India–China contacts. The book, titled India and China: A Thousand Years of Cultural

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Relations, provides information about the ageless affinity between the two civilizations. Dr. Bagchi collected and translated several sections of the ancient Chinese Annals, which contain materials on the history and geography of India during the first few centuries of the Christian era. He translated a Chinese account of India, The Land of the Sakyas (She-kia-fangche), which was compiled by Tao Xuan in the seventh century AD. It is a systematic geography of Central Asia and India compiled from the Buddhist point of view and is an indispensable complement to the famous account of Xuan Zang. In his life and work, P.C. Bagchi exemplified the perfect Sino–Indologist. Cheena Bhavan was built by both Bagchi and Tan Yunshan. Tan oversaw the language and administration, whereas Bagchi was in charge of the research both in Sino–Indological studies and in other research. Aside from Bagchi, other renowned scholars were associated with Cheena Bhavan, including Pandit Vidusekhara Sastri, P. V. Bapat, V. V. Gokhale, Sujit Kumar Mukhopadhyaya, Santi Bhikksu Sastri, Pandit Aiyaswami Sastri, and Prahlad Pradhan. Junior to them were Krishna Kinker Sinha, Amitendranath Tagore, Satiranjan Sen, K. Venkataraman, and V. G. Nair, among others. Pandit Aiyaswami Sastri restored to Sanskrit a treatise on logic called Karatalaratna, with critical notes and an introduction. An important work of the famous Buddhist scholar Bhavaviveka, who lived in the sixth century AD, this long-lost work is preserved only in Chinese translation. Sastri also restored another important text on Buddhist philosophy called Tattvasiddhi, the author of which, Harivarman, lived in the fourth century; Tattvasiddhi is preserved in a fifth-century Chinese translation. Santi Bhikksu Sastri restored another long-lost text to Sanskrit: the Bodhicittotpada-sutra-sastra of Vasubandhu. It is a work on Buddhist philosophy preserved only in a Chinese translation dating to the beginning of the fourth century AD. This body of work underlines the fact that at the initial

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phase of the Chinese studies program at Cheena Bhavan, a large portion of the scholarship was related to Buddhism. Satiranjan Sen translated into English two medical texts, the Sanskrit originals of which had been lost; they were preserved only in old translations. His critical study of the texts shows that at least one of them represents a school different from the Caraka and the Susruta. Amitendranath Tagore translated a number of Jataka stories from the Chinese Tripitaka, the original of which was lost; he translated other stories, as well. Prahlad Pradhan translated a chapter of the Vinaya of the Dharmaguptaka school from its Chinese translation; again, the original Sanskrit work was lost. Professor Pradhan also engaged in translating the entire Vinaya, as well as a critical version of the Abhidharmasamuccaya of Asanga, a philosophical work of great importance. He discovered the Chinese manuscript in the collection of the Bihar Research Society in Patna. Sujit Mukherjea translated the Chinese version of a Dhyana text attributed to Kumarajiva and restored a treatise on “Vijnanavada” that had been translated into Chinese by Paramartha. Sujit Mukherjea prepared a critical version of the “Vajrasuci” using available manuscript materials and their ancient Chinese translations. P. V. Bapat translated from Chinese a lost Sanskrit work called “Arthavargiya-sutra”; it corresponds roughly to the Pali “Atthakavagga,” but there are important differences between the two. Bapat also analyzed the Chinese translation of the Pali text Samantapasadika, which is Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the Vinayapitaka. Bapat prepared a critical version of the Pali text after comparing it with the Chinese version. Pannasiri carried out a comparative study of the different versions of the Sigalovada suttanta, a Buddhist text of great importance. There are four different Chinese translations of the text aside from the Pali version. Pa Chow, a Chinese scholar who came from China to study at Cheena Bhavan, conducted a comparative study of the existing Sanskrit version of the Avadanasataka and its ancient Chinese translation. He also collected important materials that shed light on the original version of the text.

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The Cheena Bhavan Library: A rare treasure for Chinese scholars in India The library of Visva Bharati Cheena Bhavan is a rare treasure not only for the Visva Bharati University but also for the other universities and institutes pursuing research in the field of Chinese studies. The library houses the following works: (a) a collection of commentaries on the Chinese canons of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), containing 186 works comprising 1478 fascicles in 360 folio volumes; (b) the imperial edition of the twenty-four histories, consisting of 3268 fascicles in 538 folio volumes; (c) a complete collection of Chinese prose from the three ancient periods—namely, Chin, Han, and Six Dynasties—containing the works of 3495 authors; and (d) a complete collection of the prose and poetry of the Tang Dynasty. The Cheena Bhavan library also contains a special collection of works of different kinds dating to different times, called Cong shu (“collected works”), as well as the famous Chinese encyclopedias. Another very important and valuable collection of the Chinese Buddhist scriptures called Tripitaka in Sanskrit and Tsang ching in Chinese is also preserved in the Cheena Bhavan library. The facility accommodates several hundred selected books of special importance on Chinese Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy, and religion published by the three famous Chinese Buddhist institutions: the China Buddhist Institute, the Nanjing Buddhist Tripitaka Press, and the Shanghai Buddhist Book Company. Thus the library possesses a nearly complete collection of books on Chinese Buddhism that aids scholars pursuing their studies. Apart from the books on Buddhism, books on Chinese linguistics, politics, literature, and other subjects have been collected by the Cheena Bhavan library since 1970.

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The Development of India’s Chinese Studies through Cultural and Educational Exchange Since the establishment of Cheena Bhavan, an increase has occurred in the visits exchanged by officials and private scholars, some of which are extraordinary. The most outstanding event was the visit of Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek in 1941; they visited Cheena Bhavan and briefly stayed in the Uttarayana, the poet’s residence in Shantiniketan. Another notable visit was the goodwill mission of Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People’s Republic of China, who visited Shantiniketan in 1957. Prior to that were the goodwill mission of the venerable Tai Hsu during the Sino–Japanese war and the mission of Dai Jitao, president of the Examination Yuan of the nationalist government in 1940. Tai Hsu wrote an essay in Chinese tracing the historical relations between India and China and praying for its renewal. This document, engraved on a plaque, is installed on a wall in Cheena Bhavan’s hall. In 1947 a cohort of Indian students went to China to study. The group consisted of three scholars from Cheena Bhavan—namely, Amitendranath Tagore, Satiranjan Sen, and K. Venkataraman. Amitendranath Tagore taught Chinese at Visva Bharati and then went to a university in the United States to teach Indology. Venkataraman taught philosophy and religion at Visva Bharati and also became the director of Cheena Bhavan. Satiranjan Sen taught Chinese at the University of Calcutta and drafted a book titled Teaching Chinese without Tears. Chinese scholar Wei Kueisun, who came to Shantiniketan under the official exchange program, continued on as a faculty member at Cheena Bhavan.

Recent Developments at Cheena Bhavan Because of the opening of the graduate and master’s degree courses in 1979, the research work of the department declined to some extent. Steps were taken to attract scholars from India to conduct research at Cheena Bhavan. The institute’s Diamond Jubilee celebration was

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held on 30 August 1997, for which event many dignitaries, including Wei Fengjiang—Tagore’s first Chinese student—visited Shantiniketan as India’s honored guests. Chinese teachers began to arrive at Cheena Bhavan in 1998, and their arrival immensely benefited the students and scholars of Cheena Bhavan in their studies. Research conducted by the department in the 1990s and 2000s includes the following: Uposatha Ceremony: The Earliest Tradition and Later Developments, A Translation of Lu Xun’s Short Stories from Chinese to the Oriya Language, “Sino–Indian Cultural Exchange between India and China from the 1st Century to the 7th Century,” and A Comparative Syntactic Study of Chinese and English Interrogative and Negative Sentences (a PhD thesis). In addition to producing these works, the scholars engaged in research on Chinese politics, literature, and so on. The scholar-professors who have visited Cheena Bhavan in recent years for short periods and delivered lectures have contributed greatly to the academic exchange and fostered friendship between India and China. Among them were Wei Fengjiang, Geng Yinzeng, Tu Wei-ming, Zhou Fucheng, Wu Xiaoling, Lin Chengjie, Charles Willemen, and Dong Youchen. Members of academic circles around the world still show great interest in visiting this institute for their academic pursuits. Likewise, Wang Lipin and Wu Ou of the Ancient Archives Study Centre of Peking University came to Cheena Bhavan for two months starting in January 2009 to help the department catalog the ancient books preserved in the Cheena Bhavan library. Their visit underscores that the scholars of Chinese universities, too, still opt to conduct their research at Cheena Bhavan. In view of the increasing demand for and popularity of Chinese language study in India and considering the research on Sino–Indian culture among Indian and Chinese scholars, it is high time those involved explored new avenues of academic cooperation between the universities of China and those of India. To this end, Visva-Bharati Cheena Bhavan signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Yunnan University,

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Kunming, People’s Republic of China in June 2011. This memorandum has fostered an exchange of scholars and visiting professors between the two universities. Summer camps for the students of Visva-Bharati will be organized at Kunming, and in the same way summer camps for the students of Yunnan University will be organized at Shantiniketan The realization of this program can be attributed to the lifelong scholarly devotion and contributions of many academic luminaries associated with Cheena Bhavan.

Conclusion Tagore’s visit to China not only brought to the Chinese the high attainments of Indian civilization but also awakened in Chinese minds the grandeur of the eastern civilization. The academic circle in China is still interested in Cheena Bhavan because for several years it has been a center of collaboration between Indian and Chinese cultures. Tagore sought to revive and strengthen the historical relationship between the people of these ancient trans-Himalayan countries through various academic research on Sino–Indian cultural studies, collectively undertaken by Chinese and Indian scholars, as well as scholars from many other countries. As envisioned by Tagore, Cheena Bhavan has indeed developed into an advanced center of research. The awakening of the Sino–Indian cultural renaissance in the twentieth century is mainly due to the vision and effort of two great souls, Tagore and Tan Yunshan. Cheena Bhavan is like a tree: it began as a small seed. In later years Cheena Bhavan flourished, and the program on Chinese studies spread to other parts of India. Indeed, the tireless efforts of the great scholars of Cheena Bhavan in disseminating cultural and educational interests among Indian and Chinese scholars cannot be denied. Avijit Banerjee is Reader in Chinese in the Department of Chinese language and Culture (Cheena Bhavana) at Visva-Bharati University, India.

Chapter 3

Buddhism and Chinese Studies in India Anita Sharma

Since ancient times, Chinese and Indians have maintained close cultural ties. The spread of Buddhism from India to China and then from China to other East Asian countries constitutes a great chapter in the ancient history of cross-civilization exchanges. Buddhism was accepted in China and played an important role, together with China’s indigenous Confucianism and Taoism, in shaping Chinese civilization. Buddhism has been a constant and positive thread in India’s visions of and studies on China. Buddhism has influenced the development of a positive image of China in Chinese studies in India.1 Research on Buddhism in Chinese studies in India has covered the study of Chinese Buddhism as an empirical, objective, critical, scientific field of inquiry grounded in the texts, languages, and traditions of a partic-

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ular historical field of study. If one follows the research trend in Chinese Buddhism in India, one finds that earlier research in India focused on understanding Buddhism’s earliest introduction in China and the conditions that led to the development of uniquely Chinese schools of Buddhist thought, practice, and expression. Indian researchers explored the issues that influenced the development of schools of thought and practice, as well as the processes of interaction among these schools. The fundamental philosophy of early Madhyamika in China has been researched based on important Chinese texts. Chinese sects, such as Huayan, Tiantai, Chan, and Pure Land, were studied in the contexts of the particular historical and social issues that generated them. Research on Chinese Buddhism boasts an astonishing, rich tradition of literary and philosophical works. Translation projects of Chinese Buddhist texts to Sanskrit and vice versa have been undertaken by Indian scholars from different universities both individually and collaboratively. The Chinese language was used as a tool for these translation projects. A comparative study of some Mahayanist texts, such as Lalitavistara Sutra and Gandavyuha Sutra in their Chinese and Tibetan versions, has also been conducted. Lalitavistara Sutra describes events beginning from his descent from the Tushita heaven into his mother’s womb up to the preaching of his first sermon. Radha Banerjee has done work on it. In the Gandavyuha Sutra, a young pilgrim searches for supreme enlightenment that takes him on a journey to see more than fifty teachers. A comparative study of the Nikayas in Pali has been done on the Agamas in Chinese. In recent decades, scholars have been interested in the history of modern Chinese Buddhism, the movement of humanistic Buddhism in contemporary China, studies on the theology of humanitarian Buddhism, the strength of the Chinese Buddhist Order of Nuns, the establishment of international Buddhist organizations, and the Buddhist pattern of Taiwanese identity. New topics for research suggested to young students include the social activities of Buddhist organizations in China.

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The theme of Buddhism on the Silk Road has also attracted the attention of Indian scholars in recent years. Understanding China’s cultural contexts historically helps researchers appreciate the diversity of the cultural heritage of Chinese Buddhism, as well as understand the formation of practices unique to China’s Buddhist traditions. Buddhist scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan began taking interest in this area a few decades ago, but this is a new phenomenon in India. Currently, the focus is on such topics as Xuanzang and the Silk Road, Buddhist settlements and the travels of Xuanzang in India, merchants and monks, the spread and development of Buddhism in China via the Silk Road, and Buddhist archaeological remains along the Silk Road. Art, architecture, inscriptions, and iconography related to Chinese Buddhism also interest the researchers of Chinese studies in India. Recently, statistical studies and comparative studies on Buddhism and Chinese studies have been undertaken by many young Indian scholars. Buddhism and Chinese studies in India developed over time from the beginning of the twentieth century, with the help of Rabindranath Tagore. Upon his return from China, Rabindranath Tagore brought with him the young Tan Yunshan to establish a Chinese center of Chinese Buddhist studies in Shantiniketan. The Shantiniketan movement emphasized language and classical studies. Analysis of Buddhist texts and India– China cultural exchange groups were the important aspects of this movement. Thanks to Tagore’s interest and the leadership of P. C. Bagchi, young scholars particularly interested in Buddhism began to arrive from all over India, and some of them were sent to China for specialized studies in Buddhism. Although Professor Bagchi was not a product of Shantiniketan, he was a great Sinologist and Buddhist scholar. His services to the cause of Buddhist learning at Shantiniketan are highly commendable. Having studied Buddhism and Chinese language under the illustrious French scholar Sylvain Lévi, Bagchi became the doyen of Chinese studies in India. He completed his PhD in Paris, but his most widely read works were published in India and China; his best-known work is India and China: A Thousand Years of Sino–Indian Contact (1944). He was a

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scholar maker. His research was embodied in four volumes in the SinoIndica series, the first two volumes of which, numbering nearly eighthundred pages, contain a detailed survey of the Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist texts. The other two volumes contain a critical study of two ancient Chinese–Sanskrit dictionaries compiled in China during the Tang period for use by Buddhist scholars. These works opened a new avenue of research to Indologists but have yet to be translated to English. Biswadeb Mukherjee was another renowned scholar of Buddhist studies. Although Mukherjee worked on Pali- and Sanskrit-based Buddhism, his research also included research papers on such themes as comparative study and Buddhist works in Chinese translation. He compared the enlarged Lankavatara sutra with several Chinese translations of this text done in different periods. According to Mukherjee, The languages of India and China belong to two completely different language groups. Except for a few expressions and names which are phonetically reproduced in Chinese, the Chinese translations virtually provide us with word-by-word commentary on the original Indian texts. Once translated the text became frozen, and thus remained free from the additions and alterations which the texts in India underwent. Sometimes the Indian text got so changed that a new translation of the same text became imperative. The Chinese translations thus constitute an important milestone in the history of a gradual development of a text or of the philosophy contained in the text.2 Aiyaswami Sastri translated Karatalaratna, an important work of the famous Buddhist scholar Bhavaviveka, into Sanskrit. He also restored another important text on Buddhist philosophy called Tattvasiddhi. Shanti Bhikshu translated the Bodhicittotpada-sutra-sastra of Vasubandhu into Sanskrit, the original of which had long been lost. Amitendranath Tagore translated a number of Jataka stories from the Chinese Tripitaka. Prahlad Pradhan translated a part of the Vinaya of the Dharmaguptaka school from its Chinese version, and he also translated a critical version of the Abhidharmasamuccaya of Asanga, a philosophical work of great impor-

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tance. Sujit Mukherjea translated the Chinese version of a Dhyana text attributed to Kumarajiva and restored a treatise on Vijnanavada from Chinese. In addition, he prepared an analytical version of the Vajrasuci, with the help of its ancient Chinese version. Pannasiri carried out a comparative study of the different versions of the Sigalovada suttanta, a Buddhist text of great importance. Jayeeta Ganguli conducted research on Chinese Buddhism; her area of research is Chinese Buddhism with special reference to the Vinaya literature preserved in Chinese. She is currently working on a project titled Transformation of the Buddhist Community in Modern China. The Department of Buddhist Studies was established at the University of Delhi in 1957 with the objective of promoting advanced studies in all branches of learning and publishing works of permanent value. To commemorate 2500 years of Buddhism and to pay homage to ancient learning, the University of Delhi, in collaboration with the Indian government, planned to establish the department with specializations in six core areas: Buddhist history, Buddhist philosophy, Pali-based Buddhism, Tibetan language and Buddhism, classical Chinese Language, and Buddhism. P. V. Bapat was the founding head of the department and was interested in Chinese Buddhism. His book 2500 Years of Buddhism includes a chapter on Chinese Buddhism. In 1970 after joining the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Poone, Bapat collaborated with A. Hirakawa to translate into English for the first time Shan-chien-pʻipʻo-sha: A Chinese Version by Saṅghabhadra of Samantapȧsȧdikȧ, which is a commentary on the Pali Vinaya. Bapat also translated from Chinese a lost Sanskrit work called Arthavargiya-sutra. Latika Lahiri joined the Department of Buddhist Studies in 1967 and there she supervised many research students conducting studies on topics related to Chinese Buddhism. Her pioneer work was the translation of Yijing, Chinese Monks in India (1986), a biography of eminent monks who went to the western world in search of the law during the great Tang Dynasty. Other research of Lahiri’s examined the Lung-man cave inscriptions, the popularity of Maitreya Bodhisattva, and the Pure Land School and its

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influence on Chinese society. In the 1990s, R. K. Rana joined the department, having obtained his doctorate and written his dissertation on A Study of the Buddhist Laity in Chinese Society from the 4th to 8th Centuries AD. Since then, he has been conducting research on Chinese Buddhism. His many writings include “Aspects of Buddhist Literature in China,” “Expansion of Buddhism in China,” “Concept of Sudden Enlightenment in Chan Buddhism,” “The Hua-yen Doctrine of Dhrmadhatu,” “An Investigation into the Spirit of Fang-bian (Skillfulness) in Chinese Buddhism,” “Chan Thought and Art,” An Analysis of the Chinese Traveler’s Account of Buddhism in Punjab,” “Dharma and Tao: Some Interaction Between Chinese Chan and Taoism, Nalanda and the Tantric Tradition in China,” and “Chinese Traveler’s Description of Purity in Ancient Indian Monastic Life.” Rana has done extensive research on such topics as Buddhist literature in China and various Chinese Buddhist sects. The University of Delhi’s Department of Buddhist Studies has been publishing a journal since 1974; more than thirty-five volumes have already been published, but very few papers are on Chinese Buddhism. Lal Ji Shravak, head of the Pali and Buddhist Studies Department of Benares Hindu University, not only translated Chinese Buddhist texts into Hindi but also conducted critical studies of various texts. He translated the Chinese Buddhist texts Za-A-Pi-Tan-Xin-Lun and A-Pi-Da-MoJi-Yi-Men-Zu-Lun into Hindi, a great achievement for an Indian scholar working on Chinese Buddhism. Shravak’s other well-researched papers are “Teaching Methods of India in the Seventh Century A.D. Based on the Records of Yi Jing,” “Wei Shi Lun Zong: Its Rise and Development,” “Contribution of Xuanzang to the Abhidharma studies in China,” “Persecution of Buddhism by Chinese Rulers and the Role of Intellectuals: From Beginning to the Tang Period,” “A Study of the Catalogues of Chinese Buddhist Texts,” “Chinese Translation of Buddhist Texts and Problems of the Translation of Technical Terms,” “Role of Daoism in the Expansion of Buddhism in China,” and the “Role of Tibetans in the History of Chinese Buddhism.” When I had a discussion with Professor Shravak on Buddhism and Chinese studies in India, he informed me about his forth-

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coming book, Xuanzang’s Contribution as Translator to the Development of Buddhism in China. Shravak is presently translating the book Indian Influences on Chinese Art from Chinese into Hindi. The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies is a peer-reviewed journal published by the Benares Hindu University. It publishes translations of Chinese texts along with papers on Chinese Buddhism. Nava Nalanda Mahavihara in Nalanda was set up in 1951 to develop a center of higher studies in Pali and Buddhism along the lines of the ancient Nalanda Mahavihara; Bhikshu Jagdish Kashyap was the founderdirector of the institute. The major accomplishment of the Mahavihara is the publication of Pali- and Sanskrit-based Buddhist works under the guidance of such renowned scholars as Satkari Mookherjee, C. S. Upasaka, D. K. Barua, and recently Ravindra Panth. After integrating Xuanzang Hall with the Mahavihara, Professor Panth obtained university status for Nava Nalanda Mahavihara. Since ancient times, Nalanda has played a significant role in the development of Buddhism in China; today Nava Nalanda Mahavihara organizes seminars, conferences, and workshops and also presents well-documented research on Chinese Buddhism. Although the focus in Nava Nalanda Mahavihara is on Pali and Sanskrit, some research on Chinese-based Buddhism has also been conducted under the guidance of Chander Shekher Prasad. He joined the Mahavihara in 1973 after finishing his research in Shantiniketan under the supervision of K. V. Ramanan of Cheena Bhavan, Shantiniketan. His specialized field of study is the comparative study of the Chinese Agama Sutras and Pali Nikayas, but he has produced many papers on different aspects of Buddhism using Chinese sources, including the Chinese Agama vis-à-vis the Sarvāstivāda tradition, the semblance of Pali scriptures in the Chinese Buddhist canon, and the role of the ancient Nalanda Mahavihara in fostering relations between India and China. During the course of writing this chapter, I met with Dr. Prasad and interviewed him about his writings. He informed me that his forthcoming book will present his research on Chinese Buddhism with Chinese references.

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The Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts in New Delhi has an East Asia department involved in multidisciplinary research projects. Conferences, workshops, and seminars constitute an important part of its research leading to publications. Chinese Buddhist art and architecture is one of the major areas of research. Radha Banerjee of the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts is a scholar of Buddhism and Buddhist art who has published several articles on Indian and Chinese Buddhist art in international journals. She has edited a book, Xuanzang and the Silk Road, with Lokesh Chandra, a renowned scholar of Buddhism with over four hundred works and text editions to his credit. His representative works are the Dictionary of Buddhist Iconography (twenty volumes) and The Thousand Armed Avalokitesvara. Later on, he worked on the origin of Avalokitesvara, which is based on original Sanskrit, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Sogdian, and Tibetan works. Sujatha Reddy, also from the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, has dedicated herself to the comparative study of Chinese and Sanskrit Buddhist texts. Dr. Bhagyalakshmi, also from the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, has written papers such as “The Creation of Goddess of Mercy from Avlokiteshvara.” Advaitavadini Kaul has conducted extensive research on Buddhist scholars from Kashmir who went to China to spread Buddhism. Her book Buddhist Savants of Kashmir: Their Contribution abroad is detailed in its exposition of the contribution made by Kashmir-based Buddhist scholars and missionaries in the ancient and early medieval period in China. The K. J. Somaiya Center of Buddhist Studies in Mumbai can also be considered to benefit Buddhism and China studies in India. It organizes international conferences for Indian and Chinese scholars working on Chinese Buddhism, and it facilitates understanding of the current research trends in this area of specialization. The completed interviews of several renowned Indian scholars of Chinese Buddhism and the data available for Buddhism and China studies in India allow the division of the stages of research into four categories. The first relates to understanding Buddhism’s earliest introduction to

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China. Indian scholars researched the themes of origin, development, and evolution of various Buddhist sects in China. Comparative studies on these sects with Indian or Japanese schools also belong to this category. The salvation-oriented issues that influence the development of Buddhist schools of thought and practice, as well as the processes of interaction among these Chinese schools, are also explored. The interaction among Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism in China has also been studied. Very interesting research has been conducted on the study of Buddhism among the national minorities of Yunnan Province in China. An intensive and in-depth study has been conducted on Buddhist festivals and rituals in Yunnan Province. The second category is translation related. The translation of Chinese Buddhist texts into Sanskrit and vice versa represents the second stage in the academic research on Buddhism and Chinese studies in India. Owing to the difficulties faced by Indian scholars regarding knowledge of classical Chinese, research on a wider scale is difficult. A well-trained scholar who lacks knowledge of the language cannot access important information and scripts. Nevertheless, Indian scholars of Buddhism and Chinese language realized the importance of the translations of Buddhist texts in the study of Chinese Buddhism. As Harprasad Ray said, “A comparison of the Vinaya pitakas in Chinese translation with their Pali counterparts often yields new and significant insight. The accounts in the Chinese Vinayas are often more complete than those in the Pali Vinayas and shed more light on many aspects of early Indian life and society. They are also the source of information on the doctrinal schism between the various Buddhist schools.”3 The third category covers Buddhism on the Silk Road. According to Lokesh Chandra, “This route is the first and foremost pathway of texts and translators, of sutras and schools of thought.”4 Many Chinese pilgrims went to India for Buddhist studies, and Indian monks went to China to spread the faith. The footprints of Buddhist pilgrims can be seen on the Silk Road along central and northwest India, as well as in Southeast

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Asia. Traversing from India to modern China and beyond, Buddhism not only affected the lives and cultures in those in the regions but also left a legacy in arts, architecture, and literature. Historically understanding China’s cultural contexts helps researchers appreciate the diversity of Chinese Buddhism’s cultural heritage and understand the formation of practices unique to China’s Buddhist traditions. Buddhist scholars from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan began taking interest in this area a few decades back, but this is a new phenomenon in India. Some research has also been conducted on the Cetiyagharas in Indian and Chinese Buddhist caves. The beginning of twenty-first century saw the revival of Buddhism in China with the opening up of the first Buddhist forum in Hangzhou. In recent decades, Indian scholars have become interested in the history of modern Chinese Buddhism, contemporary social issues and Buddhism, the humanistic Buddhism movement in contemporary China, and so on. All these fall into the fourth category—namely, Buddhism and the environment, a new area of research for Indian scholars. Buddhist ethics, economics, and activism are seen in relation to environmental issues in contemporary China. Various research topics related to the role of Taiwanese Buddhist organizations in China, such as Foguang Shan, Fagu Shan, and Tzu Chi, are being studied. Narayan Sen, a veteran China studies scholar, provided relevant information on Buddhism and Chinese studies in India in telephone discussions.5 Aside from sharing information about Indian scholars who specialized in Chinese Buddhism since the middle of the twentieth century, he also talked about young Indian scholars who are working on topics such as Chinese Jatakas. Indian scholars of Buddhism believe that in the present context as in ancient times, Buddhism in Chinese studies in India plays a significant role in bringing India and China together. The hard work of these Indian scholars in researching Buddhism and China studies in India has brought many accomplishments. The most significant of these achievements is restoring lost Sanskrit books by trans-

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lating Chinese Buddhist texts into English, Hindi, or Sanskrit. Comparative study of the various editions of the same text in Sanskrit and Pali is conducted with the help of available Chinese translations. Translation is no easy task, and translation involving classical Chinese is doubly difficult. Only through comparative studies can one can arrive at reliable conclusions regarding certain aspects of the history of Buddhism. Clearly, for such comparative studies, materials preserved in Chinese translation are absolutely indispensable. These extant studies by Indian scholars have significantly enriched scholars’ understanding of Chinese Buddhist traditions. The quality of research varies widely, ranging from translations to several informative aspects of Chinese Buddhism dealing with the newly emerged issues and their relevance in the modern world. These studies are still in the relatively early stages of exploring the rich diversity of Chinese Buddhism. The goal of this chapter is to enable young scholars working on Chinese Buddhism to conceptualize the entire body of research that has been undertaken in this field by earlier scholars, allowing scholars to evaluate and appreciate the tremendous work already accomplished, as well as aiding them in selecting topics for further research in the field. Anita Sharma is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Delhi.

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Endnotes 1. This chapter, embedded in the image of civilizational China, is based on the interviews of scholars from different universities and organizations working on Chinese Buddhism and their contributions to Chinese studies. Tibetan Buddhism is not included because it needs to be discussed separately. 2. Mukherjee Biswadeb, “Comparative Study and Buddhist Works in Chinese Translation,” in Fojiao yu zhongguo wenhua guoji xueshu huiyi shang ji (Proceedings of the International Conference on Buddhism and Chinese Culture, Upper Volume) (Taipei County: Committee of Religious Studies of General Association of Chinese Cultural Renaissance, 1995), 259–283. 3. “Understanding Xuanzang and the Xuanzang Spirit,” in Across the Himalayan Gap, http://ignca.nic.in/ks_41020.htm. 4. “India and China: Beyond and the Within,” in Across the Himalayan Gap, http://ignca.nic.in/ks_41023.htm. 5. Narayan Sen, personal communication with the author, October 2009.

Chapter 4

Chinese Studies in India B. R. Deepak

Language and Chinese Studies in India This chapter looks into various phases and the growth of Chinese studies in India, especially the language element and its contribution toward strengthening the research and understanding of past and present China. Every researcher acknowledges the importance of language in area studies, for the very knowledge of language directly affects the possibility of acquiring a more in-depth, correct, and objective understanding of a country and its civilization. In India, however, language and area studies have remained disparate owing to various perceptions of them and to challenges involved in integrating them. This chapter argues that if Chinese studies are to be strengthened in India, language and area studies need to be integrated so that one can benefit from the other and so that more comprehensive, objective, in-depth, and comparative studies can be initiated.

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China studies are multidisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary, composing an individual, collective, institutional, and intrainstitutional field of scholarly inquiry and edification that offers a holistic understanding of China in various domains; language is only one of these domains. With the emergence of China upon the global economic and political stage, Chinese studies, especially the learning of the Chinese language, have gathered momentum not only in India but also in the world at large. For various political and economic reasons, however, Chinese studies in India constitute a relatively recent phenomenon compared with the state of the field in western countries. Chinese studies in India have been lopsided for a long time and remain so because of the lack of real language expertise among China experts. There is no researcher who does not emphasize and acknowledge the importance of language in area studies; language, as an essential carrier of a country’s culture, tradition, history, and philosophy is bound to play an important role in decoding each and every aspect of that country. But in India the separation of language and area studies has resulted in a sort of “touch me not” psychology between the two, although institutions and universities in China encourage interdisciplinary studies. Therefore gauging the state of Chinese language and China studies in India requires returning to history in order to discover how the fields developed, disintegrated, and attempted to reassert themselves under different circumstances.

The Beginning and the Four Phases Courses in Chinese language were first introduced in University of Calcutta in 1918. These were obviously started with the aim of learning more about Chinese civilization, which was emerging as a symbol of Asian resurgence after having overthrown the Qing Empire (1644–1911) through an armed revolution (the Xinhai Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen). Indian revolutionaries and nationalists, such as Rash Behari Bose, Baraktullah, Surender Mohan Bose, Lala Lajpat Rai, and many others, established strong links with Sun Yat-sen and other Kuomintang leaders. To

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bring together the nationalists of Asian countries, an organization called the Association for Asian Harmony (Yazhou heqinhui) was established in Tokyo.1 Unfortunately, owing to a shortage of students, the courses at Calcutta University had to be abandoned. It was in the aftermath of Rabindranath Tagore’s China visit in 1924 and his personal interest in China that China studies were initiated at Visva Bharati University in Shantiniketan and culminated in the foundation of Cheena Bhavan in 1937. Manoranjan Mohanty called this and other initiatives in India to delve into or strengthen China studies “movements.”2 The second movement according to him was the Indian School of International Studies (ISIS), started by Jawaharlal Nehru with the help of people like Professors Kunzru and Appadorai and which aimed at strengthening the study of world affairs from an Indian perspective. The ISIS was subsequently merged into Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and since then has established itself as another experiment or movement different from the others mentioned by Professor Mohanty, particularly after the establishment of the independent Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies within JNU’s School of Languages, Literature, and Culture Studies. The third was the Delhi University (DU) movement, which developed with the help of the Ford Foundation. The fourth movement, in the form of the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), was established with the help of the Ministry of External Affairs in 1991.

The First Phase The Shantiniketan movement, marking a seminal civilizational moment, was the initiative of Tagore, and humanism and rationalism formed its foundation. China studies were kick-started in the year of their inception with the arrival of Sylvain Lévi, the French Orientalist; however, the program took a definite shape and was institutionalized only after Tagore’s meeting with Tan Yunshan in 1927. Professor Tan came to Shantiniketan in 1928 and devoted his entire life to the building and strengthening of China studies in India until he passed away in 1983. Summing

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up Professor Tan’s contribution to the Chinese Studies Department at Shantiniketan, Arttatrana Nayak, professor of Chinese language at Shantiniketan, observed, “First, he collected a huge amount of funds in China and Southeast Asian countries through his personal connections for the construction of the Cheena Bhavan building. Second, he procured a large collection of classical Chinese research materials from various sources, essential for any research program, and brought them all to Cheena Bhavan. Third, he invited many Chinese scholars and teachers to Shantiniketan, who dedicated themselves to teaching and research on Sino– Indian cultural studies. Fourth, he published a periodical, Sino–Indian Studies, to disseminate the research work of the scholars.”3 Yet another contribution Professor Tan made consists of his prolific writings not only in Indian journals and media but also in China’s leading journals at that time, including Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi); he thus introduced the Indian freedom movement and its leadership to the Chinese people. According to Professor Mohanty,4 the Shantiniketan movement witnessed two extremely important developments. First, it emphasized language and classical studies, and second, it attempted the analysis of Buddhist texts. Regarding these two components, Tan Yunshan thought to restore some of the lost Buddhist texts in India by translating their Chinese versions into the source languages—Sanskrit and other Indian languages. According to him, more than five thousand Chinese volumes in the Chinese Buddhist Tripitaka were translated from Sanskrit, most of which original texts are either lost or undiscovered. After the foundation of Visva Bharati, Tan intended not only to restore all lost Sanskrit works but also to translate other important classical works from Chinese into Sanskrit and other Indian languages5; this undertaking remains incomplete. Nevertheless, the Shantiniketan movement did produce some of the earliest and most outstanding Sinologists in India. Among these, the name of P. C. Bagchi remains unrivaled.

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The Second Phase The 1962 border conflict with China can be considered a watershed for Chinese studies in India. The conflict exposed India’s various weaknesses in terms of both its defense capability and its shallow understanding about China, especially its strategic and security interests. Therefore the 1962 debacle witnessed the foundation of new institutions, such as the ISIS established by Jawaharlal Nehru and JNU in 1967. From that point on, more Indian scholars of China have studied China predominantly as a nation-state, although the civilizational aspect has remained between lines in their work. The DU Movement During this period, as the Ford Foundation developed a global strategy to finance and promote China studies throughout the world, it sponsored the ISIS during its early stages, financing the program and providing scholarships to students who wanted to study in the United States. The ISIS ultimately became a part of JNU. At DU an independent research center was established, the Centre for Chinese Studies (1964); it was later renamed the Department of Chinese and Japanese Studies (1968) and made an integral part of the university rather than an independent entity. In 2003 the name was changed to the Department of East Asian Studies. According to Professor Mohanty, the two distinct features of this movement were (a) that an area studies program was introduced, the unstated strategy of which was to examine political culture, economics, and foreign policy; and (b) that the area studies program also aimed to integrate the study of Chinese language, literature, and philosophy and to come into closer alignment with China studies in the United States. The Delhi movement witnessed the emergence of some of the most prominent Chinese experts in India. Among these, V. P. Dutt, the founding head of the Centre of Chinese Studies, Tan Chung, Giri Deshinkar, Mira Sinha Bhattacharya, and Manoranjan Mohanty stand out prominently. Most of these experts delved into studies of foreign policy, strategy and security, and China’s agrarian issues. Professor Tan was perhaps the only scholar who

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continued the tradition of the Shantiniketan movement while serving at both DU and JNU. Initially, he pursued Chinese history as an area study but later extended his work to include Sino–Indian civilizational dialogue. In this regard some of his works written or edited during and after his stint as a professor-consultant at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, are worth mentioning; these include the monumental Dunhuang Art through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie (1995), Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China (1998), In the Footsteps of Xuan Zang (2001), and India and China: Interface and Surge of the Two Great Civilizations (2006). Regarding the question of integrating area studies with language, the DU movement in its early stages did not achieve the desired results. The diploma courses offered by DU are insufficient for mastering Chinese language for research. However, basic knowledge of Chinese was enhanced and strengthened through the sustained interests of students in Chinese and the opportunities provided by one- and two-year scholarships to pursue further studies in China or Taiwan.

The JNU Movement The JNU movement of China studies took a different path of development than the Shantiniketan and Delhi movements took. Rather than attempting to integrate area studies and individual disciplines, JNU established two distinct and unique centers under the auspices of two different schools, a decision that reflects the structure of schools and centers at that university. Various centers in the School of International Studies, such as the Centre for East Asian Studies and the Centre for International Politics and Organization (now the Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament), as well as the Centre for Political Studies in the School of Social Sciences are actively pursuing China studies. However, their focus has remained on Chinese politics, economy, defense, and security. The language expertise of scholars and researchers in these centers remains a serious constraint despite attempts to enhance the skills of

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MPhil students at the Centre of East Asian Studies through a four-semester course in Chinese offered and designed especially for them by the Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS). This experiment did not achieve the desired results but instead benefited many students who have built on and strengthened their language capabilities by going to China on scholarships. Second, the establishment of the CCSEAS (formerly the Centre for Afro-Asian Languages and Centre of East Asian Languages) in the School of Language, Literature, and Culture Studies (SLL & CS; formerly the School of Languages) in the early 1970s definitely provided a solid impetus to the JNU movement and China studies in India because it benefited both Chinese language learning and area studies. The course in Chinese at JNU was initially offered by H. P. Ray and subsequently for many years by Tan Chung. Professor Ray has applied his language expertise to research on trade and diplomacy between India and China during the fourteenth century; he has also widely translated Chinese historical data pertaining to India and South Asia. His works include India, SouthEast Asia and China: Some Historical Issues (1999), North-East India’s Place in India–China Relations and Its Future Role in India’s Economy (2003), Trade and Trade Routes between India and China, c.140 BC–AD 1500 (2003), and Chinese Sources of South Asian History in Translation: Data for Study of India–China Relations through History (5 vols.; 2004– 2011). Although the focus of CCSEAS courses has been language, literature, culture, and civilization, the courses at the MPhil level provide scholars with the opportunity to delve into other areas of study, such as India– China relations, politics, economics, and popular culture. Scholars are briefly exposed to the social sciences, especially its theories, but their strength lies in using language as a tool for research. Professor Ray’s works, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, speak mainly to the advantage that a knowledge of Chinese provides a researcher. I have also extensively used the Chinese language as a tool for research, resulting in works

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such as India and China, 1904–2004: A Century of Peace and Conflict (2005), India–China Relations in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (2001), a Chinese–Hindi Dictionary (2003), My Life With Kotnis (2006), and China: Agriculture, Countryside and Peasantry (2010), among others. The tool of language, as these titles suggest, proves to be a vehicle for the convergence of civilizational China and nation-state China. By 2006 the CCSEAS at JNU had produced twenty-eight cohorts of students who had completed their master’s degrees. Since the center initiated its MPhil and PhD programs in 1993, it has produced only two PhD scholars; Bagyalaxami was the first, and I was the second. Further, many of the master’s students received lucrative offers in multinational corporations after graduation, so very few have continued with research endeavors.

The Third Phase According to Professor Mohanty, the third developmental phase of China studies in India involved the establishment of the China Study Group (CSG) in 1969 by Professors Deshpande, Deshingkar, Mohanty, and others, along with the active participation of serving or retired diplomats at Sapru House in New Delhi. The group can be regarded as an extension of the DU movement and continues to be active today through the affiliation of several institutions and organizations. According to Professor Mohanty, the rationale behind this movement involved engaging Indian public opinion in order to generate debate on China. However, this stage also witnessed the decline of the Shantiniketan movement, which was marked by the initiation to address the problem of discipline versus area studies. Second, attempts to bridge the structural gap between China studies and the core discipline of political science were insufficient. Therefore the movement did not receive much-coveted support. As for the realization of its aims, the movement was successful to some extent, for it brought like-minded people into its folds, ultimately laying the foundation of the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) in India.

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However, it failed to address the much-ignored problem of discipline and area studies. Very few scholars of this movement were equipped with the language expertise required for advanced research, albeit quite a few possessed a working knowledge of the language.

The Fourth Phase The fourth phase started with the establishment of the ICS in 1991. As stated earlier, this move formalized the informal CSG. China Report, the only Indian academic journal on China and an outgrowth of the CSG, was also taken over by the ICS. The ICS brought together faculty and research scholars from both DU and JNU, as well as former diplomats and people from other fields and professions with a specialized interest in China. The ICS also continued the CSG’s Wednesday seminar tradition, holding regular seminars and conferences, undertaking projects, and participating in academic exchanges. Being a semigovernmental organization, the ICS involved itself in track II diplomacy and exchanges with similar institutions in China, Russia, and Japan. It signed memorandums of understanding with leading Chinese institutions, such as the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences. The establishment of the ICS precipitated a rapidly growing interest in China studies. Obviously, friendly neighbor relations, brisk trade, and lively economic, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges contributed to this growth of interest in China. The overall development of India–China relations resulted and strengthened multilayered exchanges, including academic ones, and the number of students going to China from India— and those coming from China to India—increased markedly. Professor Mohanty argued that this movement led to the two countries’ opening up to each other, a development that facilitated frequent academic exchanges between them. It also created theoretical intellectual possibilities of a greater scope. The other peculiarity was the new confidence in terms of knowledge, methodology, and theoretical aspects that emerged

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as China studies gained momentum. However, the new literature is characterized by severe shortcomings in terms of academic depth, whereas the literature of the Shantiniketan movement is extremely impressive. This was a real cause of concern for Professor Mohanty, who also pointed to the evils the Internet revolution has wrought in academics.

The Present State of Chinese in China Studies Teaching and research of the Chinese language as a discipline at the undergraduate and graduate levels are now carried out primarily at JNU, Visva Bharati University, and Banaras Hindu University (BHU). These universities are considered the top institutes for pursuing China studies at the graduate level. Punjab University and several others offer one- or twoyear diplomas and certificate courses in the Chinese language for undergraduate and graduate students. DU is also a major destination for students pursuing courses at the graduate level in China studies. Apart from the universities, several research institutes that have mushroomed after the normalization of India–China relations are also involved in China studies. These include the ICS, the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA), the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), and the Centre for Policy Alternatives. The Indian Council of World Affairs, founded in 1943, also initiated programs emphasizing China studies in recent times. Research at these institutes is limited to subjects related to India–China relations, particularly economic relations and defense and security.

JNU Chinese language study as a discipline was introduced at JNU in 1973. Commenting on the fate of CCSEAS two years after its establishment, Professor Ray recollected that the entire Chinese program at JNU “had gone haywire.”6 “The only Chinese teacher, Mr. Tsai Hansheng, had left

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due to trouble whipped up by some students. I was left with my colleague, the late Ms. Vimla Saran, to conduct the program … no overseas or mainland Chinese was willing to come. We had to run from pillar to post to get part-time teachers from the All India Radio and Cabinet Secretariat.” Now, thirty-six years after its inception, the CCSEAS at JNU has become one of the best centers of Chinese language learning and research in and on the Chinese language, its literature, and other China-related themes of area studies. The center was strengthened when Tan Chung and Yap Rehman joined it during the late 1970s. Since then, thirty-one cohorts of post-graduates have come through the center, and outstanding students from various cohorts have joined the ranks of its faculty. Regarding the courses offered at CCSEAS, students at the firstand second-year levels are trained intensively in order to develop their language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and comprehension. However, they are also exposed to small literary texts, whether poetry or prose. A look into the culture and civilization through literary abstracts, primarily modern ones, dominates text learning, especially in the final year of the undergraduate study program. The students also encounter literary texts in other courses at the undergraduate level. For example, in a course on composition, I introduce literary texts in the form of poetry and prose for discussing characterization, appreciation, and criticism; students have found these texts quite interesting. A comprehensive tools course aimed at inculcating students’ interest in China’s culture and civilization, polity, and economy has been offered to undergraduate students. However, the center does not offer its own elective courses in fields such as political science, geography, sociology, and history, which are requisite courses complementing the core courses in language for undergraduate degrees. Another feature unique to CCSEAS is its evaluation system, which conducts three sessional examinations and one at the end of the semester. Students must qualify in two of the three sessionals to be eligible to take the end-of-semester examination. This

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pattern maintains rigor and underpins the revision and prevision of the syllabus. At the graduate level, courses are designed for literary criticism and appreciation at two levels: classical Chinese literature, and novels and novelettes from the modern and contemporary period. Courses in interpretation and translation are offered simultaneously. CCSEAS faculty members have not designed textbooks for Indian students learning Chinese at the undergraduate level, but I have compiled a graduate-level textbook dedicated exclusively to classical Chinese literature, with original Chinese texts. Certain factors pertaining to the text and to the readers have been taken into consideration. Important factors—the learners’ language level, prior knowledge, and degree of interest, as well as the subject matter itself—comprise the guidelines for literary text selection at the center. The readers’ comprehension level is also taken into account because if they are able to understand what they read, they will be able to respond to it on a personal level and perhaps even enjoy it. With this goal in view, the learners’ language proficiency and the manner in which the language is used in many literary texts are considered in selecting the books compiled by Chinese authors. The five-year MA program has been designed to provide students with the necessary language skills for the conduct of research and to expose them to area and cultural studies. It is with such expertise that these students advance to MPhil and PhD programs. Despite the unavailability of area study–related optional courses at the undergraduate level and the perennial shortage of teaching staff and facilities, the CCSEAS has been able to develop an effective and sizeable scholarship in China studies.

Visva Bharati As mentioned previously, the focus of teaching and research at Visva Bharati has been classical and Buddhist Chinese studies. This resulted in an emphasis on accuracy over fluency in Chinese language. The accuracy school demanded the faithful translation of texts, producing substantive

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and in-depth research work. However, with the deterioration of bilateral relations between India and China and the subsequent deep freeze, interest in the classical tradition of Visva Bharati declined steeply. The institute was unable to attract students for almost four decades after the border war; thus the deterioration of relations between the two countries dealt a severe blow to classical tradition and to the image of civilizational China. The situation changed for the better recently, when the thrust of teaching and research shifted to the development of communication skills and a focus on contemporary issues. Now the department has over one hundred students, both undergraduate and graduate. As for the syllabus and curriculum, Visva Bharati has adopted textbooks similar to those at JNU, at least at the undergraduate level. Unfortunately, the initial emphasis of the teaching and research, along with their objectives, has been lost. The objective of Cheena Bhavan was to promote cultural exchange between China and India, studies in Buddhism, Chinese and Indian religions, philosophy, history, and literature. Attempts have been mounted to revive the classical tradition, but classical studies require learning classical Chinese, so very few have taken up the discipline.

BHU The teaching of Chinese at BHU has a long history, but the program gained impetus only during the 1980s when the department started offering degree courses for undergraduate and graduate students. The teaching and research cannot be expected to be better with only three full-time faculty members who, according to Kamal Sheel, “bear the major brunt of teaching with each taking between 25 to 30 hours of classes per week.”7 About the curriculum, Professor Sheel said that in the BA in Chinese, students work on two papers each year for the first two years.8 However, in their third year, those opting for Honors Chinese are required to complete six papers on topics ranging from language and literature to Chinese history, culture, and thought. The postgraduate program focuses on the teaching of advanced-level Chinese from stories and poems from major

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Chinese authors, and it also provides opportunities for students to pursue specialization in either Chinese language and literature or China studies. Courses in classical Chinese are offered both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, diploma courses are offered to students from other departments. Although the teachers have been overloaded with teaching responsibilities, there has nevertheless been some notable progress in research, said Professor Sheel: “These include the publication of a research journal in Asian studies, publication and translation of two important Chinese Buddhist texts, Mishrak-abhidharama-hrydaya-shastra and Abhidharama-sangitiprayapads-shastra, in addition to works in the area of modem Chinese and comparative history. Besides this, there have been dissertations on the female protagonists in the works of Lu Xun, on the Bhagwad Gita and Confucianism, and on humor in Chinese and Japanese literature, etc. There has also been a research focus in the area of Sino– Indian Studies with emphasis on comparative studies.”9 DU offers only diploma and certificate courses to undergraduate and graduate students. In the absence of a degree program, the teaching and research in the Chinese language, literature, and civilization have not been strong. DU has a strong graduate program in China studies. However, the Chinese language remains a major handicap for research students, who have consequently not been able to produce substantive research work. The problem of integrating discipline and area studies has taken a form similar to that evident at JNU, BHU, and other institutions in India.

The School of Foreign Languages The Schools of Foreign Languages (SFL), Delhi and Panchmari in Madhaya Pradesh, are two institutes under the purview of the Ministry of Defense. But the courses they offer are primarily designed to cater to the needs of defense personnel. Their teaching approach and methodology have been dominated by the accuracy school, and hence very few students graduate from these institutes with good communication skills.

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The pronunciation of trained individuals is so erratic that deciphering their messages is almost impossible. Although the goal of these institutes is to produce translators and interpreters for government ministries (especially defense and home), this objective has remained unrealized.

Other Central and State Universities Various other institutes and universities in India offer Chinese language courses; however, these are only short-term diploma or certificate courses. Such courses are offered at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi; Punjab University, Chandigarh; the University of Calcutta, West Bengal; Uttkal University, Orissa; Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad; the University of Hyderabad; the English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad (where a course is set to start; its advertisement has been posted); and Bhagat Phool Singh Women University, Sonipat; Haryana; Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi; Tezpur University, Assam; and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. Recently Doon University, Dehradun, Uttrakhand became the second university in North India after JNU to offer degree courses in Chinese language. Except for Punjab University, where courses in Chinese lead to area studies, institutes have been offering these courses in answer to the needs arising from growing trade and business relations between India and China. But the content of these courses is very shallow, and the teaching methodologies are doubtful. As proof, the students graduating from such courses can neither speak nor read Chinese properly, much less use Chinese as a tool for research. Private Institutes and Universities Among private universities, Amity is perhaps the only university offering courses in the Chinese language for its undergraduate and graduate students, including those in MBA programs. Various institutes and business schools across the country cater to the needs of people engaged in business with China and to those of enterprises that transact business with China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Some of these institutes include the JK

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Business School, Gurgaon; the Chinese Language Institute in Green Park, New Delhi; Vidushi Academy, Bangalore; and the India–China Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Many schools and colleges across India also offer Chinese language courses; the most successful in Delhi to my knowledge is Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan. In order to do away with the shortage of language teachers in India, many private institutes have invited teachers from mainland China. Notwithstanding the zeal and initiative that characterize such institutes and universities, the quality of students remains a key concern.

Problems and Issues The state of China studies in India, past and present, evidently indicates a disjunction between language and area studies. Despite emphasis on the need to build strong Chinese language competence among researchers, the problem has continued for various reasons, among them the disintegration of the discipline and of area studies, the lack of Chinese bibliographic sources (including the database of Chinese libraries in India), and the lack of funding and scholarship opportunities to China—aside from the inherent difficulty of the language.

Integration of the Discipline and Area Studies This disjunction between the discipline and area studies will remain as long as the two are not integrated. Although JNU allows scholars to engage in interdisciplinary research, the students prefer to obtain higher degrees in disciplines other than area studies largely owing to the limited job prospects throughout the country for experts in area studies. As a result, students from other disciplines rarely venture into area studies. This is not an isolated issue; the disciplines in India’s universities have remained either “India-centric or Euro-centric,” as asserted by Chakrabarti.10 Most students who pursue research in China studies come from disciplines such as international relations, disarmament, and political science—all characterized by a nation-state bias. Very few come from

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the fields of history, sociology, economics, philosophy, anthropology, or literature. But China’s economic success story, combined with its increasing political power in recent years, has led more and more students to show an interest in China studies. In view of this, the issue can be handled at two levels. First, universities—at least the top universities to start with— must offer courses in Chinese economy, agriculture, rural development, philosophy, and sociology, among others. At the same time, the Chinese language should be made a compulsory course for students. Regarding the language stream, the problem can be dealt with by offering the courses just mentioned as electives. This would call for a healthy collaboration between the language and area studies departments. Upon fruition, both can take up the much-needed comparative studies between India and China in various fields.

Building Bibliographical Sources and Databases of Chinese Libraries India has neither the necessary bibliographical resources to support substantive and advanced research in China studies nor a lively intellectual milieu that would facilitate the sharing of research findings. Shantiniketan houses a rich collection of Buddhist bibliographical sources, but the material is collecting dust because there are very few scholars of literary Chinese, necessary for understanding not only the Buddhist classics but also all other literature pertaining to the twenty-four histories of China, its philosophy, and its ancient literature. JNU, considered one of India’s best universities in teaching the Chinese language, cannot match DU for the collection of Chinese source materials on history, language, and literature, including bibliographical sources pertaining to other China-related disciplines. Various factors have contributed to this state of affairs, the first of which is JNU’s Eurocentric approach; as a result of that, East Asian streams are accorded stepmotherly treatment. Second, there is no expertise on the Chinese language among

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the JNU library’s employees. In order to save on expenses, the university administration does not employ people to catalog books in Chinese. For this reason, many books on China donated by Taiwan or China have yet to be cataloged at JNU. If CCSEAS asks for a separate library, the university does not have the necessary space or other requirements; the center’s requests to the university administration have fallen on deaf ears. Third, mutual distrust between India and China has obstructed the desired reciprocity in the exchange of scholars and bibliographical databanks between Indian and Chinese universities. The computerization of Indian libraries has matched the “Hindu rate of growth” and has hampered the memos of understanding between Indian and Chinese libraries. Fourth, the increasing cost of journals and magazines has limited researchers’ access to them.

Scholarship Opportunities and Funding Very few scholarships, fellowships, and grants are earmarked for students of Chinese and China studies. There are only twenty-five India–China cultural exchange program scholarships, but these are open to students in all streams. Almost none of the foundations offer fellowships and funding for Chinese and China studies. This situation is likely to improve, for Taiwan has also initiated twenty-five annual scholarships for Indian students interested in pursuing their studies in Taiwan. Other exchanges are marred by sycophancy and nepotism, among other issues, at the bureaucratic and political levels. Delhi-centrism Chinese language and China studies have remained Delhi-centric not only in terms of teaching and research but also in terms of resources and funding. India’s top universities and institutes offering Chinese are found in Delhi; outside that city, only Visva Bharati and BHU offer Chinese language and studies. Thanks to the increasing trade and commerce between India and China, many other universities in east, west, and south India are now planning to offer courses in the Chinese language, a devel-

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opment that is expected to strengthen China studies programs across the country. Chennai is likely to emerge as the second center of China studies in the near future. In contrast to the state of China studies in India, a 2004 survey conducted by the College Board of the United States revealed that 2,400 US high schools were set to offer regular classes on the Chinese language starting in 2006. In Europe, France now surpasses all other European countries in terms of the number of people learning Chinese, and thirtyeight universities across the nation now offer programs on Chinese. According to the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, at present, more than thirty million people around the world are learning Chinese to varying degrees, and over 2,500 colleges and universities in one hundred countries offer Chinese classes. Growing numbers of primary and middle schools around the world have also added Chinese courses, and the number of various Chinese training institutes is increasing.11 With China as India’s immediate and largest neighbor, should not India initiate and strengthen Chinese language and China studies across the country? In conclusion, China studies in India have traversed almost a century of development, surviving difficulties and enjoying better times, as well. That the Chinese language will play an increasingly important role in the understanding of China, on the one hand, and in the strengthening of China research in India, on the other, is also acknowledged. An attempt to establish a détente with China since 1988 has proven beneficial for both countries on various counts, whether in terms of commercial, cultural, or academic exchanges. Increased exchange has given rise to a Zhongguo re and Zhongwen re in India. To a certain extent, this “craze” may help integrate areas studies with the discipline. However, the flip side of this trend is that it seems likely to maintain, if not widen, the existing gap between the contemporary and classical traditions of China studies in India. Therefore the Indian government, as well as the country’s academic institutions,

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should pay close attention to the problems and issues raised in this volume, in order to better understand India’s neighbor. B. R. Deepak is an associate professor of Chinese at the Centre of Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.

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Endnotes 1. B. R. Deepak, India and China during the first half of the 20th Century (New Delhi: APH Publishers, 2001). 2. Manoranjan Mohanty, “Historical Evolution of China Studies in India,” paper presented at the AAS One-Day Workshop on China Studies in India, India Habitat Center, New Delhi, 6 March 2008. 3. Arttatrana Nayak, “Rabinderanath Tagore and Visva-Bharati Cheena Bhavan: A Centre of Civilizational Dialogue,” in Review of China Studies in India: A Colloquium, ed. Madhavi Thampi (New Delhi: Institute of Chinese Studies, Occasional Studies, 2007). 4. Remarks made at the AAS One-Day Workshop on China Studies in India, India Habitat Center, New Delhi, 6 March 2008. 5. V. G. Nair, ed., Professor Tan Yun-shan and Cultural Relations between India and China, Commemoration Volume (Shantiniketan: An Indo-Asian Publication, 1958), 20–21. 6. Harprasad Ray, “Reminiscences and Suggestions,” in Review of China Studies in India: A Colloquium, ed. Madhavi Thampi (New Delhi: Institute of Chinese Studies, Occasional Studies, 2007), 17. 7. Kamal Sheel, “Chinese Studies at Varanasi and Indian Scholarship on China,” in Review of China Studies in India: A Colloquium, ed. Madhavi Thampi (New Delhi: Institute of Chinese Studies, Occasional Studies, 2007), 23. 8. Ibid., 22. 9. Ibid., 23. 10. Sreemati Chakrabarti, “Survey of the Present State of Chinese Studies in India,” in Review of China Studies in India: A Colloquium, ed. Madhavi Thampi (New Delhi: Institute of Chinese Studies, Occasional Studies, 2007), 7. 11. Rong Zhang, “Chinese Language Learning Expands Globally,” China Pictorial, January 2006.

Chapter 5

Rural Industrialization in China Studies in India Sanjeev Kumar

China studies in India have gone through three phases. The first phase was initiated by the establishment of Cheena Bhavan in Shantiniketan, and focused on the ties between the histories and civilizations of India and China. After 1962 China studies in India entered a second phase, which was dominated by security studies; sharp ideological divisions were evident between Sinophobes and Sinophiles. The contemporary phase can be broadly called the third, which began in the 1980s. During this phase, China studies in India were led by China area and language studies, as well as by think tanks and discipline departments. These studies were largely characterized by pragmatism rather than ideological considerations. The reasons for the shifts in China studies can be traced to domestic, bilateral, and global issues. The rapprochement in India–China relations,

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particularly since the 1980s, the implementation and success of marketoriented economic reform in China since 1978, and the wave of globalization have created an atmosphere in which debate on learning from China’s experience, including rural industrialization, is desirable in China studies in India; these are some of the factors that have influenced China studies. Specifically, it is pragmatism in the studies of rural industrialization that has led moves toward transcending the division between civilizational China and nation-state China. Rural industrialization in China is an important component of any investigation into China studies in India. In Indian literature on China’s rural industrialization, distinguishing among the main groups or structures analyzing China’s rural industrialization is possible. These groups or structures encompass different research resources and methods. The study reviews Indian discourse on China’s rural industrialization in terms of the following structures: (a) China area and language studies, (b) Chinarelated courses in various discipline departments, and (c) China-related research in various research institutes. Furthermore, the study assesses each category of scholarship according to twin criteria: research and dissemination, including contribution to the national debate on learning from China’s rural enterprises, popularly known as township and village enterprises (TVEs) in English literature and as xiang zhen qiye in Chinese literature.

Rationale of the Study The justification for this study rests largely on two interrelated factors. First, the significance of rural industrialization in China’s overall development is remarkable. The majority of China’s population lives in the countryside, and the country serves as a good example of how a development strategy focusing on rural industrialization can bring about important and mostly positive changes in the lives of rural residents, as well as in the structure of the Chinese economy. Notably, although a crisis exists

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in China’s rural sector, the success of TVEs has contributed to providing a kind of economic and social stability to China’s countryside. Second, the growth and development of TVEs have undoubtedly attracted attention from the world in general and from India in particular. TVEs can be seen as a means of distributive intervention. These have also been cited as a model for rural industrialization, particularly for large agrarian countries, such as India. Indian prime minister Shri Manmohan Singh, also a reputed economist, stated at the Chief Minister’s conference in 2004 that “we need to learn from the Chinese model of rural business hubs that add value to agriculture produce within the rural areas.”1 He further commented that “Panchayati Raj institutions involve themselves in establishing rural business hubs, which might promote rural prosperity and diminish poverty in India as they have done so effectively in China.”2 Along the same line, then Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said, “Our objective is no less than catching up with and overtaking China’s Township and Village Enterprises and Thailand’s OTOP (One Tambon/One Product).”3 Recognizing the importance of China’s diversified industrialization, Aiyar also made similar statements at various forums in India. On issues related to development, China’s experience has largely been recognized as relevant to Indian conditions, and vice versa. China’s TVEs have also received increasing attention in academic discussion and debate. Yasheng Huang of the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), stated that “without understanding TVEs, one would not able to understand Chinese success … one of the biggest differences between China and India is that China had TVEs; India did not. The biggest differences between China and India, I would argue, have less to do with FDI infrastructures; it has very much to do with TVEs.”4 Many scholars might disagree with Huang’s argument; however, there is hardly any doubt about the emergence of a TVE perspective of development, which can offer lessons to large, populous agrarian countries like India. Thus examining the development and dimensions of rural industri-

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alization in China studies in India is extremely relevant. To analyze rural industrialization in China studies in India, an overview of China’s rural industrialization sets the stage for understanding the issue.

An Overview of Rural Industrialization in China Rise and Transformation of TVEs The introduction of institutional reforms in the late 1970s made a difference in the establishment and development of rural enterprises in China. The transformation of rural policy during the period 1978–1983 included a change in policy toward rural enterprises, as the government recognized that collective- and brigade-run enterprises can be established directly for the purpose of profit. In 1981 the Chinese government announced a threeyear tax holiday for new enterprises. However, there is little doubt that the enthusiasm of and initiatives taken by the local government and local people were among the major reasons for the early impressive performance of TVEs. State-owned enterprises pressured the central government to implement discriminatory policies against rural enterprises. To survive and develop, many rural enterprises even resorted to illegal means, such as bribery, to obtain raw materials and access to market channels. Numerous case studies suggest that local governments and people involved in rural enterprises used their personal connections to steal necessary information regarding machine maintenance and markets, among other things.5 Because the enterprises run by peasants were under the jurisdiction of township, town, or village governments, in 1984 the central government decided to rename all collective enterprises operated by the People’s Communes and production brigades, as well as enterprises run by the peasants, dubbing them TVEs. Between 1984 and 1991, a series of official directives relating to preferential treatment of TVEs, especially with regard to raw materials, credit, and taxation, was implemented. This was a period of high growth. Deng Xiaoping acknowledged in 1987 that “the

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greatest and most unexpected accomplishment in our rural reform has been the development of TVEs…. This good idea came not from us leaders, but was the creation of agricultural institutions at the grassroots level and peasants themselves.”6 However, private enterprises were still discriminated against. From 1989 to 1991, TVEs suffered from political controversy about their role in the economy. Deng Xiaoping’s inspection tour of Southern China (1992) and the Fourteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reaffirmed the importance of TVEs in the Chinese economy. A series of government regulations was introduced to encourage the development of TVEs. Rural credit cooperatives were encouraged to provide loans to these enterprises, and employment in TVEs grew to 135 million in 1996. The process of structural adjustment and institutional innovation characterizes the contemporary phase of TVEs. The effect of TVE property rights transformation on its efficiency has been an important issue of debate in recent times. The TVEs have witnessed a large privatization or transfer of property rights, transition from labor-intensive to capitalintensive operations, and the increased role of technological development. Around 90 percent of collective TVEs have been restructured. The resultant forms included joint-stock cooperatives, jointly run businesses, limited liability companies, shareholding companies, and Sino–overseas joint ventures. Although the number of TVE employees decreased in 1997 and 1998, employment began rising again in1999 and reached a historical high of 150 million in 2007.

The Contribution of TVEs and Lessons for Developing Countries The Chinese experience illustrates that rural industrialization can play a crucial role in (a) raising the income of rural people (TVEs are responsible for an average 34 percent increase in the income of rural residents), (b) solving the unemployment problem in the countryside (the percentage of employment in TVEs to national aggregate employment is more than

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18 percent),7 (c) checking rural-to-urban migration, (d) supporting and enhancing the effectiveness of agriculture and contributing to social sector development, especially in health and education,8 and (e) transforming the socioeconomic environment of the countryside. TVEs have also been a major driving force in restructuring the Chinese economy and have made an impressive contribution to the national GDP, the national industrial output, and the value of total national export, among other things. The Township Enterprise Law (1997) has provided legal support for the development and expansion of rural enterprises. However, marketoriented banking reforms in the 1990s made borrowing from banks problematic for rural enterprises, thereby affecting their growth. The leaders of some TVEs maintain that they have investment opportunities in mind that promise a high rate of return but are unable to take action largely because of insufficient capital or bank loans. The increased power of local governments has also resulted in various incidences of irregularities in collecting sales taxes, profit taxes, and local levies. TVEs concentrated in the coastal regions of China have likewise created regional disparities during the era of reform. China has also paid a social cost. Furthermore, TVEs have presented challenges for rural environments.9 Although the experience of one country might not be wholly applicable to other countries, the Chinese experience provides important lessons regarding the emphasis on innovation, geographical location, employment generation, and the highly significant role of local governments in developing countries—especially India, where industrialization has not been adequately diversified. Several structures or models of China studies currently exist in India. Scholarship in area and language studies is designed to provide a perspective for making the debate meaningful.

China Area and Language Studies Manoranjan Mohanty was perhaps the first Indian scholar to study China’s rural industrialization.10 He chose Wuxi County (near Shanghai) as the

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subject of his field study, beginning from the 1980s, and analyzed China’s rural reform, including China’s rural industrialization. He visited Wuxi many times to understand the rapid changes occurring in rural areas. He emphasized China’s TVEs as unique phenomena having no parallel in contemporary developing countries. Drawing lessons for development theory, Mohanty argued that Wuxi represented a model of development that combines agricultural and rural industries. He also conducted research on the management and workers of rural industries in Wuxi.11 Another scholar, Miroo Desai, wrote his MPhil dissertation on the performance of rural industries in post-Mao China for the period 1978–1988.12 Kamal Sheel (Department of Foreign Languages, Banaras Hindu University), analyzed an interesting dimension of China’s rural enterprises. While examining human relationship discourse in China, Sheel described the role of guanxi and its effect on rural enterprises in order to understand the paradoxical phenomenon of corruption and growth in rural China. My own study13 emphasized the significant contribution of TVEs to rural development, national economic growth, and institutional transformation in China. Empirical evidence for this study was collected in Shaanxi, Anhui, and Zhejiang Provinces in 2005 and 2006.14 My research also identified some best practices based on the field study and lessons on China’s rural industrialization for India, especially the capacity building of Panchayats. I highlighted the Dongzhen experience of agricultural industrialization of food processing enterprises.15 Geeta Kochhar is another scholar who studied the TVE phenomenon as part of her PhD thesis. She underscored the various TVE models and their contribution to the urbanization and creation of small towns.16 The strengths of scholarship within China area and language studies are as follows. All scholars within this structure of China studies conducted focused research and used Chinese language sources, performed field studies in China ranging from library consultations and site visits to field studies through structured questionnaire and in-depth interviews, and even used some databases on the subject prepared by China’s premier research institutes, in addition to data provided by the State Statistical Bureau

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of China. This certainly added quality to the scholarship. Furthermore, scholars conducted research from their individual perspectives: mainly political economy and policy, but also sociological, cultural, and comparative social science. The scholars also significantly contributed to the national debate on learning from China’s rural industrialization and presented papers in various forums. However, the dissemination of their research for wider circulation still requires improvement. Most important, this group of scholarship also directed significant attention to the problems that TVEs faced in China, especially after the mid-1990s, and the debate within China about the form in which TVEs should be encouraged, which is largely missing in other groups of the study. However, the total volume of research is very limited. Many areas of China’s rural industrialization still need to be explored by the scholars of China area and language studies.

Discipline Departments and Research Institutes Discipline departments of universities and research institutes can be classified by their different institutional structures and different research emphases. But the scholars of research institutes who study China’s TVEs received their training in discipline departments and directed their research along similar lines. Hence, simultaneously analyzing research done by both institutions is a sensible approach. G. K. Chadha (formerly with the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU) was among the first scholars to conduct research on rural industrialization in post-Mao China. Aside from analyzing the public policy and accomplishments of China’s TVEs, he also emphasized the social costs incurred in rural enterprises in terms of many youngsters who forgo studies and join TVEs.17 S. V. Devanathan (from the Velammal College of Management and Computer Studies, Chennai) enlisted the reasonable success of China in solving the unemployment problem through the establishment of TVEs.18 Studying the employment

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trends of India and China, C. P. Chandrsekhar and Jayati Ghosh (Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU) concluded that the recent period has witnessed a rise in the employment share of TVEs and private units.19 Moreover, some research scholars from the economics departments of the University of Delhi and the University of Kashmir, among others, have chosen to investigate TVEs in their dissertations. Scholars affiliated with research institutes have also accorded attention to research on China’s TVEs. M. S. Swaminathan, a well-known agricultural scientist, described TVEs as the beginning of the economic revolution in China. He noted that China’s ability to become a global outsourcing hub for manufactured products resulted largely from the emergence of China’s TVEs. He said that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (Government of India) can also collaborate with China’s TVE program.20 Amiya Kumar Bagchi (Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata) argued that the Panchayati Raj institution should perform responsibilities similar to those of China’s local government.21 Surjit Singh (Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur) emphasized important issues related to finance, technology, and agricultural modernization, and completed fieldwork in Wuxi County.22 Kamal Nayan Kabra’s study highlighted the historical evolution and unique nature of TVEs, as well as their contribution to China’s development for the period 1978–2002.23 Mohammed Saqib and Debashish Chakraborty studied the Chinese experience of TVEs and the operations of agricultural cooperatives in India.24 Furthermore, a very important study was completed by Anit Mukherjee (National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi) and Xiaobo Zhang (International Food Policy Research Center, Washington, DC),25 providing policy lessons for India and China. The collaborative mechanisms helped the scholars analyze rural nonfarm development patterns in India and China and provide policy lessons. Although university discipline departments have not been only Indiaor Eurocentric, studies on China’s TVEs are extremely limited in discipline departments, such as economics. Scholars from research institutes

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have also conducted significant research on TVEs, and very few of them have completed field studies. They have primarily cited inadequate data provided by the State Statistical Bureau of China. In some cases, only data from an English-language book on TVEs were cited.26 The authors broadly followed time-series analysis, policy and political economy, and comparative approaches, which are worthwhile; however, there is a need to develop and test appropriate models for Indian conditions after understanding the Chinese trajectory and experience related to TVEs. Local governments played the most important roles in the establishment and development of TVEs in China. Although some references have been made by scholars such as George Mathew (Institute of Social Sciences), hardly any research has been conducted by Indian political scientists. Moreover, some scholars see China’s rural enterprises as a solution to all the problems of rural areas and provide lopsided analyses by disregarding the problems faced by TVEs or the limitations of the TVE model of development. Some important documents have also raised certain controversial issues. The draft on the National Commission for Farmers (Government of India, 2006) says, “China has addressed the need for creating opportunities for skilled non-farm employment through a massive Township and Village Enterprises (TVE) movement.” This understanding ignores the important role of peasants, which was appreciated by leaders such as Deng Xiaoping. Finally, there is a broad similarity in the nature of research on TVEs among various components of China studies in India. Although the volume of research is limited, the studies on China’s TVEs are largely pragmatic and policy oriented; even the political-economy approach was not used in a classical Marxist sense except in a limited number of studies. In the era of economic reform, the larger contemporary debate revolves around the distribution of growth largely in the rural sector, which is lagging in India, and TVEs have been seen as an effective means of rural development and distributive intervention.

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The Way Forward The prime minister and Panchayati Raj minister of India made statements appreciating the performance of China’s TVEs—or TVEs’ catching up— in 2004. The idea was to implement the Chinese TVE model in India. But this has not happened in India thus far, largely for the following reasons. The current trend of research on China focuses primarily on economic reforms, with less emphasis on rural industrialization. Limited research and debate on China’s rural industrialization in India exists, and the various dimensions of the TVEs of China need to be extensively studied not merely because of their rapid growth rate and important contribution to China’s development but also because of their unique nature and relationship with local governments. The methodological issue is also important. The Indian government’s framework for small-scale enterprises is quite different from the Chinese emphasis on rural location and employment for local residents. Although broad conclusions have been drawn for India, properly understanding China’s TVEs and developing an appropriate model for India are necessary. Establishing Panchayat-facilitated rural enterprises in India is also an alternative. The main components of China studies in India (described earlier) have not significantly influenced others’ discourse on rural industrialization. Cross-disciplinary research on China has yet to be conducted. A truly multidisciplinary approach to the issue of China’s TVEs presents advantages and lessons that can be learned. Moreover, collaboration between China studies and discipline departments or research institutes is required to obtain new perspectives on the issue. Research projects, particularly collaborative ones, can overcome the limitations of the different models of China studies and offer important contributions to the body of knowledge on China’s TVEs. Collaborative research between institutions of China studies in India and their Chinese counterparts is lacking. The implementation of collaborative research projects with Chinese institutions can lead

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to a more practical understanding of the issue. Because of this practicality, such collaborative research would combine and recombine the civilizational components and the institution of the nation-state and move beyond the current preoccupation with security in China studies. Research institutes and discipline departments that have investigated China’s TVEs are relatively dispersed across India, but the spread of China area and language studies in India is still highly Delhi-centric. The interest in various aspects of China’s rise is enormous; therefore China studies in India should be spread across different regions of India. Sanjeev Kumar is a Research Fellow at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi.

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Endnotes 1. Address by prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, at the Chief Ministers’ Conference, New Delhi, 24 June 2004. 2. “Economic Empowerment Through Panchayats,” address by prime minister Manmohan Singh at the National Presentation on Rural Business Hubs, New Delhi, 5 November 2004. 3. Address by the Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar; cited in The State of Panchayats: A Mid Term Review and Appraisal (New Delhi: Ministry of Panchayati Raj, GOI, 2006), 25. 4. Yasheng Huang, “Rethinking the Chinese Economic Miracle” (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008), http:// www.carnegieendowment.org/files/1117carnegie-china.pdf (accessed 5 November 2009). 5. See, for example, Ma Wong and John Wong Yang, China’s Rural Entrepreneurs: Ten Case Studies (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1995). 6. He Kang, ed., China’s Township and Village Enterprises (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2006), 81–82. 7. Zhongguo xiangzhen qiye nianjian (Beijing: Ministry of Agriculture, 2004). 8. For details, see Sanjeev Kumar, “Rural Development through Rural Industrialisation: Exploring the Chinese Experience,” www.asianscholarship.org/asf/ejourn/articles/Sanjeev%20Kumar2.pdf. 9. These findings are based on a survey conducted in Shanxi, Anhui, and Zhejiang Provinces of China in 2005 and 2006. 10. Manoranjan Mohanty is a Sinologist and political scientist. 11. For more details, see Manoranjan Mohanty, “China’s Reforms: The Wuxi Story,” Economic and Political Weekly 44, nos. 26–27 (June 2009): 308– 319; Manoranjan Mohanty, “Rural Industry, Management and Workers in Wuxi,” China Report 29, no. 1 (1993): 49–73. 12. Miroo Desai, Rural Industries in Post Mao China, 1978–1988, unpublished MPhil dissertation, School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi, 1991. 13. I obtained my PhD in China Area Studies, JNU. 14. I would like to thank the Asian Scholarship Foundation for providing the opportunity to conduct nine months of research in China.

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15. For more details, see Sanjeev Kumar, “Rural Development through Rural Industrialization: Exploring the Chinese Experience,” www.asianscholarship.org/asf/ejourn/articles/Sanjeev%20Kumar2.pdf; Kumar, “Rural Industrialization in China,” Xiang zhen qiye dao bao (November 2006): 4–5; Kumar, “China’s Quest for Building a New Socialist Countryside,” in China’s Agricultural Transition: Balancing Rural Urban Relations, ed. Zhang Xiaoshan et al. (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2009), 82–93. 16. Geeta Kochhar, Chinese Cities and Labour Migration: Effect of Economic Reform and Urbanization, (1984–2001), unpublished PhD dissertation, JNU, New Delhi, 2005. 17. G. K. Chadha and A. Saith, Rural Industrialisation in Post Reform China (New Delhi: ILO/SAAT, 1996). 18. S. V. Devanathan, “Generating a Rural Job: The Chinese Way,” Icfaian Journal of Management Research 5, no. 2 (February 2006): 73–82. 19. C. P. Chandrsekhar and Jayati Ghosh, “Recent Employment Trends in India and China: An Unfortunate Convergence,” International Development Economics Associates, 2007,http://www.networkideas.org/featart/ may2007/India_China.pdf (accessed 10 November 2009). 20. M. S. Swaminathan’s address on CSIR Foundation Day, 26 September 2007,http://www.niscair.res.in/sciencecommunication/rndnewsletters/csirnews2k7/csirnews_30oct07.pdf. 21. Amiya Kumar Bagchi noted this while presenting a paper at the India– China Seminar organized by China Agricultural University, Beijing, and the National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies, New Delhi, 25 March 2005. 22. Surjit Singh, “Rural Industries in Contemporary China,” China Report 32, no. 3 (1996): 269–293. 23. Kamal Nayan Kabra, “Rural Industrialization in China: A Saga of Township and Village Enterprises, 1978–2002,” in Rural Transformation in India: The Role of Non-Farm Sector, ed. Rohini Nayyar and Alak N. Sharma (New Delhi, Institute of Human Development, 2004), .35–48; Kabra, “Reforms in India and China-Policy Regimes Make the Difference,” The Hindu Business Line, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/2002/06/14/stories/200 2061400060800.htm (accessed 15 November 2009). 24. Mohammed Saqib and Debashish Chakraborty, “The Working of Agricultural Cooperatives in India: Is there any Lesson to Learn from the Chinese Experience,” in Energising Rural Development through Panchayats, ed.

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Bibek Debroy and P. D. Kaushik (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, Rajiv Ghandi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2005), 187–209. 25. Anit Mukherjee and Xiaobo Zhang, “Rural Industries in China and India: Role of Policies and Institutions,” World Development 35, no. 10 (2007): 1621–1634. 26. Data from He Kang’s book China’s Township and Village Enterprises were cited by many (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2006).

Chapter 6

Indian Studies on the Chinese Development Experience T. G. Suresh

Preliminaries The rise of China as a global economic power comprises one of the most dramatic stories of the late twentieth century. The rate at which the country recovered from the almost negative growth of the late Mao years was remarkable. The impressive economic gains the country has achieved in a range of areas, including poverty reduction, employment generation, industrial expansion, and—more important—global integration, have evoked considerable interest among India’s academic and policy circles. Of late, economic progress has emerged as one of the central concerns of Chinese studies in India. For many, the Chinese development trajectory was both puzzling and exemplary compared with that of India. China’s global leap, which surpassed the rate and scale of India’s

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developmental records, has stimulated an engaging debate among Indian scholars. Much of the debate seems to have emerged from a growing concern about the asymmetries China’s progress has produced in terms of the comprehensive national strengths of both countries.1 Recent years have seen a notably growing academic interest among Indian scholars in China’s development experience. This interest has been greatly influenced by the rise of China as a global economic player and by the way it has transformed the lives of its people. The Indian academic writings on China’s growth trajectory now define a focused field of Chinese studies in India. The nature of the aggregate data, the focus on government policy as the cause of development and progress, and the increasing attention to the role of local governments in development studies share a common epistemological understanding of China as a bordered nation-state rather than a civilization, though the developmental state is more benign than the national-security state. In that sense, India’s increased recent interest in China marks a shift in the way Chinese studies have been imagined in India by foregrounding development and growth as the primary category of China analysis. This also reflects a longing for a more precise and empirically grounded approach to understanding China. Limited opportunities for field visits to China, however, as well as meager resources and narrow access to relevant empirical data, impeded early initiatives in this direction. Nevertheless, the scenario has changed significantly in the last five to seven years; institutional associations and scholarly visits to China have increased. These visits have been conducted with the support of various universities and international research support, such as that offered by the Asian Scholarship Foundation. The scholars with recent field experience in China and those who have eventually published or presented papers on China’s development in various international conferences represent diverse disciplinary backgrounds—from area studies to affiliated disciplines, such as political science, economics, and development studies. The disciplinary training and the research techniques they employed were different from the earlier

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ones. The new empirical focus brought to the fore new sources on understanding China, such as aggregate national-level income data and provincial statistics. These sources were supplemented with the substantial empirical studies conducted by both Asian and western scholars. This chapter attempts to provide a thematic survey of Indian studies on China’s developmental experience over the last three decades. The term development is used here in a broad sense to refer to the enabling process that seeks to enhance social and economic progress, as well as the collective well-being of the people. It has multiple dimensions, a plurality of actors, and diverse ideational origins. Indian scholars have examined these aspects from different vantage points from time to time. This chapter seeks to outline only a limited survey of the Indian writings, focusing on select texts. An exhaustive review of the relevant literature is neither intended nor within the scope of this outline. What is referred to here as Indian studies consists mainly of the writings of Indian scholars that have already appeared in print in academic journals, edited volumes, and full-length books. This study is a preliminary inquiry into what constitutes Indian writings on China’s development experience; it also aims to examine their analytical devices, areas of concerns, methodological orientations, and perspectives.

Knowledge and Romance: Looking at China in the Early Years China’s transformative processes have had significant influence on India’s social sciences since the early years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Many Indian scholars shared a sense of fascination with China’s radically changing social and economic relations. It is possible that most of the early China scholars were initiated into China studies by personal interest in this transformative model. However, little of this interest found any academic expression in the form of publications; the reasons for this are too well known to most local scholars to be

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explained here again. Indian social science was at a nascent stage during that time; access to primary source material on China was restricted, as was the language expertise required to meaningfully engage in social studies on China. The 1950s was also a period during which the social world was still imagined as a largely coherent unit in which the political was simultaneously economic. In other words, the academic specialization focusing on the various spheres of social life and the accompanying activity of studying these with appropriate research tools derived from the relevant discipline had yet to become standard practice. For intellectual purposes, this meant that anyone with an interest in China’s transformation could well turn to K. N. Panikker’s book to learn about the kind of society, economy, and polity that China was evolving into. In a way, social science then was largely a disciplinary field that was subsequently broken up into separate fields of specialization. At another level, in the early postcolonial decades in India, the idea of development invoked different sets of meanings, images, and goals. Above all, it suggested a broad range of positive social outcomes attainable through rational state intervention and collective public actions. This was closely intertwined with the ideas of progress and well-being. Therefore issues pertaining to development became the concern of a larger social science community rather than the exclusive field of developmental economists. The political economy of China’s socialist transformation drew much attention in Indian social science starting in the early seventies; that was a time when many of the English-language books on China by sympathetic western scholars become available in university libraries and selected bookshops. These studies provided well-documented and substantial accounts of the process and ideas that changed the lives of China’s millions. A generation of Indian social science students was able to acquire an incisive understanding of these processes mainly through the works of western China scholars. Economists were the first to put together locally available data and offer an explanation of the Chinese development

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experience. An early attempt in this direction was that carried out by K. N. Raj in 1967.2 He examined the economic growth trends in India, Pakistan, and China from a comparative perspective. Pranab Bardhan, who later became a leading Indian economist, focused on China’s agriculture in a paper titled “Agriculture in China and India: Output, Input and Prices,” which was published in Economic and Political Weekly in 1969.3 The Indian economists who made early contributions on the subject shared a common concern—the agriculture sector. Given that both the countries had been, until recently, predominantly agrarian societies, this focus was the most relevant because it suggested the specialization of the scholars. But despite their pioneering contributions, these writings largely remained within the specialists’ field without being studied by other China scholars of India. The scholars who had disciplinary expertise in economics did not have the necessary language proficiency to access the Chinese primary resources. Nevertheless, much of their analytical propositions have close correlations with the empirical trends. The first ever case study focusing on aspects of the Chinese development experience by a scholar from the Chinese studies background was Prasenjit Duara’s work on the Great Leap Forward. Originally written for his dissertation, this paper was later published in Economic and Political Weekly in 1977.4 A discussion of early Indian writings on China’s transformation and development would not be complete without mentioning the incisive Excerpts from a China Dairy by Govind Kelkar. From 1978 to 1979, Economic and Political Weekly published a series of reports from Kelkar’s China travel accounts. This series became a significant source in understanding China because it was penned by an Indian scholar who had visited China’s otherwise restricted economic and social sites. At a time when it was still difficult to obtain physical access to China, input based on personal visits and firsthand accounts emerging from direct interactions with the cross-section of Chinese government officials, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) functionaries, ordinary workers, students and women was extremely valuable source material. Most of what Kelkar reported in her China dairy is, in fact, directly pertinent to development, particularly the

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ideas and models that were developed and deployed at that juncture in China’s developmental trajectory; the actors, participants, and the beneficiaries of those models are succinctly documented in her diary. Sections in Kelkar’s diary focus on agricultural development, the Dazhai production brigade in Shanxi Province, credit cooperatives, and the Shanghai machine-tools plant, among others—topics relevant to the purpose of this paper.

Farewell to the Specialist’s Field: New Social Science Collectives for Studying China There has been a growing trend since the late 1990s to overcome narrow disciplinary barriers and make collective contributions to an understanding of contemporary China. This trend signifies a realization shared by many in the China field that most of the studies carried out within separate disciplines remain largely isolated, however eminent they are; thus their academic impact is limited. This realization necessitated the formation of informal scholarly collectives whose members are drawn from different backgrounds and training conditions. China studies seminars and workshops have become increasingly open to scholars whose research interests focus on China irrespective of their training in Chinese studies. One of the most significant volumes to result from such collective efforts is the book edited by G. P. Deshpande and Alka Acharya, titled Crossing a Bridge of Dreams: 50 Years of India and China (2000).5 This volume contains four chapters relevant to development issues: Utsa Patnaik’s long and substantial chapter focusing on agriculture, which also examines the postreform trends in crop area, output, and rural employment;6 C. P. Chandrasekhar’s overview chapter on industrial development;7 the work of Alka Acharya, Rama V. Baru, and Geetha B. Nambissan on human development, with a focus on health and education; and Gopa Joshi’s politics of environment and development.

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For the present purpose, I examine the chapter on state and human development jointly written by Acharya, Baru, and Nambissan. Although it is a comparative inquiry, the paper primarily focuses on China and provides an extensive overview of the policy trends in the areas of public health and education. The authors argued that in China’s case, especially during the Mao era, the state has played an important role in terms of formulating appropriate policy regime, as well as in implementing microlevel policies in the fields of health and education. The authors attributed the remarkable improvements in the human development records in China to the Mao-era state interventions. By bringing in this dimension of well-being, measured in relation to life expectancy, literacy rates, and access to public resources, Acharya, Baru, and Nambissan approached development from a perspective that has become central to the development debate today. Implicitly, their discussion of China strongly suggests that low-income agrarian societies can achieve much better standards of living if state intervention is focused, enabling collective public actions to converge for common goals inspired by progressive human development. The later section of their paper examines implications of reforms in these areas. The authors observed that the change in the development strategy initiated by the post-Mao leadership prioritized economic growth over development and suggested certain continuity with the earlier period, particularly in the role of the state in conditioning social and economic outcomes.

From National Aggregate Approaches to Provincial-Level Micro Inquiries: Current Trends China’s postreform economic growth and globalization have greatly attracted the research interest of Indian scholars. Most notably, there has been a major change in the way China is perceived in India compared with the earlier periods. China’s rise as a preeminent global economic power evokes considerable interest among the present generation of social science students in India. At the same time, China’s global march has

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generated much attention and appreciation among the new Indian middle class, corporate and business groups, and policy elite. The cumulative effect of all this has been faster diversification of Chinese studies in India, which have grown from a specialized concern to a more general academic engagement seeking to explain China’s astounding economic success. The responses in these contexts suggest a variety of trends and perspectives encompassing a broad range of approaches, methodologies, and explanations. Much of these have evolved from some level of anxiety, ambivalence, and aspiration. This section discusses some of the emerging trends in the Indian studies on China’s development experience. First, Chinese studies as a focused field of research is undergoing a significant change in terms of scholars’ disciplinary background. Barring a few exceptions, Chinese studies in general have been the domain primarily of scholars who exclusively study China. In that sense, the field was largely a cohesive academic collective that possessed benchmark expertise of close familiarity with Chinese development, political history, and foreign policy choices. Therefore it was far easier to have a dialogue within China studies about the development trajectory of China. However, a noticeable change occurring today is the disciplinary broadening of China studies and the enlargement of the scholarly community. Many young scholars are now initiated into studying China’s development experience, mainly focusing on the postreform period. They come mostly from a social science background with diverse specializations, including economics, political sciences, journalism, sociology, rural development, trade policies, finance, gender studies, and health care. Much of their focus is on the microlevel related to their respective fields of specialization. How long their academic engagements with a focused aspect on China’s development process will last is a different question. Some of these are, at any rate, becoming short-term academic affairs because the scholars often find it difficult to sustain their interest without adequate institutional support, access to resources, and field-visit opportunities. Although the overall academic impact of these studies remains limited and uncertain,

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they are making no less significant contributions in terms of understanding China’s postreform story. Second, approaches to China’s development have evolved into better focus and research designs. This has been a noticeable trend among scholars who have long associations with Chinese studies. There seems to be a growing realization that the macrolevel aggregate approach has its limitations, often slipping into unintended generalization and conclusions. Therefore treating China as a single unit without breaking it down into its specific aspects is probably not an appropriate way to design research. At another level, the diverging development outcome within China has become strikingly noticeable to the world outside and is now recognized by the nation’s policy leadership. The uneven development between the eastern coastal region and the western hinterlands, different levels of rural industrialization in different provinces, the new social stratifications, the labor question, the rise of the middle class, gender issues, and so on have come into the focus of development studies. These have been well reflected in the recent Indian writings and research on China. This section discusses some of the representative works from India. Two full-length research articles published by Indian scholars focus on the provincial-level developmental processes and their outcomes. Manoranjan Mohanty’s “China’s Reforms: The Wuxi Story” traces the impressive developmental transformation experienced by the Wuxi area, particularly during the reform era.8 The paper argues that development through political urbanization in Wuxi may have achieved faster economic growth but with accompanying social, environmental, and political costs. Mohanty pointed out the danger of authoritarian leadership’s wielding state power to promote state and collective ownership and sometimes private ownership or market economy; the author highlighted the need to have democratic institutions at the grassroots level formulate developmental policies.9 Ritu Agarwal, drawing upon six months of fieldwork in Chenggong County, Yunnan Province, demonstrated in “Women Farmers in China’s Commercial Agrarian Economy” how the process of market

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reforms has drastically altered the lives of a large number of rural Chinese women, transforming them from year-round labor providers into farmerentrepreneurs.10 The paper argues that the institutional changes brought about by the reforms have contributed to the rise of a distinctly new class of women entrepreneurs who have emerged as significant actors in the rural economy. The study has raised critical questions around three variables—namely, marketing opportunities, access to farm inputs, and control over land—as potent challenges that restrain women’s abilities in terms of negotiating the male-dominated institution of the market. In addition to these, focused studies have been conducted on provincial-level experiences in the form of conference papers. My own study on “The Political Economy of Reform and Opening Up in Sichuan Province,” which I carried out with the Asia Fellows Award from the Asian Scholarship Foundation in 2008, examines the differentiated outcomes for social groups and spatial units in Sichuan.11 In particular, I argued that whereas the early socialist transformation and subsequent reforms have significantly enabled Sichuan to overcome its spatial disadvantages, helping it become part of transprovincial economic flows and facilitating greater political and cultural integration, the reforms and western development programs in Sichuan have created new spatial hierarchies, engendered new social stratification, and given rise to economically differentiated social groups.

Indian Studies on China’s Development Experience: The Journey thus far and the Way Forward Nearly four decades have passed since China’s transformative process drew serious academic attention among Indian social scientists. The current field of study reflects the conception of China as nation-state. Accordingly, government policy has been a major factor, a crucial catalyst causing changes and progress. However, Indian scholarship on the subject remains sketchy, and studies are dwindling. It is important to note consistent trends that partly explain this phenomenon: issues relating to

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development have never been the primary focus of Chinese studies scholarship in India. Although there has been intense debate on China’s development policies as part of a larger political process, a focused research attempt evolved very recently within the Chinese studies group in India. It has always been the non-China scholars, specialists in their own fields (mainly economists), who felt that understanding China entails empirically grounded approaches to China’s development. Much of the Indian writing on China’s development came mainly from non-China expert social scientists whose research and teachings focus on their disciplines rather than on China-centric issues. These scholars have made significant contributions to Chinese studies in terms of understanding the subject as they approached China with research tools and categories available in their discipline. At another level, studying development processes and their outcomes requires close empirical examination and access to data. Without adequate institutional commitment to research funding, scholars working on relevant aspects of China’s development face a constraining challenge with respect to meaningful academic engagement. In this regard, the Asian Scholarship Foundation has been an immensely valuable source for Indian scholars, enabling them to carry out further field research in China. As already indicated, studying Chinese development today poses complex challenges because its dimensions and outcome have diversified immensely. Methodologically, there has been a generally shared realization that the national aggregate approach is much less useful or valid and that microlevel specific studies are the way forward. In that sense, as a research concern, Chinese development calls for more multidisciplinary engagement, an endeavor well beyond conventional Chinese studies traditions. T. G. Suresh is an assistant professor at the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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Endnotes 1. A. Vaidyanathan, ed., Economic Development of India and China: A Comparative Study (New Delhi: Academic Foundation 1988); Amiya Kumar Bagchi, “Workers and Migrants: China and India circa 2005,” in Globalization and Labor Mobility in China, ed. I. L. Nielsen, R. L. Smyth, A. M. Vicziany (Clayton, Australia: Monash University Press, 2007), 151–168; Amitabh Kundu, Disparity, Mobility and Urbanization in India and China (New Delhi: Manak Publications, 2000); Ashok Mitra, ed., China: Issues in Development (New Delhi: Tulika, 1988); Vinod Mehta, The Soviet and the Chinese Economy: A Comparative Study (New Delhi: Sterling Publications, 1981). 2. K. N. Raj, India, Pakistan and China: Economic Growth and Outlook (New York: Allied, 1967). 3. Pranab Bardhan, “Agriculture in China and India: Output, Input and Prices,” Economic and Political Weekly 4, nos. 1–2 (January 1969): 53– 65. 4. Prasenjit Duara, “Great Leap Forward: An analysis of the Nature of Socialist Transformation,” Economic and Political Weekly, special issue (August 1974): 1365–1390. 5. G. P. Deshpande and Alka Acharya, eds., Crossing a Bridge of Dreams: 50 Years of India and China (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000). 6. Also see Utsa Patnaik, “Three Communes and a Production Brigade: The Contract Responsibility System in China” in China: Issues in Development, ed. Ashok Mitra (New Delhi: Tulika, 1989), 34–61. 7. C. P. Chandrasekhar, “Industrial Development” in Crossing a Bridge of Dreams: 50 Years of India and China, ed. G. P. Deshpande and Alka Acharya (New Delhi: Tulika, 2000), 68–87. 8. Manoranjan Mohanty, “China’s Reforms: The Wuxi Story,” Economic and Political Weekly 44, nos. 26–27 (June 2009): 308–319. 9. Manoranjan Mohanty, “Development and Democracy: The Indian and Chinese Experience,” in Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China, ed. Tan Chung (New Delhi: Gyan, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1998), chapter 26, available at http://ignca. nic.in/ks_41030.htm. Also see G. P. Deshpande, “Modernization and Political Process in China,” Economic and Political Weekly 25, no. 1 (June 1990): 27–29.

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10. Ritu Agarwal. “Women Farmers in China’s Commercial Agrarian Economy,” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 42 (October 2007): 4261–4267. 11. T. G. Suresh, “Political Economy of ‘Reform and Opening Up’ in Sichuan Province (1977–2006),” paper presented at the Ninth Asia Fellows Conference, Bangkok, 17–18 July 2009. Also see T. G. Suresh, “The Evolution of Business China’s New Labor Contract Law: An Indian Perspective,” China Currents 7, no. 3 (Fall 2008), available at http://www. chinacurrents.com/fall_2008/cc_suresh.htm.

Chapter 7

Developments In Tibet The Effect On India–China Relations Sharad K. Soni and Reena Marwah Of late, Indians have been encouraged to study contemporary China not only because of this civilization’s cultural richness but also because of China’s already significant influence over world events. Such influence has continued to expand in the twenty-first century. Several scholars believe that in the future, people who are knowledgeable about China will have an advantage over those who are ignorant, in much the same way as those at ease with the language and culture of European powers have benefitted in the past and present. However, China is not only an important civilization “out there”; it is also India’s largest neighbor “right here.” With the incorporation of Tibet into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1950 and the government of India’s oft-repeated official acknowledgment of Tibet as an autonomous region of China, the PRC ceased to be a distant neighbor and became as proximate to India as the states of the Indian subcontinent itself. For Indian scholars whose prime focus is South Asia, studying China is a necessity as well. Tibet, which has been one of the key areas in China studies (several institutions in India impart knowl-

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edge on Tibetan culture, history, and religion), needs to be comprehensively researched in order to gauge the extent of its influence on India– China relations. It is in this context that this chapter addresses the central theme from such perspectives as institutions or academics, media, think tanks, and politics, performing an objective analysis of the Tibet consciousness from cultural, political, and strategic points of view, in addition to highlighting both the negative and positive effects of developments in Tibet over the years on India–China relations. While doing so, the chapter seeks to examine how academics, journalists, policy makers, politicians (mainly through parliamentary debates), and China studies experts in India have viewed developments in Tibet as far as their influence on India–China relations in the broader context is concerned. In the Indian literature, the image of China as civilization and that of China as nation-state interact most vividly in the studies of Tibet. A few interventions and statements by Chinese scholars have also been included to illuminate the Chinese mindset on this issue.

The Evolution of Tibetan Studies in India Many centuries ago, Indian scholars undertook the arduous task of traveling across the Himalayas to Tibet and carried with them Indian philosophy and Buddhist thought. Such interaction between Indian and Tibetan scholars resulted in the evolution of Tibetan culture and thought, which came to be known as Tibetology. However, it was in the early nineteenth century that Hungarian explorers and scholars ventured into inner Asia in search of clues to their own national origins. The first among them, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, began his travels in 1820 and eventually became the founder of Tibetology,1 defined as the study of all aspects of Tibet—including its history, religion, language, politics—and the collection of Tibetan articles of historical, cultural, and religious significance.2 Tibetan artifacts include Tibetan statues, shrines, Buddhist icons and holy

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scripts, Thanka embroideries, paintings, and tapestries, jewelry, masks, and other objects of fine Tibetan art and craftsmanship.3 Tibetan studies in India have been in existence both as an element of Chinese studies and as a separate entity. The latter manifestation appears to focus exclusively on Tibetan language and cultural studies. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Buddhist scholars became interested in exploring the vast literature of Tibet in order to become acquainted mainly with Buddhist religious works, which were then available only in the Tibetan language because the original Sanskrit texts had been lost. At about the same time, the emergence of A Tibetan–English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms in 1902 and An Introduction to the Grammar of the Tibetan Language in 1915, both by the first Indian Tibetologist, Sarat Chandra Das, provided the basic tools for studying Tibetan literature. These are still considered essential tools for scholars of Tibetan studies all over the world. Initially, “the Buddhist-Sanskrit literature, represented in Tibetan translations, proved to be the most convenient starting point for Tibetology in India.”4 The contribution to traditional Sanskrit–Tibetan studies for further development of Tibetology in India made by another great Indian scholar, Rahul Sankrityayan, appears to be extraordinary. Between 1930 and 1950, he undertook several hazardous journeys to Tibet and returned with not only valuable Tibetan manuscripts and xylographs but also a good number of Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts and some Thanka paintings, which are preserved in the K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute at Patna.5 Aside from being a great Sanskrit and Pali scholar, Sankrityayan also mastered the Tibetan language and produced Tibetan primers, a grammar, and a Tibetan–Hindi dictionary.6 Earlier, realizing the importance of a Buddhistic approach to Tibetology, Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Indian Nobel laureate and an eminent poet and philosopher, introduced Tibetan studies as a subject for comparative research in Indology at Shantiniketan, where a center for international cultural studies called Visva Bharati was established in the early 1920s.7 His vision received a further boost in 1954 when

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the department of Indo–Tibetan Studies at Visva Bharati was converted into a full-fledged center; it was the first center among Indian universities to offer a course on Buddhism and Tibetan language and literature at the graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels. The credit for establishing the center goes to P. C. Bagchi. In addition to these individuals, several government and private institutions in India are involved in Tibetology through research and publications. Over the years, these institutions have conducted several studies and research projects on Tibetan studies based on Buddhist culture, language, literature, philosophy, and so on. Two such institutions with the objective of preserving Tibetan culture and tradition by carrying out research studies in the Indo–Tibetan field include the Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology (SRIT) and the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (CIHTS). Established in Gangtok in 1958 and initially known as the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology (named after the late Palden Thondup Namgyal, the Chogyal of Sikkim), the SRIT is one of the esteemed institutions in India carrying out research on the language and culture of Tibet. The museum in the institute houses one of the world’s largest collections of rare manuscripts and works on Mahayana Buddhism. Furthermore, the museum is home to more than two hundred Buddhist icons, antique paintings, Thankas, statues, shrines, tapestries, masks, and other Tibetan works of religious art. Today the institute is a world-famous center for the study of Buddhist philosophy and religion, encompassing translations of the original teachings of the Buddha and discourses by eminent Buddhist scholars from all parts of the world. The CIHTS was envisioned by Jawaharlal Nehru and his holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama for the purpose of imparting education to Tibetan youth, as well as to those living near the Himalayan border regions. The institute was established in 1967 and began functioning as a special wing of Sampurnananda Sanskrit University, Varanasi; in 1988 the government of India declared the CIHTS a university. The CIHTS also functions as a research institute and serves as a platform for interaction between Buddhist and non-Buddhist Indian philosoph-

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ical schools, between Buddhist and western philosophers, and between Buddhist scholars and scientists. Other institutions involved in conducting teachings and research on Indo–Tibetan Buddhist studies in general and Tibetology in particular include Sampurnananda Sanskrit Visvavidyalaya and Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi; Nalanda Mahavihar (Deemed University), Nalanda; Magadh University, Bodhgaya; Delhi University (DU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Tibet House, all in Delhi; Allahabad University, Allahabad; Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur; Lucknow University and Acharya Narendra Dev International Research Institute of Buddhist Studies, both in Lucknow; Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan, University of Calcutta, North Bengal University, and the Asiatic Society, all in Kolkata; Jammu University, Kashmir University, the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, Choglamsar, and Leh, all in Jammu and Kashmir; Nagarjuna University, Guntor; Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla; the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala; Patiala University, Patiala; Punjab University, Chandigarh; Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra; Nagpur University, Nagpur; Nyingma Institute of Sheydra, Gangtok; and the Manjusri Centre for Tibetan Culture, Darjeeling; as well as the Srongtsen Library at the Centre for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, which has been recognized as a research resource center by the H. N. Bahuguna Garhwal University, Srinagar in Uttaranchal. Moreover, the International Academy of Indian Culture (in Delhi), established by Raghu Vira and actively promoted by his son Lokesh Chandra, has published a series of valuable Tibetan books, particularly on history and philosophy, including the works of Bu-ston and the history of dPao-tsug-lag, among others. These are considered rare and now almost impossible to acquire in Tibet.8

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Tibet from a Historical Perspective Tibet has been the focus of international attention for nearly a century now. In a well-researched book titled Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement, the Sacrifice of Tibet (Mittal, 2004) set in the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of Tibet by the British, Claude Arpi argued that “India’s acquiescence to the enslavement of Tibet has had disastrous consequences.”9 In fact, India now hosts a larg concentration of diasporic Tibetans (according to official Indian sources, their population in February 2008 numbered 110,095). Historically, the Tibetans were a feared martial and war-like race. However, in the seventh century AD, after Buddhism came to Tibet, they became a pacifist nation. According to Arpi, “Tibet’s conversion had another consequence on its political history: a non-violent Tibet could no longer defend itself. It had to look outside for military support for the protection of its people and Dharma and to safeguard its frontiers.”10 This assistance came first from the Mongol Khans and later from the Manchu emperors of China’s Qing Dynasty, when they themselves became followers of the Buddha’s doctrine. The substance of China’s historical claim to Tibet is that the Mongol Khans conquered both China and Tibet at the same time and that the territories held by the Mongols were inherited first by the Mings and then by the Manchu rulers of China; therefore Tibet is an inalienable part of Chinese territory. However, another argument is that because both the Mongol Khans and the Manchu emperors accepted the Dalai Lama as their spiritual preceptor owing to the patron–priest (Choe–Yon) relationship,11 China was in fact giving tribute to Tibet. But China (for a long time now) has stood by its counterarguments even in the face of opposition from the western world. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the events that unfolded on the Tibetan plateau had far-reaching consequences for the future of Tibet. At that time, Tibet had already become an area of interest in the great game among Britain, Russia, and China. The story began just over one hundred years ago, in September 1904, when the British colonel Francis Younghusband entered Tibet and prevailed upon the hitherto insular kingdom

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to conclude an agreement with the mighty British Empire. The Lhasa Convention of 1904, signed by the British and the Tibetans, sealed British lordship over Tibet. The Shimla Convention followed in 1914, laying out the McMahon Line defining both the Indo–Tibetan border and the division of Tibet into Outer Tibet (which lies along the border with India and is now known as the Tibetan Autonomous Region) and Inner Tibet (present-day Sichuan, Yunnan, and Qinghai Provinces of China). The Shimla Convention resulted in the acknowledgment of China’s sovereignty over Inner Tibet but only suzerain control over Outer Tibet; British India retained trading and extraterritorial rights in this part of the region. Tibet signed this treaty as an independent nation, highlighted by the British government in a note to the Chinese dating to 1943: “Since the Chinese Revolution of 1911 … Tibet has enjoyed de facto independence.”12 China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-Qing, was overthrown following the Chinese revolution of 1911, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. As a result, Mongolia (then known as Outer Mongolia) and Tibet emerged as de facto independent states in 1911 and 1912, respectively. In both cases, however, this independence was not recognized by China. In 1913 a Treaty of Friendship was signed between Tibet and Mongolia, signifying the independent existence of both nations. Under the government of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, Tibet functioned independently of China until 1949, when the PRC was established; soon afterward, Tibet’s de facto independence ended. In October 1950, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marched into the territory controlled by the Dalai Lama’s government, thereby accomplishing what the Chinese describe as a peaceful liberation from centuries of theocratic feudal despotism and reuniting Tibet with the motherland of which it is an inalienable part.13 Tibet was formally incorporated into the PRC, and a seventeen-point agreement was signed by Tibet and China in May 1951. Friction, ambiguous expectations, and divergent interpretations of Tibet’s status under this agreement ignited an uprising against Chinese rule in the 1950s14 that culminated in the escape of the fourteenth

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Dalai Lama, along with his 80,000 followers, to India in 1959. Subsequent decades have witnessed the Sino–Tibetan impasse growing despite attempts to resolve the Tibetan issue through the process of both formal and informal dialogue between the representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. The violent 2008 Tibetan uprising was indeed the result of an ever-growing stalemate between the two sides, which also reflects the lingering pessimism about any resolution to the Tibetan issue during the lifetime of the Dalai Lama.

Indian Perspectives on Tibet Affecting Sino–Indian Relations With the presence of the Dalai Lama and more than 100,000 Tibetans in India since 1959, tremendous empathy and compassion have been expressed for them by some Indian scholars and analysts, demonstrating the complicated relationship between the concepts of Chinese civilization and the Chinese nation-state whenever Tibet is invoked in the narrative. According to these sympathetic views, in April 1954 under the Panchsheel agreement, Jawaharlal Nehru accepted China’s suzerainty over Tibet. Successive Indian governments have carried out the same policy. The Chinese, however, felt that Nehru had always wanted Tibet’s independence. In this regard, while emphasizing Tibet as a contradiction in Sino– Indian relations, Dawa Norbu argued, “the PRC’s policies towards independent India have been characterized as a judicious combination of deep strategy and surface diplomacy.”15 This stance, as he stressed, “was taken because the Chinese communists firmly believed that India would play a crucial role in any probable external intervention in Tibet.”16 The Panchsheel agreement, referred to as the five principles or five modes of conduct, has been considered one of Nehru’s major contributions to building a world free from conflict and characterized by peace, particularly in Asia. Nehru thought that the Panchsheel model could be used in treaties all over the world and that it would lead to peace everywhere. The

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five principles are mutual respect for one another’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in another’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. These principles guided India–China relations, although Tibetan affairs and border issues were stumbling blocks to the bilateral relationship. Nevertheless, relations between India and China, long fraught with resentments, including a short border war in 1962, have recently warmed. The two countries have also seen a thaw in their diplomatic dealings. Even Samdhong Rinpoche, the former prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, has been quoted as saying in Dharamsala that cordial relations between India and China would have a “positive” effect on the entire world. He described Tibet as being “sometimes a key issue to achieve a sustainable co-relationship between India and China.”17 In contrast, however, a survey conducted by Outlook magazine reveals that 71 percent of those polled stress that the Dalai Lama’s presence on Indian soil has had an adverse effect on India–China relations.18 Conversely, Manoranjan Mohanty of the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) has dismissed the description of the Dalai Lama as an apolitical person and his activities as apolitical, describing it as “incorrect.” Srikanth Kondapalli of JNU added, “the Dalai Lama’s being in India represents, among other things, civilizational soft power.” From the sociological point of view, Shiv Visvanathan stressed that the Dalai Lama “represents ethics as opposed to ideology, which is something the left can never understand, but which appeals to all of us.”19 Both India and China are now modern nation-states, rising simultaneously in the global arena. Are past civilizational contacts affecting contemporary Sino–Indian bilateral relations? This question is important because China and India as emerging powers are poised to play significant roles in the world politics of the twenty-first century. D. S. Rajan, director of the Chennai Centre for China Studies (CCCS), believes that “politically, contacts between the two [India and China] at high political leadership levels have grown tremendously; also, marking big improvement

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in economic relations, bilateral trade is gathering momentum.”20 Of late, independent analysts, such as Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), support the view that India excessively conceded to the Tibet issue in exchange for the opening of border trade through Sikkim, which in any case is to Beijing’s strategic advantage. However, according to Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, former director of the Delhi-based ICS, both India and China have viewed each other as having hegemonic designs in the Asian region, Tibet and Sikkim being prime examples of those intentions. She found significant not only that Nathu La has been opened for trade under the joint declarations but also that the towns of Changgu in Sikkim and Reginggang in Tibet have been identified as trading centers, as well. “There is interest on both sides, very deep interest, to see that what is happening is not allowed to upset the apple cart that is the state of India–China economic relations,” she added.21 Several others have studied the Tibet issue from a scholarly standpoint. Among more recent commentators on Tibet is N. Ram, editor in chief of The Hindu, who attributes the economic progress of Tibet in recent years to China and completely agrees with the Chinese stance on Tibet.22 On the issue of Tibetan refugees coming to India, Bhaskar Roy observed that “New Delhi cannot remain unconcerned with such a significant development involving the Chinese,” and that “Indian policy is not to turn away destitutes and refugees on humanitarian grounds.”23 He highlighted that India accepted not only the Dalai Lama and nearly 1.5 million Tibetan refugees who fled alleged Chinese state discrimination but also 10 million Bangladeshis who took refuge in India to escape the atrocities of the West Pakistan army during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation. Perhaps with the exception of Pakistan, host to numerous Afghan refugees following the war in that country, India hosts the highest number of refugees in the world. Roy rightly underlined that “such humanitarian acts have not prevented New Delhi from seeking friendly relations with countries from which these refugees came [to India].”24

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In recent years, Tibet has been studied in the context of Sino–Indian water issues. Tibet is the source of most major Indian rivers, including the Brahmaputra, the Indus, and the Sutlej. The Tibetan plateau’s vast glaciers, huge underground springs, and high altitude make Tibet the world’s largest freshwater repository after the polar icecaps. Significantly, all of Asia’s major rivers except the Ganges originate from the Tibetan plateau; even the two main tributaries of the Ganges flow in from Tibet. However, as Brahma Chellaney pointed out, “China is now pursuing major interbasin and inter-river water transfer projects on the Tibetan plateau, which threaten to diminish international-river flows into India and other coriparian states.”25 He noticed that “before such hydro-engineering projects sow the seeds of water conflict, China ought to build institutionalized, cooperative river-basin arrangements with downstream states” because these “projects and plans are a reminder that Tibet is at the heart of the India–China divide.” Chellaney expressed the hope that “Tibet can still become a political bridge between China and India,” provided water becomes “a source of cooperation, not conflict.”26 Furthermore, referring to the Tawang tract or the border issue as the Great India–China Game, Mohan Guruswamy, chair of the New Delhi– based Centre for Policy Alternatives, observed that “with the collapse of the British and Soviet empires, the only inheritors of this squalid and sometimes bloody game are the Chinese and Indians, the two world’s major military powers made even more formidable by their openly deployed nuclear forces.” He insisted that “China and India should trust each other, treat each other as true friends, instead of being suspicious [of] each other.”27 Undoubtedly, as Swaran Singh of JNU posited, “Tibet’s India connection is the greatest irritant in China’s perceptions about India.”28 One can witness that “repeated Indian statements … expressing India’s commitment to regard Tibet as an autonomous and integral part of the ‘territory’ of China, have not helped India–China relations.”29 On this count, one can infer that India’s policy on Tibet is significantly determined by the dynamics of its relations with China.

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The Current Scenario in India’s Tibet Policy India’s Tibet policy has not changed fundamentally despite the violent 2008 Tibetan unrest, during and after which India responded to China’s sensitivities with due caution and restraint. The Foreign Ministry expressed its “distress” over reports of violence in Lhasa and the deaths of innocent people and called for the crisis to be resolved “through dialogue and non-violent means.” Even in response to attempts of Tibetan refugees to arrange a march to Tibet in protest against the Beijing Olympics, the official Indian position remained firm in its disapproval of such moves. It said: “All those in India, whether Indian citizens or foreigners, are subject to the law of the land regarding the crossing of our borders, marches or demonstrations. Like our other guests, Tibetan refugees, while they are in India, are expected to refrain from political activities and those activities that affect our relations with other friendly countries.”30 Therefore the authorities in India “restricted [the] activities of the Dalai Lama’s ‘Government-in-Exile,’ preventing Tibetan activists from indulging in violent protests in India, and marching to Tibet across Indian borders.”31 India’s stand on the Tibet crisis was based on its traditional opposition to separatist movements and foreign intervention in support of such movements. Furthermore, considering the extent of the growth in India–China relations in recent times, New Delhi prefers not to support the Tibetan cause despite the fact that “protests by Tibetans have implications for India as the Tibet issue is entangled with the India–China border dispute.”32 India’s response to the 2008 Tibetan unrest was based on several factors. First, India remained firm in its principled stand that Tibet is a part of China and that problems between the two sides need to be resolved through peaceful dialogue. Second, India considered it unwise to damage its relations with China, with which India’s economic and trade ties are strengthening. Third, India did not consider it morally correct to allow activities that could cause the disruption of the Olympic torch relay on its soil, and hence preferred to ignore the western campaign supporting

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Tibetan protesters; instead, it cooperated with China to ensure a peaceful relay in New Delhi.33 The Chinese side appreciated the overall Indian response to the Tibetan unrest. While acknowledging Tibet as a sensitive bilateral issue, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao publicly thanked New Delhi for the “steps taken by the Indian government in handling Tibetan independence activities masterminded by the Dalai clique.”34 However, India’s response did not please the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama criticized New Delhi, describing it as “overcautious,” and Tibetan activists uttered strong words of accusation: “India supports China too much. We are struggling but they don’t let us.”35 The evolution of India’s policy on Tibet can be traced to India’s preindependence period. Between 1947 and 1954, India recognized Tibet as an independent nation, and Tibet did participate as an independent country at the first Asian Relations Conference held in New Delhi in March and April 1947, just a few months before India gained its formal independence. But in April 1954, under the Panchsheel agreement, India gave up this position and Jawaharlal Nehru accepted China’s suzerainty over Tibet. Although India agreed to withdraw all the extraterritorial rights in Tibet enjoyed by Britain during its rule over India, China committed itself to respecting Tibetan cultural and religious autonomy. Successive Indian governments have carried out the same policy. However, B. Raman, director of the Chennai-based Institute of Tropical Studies, asserted, “Our aim should be not to embarrass and humiliate China, but to persuade it to change its policy on Tibet and reach a negotiated settlement with His Holiness through a sustained dialogue.”36 According to him, “India should play the role of a facilitator of such a dialogue.”37 One may ask whether the political issue of Tibet has any real foothold in Indian public opinion, media, or political parties. The answer is certainly no, for despite the vicissitudes of India–China relations, no Indian government has ever sought to support the Dalai Lama’s political agenda. C. Raja Mohan, strategic editor of The Hindu, stated in May 2003, “The question of Tibet always lingers uncomfortably in the air whenever the top

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leaders of India and China meet.”38 Nevertheless, the power of “Tibetan autonomy” in India’s thinking “has been gradually diluted under the imperatives of improving relations with China and the compulsions of Chinese assertive stance.”39 In December 1988 Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to China opened the dialogue between China and India on the border issue. Subsequent developments led to confidence-building measures between the two countries mainly through the agreements concluded in 1993 and 1996, thereby moving forward on the border issue through dialogue. In 2003 when prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited China, even the phrase Chinese suzerainty was dropped, in acceptance of Tibet as “part of the territory of China.” On 24 July 2003, during a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the statement delivered by the Indian prime minister in connection with his visits abroad, including to China, then foreign minister Yashwant Sinha stated on record that “it has been the Government of India’s policy ever since His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to India and as is reiterated in all the agreements … we regard him as spiritual leader, as a religious Guru and no Government has so far permitted Indian territory to be used for political purposes by the Tibetans, and that is the reiteration which we made while in Beijing.”40 Moreover, Tibet did not even figure in the official documents or speeches during prime minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to China in January 2008. As S. D. Muni of the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore has underlined, “China was happy with India’s reiteration of ‘one China’ policy. [And] New Delhi finds it prudent to avoid irritating the Chinese with the Tibetan question.”41 The 2008 unrest among Tibetans provided an opportunity for India to review its Tibet policy for the future, all the more so because India cannot remain unaffected by developments taking place in Tibet, particularly with regard to border security. Several factors need to be taken into account by India in working out its Tibet policy,42 including the following: (a) the Tibetan movement in India must not cause a fissure in relations between India

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and China, (b) India’s security along the Sino–Indian border must not be threatened, (c) India has legitimate security concerns in Tibet, and (d) India can play a more proactive role in encouraging dialogue between Chinese and Tibetan leaders, which would lead to a final resolution of the Sino–Tibetan impasse.

Chinese Perception on Tibet: A Factor in India–China Relations Like Indian scholars, Chinese scholars have perceived Tibet as an important factor affecting India–China relations, although their perceptions differ on several counts. In Chinese scholar Li Li’s opinion, “the progressive strengthening of India’s post–Cold War policy of détente towards China led the two nations to commit in 1996 to a constructive cooperation.”43 According to her, “after the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government took office in 1998, … it referred to China as India’s greatest threat, citing it as justification for conducting nuclear tests. This implied a turn for the worse in India’s China policy, and that the two nations had entered a new era of antagonism and hostility.”44 Nevertheless, as she observed, “the situation changed again when the Vajpayee government began making overtures towards China, and the two nations reached consensus on comprehensive bilateral cooperation in 2003 during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to China.”45 Furthermore, a story published in the Nagaland Post on 12 January 2009 highlighted the viewpoints of some other Chinese scholars on Tibet as a factor in India–China relations.46 Quoting Chinese scholar Hu Shisheng, deputy director of the Institute of South and Southeast Asian Studies in Beijing’s China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the story pointed out that “India uses the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to strengthen its claim on Arunachal Pradesh, a sprawling region that Beijing claims.” Hu Shisheng added, “In the eyes of [the] Chinese, we believe that you use the Dalai Lama to strengthen your argu-

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ment (for Arunachal).” Hu agreed that “the Dalai Lama is very powerful even among Tibetans in China.” Zhang Guihong, executive director of Fudan University’s Centre for South Asian Studies, noted that Tawang was of special importance owing to China’s historical claims over the region. He felt that the Dalai Lama’s statement in Tawang praising India was a “thank you” to India for hosting him since he fled his homeland in 1959, three years before India and China fought a brief border war.47 At the same time, Chinese scholars also believed that Sino–Indian relations, strained in recent times, needed to improve. Zhang Li of Sichuan University’s Institute of South Asian Studies argued that “innovative thinking” has to be adopted on both sides in order to resolve the lingering boundary dispute.48 In the words of Shi Yinhong, “the present Dalai Lama is not a ‘purely religious leader’ but a very political person: Tibet’s theocratic ruler before 1959 and the head of Tibetan ‘exile government’ since then.”49 After more than two decades of public advocacy for Tibetan independence, the Dalai Lama changed his political posture to allegedly recognize China’s sovereignty over Tibet. He did this to adapt to universal recognition of Chinese sovereignty in the international community, as well as to China’s greater stature in the world. However, in sharp contrast to the politically charged statements by the Chinese scholars cited above, Tan Chung underlined the civilizational links between India and China. He highlighted the fact that “the Himalayan barrier between the two countries has finally vanished. After all, it was from this Himalayan cradle that the first Indian and first Chinese were born. The cradle still stands there as an eternal symbol of Sino– Indian twin-hood. Let this be the constant reminder to the two countries when they march into the future.”50

Conclusion From the academic point of view, Tibetology in India received an incentive in 1954 when the Department of Indo–Tibetan Studies at Visva

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Bharati was converted into a full-fledged center focusing on Buddhism and Tibetan language and literature. Since then, several institutions have established departments on Tibetan studies, resulting in the tremendous growth of interest among Indian scholars in Tibet. The so-called Tibet issue, which assumed a political hue in Sino–Indian relations, has had a significant effect on the course of relations between the two countries for some time. It may now be recalled that as the era of nation-states emerged in the early twentieth century, Tibet under the thirteenth Dalai Lama declared independence but maintained a policy of distance and disengagement from the outside world. China, on the other hand, exercised no direct control over Tibet until the PLA invasion, led by the Chinese communists in 1949. Over the course of their historical relations, Tibet and China have passed through periods of strength and dominance, as well as times of weakness and division. Both were able to threaten or influence their neighbors on occasion, but East Asian perceptions of international relations were fluid enough to underline that countries can be subordinate to a neighbor, even for considerable periods of time, without losing their sense of independence. This is especially true in cases where a nation was able to maintain a distinct identity. Many modern Chinese historians have claimed that these countries, which were under the imperial influence of various Chinese dynasties, somehow became integral parts of China. However, Tibetans believe that Tibet has always maintained a distinct cultural, religious, linguistic, and ethnic identity. Such beliefs point to a Tibetan consciousness that also influences the thoughts of scholars from both India and China. These scholars subscribe to the view that their countries are the cradles of civilization and believe they can work together on several issues in the global landscape—perhaps even on the Tibet issue. Nevertheless, the border question and the way the Dalai Lama has been viewed have made the matter contentious. Although Indians consider him a spiritual and religious leader, the Chinese believe him to be a political person, thereby further complicating the question of Tibet. Yet for more than five decades, India has perceived Tibet as part of China.

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One may view the entire issue of Tibet differently in light of recent developments. Despite the fact that the Tibetan unrest of 2008 cast a shadow on Tibet’s future, there is now an ample scope to study such developments from a new perspective, all the more so because the Tibetan unrest has underlined the need for China “to seriously proceed with moves to engage the Dalai Lama in seeking a negotiated and peaceful solution of the Tibetan tangle.”51 Finding the middle ground, therefore, is requisite for a definitive solution to the Sino–Tibetan stalemate. As far as India’s approach to the 2008 Tibetan unrest is concerned, it has been “diplomatically correct and politically cautious”52 in responding to the crises. Although no change has been implemented in India’s Tibet policy in the aftermath of the unrest, New Delhi has been following the dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama and his government in exile. The outcome of the dialogue will directly affect India’s security concerns about border areas, as well as the dynamics of its overall relations with China. Sharad K. Soni is an assistant professor of Mongolian and Central Asian Studies at School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. See last page for Reena Marwah’s bio.

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Endnotes 1. V. V. Gokhale, “Tibetan Studies in India (A Brief Survey),” Report of the Japanese Association for Tibetan Studies, no.18 (31 March 1972): 6. 2. See Wikipedia, “Tibetology,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetology (accessed 12 December 2009). 3. Ibid. 4. Gokhale, “Tibetan Studies,” 6. 5. Nirmal C. Sinha, “Tibetan Studies in Modern India,” Bulletin of Tibetology 19, no. 1 (1983): 13. 6. For more details on his personality, travel, and contribution, see Wikipedia, “Rahul Sankrityayan,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahul_ Sankrityayan (accessed 12 December 2009). 7. Gokhale, “Tibetan Studies,” 6. 8. Ibid., 8. 9. See Rajeev Srinivasan, “The Sacrifice of Tibet: Extraordinary Delusions and Temporary Insanity,” 25 March 2008, http://www.rediff.com/news/2 008/mar/25rajeev.htm (accessed 19 June 2009). 10. Claude Arpi, “The Tibet Factor in the Indo–Chinese Relations,” World Focus 29, no. 4 (2008): 153. 11. For more on the Choe–Yon (patron–priest) relationship between the Mongol rulers in China—particularly Khublai Khan, the founder of Yuan dynasty (1260–1368)— and the Tibetan clergy, see Sh. Bira, “Qubilai Qa’an and Phags-Pa Bla-ma,” in The Mongol Empire and its Legacy, ed. Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 240– 249. 12. Srinivasan, “Sacrifice of Tibet.” 13. Ravi Bhoothalingam, “For a ‘Harmonious Resolution’ of the Tibetan Question,” Economic and Political Weekly (18 August 2007): 3383. 14. Warren Smith, China’s Policy on Tibetan Autonomy, Working Paper no. 2 (Washington, DC: East-West Center, October 2004), 46. 15. According to Norbu, “China’s deep strategy observable from the pattern of her actions, is to gain a strategic edge over India in Inner Asia by quoting Indian acquiescence in the Chinese occupation of Tibet … And surface diplomacy which is characterized by frequent visits of all kinds to New Delhi (such as those during 1954–58 and 1989–93) has been pursued whenever the PRC feels vulnerable in Tibet.” See Dawa Norbu, “Tibet in

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18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

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Sino–Indian Relations: The Centrality of Marginality,” Asian Survey 37, no. 11 (1997): 1082. Ibid. Kondapalli and Viswanathan quoted in Ranjit Devraj, “Tibet can bask in India and China’s warmth,” Online Asia Times, 9 July 2003, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EG09Df01.html (accessed 25 March 2009). For more details, see Anjali Puri, “The Dalai Lama,” Outlook , 14 April 2008, 34–38. Quotations from Anjali Puri, “The Dalai Lama,” Outlook, 14 April 2008. D. S. Rajan, “India–China Civilization Contacts and their Meaning to Bilateral Ties in the Modern Era,” C3Sindia, no. 284 (June 2009), http:// www.c3sindia.org/india567 (accessed 17 July 2009). For more details, see Jayshree Bajoria, “The Question of Tibet,” Council on Foreign Relations (5 December 2008), http://www.cfr.org/publication/15965/ (accessed 19 June 2009). For more details, see “Tibet on Road of Rapid Uplift: N. Ram,” The Hindu, 27 February 2009, http://www.thehindu.com/2009/02/27/stories/200902 2755511900.htm (accessed 18 May 2009). Bhaskar Roy, “Lhasa Uprising: China’s Actions Crossing its Boundaries,” SAAG paper no. 2642 (24 March 2008), http://www.southasiaanalysis. org/papers27/paper2642.html (accessed 21 May 2008). Ibid. Brahma Chellaney, “The Sino–Indian Water Divide,” Black China Blog (13 August 2009), http://az-china.com/blackchinablog/?p = 294 (accessed 21 October 2009). Ibid. “Indian Scholar: Tibet Issue an Internal Affair,” China Daily, 8 May 2008, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-05/08/content_6670955 .htm (accessed 26 June 2008). Swaran Singh, “India–China Relations: Perception, Problems, Potential,” South Asia Survey 15, no. 1 (2008): 88. Ibid. Quoted in S. D. Muni, “The Third Tibetan Uprising: India’s Response,” ISAS brief no.60 (24 March 2008), 1, http://www.isasnus.org/events/ backgroundbriefs/61.pdf (accessed 25 October 2009). For more detailed analysis, see Punchok Stobdan, “An Indian Perception of the Tibetan Situation,” Asia-Pacific Bulletin, no. 31 (20

Developments In Tibet

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48.

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March 2009), http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/apb0 31.pdf (accessed 27 May 2009). Abanti Bhattacharya, “India Should Revisit its Tibet Policy” (4 April 2008), http://www.idsa.in/publications/stratcomments/AbantiBhattacharya040408.htm (accessed 29 May 2008). Stobdan, “Indian Perception.” See Henry Chu, “Tibet Unrest Tests India,” Los Angeles Times, 20 March 2008. See Muni, “Third Tibetan Uprising,” 2. B. Raman, “Tibetan Diaspora and India–China Relations,” C3Sindia, no. 233 (2008), http://www.c3sindia.org/tibet/426 (accessed 5 December 2008). Ibid. Raman underlined the fact that “after the March-April 2008 uprising in the Tibetan inhabited areas, India did well in expressing openly its distress over the turn of events in Tibet and in expressing its interest in a dialogue and not a street confrontation between the Chinese and the Tibetans.” See Office of Tibet, New York, “Indian Media Debates Impact of Tibet on Prime Minister’s China Visit,” 21 June 2003, http://www.tibetoffice.org/ en/index.php?url_channel_id = 53&url_publish_channel_id = 293&url_ subchannel_id = &well_id = 2 (accessed 27 September 2009). Muni, “Third Tibetan Uprising,” 3. See “Discussion on the Statement by the Prime Minister on his Recent Visits to Germany, St. Petersburg, Evian and China,” 24 July 2003, Indian Parliament on the Issue of Tibet: Rajya Sabha Debates, 1952–2005 (New Delhi: Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre, 2006), 110. Muni, “Third Tibetan Uprising,” 3. Sharad K. Soni, “India’s Response to Tibetan Unrest, 2008,” Himalayan and Central Asian Studies 13, no. 1 (2009): 109. Li Li, “India’s Security Concept and Its China Policy in the Post–Cold War Era,” Chinese Journal of International Politics 2, no. 2 (2008): 229. Ibid. Ibid. IANS, “India Behind Dalai’s Trip to Arunachal: Chinese Scholar,” Nagaland Post, 12 January 2009, http://www.nagalandpost.com/ShowStory.aspx?npoststoryiden = UzEwMTk5OTQ%3D-SvcGyJ%2BXvHI%3 D (accessed 25 December 2009) Ibid. Ibid.

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49. Shi Yinhong, “West in Dark on Tibet, Basic Facts Shed Light,” China Daily, 20 February 2009. 50. Tan Chung, “A Sino–Indian Perspective for India–China Understanding,” in Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China, ed. Tan Chung (New Delhi: Gyan, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1998), http://www.ignca.nic.in/ks_41019.htm (accessed 11 December 2009). 51. Muni, “Third Tibetan Uprising,” 5. 52. Ibid., 1.

Chapter 8

Taiwan in Chinese Studies in India Abanti Bhattacharya

Taiwan is an important area of study in terms of being both a factor in the India–China ties and an element of Chinese studies in India. The tenuous India–China relations following the war in 1962 allowed India–Taiwan relations to develop, albeit commercially. India’s relations with Taiwan remained limited under the framework of “one China.” With the present Kuomintang (KMT) government in Taiwan and its foreign policy goal of a peaceful power, there is an opportunity for India to share its experience with Taiwan in dealing with China. Therefore there is a need to study how Taiwan factors into the Chinese studies program in India. This chapter explores how Taiwan studies have developed in India under the rubric of the “one China” relations. The questions to be addressed are (a) whether and how the focus on Chinese studies has segre-

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gated India’s studies on Taiwan, (b) whether Taiwan, as a contentious issue in China, has been neglected in India’s Chinese studies, (c) how studies on Taiwan have evolved in India over the years, and more specifically, (d) how the study of Taiwan has developed in academic institutions and think tanks. I first identify the position of Taiwan in India’s China policy and then explain how Taiwan studies have developed in India. This is a typical area of study where the literature conceives of China strictly as a nationstate rather than as a civilization.

Taiwan in India’s China Policy This section divides India’s China policy into two parts. The first part reflects India’s relations before the communist victory in China, and the second part focuses on the post-1949 era, with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland, the retreat of the Guomindang (GMD; nationalist) regime, and the foundation of Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan.

The Pre-1949 Phase The pre-1949 phase—particularly, the years between the late 1930s and early 1940s—saw a strengthening of the ties between the nationalist movements of both countries. Of particular significance is that although the links between the Indian National Congress (INC) and the GMD were closer at the leadership level, the contact between the Indian nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was more palpable at the popular level through the activities of the Indian medical mission.1 Notably, this is the phase when China, under the united front strategy of the GMD and CCP, was supporting the allies in their war efforts; therefore China’s principal enemy was not the West but the Japanese imperialists. Chiang Kai-shek visited India in February 1942 to persuade Nehru to join the war effort. It was a time when the Indian national movement had reached a crucial juncture, and strong nationalist sentiments were growing in India against participating in the war efforts until the ques-

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tion of independence was settled. India’s move against the British government would have meant the diversion of British attention from the war to India. Consequently, this would also have weakened India’s support for China’s struggle against Japanese aggression. Thus Chiang’s visit to India was intended to create a common war effort. The decision of the British government to send the Cripps mission to India in March 1942 to find a solution to the Indian problem was, to a large extent, attributed to Chiang’s intervention with the British on behalf of the Indians.2 The Cripps mission failed, and Mahatma Gandhi declared the Quit India Movement in August. He wrote to Chiang that only a free and independent India could play a prominent part in defending China.3 During the Second World War, the Indian medical mission served in China. This was also the time when Indians established contact with the communist-controlled areas. The India–China fraternity reached its pinnacle when the thirty-one-year-old doctor Shantaram Kotnis died while serving the Chinese in Hebei Province. Thereafter, Mao Zedong and Zhu De expressed their gratitude to the congress and to the Indian people. Contact with the communists ceased, but the INC continued to connect with the GMD until the outbreak of the Chinese civil war.

The Post-1949 Phase With the communist victory in the Chinese civil war and the establishment of the PRC, the nationalists under Chiang Kai-Sheik fled the mainland and established the ROC in Taiwan. This was the beginning of the Taiwan problem. The existence of two Chinas came to determine India’s foreign policy significantly and shaped its relations with China. During the postwar era, whereas the United States continued to recognize Chiang Kai-shek’s regime as the legitimate and legal government of China, India recognized the PRC. The United States also allowed the ROC to hold a seat in the United Nations (UN), though India regarded this as unfair and campaigned for China’s seat in the UN. India also considered Taiwan an internal problem of China’s. In fact, Nehru played an important

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role during the Quemoy crisis (1958) in resolving the Taiwan problem in a peaceful manner and made earnest efforts to bring the United States and China to a negotiable position on the issue.4 During the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955, Nehru held several rounds of discussion with the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai on the Taiwan issue. He impressed upon the Americans that the crisis in the Far East was a result of the United States’ nonrecognition of the PRC and the denial of the PRC its rightful place in the UN.5 Clearly, from the very inception of the PRC, India’s relations with Taiwan were based on the “one China” principle, implying that India does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign political entity and has no diplomatic, military, or political relation with it. This policy remained operative despite the 1962 debacle and to date defines India’s relations with Taiwan. In fact, owing to the already tenuous relations with China following the 1962 war, India preferred not to exacerbate the security situation by favoring Taiwan. Hence even the commercial relations between India and Taiwan remained minimal during the Cold War era. In the post–Cold War era, the rise of the Indian economy, coupled with its huge market, provided a new prospect for the India–Taiwan relations to take off in the late 1990s. More important, the launch of India’s Look East policy created new opportunities for building economic ties between the two. Initial contacts between Taiwanese trade officials and Indian representatives were held in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Geneva.6 These meetings paved the way for opening an economic commercial office in Mumbai in 1992 and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in New Delhi in 1994. In a similar vein, India set up the India–Taipei Association (ITA) in Taipei in 1995. China initially objected to such commercial relations; however, the Indian government argued that if the United States, western European countries, and Japan shared commercial and economic relations with Taiwan, neither should India’s relationship with Taiwan be frowned upon.7

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From 2002 onward, India began to figure into Taiwan’s destination chart. Taiwan’s largest airline, China Airlines, started a thrice-a-week service on the Taipei–Delhi–Taipei route, thereby opening a direct air link between India and Taiwan.8 Economic relations between Taiwan and India have been growing fast since the Taiwan government initiated an action plan in 2006 to boost bilateral economic ties. In 2008 India–Taiwan trade India–Taiwan trade registered USD 5.34 billion, and by 2011 the trade figures touched USD 7.56 billion.9 India–Taiwan trade has thus grown eight-fold since the 1995 opening of representative offices in Taipei and New Delhi, and Taiwan expects bilateral trade to double to USD 10 billion by 2015.10 Over the years, India–Taiwan relations have expanded to include not only trade and investments but also academic exchanges and tourism. In February 2009, Taiwan Visitor’s Association organized a delegation to New Delhi and sponsored a Taiwan Tourism Promotion Workshop during this visit. In 2010 the Taiwan Tourism Bureau established an office in India to showcase Taiwan as a tourist destination to Indian travelers and traders.11 There are also talks of establishing an India–Taiwan free trade agreement (FTA) soon; in February 2011 Taiwan and India launched a two-year free trade agreement feasibility study. These exchanges have led to a mini influx of Indians into Taiwan, with small groups of Indian nationals springing up in several locations near the country’s larger universities, most notably in Hsinchu and Taipei.12 According to the official 2008 data, 1,900 Indians reside in Taiwan;13 there are almost one hundred Indian scientists in Academia Sinica alone.14 The ITA in Taipei has taken the initiative to organize trade conferences, and the number of Taiwanese companies attending trade conferences grew from 80 to 150 in 2009. For the third time, Taitronics India, an international trade exhibition, was held at the Chennai Trade Center (11–13 September 2009). The event was jointly organized by the Taipei World Trade Center Company, an affiliate of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Associ-

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ation, in partnership with the government of Tamil Nadu and the Confederation of Indian Industry. For years, Taiwan’s investments were overwhelmingly concentrated in China. To reduce its economic vulnerability, Taiwan’s minister of economic affairs submitted a report on “global investment strategy” in March 2006, which focused on ways of diversifying Taiwan’s investment away from China.15 Thus the policy line that emerged was focused on redirecting investment towards other emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Eastern Europe. Under the present KMT government, Taiwan has adopted a major foreign policy initiative by fostering cooperative relationships with the major powers to reduce dependence on China and to increase its maneuverability in the international arena. From this perspective, its ties with India have become salient. In fact, before Ma Ying-Jeou became president, he visited India in June 2007, and his visit made clear that he was “interested only in ‘bilateral’ and not ‘trilateral’ relations—through China—with India.”16 Currently, India–Taiwan relations indicate a growing trend despite the lack of political contact. Taiwan, which is the world’s seventeenth-largest economy, a manufacturing hub of iPods, and the world’s top producer of PC notebooks, is now setting an ambitious target to scale up its bilateral trade from the current USD 6 billion to USD 10 billion by 2015.

Taiwan in India’s Chinese Studies Based on the preceding discussion of Taiwan in India’s China policy, the China factor inhibiting India–Taiwan relations from growing into a fullblown political relationship is evidently clear. This tension has inhibited any meaningful growth of Taiwan studies in India. Further, Taiwan, being a contentious issue, has failed to gain salience in Indian foreign policy and has been neglected in India’s Chinese studies. In contrast, the very contentious nature of Taiwan has also promoted Taiwan studies. In fact, despite being a small island nation with a population of barely 23 million,

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Taiwan has emerged as a major subfield of the China studies program in India.

The Cold War Era During the Cold War years, studies on Taiwan in India were minimal and almost nonexistent. Most work focused on China and China-related issues. Even the books written about China made hardly any mention of Taiwan. Books on Indian foreign policy rarely dealt with Indian policy towards Taiwan; only a few, such as Subimal Dutt’s With Nehru in the Foreign Office (1977), reflected on India’s position in Taiwan, although no separate chapter addressed Taiwan. No monograph on Taiwan was written by any Indian during the Cold War era. Articles on Taiwan were very few, and most of them focused either on China–Taiwan relations (K. N. Ramachandran, Strategic Analysis, 1981) or US–Taiwan relations. The Post–Cold War Era India is rising, and its economic presence is expanding. Thus there has emerged a general interest in India and Taiwan not only to deepen economic and commercial relations but also to extend that cooperation into other areas, such as tourism, culture, academics, and climate change. Some serious work is being done on the prospects of signing an FTA between India and Taiwan. Indeed, a solemn need to understand each other has grown to strengthen trade and investment relations. From the second half of the 1990s, studies on Taiwan in India began. The establishment of the ITA in March 1995 and the launching of India’s Look East policy in 1991 gave a major boost to Taiwan studies in India. In fact, the establishment of the India office in Taipei facilitated the forging of robust economic and trade linkages in the business community. It also enabled the academic and strategic community to acquire a new perspective on Taiwan. Needless to say, this perspective deals with Taiwan’s identity issue and hence raises the question of China’s nation-building agenda, sitting between the national and the civilizational agenda.

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Taiwan’s transition to democracy was a significant milestone in its history that not only affected its conduct of foreign diplomatic relationships but also determined its relations with countries around the world. Its foreign policy began to focus on strengthening bilateral relations with other democracies. Taiwan’s democracy essentially sought to demonstrate that it is not a part of the PRC; this new orientation fed into its quest for acquiring a distinct Taiwanese identity and enabled it to play a more robust role in the global arena. As part of the localization movement to enhance Taiwanese consciousness, universities and schools have mushroomed in number, promoting research on Taiwanese society, politics, and culture. In Taiwan, around twenty graduate institutes and college departments offer Taiwan-centric courses. However, it was not until 2005 that an academic department used the phrase Taiwan studies in its title.17 In that year, Chang Jung Christian University in Tainan County established its Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Studies. The National Chengchi University created its Taiwan Study Center only in 2003.18 Although Taiwan is not a legitimate actor in the international system and is relegated to the fringes of international politics, it cannot be ignored either in international politics or in the academic community. In 1994 Taiwan formally initiated its Go South policy, which gave an added incentive to link it with India’s Look East policy. Equally important is that because Taiwan could not function as a legitimate sovereign power, it tried to build contacts with most countries at the track II level. Therefore, think tanks and universities became important platforms for building interaction and conducting unofficial diplomacy between the two countries. Since 2000 Taiwan studies in India have gained salience among the strategic community, particularly in the think tanks. To this end, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the National Chengchi University, Taipei, and organized the first roundtable conference between IDSA and National Chengchi University, held 10–11 September 2003 in New Delhi. The United Service Institution (USI) initiated a track II dialogue with the Insti-

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tute for Taiwan Defense and Strategic Studies (ITDSS) of the National Defense University of Taiwan in July 2005. A year later, in 2006, the USI organized a trilateral dialogue in New Delhi involving the ITDSS and the Okazaki Institute (Japan). Similarly, the Center for Land Warfare Studies organized a seminar on “Asia-Pacific Security Environment and Cross-Strait Relations: Post-2008 Taiwan’s Presidential Election,” held on 28 April 2008. The organization Research and Information System for Developing Countries also publishes reports and policy briefs on Taiwan from time to time.19 The Indian National Science Academy and the Academia Sinica, Taiwan, also signed an MOU in September 2004 to enhance collaboration on scientific research. Universities across India were not far behind. The University of Delhi (DU) organized a two-day international conference in January 2007 on “Taiwan Today,” to foster a broad understanding of Taiwan. It organized a three-day international conference held 19–21 March 2009 on “Taiwan as a Factor in the Emerging Asian Security Architecture”; the event was jointly organized by the Department of East Asian Studies, DU; the Prospect Foundation, Taiwan; and the Indian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi. In collaboration with the Taipei Cultural and Economic Center, New Delhi, the Department of Political Science at Bangalore University organized an international conference on the theme “Taiwan in the 21st Century” in 2008, the objective of which was to take stock of the developments in the emerging Indo–Taiwanese relationship. As recently as January 2012, the Department of East Asian Studies at DU hosted a seminar titled “Taiwan’s Presidential and Legislative Elections 2012: A Preliminary Analysis” to reflect upon Ma Ying-Jeou’s second term. The post-1995 period saw a number of works on Taiwan studied from strategic and economic perspectives. Articles factoring Taiwan into US– China relations and considering Taiwan–ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) relations were written by Indian Sinologists.20 Note that in the early 2000s, works on Taiwan for its own sake were absent

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in India’s Taiwan studies. In fact, most studies on Taiwan evolved as part of studies on India’s Look East policy.21 It was only in 2006 that exclusive focus on Taiwan gained the attention of the general academic and strategic community. These studies include Taiwan Today (Sreemati Chakrabarti and Anita Sharma, 2007) published by the Department of East Asian Studies at DU, and The Taiwan Factor ( M. J. Vinod, Ger Yeong-Kuang, S. Y. Surendra Kumat, 2009) published by the Department of Political Science at Bangalore University. Although the 2007 DU publication was aimed at providing a general overview of Taiwan, the forthcoming volume edited by Madhu Bhalla and Abanti Bhattacharya on Taiwan moves beyond ROC’s polity, society, and economy and focuses on Taiwan’s place in the emerging Asian security architecture. In other words, this graduation to deeper levels of study indicates the maturity of Taiwan studies in the university system. The Department of East Asian Studies at DU offers an optional paper on Taiwan studies. However, there is still no full-fledged course offered on Taiwan, though courses on Japan, China, and Korea are in place. There is also no designated post in the university for a Taiwan expert. At Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, three MPhil dissertations addressed Taiwan-related issues of the 112 written between 1973 and 2009, and only one PhD thesis of 46 did so between 1962 and 2009. Taiwan studies in India have not grown into a distinctive field but rather, as in the United States, have remained a subfield of Chinese studies.22 In fact, Taiwan studies in India are still a conference-driven phenomenon, and a community of Taiwan experts has yet to emerge.

Conclusion The evolution of Taiwan studies in India indicates several characteristic trends. First, it has essentially remained tied to the binary of Taiwan– China relations. Taiwan studies have yet to emerge independently from the shadow of Chinese studies and develop into a field of study in their

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own right. Second, although Taiwan studies have progressed, they remain extremely conference driven, conferring an “out of sight, out of mind” kind of impressionistic value on Taiwan studies. Third, quite notably, Taiwan studies have grown not only with the end of Cold War era and the onset of globalization but also with the rise of China. The challenge from China propelled Taiwan to build economic, cultural, and academic links with other countries, thereby increasing its space in the international arena. In fact, through the promotion of Taiwan studies, Taiwan has sought to challenge its geopolitical marginality in international politics.23 Similarly, India, through its Look East policy, has sought to expand its strategic space, and thus Taiwan acquired strategic value in India’s engagement with East Asia. Consequently, Taiwan studies gained the attention and respect of the academic and strategic community. In other words, the common challenge of China has propelled Taiwan studies in India. The rise of China is a challenge that both India and Taiwan face. This circumstance calls for deeper relations between the two, for sharing each other’s experiences in dealing with China. As democratic countries, India and Taiwan could be natural partners in the sharing of resources and information on China. Taiwan has excellent archival and statistical resources and hence might emerge as an important destination for field research. Deepening economic relations and building people-to-people contact through cultural and academic exchanges are also required to enable a stronger linkage between India and Taiwan that will eventually contribute to flourishing, meaningful Taiwan studies in India. As government policy decisions benefit Taiwan studies in India, similarly, rigorous study and research on Taiwan can assist the government in finding new and deeper levels of engagement with Taiwan. There is a need to move on from the narrow binary study of Taiwan–China relations and establish an independent program on Taiwan studies in the Indian university system. This will help build expertise on Taiwan studies. However, there is a grave danger to Taiwan’s becoming an area study. Drawing from the insights of Taiwan scholar Mark Harrison, the following question is pertinent: if

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China swallows Taiwan, will it remain an area study program? Clearly, the fate of Chinese studies and that of Taiwan studies are linked. The first requirement, therefore, is delinking the Taiwan area study from issues of foreign policy; the next is making the studies on Asia a civilization-oriented program—unlike in the United States, where it is an area study curriculum. In India, Taiwan studies are linked to Indian foreign policy and India–China relations; thus they are excessively focused on the security factor. Moreover, if civilization becomes the focus of study, the danger of geopolitical marginalization or the disappearance of Taiwan as an area will cease to matter. Abanti Bhattacharya is an Associate Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Delhi.

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Endnotes 1. Mohan Avinash Saklani, “Nehru, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Second World War,” India and China in the Colonial World (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2005),167. 2. Ibid., 179. 3. Ibid., 180. 4. Subimal Dutt, With Nehru in the Foreign Office (Calcutta: Minerva Associates, 1977), 222–226. 5. Ibid., 225. 6. Subash Shukla, Foreign Policy of India (New Delhi: Anamika, 2007), 193–194. 7. J. N. Dixit, My South Block Years: Memoirs of a Foreign Secretary (New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1996), 316. 8. “Taiwan-India Direct Flights Makes Debut,” The Hindu, 6 April 2002, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2002/04/06/stories/2002040 600960200.htm. 9. Kevin Chen, “Taiwan Eyes India Trade,” Taipei Times, 10 May 2012, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2012/05/10/2003532409 10. Ankit Shrivastava, “India-Taiwan Trade Analysis,” India Briefing, 14 march 2011, http://www.india-briefing.com/news/india-taiwan-tradeanalysis-4698.html/ 11. Pukhraj Varshneya, “Promoting Taiwanese Trade, Investment, Academic Exchange and Tourism in India” (New Delhi: Taipei Economic Cultural Center in India, 2009), http://www.roc-taiwan.org/IN/ct.asp?xItem = 883 68&ctNode = 5059&mp = 277. 12. Richard Hazeldine, “Community Compass: Feature: Indians See Presence in Taiwan Grow,” Taipei Times, 20 January 2009, http://www.taipeitimes. com/News/world/archives/2009/01/20/2003434182. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Fu-Kuo Liu, “Towards a Dynamic Economic Partnership: India–Taiwan Relations Update,” in Rising India and Indian Communities in East Asia, ed. K. Kesavapany, A. Mani, and P. Ramasamy (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008), 656. 16. Roy Shubhajit, “Taiwan Presidential Candidate Wants Clear Bilateral Ties with India,” Indian Express, 13 June

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21. 22. 23.

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2007, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/taiwan-presidential-candidate-wants-clear-bilateral-ties-with-india/33465/0. Steven Crook, Taiwan Studies in Academia, 20 March 2007, http://www. culture.tw/index.php?option = com_content&task = view&id = 585& Itemid = 156. Ibid. RIS Policy Brief no. 25, Case for a Robust India–Taiwan Economic Partnership? (June 2006). Baladas Ghoshal, “Taiwan’s Relations with ASEAN,” Asian Defence Journal, no. 8 (August 2001): 4–7; Swaran Singh, “Taiwan factor in Sino– US Relations, ” Strategic Analysis 18, no. 11 (February 1996): 1465– 1477; V. G. Kulkarni, “Taiwan: Biting the Ballot,” Far Eastern Economic Review 159, no. 11 (14 March 1996): 18–24; B. Raman, “Two Faces of China: Lessons from Taiwan,” Journal of Indian Ocean Studies 3, no. 3 (March 1996): 185–188. Swaran Singh, “Factoring Taiwan in India’s Look East Policy,” in India and ASEAN: Foreign Policy Dimensions for the 21st Century, ed. K. Raja Reddy (New Delhi: New Century, 2005), 283–296. Shelley Rigger, “Political Science and Taiwan’s Domestic Politics: The State of the Field,” Issues and Studies 38, no. 4 and 39, no. 1 (December 2002/March 2003): 49–92. Mark Harrison, Legitimacy, Meaning, and Knowledge in the Making of Taiwanese Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Chapter 9

China Studies in Indian Think Tanks Strategic Community, Discourse, and India’s China Policy Jagannath P. Panda The Complexity of Studying China As global economic integration deepens and the Chinese economy develops rapidly, new channels are being created worldwide, at different levels, in order to understand China and its developmental course. India, however, seems to lag behind. The language barrier, failure to appreciate East Asian culture, and the seemingly “exotic” nature of China are some of the usual impediments seen to promoting China studies.1 In India there are additional difficulties, the prime obstacle being the “obsessed nationalist” security-centric viewpoint of the political strategic community, most of which is still preoccupied with the 1962 China–India war. 2 This viewpoint has generated an erroneous China perspective in India that overshadows Sino–Indian relations and the promotion of dialogue

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against the touchstone of reality. A prime example of this is the way Indian think tanks and research institutes view China and promote China studies without truly acquiring adequate exposure to the language, culture, and systemic complexities of the country. This chapter seeks to inspect the course, medium, and culture of studying China in Indian think tanks, and to explore how these have shaped and affected the Indian state’s discourse. The study narrates the evolution of China studies communities in Indian think tanks, their experience of struggle, and their contribution to the security dialogue of India’s China policy discourse. The objective is simple: to underline the evolutionary experience, difficulty, and problematic course of this embryonic branch of dialogue among the strategic community in the country. Although this chapter focuses on Indian think tanks’ perceptions and their medium of interpreting and researching China, it particularly seeks to contribute to a discourse on the political, military, cultural, and socioeconomic evolution of the Chinese state, which tends to be off-putting and flawed in India’s existing China policy. The China studies community in Indian think tanks is seen to be struggling to agree on whether to view China’s progress as a process of evolution from civilization to nation-state. The findings of this chapter are by no means an ultimate examination of all the dialogue processes used in studying China within the Indian strategic community. If anything, the remarks made herein reflect the complexities and difficulties of studying and understanding China in the Indian context.

A Supply –Demand Gap Constructing the Dialogue Understanding the complex character of China studies program and community in Indian think tanks is an increasingly important task. Policy makers, officials, and scholars throughout India are engaged in a keen learning process of formulating a constructive and useful China policy, but they seem to be doing it without genuinely assessing the depth, extent,

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and scope of their limitations and advantages. Outdated impressions of China’s progress as a state can lead only to poor policy formulations. A China that is increasingly embracing democratic values and pluralism, as recognized by many China specialists around the world, would mitigate to some extent the ideological tensions that underlie distrust of everything Chinese, from military to diplomatic intentions. The role of think tanks in any informed society should be to guide informed policy formulation. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) identifies think tanks as the “bridge between knowledge and power.”3 In an open and pluralistic democratic society, the nature and role of a think tank is to provide a forward approach or futuristic thinking through rigorous analyses. In India think tanks, or public policy research institutions, have begun to increasingly prove their utility in creating the necessary awareness in foreign policy and international relations studies discourse as means of information transfer and as agents of change. Area studies, however, require not only specialized effort but also concentrated scholarship and, more important, permanent evolution of the study curriculum, which Indian think tanks or research bodies currently lack. The China studies communities in Indian think tanks have been comparatively meager, struggling to evolve as a single unit and remaining relatively less informed and advanced, while elsewhere in the world, the China studies curriculum has advanced considerably. Robert E. Hegel wrote: “No longer is China exotic, the apparent opposite and Other to the US in many ways; China is now seen as comprehensible, as worthy of study as is Western Europe.”4 Think tanks, though a somewhat recent phenomenon in Indian research streams, have now become well known in Indian academic culture. Currently India is second only to the United States in the number of such institutions. On the development of think tanks, well-known strategic affairs expert K. Subrahmanyam has said that “only as a nation begins to look outward will it devote more resources to such fields”5 In India think tanks are comparatively new arrivals, fairly immature, and they

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lack the power to influence the right discourse in governmental decision making. Most newly formed think tanks focus on social science and developmental issues and limit themselves to creating awareness; only a meager 15 percent of total think tanks do research on security and foreign policy– related issues,6 limiting the scope for a proper evaluation of China in Indian strategic community discourse. The poor evolution of China studies communities in Indian think tanks is also a part of the Indian state’s failure to push to the next level its broad disciplines of international studies or its international relations program. The history of India’s knowledge evolution and higher education system suggests that the “inadequate development of expertise” in international relations studies, in both publicly and privately funded bodies, is minimal in comparison to the surplus of talent in economic policy studies.7 Since independence, the study branch of economics and statistics has always been demanding, and India has advanced in generating both the supply of and the demand for adequate expertise in these two fields. As a result, the legacy of institution building in economics in India has been particularly impressive compared to that in international relations studies. An important reason behind this, it is argued, is that Jawaharlal Nehru thought himself an expert in global affairs but a neophyte on economic issues.8

Difficulties of the China Studies Community Among the notable think tanks or research institutions in New Delhi that have pursued China as an academic research interest are the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), the Institute for Chinese Studies (ICS), the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), and the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS). Among these, IDSA and ICS remain preeminent. Their research inputs on China mainly include studies on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and strategic issues related to boundaries and security-related

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aspects. Although ICS has conducted some studies on culture and societal issues, including strategic matters, IDSA has maintained its mandate of studying China from foreign and security-issues perspectives. The role and weight of these think tanks have risen with the growing importance of China studies around the world. However, they remain coy, they lack confidence and influence, and they have failed to promote the culture of China studies in the larger knowledge communities in India. Three developments may be noted with regard to the China studies program in Indian think tanks. First, the government’s expectations from these think tanks have been very limited regarding China, confined as they are to security and military studies. Second, the China study circles in them are not firmly grounded. Third, their research output has been minimal and somewhat lackluster.

The IDSA Experience IDSA, founded on 11 November 1965 through the strong initiative of defense minister Yeshwantrao Chavan, aims to provide an objective assessment of issues related to national and global security.9 However, even after forty-five years of existence, IDSA is still deficient in its number of scholars and experts and in its scholarship on China.10 IDSA did make progress in the initial years under the dynamism of its first director, K. Subrahmanyam, but its ability to formulate policies and provide strategic output to the government declined thereafter. The reasons for this decline are many, foremost being the lack of comprehensive understanding about how to conduct policy-oriented research and promote adequate scholarship at the right time and in the right areas. Research on China in IDSA has been guided mainly by the sponsoring agency, the Ministry of Defence, rather than by the research scholars’ choice or the dynamism of China studies. Research in IDSA is influenced by the “comprehensive agenda” provided by the ministry from time to time.11 No doubt, a country’s leading think tank should provide its government with the adequate research input that is demanded; however,

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that should not come through some sort of accommodative scholarship and at the cost of a scholar’s individual interest. One should never be asked to write or conduct research on a subject if one lacks background in that particular area. Scholars need to be given free rein to write on and conduct research according to their interests, which alone can bring out the best in them. Moreover, it would have been more apposite if IDSA or any other think tank had influenced the government’s China policy in a broader context, which does not seem to have been the case at all. The government has repeatedly asked IDSA to carry out some projects related to China. For example, the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has regularly given IDSA abundant funds to conduct research on various aspects of China that affect India. Although some China studies communities or cluster members in IDSA have been part of this project, the funding has never been given exclusively to the China and South/East Asia cluster to carry out longer field study trips to gather information and learn Chinese language. IDSA is perhaps more popular for its flagship journal, Strategic Analysis, now published by Routledge (Taylor and Francis). It is currently bimonthly, printing both in-house and outside scholars’ contributions. Over the years, however, the journal has been deficient in China-related studies, despite being edited by a senior China scholar until very recently. The limited contributions on China published in Strategic Analysis have been confined mainly to issues such as the CPC and the PLA. The lately arrived younger generation of scholars in the China and South/East Asia cluster of IDSA have, however, written on more diverse subjects.12 IDSA also produces some weekly newsletters on important areas like Pakistan, but nothing on China until recently. IDSA’s comprehensive agenda divides its research orientation into two broad areas, area studies and thematic studies, keeping in view India’s security and national concerns. For example, the IDSA Research Agenda for 2009–2010 on China, as provided by the government, suggests the following list of topics as its research priorities:

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Domestic socio-political challenges; Changing role of the Communist Party leadership struggles and inner-party dynamics of CPC; Rise of China and emerging geo-political landscape in Asia; Military modernization and acquisition of new systems; Defence expenditure of China: the hidden component; Chinese advances in network-centric warfare and information warfare; China’s maritime power; China’s search for energy; Foreign policy postures —China’s strategic engagements with Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Gulf/Central Asia; Developments in India–China relations; US–China relations; Cross-Straits relations; Infrastructure developments in Tibet and implications for India; Tibet after the Dalai Lama; Increasing Hanisation in Tibet and its implications; Implications of the Kunming Initiative on India; Comparative analysis of Chinese methodologies in dealing with boundary issues with neighbours.13 Two difficulties have been noticed among the China studies community in IDSA. First, barring a few, scholars have not pursued a single theme or area of study on China over the years; hence they have failed to develop adequate expertise in the subject area. Second, not many scholars in the China studies community are trained or well versed in the Chinese language, so the research remains mostly secondary. This is the case with regard to most think tanks in India. India simply does not have enough Chinese-language experts or resources. Furthermore, the China and South/East Asia cluster, which is the main research body of IDSA on China, has stated: The East Asia Centre is dedicated to study and research the domestic and foreign policy of China, Japan and Korea and India’s multifaceted relationship with the region and countries of the region. As far as China is concerned the center’s research foci are its foreign policy (particularly with the US, Russia, Central Asia and the Asia Pacific) domestic politics, economy, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and India’s relationship with China in all its dimensions. It also focuses on Taiwan, its domestic politics, Sino-Taiwanese relation-

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These research themes are no doubt of immense significance for India’s national security concerns, but they follow the normal realistic discourse of study, ignoring the other part, the idealist discourse. Moreover, most of these topics are related either to Chinese foreign policy or to military issues. In a way IDSA, as a premier think tank, is limited in its research vision, ignoring the cultural and societal aspects of strategic studies. The majority of available scholarship on China at IDSA devotes much time in doing research or producing something related to this comprehensive agenda prepared according to the government mandate. Individual scholars and their backgrounds have been neglected in IDSA’s research on China. Joint studies are supposed to be the strength of think-tank culture. At IDSA, however, the China and South/East Asia cluster has failed to produce any substantial joint publication or position paper. At IDSA scholars have preferred pursuing their own research per the government agenda instead of pursuing group research in a think tank. Moreover, IDSA has not been able to hold a seminar on China for the last few years. Adding to these complexities are the very negligible interactions among the IDSA China study group and the government and foreign service officials concerned. The case of Srikanth Kondapalli may be cited here as representative of some of the anomalies at IDSA. Professor Kondapalli is one of India’s finest experts on China studies and was at one time on the faculty of IDSA; he specialized in issues related to the PLA. His publications include China’s Naval Power (IDSA and Knowledge World, 2001), China’s Military: The PLA in Transition (Knowledge World, 1999), Asian Security and

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China (Shipra, 2004), and A Great Leap Forward Modernisation: Chinese Armed Forces in 2003 (Centre for China Studies, National Chengchi University, 2005). Kondapalli acknowledged that, in the initial years, he was not conducting research on PLA by his own choice or inclination but by situational compulsion. In later years, he developed the interest to pursue research exclusively on the Chinese military; this work earned him renown. In his view, during the early years finding a job in the China studies branch of the few universities whose curriculums included the discipline was difficult; IDSA seemed to be the only alternative choice. Although IDSA provided him a sort of base for pursuing a career in China studies, working in IDSA under contractual service and his connection to various security-related issues in the government restricted Kondapalli’s foreign tours and limited the programs he could attend abroad, and it decreased his freedom to pursue his own research interests.15 Books published under IDSA auspices on China cover mainly the Chinese security and foreign policy dimensions of research in India, ignoring the political and sociocultural facets of China studies. The more notable IDSA-sponsored publications on China include Russia–China Relations: Relevance for India (IDSA & Shipra, 2004), Asian Security and China 2000–2010 (IDSA & Shipra, 2004), A Clash of Political Cultures: Sino–Indian Relations, 1957–1962 (Roli Books, 2004), China’s Naval Power (IDSA & Knowledge World, 2001), China’s Military: The PLA in Transition (Knowledge World, 1999), India–China and Panchsheel (Sanchar, 1996), and China’s Changing National Security Doctrines (IDSA, 1999). Most of these writings depend upon neither primary sources nor strong Chinese-language references or publications. In addition, most of them lack a methodological or theoretical approach. They were merely written at institutional mandate or for policy reference. Regarding historical accounts, most of the Indian government’s study projects have been concentrated in a few think tanks, such as IDSA, ICWA, and ICS.

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IDSA is the only body apart from ICS that is supposed to have a fullstrength China studies community in India. IDSA is also the only think tank that has a full-fledged research body mixed with civilian and military aspects. Under the circumstances, IDSA’s China and South/East Asia cluster is perhaps the best equipped to undertake studies on China. The cluster primarily covers issues relating to China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. Chinese foreign policy, politics, and military modernization are some of the key research areas of this cluster, but the group lacks adequate scholarship resources to carry out the research. Rising opportunities outside IDSA in China studies, better job options, and the difficulties of working in a think tank have been eroding the faculty of this cluster throughout the last several years. The current cluster members are young—perhaps too young to carry out in-depth research. The earlier cluster comprised both government and civilian personnel. M. V. Rappai, one of the earlier members, has a background in Chinese language studies and government work. Other members, including Sujit Dutta, Srikanth Kondapalli, and Swaran Singh, moved to universities. These generations of China scholars established their careers at IDSA, but the institute could neither entertain their requests for permanent positions nor find a way to maximize their scholarship and expertise in today’s context. The result is a sudden generation gap—and an attendant scholarship gap—in India’s most prestigious think tank. Senior colleagues and management at IDSA feel that the teaching community in premier institutes such as Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Delhi University (DU) has failed to promote or produce adequate scholarship on China. The teaching community at JNU and DU, in turn, broadly subscribes to the view that the China studies discipline has been poor over the years on account of the structural difficulty of the Indian state.16

The Institute for Chinese Studies (ICS) The ICS, the preeminent institute for China studies in India, suffers from a similar malaise. Primarily, the ICS “grew out of the China Study Group, which was an informal forum of scholars working on China at the Univer-

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sity of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), The Institute of Economic Growth, The Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses and other research institutes of Delhi”17 The main objective of the ICS is “to promote systematic study on China in India by actively initiating and supporting research projects both within the institute and outside. It seeks to provide a forum for sustained scholarly exchange and interaction.”18 Although ICS has developed as an institution to conduct research and pursue discussions on China, from its formation in 1969 until now its performance has not been particularly impressive. It has neither developed an institutional process to recruit scholars on China on a substantial scale nor developed to a level that would allow it to make a substantial impact on India’s China policy. ICS faculty members are generally from JNU and DU, affiliated more casually than institutionally. The ICS is better known for its quarterly journal, China Report (Sage), the first exclusive journal on China and East Asia published from this part of the world, than for anything else. As far back as 1988, the China Study Group in ICS stated that three constructive elements needed to be studied by Indian scholars on China: Chinese civilization, the development experience, and China and the world. “These dimensions can actually be regarded as the central concerns of social science and, therefore, studies in India of these aspects of China can contribute to the generation of a new body of knowledge.”19 These imaginative words, however, have more or less been confined to paper. Institutional linkages between ICS and other research bodies conducting scholarship on China have been meager. ICS has traditionally maintained a good linkage with Cheena Bhavan (Shantiniketan, Visva Bharati University) and other social science institutes under the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). However, it is believed that ICS has managed to establish and push its linkages with most social science research institutes across India because of the meritorious and outstanding credibility of the Centre for the Study of Developing Society

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(CSDS). ICS has time and again organized bilateral talks and seminars with bodies like ICWA, though institutional interactions between IDSA and ICS are almost nonexistent, perhaps because of a fundamental ideological difference between them. IDSA scholars are generally believed to follow the realist approach and to see China as a security concern. In contrast, ICS scholars see China as an opportunity, to an extent, and follow a somewhat idealistic approach. It is common for differences of approach to exist between any two research institutions, but that should not necessarily prevent interinstitutional collaboration. Though the ICS does have somewhat close interactions with DU and JNU, most of its affiliated fellows being faculty members of these two leading universities in New Delhi, IDSA remains entirely aloof from these university communities. As a result, China studies communities in India, particularly in New Delhi, have not evolved as a single unit.

Other Institutes Among the faculty of CPR and IPCS, there is adequate interest in pursuing careers on China, but these institutions suffer from a lack of resources, infrastructure, and funds. CPR is one of the twenty-seven national social science research institutes recognized by the ICSSR of the government of India, but its faculty members have to generate money for themselves in terms of projects and research ventures.20 Although established as early as 1973, CPR still lacks an established China studies program. Individual experts and scholars at CPR have tried to publish views related to China, but these have fallen far short of mainstream China studies discourse. Similar is the case of think tanks outside Delhi. The Chennai Centre for China Studies (CCCS), for example, came into existence in 2009 as a nonprofit public policy think tank. CCCS declares that its objective is to “carry out in-depth study of developments relating to China with priority to issues of concern to India.”21 One of its avowed objectives is to create “public opinion” on China in India. The CCCS faculty members are mostly retired government officials, and their aim is to evaluate India’s security and threat perceptions with regard to China. To reiterate, the

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research is limited to security aspects. Furthermore, the CCCS has yet to receive substantial help from any quarter to develop it as a full-fledged research body.

Governmental Myopia The thinking in the government, as conveyed by officials, is that the scope of China studies is very limited in India, especially in terms of generating employment, and that it was until some years ago a difficult career to pursue. Celebrated scholars on China maintain, in contrast, that what really limits them in providing the right input or giving output to the government is lack of freedom. Most scholars cannot find appropriate funds to conduct in-depth field studies. The bureaucratic control inhibits research.22 Sanjaya Baru wrote: The paucity of funding and limited career options limit the investment scholars are willing to make in acquiring area expertise, the number of “field trips” they can make, and the number of years they can live in and devote to an area. These limitations, in turn, reduce their relevance to policy makers. What policy-makers in the external affairs and defence ministries do not seem to realise is that while “internal expertise” may exist, permanent civil servants may tailor their judgments to suit the prejudices and needs of their bosses and are unwilling to think out of the box. That is precisely where outside expertise helps and the supply of such expertise is growing.23 Also stunting research in India on China are the realities that India lacks competent scholars and that China studies remain a difficult stream of research.24 An article in China Report of ICS mentions that “there are three major shortcomings of Chinese Studies in India: (a) the absence of a solid foundation programme; (b) the lack of an adequate milieu of Area studies; (c) the lack of adequate facilities for long-term social science field research in China.”25 It is argued, as well, that Indian think tanks lack both funds and autonomy.26 Some institutes are also “too academic oriented.” The late Professor V. P. Dutt, a distinguished fellow associated

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with IDSA, opined that “to do in-depth research on China, institutions like IDSA should thrust energy on capacity building. Because to write and contribute qualitative pieces on China takes time and the approach should be more on understanding the Chinese culture, language, and people.”27 Another senior scholar also pointed out that given the importance of China and its global rise, most Indian scholars today want to write about China, but they do not do justice to their theme by providing adequate, indepth input. Xenophobia, an element of historical baggage, also underlies the research orientation. Most researchers in these think tanks have no China studies background. ORF, one of the largest private think tanks, for example, has not really developed its China center.

The Impact on State Discourse The meager output on China studies in Indian think tanks leads to a limited, unstable, and partial discourse. Literature on China from the strategic community in India is random and based on singular or individual assessments and perceptions. Although these scholarly assessments provide a picture of some particular aspect of China, the fact remains that individual assessments on security and strategic postures without a team effort or group study can be misleading sometimes. Added to these handicaps is the problem of personal rivalry among scholars. Many in the older generation fail to encourage the younger generation to work on China.28 There is also poor coordination, as observed earlier, in research both within institutes and among think tanks. It is difficult to find data on how many scholars are currently working on China and on what themes. The ICS has held several workshops to attract the younger generation to study and research about China, but the effort has been inadequate owing to the lack of funds and resources.29 Amidst this gloomy picture, concerns still remain at the highest level regarding how to study and evaluate China appropriately. Surjit Mansingh noted:

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Without entering into an epistemological ocean we catch the piscine gleam of comparative knowledge as one route to improved self-knowledge and offer it here, along with other workaday, even statist, reasons why more Indians should study contemporary China. These are: China’s importance in the world as a great and ancient civilisation as well as a global power today; problems posed by China’s proximity to India; China’s diplomatic and economic achievements that Indians envy; current threat perceptions in India and the concomitant requirement for a solid base of scholarship capable of making independent assessments of China’s capabilities and intentions; India’s need to build realistically and knowledgeably on the slowly widening opportunities of cooperative commercial (or other) ventures with China so as to open an exciting new chapter in the age-old encounter between Chinese and Indian civilisations.30 The problems are many and the solutions are hard to find. China as a study discipline is poor in Indian think tanks and must be built at the national level. Think tanks also need to play a strong role in creating the right awareness. A first step in this direction could be to close the existing gap among Indian bureaucracy and government agencies, academics, and civil society and to build a strong bridge of understanding on the subject. Moreover, scholars working on China should be hugely encouraged by the older generation to write and speak about China, visit China, and articulate their views about China. Old-generation classical scholarship should be valued at the highest level. Eminent scholars like V. P. Dutt, G. P. Deshpande, and Manoranjan Mohanty should be asked by the government to take charge of the China studies communities in India at a broader level. There has to be a forward-looking approach from the government on the scope of China studies in India. Interest was expressed in 2000 in establishing special study centers on China under the Indian National Defence University (INDU);31 prompt action should be taken on this interest to establish the much-awaited study center.

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A contemporary pluralistic society with a futuristic outlook must have fresh and new governmental systems to match the requirements of policy making in changing times. The strength of a society rests on societal memory, which is like institutional memory in shaping the policy future of a pluralistic system.32 The dynamic and pluralistic Indian democracy needs a permanent China studies community that holds learned remembrance and that supplies adequate input to the futuristic policy discourse. India’s China studies communities may measure and analyze China’s remarkable rise over the past generation, but formulating a steady China policy or determining where China is really moving and its effect on India’s national security discourse must be done collectively and with great modesty. Among much uncertainty, the one certainty is that China is both a challenge and an opportunity for the Indian strategic community that will require close scrutiny, careful management of its state discourse, and sober understanding from now on. Jagannath P. Panda is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi.

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Endnotes 1. This chapter is part of the grand project titled “Chinese Studies in India” launched by Chih-yu Shih of the Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan. I am grateful to Professor Shih for giving me this opportunity a second time; when he asked me in 2007 to join as a postdoctoral fellow, I was obliged to decline at the last minute owing to some personal difficulties. This chapter seeks to provide a realistic picture of China studies in Indian think tanks. Most of it is written based on my personal experience, interactions, interviews, and observations, and with a genuine desire for improvement in the discussed area of studies. There is no rancor in these observations and no intention whatsoever to comment adversely on any institution or person. It has been argued that China is “exotic” because it is ancient and politically foreign to overseas people, scholars, and students. See Robert E. Hegel, “Teaching China as a Global Culture,” Tamkang Review 38, no. 2 (June 2008): 9. 2. Political strategic community in India here means the strategic community that studies and interprets China from various perspectives. This includes both China specialists and non-China specialists. 3. Diana Stone, “Think Tanks and Policy Advice in Countries in Transition,” paper presented at the Asian Development Bank Institute Symposium, How to Strengthen Policy-Oriented Research and Training in Vietnam, Hanoi, 31 August 2005, 2. 4. Chinese is estimated to be the third most commonly spoken language in American households after English and Spanish. See Hegel, “Teaching China,” 11. 5. Praveen Dass, “422 and Counting … Think tanks boom in India,” Times of India, 17 October 2009, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/4 22-and-counting-Think tanks-boom-in-India-/articleshow/5134182.cms (accessed November 22, 2010). 6. Ibid. According to a global survey carried out by the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute in 2007, India was fifth on the list of countries with the greatest number of think tanks. The United States headed the list with 1,776. See Mrinal Suman, “India Needs Independent Defence Think Tanks,” Indian Defence Review 23, no. 3 (July– September 2008), http://www.indiandefencereview.com/2009/06/india-

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9. 10.

11. 12.

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needs-independent-defence-think tanks.html (accessed 12 November 2009). Sanjaya Baru, “Can Indian Think tanks and Research Institutions Cope with the Rising Demand for Foreign and Security Policy Research?” ISAS Working Paper no. 67 (16 June 2009), 11. Sanjaya Baru wrote: “Nehru dominated thinking on Indian foreign policy in the 1950s but reached out to experts on economic policy and helped create new research institutions. The Planning Commission was itself a ‘think tank.’ It was guided by the statistician, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis, who set up the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), and had the guidance of economists like V.K.R.V. Rao and K.N. Raj who set up the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). For its part, the private sector stepped in and partly funded the National Council of Applied Economics Research (NCAER). Subsequently, the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) was also set up. Between them, the Planning Commission, the ISI, the DSE, the NCAER and the IEG produced a generation of economists who manned the policymaking institutions of the government and imparted a high degree of professionalism and intellectual independence to governmental thinking on economic policy. Apart from the DSE, departments of economics and statistics in universities across the country, including those in Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Andhra Pradesh and Osmania, created an army of economists and econometricians.” Ibid., 4. For details, see http://www.idsa.in/aboutidsa. It is the general view in India that IDSA survived because it was fortunate to have as its head a young and dynamic Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, K. Subrahmanyam, with an acknowledged expertise in strategic affairs. For a comprehensive report of the IDSA research curriculum, see the IDSA website: http://www.idsa.in/system/files/IDSA_Research_ Agenda_0.pdf. In the recent past, Strategic Analysis has published interesting papers on Chinese nationalism and the “rise of China” debate. Credit goes to younger-generation scholars like Abanti Bhattacharya and Ravi Prasad Narayan, among others. East Asia: IDSA Research Agenda, 4, available at http://www.idsa.in/ system/files/IDSA_Research_Agenda_0.pdf. Research Centre: East Asia, IDSA, at http://www.idsa.in/chinasouth-eastasia.

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15. Although IDSA is an autonomous body of the government of India, it is mandatory for an IDSA faculty member to obtain multiple clearances to travel abroad for a seminar or conference, including clearances from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), apart from the normal in-house clearances. 16. Personal interactions with many senior colleagues and scholars at IDSA, as well as at JNU and DU. 17. See the ICS website at http://www.icsin.org/about.html (accessed 22 May 2010). 18. Ibid. 19. “Chinese Studies in India: Perspective and Programmes,” statement prepared by the China Study Group, Delhi, China Report 24, no. 4 (1988): 473. 20. See the CPR website, http://www.cprindia.org/index.php (accessed 23 May 2010). 21. See http://www.c3sindia.org/aboutus. 22. Observation based on the author’s interactions with various scholars at different times. 23. Baru, “Can Indian Think Tanks and Research Institutions Cope?,” 8. 24. Observation made during various discussions held at IDSA regarding how to improve the China studies program in India. Many retired Indian diplomats and government officials cite these two as the main problems. 25. Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea et al., 474. 26. Dass, “422 and Counting,” n6. 27. Observation made during personal interaction. 28. Author’s personal experience. 29. Views noted from many ICS fellows during my interactions with them. 30. Surjit Mansingh, “The Importance of Understanding China,” in Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China, ed. Tan Chung (New Delhi: Gyan, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1998), 541. 31. An expert committee chaired by K. Subrahmanyam and with the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) had suggested an exclusive center on China under INDU, but not much progress has happened on this front. See Baru, “Can Indian Think tanks and Research Institutions Cope?,” 2. 32. Ibid., 11.

Interviews Section

The following pages are the interviews that were conducted with nineteen key individuals in the field of China studies in India. Each interview is preceded by a short biography of the individual.

Mira Sinha Interviewer: Dr. Reena MARWAH Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was selected for the Indian Foreign Service and served in the Indian Embassy in Beijing, after which she resigned from the foreign service to teach at Delhi University. She taught post-graduate courses on Chinese politics at Delhi University. She was one of the pioneers of Chinese studies at Delhi University. Mrs. Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea was a founding member of the China Study Group (CSG) and the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), of which she was the first director. She was consulting editor of China Report, first of the Group and now of the Institute. She was emeritus fellow of ICS. Her special interest was on China's foreign relations, world view, and foreign policy in India-China relations, and their negotiating strategies on the territorial issue. MARWAH: Could you kindly explain how your interest in China arose? SINHA: I cannot explain why there was an interest in China. In fact my interest began in my teenage years, due to interest in Chinese poetry, as well as sympathy for China, which was inspired by some books I had read. The physical contact with China had to do with Chinamen selling embroideries door to door. I was fascinated by two things: first, the embroidery itself, and second, the perfect, orderly, and very precise way in which the embroidery was done. It seemed that it was so well-organized, arranged, and pre-planned that I wondered what that meant. I was also fascinated by the exactitude with which the linen material was tied and the way in which the every item was packed. My first image of China was the disciplined image of the Chinaman, who also seemed a gentle person. MARWAH: When and how did a formal interest in China arise?

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SINHA: I had a casual interest in politics, and my vision of independence was a romantic image. Nehru spoke of a type of union with China. Although I did not read much on China at that time, my sympathies were for China as a poor country, whose people were adversely affected, and the difficulties of fighting the might of the Japanese military. At that time, I did not read anything about Indians going to China, but I had some contact with Santiniketan, as my uncle taught there. However, that was merely an impressionistic view atSantiniketan. MARWAH: Please tell us about your family and education. SINHA: From here on, I will speak about how I got my education, despite all the hurdles and restrictions. That was my phase of rebellion. In my family, women would usually get married at an early age. However, I resisted all attempts of my mother and other family members to get me married and insisted that I go to college. I attended class as a private student and graduated from East Punjab University. I managed to sit for and pass the examinations. I was very keen to pursue higher studies and not be confined to the routine domestic life. Later I went abroad, by getting some money from my mother, and went to the London School of Economics, where I did a post-graduate course in international relations. I always wanted to travel and also to build a career. This led me to come back to India, where I sat for the Union Public Service Commission exams and was selected for the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). I was selected in the 1954 IFS group. I opted to learn the Chinese language, because China remained my area of interest. Yet there was no special thought or reason for opting for the Chinese language. I was then sent to the British Foreign Office for training, as was the usual custom in those days for foreign service officers. Although it was my desire to go for further language training to the Hague in The Netherlands, new trainees were required to go to either Oxford or Cambridge. That is where I began to study the Chinese language. Professor Dubbs taught me. After returning, we were supposed to familiarize ourselves with the countryside, so I traveled within India. I began also looking at papers, ranging from

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Nehru to Pillai, and learned about the visit of the Laddakhi traders and the road built by China, etc. After the Dalai Lama came to India, there was some tension. MARWAH: What happened after your language training was completed? SINHA: It was around that time that the government decided to post me to China. I was asked to meet Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru before I left. I was eagerly looking forward to that meeting; however, contrary to my expectations, Nehru did not give me any guidance with regard to India’s foreign policy towards China or a background of our historic relationship with the Chinese. MARWAH: That is really amazing and unbelievable. SINHA: In addition to Nehru’s obvious disposition towards the well-todo, there are other memories of my interaction with him. I had studied earlier at Lady Irwin College, and I had gone with a group of students to invite him for the convocation. I remember that he asked me what he could do for me. In other ways, of course, Nehru had a vision for India, and his vision was that the young educated people of India should take care of the process of modernization. Of course, as with regards to China, in my opinion, he should have given more importance and a more serious perspective to our relations with China. Even if he had any vision for China-India friendship, he did not share it with me when I went to see him before my departure. When I was posted in China, for two and one-half years in the mid-1950s, India-China friendship was at its height. However, by the time I left, our relations weakened and became rather sour, particularly because of the Tibet issue. It was decided that Zhou Enlai would come to India to meet Nehru. There were economic problems in China at that time; in particular, there was a food shortage. However, I saw the way they managed things, even in the most difficult of times. Huge amounts of cabbage were being distributed in some areas, as cabbage production was high.

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My major impression of China was that of a Gandhian society, where the focus was on making basic necessities available to the people. The Chinese were very simple, very human, caring, and warm people. The cradles they made for their children were very colorful, and I was very impressed with the way they cared for their children. Whatever they had they invested in their children and future generations. That was very striking and, in my opinion, very forward thinking, too. After the 1962 war, the government of India was interested in China studies. The Ford Foundation also sponsored a delegation of six people, in which I was a member. I had resigned from the Indian Foreign Service, and had been teaching for some time at Columbia University. There was a demand for Chinese teachers at Delhi University, where Professor V. P. Dutt was head of the department. In 1958, the Department of Buddhist Studies was set up, and courses on the Chinese language were introduced. I also started teaching; I taught the paper on foreign policy to a group of six students at the Master’s level. A senior professor asked me why I wanted to teach in the China studies program, as that was when antiChina feelings were very high. Posters were even put up in the university, calling us CIA agents or America’s agents. We did not take a pro- or anti-China approach; we presented a balanced picture. A feeling of camaraderie emerged and grew amongst us in the department. Whatever information we had about China came from the United States Embassy, and all our textbooks on China were also from the United States. We, in the department, felt we needed our own perspective on China, and we started having discussions among ourselves. MARWAH: What about your published work in that area? SINHA: It was difficult to get anything published in those days, and we were often trailed and monitored because of our activities. I wrote on Sino-India confrontation, a re-interpretation that was published in China Report. I also wrote another article on Nepal and China. Mr. K. Subrahmanyam used this at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. Mr. Subrahmanyam was very helpful to our China Study Group,

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and we got a cabin at Sapru House; he also made information on China accessible to us. Each one of us in the group would read the aspects that interested us. Thus, our China Study Group was like a non-governmental organization. We called ourselves the Wednesday group, as we met every Wednesday at Sapru House, either on the lawns or in the cabin if it was available. At that time there was no cooperation between JNU and Delhi University in the area of China studies. The ministry had no interest, as they felt there were enough scholars from the United States. In 1972, I was asked by the mainstream to write an article. That was done merely so that it could be countered effectively. In 1971, J. P. Narayan organized a discussion at Sapru House. My analysis was that China would not intervene in the 1971 situation, during the war for the independence of Bangladesh. China study as a part of an ideological debate stayed with us and colored all that happened later. It affected all our promotions, etc. That is why we interacted informally among ourselves rather than in organized academic discussions. At the time we were engaged in teaching, the anti-China feelings were high. Both my colleague Giri and I would go to the extent of telling our students that they could agree with our opinions, but should not repeat them in their answers. My principal objective was to start the process of unlearning, and I felt that we had to begin offering a more valuable point of view. When the inquiry first started, we had no alternatives. There was no Indian scholarship and very limited access to information, nor were we exposed to British or German scholarship. We had to rely on information from the United States. By 1991, more people had started writing on China; however, the Institute of Chinese Studies could not grow very much because it had no fulltime staff or proper facilities. Additionally, the writing that people did was unpaid. Despite all of that, the strong commitment of the group kept the Institute of Chinese Studies alive. In the early ’80s, I went to Nigeria, and my interest in teaching declined. There had been no promotions in our areas. My focus in China thereafter

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was on India-China relations and their negotiating strategies, and I worked on a book. MARWAH: What is your opinion of India’s foreign policy towards China? SINHA: Regarding foreign policy, I feel that we are more ad-hoc in our policies. China has a more global perspective; they want to match their development with that of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Chinese evolved a system of dealing with inequity by focusing on and emulating rich countries. They also wanted to avoid confrontation wherever possible. I have always argued that India and China cannot be viewed as ordinary countries; it is important that we have opinions that are not West-oriented. We must continue to look at things differently and stress that each needs to study the other and itself with a high degree of objectivity. I got sidetracked by writing on Mao and Gandhi. Take the Gandhi precepts and the Mao practice. They have a lot in common. MARWAH: How does one tackle the problem of holistic thinking? SINHA: We do not have the tradition of sharing knowledge between departments. We also do not have the institutions necessary to build on. In this area, I feel we need two things. First, we need to recognize that we do not have any scholarship on China, no record of Indian travelers to China, and no substantive body of literature. No doubt, some writings are there, but these are by people who do not know China well enough. Second, we have to see ourselves as successors of the British Empire. In 1947, we were so different. We had two agendas that we had to complete. We had to define ourselves territorially, and we needed to have a dividing line. The territorial issue has been a major issue in the twentieth century. It is important that we recognize ourselves as what we are— multi-religious and multi-ethnic. This brings in the agenda of citizenship.

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I admired Nehru for building the country on the principle of secularism, as this was the most appropriate for integration. This principle was good, but unfortunately Nehru did not know how to strengthen it. We did not emerge into the modern world politically. We also do not see China as having emerged in the modern way. After the 1962 war, we continued to see ourselves as the focus of China’s designs. We do not see ourselves as a geo-political entity, and consequently we are not the country that we should have been. When it comes to China studies, I am ambivalent. There is a lack of interest and experience, and we have not produced a sinologist in ten or twenty years. We need to begin with some degree of humility regarding China studies. In the first place, we need to build on the factual and descriptive aspect of China studies. Second, we should relate that to the policy and study whether there is a gap or a resonance. and then we need to link our knowledge with existing institutions. As such, studies can also be linked to comparative situations. Our research program must focus on narrow subjects, and we have a lot to learn before we go on to examine larger issues. China has made efforts to reach the economic status of the USA. In the Maoist era, it was not GNP (Gross National Product) that China wanted to increase. What they strived for was to raise the per capita income of their countrymen. They wished to realize this objective through their own model and not via the route taken by the Russians. MARWAH: In terms of agriculture, how do you assess China? SINHA: Now, China has gone beyond us, and we look at China to understand how they developed not only their farm sector, but also their industries. In the 1950s, India was the model, and the Chinese were keen to learn from us. They admired our technical capacity and wanted the technology, but not our economic policy. They wanted practical know-how, but since they were completely blocked from acquiring our knowledge, they would buy air conditioners, furniture, and other electronic items from

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Indian diplomats when they returned to India. They did this to develop their own technological capabilities. The Chinese also learned about our multi-party system in order to understand its negative aspects. China’s interest in us has been more political and strategic rather than economic. They want to learn from other countries’ experiences and build their own model, free from the problems of other models. MARWAH: Please share your views on the current state of China studies and the research focus in India. SINHA: When I began teaching, I gave up the Indian Foreign Service. I also worked on China’s population policy, but I was a laughingstock, basically, as there was a lack of interest in China. It was noticed, in fact it set the world on fire, because of the Cultural Revolution in China, which provided a moralistic view on human society. Now Mao has become the Naxalite. Today, any interest is because China is doing well economically. In my opinion, China is doing so well because it suffered since the downfall of the empire. MARWAH: How often have you visited China in recent years? SINHA: I went in 1982, and continued visiting China through 2001. Before 1982, I went when I was posted there. In the ’50s and ’60s, I went with the delegation sent by the Ford Foundation. MARWAH: What are your views on the Tibet issue? SINHA: I feel the Tibet issue is a mix of fact and fiction. We ignore geo-political issues and have not analyzed carefully why the flare-up happened. We need to redefine our position. There is the issue of selfdetermination and, in my opinion, there are too many other issues involved. As far as our thinking goes, I believe we have not moved into the twenty-first century. Politics dominates everything; even if people suffer, it is the state’s concerns that always dominate. There is asymmetry in US policies on China. If the USA had wanted Tibet to secure its independence from China, it could have made sure of that by now. In fact, in my opinion,

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both Taiwan and Tibet could have become independent. However, the United States did not want to take any risk. China, I feel, will be harder on Tibetans. My fear is that there will be a greater militarization over the Tibet issue. The motto should be to never forget politics, but to work for human rights in your own immediate neighborhood. This can have a phenomenal impact. We are more inclined to look at the big picture; we did not think that the village would be as affected by globalization as it has been. This is because the large system determines the parameters within which you can make decisions. MARWAH: Can we just discuss what you said about your initial image of the Chinaman as very gentle? SINHA: Not necessarily gentle. MARWAH: Very orderly, disciplined. SINHA: Orderly, disciplined, tidy. MARWAH: So what were your impressions when you went there, when you met the people, or when you visited various places? SINHA: I think I mentioned last that Beijing—I have not traveled much outside Beijing—was very much a Gandhian society. MARWAH: Yes, you said that there is a linkage between Gandhi and Mao. SINHA: Not a linkage at that time, but very much so later. But looking back, I would say that it was very much a Gandhian society, because it was very human oriented. First, they had neither money nor material resources nor technology, so what they lacked was compensated for by this human effect and human warmth and cooperation. Second, the gulf between leaders—such as Mao and the first generation of revolutionaries—and the people did not seem very large, because they all wore the same kind of clothing and, as far as we knew, they had no personal bank balances, no amenities, no luxuries. They had their official residences, but we were told that, like all those who represented China, they were sartorially equipped

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to represent China in a very dignified fashion. But they came back to their own little modest rooms. Third, there was very little indication—I suppose at that time we were quite innocent about what socialism and so on meant —but there did not seem to be any overt signs of what is today called socialism. The storyteller at the street corner, the little woman who would repair a torn garment, and someone to make something for you were all still there. So the little private enterprises were still there. And the few places that I visited, everyone wore those cotton-padded uniforms. For instance, when I went to a children’s crèche, I was struck by the absolute love and affection that was being given to the children, but they were overclothed. When the winter was quite terrible, the Chinese would get into bed in the cotton-padded uniforms, and perhaps they possessed only one set. They would probably not be able to have a bath every day. There was no fuel or water, so there was no hot water. And they are great garlic eaters, so the smell of garlic was overpowering in a crowded hall. But then garlic was good for health, so they all ate garlic. So these children in the crèche were looked after by women who obviously had no training, had come fresh from the village, and were just like maidservants, in that they were not professionally trained nursery workers. As I told you, I think they were given these thick cotton-filled quilts that were all right. The interesting thing was that a lot of effort was put into the care and educational upbringing of these children, so they looked very healthy. Mao said, “Our future lies with the children,” so very little was denied to the child. They were not spoilt, but were given whatever was required for their upbringing and their nourishment. MARWAH: So the children were well taken care of? SINHA: Wherever they were, in the crèches or in the schools, children were the future of China, in which a great deal of investment was made. There was a very small diplomatic community, and they had very little contact with the Chinese, only on a very official level. If they wanted to invite Mr. X to dinner, and this Mr. X was equivalent to the deputy secretary or the joint secretary of a particular ministry, Mr. Y would take

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charge because Mr. Y was now dealing with that desk. So there was no question of inviting the individual; you invited the position. We admired their hard work, their discipline. Poverty was extreme. When I first went, there were certainly no taxis and very few buses, so we traveled in private cars. The typical old Chinaman was the one you read about in the books or saw in movies, with big teeth and a very thin cap. But they were building roadways, highways, for the future, keeping trees on the side of the roads so that by the time the city grew, the roads were ready to receive them and the trees had grown. So that was their thinking ahead and planning. MARWAH: Futuristic always, visionary. SINHA: Not visionary, very practical. What would be the point of waiting five years to be ready for cars? MARWAH: When you went later, what changes did you see? SINHA: Oh, fantastic changes. MARWAH: After the ’50s, when you stayed for two and one-half years and came back? SINHA: I stayed for two and one-half years. I went back to China several years later. Lots had changed. MARWAH: Was that when you had started teaching and the Ford Foundation sent a delegation? SINHA: That was not as part of the Ford Foundation delegation, I went on my own to attend a conference. But the shock was to see women in red tights, to have someone changing money to piles of loose change, and to see the corruption too. Of course, when you go for a conference and are only there for three or four days, you do not see much, but you could see that the food shops were better, bookstores were fully stocked. MARWAH: Was there more awareness, more literacy?

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SINHA: It is interesting that every time there was an issue. I do not remember what it was in 1982 when I went, but when I went again later, it was the whole question of whether China would join the WTO (World Trade Organization); then the bookstores were full of books explaining WTO and globalization, especially to university students. The city of Beijing had grown enormously, and there was little anxiety concerning which direction China would take or how it would overcome this; it was the time of post-Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four. MARWAH: What about the Chinese wanting to know about India at that time? Was there curiosity about India? SINHA: During my first trip in the 1950s, there was a lot of curiosity about India. As early as that, Chinese youngsters were trained to learn Indian languages. There was a girl near us who was learning Hindi. Much effort was being made to learn about India in order to connect the countries. Indian food was beginning to gain more popularity. By the ’80s, of course, because of the 1962 war, we never met with hostility in China, public antipathy to India, as there has been in this country toward China. That is the advantage of having a government with a highly centralized, controlled society. Media coverage and comments were very restricted to factual or constructive, not opinionated as here, which I think has created a big problem in India. To change the mindset of ordinary people and ordinary academics is very difficult. This is the point that I especially want to make about China studies. For the people of China, India was never an unknown. Bindi (an Indian forehead decoration) is worn by a lot of children, and on festive occasions they always make children wear bindi. India, Buddhism, and Gandhi are very much part of their cultural, historical, and mythological background. In China, India has been prevalent as a civilization in their everyday life, whereas in India, there is an absolute blank regarding China. They have no mythological interest in China, or historical, or institutional, or national memories and archives. Although I have not done any survey, I do not think there is a single book on Chinese history by an Indian after so many years of exchange and contacts. I do

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not know when we started teaching Chinese history in colleges. Certainly in Santiniketan, but the stress was on Buddhism much earlier. But because of Nehru and his views on China, which are somewhat known, China did not mean anything to anybody in this country. I think that is our biggest problem in developing China studies; we had no base to build upon. The Chinese have historical records and analytical work done in China; they have done lots of studies since the 1950s. So everybody reacts, agreeing to the fact that the Chinese have all that, but how do they understand Indians? Understanding is the next step. They encourage it officially, so the number of think tanks or individuals in China working on India are more numerous than those in India working on China. After the 1962 war, of course, it declined a little because there was no formal contact or exchange. But for us, I think the problems are threefold when conducting a course on China studies. First, we have no institutional memories at all, no national memory of China. There has been no encouragement, either at the academic or the official level, for the introduction of Chinese history and Chinese philosophy. Whereas I think our sinologists could be considered germane— who got awards and who has written on vaccine, in fact several volumes on it. The only individual who neared success as a sinologist was a colleague of mine, who had a historical understanding of the origin of China and the language. We have neither language nor academic background on any discipline connected with China, nor does public knowledge exist. There was not much written in the newspapers until we started writing. I still meet people who say that we were the only source of information on China. So this is major and complicated problem—historical, cultural, as well as contemporary. Second, because we did not have a tradition of respecting or acquiring knowledge, we have not realized nationally the importance of knowing another country. I am not just talking about China. Where are our experts on Pakistan? Where are our experts on the United States or the Soviet Union? Area studies? Country studies? Just knowing about the outside world is so important. We don’t know, we do not learn, we do not acquire

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academic resources. When we started, there was no academic encouragement, there was no political encouragement. MARWAH: In fact, it was the opposite; there was discouragement. SINHA: And there were no avenues for young scholars to opt to study China, Japan, or any other country and think that they could build a career out of it. In the end, you have to think about your stomach and about supporting your family, and you cannot become idealistic. MARWAH: You mentioned that you had six students in the beginning, when you had just started teaching. SINHA: Just six students, but that was at the height of the Naxalite era, so there was also a great deal of interest growing in Maoism. So the public response to the lectures that we held was quite phenomenal. There were students who stood near the windows, on the lawns; one student told me that they were tired of learning about the British Constitution as the mother of all constitutions. They wanted to know what was happening elsewhere. This leads me to my third point, and it will go back to Fairbank and his autobiography, which I read a long time ago. I think country or area studies —I do not know the difference today between area studies and China studies—had started as a handmaiden of government need; it was not an academic exercise. In America, because of their long association and special relationship with China, something like ours with Britain, there have been a number of people who had exposure to China. There have been missionaries; they have set up foundations and research institutes; they have lectured and written as well. So, most families in the urban intellectual world have some knowledge about and some connection with China. They also had trade. They had sinologists and people who have traveled through Central Asia. They had people who had dealt militarily with China, they had diplomatic representations, they have archives, they have memories, and they have academic resources. MARWAH: Something to build upon, which we never had.

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SINHA: They built upon that very assiduously, but I think that during the Second World War is when the importance of China was really recognized in the state department. And that is when its study was encouraged. So area studies and China studies grew up, as I see it, as the handmaiden of the national security policy. So when you look back at the way China studies has evolved, I do not think there was any China studies before that. We were at the beginning of a huge difficult process. But looking back, it was a national movement, and for this I give Nehru a lot of credit. I have certainly written about this before, saying that when we began to oppose the British in our own interest, then we looked to other supporters, and we overarched the British colonial era by going back to our ancient cultural linkages. But that was the only thing that could help us overcome the colonial era. In the colonial era, the British were the aggressors for China. Indian soldiers, Indian policemen, and Indian bureaucrats were well known as servants of the British. So their image in China was not very good. Mothers in Shanghai, for instance, would frighten their children by saying that bearded Sikhs would come. Certainly we were there fighting on the behalf of the British. So Nehru’s very voice…and so on and so forth. Then there was another political phase, when Chiang Kai-shek came, and there was follow-up on that. So there was again a deep political motivation, as it were, for opening up with China, for the problem was very deeply rooted. Then, I would say since the civil war, there was a little romantic element, especially how it affected our ‘Quit India’ decision. Nehru would not agree to that resolution until Gandhi assured him that it would not affect China’s struggle against the Japanese. So Gandhi had to write a special letter to Chiang Kai-shek with the assurance that, although we would oppose the British, we would not interfere with their national struggle. So the interlinks at various points were political. Then, of course, from the civil war again, Indian soldiers were fighting the British and the Americans, not as liberators, except in Burma or elsewhere. Chinese troops were trained here, Stillwell came and went, and there is that official military connection, but nothing beyond that. After that there was the medical mission, then with the takeover of the Chinese Communists, there

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is a blankness, no background on the Communists, no knowledge, Nehru never heard anything. So suddenly there is this totally new animal. We do not know who the leaders are, we do not know what they want, so we have nothing to fall back on. In my view, we could have treated this like what Mao said about society being your pie. I think for us history should have been that. We had no history, we were a new state, and we could shape it the way we wanted to. But I think we lacked knowledge and background on China, and of the Cold War era of anti-Communism. Nehru also forgot his socialist leanings and had to deal with Communists as an opposition force at home, I think that changed the whole picture so that there was no great initiative to understand China. We did send a few cultural delegations, but there was not much exchange. Every decision we made, whether it was on Tibet or other things, we did the right thing, like sending grain or whatever, but then it just meandered into nothing. No studies, just impressionistic views on China. Their cultural delegations came, ours went. There was a strong left-wing influence here that looked at China sympathetically, as they did at Russia. I think one of Nehru’s greatest acts was in 1954, but again it was not considered an act, because it did not lead to any understanding of China. He said in parliament and wrote to the chief ministers that people must learn the Chinese language, but nothing was done about this. Again I would say that it is politics, and our intellectuals and intelligentsia tend to follow the mainstream view simply because we have not done enough research and study. If we had our own studies on China and all of us ended up knowing the history, philosophy, or culture of China, we may have a different view. There was so much hero-worship of Nehru, and people just accepted the mainstream view. That was in 1959 and 1960, and by 1962 opinions actually went from one extreme to the other. And the second fairly major phase was after the 1962 war. MARWAH: That was for quite long… SINHA: It was very long, and that is why today—and this is a point I make over and over again—those who talk about the border issues, first,

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do not realize how complicated the whole thing is. Second, they begin by taking the notes that were exchanged in 1958–1959, as well as the position that India took then, as the truth. There is nothing before that. The whole decade after we became independent, several things happened. MARWAH: Which are missing? SINHA: That is why it is so difficult. In 1962, the atmosphere was so sour that it was difficult for people to question the statements of government, to say anything good about the Chinese, or to look at them in a positive or constructive angle, even though they were our immediate neighbor. However, in 1962 the government—whether it was at their initiative or American initiative I cannot say—recognized and accepted the need to increase knowledge on China. So through the Ford Foundation, the government arranged to send a group of scholars to China. I look objectively at the background of the mainstream view, and I think the Americans were very political in their writings. But some of us began questioning the American stand, not only American writings, but also what was happening in Vietnam, American policy towards China, and what was happening in China. But we had nothing to fall back on, as there was no Indian point of view, nor any Indian scholarship. So we tended to look at China from within its ideological framework, which I think was a good thing because that is what determined their policy. So that is the unfortunate side of this—you either accepted the mainstream analysis or looked at things from the Chinese point of view. So after that, politics again intruded, either acting as the dynamic for the development of China studies or hindering the process. The government started some kind of program on China but did not know how to carry it through, for lack of expertise. I do not see any independent growth in China studies anywhere, actually. I do not think you can remove area studies from the political arena, but I think you can always remove sinology from the political realm. So there has to be, in the long run, development in this country of sinological studies, and no one can become a sinologist in less than twenty years. MARWAH: Absolutely, it needs to be a continuous engagement.

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SINHA: And I feel that, in the meantime, there have to be studies on contemporary China from the policy perspective and, in addition, we should have think tanks attached to the government. They work on government policy, but they also give objective views that are based on understanding, analysis, accumulation of data, and that kind of thing. For India, I think, the future lies in doing work only on contemporary China from a political perspective in order to evolve an Indian viewpoint on China. There is a need to do both pro-government policy studies and those that are critical of government. Or at the least, there must be three or four options available to government. Take this whole Tibet issue; there has not been one recent serious article on it. What are those who do write on the border issues really talking about? Or those who write on Arunachal Pradesh? This is creating, as I said, an idea and public opinion that will be difficult to manage later on. MARWAH: New issues seem to keep emerging, like the submarine issue, and everything written on China is negative. SINHA: In terms of defense and military (from the perspective of China), it appears that the idea is to encircle India, contain India, and there is a threat perceived in whatever China does. The threat perception is very high. Like our recent Agni-III tests, if you say that its range is 50,000 or whatever distance, you know that it will reach Beijing, but it will also reach Moscow, it will also reach other parts of Europe. Why make it China specific, or state that it can reach the heart of China? It does not make any sense. I think, unless you have more think tanks, more information available… Look at us, we are still looking around for information; we are going to have to continue being the drum-beaters for government policy, right or wrong. MARWAH: But ultimately this is going to create a lot of complications. SINHA: Far too many, and the good that Nehru did is forgotten. For the congress, at least, everything seems to start now from Rajiv Gandhi’s visit. The role of China studies is to establish that China is an important and

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rising power and that it will help shape the future of the world. Although the asymmetry between China and us is considerable, so will our relations with China be, because we are going right back to Nehru in recognizing that what we do with China, China does with us. It is going to shape the future, not only for Asia, but also for the whole world. What China studies needs to do is point out that India’s China policy must incorporate a higher dimension, where we look at the trends of the time and the needs of the future, and for our own needs of course. MARWAH: And we should not always be looking at China or Pakistan, with both of them becoming our enemies. SINHA: Absolutely. That and we need to start broad-basing China studies on materials available from sources other than the Americans. British writings on China are not available easily here. We are so swamped by what the Americans say about China that we cannot think outside that anymore. MARWAH: Therefore, there is no real independent and in-depth thinking on China, in your opinion? SINHA: Not only is it not independent, but there is no alternate source of information. We do not look to the British; we do not look to the French or the Germans or the Scandinavians, who are doing a lot of work. What about the Russians? They have a long tradition of working on China. What about Southeast Asia? We are at a loss; we are equally perplexed about our other neighbors, both immediate and distant. We have a long way to go academically, and the biggest tragedy of China studies is that we continue imitatively, following on the American lines and within the framework of Western social science, not looking at it from our perspective. We do not know what our perspective is. A lot of digging needs to be done, as well as much more serious research. MARWAH: And when you went back to China later, what did you feel? What kind of changes did you find amongst the people towards India, or was it the same as it was earlier?

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SINHA: The biggest change I found is that earlier they would say, “Oh! How beautiful, silks and the bindi and the dress,” but now the glamour no longer excites them. Of course, now I do not know with Bollywood what is going to happen. MARWAH: But that fascination is not there. SINHA: And something else about this tradition does not fascinate them anymore, not like this, but tradition in a philosophical or a cultural sense. I keep saying that now I think the Chinese are looking past India. They have gone way past us in their modernity of thought and thinking, in the way they study issues, their interests, their concerns; we do not have very much to give them now. They are interested in what we do because we affect them in some way. But in what areas can they learn from us or find that we are more advanced than they are? There was information technology at one time; now even that does not exist, as they are catching up very quickly. Listen to their newsreaders speaking English. They also write much better than most of us today. The average Chinese scholar who, let’s say eight years ago, could not speak English at all, today reviews English when he comes to interact with us in India and also writes. Whether you write well or not does not matter, because that is how you will learn— believe the Chinese. I think their approach to the world is to protect themselves from confrontation. MARWAH: So you feel it’s more defensive than offensive? SINHA: It is neither. They are building their capabilities, but they realize that any confrontation would set them back economically, politically, socially—in every possible way. First, I find that Chinese academics now pattern themselves in the style of American studies, and some of them, of course, are completely American in their approach. However, a lot of them still have a strong China focus. Second, there is an increase in the number of think tanks in China.

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MARWAH: But do they have independent views now? SINHA: I think where they differ from the Russians and us, as I gather from my Chinese friends, they were never stopped from expressing their views. The constraint on them was that if their views did not agree with government policy, then those views were not to be published. But they were taken into consideration by the government. I think this is healthy. It is why even in Russia, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there were people who had been critical of Soviet policies suddenly publishing their works. There were different phases of course, and then the Cultural Revolution. I also remember, going back to the ’50s, when China had absolutely no contact with the outside world, and neither we nor the Russians could have supplied them the literature or the medicines they required. As far as literature was concerned, they made every effort to get hold of whatever was being published abroad on China, and critical articles were put together in a publication. These were distributed only at the political level up to a certain point, in order to let the Chinese who were involved in decision making be aware of how China was being looked at on the outside, what the criticisms were, and how those could be addressed. That was being circulated. MARWAH: Then they were not really averse to knowing the negative aspects also? SINHA: They have always wanted that, because they were so proud of their image, and they realized that successful policy and a positive image go together. So they were always anxious to know what others thought of them, what in others’ point of view they were doing wrong, and if it could be rectified. It sounds very idealistic, but this is the Chinese tradition and not something they had recently begun. MARWAH: But that way, we feel that there is much writing criticizing our policies, etc., but we are still not able to move forward. There are many different opinions about whether or not there is anything we can do.

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SINHA: I think sometimes that this kind of freedom is wasteful. If the expertise exists, harness it. Let us give a concrete scenario. Why does our government not share information with us? Even archives going back to the McMahon Line and the Shimla Conference are not open. Of course, after 1949 nothing is open. What happens today is another thing. What is the government’s stand on Tawang or Arunachal? We do not know. The Chinese know more than we do. So we blissfully write on. MARWAH: Do you have any more suggestions on who would be good to interview? SINHA: I think Krishna wrote a piece on China. You looked at back issues of China Report? MARWAH: The few that we have. In fact, I am going to see Dr. Patricia tomorrow. I will also ask her for additional names. SINHA: There is Subrahmanyam, who encouraged this new group to begin with. Then, of course, viewpoints began to differ; he is very much a government person. MARWAH: But he helped initially? SINHA: He advised me on how to get to China. I was not afraid to interact with someone who was critical in his stance. MARWAH: And amongst our diplomats and contemporary scholars? SINHA: Vinod Khanna, Ranganathan, Paranjape, all those who have dealt with China from the foreign angle. Shankar Vajpayee, and Umrao, head of the National Security Advisory Board. He was instrumental in the takeover of Sikkim. K. P. S. Menon, Jr. has retired in Chennai. Someone like C. V. Muthappa would also be good; he once resigned because he disagreed with the China policy. But that was only on the policy level; I do not think he has ever been in China. Actually it would be a great service if you could pressure the government to open up the archives. You have got V. P. Dutt, and his wife also, Ranveer Vohra. On the military side, those

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who were in Korea during the armistice, who had to deal with the Chinese there and also had to go to China. Then I. K. Gujral, Natwar Singh. MARWAH: Our knowledge is so limited. SINHA: I think something that you must stress is that we are absolutely uninformed regarding out past relations with China—what I called in an article “the ordinary familiarity of neighbors.” There is no archival material except that which is British. So it is up to our young people to move forward with this. MARWAH: Thank you so much.

Diptimoy Bhattacharya Interviewer: Dr. Avijit Banerjee Mr. Diptimoy Bhattacharya has worked with government of India as a Chinese linguist and he was also a teacher at Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center), Visva Bharati University in West Bengal, India. BANERJEE: I am Avijit Banerjee, and I am extremely delighted and honored to be talking to you, sir. I would like to begin by asking at what stage of your life you became familiar with China. BHATTACHARYA: I first confronted the word China through China Khabar (Food of China) in which there were recipes for Chinese food. My family was fond of Chinese food. So through that I became familiar with the word China. BANERJEE: Sir, please tell us something about your family background. BHATTACHARYA: I belong to the Bhattacharya family of Nadia district: Nadiyarpara, Krishnanagar West Bengal. It is one of the oldest families of Bengal. Bhattacharya is not our original title; we were originally the Bagchi. Our ancestral house is in Krishnanagar. It is a very old house, huge and U–shaped, with vacant land on its three sides. In front of the house, there was an open square where the Durgapuja and Navami Puja were conducted regularly. It was an old house with many traditions. It was probably built during the times of Maharaja Krishnachandra, and when Sirajuddaullah was the Nawab of Bengal. I heard that our ancestors had offered some puja [prayer] in the Royal Palace, and the king conferred upon them the title Bhattacharya. But otherwise, originally we were the Bagchi. Most of that house is now sold; only a small portion is left where the family of my youngest uncle resides. There are so many historical

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incidents associated with this house, and especially the open space in front of it. During the days of the freedom movement, leaders like C. R. Das and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose addressed the people of that locality. The revolutionary poet Kazi Nasrul Islam sang songs there. But now we are completely disconnected from that place. I am the only son of my parents, and I have one sister. My father was in government service in the postal department. BANERJEE: Was your father in Krishnanagar? BHATTACHARYA: Initially he was in Krishnanagar. But then he came down to Nadia district, to a small place called Maldah. BANERJEE: What about your mother? BHATTACHARYA: My mother was from Krishnanagar itself. She is from the place called Chaukherpara. They belong to the family of Dewans of Raja Krishnachandra. You must have heard of Dewans Kartikchandra, Umeshchandra, etc. The great singer Dilip Roy was my mother’s uncle, and my maternal grandfather was treasurer for the Royal family of Krishnachandra. So both the sides were from Krishnanagar. BANERJEE: When did your schooling start? BHATTACHARYA: My father was transferred from Krishnanagar to a city in Nadia district. That’s a small place where, at the age of eight, I was admitted to the New English School in class three. I was there for three years. Again, after three years my father was transferred to Chuadanga, so my family moved there. It was in Nadia district. At the time of partition, a part of Nadiya district came to India while some was transferred to Bangladesh. So now it is in Bangladesh. The school’s name was Chuadanga Victoria High School. I studied there for three years, and my father got another transfer to Nawadweep, where I graduated from Bakultala High School. I was ranked first in all the standards and very much loved by all my teachers. They felt that I worked too much on my studies, but it was not so.

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BANERJEE: Was this until matriculation? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, then I was admitted to Krishnanagar Government College. I used to go daily from Nawadweep to Krishnanagar College, crossing the Ganga by ferry, and then I used to go back. Although I had an ancestral house in Krishnanagar, my family was in Nawadweep. I passed my matriculation in 1946, and soon after I lost my father. He died prematurely. He was still in the service. He was young, about forty years old. That was a catastrophic event for us. My sister was twelve years old and studying, and I was sixteen. That was a hard time for us, and nobody helped us. The postal authorities offered me a job, but I had my studies, so I refused their offer with thanks and told them that if they needed me, I would be able to join only after my studies were completed. BANERJEE: So you continued your studies at Krishnanagar College? BHATTACHARYA: No, I was confused where to go. One of my maternal aunts lived in Calcutta. So I went to Calcutta and explained the whole story to them. They gave me a place to stay, but told me that I had to make my own arrangements for college. The Aashutosh College is here in Bhavanipur. Dr. Panchanan Sinha was the principal. I showed him the transfer certificate, and my matriculation result was good and, considering the entire situation, he was sympathetic to me. I was figuring out how to manage my expenses, because I had to send some money to my family as well. I got my sister admitted to a local school. After the death of my father, we had to vacate our government-provided housing., so we rented part of a house in another area of Nawadweep. While doing all this, I give home tuition [teaching students at their homes]. So one day, while walking on Aashutosh Mukharjee Road, I saw a huge, two-storey building. I asked whose building it was. Somebody told me that it was Sir Aashutosh’s building. I realized Shyamaprasad Mukherjee must be there. They said, “Yes, he is here.” He was a minister in charge of commerce and industry. He was a great leader, educator, vice-chancellor, and so on. One day he was standing in front of his house. I climbed the stairs and saw the library ahead. A tall man was standing there; he looked at me and asked who I was

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and what I was looking for. I told him that I was a student at his college and requested that he allow me to explain my difficulty. He was very kind and listened patiently to my situation. After listening to me, he asked me who had told me to visit him. I told him that I had done so on my own. He asked me to speak to the principal. As I was hesitant to do so, he himself spoke to the principal, and after that all my fees were waived. I got all the help possible from the college, and I was even allowed to borrow reference books from the library. At that time one very young lecturer had joined the economics department. I was admitted first in intermediate arts, and then BA (Honors), and economics was my major subject. I met the young lecturer. He was initially a parttimer and very friendly to me. He was introduced to me as Kusum Dutta. He advised me on how I could make some more money through giving home tuition. In that way, I became a part-time tutor to the daughter of the director general of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Raisaheb Mukherjee, from Baubajar. This helped me to continue with my studies. One of my classmates, Mr. Hariyanand Birari, who became the Director of Intelligence and later the Governor of Haryana, advised me to transfer to Presidency College. However, my financial situation did not permit this, and I did my BA (Honors) at Aashutosh College. But later on I met him in the MA program in economics at Calcutta University. However, due to some family problems, I had to discontinue my studies just before the final MA examination, and I had to take a government job. BANERJEE: So you started your professional career with a government job. BHATTACHARYA: It was in Calcutta with P & K Audit. Later, in 1958, I was transferred to Calcutta telephones. I rented a house and stayed with my mother and sister. In 1956, during the days of Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are Brothers), students like me and those who were not satisfied with their jobs were frantically trying to get out of that service and were trying to do something different. I was preparing for compet-

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itive examinations. I had to appear for my IAS (Indian Administrative Service) examination. In the meantime I got my sister married. They were all attached to me. But my sister was having a daughter and, on the day of her delivery, she passed away suddenly. I could not go for my examination and lost my last chance to appear for the IAS exam. So I was trying to find some other job. It occurred to me that I should learn a foreign language. In the same way as Shyamaprasad Mukharjee, I went to Sudharma, residence of Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatarjee. I told him my background and told him that I wanted to build a career in foreign language. He was a great linguist and a professor of comparative philology, and later he was chairman of the Legislative Council of Calcutta. He suggested that I should study Chinese. All other people were scared of learning Chinese, according to him. In his opinion, it was the most difficult language in the world. He said that he could not do two things in his life: first, learn Chinese completely, and second, go through Vedas thoroughly. “I am not telling you to do Vedas, but you should do Chinese studies for me.” He said, “I, being a student of comparative philology, must know all the languages, but I know only bit of Chinese. I can test whether you know Chinese or not, but I have no time to learn it thoroughly.” So he suggested that I study Chinese, and at that time I was serving in the telephones department. One day I read an advertisement in the newspaper that Chin-Bharat Sanskriti had decided to open a city branch in Calcutta, offering afternoon classes. The venue was the India National Hall, and I went along with my friends. This is where they were going to open the city branch of Chin-Bharat Sanskriti. A gentleman was speaking there in a very peculiar voice. He introduced himself as Satiranjan Sen. I asked him if he was going to be the teacher. He said he was and that other Chinese teachers would be coming from time to time. His was the first group that went to China from Santiniketan—Satiranjan Sen, Amitendranath Tagore, Venkatraman, and Dr. V. Kumar, who was the Chinese intelligence officer later on. He also served as an interpreter for Dr. Pannikar when he was Ambas-

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sador to China. He wrote a book titled Inside Two Chinas, because he saw the regimes; the KMT (Kuomintang: Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Communists. T. K. Shibrurkar also went with them to study the Chinese language. Satiranjan Sen was from the Kaviraj family. His topic was related to Chinese herbal medicine. So, after he returned from China, he started an organization in Thakurpukur near Jokha along with Dr. Chatarjee. At that time Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatarjee was president of both the India-China Friendship Association and the India-Soviet Friendship Association. He told the audience that the institute had Maha Upadhyay Shastri as its president and himself as its vice president. It was in 1956–1957. He asked us why we were going there to learn the Chinese language and what the purpose of learning Chinese was. One of my friends said that the purpose was “knowing about China, going to China.” Another friend, who was an amateur actor, said, “Sir, I want to become an ambassador.” That was the first and last day of his studies there. I studied there for two years. One year I took a certificate course, and the next year I did the advanced course. BANERJEE: What were the books you studied there? BHATTACHARYA: Very few books were available: Speak Chinese, Read Chinese. These were Yale University (USA) publications and some books published by Stanford University. Chinese books were not available at that time, and a dictionary also came much later. So this was the state of affairs at that time. I was in regular contact with Dr. Chatarjee, and he used to enquire about the progress of my studies. He took a keen interest in that. He said, “Bhattacharya, you should go to Calcutta University also.” Calcutta University at that time had a course on Chinese studies. One of the Chinese gentlemen there, Phang We Shun, was a very good teacher. He was a Chinese bureaucrat and came to Calcutta as manager of a branch of the Bank of China. Despite earning a hefty salary, he gave up his job and joined the primary school as a teacher. He later moved

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to Calcutta University and was a great scholar. He became a friend of mine. His wife was a doctor. I used to visit their house. I think that they had a mission to create some kind of desire among Indians to learn the Chinese language. I was doing the two things simultaneously. When the Chin Bharat Sanskriti moved to Calcutta, it was renamed Prachyavidya Vihar—The Institute for Oriental Studies. Prachyavidya means Sanskrit. Tibetans, Chinese, and Russians were taught there. We actually operationalized it. From fixing signboards to distributing pamphlets, everything was done by me personally. It was located in a Chinese Buddhist temple near the lake area. There were as many classrooms as there were in the Chinese Department, Tibetan Department, and so on. The great scholar Shiosi Nara was there. Now he is a professor and head of the department of comparative philology, Tokyo University. He used to take classes at the Golpark Institute of Culture in Calcutta. He joined us in the Japanese department. After that, Dr. Mukherjee told me to teach some classes. He said there was a shortage of teachers. I brought Tan We-shi here for Prachyavidya Vihar. Another gentleman, Raman M. Bose, used to be there and was my teacher. He asked me to create an interest in learning Chinese among the students. Earlier we used to bring the students and convince them to read Chinese so they could get a good job. So in that way I was very well known. One evening, with my little knowledge of Chinese, I was teaching a class. Suddenly the police van came, and I got nervous. Professor Chatarjee was along with them, and he introduced me. “He is our young teacher teaching Chinese.” They were Dr. Humayun Kabir, the minister in charge of education and culture, Mr. M. L. Bhattacharya, and other gentlemen, but I don’t want to mention their names. Initially I got frightened. He told me not to be nervous, but to go on teaching while they sat on the last bench. I was a bit shaky, but then I went on explaining things to the students. I was in any case popular among the students, so they were impressed and went away. In April 1959 or 1960, I don’t clearly remember, they asked me to go to Delhi to attend an interview.

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BANERJEE: You did not apply there? BHATTACHARYA: No. Then I went there; I had to join the department under the Home Ministry. After joining, they told me that I had to undergo some training. I told them that I was not a Chinese expert, but just a beginner. They said they were contemplating providing me with the best training. Then I took the charge. After a few years, they asked me to go to Mysore. BANERJEE: Was there an institute at that time in Mysore? BHATTACHARYA: It was going to start. So I was there initially for one year, and some people from Delhi also came there for one year. One great scholar from England, Mr. Sahou, also came there as an instructor. At the same time, the Sino-Indian border problem started. There were Indian instructors, and Mr. Sahou was the main Chinese instructor. Later I came to know from him that he is a born Chinese. He was born during the times of KMT and had experienced the war and recession. He suffered a lot in China. His education was in Michigan. He got a law degree from there. From there he went to Indonesia and was a great friend of Dr. Sukarno. Later on he became a British citizen. He was a scholar of both classical and modern Chinese. In Mysore there were so many students coming from the language branch. BANERJEE: At that time was there no school of foreign languages? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, it was there in Delhi. There they completed their certificate course and came to Mysore for advanced courses. BANERJEE: Who were the Indian instructors? BHATTACHARYA: One was Mr. Sharma, and the other was Mr. Gupta. BANERJEE: Was the training there in both classical and modern Chinese? BHATTACHARYA: When we went, there was no syllabus or anything. Everything was eventually formulated. Initially we had only newspapers as our reading material, all the Chinese and English newspapers.

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BANERJEE: Did you get the Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) during that time? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, it was there. BANERJEE: So, from where did you get the newspapers? BHATTACHARYA: Well, the department used to provide us with so many newspapers. Later on, books were available and then military documents too. BANERJEE: Sir, was it under the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs)? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, people from the army, navy, air force, foreign service probationers, and intelligence to local police also. Mr. Bhaskar Mukherjee came from the West Bengal police. That was the only government school for higher and technical studies in Chinese. At the end of the course we were asked to take the interpretership examination at Delhi under the School of Foreign Languages. BANERJEE: Who was teaching there? BHATTACHARYA: Mr. Shibrurkar was there, and some others were there. Initially, they did not allow me to take that examination, since I had not passed the preliminary and advanced courses at the School of Foreign Languages. At that time there were no BA or MA courses, but the fulltime, four-year interpreter’s course was considered the highest degree. I sent the syllabus and letter to Calcutta University. He strongly recommended my case to the principal, saying that this is a prestige issue for them. He said Mysore was a cool place and they would be having their examination in May in Delhi, which would be experiencing hot weather. He requested one extra month for acclimatization of his students in Delhi. I got one extra month to appear for the examination. I went to Delhi, studied day and night, and topped the list. That was in 1964 after the war. BANERJEE: Now I am asking you some personal things. When did you get married?

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BHATTACHARYA: Well, I got married in 1958, when I was in telephones. During my training, I took my family along. They were in Mysore and then in Delhi. BANERJEE: So tell us something about your family. BHATTACHARYA: My wife could not finish her studies since she had to accompany me to Mysore. So she was with me the whole time. My daughter and son were also there. My son was very young, but my daughter started her schooling in Mysore. Later I was transferred to Siliguri with this job. Actually, after we passed our courses, Dr. Sahou kept two people with him, Mr. Sukhranjan Maitra and me. Mr. Mathalingam was also retained for some special training in cursive writing that he specialized in. Bhattacharya was to take charge of this institute. He had so much faith in me. Ultimately, he died in Mysore. His family was in London, so his body was sent there. I went to Siliguri, and from Siliguri I went to Calcutta. So when I was in Calcutta in 1974, Visva Bharati advertised for the post of lecturer, and my department asked me to apply there. BANERJEE: So before going to Visva Bharati, please tell us something about your children. BHATTACHARYA: My daughter studied in Calcutta until higher secondary, and then she graduated from Visva Bharati University. She passed her MSc in physics from Shikha Bhavana, Visva Bharati. She was in the first group of trainees at the Indian Statistical Institute. After that she got married and went to work at the Asiatic Society. There she compiled a book titled Cultivation of Science under the guidance of Professor R. M. Sen. His research was in the history of science. After that she finished her PhD in atomic physics from Jadavpur University under Professor Arnab Ghose. Currently, she is head of the department of physics, Aashutosh College, Calcutta. Her papers are published at Harvard University. BANERJEE: What about her husband?

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BHATTACHARYA: Her husband is a renowned cardiologist. He is an MD, faculty at many colleges all over the world, and a leading cardiologist in Calcutta. BANERJEE: Your son? BHATTACHARYA: My son initially studied in Calcutta. Then he was transferred to Visva Bharati. While he was doing his MSc in chemistry, he got a chance to transfer to the Science College at Calcutta University for chemical engineering. He is a chemical engineer with a specialization in rubber and polymer. He is a well-known rubber technologist. He started his career with Birla Tyres, and then moved to Goodyear, J. K. Tyre, and ICI. From ICI he went to a trading company in Singapore. Then he became a vice president of RI International and is now CEO of an international company. BANERJEE: Okay, sir, please tell us something about your days at Visva Bharati. BHATTACHARYA: I joined Visva Bharati in 1974 on deputation for two years. In 1976, I was again asked back. I think Dr. Surjit Sinha was the vice-chancellor at that time, and Dr. Chatarjee was very pleased that I was coming to Visva Bharati. He told me that was the right place for me as I could create experts. There was a lot of correspondence between Visva Bharati and my parent department. Ultimately they agreed to let me go if a certificate was provided that my inclusion at Visva Bharati was in the national interest. The vice-chancellor gave him that letter. In 1978, the president was pleased to release me with the full benefits of my past services. My director said we were losing a good expert. I assured them that dozens of experts would be sent to them. Later I was a member of a UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) panel, and when I conducted interviews, at least half of them had been my students. I joined Visva Bharati with a mission to make Chinese studies popular in India. Previously the interest was not there. I had to face lots of difficulties. Frankly speaking, most of my colleagues were not cooperative.

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They were not teaching the classes regularly, but were only engaged in finding fault with my teaching. There were only two courses—certificate and diploma courses. There was no graduate degree. It was such a big institute, but I asked what the activity was and where the students were. They said, “No, only research; this is the place for research in Buddhism.” I said, “Buddhism is there, but that’s not the only thing; they must know the language first.” Without knowing the language, how could they do research? And for research one must know classical Chinese, and that requires specialization. So initially there were students learning the language and then the culture, because the department was for learning the Chinese language and culture. So I suggested that they start a BA honors course. Before I went to Santiniketan, Surjit Sinha, the vice chancellor, had a talk with Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatarjee. Dr. Chatarjee wanted to develop that department. People were sitting idle, and there were very few students. And today there are hundreds of students there. So we had to start this BA course. BANERJEE: So the graduation course finally started, didn’t it? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, it was started in my time, and Joyeeta and others are from that first group. After they graduated, there needed to be a Master’s degree. There was a lot of resentment from my colleagues; they said, “There are no teachers, books, or facilities here.” I said, “Let’s try.” During my visit to China—actually I visited China at the end of my service in 1988, at the time when both the countries were signing the Sino-Indian cultural agreement—I was there representing Visva Bharati. It was in Beijing in 1988, the director of ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Science Research), Dr. Bharat Rajan, minister in charge of culture, the deputy minister, and Ambassador [C. V.] Ranganathan were there. I had a lengthy discussion with Ambassador Ranganathan about my experiences at Santiniketan. He suggested I visit Nanjing University and the Peoples University. I visited them and also visited Normal University. There I met head of the department. He told me there were about eighty students from Pakistan and also a significant number of students from Bangladesh. He

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said, “We try to increase the number of scholarships for Indian students so that the maximum number of students can be invited, not only to study language, but agriculture, medicine, and other things.” BANERJEE: How long did you stay in China? BHATTACHARYA: I stayed in China for a month. Mr. K. P. S. Menon was also there. He was a consular general there. Mr. Bombawala was also there, and they all used to come to the house of Professor Narayan Sen. Professor Sen’s son, Tansen, asked me to send him a copy of the photo we took with Mr. Menon at the summer palace. So my purpose was to popularize Chinese studies at Visva Bharati. BANERJEE: Who were your colleagues at Santiniketan? BHATTACHARYA: Dr. Mukherjee was there, Reena Ganguly was there, and Professor Naik joined later. At that time Professor Venkatraman was the head of department. He was an expert in classical Chinese. Actually, there was a lot of opposition to him for making a well-formulated course in graduate and post-graduate studies. He said, “This is a research institute and not a school.” Ultimately, he was convinced. BANERJEE: During that time, were you getting books from China? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, we were getting books from China. Actually, when Zhou Enlai visited Santiniketan, he donated shiploads of books. These books are kept in the library and are a treasure for Visva Bharati. BANERJEE: Did you meet Dr. Tan Yunshan? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, he was here when I was head of the department. Then I met another gentleman, Hajimi Nakamura. There is a university in Japan named after him. BANERJEE: So, sir, what were the contents of the course you have outlined?

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BHATTACHARYA: Well, there were eight papers, and new things were introduced, like China’s relations with different countries, the study of Chinese political thoughts, and sociology. BANERJEE: Were you getting Chinese newspapers in those days? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, there were newspapers. Initially it was difficult, but later we were supplied regularly from New Delhi. BANERJEE: Sir, can you please mention some important people who visited Cheena Bhavan in your time? BHATTACHARYA: Cheena Bhavan, Visva Bharati was established in 1937. So the Golden Jubilee celebration in 1987 took place during my time. And the great scholar who was the first Chinese student of Visva Bharati, Mr. Wei Fengjiang, came for the celebrations. When the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited China, he met her there, and after the demise of Indira Gandhi, Mr. Wei came to the Indian Embassy in China and wrote an obituary in the condolence book. Rajiv Gandhi was impressed by his words, and arranged his visit during the Golden Jubilee celebration of Cheena Bhavan. I was then head of the department. I went to Calcutta to receive him, and we arranged for him to stay at the Park Hotel. He was accompanied by his interpreter. I brought him here by the Santiniketan Express train. He delivered the speech at Santiniketan. BANERJEE: Did anyone from the government of India come in 1987? BHATTACHARYA: No. BANERJEE: Sir, can you recall any other memories and experiences during your tenure at Cheena Bhavan? Any visits by an Indian or foreign delegation? BHATTACHARYA: The Chinese ambassador once visited in 1987, along with Chinese diplomats. They all stayed at Ratankuthi at Santiniketan. In 1959, I applied for the Harvard Scholarship, and my application was strongly recommended and forwarded by Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatarjee and

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Dr. Nihar Ranjan Roy. It was certain that I would get the fellowship. However, I did not know the politics of it. In those days in the USA, learning Chinese from an Indian, and especially someone from Calcutta, was looked at with suspicion, so I was not awarded the fellowship. I came to know about this from Dr. Ram Rahul, who was my roommate in Delhi. He was the interpreter for Sir William Douglas, who wrote the famous book, Beyond the High Himalayas. Rahul was also a professor at the school of international studies at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and had some contacts at the American Embassy. He told me that they were not granting Chinese fellowships to any Indians that year, but to Pakistani and Thai students. My friend Rabindra Bijoy Soman was granted, because his subject was Buddhism, and the Chinese scholarship was granted to Mrs. Nabaneeta Deb Sen for comparative literature. She is the first wife of Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate. Mr. Rabindra Bijoy Soman later became Rabindra Bijoy Bulwa. He returned and joined his post, and he was head of the Pali department, Calcutta University. BANERJEE: Sir, what are the things you taught at Cheena Bhavan? BHATTACHARYA: Modern Chinese, particularly the terminologies, and China’s relations with neighboring countries like the Soviet Union, Vietnam, the UK, and the USA. BANERJEE: So, you visited China in 1980? BHATTACHARYA: Yes. BANERJEE: And what other places have you visited? BHATTACHARYA: Well, during my service I visited only China. After I retired, I visited a couple of places. BANERJEE: Which year did you retire from service? BHATTACHARYA: I got an extension for five years. So I was relieved from service in 1993. After that I visited few places. I visited Paris, London, Geneva, Salzburg, Vienna, and Berlin. I went to Humboldt,

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where Dr. Biswadeb Mukharjee was. Then I visited Hamburg, and finally Switzerland. BANERJEE: Sir, did you visit these countries as a tourist? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, I visited these countries as a tourist, but I did some China-related work in my personal capacity. BANERJEE: So, among all these countries, where did you find China studies flourishing? BHATTACHARYA: In Geneva, students are very hardworking. In France, Chinese food is very popular. The Tafa restaurant is very popular, and they do lots of business. Chinese food is very popular in all these countries. Chinese businesses are very good in these countries. My son visits China very frequently, almost every month, so I get many Chinese things. BANERJEE: What is your personal experience with the Chinese? You have dealt with lots of Chinese during your government and academic career. So what is your experience of common Chinese people and Chinese at the government level? BHATTACHARYA: The common Chinese are very hardworking, and that quality impressed me the most. If they promised to do something for you, they did it. They are very sincere. BANERJEE: What is their attitude towards common Indian people? BHATTACHARYA: Actually, the common Chinese people do not bother much with politics and other things. They are highly materialistic, and they prefer the Western lifestyle. They are highly westernized. BANERJEE: And what is your impression about the Chinese working at the government level? BHATTACHARYA: Only one thing I can tell you. They are very reserved. They talk less, unlike Indians. We like to talk a lot. Let me tell you one thing. When we were students, the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama both

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came to Calcutta. We saw them in the market doing shopping. So I asked Mr. Fang Weixia, “Sir, what is your impression of those guys? See, they are shopping here.” I expected that he would tell me many things about them. But he said only one thing: “Bhattacharya, they are very young.” BANERJEE: So when you visited China in 1988, what was it like? Was it developed? BHATTACHARYA: Well, compared to India it was already ahead in development in terms of long, straight roads, big hotels, department stores, markets, and so on. BANERJEE: Was it polluted at that time? BHATTACHARYA: Well, pollution came along with industrialization. BANERJEE: So where did you stay in China? BHATTACHARYA: I stayed at Friendship Hotel. My friend Narayan Sen arranged for me to stay there. Actually, at the Friendship Hotel there were many apartments where the country experts were there, like India experts, Pakistan experts, and Nepal experts. The Foreign Language Publication House had so many experts, and Narayan Sen was an India expert. Every evening we used to meet together. At that time many Indians were killed due to adulterated mustard oil. So they asked us about that. It showed their keen interest in India. They said if this had happened in China, the responsible people would have been shot dead. In India, we had the penal code, which was inherited from the British, but in China they had their own system. BANERJEE: So could they speak openly against the authorities at that time? BHATTACHARYA: It just started, and I saw posters at various universities. And later we saw the Tiananmen Square incident. A few selffinancing American students who came to China with lots of books and magazines brought with them democratic ideas, and the bamboo curtain

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was to be lifted. These books, journals, and magazines were distributed among the students, and that was the beginning of the student movement that erupted into massive protest. BANERJEE: How were Nanjing and other cities at that time? BHATTACHARYA: Well, at that time it was nasty, with small lanes and by-lanes. But now my son tells me that there is tremendous development. Every month he visits China and finds improvement. BANERJEE: Sir, when you were working with the Indian government, was the India-China relationship in a good state? BHATTACHARYA: When I joined the government, the bilateral relationship was not very good; there was no exchange. It was very difficult to get a Chinese visa. But when they found out that I was a student of Fang Weixia and an active worker for the India-China Friendship Association, and that Mr. Bhakti Bhushan Mondal was my friend and I had come to Delhi along with him, then the Chinese granted me a visa. BANERJEE: Can you name any renowned Chinese person you met during your government tenure? BHATTACHARYA: I met Dr. Pang Qishuang, who was director of the Chinese Institute of Social Sciences. I met him at the institute. He, along with two of his scholars, visited Santiniketan. They were Buddhist scholars. Dr. Pang Qishuang, director of the institute, had with him one lady, who was head of the department of Islamic studies. I left my MA studies and joined Visva Bharati. A condition of joining Visva Bharati was that I must have an MA, so my department asked me to complete my MA and gave me some leave. So I completed my MA in Islamic studies from Calcutta University. When I visited the Institute of Social Science, Dr. Pang Qishuang took me to the department of Islamic studies. A lady was the head of that department and she said, “Bhattacharya, we are both students of Islamic studies, but we are not Muslims.” She gave me a Koran and other things to read.

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BANERJEE: What is the association you have with China or China studies? BHATTACHARYA: None now. Earlier, I was a member of the IndiaChina Friendship Association. BANERJEE: Is it still functioning? BHATTACHARYA: I have no idea. It is now for you people to take over. You can revive it. If you try to rejuvenate it, then there will be a response from the other side also. BANERJEE: Please tell us something about your students. Who were they, and what are they currently doing? BHATTACHARYA: Priyadarshi was my student in Uttarshikha. He has done well, and he is a good singer also. BANERJEE: What is your opinion of the present status of Chinese studies in India? And what are your views on the future of China studies? BHATTACHARYA: For Chinese studies in India, there are two sides. One is the research domain, which is vast and mostly unexplored. For historians, classical Chinese is a must for understanding ancient China and Buddhism. For modern experts, field visits are essential. The Chinese have started learning English at the primary stage of school education. We start learning the Chinese language only at the BA stage. For practical purposes, Indians should know Chinese in detail. BANERJEE: So, sir, should it be at the university level or at the school level in your view? BHATTACHARYA: The earlier, the better. Chinese language and pronunciations are difficult, so one should learn it at the earliest stage. BANERJEE: So, how do you see China’s future? Will it continue to develop at this pace, or will it slow down?

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BHATTACHARYA: They will continue to grow. But the common Chinese people are becoming more westernized, and they must maintain their identity. They should not forget their origin. There is lot of consumerism in China. Young people going to discotheques, spending lots of money, and so on—this will not help them in the long run. BANERJEE: So, sir, you left Visva Bharati in 1993. So what have you been doing since then? BHATTACHARYA: After leaving Visva Bharati, I was not teaching anywhere. A few students and people from different fields visited me for some guidance. For example, one engineer from BPL came for some translation work related to remote control, car locks, and some technical things. I was not involved in any kind of formal teaching. One day I got a call from General Sarkar, who introduced himself as a principal of Ramakrishna Institute of Culture. He said, “We conduct classes in Chinese language here. I have heard about you from many people, so can you come and visit our institute?” He asked me whether I was doing any teaching work. I told him previously I taught part-time classes, for instance at Calcutta University. Every Tuesday I went to Calcutta, and in the evening I taught in the department of foreign languages, and two more classes on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then I went back to Santiniketan. He said, “Since you have had experience at two universities, why don’t you join us here at Ramakrishna Mission? Many students are coming here, and we want to popularize it. In Santiniketan, students are getting scholarships, so we can also make some arrangements here for students.” At his request, I joined Ramakrishna Mission and also modified their syllabus. The first year, I conducted the preliminary course, and in the second year I taught the advanced course. I also got many students from all walks of life— senior citizens, college students—and lots of possibilities were there. I taught there for quite some time, at least for four to five years. Then I had to go to Bangalore for other purposes. BANERJEE: So when did you leave this institute?

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BHATTACHARYA: I left it in 2002. Since then, I have not been doing any academic or pedagogical work. BANERJEE: Besides teaching, were you also involved in some kind of interpretations? BHATTACHARYA: No, now I am doing a different kind of work. Now I am an honorary chairman of an NGO. It is the Social Awareness Program and Nursing Association (SAPNA). BANERJEE: So what kind of work are you involved in? BHATTACHARYA: We work to spread awareness about HIV-AIDS, and also for the education and health of poor children. Presently we are working in the Sundarban areas in West Bengal. So now I am engaged in this social work. BANERJEE: Thank you, sir. It was my pleasure talking to you.

Ravi Bhoothalingam Interviewer: Dr. Sharad K. Soni Ravi Bhoothalingam, founder and chairman of Manas Advisory, studied experimental psychology at Cambridge University, UK, and has held senior positions in industry both in India and overseas, currently serving on several company boards. After his assignment as president, Oberoi Hotels, he has traveled extensively on expeditions to and within China, Mongolia, and Central Asia. He is active in India-China business and cultural relations and has a working knowledge of Mandarin. Ravi is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London; a visiting fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi; and a visiting professor at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. SONI: I am very delighted to introduce Mr. Ravi Bhoothalingam, who has long been associated with China studies, mainly through his travel and exploration in China over the past several years. Sir, first of all, tell me something about your family background. BHOOTHALINGAM: My father was a member of the Indian Civil Service; he joined the service in 1931 in the then-Madras presidency cadre, which later on was split into several parts, and he became part of the Andhra Pradesh cadre. But to us, the period that is relevant is from just before the Second World War, when he was posted in Delhi where I was born in 1946. My mother is a well-known writer in both Tamil and English. She writes novels in Tamil and for children in English. Of course she doesn’t do it now; she is almost ninety-three years old. I have one elder sister, who lives in Chennai, and me, so it is a small nuclear family. My entire youth, up to the age of nineteen, was spent in Delhi. I went to school here at St. Columba’s High School, where I did Senior Cambridge, which was the system in those days, and thereafter, I joined

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St. Stephen’s College, where I read physics. In the intervening period between school and college, I studied French, and that gave me a very good appreciation of how to study and learn a foreign language. It also gave me some interest and opened the horizons that a foreign language can give one, and I count this as an important influence in my later study of Chinese. At St. Stephen’s College, I got a sound scientific education, which I feel is very important these days. It helped me later on in my career, which took many turns and twists. I have found this scientific background to be of very great value, no matter what I have done. I graduated from St. Stephen’s in 1965, and was admitted to Gonville & Caius College at Cambridge University, UK, where I intended to carry on my physics studies and actually applied for an MA in advanced physics. It’s a two-year program, if you have a graduate degree in India. So I went there in September 1965; the flight actually took off during the last few days of the Indo-Pakistan War. The war was still going on when we reached England and, in fact, the plane had to be diverted, because the traditional route, Delhi to Moscow to London, flown by Air India, was not possible because of the war. When I reached Cambridge, after a few days of discussions with various people and reviewing my own interest, I decided not to pursue physics, but switched my interest to experimental psychology. My own strong feeling was that a combination of a scientific approach, together with an interest in how human beings function, is what I would really be interested in and is what fascinated me. And so I decided to change the subject, which fortunately at universities like Cambridge you can do; they give you quite a lot of flexibility. Also, the advantage is and was that psychology is taught as a science at Cambridge. It relies heavily on a scientific, biological background, with neurology and chemistry and so on. So it is not taught as a kind of airy-fairy adjunct to arts, which in many places in India it tends to be. This also attracted me, and it also gave me some strength, because I knew that when my father found out what I had done, which unfortunately he would after several weeks, because that was the time it took for a letter to reach India and for another letter to come back, I felt he would be somewhat pacified by that, the fact that

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psychology is taught as a science. This is because his view of a subject like psychology was at that time that it was very close to witchcraft and magic and not a proper subject! Anyway, I switched with the encouragement of my tutor and various professors at my college. Interestingly enough, the master of my college at that time was Sir Nevill Mott, the Nobel Prizewinning physicist, who one would have thought would have discouraged me, but he actually encouraged me and said, “Do what you feel you should do, do not do what others tell you to do,” which is a very good piece of advice, I think, that I now give young people. So when I started this course, I had to catch up a lot on the biological side, because that was something I had only touched upon very briefly. Here again, I was very fortunate because one of the very senior members of the faculty in my college was Joseph Needham, who was a famous biochemist and embryologist, but even more famous than his embryology or biochemistry was the fact that, even at that time, he had become extremely well known as one of the leading China scholars of the world. By that time, he had produced six or seven volumes of his monumental work called Science and Civilisation in China. I started talking to him, and again by another coincidence, he succeeded Sir Nevill as the master of Gonville & Caius College. (Master is the terminology used at Cambridge to signify the principal of the college.) His early interest in me, actually, which I value greatly, also conferred some responsibilities. For example, early in 1966, when China was just entering the Cultural Revolution, Joseph Needham had arranged to have this scheme by which Chinese students, for the first time in the history of the so-called “Red China,” would come out of their country and study at Cambridge, and he could do this because his relations with China were extremely good, his relations with the earlier KMT (Kuomintang [Chinese Nationalist Party]) government had been good, and with the People’s Republic it was even better. So the net result was that for the academic year 1966–1967, four Chinese students (young men) came to spend a year at Caius College. Joseph Needham called me, because at that time there were only three students in the college who were from Asia. There was myself, a young man from Nepal, and one other from Singa-

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pore. So he called me, perhaps because I was his science student, and he said, “Ravi, these four young men are coming from China. I want you to look after them, show them the ropes, tell them what life is like here, and generally see that they are comfortable.” I reminded him that India and China fought a war just a few years ago. Joseph Needham waved his hands in the air and said dismissively, “Forget about that. You must learn to take the larger and the longer view; these things come and they go.” So I met these men and showed them around. I started talking to them, and I hope that I made them comfortable. Unfortunately, I never wrote down their names, because it is quite likely that at least one of them, if not more, may be very senior figures in Chinese society in one way or the other, but of course I can still get the details from the college. SONI: What year did they come? BHOOTHALINGAM: 1966–1967. So, again it became relevant to me, because this was my earliest exposure to real Chinese in a very close sense, because when you are students you discuss a lot and interact a lot. The present that they gave me, which I still have somewhere here, is the original Red Mao Book and a small Mao badge, which they presented to me. The next year, 1967–1968, which was my last year at Cambridge, as part of my study in psychology, I had to do a dissertation in one particular aspect, again under the influence of Joseph Needham. He used to call me every now and then for a discussion in the master’s lodge, where I saw firsthand what a marvelous collection of Chinese antiquities, curios, ceramics, paintings, landscapes, and documents he had. In fact, the master’s lodge is a small museum of China, and I was happy that even last year, when I revisited the college and went to the master’s lodge, I found that the current master had improved it. This master, Sir Christopher Hum, also by an amazing coincidence, formerly worked in China; he used to be the British Ambassador to China, retired in 2006, and since the beginning of 2007 has been appointed as the master there. So, as I was saying, with Needham’s encouragement and influence, I chose psycholinguistics as the subject of my dissertation, and within

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that a project involving Chinese and English. Now psycholinguistics is a subbranch of psychology, which focuses on the interaction between thought and language, and language and thought; how language is created and how the creation of language influences thought; and what the ways are in which these two influences work. That is the basis of that subbranch. The project that I took up involved the information content in English words and the corresponding Chinese characters. How much information does a word carry in English? How much information does it carry in the character form in Chinese? In words of different types and information, this is described in a scientific way. The idea was to see what the comparative advantages were in English or Chinese, as the case may be, in terms of conveying information and knowledge, and in which way and under what circumstances each was advantageous. So it was a very interesting project that I undertook under the direction of Dr. G. S. Brindley, who was a very well-known neurophysiologist at that time. Looking back to that time, this initial exposure that I had to China was a very unique experience and somewhat unusual, because the engagement of China with the world had started, but then again had receded with the Cultural Revolution. This had not happened in pockets such as Cambridge, where Joseph Needham, along with Joan Robinson and Martin Bernal, had founded the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which held various discussions and seminars on China, some of which I attended. I got stimulated by different aspects of China at that time. However, life took a different course, because after I graduated the hard realities were that I had to find a job, and however fascinating psycholinguistics and Chinese may have been, it did not lead to anything concrete in terms of a job. So I then went to the corporate sector, where I spent the next thirtytwo years of my life. I joined the Indian arm of British American Tobacco, known as Imperial Tobacco, now called ITC, and because I had studied psychology, I was placed in the human resource department, at that time called the personnel department. Of course, not knowing anything about industry, I was not really able to distinguish one department from another, so I was quite happy to start in this area. In the following years, I served at

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various places in ITC’s network in Calcutta, Mumbai, and Chennai, and rose through the ranks at a reasonable speed. I was then transferred to Delhi as part of ITC’s new venture, the Welcome Group of Hotels, where I was in charge of the human resource function, and later the projects division in charge of building new hotels. This was a very interesting experience for me, because I was not only in charge of the human resource function for many years, but later on I was given a division that actually did some physical work—construction, project management, and development. So I had to put my human resource knowledge into action to produce actual results. Looking back on it here, again my earlier knowledge of physics and science came in useful. So when the engineers talked to me about stress and strains and concrete mixtures, at least I knew enough to ask some questions. I may not have known the answers, but I grew interested and to respect the technical side of the business as well. This experience helped me later on, when I became the managing director of Vazir Sultan in Hyderabad for about six years, and thereafter too, when I went to London as worldwide head of human resources, British American Tobacco, for a period of three years. During this time in London, being at the world headquarters of a multinational corporation gave me the opportunity to look at many cultures in operation and the way they dealt with issues of manufacturing, trade, and industry, and how a multinational corporation manages the resources that are scattered amongst many countries with a wide variety of cultures, geographies, economic standings, and political situations. I did a fair amount of traveling, including a lot of travel in Asia, to Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, but not to China itself. It gave me insight, again, from a different angle about the different peoples in Asia, the intermixtures of various Chinese subpopulations that had populated different parts of Asia, how they meshed with the local populations, what the advantages were, and what the tensions were, which also became a very valuable learning experience for me. At that time, I am talking here of the mid-’90s, my initial interest in China, which had been dormant all these years while I was working in India, came surging back. But these new exposures and new angles of insight,

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which I gained on this worldwide platform, provided an opportunity for me to reconnect and, being in London, I started reconnecting by attending lectures, reading books, and going back to some of my earlier contacts at the University of Cambridge. One of the offshoots of this interest was that I was able to influence my daughter to study Chinese, and she in fact studied Mandarin as her second language when she was at university in the USA. Some years later, she dropped it and went on to media studies and to a career in television. When I pressed her on it, she said, “Appa, why are you pushing me? If you are so interested in Chinese, why don’t you do something about it?” This actually triggered a train of thought in me, which was to last from that time, about 1995 or ’96, to the present day and hopefully into the future. In 1995 I came back to India and became president of the Oberoi group of hotels; my earlier acquaintance with hotels was a major factor in this move, plus it gave me the opportunity to join a company that was then modernizing and expanding overseas very rapidly. Oberoi was also exploring avenues in China. I started traveling to China and, in fact, was a member of the first delegation taken by CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) to China in September 1996. Thereafter, I became a very regular visitor to China, although that particular project, which Oberoi was hoping for, never materialized. But a combination of tourismrelated conferences and tourism, travel, and hoteliers are all part of one general industrial framework, plus my personal interest in travel took me again and again to China, where I rekindled this interest. At that time, motivated by my daughter’s remark, I started learning Chinese on a selftaught basis, with books, tapes, and later on through software programs. But I soon realized that this was not very useful. I would get to a certain stage, but then when I was not using the language it tended to slip back. So much later, in 2005 in fact, I enrolled for a two-month intensive program in Mandarin at a language school in Beijing. The school is affiliated with the Beijing Language and Culture Academy. This was a very intensive and extremely interesting time for me. First, I was part of a class of one hundred students, but the one hundred were subdivided according to their knowledge of Chinese, starting as very small groups of not more than five

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or six each. The composition of this particular group changed depending on what particular course you were doing, where it was subdivided into a number of subjects. This gave me an opportunity to interact with this whole range of students, who came from many different countries. But out of these one hundred, sad to say, I was the only person from India. It makes me sad that there was and is so little interest in investing in learning this language. It was also very interesting, because I was one of the few socalled mature students; most of the others were youngsters below the age of twenty-five. There were three or four of us who were very much more advanced in age. But this was also a good opportunity, because we soon established an excellent rapport. We could give advice to the youngsters in areas in which they did not really know much, and they also did a lot for us. So it was a very healthy and interesting group. I was very impressed with the technology of teaching the language. The group was divided into very small subgroups; there were separate classes where you could listen to the language, with the aim of understanding and distinguishing the tones, and in order to get the pronunciation right. There were spoken classes, there were classes on characters, and there were general conversation classes. It was six hours a day plus two hours of preparation, so a total of eight hours in the day. In addition, there were elective subjects, and I took two of them: one was Taiqiquan and the other was calligraphy. These were not held every day, but twice a week. They were also very fascinating as insights into the Chinese way of thinking. I have moved forward a little into 2005 in describing this program, but during the period since 1996, when my engagement with China started, as I said, I visited China very often, traveling extensively through China, particularly its remote regions. I traveled three times in the Tibetan region; I am not talking of political or geographical Tibet, but Tibet as a cultural region, including parts of Yunnan and Sichuan. I traveled across the Tibetan Plateau to Lake Mansarovar and Mount Kailash. I traveled, as I said, to the Northern Yunnan region, which was the erstwhile Eastern Tibet, and to the Tibetan cultural areas of Zhongdian, now called Shangri la. I traveled along the valleys of the three rivers, where the Mekong,

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the Salween, and the Yangtze run in parallel, absolute parallel, for about 150 kms. It is a very dramatic region of mountains, valleys, and sharp ravines, where the Yangtze comes down from the Tibetan highlands into China, and then takes a sharp turn. The Yangtze is traveling southwards; at that point, it takes a turn of almost 350 degrees to go back north and then proceeds eastwards up to the sea. At this point, the Yangtze is called Jinshajiang, the river of golden sand. There is a very interesting story about how this happened, which is very close to Indian mythology. The story is that the Emperor Yü, one of the mythical emperors of ancient Chinese past, who was a great hydrological engineer, saw that the Yangtze was coming straight down south from the Tibetan highlands, and he was extremely worried that it would continue south and go out of China, thus depriving China of all this water. So, he picked up a huge mountain, somewhat like Hanuman, and put it in the way, and the river turned at that point and went back north as I have described. I went to a place called Shigu where that happens, the great bend of Yangtze, as it is called. There is a hill there from which you can actually see the bend, the dramatic bend of the Yangtze happening. So I have traveled a lot in areas of Inner Mongolia, Guizhou province, Guilin, the coastal region in Shandong, Mt. Taishan, Emeishan, Leshan, and all these places. This travel actually opened my eyes to life in different parts of China, not just the cities but the interiors, and I started asking myself a number of questions. Is there a way in which Chinese people think, and is that way of thinking different from the way Indians think? And if the answer to that is yes, then how is it that this difference comes about? I have now been drawing on my earlier understanding and study of psycholinguistics, rekindled after all these years, and have been investigating, writing, and studying in my own way the impact of language on thought and thought on language, as to how it impacts the thinking of the Chinese people. What impact does an idiographic language, a character-based language, with its particular strengths and its particular approach, have in the formation of thoughts, and in what manner do these thoughts get formed? What are the visual and sound implications of this

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thinking? What does a visual language actually convey as opposed to an alphabet-based language? I started developing these thoughts and ideas and continue to do that, triggered by these questions that I raised for myself. And the questions then went on to address things like, if there is this difference in the method of thinking between the Indians and the Chinese, what then are the implications, how do they impact development, how do they impact education, how do they impact the organization of society, how do they impact planning and long-term thinking, how do they impact the process of manufacturing, and so on. There are a number of implications that I then started investigating, some of which I have written in papers or delivered in various lectures since then. Continuing with the theme of my career development, in 2001 my contract with the Oberoi Group came to an end. I then started my own consultancy practice, which has naturally divided itself into three parts. One part, which draws on my experience in psychology and human resource development, caters to my work in terms of executive coaching, leadership coaching, and development of human resources. The second part, dealing with my global experience of industry and running various businesses, deals with business growth and interaction; I actually practice this by being on the boards of various companies and interacting with various people on these boards, hopefully being of some value to them, while also learning from different industries, such as pharmaceuticals, automobiles, IT, and so on, where I am connected as to how these things are developing all over the world. Interestingly, all these companies that I am connected with also have operations in China, so that gives me another dimension to reach into China. And the third leg of my practice is India-China connectivity, which again I am doing on three pillars. One is through industry—principally through CII, where I am affiliated—in interconnecting Indian and Chinese businesses, particularly Indian and Chinese CEOs, in networks and conferences to see how the two countries can develop long-term business strategies, not short-term deals or shortterm business negotiations. That of course will happen, but going beyond that, looking beyond, how can we identify our comparative strengths, put

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them together so that there is long-term industrial prosperity between the two countries. This is one major area. The second major area is through the Bangladesh-India-China-Myanmar regional development forum, also known as the Kunming Initiative, which is a Track II engagement of these four countries, aimed at developing a sub-region of the world, which you can say is southwest China, northeast India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. These are all underdeveloped countries, or underdeveloped regions of larger countries, which have many commonalities. They have many geographic, climatic, and topographical commonalities; they have many ethnic commonalities, because the ethnic population in that region has very similar origins. They have commonality in the fact that they are all border regions, they are all sensitive regions, they have many social and other issues, and they are economically backward. But they are also very rich in terms of flora and fauna and natural endowments, and very rich by way of minerals and water resources, so they have got all these strengths. This is the second area where I am involved, and in this area I sort of function as the lead person in the area of tourism and travel, because one of the initiatives of this Track II venture is looking at what initiatives can be taken to develop this region. The three initiatives, travel and tourism being one, the second being transportation, and the third trade, provide me the second opportunity of linking with China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. The third is my continuing interest in travel within China and in looking at China with my own perceptions and discovering more of it and encouraging Chinese people to do likewise with India. So this is the way I am proceeding with my engagement with China and each of these methods. I believe this gives me an opportunity to get a new viewpoint. Somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle, I am trying to put pieces together, to form a project around how the Indian mind and the Chinese mind function, and in what way they can interact together, how they can fit together for their mutual benefit and, I believe, for the benefit of the world at large. Because if there is a way in which two and one-half billion people can connect, as indeed they did in civilizational history before, then I believe nothing but good can come of that in the future.

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SONI: You were talking about the “Journey to the East.” Could you please elaborate on this? BHOOTHALINGAM: “Journey to the East,” is a piece that I wrote, a kind of take-off on the famous book Journey to the West, which talks about Xuan Zang’s trip to India. I have been saying for some time that tourism is a very important factor in the development of economic growth, because tourism actually gives rise to a very high degree of employment; it is an employment-intensive business, unlike petrochemicals or steel, where today, with modern technology, the employment per unit of investment is very low. For example, you can have huge petrochemical plants with only thirty or forty people employed. But with tourism, which is a people business, you actually need people; whether it is a hotel, a travel agency, a tour operator, a museum, or conducted tours or treks, you need people to help other people in the act of tourism, and it has been calculated that the multiplier for employment in tourism is even higher than in agriculture. If agriculture employs forty people per one million rupees of investment, a statistic that is commonly used, tourism is forty-eight, industry is only twelve; this is the way the ratio works. I have been saying that tourism is a generator of employment, which is extremely powerful but underrated. It generates employment at low investment; it also generates employment that is not of a very sophisticated order. You do not need PhDs. You do not need IIT graduates. You do not need information technology qualified people. You need people who can work as waiters, as tea-boys, as guides, and so on. So you need people of moderate educational levels. Yes, you need people whose attitudes are right; they should be service oriented and willing to work, because nobody wants to be served by a grumpy, sullen person. But you do not need very high educational endowment. So this can act as an employment generator for moderately educated people, and therefore can bring employment to segments of the population who otherwise miss out on higher level opportunities, like manufacturing and IT, which require a certain degree of technical know-how. It is with that in mind that I wrote “The Journey to the East,” because as I said, that the population of India is one billion people, while China has a population

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of 1.3 billion. According to the World Tourism Organization, neighboring countries provide the most tourists to each other, whether it is Europe and Britain, or the countries of Europe, or Australia and New Zealand, or America and Canada, or Russia and Eastern Europe, or China and Japan, or Southeast Asia and China; all these examples are of mutual tourism, which is the most common. The subcontinent of India is a sharp exception. We hardly have any tourism from our neighboring countries. How many tourists do we have from Pakistan or from other places? It is because of our geopolitical situation. The World Tourism Organization has estimated that by 2020, China will have one hundred million tourists going abroad, out of China, and one hundred million tourists going into China—that excludes ethnic Chinese going to or coming from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and so on. Their estimate for India is that fifty million Indians will travel overseas by that time, in 2020. Today the number of Indians traveling overseas is about seven million, and the number of Chinese traveling overseas is about twenty-five million. Now, how many of these Chinese are we getting here, and how many of the Indians are going to China? Of this huge number, you would be surprised to hear that the number of Chinese coming to India is only about 60,000 per year, and the number of Indian tourists going to China is of course much more; it is about 450,000. By Indians here, I include Indian passport holders, so they may come from elsewhere also. These are mere drops in the ocean. Let us assume that, even if one million tourists were to travel each way, and if you were to spend a modest sum of, let’s say, $800 over a two-week holiday, you are spending about $60 or $70 a day, which is the bare minimum; that is a billion dollars being spent each way in each of these countries. So, the potential is huge even if a million tourists travel each way; this is nothing when you are looking at these kinds of numbers. But what is stopping it are two things. One is the hardware—namely the infrastructure, flights, hotel rooms, and so on. That hardware constraint is really a constraint in India, not in China; China could easily accommodate more Indian tourists. But India today is not in a position to accommodate people, because we do not have the infrastructure. But hardware is only one part of it. As I

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see it, what is holding up travel and tourism, and therefore generations of employment and everything else that I said, is the mental awareness in each of these countries; very few Indians are aware of China and very few Chinese are aware of India. Indians, those who do have an awareness of China, have a very vague awareness, somehow linked almost entirely to 1962 and its aftermath. In China, the awareness is slightly more, and I think the awareness is slightly more positive than in India, from the public point of view. But again, India is not on the top of their minds. So two of the largest developing superpowers or potential superpowers of the world, next to each other, have hardly any awareness of each other, hardly any public consciousness of each other, hardly any idea or any dream of what can be done to engage with each other. I have taken tourism as one example of what could happen if these potentials were to be unleashed, what could happen to ordinary people in terms of employment and opportunities, and this example can be multiplied through other industries. If neighboring countries cannot find out what strengths each has to offer the other and collaborate in this way, then how can we expect countries even further apart, with more complexities, to do this? How can we think of the world as truly global in that context? Big countries, developing countries, countries with a civilization and history as ancient as ours need to lead the way and provide an example of what can be done. So this is the goal I am really working on, to try and see how we can build awareness, build knowledge of the opportunities and potential that is possible, enable largescale connection between the two people, to the benefit and prosperity of the people of both countries. SONI: How often do you visit China? BHOOTHALINGAM: Two to three times a year, I would say. SONI: Please tell me something about your relations with the Chinese scholars, academics, or professors. BHOOTHALINGAM: I met a number of people at the various institutions in China, for example, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,

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the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and the Asia Pacific Institute, in both Beijing and Shanghai. There are a number of scholars who are connected with India in the Yunnan province, which is the lead province for the BCIM initiative (Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar). There are people in Sichuan. Sichuan University has a very active South-Asia Association. There is the Chinese counterpart of CII, which is the CCPIT, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, which has a very active, business-oriented engagement with India. There are individuals, such as the previous Chinese ambassador to India, Ambassador Zhou Gang, and others, who are connected with India-China relations, playing an active role, all of whom I am in touch with. So there are a number of people in the academic world, in the business world, and in the diplomatic world who connect me with China. I meet one or another of them in each of these arenas. SONI: Do you remember any events or experiences that affected Chinese studies in India or Indian studies in China? BHOOTHALINGAM: I think that Indian studies in China is somewhat more advanced than Chinese studies in India. Chinese studies in India is extremely limited and, to my mind, just nowhere near what is required. A country of 1.1 billion people and a country of 1.3 billion people, both rising superpowers, should have much more awareness of each other, and that awareness can only come through proper study, which means developing centers of excellence in China studies for India, and India studies for China. Awareness can develop through more travel and connectivity, where more tourists and visitors will travel in each direction. And we need to organize programs for people-to-people connectivity, whether youth groups, student groups, exchange programs, sporting connections, cultural connections, joint ventures—there are so many ways in which people can connect. But unless you have all of these functions—academics, research, business, and people-to-people connections—you really cannot have proper engagement between the two countries. The start has to be made by hugely strengthening China studies in India. I feel the best

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way to do this is not only to depend on government, but also to have public-private partnerships, get corporations involved, get interested individuals involved, get the government involved, and form a partnership where there can be independent work in China studies of a good strong professional and academic quality, but well-endowed and resourced. Right now we have excellent people, we probably have some outstanding people in this area, and I have personally benefited from them. But they are all working with very limited funds, and what they have achieved is really amazing considering the meager support and encouragement that China studies has gotten in India. I think the time has come to escalate it by a factor of at least one hundred. SONI: Please tell me a little bit about your association with the organizations that are working on China in different areas. BHOOTHALINGAM: As far as my associations are concerned, on the corporate side I am a director of three companies: Dr. Reddy’s Laboratory; Sona Koyo Steering Systems Limited, which is an automobile ancillary manufacturer; and Nicco Ventures, which is an IT services company. On the business association side, I worked closely with the Confederation of Indian Industry. Academically, I am visiting professor at the Administrative Staff College in Hyderabad, visiting fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London, and an international moderator for the Aspen Institute, Colorado, which does global leadership training. These are my formal engagements. SONI: What about your children? BHOOTHALINGAM: I have two children. My son is a lawyer; he graduated from St. Xavier’s in Bombay, Cambridge University in the UK, and Georgetown University in the USA. He works as a general counsel for a hedge fund in London. His wife is also a lawyer, and they both live in England. My daughter, who I have mentioned earlier, studied Mandarin as a second language, actually spent about six months as an exchange student in Beijing, worked on a project in Beijing with Reuters, subse-

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quently went into media, and is now with NDTV. She is a television journalist and producer with NDTV. She is married also, and her husband is an international translator and interpreter who works with organizations all around the world, basically in European languages, and they live in Delhi. So that is my family. SONI: What is your area of focus in Chinese studies, such as writings like a travelogue? BHOOTHALINGAM: My areas of focus, as far as writing is concerned, fall into several categories. First, I would say travelogues, which cover unusual journeys in China, and they have incorporated my travel to Tibet, including travel across Lake Mansarovar and Mt. Kailash, travel along the Silk Route to Kashgar and areas of Xinjiang, journeys in mountainous Yunnan, around what I have called Shangri la (the region around Zhongdian), and now I intend to write about my journeys in Inner Mongolia, culminating in Yuanshangdu, which is the present name for the historic Xanadu. So, that is on the travelogue side. On the tourism side, I have done various presentations for BCIM, starting with their meeting in Yangon in 2003 on the role of tourism in development of the economies of the four countries, with particular reference to India’s Northeast. These papers are available in BCIM-accumulated documents from 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. They cover policy papers. They cover concrete action plans and concrete sectors. I have also published papers on sustainable tourism for the development of the Northeast in a magazine called Sustainability Today, which is focused on climate change and environment. I have published papers for the Administrative Staff College, where in a seminar on the Northeast, again there was a paper called “Creating Prosperity for the Northeast through Tourism.” Then I wrote a paper for a conference in Guwahati, at CENISEAS (Center for Northeast India, South and Southeast Asia Studies), headed by Sanjib Baruah, again a paper on tourism in the Northeast. This is on the tourism sector, different facets of it, how tourism can generate growth, employment, and development in these difficult bordering regions, and what one can learn from different examples of

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what other countries have done. Then I have written about the psychology and language issue, again in the Indian Express, and in a paper delivered at the Administrative Staff College, titled “Unraveling the Mind of China,” which was about language and thought, and a similar illustrated lecture delivered at the India International Center, variants of the same theses, same theme, presented as an illustrated lecture. Then I wrote an article on Tibet for the Economic and Political Weekly, titled “Harmonious Resolution of the Tibetan Question,” where I basically look at the middle path solution advocated by the Dalai Lama, analyze it, and see to what extent it needs to be modified and in what direction, what things need to be done, and what the obstacles are. What I am proposing is a harmonious resolution. Shortly after this paper came out, a few months later, there were the Tibetan disturbances of March 2008. At that time, I again delivered a paper, a kind of update, and we discussed both the update and the original paper at the Institute of Conflict Resolution. Subsequently, I have written a couple of pieces in Tehelka in follow-up for those who actually look at the Tibetan issue, what India’s role can and should be in bringing about a resolution. So it’s kind of a sweet-and-sour, spice-and-sugar type of a mixed bag I would say. SONI: Could you please discuss more about your written piece, “Unraveling the Mind of China”? BHOOTHALINGAM: It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to share some thoughts on this subject. At the outset, let me say that I have no claim to being a scholar, let alone a philosopher. My acquaintance with this subject, such as it is, arises from an amateur’s avid interest and through travel and exploration in China over the last ten years. It has been fueled by my belief that the relationship between India and China in the twentyfirst century will be a determining factor for world peace and the orderly progress of mankind. After all, the two countries have had a long engagement in cultural interflow since Buddhist scholars from India first reached China in 217 BC. And, excluding the events of 1962, India and China have maintained between themselves over two millennia of peaceful relations

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with no period or event of armed conflict. Such a record amongst neighboring countries is unprecedented in world history. Worldwide attention has been focused in recent months on the emergence of India and China as the potential leaders of the twenty-first century. Newspapers and eminent journals, like the Economist of London, the Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, and Business Week, have commented on this phenomenon and speculated on a scenario where these two countries rise to superpower status by the first quarter of the century. The National Intelligence Committee of the United States has further examined the implications in terms of the military and economic ascendancy and consequent geopolitical influence of these two Asian powers. Yet there remains an irony. Today, despite growing trade ties between India and China—mutual trade now is over US $15 billion—the two countries are yet to engage with each other in a meaningful way, either on the economic front, or indeed any other. Investment flows are weak, tourism a mere blip. Even the much-hyped growth in two-way trade is heavily dependent on primary products out of India—iron ore, iron, and steel. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is rushing to exploit the strengths of China as the “world’s factory” and of India through its prowess as the “world’s back office.” Despite the formidable reputation of Indian as well as Chinese businessmen for seeking out profit anywhere in the world with great entrepreneurial success, they seem wary of treading into each other’s country. Of course, our government has not helped, with its residually suspicious attitude to Chinese investments in India. The other side is more receptive. Still, the real cause for this perception is the lack of awareness and the yawning knowledge gap on each side. While looking in every other direction, India and China remain largely terra incognita to each other. With the world seeking such opportunities ahead to resurrect, as it were, the Silk Road to prosperity, one would have expected the study of China in all its aspects to be a burgeoning field in India. Regretfully, this is not the case. Institutions engaged in these activities are few and under-resourced.

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More Indian students learn Italian than Chinese. The situation regarding Indian studies is better in China, but only just. This lack of mutual awareness is no longer just an academic weakness. It can be a serious impediment to our growth as an economic and regional power. But where does one start? I wondered often during my travels whether there exist identifiable ways of thinking that are distinct to the Indian and Chinese psyches and, if so, what the implications might reveal. Could they throw light on some questions like: What explains the Chinese prowess in infrastructure and manufacturing? How does China grow so fast? Will China ever become a democracy? In a search for answers, I now follow the contours of a simple model, which goes as follows: Language influences thought Thought produces behavior Collective behavior creates a culture Culture influences development Let me consider Confucianism as just one illustration of culture. Confucianism is in a revival mode in China in quite a major way; indeed, the country’s cultural and language institutes overseas are known as “Confucius Institutes.” As a lead-in, I will take an area that might at first sight seem unrelated to Confucianism—the expansion and modernization of infrastructure in China. In the incessant comparison between India and China, the sheer visual evidence of China’s public infrastructure—roads, airports, and bridges—stand out. Yet, giant infrastructure projects are nothing new for China. The Great Wall, the Grand Canal linking the Yellow River and the Yangtze, and the gargantuan 2000-year-old irrigation works of Du Jiang Yan, among many others, are all part of ancient Chinese history. These were not monuments built to glorify any individual ruler, but public investments for the larger common good. What motivated the then-emperors to labor over these works for decades, each building on the efforts of his predecessor? Did the people willingly partic-

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ipate in these endeavors, or were these projects the fruits of slave labor exacted under imperial coercion? Perhaps the Confucian ethic has a role to play. Confucius lived in the sixth century BC, an era that, not unlike ours, saw states contend for supremacy. Although Mao Tse-tung tried his best to denounce Confucius and eradicate his teachings, even he had to admire the Confucian ethic for its emphasis on public education and social order. In India, our experience of diversity in daily life, whether of caste, creed, language, or custom, has generated a flair for flexibility and cultural adaptation that is widely recognized, not least in the adaptability of Indians in new environments. The Indian mind also seems capable of operating at several levels, simultaneously holding views that may be in direct opposition to each other. The Chinese are constantly amazed at our fluency with languages, our ability to churn out results, for instance in software, amidst apparent chaos, and the flexibility of our mindsets in coping at the same time with issues both mundane and serious. Yet with all this, as Naipaul said, we are ever at the point of fracturing into “a million mutinies.” To summarize the arguments thus far, the Chinese way of thinking emphasizes the pragmatic and concrete with great visual imagery, and has a strong sense of civilizational history, geography, and unity. Also its ethical legacy values orderliness and harmony, sometimes to excess, where the individual and the state have mutual obligations. In India, a vibrant, loosely held imaginative and creative collection of people has strengths of complex and abstract thinking, along with flexibility in dealing with multiplicity, diversity, and uncertainty. These two sets of attributes seem incompatible. Yet, like yin and yang, the combination of these two baskets of skills is exactly what is required in the conduct of business in today’s world. Imagination without order would be chaos; structure without vibrancy would be sterile. A relationship that utilizes the strengths of both nations could create a partnership for mutual prosperity and growth, and also peace and goodwill. What could the contours of a worldwide Pax Sino-India engagement be? When then-Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji visited India seven years ago, he proposed cooperation in information technology, with India

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being the lead partner in software and China in hardware. Since then, China has continued to look at India’s software industry with admiration and not a little envy. But we can also look further afield. What about an alliance between India’s management, consulting, and language talents, with the Chinese organizational ability to execute gigantic infrastructure projects? Would Chinese student and youth tours to India be more popular if combined with a summer program in the English language or IT? The list can go on. Greater interaction could lead each country to more benefits, equally important, but which lie in more sensitive terrain. India would do well to observe the degree to which Chinese women are equals at work, and are not subjected to the evils of “eve-teasing.” Similarly, the dignity of labor, even in the lowliest of jobs, and Chinese social mobility are worthy of emulation. On India’s part, the greatest gift to our northern neighbor would be our experience and insights on how a poor country can embrace democracy. But here too, India could learn something from China’s examples of village-level elections and empowerment, which have resulted in their rural schools and clinics doing, by and large, what they are supposed to do, in sharp distinction to ours. Will China ever become a democracy? Let me stick my neck out and say, “Yes.” But it is likely to have peculiarly Chinese characteristics. Just as India has innovated new instruments of democracy to suit her needs (e.g. the vast array of regional and sectional political parties), China could end up possibly with a “Confucian democracy,” where a meritocratic and technocratic regime is tempered by the rule of law and a free press, but perhaps with a more restricted form of electoral representation than we enjoy. Surprisingly, this could be closer to the Platonic ideal of the “philosopher-king,” not to speak of our own Ramarajya (the Reign of Righteousness). What does all this mean for India? Rather than emulate China’s economics (let alone politics), we could do what she unwittingly did, and that is look for hints in our own traditions that support modernization and yet uniquely express our genius. Mahatma Gandhi did this until 1948. Perhaps when we rediscover him, as China did Confucius, we shall truly earn our place in the sun. India and China have the opportunity

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to build a new relationship based on each other’s strengths, and be exemplars to the world in the twenty-first century. This is a goal that would be endorsed heartily by the spirits of those millions of civilizational brethren who traversed the Silk Routes over the last three millennia. The Chinese classic, Dao De Jing, says: “Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” Let us start those actions now. SONI: How do you see the future of Chinese studies in India? BHOOTHALINGAM: I feel that they are at a completely different scale than what they should be, and if we really mean business, we must invest much more in this area. When I say China studies, I am looking at the whole of East Asia; I am looking at China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, IndoChinese peninsular, and Myanmar. If Asia is really coming up and Asian peoples and economies are developing, obviously, the corollary is one needs to know them, study them much more than is being done at present. I also must say that I think in India, academia, business, and government still work in different compartments. I see much closer collaboration certainly in the West, much closer collaboration certainly in China. I think in India we still have not broken these barriers sufficiently. I find myself, therefore, sometimes in a very strange position because I come from a background of having spent a lot of my time in industry. I am not an academician, but because of my interest in these areas and what I have attempted to do, I just do not want to leave things at business transactions. So I have got a foot here and a foot there, which should be, in my view, a better way, because whenever one appreciates a country or a culture or a civilization, it is a multidimensional approach. I feel that this is an area India has not tackled properly. And it is not just China studies. In many other centers, harmonization of industry, government, and academia is not proceeding as smoothly as it should, and it is not adding energy as it should, which it is in the Western societies and in China. And I think we need to find mechanisms of doing this, without losing quality, without losing independence of thought. There seems to be an apprehension. But

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I think that if it is structured properly and managed properly, why should it not happen? SONI: What are your views on China’s future? The current scenario and disturbances in its own region, like in Tibet, even in Inner Mongolia, in Xinjiang also, and since you have already visited all these areas, even the remotest areas, so you know all these areas. What exactly do you find, and how do you see the future of China? BHOOTHALINGAM: This is where I feel that India-China true engagement, learning from each other, contributing to each other, can build a very mutually positive relationship and outcome in many areas, not just economic, one example of the issues you mentioned, but in many areas. Yes, China has these issues in its backyard. As I mentioned, China’s strength is that in a very large part of its territory, the national identity is very strong, stronger than the regional identities. But in some areas and in some aspects, there are these sub-nationalist feelings. I think that what China can probably learn from us (but not exactly adopting what we do), is how to manage that diversity. I think we are able to manage diversity in India in a more flexible and accommodating way, though sometimes it might seem a bit chaotic and a bit diffused, but we are, nonetheless, able to manage diversity better. The Chinese, as I see it, have so far been more brittle. They convey the impression of not wanting to experiment too much. As they grow, as they develop, and as they become more prosperous, I think their ability to take risk will increase. But this is something where there can be a fruitful learning for China from India. Similarly, there are many things that India can learn. I think in India we make an excuse of the fact that we are a democracy, to say that we cannot get things done. The common refrain, at least in business circles, is, “Well, China can do it because they do not care about what happens.” But actually, I think it is not quite so simple. I think we can learn from China how they manage big projects and do infrastructure far better. The answer is not so simpleminded that they do not have a democratic tradition and therefore they can ride roughshod; I do not think that it is as simple as that. So I think that

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there are areas in which we can learn from each other. If we do that, then the issues that confront us, which are challenges in both countries—for example, in China the challenge of managing diversity, managing the gaps between the rich and the poor, between one region and another—I think our ability to handle those challenges will improve. They can learn this art of flexibility. I think India can rapidly increase its rate of growth and its productivity, learning how to do things in a more productive and efficient manner, while still remaining within its democratic traditions, not making democracy an excuse for poor implementation. So, I think both countries can cut their risks through a process of imaginative cooperation, or they can increase their risks if they do not avail themselves of this opportunity. How our country does this will determine how the future pans out, because each country has a set of opportunities, each country has a set of risks. China has done very well economically, but it is not equipped to tackle social and political areas, which, as it becomes more prosperous, will rise in importance. It has to learn those skills. India has to basically accelerate its economic growth before the disadvantaged and ignored populace react in anger and frustration, as they have already begun. So India cannot just say that we will carry on in our old way because time may run out. These are the dimensions of cooperation as I see it, and if it happens, then I think the story will end well for both. If it does not happen, the risks for both countries become larger. So cooperation and collaboration for India and China are also, in many ways, crucial for them to work out their own problems. SONI: Anything more would you like to add? Are you planning to do any particular project on Chinese studies? BHOOTHALINGAM: I will carry on with the various projects that I have in mind. The language and thought project is ongoing, developing itself. The business connectivity and long-term collaboration are going on. BCIM is already there. SONI: I meant to ask if you are going to pursue any funding agency to fund your particular project.

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BHOOTHALINGAM: Each of these projects has got different funding sources. So, they are different pieces running on different modes as it were. I have not thought of another one; these are enough to keep me going. SONI: Thank you very much, sir. It was nice talking to you.

Govind Deshpande Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Govind Purushottam Deshpande, Marathi playwright, was born in 1938 in Nasik, Maharashtra. He received the Maharashtra State Award for his collective work in 1977 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for playwriting in 1996. Professor Deshpande is known for advocating strong, progressive values, not only through his academic writings, but also through his creative work. His plays especially reflect upon the decline of progressive values in contemporary life. He is impressively persuasive. Having specialized in Chinese studies, he currently heads the Center of East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The Library of Congress has acquired twelve of his books, including a few on Chinese foreign policy. Some of his works have been translated into English. SINGH: Sir, we normally begin by asking at what stage of your life you became familiar with China. DESHPANDE: There was a remote connection since my childhood. My father and my uncle were politicians and belonged to the socialist bloc. They, being socialists, were the disciples of Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan, and thereby were connected to the socialists’ countries of that time. And it’s because of that, there were always references to the Soviet Union and China in my house. When I was doing my MA in 1958, India-China relations had not deteriorated completely, but were heading toward a downfall. Later there was also an uprising in Tibet. These events attracted me to China. But to be fair, China was not the lone factor. I was fascinated by East Asian civilizations. I am a very civilization-oriented person and considered the entire Sinic civilization as one. So I was willing to be admitted to any division of East Asian studies. But the Indian School

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of International Studies (ISIS) had only included China and Japan. So I was placed in the China division. I finished my MA in 1960 and applied for East Asian studies at the Indian School of International Studies. In those days we used to have the state government fellowship, and so I also applied for the Maharashtra government fellowship and was subsequently awarded it. I was admitted to East Asian studies, and Professor V. P. Dutt persuaded me to join the China division. But overall my interest was on East Asia. SINGH: Your PhD topic was on the foreign policy of China in Africa? DESHPANDE: Yes, but I had no alternative, because if I worked on domestic politics within China, it was extremely difficult from 1960 on to visit China. In 1960 there was an interview for language scholarships in Beijing, and each year at least four students went. I applied for that scholarship and was selected, but for some reason my visa was denied. Then one morning I got a letter from the ministry asking me to contact the Chinese Embassy. Surprisingly, the embassy staff member received us with courtesy. But then he went inside and did not reappear for the next twenty minutes. Then he came back and said they were not aware of any such program. I told him that my government had asked me to contact him, but there was no point in arguing with him, since he was also following orders. So that was the end of my dream of going to China, where I would have definitely worked on domestic issues within China. In fact, a few months after that I received another letter from the ministry saying that for certain unavoidable reasons the program had been suspended indefinitely, but when it was revived in the future, I would be informed. Unfortunately, I waited for half a century but never received another letter. SINGH: So you focused on another major engagement, of China with Africa. DESHPANDE: Well, it was Africa, but I would like to call it a united front against imperialism, and the book that was published was titled China and Africa: United Front against Imperialism.

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SINGH: So it was not purely state-to-state relations? DESHPANDE: No, it was a study of various national movements and China’s stance and role in them. I won’t deny that it’s a book on foreign policy, but certainly it’s not only about foreign policy. Understandably, it was my first endeavor into writing, and I don’t think I will recommend it to readers. SINGH: But I suppose, out of the various books that have appeared over time on state-to-state relations, this remains an enduring work, as it discusses the cultural moorings, national movements, and sociology of relationships. DESHPANDE: Well, I would certainly like to see that happening. SINGH: Did you go to Africa on a field trip? DESHPANDE: No, it was very difficult in those days to manage a field trip. At ISIS my career was divided into two stages. In 1960, I began my pre-PhD course work, and then I received a scholarship to study Chinese in Hong Kong. So there was a break at that time with ISIS. I did that course and came back. I had no money and no job. I began working at China Report as an assistant editor. So there were two stages. I joined ISIS and did pre-PhD course work and went to Hong Kong for language study, and then I came back to start working on my PhD. SINGH: So during this difficult period was there a tendency to switch over [to something other than China studies]? DESHPANDE: No, I faced difficulty and decided not to give up. That was the time when my column in EPW (Economic and Political Weekly) started. Several articles were published in EPW issues, which led to the publication of a book. The book was a collection of columns from EPW on the Cultural Revolution. I was interested in those ideological fights, quarrels.

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SINGH: That was perhaps the first comprehensive book on the Cultural Revolution from an Indian point of view. DESHPANDE: It was titled China’s Cultural Revolution: A View from India. It was the idea of an editor at EPW to bring the columns together as a contemporary view of China from an Indian student. SINGH: So when did you transfer to JNU? DESHPANDE: In 1968 the post for lecturer was advertised. I applied for it and was appointed. That was virtually the beginning of setting up the department. Professor V. P. Dutt, who was founder of Chinese studies at SIS (School of International Studies), then moved to Delhi University and started a new department there. My own impression is that he would have liked to see this department growing in a different way. He left the university, but his wife Gargi Dutt continued. She was in fact my PhD guide. SINGH: So you had started teaching? DESHPANDE: Mrs. Dutt decided that I should teach two courses. Since it was very departmentally oriented, there was really no choice between what I wished to do and what I could do. But in any case, it did not do much damage. She asked me to teach modern Chinese history, from the Opium Wars to the Cultural Revolution. I would have preferred the political system of China after the revolution. I suggested we have a history of the Communist revolution, which would include modern China, but she was not very enthusiastic about the idea. SINGH: Once you came to JNU, other than teaching, I am aware you were involved in parallel activities with a China studies group, something that went on for many years. DESHPANDE: The China studies group started as an informal group. There was a tendency amongst my Delhi University [colleagues] to make it appear as [if it was] their group, which is not correct. The kind hospitality that K. Subramanyam offered us cannot be ignored. I attended several of their meetings seriously. I must say he [K. Subramanyam] was one of

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the best analysts of power [realism] at the school. If there was anything wrong with the government of India’s policy regarding China, he would comment on it in such a clinical fashion, as if a doctor was actually writing a prescription for a patient. SINGH: So when the war was beginning, were you in Hong Kong or in India? DESHPANDE: No, I was in India. SINGH: So what was the sense at that time? Were the experts who were studying China engaged by the government? DESHPANDE: As far I know, Professor V. P. Dutt was involved in some way. His personality always had strong political dimensions. SINGH: I have heard that Nehru was very perturbed by the fact that we had very few experts on China. DESHPANDE: True. In fact, I went through a phase that was partially inherited from my family history, but I was extremely suspicious of China. I found many Chinese positions less than reasonable on various issues, including the border dispute. They often talked of a give-and-take policy, but never clearly said what they wanted to take and what they wanted to give. SINGH: Domestically speaking, there were very few people talking about China; was there any coordinated effort to understand China? DESHPANDE: Well, the people we are talking about were very young at that time. We were students in fact, not even PhDs. The China study group was a later phenomenon. Professor Dutt had a political position on China, which was essentially nationalistic, or a more subtly moderate nationalist position. SINGH: How did the startup of the China Report go?

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DESHPANDE: Well, it has its peculiar history. When China Report began; it did not begin as an academic journal. When I joined as an assistant editor, it was not thought to be an academic journal. It started with providing information to Indian readers about what the Chinese were doing. SINGH: So did you find it comfortable? DESHPANDE: Well, the hints were clear that I had to find some alternative. I am not an apolitical scholar, for that matter. I would like to believe that my scholarship can be questioned, but not my politics. The journal at that time was financed by the Congress on Cultural Freedom. It’s my sense that the journal turned more China friendly as the Soviet influence started to grow within India, and some of my China Report colleagues were extremely anti-Soviet. SINGH: But, despite any encouragement or patronage, the group continued for a long time, finally establishing the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS). DESHPANDE: Part of the reason it did not break up was that we already had our primary priority, and the group remained an informal domain for discussion. It continued without losing any members. It was essential that the group of people talk to each other, even with their differences. But I don’t think there was any doubt in Manu’s [Professor Manorajnan Mohanty] mind about my politics; in fact, I told him we were the two strongest political fellows in the group. But, despite our political differences, we kept our friendship alive, and it helped in advancing the scholarship. SINGH: So what kept that group alive? DESHPANDE: Well, there was an inevitable exchange of information and writings. Then there were interpretative exercises, which were interesting. Through this forum we used to get immediate feedback on our writings

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without any malicious reactions, so there was a strong sense of community in which everybody was entitled to their own beliefs. SINGH: So at what stage was a decision made to form the Institute of Chinese Studies? DESHPANDE: It was much later, in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) had been running China Report for some time, and our friend C. S. R. Rao was editor. There used to be one Gandhian gentleman at CSDS in those days, who was also Jayaprakash Narayan’s secretary, Mr. Mahavir Prasad Sinha; so those two used to run China Report. And the journal became more academic in nature than it had been. Even to this date, it is not entirely academic, as it has its politico-ideological angle. But then we decided to form an institution. Girija Shankar was the link between this group and the CSDS. The CSDS had also agreed to provide some institutional support, which actually made the ICS possible. But they left the editing part of it completely to us. SINGH: Hong Kong was your first interface with the Chinese people. Given that you had a very cultural and civilizational orientation for studying China, how did it feel when you were in Hong Kong? DESHPANDE: The years I spent in China were from 1963 to 1966. In August 1963 I went there, and in January 1966 I returned. For a year and a half towards the end of my time in Hong Kong, I studied East Asia. I went for a month to Japan, Korea, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and so on. SINGH: So was there any sense of alienation, since it was immediately after the war? DESHPANDE: Well, my sense is that in Hong Kong there were groups who were looking at this as a problem between Communists in China and India, and not the Chinese and Indians. It is during those years I wrote letters to the editor of Far Eastern Economic Review, which was highly

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nationalist and extremely suspicious of the Chinese claims. They carried all these letters and editors’ replies to them. At that time, I became friends with a person who was a first secretary in charge of press relations at our [high] commission in Hong Kong. He was a journalist with The Hindu. Then he joined the publicity wing of the Ministry of External Affairs. He became my good friend and introduced me to many Chinese professors, journalists, and so on. He even threw a farewell party when I left Hong Kong. This is one of the coincidences of life. But it was great to be with Shiv Ramakrishnan; he has since passed away. I came back in 1966 to work at China Report. Then, in 1968, there was a vacancy for a lectureship, and then I began the second part of my suspended PhD. So I did my PhD in two phases. And when I came back, I spoke Chinese reasonably well and used to say that most of the students go to the West for their first field visit, but I went to the East. SINGH: So you started teaching at JNU and, as you know, at JNU there are research activities in addition to teaching. All the current Chinese language faculty members, as well as those in international relations, have been your students. DESHPANDE: Yes. Alka Acharya, Srikanth Kondapalli, Varaprasad [Shekhar] were all my students. Hemant [Adlakha] was also my student. Madhu Bhalla did her MPhil with me, and a number of others as well. But it was a sheer biological coincidence; I was born earlier than them. SINGH: There is always a sense that one has left behind a number of good students to take care of China studies. DESHPANDE: Fortunately, except for one or two curious cases, I always had a very warm relationship with my students. SINGH: I, being a supervisor to many PhD students, certainly understand that. Who was your first student? DESHPANDE: My first student was purely accidental. She was an elderly Assamese lady married to a Bengali anthropologist.

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SINGH: Why I asked this question is to find out how, after you were assigned or decided on your PhD theme and then became a supervisor, you also had to come to an agreement on the theme of your PhD students’ studies. Was there any difference you tried to make? DESHPANDE: As I said, my first student was purely accidental. She was a student of Central Asia working on Tibet-related issues, and she developed some differences with Professor Ram Rahul in Tibetan Studies. So the dean of the school asked me to supervise her, and it was difficult for me to say no, since Tibet is a part of China. So after that incident I started taking a deep interest in student interactions and what they were interested in working on. I told them that their choice would ultimately prevail, but my interest in that theme was equally important. So, through the usual discussions, I found out why each student was interested in his or her chosen subject. Though I had worked on foreign policy issues, I advised them not to study foreign policy issues. So, the PhDs completed under my supervision were on the anti-Confucian campaign, the use of historiography, or the comparison between the propaganda techniques of the Communist Party of China and CPI(M) Telangana. This was studied by Srikanth Kondapalli. Varaprasad worked on science and technology issues. Sabaree [Mitra] worked on politics and literature in China. There was one conference the Japanese secretariat organized, where Giri [Deshingkar] read the paper on China studies in India in which he said SIS had worked only on China’s external relations. I immediately contested his assumption. As a matter of fact, our center had produced more research on China’s domestic and internal issues. SINGH: Sir, I would like to slightly divert here; when did you first visit China in your career? DESHPANDE: I visited China very late, but then of course I went several times. But for the first visit I had to wait a long time, and in fact the provocation was essentially political for my visit to China, and that happened very curiously. I was very sympathetic to the leftists’ ideology and knew a few left leaders very closely. There was one CPM member of parliament,

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Mr. Jyotirmoy Bose, from the Diamond Harbor area, who used to argue and was very vocal. He once asked me if I had been to China. I told him that comrades like him did not permit me to go to China. He was familiar with my columns, but I had never met him before. We met at the house of another left leader. He said he would take [this issue] to the higher levels. I conveyed that he must; otherwise, what was the use of running a China studies department and not being able visit China. Sure enough, after a few months the Chinese Embassy contacted me asking me what the problem was. In the meantime, the North Korean Academy of Social Sciences decided to invite social scientists to Pyongyang. So I visited Pyongyang before China. I contacted the Chinese Embassy official asking him to manage a brief trip to China. So out of that delegation, Utsa Patnaik and I went to China, courtesy of the inter-party relationship. So we parted from our delegation at Pyongyang and took the train from Pyongyang to Beijing. SINGH: So your first visit to China was by train, and you must have landed at Beijing Central Station. What other places did you visit? DESHPANDE: Of course we went to Shanghai, Canton, and to communes that produced litchi, and we had a wonderful meeting with the party secretary there. We met several party people. Since Utsa [Patnaik] was an economist, we also met a number of planning commission members. It was 1983, and change was already beginning in China. The party member in the planning commission referred to the economics of Mahalanobis. I wrote about this in an issue of the Economic and Political Weekly. SINGH: So did you visit universities there? DESHPANDE: Yes, all three: Beijing, Shanghai, and Canton, and also Chengdu, where the South Asia Institute is located. SINGH: After you returned from China, did you notice any change in your understanding of China?

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DESHPANDE: Definitely. I always had a very contradictory attitude towards China. I found their economic performance superb. But a preliberalization China existed in many ways. And the party was able to negotiate better because of their discipline. So I had this attitude towards Chinese economic performance, which was welcoming if not recommendatory. The discipline has helped the state to remain together, and without a strong state you cannot negotiate with big powers. There can be debate about what can be negotiated, but not about how to negotiate, and I found that China is the only country in Asia with a strong sense of state. I attribute this strong sense of state to Confucianism. Had the same been the case in India, I would have referred it to Arthashastra, since Kautilya talks about a strong state. So the Asian civilizations are very strong, stateoriented civilizations. But in India, I get the feeling that the state is weakening vis-a-vis the USA or China. There should not be a contradiction between a strong state and an approachable state. SINGH: But many people describe China as a regime rather than a state. DESHPANDE: I don’t agree with that. I think China is a civilization state rather than a regime. It has its own autonomous state structures. Before you ask me further questions, one name must be remembered as far as Chinese studies in India is concerned, and that is Karunakar Gupta. He was a floating member of our group. Whenever he was in Delhi, he used to attend our meetings. Frankly speaking, his only interest was the border dispute. He was not a China expert per se, but at one point the border dispute dominated the bilateral relations to such an extent that it brought his interest to the fore. He was a vice-principal of a girls’ college in Calcutta and got a fellowship to the Indian House Library and did some work. But he was an iconoclast and published a few pieces in China Report. Those who worked on the border dispute knew him very well and held him in high regard. SINGH: The ICS now has very close relations with the government and the Ministry of External Affairs, and a good number of policy inputs are

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directly or indirectly ICS provided. Would you [tell us] at what stage that began and how it began? DESHPANDE: After the cooperative grants from CSDS, some money came from the Ford Foundation, but it was clear that if we had to give it [ICS] a lasting institutional form, then the grant-related problems had to be solved. So we approached the ministry and fortunately at that time there were two former DU students as secretaries. T. C. A. Rangachari and Vinod Khanna were there. They encouraged the idea, and that was the beginning of a relationship. SINGH: The ICS also made some visible contributions; for instance, the Kunming initiative and the trilateral [Russia, China, India] summit, etc. So, do you see an effort toward driving foreign policy there? DESHPANDE: No, that would be quite an overstatement. The first time that we decided to hold a trilateral, we decided to make it as broad as possible. We invited scholars from a large section of China studies. The agenda was clearly to articulate certain things that the government could not think of or would not like to carry out. In a sense, governments worldwide use think tanks as sounding boards for the initiatives they wish to take. So it could be a government-driven exercise through an institution, or an institution-driven exercise through the government, which would be a more appropriate description of our situation. To start with, it encouraged us to go ahead with the trilateral; however, it was not very optimistic about the trilateral, and over time this attitude seems to have changed. SINGH: Of the two initiatives we are discussing, the Kunming initiative and the trilateral, the latter has surpassed the other by far in terms of its evolution and visibility. The Kunming initiative, in my opinion, has failed to take off on that scale. DESHPANDE: You are right. It’s my personal opinion that the government of India did not wish to promote or discuss the issue of the northeastern states so openly and publicly. The trilateral was another matter, because you were dealing with the state as one actor. But in Kunming,

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there were many actors, which made it difficult. So I was personally not very supportive of the Kunming initiative, because I found it an unviable proposition. The government of India’s security concerns should not be discounted at any cost. SINGH: At the ICS, you had a major role, which was increasingly becoming policy-centric. At JNU you were one of those teachers who clearly focused on academic rigor, not really on state visits, but on what makes foreign policy: understanding a culture and the politics of the country. How did you balance those two, policy research and academic rigor? DESHPANDE: I believed that I should allow my beginning in China studies to be purely China-centric. Without proper knowledge of the culture, history, and civilization, then it purely becomes state-to-state analysis. But the driving factor was that state policies vary from state to state and at times are culture oriented. And the China and India problem should not be examined as state-to-state-centric. In addition, the other branch of studies that is quite prosperous in India is defense and strategic studies. We have the finest scholars on strategic analysis, and they are doing good work. So I feel the two branches ought to be interacting with each other. One is the exclusive branch of K. Subramanyam and Raja Mohan, who analyze world politics from the power prism, and the other branch belongs to the traditional China expert who brings out more cultural analysis on the basis of internal movements and so on. But that doesn’t happen. The people who understand the weapons system should also try to know what Confucianism is, or at least listen to those who know Confucianism. I believe China studies or area studies in India cannot be pure area studies as they are in the West. They have a 16th century China expert, a 17th century China expert, and so on. We cannot have that, only in Indian history. So I think we clearly need two interacting branches of area studies, and I am not quite sure if that is what is happening. SINGH: That is what makes me so curious about the group that remained cohesive for such a long time. The issue of coordination between China

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studies and strategic studies is always highlighted as a limitation, and by many other scholars of whom we spoke as well. So when you were a professor at JNU, what did you do to enhance this coordination? DESHPANDE: Again, I used to say this very comically. If someone is looking too much at the weapons system, I would say to drag him back and, in the same way, if someone is looking at Confucianism too much, then I said to drag him back. The point is, an expert in China studies must also know strategic studies. If we are not reading the James Wilson translation of classical Chinese, and are only doing Chinese foreign policy, then what is the use of it? SINGH: I remember, I was lucky to write a chapter for your book, Crossing a Bridge of Dreams. That was in 2001, when I entered JNU. This was a balanced work and an exercise in maintaining coordination. DESHPANDE: That book always gives me the satisfaction of knowing I’ve done some serious work. I mean, if I were to ask myself what it is that I have achieved, I would say a few good books and eight or nine PhD students, and that’s enough for one life. SINGH: That’s more than enough. I mentioned to you that most of the China scholars around were your students, and I think that’s a tremendous legacy. But were there any other institutional arrangements, such as signing MOUs with any Chinese universities? DESHPANDE: Most of the institutional arrangements fell within the school of languages. This might have been an MOU with the Korean Foundation and the Japanese Academy or Chinese studies institutes. China has now initiated Confucian Centers. That is indicative of the return of the civilization factor. Various institutional or semi-institutional arrangements can be worked out, depending on the situation. SINGH: How have you seen China change since you started visiting? Everyone talks about the transformation of China in terms of gadgets, skyscrapers, and the number of cars on the roads. How do you see the

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evolution of China through interactions and from the civilizational point of view? DESHPANDE: As a society, they have a strong sense of history, which in my opinion is their major strength. In India, we have rendered our history shorter and shorter, but in China they have made theirs longer and longer. An average Indian does not know more than two hundred years of history. Only epics have survived, but how many students studying political science know Bhishma’s [epical hero] analysis of state in Shantiparva? I don’t think anybody would know it, because it’s not been taught. There is far greater respect for Confucian texts in China than we have for passages like Shantiparva in India. I recall that I once offered JNU’s SIS department to give a few lectures to our theory students if they were interested in sections of Mahabharata and its connection with Arthashastra. But, as usually happens, and particularly in Delhi, everybody agreed but nothing came of it. I offered the school of languages that I would deliver a few lectures on the principles of Indian ethics by various thinkers, and I know enough Sanskrit to be able to do that; again everybody agreed but nothing happened. SINGH: But, to come back to your experience, you have been in the field of China studies for more than three decades. How has China studies progressed? Have they advanced, are they declining, or are they changing at all? And how does that differ from China studies in the ’60s, ’70s, and so on? DESHPANDE: Well, in a fundamental sense they are declining, and the reason why they are declining is that people are losing interest in China studies as China studies. They are interested only in strategy and foreign policy matters related to China. I referred to this a little while ago, that it is important to connect the two rather than focusing on only one. Scholars are only interested in studying China as a power, and only that kind of study has expanded. The rise of China as an emerging power is certainly dominating the international relations agenda, but that does not negate the

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fact that the other kind of China studies are declining. We predominantly have the Western view of China, which is often taken for granted. SINGH: At Delhi University, and also at SIS, various studies, such as rural employment, are being undertaken. DESHPANDE: Well, I am not entirely ruling them out, but the fact is that their space has shrunk. There is a growing distance between those who are working on China’s domestic matters and the general populace. There are not enough interventionists’ writings. Suppose that there is a major policy decision being made in China; it is not being commented upon here in India. We have a plethora of commentaries being written only on foreign policy decisions. There is no tendency to question and contest the policy formulations of China. SINGH: But what do you think is the reason behind this change or decline? Is it the common malice of the entire education system, or is it specific to China studies? DESHPANDE: It partly happens because of inadequate language training and expertise. A language actually helps you to enter inside the country and into its culture. There is also a lack of introduction to Chinese civilization, and those who are studying China must do that. SINGH: Is there a dichotomy because we have scholars doing either fulltime language and culture or full-time foreign policy? DESHPANDE: Well, the language scholars focus more on linguistics rather than the ideas that language carries. I have not come across substantial writings from them. It could be presented in simple forms; for example, a straightforward history of the Chinese Communist movement or Communists literature, etc. In spite of there being so many language scholars, there is no simple book on 20th century Chinese literature. In fact, China Report has a long history of Chinese literature that was written by me. It may be good or bad, but work was being done. Why do the fulltime language scholars not do something like this? There was an article

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in Chinese on the centenary book on grammar in China. Sabaree [Mitra] and Hemant [Adlakha] translated it, and I wrote an introduction to it that appeared in China Report. In that introduction, I made a few remarks that are even of relevance to those studying Chinese strategy. SINGH: You described China’s civilizational orientation as one of a strong state. Does that also mean a very powerful state? A strong state can be institutionally powerful, but does it yield power? DESHPANDE: I think they are a powerful state and make it their disclaimer. But by power, I not only mean tangible or intangible power, but also a conceptual understanding of who we are, a collective sense of identity, and a strong state in all aspects to be able to deal with other powers. SINGH: These themes are not actually part of our regular China studies. DESHPANDE: Because we have not studied China as China. In the book that you just mentioned, I wrote an essay on the semantics of foreign policy. SINGH: Another sense of decline is that we haven’t developed many institutions of China studies, and the institutions that exist are also in a state of decline. DESHPANDE: Yes, I would admit that. Even if I want to study China as China, in Delhi you would not get the right kind of assistance, and somehow you have to link it to foreign policy issues. My submission is this: there are enough institutions and departments to do China studies, and they should be encouraged to do serious work. But you must have a certain enlightened view of what kind of studies to encourage, those that will be useful fifty years from now. SINGH: You mentioned a certain amount of Western influence on China studies. Do you also see some Chinese influence on China studies? DESHPANDE: Not really, or very limited. There is a realization amongst the community of China scholars that there are number of complexities

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involved in deciphering reality as far as the Chinese state and the behavior of its elite are concerned. SINGH: I meant in the sense that the Chinese are now increasingly publishing in English. They facilitate discourse through the Shanghai forum, the Beijing forum, and so on. DESHPANDE: Well, you have answered it. They are actually facilitating it. SINGH: You had two decades of understanding China before you actually visited China. Now students visit China during their MPhils and PhDs, and they’re at a very different age when they are exposed to China. DESHPANDE: But that exposure would result in either the confirmation of prejudices or the change of ideas, and that totally depends upon the thought process of an individual. SINGH: I understand that your daughter is also interested in China. I have seen her at the India-China Institute, and I suppose she incorporates a certain amount of China studies. DESHPANDE: Of course she remains more as a professional economist. SINGH: Was there anything that could have changed your career in China studies? DESHPANDE: Well, for example, if I had actually gone to China when I was due to go, I would have landed in a very hostile China, and I don’t know what would have happened to my way of looking at China. By the time I actually went, things had certainly changed. Later I approached a filmmaker in China to make a documentary in China on the visit of the Indian prime minister, and another in India on the visit of the Chinese prime minister. So there was a Chinese television crew that came to India and shot some things, and we too, with the cooperation of the Chinese government, went to several places in China. I wrote a part of the commentary; I don’t know how much of it the director actually used, but I went

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as a China expert with the team. That was a fascinating experience, going with the television crew and viewing things from a different perspective. SINGH: Given your past three and one-half decades of experience in China studies, in what direction do you see China studies going, what needs to be rectified, and how do you see the future of China? DESHPANDE: In order to improve the content of China studies, first the culture and literature part has to be enriched, which have not been a part of China studies as such. And the language expertise should be put into appropriate use. Second, I don’t see much interaction between those who study foreign policy and strategy and those who study China as China. And third, despite all being said and done, I don’t see a community of China scholars. SINGH: Also, about the future of China, there is a huge debate on which way it is going, whether the regime is in danger and growth is too fast, all kinds of questions, and it’s a big country to focus on. How do you look at it? DESHPANDE: Two observations can be made. First, the Chinese state is not at all vulnerable. The ruling elite in China know well that the current levels of prosperity could not be maintained if the state failed. Second, this whole debate of whether China will become democratic or not is futile. It’s a concern for those who think that it’s their natural business to make the world democratic. There is an inherent degree of arrogance on the part of those who think that China should become democratic. So, in the foreseeable future, China is likely to remain an autocratic state ruled by the Communist Party. And this China, when it reaches a certain economic level, will surely make a few changes, and we have to wait until that happens. SINGH: But even if the regime transforms, you see no threat to the state as such? DESHPANDE: No, certainly not.

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SINGH: Sir, one final question. You have been a teacher to all of us. When you look back, is there any message you would like to give, any advice to your students? DESHPANDE: They are all competent scholars, and at this stage I don’t want to give them any advice. I would like to say that over a period of time some of them have actually emerged as friends, and I have benefited from reading them as much as they have benefited from reading me, and it has certainly been a pleasure knowing them. SINGH: Talking to you has certainly been a learning experience for me. I must say, some of you have done China studies in very difficult times, when it was not at all encouraged and it was difficult to get access to information. DESHPANDE: Subramanyam made some information available to us, although we were not staff members of IDSA (Institute of Defense Studies Analysis). We should grant him his due credit, because he kept our interest in China alive. If the same bonhomie is maintained among China scholars, they will go far. He helped us in building a collective and remained a silent contributor to that process. All I can say is let there be many such collectives, and let there be many silent contributors. That’s a good note on which to end. SINGH: Thank you, sir; it was my pleasure talking to you.

Lokesh Chandra Interviewer: Dr. Reena Marwah Lokesh Chandra is a scholar of Buddhism and the Indian arts. He is the son of the famous Sanskrit scholar, Raghu Vira. He has also served as a member of the Indian Rajya Sabha, besides serving as vice president of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research. In 2006 he was recognized with India’s Padma Bhushan award. He has to his credit over 360 works and text editions. Presently he is director of the International Academy of Indian Culture. Born in 1927 in Ambala in the Haryana state of India, to an esteemed family of educators, he has studied Sanskrit, the classical language of India, and many other Indian languages, including Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy by the state University of Utrecht in 1950. His interest also extends into the domain of the natural sciences. He has edited the international research journal, “Advancing Frontiers of Plant Sciences.” MARWAH: Thank you very much, Professor Lokesh Chandra, for extending us this opportunity to speak to you for the oral history project that our association has undertaken. Please tell us about how you became interested in China. CHANDRA: My interest in China studies is inherited from my father. My father studied in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies. At the first sight of Chinese characters, he was impressed by their beauty and complexity. At the same time, back home, India was seeking new dimensions to its freedom movement in terms of how we could gain freedom and what the nature of our independent state would be. China, Japan, and other countries of East Asia were independent. One of the attractions for my father was understanding how the Chinese civilization had been able

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to sustain independence for over five thousand years, as well as maintain its cultural identity. My father was fond of Chinese calligraphy, and our home was overflowing with Chinese paintings, books, and other objects. I started learning Chinese characters in 1937, at the age of ten. I asked my father, “Where are the consonants and vowels in them? There are no letters like A, B, C, D? How do the Chinese read?” My father had a book on the Chinese script by Karlgren, titled Sounds and Symbols in Chinese, published by the Oxford University Press in 1929. It is a fascinating account of how the Chinese characters have evolved. It is full of early pictographs and shows how those pictographs have been sophisticated into complex characters, sometimes on the basis of phonetics and sometimes by putting two characters together—for instance, joining the sun and the moon to represent bright. The Chinese language is not only complex, it is also a mirror of their thinking processes. The addition of elucidative classifiers was great fun for me. The syllable shan means mountain as well as shirt. To surmount the difficulty a classifier is added: zuo ‘site’ in yi zuo shan ‘one site mountain’ means a mountain, while jian ‘article of dress’ in yi jian shan ‘one article shirt’ means a shirt. The simplicity of Chinese grammar and the absence of a complex syntactic structure are characteristic of it. My father said it was not sufficient to study only Chinese characters to learn the language, but it was important to practice Chinese calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy fascinated me. All other languages are written either with a pen or a pencil, but Chinese calligraphy is with a brush. It has its own aesthetic value. Chinese calligraphy gave me an insight into their aesthetics. MARWAH: At what age did you learn Chinese calligraphy? CHANDRA: I learnt it at the age of eleven. I had lots of brushes, and I still have them. My father visited China in 1955. Premier Zhou Enlai gave him a brush. It was a gift from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. It also had a poem by Chairman Mao sketched on it. My father asked me to read what the Chinese had written on India. The first book that I read was by Fa Xian, who came to India in 400 AD. It is

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an interesting account of how the Chinese looked at us. Thereafter, I read the other two Chinese pilgrims in English, and later on in Chinese. It was interesting to comprehend what made Chinese pilgrims travel to India. Despite having a developed language and calligraphy, what was lacking in their culture that they had to come to find in India? What appealed to them in Buddhism was mysterious to me. China has been the only continuous nation-state in the world for more than five thousand years. It has existed for more than five millennia conceptually and, more or less, politically. It is again a rare phenomenon that the Chinese have documented their history for five thousand years in the Twenty-Four Dynastic Annals until 1911. The contrast between India, as a cultural entity with several kingdoms, and China, with more or less a single state conceptually, was important to perceiving the Chinese mindset. I belong to a family of freedom fighters, and for us the freedom of India was as important as our occupation with academics. The Chinese historical tradition had lessons for us. My father was engaged in the creation of new words for Indian languages. The word Sansad for parliament is my father’s contribution. He has given two hundred thousand new words to Indian languages. In this he was inspired by Chinese and Japanese linguistic traditions. The Chinese and Japanese have created new expressions for modern concepts, and they share these characters. The Chinese have a long tradition of linguistic creativity in their translations of three thousand Buddhist sutras. It was difficult to express abstract Buddhist concepts in Chinese, as it was a concrete language and they had to evolve new terms. This process of evolving a new terminology was of interest to my father. I have around five hundred pages of my father’s notes on Chinese terminologies from different sciences, such as physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, nuclear sciences, and so on. How the Chinese understood modern sciences and made them a part of their own language was inspiring. He compared it to the historical processes of linguistic creativity in Chinese. The Chinese compiled a number of Sanskrit-Chinese dictionaries, which are instructive from the point of view of generative linguistics. At the same time they are valuable for the history of India; for example, they mention the names of

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Indian cities and kings in Sanskrit, which are translated into Chinese in other works, except the name of Ashoka. While the word Bodhisattva was transliterated, Avalokiteshvara was translated as Guanyin. The words Samvidhan for constitution, Vidhan Sabha for state legislature, and Nagarapalika for municipality are all my father’s contributions to Indian languages. In his linguistic endeavors he consulted the Chinese to see how their unique genius expressed the technical terms of different sciences. Chinese is so different from the Indo-European languages that it gives a new insight into the formation of words. Different concepts are fundamental in the formation of words in various languages. For instance, the English word man is from man, meaning “to think.” In Sanskrit, manu and pashu are opposite terms. Manu means ‘man,’ or one who thinks, and pashu means ‘animal,’ or one who merely sees. Manu becomes manushya. In Latin the word human is from humus, meaning soil, so man is a creature of the earth, while in Sanskrit man is the thinker. These words show different perceptions in expressing the same semanteme (an irreducible unit of meaning). These days I am editing my father’s materials on the creation in Chinese of the scientific terminology for botany, zoology, nuclear physics, chemistry, etc. It is important to understand the translation techniques of these terms. My father collected dictionaries for his work on technical terminology in the Indian languages. He had over three hundred Chinese dictionaries on different scientific subjects, as well as of classical Chinese compiled from the second century to our times. As Chinese expression was different from other languages of the European linguistic tradition based on Greek and Latin, it became a ray of new light in every semanteme. The basis of naming a concept was so different in various linguistic families that it was a fundamentally different perception of reality. Three Chinese pilgrim scholars are famous for their travel across the whole of India and their studies at various universities. They have left valuable accounts of the social, economic, political, and academic conditions, which have become a bedrock of Indian history. Fa Xian journeyed

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overland to India in 400 AD, while Xuan Zang left China for India in 629, and Yi Jing traveled to India in 671. There were several others whose travel accounts have been lost. For example, Zhi Meng started from the Chinese capital Changan in 404. He stayed the longest in India, for fortythree years. He mentions the names of places, kings, sects, and communication routes. They are important for the cultural, economic, and political history of India. Another pilgrim, T’an Wuchen, started for India in 422. He mentions a number of Buddhist monasteries of Central Asia. He is the first Chinese to mention ‘stone honey’ (or granulated white sugar as distinct from brown sugar). It attracted every Chinese visitor to India, as honey was the only sweetening agent known to China. Sugar technology was introduced into China from Magadha as late as the eighth century. The scholar T’an Wuchen took a ship from the estuary of Ganga to Sri Lanka and thence to Sumatra to return to Guangzhou in South China. It is a rich resource for the history and geography of early classical India. MARWAH: Stone honey? CHANDRA: Stone honey was the Chinese word for sugar until the T’ang period. MARWAH: Any particular incident you would like to narrate from your meeting with the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) for China? CHANDRA: In a meeting of the EPG, a Chinese scholar said that chini, or sugar, came to India from China. I had to correct him that, according to the Tang annals, sugar technology was taken to China from India. Sugar technology went to China from Magadha during the T’ang period. When Xuan Zang went back to China, he spoke to the emperor about the stone honey. In 647, Emperor T’ai Zong sent a mission to Magadha to study the process of boiling sugar, and this method was adopted by the sugarcane growers of Yangzhou. The Chinese mission took the process and refined its technology. The Hindi word chini is Sanskrit sini, which means white, and sini has become chini or white sugar as opposed to brown sugar. The word chini

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has no connection with China. It deceptively sounds Chinese and makes some think that it originated in China. Even Pliny refers to the sugar of India as a kind of honey obtained from canes without the agency of bees. Sugar and sugarcane were the prosperity of the Ikshvaku dynasty of Ayodhya, whose outstanding kings are the epic heroes, King Dasharatha and Lord Rama. The dynastic name Ikshvaku is from ikshu, which means sugarcane. The flow of technology between the two countries for more than fifteen hundred years has to be studied. A lot can be found in the volumes of Needham’s Science and Civilization in China. The Chinese feel that Indians are strong in the IT sector. They have always felt that Indians excel in mathematics and astronomy. In the eighth century, the Imperial Board of Astronomy in China was presided over by Indians. Indians calculated the time of imperial rites on the basis of zero and trigonometry, which were new to the Chinese and gave more precise calculations. Chinese annals have preserved accounts of maritime lanes, such as the developed shipping technology of Indonesia. Some of the Chinese pilgrims to India went by sea, took a ship from Sri Lanka, from Sri Lanka to Indonesia, and from Indonesia on to China. MARWAH: But is it an indirect route? CHANDRA: Yes, it is an indirect route, but sure and safe, and there were regular sailings from Indonesia to China. Going back to the dictionary Fan-fan-yu, my father could not complete it. The entries in this dictionary are fascinating for overland routes, shipping lanes, and so on. It is valuable for its word entries from the travel accounts of two Chinese pilgrims, which have been lost. It quotes names of cities, kings, and monasteries. One of the pilgrims, Chih Meng, came via Central Asia, went as far as Sri Lanka, and returned to China through Central Asia in 447. In 2008, I edited the Fan-fan-yu, which was transcribed, Sanskrit words restored, and translated by my late father, Professor Raghu Vira, along with his Japanese disciple, Dr. Chikyo Yamamoto, in 1938. It was lying

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scattered in notes and scribblings for the last seventy years. I completed it as a mark of filial piety in true Confucian fashion. The Chinese text has also been given, along with the English, so that Sinologists can make better use of it. The lexicon was compiled in 517 AD. As pointed out earlier, it adds to our knowledge of bilateral exchanges in the fifth century. The monk Feng Zukai, a friend of Chairman Mao, wrote poems and drew pictures on ahimsa [the avoidance of violence]. In the mid-1940s, my father translated them into English and published the first volume. Ahimsa was a central concept in our freedom struggle. Gandhiji was impressed by this book and that the Chinese also believed in ahimsa. My father wanted to strengthen Sino-Indian friendship on a cultural footing that could absorb the shocks of political misunderstandings. Gaps of communication could be tided over by such an approach and could generate an ambience that allows us to see beyond parochial politics. MARWAH: So your father translated the poems. This is really impressive. CHANDRA: Feng Zukai was a Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and artist. A Chinese scholar did his doctorate thesis on the art of Feng Zukai some decades ago. MARWAH: But you said Chinese have written poems on ahimsa. CHANDRA: Multiple identities operate in different domains of life. These poems were written in the context of Buddhism. The Chinese have a Confucian identity and a Buddhist identity. Their non-violence is kindness to animals on special days. The vast Buddhist population of China is keen for pilgrimages to the land of Lord Buddha. China always had a special place of respect in the minds of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru as a great country, a neighbor, and a cultural comrade. My father was a rare Indian who had studied the language and culture of China. Mahatma Gandhi had Japanese monks at his Ashram at Wardha. They recited the Chinese text of the Lotus Sutra or Saddharma-pundarika-sutra. Gandhiji wanted to know its Sanskrit original and English translation, for

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which he invited my father to Wardha. Father gave him both the Sanskrit original and its English translation. Gandhiji was happy to know that the Chinese had translated thousands of texts, and with devotion. Gandhiji had a long conversation with my father, in company with the three monkeys on his table. The monkeys are sacred to Buddhism, as a monkey had made an offering to the Buddha; as a consequence, he was reborn as the Great King Ashoka. An offering mentioned in the Buddhist texts became so important in the culture of East Asia that the three monkeys found a place on the table of Mahatma Gandhi. The Sinological expertise of my father brought him respect at the national level. Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru, and other leaders were thrilled by the fine details of India’s contacts with Chinese culture. Chinese works are not only of academic interest, but they also prove that India and China have been friendly neighbors who have coexisted peacefully despite communication ups and downs. There is the SanskritChinese dictionary by Li-yen, which is important for interpreting the islands in Kalidasa’s Raghuvansha. It is only through this Chinese dictionary that it became known that Dvipantara of Kalidasa means Indonesia. Chinese texts also help to understand India’s relations with Central Asia. Indonesia was central to the way of the Buddha in the seventh and eighth centuries, and her fame traveled as far as China. Tagore speaks of Tepantar (Dvipantara) in his poems, titled The Crescent Moon, as a fairyland “where the pair of wise old birds have their nests.” Indonesia lived on in the amnesia of our legends, until the dictionary of Li-yen made her a tangible geographical entity. We can also see the international vision of the greatest of our classical poets, Kalidasa, who exhorts the beloved of Hemangada, king of Kalinga, to “sport with him on the shores of the sea…where your drops of perspiration will be cooled by breezes of clove flowers wafted from the Indonesian isles.” What a lovely cultural texture of Sanskrit, Chinese, and the Indonesian waters: like the net of Indra (Indrajala), in which many mirrors reflect each other in multiplied and re-multiplied reflections.

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MARWAH: What about the translation work done by your father? Like this one: to which period does this dictionary belong? CHANDRA: It dates to 782 AD. MARWAH: So in those days, was your father the only one with in-depth knowledge of the language? CHANDRA: My father translated a Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary. It has Sanskrit names of various countries of Asia with which India had cultural relations, for instance Indonesia, so he was thus interested in cultural relations with Indonesia. He became an intimate friend of an Indonesian student in Utrecht. In 1928 he was the only Indian student in the Netherlands. Professor Willem Caland introduced him to the Indonesian as a compatriot Indian, Priyohoetomo by name. When Indonesia got independence, Priyohoetomo became the principal of the Police Training School in Jakarta, as he spoke Dutch and had a European education. There were few Europe-educated modern Indonesians, and they came to occupy important places in governance. Priyohoetomo used to teach Yoga as part of the training of policemen. He came to see my father, who was a member of parliament. My father told him that the Sanskrit-Chinese dictionary of Li-yen gave the precise interpretation of the word Dvipantara in Kalidasa as Indonesia. Priyohoetomo was delighted to learn that Kalidasa admired his country. China provided solutions to problems of interpretation. My father translated a brief version of the Ramayana from Chinese into English. It was translated into Chinese from the Sanskrit Shatparamita-sutra on the six perfections by monk Kang Seng-hui, a native of Samarkand, in 251 AD. Sanskrit was a language of international commerce and intellectual expression in Central Asia, with which China had active contacts. During our freedom struggle against British imperialism, Indian scholarship thought of the global contacts of the country, and my father found Chinese studies an important tool to comprehend the international role of India in antiquity. Samarkand was an important center for India-China exchanges. The people in Samarkand knew both Sanskrit

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and Chinese. The Buddhist monk-scholars of Samarkand translated many texts from Sanskrit into Chinese. Central Asian monks from other kingdoms also made a great contribution to the spread of Indic traditions to China, as they had trade relations with China. The horses of Farghana were sent for the Chinese cavalry. Buddhist monks came on these horses. Central Asian monks were expert horsemen. They knew how to train them and treat them if injured or ill, and they were experts in veterinary medicine, and so on. They became crucial to the Chinese defense system. In 1983, I went to see the monastery where Kang Seng-hui lived and wrote. The ancient monastic structure does not exist, but a new monastery has been constructed at the site to pay homage to him and to the long tradition of translating Buddhist sutras. MARWAH: So where is this monastery? CHANDRA: I don’t remember it now. In 1955 my father, Professor Raghu Vira, went to China to collect Chinese texts. He met Zhou Enlai, who said: “You are the first Indian to come to China to collect sutras. In ancient times, it was only the Chinese who went to India to bring the sutras.” He called my father the Indian Xuan Zang. My father came back with ten tons of books, paintings, and other artifacts. Whatever work I have done in the field of Chinese studies is due to the rich intellectual legacy from my father. In China, very few Sanskrit texts have been discovered. There are four palm leaf folios, which narrate the life of Kalidasa. Yang Yinshen discovered the fragments of the Shakuntala drama of Kalidasa in the Guoqing monastery on the Tiantai Mountains near Wenzhou. These fragments belong to the eighth century and are the earliest known fragments of Kalidasa. It is the place from where Chinese theater developed. The Chinese revered Sanskrit sutras translated about three thousand Sanskrit texts into Chinese from the second to the eleventh century. Over two hundred Indians participated in this translation over a thousand years. Chinese poets wrote about the scripts on palm leaves as holy: they had the feel

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of the West, and the West means India. The sandalwood incense was the fragrance of India. Frankincense and palmyra were the smells and feel of the Dharma of the warm West. The Chinese emperor Yi Zong, who ruled from 860 to 873, himself chanted the Sanskrit sutras from palm leaf books kept in the palace. What beautiful memories of our relations with China. I have here the original text of the Mahavyutpatti, a dictionary of Buddhist technical terms in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. MARWAH: And you are well-versed in all of these languages. CHANDRA: These four are classical languages, and knowledge of them is a must for original research in Buddhist studies. The Mahavyutpatti stands out among others, as it has the largest number of technical terms of Buddhism, many of which are not found in other Chinese dictionaries. I edited this lexicon in 1981. The main area of my research is Chinese Buddhist art and philosophy. In India, the Buddhist artistic traditions came to an end around the thirteenth century. China has a continuous tradition from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries. Many gaps in the Indian artistic tradition can be filled through the Chinese evolution. Though Chinese styles are different, and the materials used are different, yet the substratum has convergences. I never took up a professional career. I worked at home with my father and continue to work at home. I spent twelve years in the parliament, as Shrimati Indira Gandhi had nominated me to the parliament. MARWAH: So did you advise her on certain policy issues? CHANDRA: Sometimes she discussed Chinese polity. Once she wanted to send a present to Premier Zhou Enlai, which was symbolic of our vibrant historical relations. She discussed with me about sending a bronze from the second millennium BC. This was ultimately presented to Premier Zhou Enlai.

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We have seen Chinese through Western interpretations. The understanding of China as a modern state does not take into account their Confucian perceptions. China is a Confucian state. I regularly read the Beijing Review, which has a page on culture once in a while. Once I read that the word shi, meaning four, is inauspicious, because death is also shi. People do not want figure 4 in their car number. Special computers have been installed in some cities to eliminate the number 4 from car plates. Subtle cultural nuances are alive in the contemporary life of China. Confucian classics have been introduced in schools. To understand China, Confucius is central as one who made Sino-centrism the dominant concept of the Chinese state. Confucianism has no theocentrism. Confucius was a social and political thinker. India needs a deep understanding of Confucian ideals as the political consciousness of the contemporary Chinese state. President Hu Jintao has invited Professor Tu from Harvard to establish a special center at Peking University to teach Confucianism. The Chinese professor was in India some time back, and I had an opportunity to interact with him. We had an interesting dialogue about Confucianism and its role in China’s future political and economic perceptions, including the idea of the central kingdom vis-à-vis the barbarians. The Chinese adage is “Sagely Within and Kingly Without.” China behaves sagely within but kingly towards barbarians. To understand China, one has to study the Chinese psycho-sphere, which is central to its polity and economy. As Confucian ideas are basic, we must teach Confucianism in our academic curriculum as political theory and how it affects Chinese polity, life, and academics. MARWAH: So you visited China in 1983? CHANDRA: I visited China four times. The last time, I was there in 2006 for a conference at the National Library of China on the “Golden Light Sutra.” During my first visit in 1983, I saw the beginnings of transition from Maoism to a more relaxed socio-economic paradigm. MARWAH: So which projects are you currently working on?

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CHANDRA: I am working on two volumes. One is about my father’s travels in China and his talks with Premier Zhou Enlai and others. The other covers my father’s detailed analysis of scientific terminologies in Chinese. The documents and writings of my father on our contemporary relations with China are the unofficial views of an academic, and the country needs to know them. I had a Chinese student who told me that we could hear to this day the wailings of the Chinese who perished in the construction of the Great Wall of China. The nation is above an individual in Chinese tradition. The construction of the railway to Lhasa is an extension of the Great Wall in terms of the human sacrifices that it entailed. MARWAH: Would you please tell us something about your father’s contribution to China studies? CHANDRA: Tagore went to China in the 1920s and was welcomed enthusiastically, but he felt dejected because the leftist movement criticized his cultural ethos. My father was influenced by him and knew him personally. There was sporadic correspondence between them. Poet Tagore established the Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center) at Santiniketan, and Chinese studies were initiated in India for the first time. My father collaborated with Poet Tagore to found the India China Friendship Association. He had started learning Chinese from British scholars in 1928 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Chinese characters fascinated him by their sheer beauty and complexity. He came from a background of Sanskrit philosophy and grammar. The Sanskrit grammar of Panini is very complex. My father saw the Sanskrit grammar of Panini in the complex visual forms of Chinese ideograms. He was moved by Chinese characters, their art, and their literature, and ours was the only Indian home lined with books in the Chinese language in several rooms. MARWAH: So you could read Chinese easily? CHANDRA: About three thousand texts were translated from Sanskrit into Chinese from the second to the thirteenth centuries. They are collected in the Chinese Tripitaka. Many of them have been lost in the original

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Sanskrit, so they are invaluable to the history of India. As a historian of India’s culture, my father was fascinated by what he found in Chinese, as the Sanskrit originals had been lost. For him, China was a rich source of Indian art and thought, literature, and history. About 250 Indian teachers went to China between the second and the thirteenth centuries, until Islam conquered Central Asia, Buddhist monasteries were destroyed, and the pilgrim route died down. He was curious to see how the Chinese had preserved all these texts for such a long period of time. India’s archeology would not be complete without Xuan Zang. When Alexander Cunningham mapped the archeological sites in India in the nineteenth century, his patron saint-scholar was Xuan Zang. Likewise, Aurel Stein was also guided by Xuan Zang in his archeological expeditions to Central Asia. MARWAH: He must have lots of Chinese friends and people coming to visit him. CHANDRA: My father was moved by the ideology of Mao Tse-tung. He believed in social justice. Though never leftist, social justice was a sine qua non for him. He read Mao Tse-Timg in extenso and went to China as a guest of Premier Zhou Enlai to collect Buddhist sutras. Zhou Enlai was delighted that an Indian had come to China to collect the sutras. To him, the collection of sutras was China’s privilege in history. Zhou Enlai said to him: “You are the Xuan Zang of India.” My father also studied the creation of new terms for various sciences and how they were inducted in the Chinese education system. China was an inspiration to him, as well as a concern. He saw Chinese maps and the aggressive intentions evidenced by them. He wrote a detailed letter to Pandit Nehru on these maps. Pandit Nehru felt that, since India and China were good friends and both are socialist, aggression was not a real danger. Father said that the Chinese were first Confucianists and then Communists. Pandit Nehru was quiet. Father organized a splendid exhibition of what he had brought from China. Vice President Radhakrishnan came to inaugurate it, and Pandit Nehru came along to see what father had done

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in China. He was happy to see the success of my father’s expedition. He spent an hour looking at everything. He brought the Maharana of Udaipur with him, the first Maharana to come to Delhi. The Maharanas had vowed that they would come to Delhi only when they had conquered it. Both the Maharana and the Maharani were glad that their centuries-old vow had been fulfilled, as India was free, and they were happy to visit Delhi. The Maharana was gracious and delighted to see the exhibition along with Pandit Nehru. MARWAH: How long did your father stay in China? CHANDRA: He was there for three months and collected an immense amount of research materials. To understand the cultural history of India, we have to consult Chinese sources, as they document events to precise dates. MARWAH: Thank you very much for the opportunity to continue our talk on the Chinese studies oral history project. I would like you to talk about your personal association with Chinese scholars and your experiences as a young student when your father was interacting with other scholars. You were saying last time that the Chinese are pragmatic in their approach. CHANDRA: Our house was full of Chinese printed texts and rare woodprints. As a child, I found them different from the Indian books. Their binding style was pleasing, the print was clear, and the paper was light. It felt different from the normal paper that we used. The texture of the paper showed that the Chinese were a different people, a people who treasured their classical identity, both in the style of binding and in the manufacture of paper. They adored the perfume of their culture. Culture brings beauty to life; it is the aesthetics of life. The Chinese are conscious of their identity, in both their domestic and foreign policies, which are culture-centric. The galloping speed with which they have developed their economy while retaining their identity is unmatched in any part of the world. Sino-centric culture is the heart of their identity. The Japanese got Buddhism from China and brought

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their scriptures from China. Most Japanese cultural elements go back to a Chinese origin. When there was no male heir to the throne of Japan, they did not accept a young princess as the empress of the future, as it was counter to Confucian traditions. Now they are happy to have a male heir to the throne. Several countries have been founded based on Chinese culture, and it deserves in-depth study. The Buddhist shunyata, or void, has been creative in China. It is not an absence; it is a creative void. Whenever a void was felt, this lacuna gave rise to creative dimensions in China. There was nothing but forests on the top of mountains, and the Chinese chose to construct monasteries there. Before Communism came to power in China, every mountain peak had a Buddhist structure; they numbered around a million. Chinese would live there, meditate, paint, read, or write. Habitation in desolate areas was a tradition in Chinese life, coming from the Buddhist tradition that a monastery should be located in a secluded place. Later on it acquired a political dimension. When Chairman Mao came to power, he started the construction of a Green Wall along the uninhabited border areas for defense purposes, in imitation of the Great Wall constructed during the Qin dynasty in the second century BC. Provision of water was a difficult problem. Water had to be transported from far-off mountains several kilometers away. Ancient techniques of water procurement were employed. The Great Wall of China has given the Chinese a sense of identity as well as of immensity. Magnitude is an important element in Chinese civilization. While there are only twenty-nine of our Ajanta caves, Dunhuang has 496 caves, while some fifteen hundred caves have collapsed over time. Chinese believe in herculean construction projects, which are commensurate with their perceptions of greatness. Everything in China has immense spatial and temporal aspects. They have constructed the fastest bullet train in the world. A strong sense of perfection and colossal magnitude has given China a distinctive excellence, as well as phenomenal projects over the centuries.

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The concept of space in Chinese town planning is reminiscent of Buddhist ideas of space and void as they evolved during the golden Tang period of Chinese history. Modern buildings, gardens, roads, etc. reflect the spirit of the Tang era. In Japan, the Tang aesthetic is very much alive, and Japan is essential to understanding classical China. The idea of empty spaces emerges from the concept of shunyata, which is an integral part of Buddhist philosophy. Shunyata is a spatial counterpart to the mathematical zero, so crucial to computers and all calculations. Besides this creative void, China has another concept from Buddhism, namely impermanence. While both are negative linguistically, semantically and philosophically they are super-positive. Impermanence in Chinese signifies that everything is passing away all the time and has to be recreated; thus creativity becomes a fundamental continuity. China is creative every moment without a hiatus. This basic Buddhist idea has been ingrained in the Chinese psyche and in their dedication to work. A third element that conditions Chinese thinking is perfection. A Buddhist image created in any part of the world is different from one done in China. For instance, each and every pearl in the necklace of an icon of a goddess is finished to a perfection without parallel. A Chinese image has to be perfect, a symbol of paramita. Paramita is going beyond, transcending existence spiritually, and in workmanship it is perfection transcending previous standards. This perfection is not a commercial category, but a visualization or sadhana (ego-transcending spiritual practice). It is depth of the mind. The perceptions of China in India have to take into account their cultural aesthetics. No excellence can remain in isolation. Cultural excellence has become a tool of technological development. Cultural perfection has been made technologically relevant, and the Chinese have done it perfectly. Designing is an important part of life, and Chinese artists strive to achieve eye appeal in everything. It is inspired by the Chinese ideograms. Calligraphy is a culture of the eyes. Seeing the ideogram is important for its comprehension. While in other languages sound is crucial, in Chinese

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seeing a character is part of the semantics. Thus the Chinese have a unique sensitivity to design; for example, the images of Ganesha made in China have a divine smile, so alluring and so inspiring. The images have been made for the Indian market, but their smile is reminiscent of Maitreya. This enigmatic smile can also be seen in the murals of flying goddesses in the Dunhuang caves. Chinese self-identity is reflected in their language, which they have adapted for all modern sciences. Though today they are seriously studying English, the Chinese language will continue to evolve because it is their “Confucian ethics of work,” on which depends their economic miracle. Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister of Singapore, spoke of the Confucian ethics of work as a cornerstone of his policy. He succeeded in his mission of making Singapore a model state based on Confucian values of a precise vision and sustained action. If India wants to become a superpower, she has to invoke the deeper values of history and culture as an inspiration for a glorious future, in line with the Confucian values in China. We must understand how China has molded the past, present, and future in a unitary discourse. While Sino-centrism has aggressive implications, it definitely infuses a sense of pride and excellence in the Chinese people. The Chinese perception of the central kingdom versus barbarians has been their motivation for surpassing other nations. Indian curricula on China focuses on political and economic dimensions, which are highly important, but we need to look at their psycho-sphere that elevates them to excellence. Economic and technological development is not merely workmanship; it also depends on the mindset of a nation-state. The Chinese have introduced the teaching of Confucian classics and Tang poetry in their school curricula. Despite undergoing massive modernization and studying English, their curricula induce the new generation to feel proud of belonging to a great Confucian tradition. Self-confidence and selfesteem comes from Confucius. The Chinese government emphasizes it and is going to spend twenty billion dollars to establish two hundred Confucius Centers in China and around the world. They want to teach Confucianism to their children and to the world. Indians must study what

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makes China great, what makes them excel over others. The Chinese have a strong sense of self-image in contrast to the counter-image of barbarians. Do we have a counter-image of the Chinese? They are still following the classical path in contemporary dealings. We cannot understand China without knowing their perception of us in their own language. The study of China has to be on both specific and general levels, keeping in view how culture has conditioned their political and economic life and strategic thinking. As far as research funding is concerned, we need more funds for China studies, because China is our most important neighbor. The global economic recession has slowed down US and Europe. Will China outpace the West in pure research, as distinct from applied technology? Pure research has nothing to do with economic slowdown. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were devoted to pure research. In the aftermath of WWII, research has become development oriented. Our studies of China have to analyze the factors that made the Chinese achieve stupendous development in a short span of time. Our topics for research on China will be different from that of the West. It is necessary to discuss the topics of research on Chinese culture and their correlation to the present and to the future. One has to understand the classical culture and its contemporary manifestations in China. I was a member of the Eminent Persons Group for India and China, and it gave me a chance to follow the contemporary developments in bilateral relations. MARWAH: How many other members did the group have? CHANDRA: There were around twenty members from all walks of life: academics, business, literature, diplomacy, and civil services. It was an important group, and it should have met more often to understand each other. There should also have been a dialogue on cultural issues. The Beijing Review frequently discusses issues vital to the unique Chinese identity in the age of modernization. The Chinese were clear from the days

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of Chairman Mao that they were not going to follow the Soviet model blindly. They believed in their own model of development for agriculture, industry, infrastructure, etc. They adjusted according to their needs and not as per the theoretical constructs of the West. These issues need to be discussed with our Chinese counterparts, and their responses can enlighten us. Chinese reactions will be mild, subdued, silent, and smiling. We have to read their smiles. We will understand China better. There are no substantial academic exchanges between our two countries today. There should be a clearly defined agenda. Academic seminars are important, as well as the exchange of books. Few Chinese books are available in India. There should be a library of Chinese books in Delhi, along with books on China from the US, Europe, and Russia. Delhi University has a good collection, but we need far more books in the Chinese language on the humanities, sciences, and technology. Strengthening the collection at the Delhi University library would be a step towards increasing our understanding of China in Chinese terms. The Chinese are self-centered. They rarely read foreign books. Their libraries have few books in the English language. They concentrate on research in their own language that reflects a strong national identity and encourages widespread creativity. A group of experts needs to study how the Chinese achieved excellence and met global standards in such a short span of time. Chinese perceptions are formed by Confucian ideas, and they are predominantly Sino-centric. China’s friendship with India will depend on our military and economic strength. We have to be super-strong in every respect. A Chinese journalist once said that India is a soft country, and Hinduism is a soft religion; the Chinese do not appreciate softness. He said that the South Chinese tie a living monkey to a stool, hammer his brain, and eat it without cooking. He implied a lot in this short statement. MARWAH: Do you think the younger generation is following Buddhism, or are they quickly adopting Western traditions?

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CHANDRA: The major trend is to assimilate modern lifestyles and still be Chinese. They are linguistically Chinese and scientifically Western. They differentiate between Westernization and modernization. Westernization means adopting Western lifestyles, while modernization implies adopting modern technologies. Culture and civilization have to be differentiated. In China, culture is Confucian, while technological civilization is essentially modern. They study in Chinese, eat Chinese food, and yet can do modern paintings. In India, we do not distinguish between culture and civilization. This difference has to be understood when studying China. Chinese culture comes to them as natural to life. The inaugural ceremony of the Beijing Olympics began with a presentation of the classic Chinese dance of the Thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara and with three thousand disciples of Confucius reading the Confucian classics from bamboo books such as those that were prevalent in the period of the sage Confucius. MARWAH: How would you evaluate China studies in India, and what are its future prospects? CHANDRA: There will always be a vast range of evaluations in the study of Chinese sources besides the Western viewpoint. Chinese sources as originally written give a perceptive view of the cultural interflow over the centuries. The evolution of China studies in the Indian context will have to take into account our national priorities in terms of competition and confrontation. The Chinese railways are coming to Kathmandu, which will change the regional geopolitical scenario and may heighten tensions. The Chinese are creating their future based on the Han concepts of international relations. In ancient times, the Chinese emperor sent Chang Chien to find out about Central Asia. He opened the world of Central Asia to China. He traveled as far as Bactria, whence he took Indian music, which became the twenty-eight martial tunes of Chinese armies in the Han period. We have shared so many centuries with China in the arts and culture. To have friendly relations with China, we have to be strong politically, diplomatically, economically, and intellectually. The political will of China is

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Confucius in modern manifestation. Neo-Confucianism is conditioning contemporary developments. MARWAH: What about their one-child policy? Do you have any comment on that? CHANDRA: The rise of the population in Xinjiang province and in other minority communities is becoming a problem. The improvement of overall health and the growing number of older individuals will make them rethink this policy. They need a younger population to run the country. The Chinese are going to frontier provinces, and now they are moving to Tibet so that the Han population can expand. Space is not a problem. Han areas comprise one-third of the area, Xinjiang another third, and the Tibetan region the remaining one-third. The Chinese achieved great projects in antiquity, like the Great Wall. Their literature is philosophical thought with beauty. China had a palace culture with civil service examinations, mandarins, and an inherited nobility. Buddhism introduced the soft power of culture and the role of common folk, the poor, and the lowly. Anyone could join a monastery, study there, become a monk, and follow a strict discipline. When one excelled, one could mix with the imperial household, the nobility, and the mandarins. In the mandarin system, only persons of a certain rank could sit for the civil service examinations and occupy important positions in the state. Buddhism established “people’s culture,” parallel to the “palace culture.” Monasteries became important as centers of learning for the common man, whom they endowed with the power of excellence. MARWAH: How long did they remain powerful? CHANDRA: The monasteries remained powerful until 1911. They were for the people and by the people. In 1911, power centered around political leadership. Monasteries were not a counterbalance, and growing inequalities in society reflected the lack of institutional insight. MARWAH: What do you think of the current state of writings on China?

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CHANDRA: The current Indian writings on China do not focus on our future relationship with China and how we should plan for it in diplomacy and at the civil society level. China is staking its claim on Arunachal Pradesh, and we need to elaborate the historical ties of this pradesh with the mainland to counter Chinese claims. We need more detailed research on India-China relations. Confucian thought conditions the East Asian and Southeast Asian countries. We should have a political will and perception of the future grounded in history. Our understanding of classical China is important from the cultural point of view, because it has a large Buddhist population and there are many monasteries. We must establish close relations with the Chinese Buddhists. They are friendly towards India, though they don’t have a political voice. We can invite the monks of the Shaolin Monastery to teach martial arts. The Buddhist population in China can help to maintain friendly cultural relations. Chinese Buddhists are poor; their poverty does not allow them to visit the Buddhist sites in India. Bilateral initiatives should promote Buddhist pilgrimage at the governmental and civil society levels. We can invite Buddhist poets, writers, monks, and martial arts experts. The Chinese are turning towards Christianity, because their main attraction is the United States. They are going to the US for jobs; to them the United States is a vast area that they can populate. In the long run, it may work out to be a demographic dominance of the United States. When Huntington went to the University of Osaka, Japan, he asked the Japanese, “Why don’t you use English in your country?” The Japanese responded, “If we start using English, we will be ruling the United States one day.” The large number of Chinese migrating to the United States may signal a similar ending. Pandit Nehru was popular in the 1950s. He helped China by introducing Zhou Enlai to all the Asian leaders at the Bandung Conference. India was one of the first countries to set up an embassy in Beijing. The Chinese got a sizable plot for constructing their embassy in New Delhi. In the early 1950s, relations between the two countries were exceptionally cordial.

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However, with the passage of time, the classical Han perceptions of international relations turned this cordiality into hostility by 1962. Happily, now our bilateral relations are again positive, and we hope that they will lead to a better academic environment for Sinological studies. MARWAH: What about your current works? CHANDRA: These days I am translating the life of Lord Buddha from the Chinese biography titled Shijia Rulai Yinghua Shiji. It was compiled by the Buddhist monk Baocheng of the Baoen monastery during the Ming period. Important episodes in the life of Lord Buddha are cited from Chinese sutras, and they are illustrated on opposite pages in exquisite line drawings. The line drawings are like the dew that sprinkles in the grass like traces of an unknown divine presence. My father was fortunate to find a copy of the Ming xylograph, which has been translated and will be published (450 pages) shortly. To my father it was: The magic of a glance that illuminates in the gold, the cloud in your mind’s horizon, making your days glisten with glimmering moments Alas! My father was not to see it in print. It will appear by this summer, about half a century after his passing away. MARWAH: Thank you very much for sharing your experience and work on China.

V. P. Dutt Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Professor V. P. Dutt was a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (IDSA). He was former pro-vice chancellor of Delhi University. Between 1970 and 1980, he was nominated as a member of parliament. He has been a member of the Indian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly (1968), and a member of the Indo-French Dialogue (1975–1976) and Indo-Soviet Dialogue. He served five terms as a member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. He also served as a member of the IDSA Executive Council. He was a former member of the 1973 Committee on Open University, of the Rajasthan Commission on Higher Education, and of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Area Studies Sub-Committee. Professor Dutt has lectured at the Sorbonne, the International Institute of Strategic Studies (London), and Hong Kong University, among other institutions. Professor Dutt’s publications include, among others, India’s Foreign Policy since Independence (National Book Trust, 2007) and China’s Cultural Revolution (Asia Publishing House, 1970). SINGH: Sir, let me ask you the first question. How and at what level did you encounter this word, or phenomenon, or idea of China? DUTT: Well, first let me say thank you very much. I am now at the fag end of my life and am passing the baton on to you people, and you are really one of the very good China scholars emerging now. You are no longer a junior scholar; you are a senior scholar now. So thank you very much for your compliments. Actually, China was not on my mind for a long time. I was doing my MA in English at F. B. College Lahore. I was always interested in international relations and politics, and one of my friends had gone to Stanford. So

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I persuaded my father to send me to Stanford University to do my MA in international relations, and there one is supposed to choose the field almost towards the end of the course. At that time, newspapers were full of the Red Army crossing the Yangtze River. I wrote a paper on China for the Hoover Institute. Hoover scholars were very serious about China, and they were conducting a conference. I wrote the paper on China’s internal developments. Of course, this was from English sources. I had not learned the Chinese language at that time. SINGH: This was before 1949? DUTT: This was between 1947 and 1949. I came back to India and joined the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA). Dr. Hridaynath Kunzroo was president, and Dr. Appadorai was deputy director; there were only two or three people there at that time. K. P. Karunakaran was one of my colleagues, and we were working on the third floor of the Coffee Hall, in Connaught Place [New Delhi]. They asked me to specialize in some area. Karunakaran took Indian foreign policy, and I opted for China. Actually, there were only two of us there. [M. S.] Rajan came a little later. So it was China. And then I met somebody who became a friend, Mr. V. V. Paranjape. He was in China, and he knew the Chinese language well. He mentioned to me about the Tombs, and in several sittings he revealed so many things about China. The Indian government sent its first official cultural delegation to China in 1950. This was a very high-profile delegation, and Mrs. [Vijaylakshmi] Pandit was the leader of delegation. So Dr. Appadorai went to Jawaharlal Nehru, saying, “We have a young scholar. We want him to study China,” and he asked for me to be sent to China with the delegation. I was made an assistant secretary, and that was my first visit to China. SINGH: Did being at ICWA have something to do with your having done a paper in Stanford and having studied literature on China? DUTT: No, they asked me what focus I had at Stanford. I said it was China. I had done the paper at Hoover, which was full of the Communist

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rise and other events, so I said China. I had no idea of what I was getting into. Maybe if I had any idea, I would have rethought. So I was made an assistant secretary to this delegation, and I went to China for the first time, stayed there for three weeks, and visited various places. That’s how China became the focus of the study. I could not stay on, because the Chinese wanted an agreement on cultural exchange. I came back. Then in 1954, the agreement was signed. They had decided to have an exchange program. Under this agreement, my wife, Gargi Dutt, and I were sent as government of India cultural exchange scholars to Peking University. SINGH: Did she have an interest in China before the agreement was reached? DUTT: She had no interest in China. What happened was when we got married. I was going. We met Mr. Kaul, who was chairman of the selection committee and joint secretary. He suggested that my wife join me. That’s how it happened. SINGH: Both of you were to become China scholars? DUTT: Yes, we went there and studied the Chinese language for three years. We stayed at Peking University. That was a period of considerable flux and change. We went in 1956. There was a lot of bonhomie between India and China, and we were given privileges over many other East European countries. They used to taunt us; you have to be either a Russian or an Indian to get privileges here. But you know, the ‘Great Leap Forward’ came and then the People’s Commune; also their foreign policy stance started becoming harder. We could sense all this. But anyway, we learnt the language. I was working on the 1911 Revolution in China, and my wife was working on the People’s Commune. SINGH: But you said you felt the hardening of the attitude during that time? DUTT: Yes, absolutely. It started in 1956 and on, and in early 1958 it was almost clear that the Chinese had hardened their stance. Not only Indians,

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but Russians also, felt the changing Chinese attitude. We came back in 1958. At that time the [Indian] School of International Studies had been established, and I was taken there. SINGH: Indian School of International Studies? DUTT: Yes. The Indian School of International Studies was started by the Council of World Affairs. I became a lecturer, reader, and professor at the Indian School of International Studies before I went to Delhi University. SINGH: So when you came back, at that time China was really prominent in the Indian consciousness…in 1958 and on? DUTT: Yes, it was also a period of changeover from the sense of Asianness to a feeling of betrayal. SINGH: So were you in great demand because you spent three years in China and knew the Chinese language? DUTT: Well, that’s true. But even after the 1962 border dispute came into the picture, many people were not really interested in China studies. And even the UGC didn’t show any great interest in China studies. I was a lecturer, and I applied for a fellowship. The UGC questioned my need for a fellowship for Chinese studies. SINGH: But sir, I read that Jawaharlal Nehru was very much concerned that India did not have China studies and language experts. DUTT: Of course, but these decisions were not made by Nehru. They were made by bureaucrats. So they questioned why we needed fellowships on China studies. But, what happened was that Professor John K. Fairbank had come to India, and he met me. Probably he was impressed by my knowledge of the Chinese language and my interest in China studies. So he invited both of us to come to Harvard as fellows. We went to Harvard before 1961, and then came the Chinese attack. We were at Harvard when the war broke out, and then this interest emerged. Dr. Appadorai sent a telegram stating that the UGC had sanctioned five fellowships. I wrote

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back saying that China studies is not a magic mantra that, within a month or two, we can produce five specialists. It takes a long time; in fact it’s a whole lifetime of study. Anyway, I benefited a great deal by staying at Harvard. I read a lot and continued to work on the 1911 revolution. I had already submitted my thesis here on the 1911 revolution at ISIS (Indian School of International Studies). It was sent to Delhi University, since I was affiliated with Delhi University. My viva-voce was held in the United States, since I was in the United States. As far as I know, two of the three examiners were American scholars. So Norman Powell took my viva, and I got my degree when I was at Harvard. SINGH: That’s interesting that Delhi University could do that. They held your viva far way in the USA. DUTT: In any case, it was mandatory that two of the external examiners were foreigners. That is no longer the case, Later on I learnt that Lattimore was one of the examiners, and Norman Powell was another examiner. I met Lattimore there, but he never mentioned to me that he was one of the examiners for the interview. In that way, I must say that they had maintained their levels of professionalism. SINGH: But still I wonder, you had spent time at Stanford, Beijing, and Harvard, and still the government of India did not contact you? DUTT: Well, at that time the government of India did not contact me, but when I came back to India and started working on Chinese foreign policy, the first invitation was by All India Radio to give a talk at least five times a week on China. And that’s how I came to be widely known. SINGH: That was to raise the overall consciousness about China? DUTT: Yes, it was about China. However, the general feeling was very hostile. They used to have a program called “Dragon.” But then I got the title changed to “China Today” and also changed the content of the program. Even if we were critical about many issues, I tried to do an objective analysis.

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SINGH: At least it was not rhetorical. DUTT: Yes, it was more about understanding China rather than just cursing them. SINGH: And it was five times a week. DUTT: About four to five times a week for five minutes on China. I had met Panditji [Nehru] after I came back from China with the delegation. Panditji held a reception for all members of the delegation. After I came back from the United States, I was actually taken to Panditji by my father, who was also a freedom fighter and a minister from East Punjab in the congress government. SINGH: This was after you came back from Harvard? DUTT: No. This was after I came back from Stanford. I was taken to Panditji (Nehru) because my father was very keen on me joining the foreign service, and I was equally uninterested in joining government service. I was taken to Panditji, and he advised me to take the foreign service examination. But at the same time, the Indian Council of World Affairs had advertised a post for research associates, and I joined there. SINGH: Paranjape was also there, or did he come later? DUTT: Well, Paranjape was not there. I came to know about Paranjape later. He had finished his three years of language training there, and he came back to India. I was introduced to him through my friends, and that’s how we became friends. SINGH: So when you were at Harvard, was there a consciousness among the local Indians to learn more about China from you? DUTT: I did not know many local Indians there. But suddenly, after the attack, there was a great demand for China experts. I was asked to appear on many television shows on China in the United States.

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SINGH: In the United States, was the Indian China expert a rare commodity? DUTT: Yes, and I was asked to appear on many television shows in the United States. After we came back from the United States, I started working on Communist China. I was working on Chinese foreign policy, and my wife was working on communes. Of course, we were studying various other political developments as well. I was particularly interested in the Communist movement. SINGH: At Stanford, you said you took a course on China; who taught you there? DUTT: Yes, in the second year one had to study a second region, so I took China. Professor Mary C. Wright was an expert on China at Stanford. She conducted the seminar. She and her husband were well-known experts in China studies, and especially on Chinese history. SINGH: So would you like to say that she is in some way responsible for your tilt towards China studies? DUTT: Not really. She was not my guide. In fact there was no guide. This was an MA program, but not a PhD. She conducted this seminar. Moreover, I was impressed by the rigorous nature of her scholarship. She pointed out many mistakes in my presentation. SINGH: So do you know anyone from that group who subsequently emerged as a China scholar? DUTT: Yes, one of them became a director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Hong Kong University. There was another, very senior scholar who became a vice chancellor of the Chinese University in Hong Kong. His name was Li Zhaoming. Since these people were doing so much work to maintain that intellectual rigor, not making statements that had no factual base or without doing any reading. But when you live in China for three years, you certainly get an understanding that you would not have gotten simply by reading literature. I realize that you also know that, since

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you also lived there for some period. So you know how the Chinese feel, which you would not have known just by reading. When I came back to India, I somehow sensed the imminent hardship in India-China relations. So when I came back, I told these things to many people whom I met. I did not meet with higher government officials, but I conveyed this to many people. SINGH: So you had already sensed that… DUTT: That China was certainly going in a different direction, and that we were going to have trouble with China. SINGH: So, other than your discussions on All India Radio, did you feel that the overall Indian policy circles were not looking at China the way they should have looked at it? DUTT: Well, India had adopted a very hostile attitude towards China. They had almost reacted with a feeling of retaliation to the Chinese moves. But gradually, I think that changed. I got a strong feeling that Mao had a different reading of the world situation altogether at that time; I wrote about it. I felt that the domestic developments within China were certainly impinging on Mao’s outlook on the world. I mentioned it in the first book that I wrote on Chinese foreign policy. At that time, the link between domestic and foreign policy was not really acknowledged. I sensed it because I lived there. I wrote about it. I gave a copy of my book to a renowned China studies expert at Columbia University, who had written several books on China. He liked my book. He wrote me a letter of high appreciation. However, he doubted the linkage that I was making between domestic developments and foreign policy, which Americans subsequently started believing in. But I had lived in China; so I wrote about it. SINGH: And was this the linkage that made Chinese foreign policy harder and far more radical in its nature?

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DUTT: Yes, radical because of the domestic developments within China. Mao hardened his stance towards internal dissidents in court and towards many external countries, interestingly except for Pakistan and somewhat North Korea. SINGH: Those are interesting exceptions, and what were the reasons for Mao to make such exceptions? DUTT: Of course, you know, Mao was a great leader and was well versed in the classical balance of politics. SINGH: Pakistan was an Islamic country, very different from Communist China, so why was such an exception made? DUTT: Even during the Cultural Revolution, there was never any demonstration against Pakistan. There was some opposition to the North Korean regime, but never against Pakistan. SINGH: We keep debating this relationship between China and Pakistan, so what could explain that? DUTT: I also wrote about it, that in the future, apart from border problems, the major issue in India and China would be the relationship with Pakistan. SINGH: You had written this before the war? DUTT: No, this book came after the war. But I wrote that, and not many people accepted that Pakistan was going to be a major problem between India and China. I was a member of the Indo-Soviet dialogue for a number of years; Primakov was from the other side, the leader of the Soviet delegation, and Kaul was from our side. During that dialogue, I mentioned this. And in the next dialogue, I reminded Primakov. Later, even Russians accepted that Pakistan was a trouble spot. They tried to soften it by developing their relationship with Pakistan. But when they saw the reaction in India, they dropped it. But it was a second major problem between India and China.

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SINGH: It’s interesting that you felt it much earlier than it became public after the war. Was there any teacher or friend who influenced you in China and remained on your mind for a long time? DUTT: At that time it was not easy for the Chinese to speak frankly to foreigners. Even our friends feared to express any opinion that was different from the party’s opinion. Nevertheless, we could sense the disappointment from their expressions and gestures. But one gentleman, who lived in India for some time and was staying near Peking University, helped me in reading the 1911 revolution documents; half of them were in classical Chinese. He was very friendly to India. But they had this problem that they all were subsequently declared as rightists. For instance, when we were at Peking University one of my friends told me that, after the Bandung Conference, Zhou Enlai came and gave a report to the students at Peking University in which he told them that the Pakistani prime minister and the Sri Lankan prime minister (who were taking a very hard antiCommunist stand) had during their meeting with Zhou Enlai told him not to take their stance very seriously; in fact, they were really against Nehru. That’s the first time the Chinese thought of the possibility of these relations. Then the Chinese started having independent relations with Pakistan and Sri Lanka. SINGH: But even in a radical place like Beijing, the Beida (Peking University) was a more forward-looking and inquisitive place than most in China. But, as you are saying, people there were also fearful of saying things openly. DUTT: Yes. SINGH: Do you remember any teacher taking a different stance openly? DUTT: Yes, but I had seen that even in the United States, when I was at Stanford during the McCarthy period. My friends were asked to stop subscribing to The Nation and The Republic. So they asked us to subscribe to them, and then they took them from us.

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SINGH: It is an interesting suggestion, that the US democracy would turn pro-administration and adhere to their opinion… DUTT: No, that is not the case truly. At the grassroots level, their democracy is very strong, and therefore these are aberrations and do get corrected. SINGH: But do universities often fall prey to such pressures? DUTT: Yes, but there were people who turned their backs to such a dictatorship, and Fairbank was one of them. McCarthy attacked him, and he simply turned his back on them, saying he did not care. Because nobody could remove him from his position, as he had a fixed tenure of appointment. But that cannot be done in China. SINGH: So who was your supervisor when you did your PhD here at Sapru House? DUTT: No one. Well, they were there for the name. But nobody was really there to supervise my PhD. At that time, it was mandatory to send your thesis abroad to foreign scholars for Viva. Two of the three examiners had to be foreigners. SINGH: So you do not remember any senior Indian scholar who influenced your thinking on China studies? DUTT: No, because there was no one. SINGH: So there was an absolute deficit of China scholars in India? DUTT: Yes. There were two scholars, and they were very good in the Chinese language, but not in China Studies. Paranjape was one. He was at the Indian Embassy in China, and another was Mr. Narayan Sen. They were good in the language, but they were not good in China studies. SINGH: Would you like to say something about your relationship with Professor Fairbank?

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DUTT: Fairbank was a China expert of international repute, and in a way the relationship had to be somewhat distant by the logistics of the situation. He had his fixed times during which no one could disturb him. He did not interfere in anyone’s work, but he used to influence others by his suggestions. One suggestion I did not accept, and subsequently regretted, was when he said, “I will give you a machine, and you dictate your experiences in China.” When I came back from China, he said, “I will you give you a Dictaphone. You just dictate your experiences.” I didn’t do it. I was busy working on China’s foreign policy at that time. SINGH: And then you came back, when there was a kind of taboo surrounding the 1962 war and India-China studies. DUTT: Yes, absolutely, for almost twenty years there was no contact between the two countries. Say from 1960 to 1980, there were no contacts. SINGH: I would like you to disprove the idea that, during this period, China studies was neglected in India. DUTT: Well, it was not neglected. Everyone was emphasizing the need to focus on China studies; but the point was that there was no contact. SINGH: But was it becoming a taboo subject in terms of fellowships, research opportunities, faculty positions, and other incentives? DUTT: No, I don’t think so, because the number of China scholars at that time was gradually picking up. Quite a few of them were at the [Indian] School of International Studies. But the problem was language. SINGH: Language was a problem, but patronization was not a problem? DUTT: There was no problem in taking China studies; no prejudices were there. The only problem was that there was no contact with the People’s Republic of China. So you had to go to Hong Kong, and that is not the best place to learn the Chinese language. But we did send people to Hong Kong, and later to the Chinese university. One gentleman was in Hong Kong for language. He was a Chinese, who subsequently went to the

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United States, and he was training Indian students at Hong Kong University in China studies. SINGH: You spent time in China, Paranjape spent time in China, you had your language and China studies training there, and then you came back. War took place, and suddenly there was taboo and no contact for twenty years. So, did this create any shift in China studies? DUTT: Well, yes. It had its effect. The scholars who took China studies at that time were not very well versed in the language. They were not deeply grounded in Chinese language, and they were working on the basis of translation services. They did their analysis from the translations SINGH: But some of them spent time in Hong Kong? DUTT: Yes, but there were not many people who knew the language. SINGH: Even today the same situation persists. DUTT: Well, the number is definitely increasing today. But the problem is that those who are good in the language are not very well versed in their discipline. They don’t know perhaps how to combine the two, language and studies. That is unlike in the United States, where there is a kind of fair synergy between discipline and language. There are many China studies scholars who know the language very well. We still don’t have that. SINGH: How do you gauge Nehru and the impact of his policies on the war? DUTT: Well, I read so many things, and mostly he was correct in his approaches, except in two things. His first error was his idea that China expanded whenever there was a strong government. Nehru was a historian and, you see, historically every empire expanded whenever it was strong. It was not just China’s case. And his second real mistake came from his reading that China would not attack India. SINGH: Was that Zhou Enlai’s charm that he believed in?

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DUTT: He perhaps misread the world situation and felt that, if China attacked India, there would be a world war. He felt that China knew it well and so would not attack. SINGH: That’s a very important interpretation that you are making, that Nehru felt if China attacked India, it could turn into a world war. Therefore, he felt China would not attack. I must say that this is first time someone has made such a suggestion. DUTT: That, I think, was a very major mistake. We did not understand the limited objective of China. And what Deng Xiaoping said later was that China wanted to teach India a lesson. SINGH: So there was a wrong calculation on the part of Nehru. DUTT: Yes, Nehru calculated it incorrectly. Otherwise, he was right in many cases. He had no illusions that China and India are Bhai Bhai (brothers). In fact he knew very well that there could be conflict between India and China and actually wanted to avoid it. He was sure that India could either develop economically or develop its military prowess. SINGH: Sir, you were reading the situation on a day-to-day and hour-byhour basis at that time, since you were an emerging China scholar. A lot of people had this idea that Zhou Enlai had outsmarted Nehru. DUTT: Well, Zhou Enlai didn’t outsmart Nehru; I don’t think that’s true. As I said, Nehru’s miscalculation impacted the India-China conflict. He was well aware that the long-term impact of this conflict was going to be bad for the overall future of Asia—the conflict could turn into a World War, and therefore China would not attack India, I think that was incorrect. So I don’t think he was outsmarted. But the problem was somewhere else. In fact, the Chinese resented what they thought was India’s patronizing attitude, because Nehru introduced Zhou Enlai to the Bandung community. I don’t think Nehru had any idea of patronizing Zhou Enlai, but there was a feeling of resentment. They felt that, both as a civilization and as a revolutionary country, they were above India.

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SINGH: Another important interpretation we hear of that time is that Zhou Enlai was not fully in [tune with] Mao’s mind. He was gradually pursuing rapprochement and friendship with Nehru, but it was Mao who was thinking otherwise. DUTT: Also there were others in the standing committee of the politburo who wanted to take such a hard line. That Zhou Enlai may not have wanted to take such a hard line is possible, but I am not sure about it, because Zhou Enlai resented what he thought was Nehru’s patronizing attitude. I don’t know, but maybe some Chinese scholar had sold him the line that Nehru wanted to establish a Brahminic empire in Asia. SINGH: Yes, but Nehru did talk of Asia. DUTT: Nehru did talk about the future of Asia in great detail, but he never wanted to establish a Brahminical empire in Asia. That’s silly. But someone had sold this idea to Zhou Enlai, and Zhou Enlai mentioned it a number of times. And whatever role Mao might have played at that time, it was Mao who decided that they should moderate their struggle with India. In 1969–1970, there was no ambassador to China from India. So, in a conference, Mao himself called a counselor general to the podium. This was very unusual, for a head of state to call a counselor and state that India and China should be friends. But then came the Bangladesh war, and there was again a setback. There was also a great deal of nervousness in the foreign ministry as to how to respond to it. SINGH: As a scholar, you were conscious of the reading of the linkage between domestic politics and foreign policy. Would you further narrow it down to regime politics? Was it possible that Mao’s declining popularity had some link with the Chinese attack on India? DUTT: I don’t think so. Mao is as popular today as he was earlier. SINGH: Many people were talking about the reassessment of Mao’s era.

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DUTT: I don’t think so. Mao is popular even today. He was an icon to the Chinese population. But yes, there was a power struggle. Within the Communist Party, there was a vicious power struggle. SINGH: Would that have something to do with the radicalization of foreign policy towards the rest of the world? DUTT: Yes. This had a considerable impact on Mao’s foreign policy, and he was simultaneously hitting at his domestic critics also. But as far as the people are concerned, there was no reduction in his popularity. There is no doubt that he made many blunders, and he was very brutal too. SINGH: So, when did you begin your teaching? DUTT: I started teaching after I came back from China, when I joined the Indian School of International Studies. Of course, we only had PhD scholars. We did not have an undergraduate program. Professor B. R. Rama was the vice chancellor, and he had known me as a young scholar. One day I got a call from him, saying, “V. P., you have to teach an MA evening class on the history of the Far East, such as China and Japan.” I could not say no to him, although I was working on my book. SINGH: This was at Delhi University, in the Department of History? DUTT: Yes, so I started teaching history at Delhi University for an MA class. That was my first teaching; otherwise we had mostly PhD students. SINGH: So did you formulate a course of your own at that time? DUTT: I changed it within the parameters that were there. The real change I made was in the teaching of modern Chinese history, when I joined Delhi University as a professor. SINGH: But after joining, what kind of changes did you make in the course? DUTT: Well, you see, I added social content, regarding Chinese society, the Chinese value system, traditional Chinese values, historical Chinese

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values, Confucian values, their impact on China, and the struggle and social changes that were taking place. I gave a new interpretation to the 1911 revolution. I explained why it was a failure, but also mentioned why it was a revolution, what the place was of the traditional peasantry class in traditional Chinese society, and what the place was of the emperor in traditional Chinese society. SINGH: That was possibly the first course on the Far East, China, and Japan at Delhi University. DUTT: Well, the course was already there for the MA program. But I gave it new content; because they were teaching what they had studied in the UK or somewhere else. Since I studied in China, I could change it. Subsequently, this course was known as “China in Revolution.” SINGH: Did you change the title? DUTT: Yes. It covered between 1900 and 1949, which is a very long period. I think it’s still called China in Revolution, including the Boxer rebellion and a whole succession of events, studied sequentially—the Boxer rebellion and the Sino-Japanese war, from there to 1949. SINGH: This was a very interesting title, China in Revolution. And what kind of new resources have you introduced for this course? DUTT: Well, not any specific resources, but I procured new books for references and studies. There were a few new books written on the 1911 revolution, so I got them for students. Mary C. Wright had organized a conference on the 1911 revolution, to which I was invited. The papers that were presented at this conference were eventually published. There were also a few new books on the May 4th revolution, which I procured. Then the Communist movement began. Earlier, no one had talked about the Communist movement. A number of books were written on the revolution, including documentaries on the history of Communist Chinese movements. These began to be used. Subsequently, the course became compulsory at both the BA and MA levels.

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SINGH: Were there any parallel China studies programs evolving in India at that time, and did you have any links with them? DUTT: No. What happened was there was a bifurcation, and I went with Delhi University. I was already a professor at the Indian School of International Studies. Then Dr. Deshmukh sent me a message through Dr. V. N. Ganguli, pro-vice-chancellor of Delhi University, that my place was there, and I must go there. So after thinking about it and discussing it with my wife, I went there. So there was a bifurcation of China studies between Delhi University and JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi). Unfortunately, at that time there was no real cooperation or coordination of any sort between the two institutions. Now the situation has changed. But for so many years I had made suggestions to the UGC about developing coordination between the two institutes, so that there would be no duplication of work, since our resources are scarce. But they said there was no question of duplication. They wanted to establish China studies at Punjab University, Chandigarh University, Visva Bharati, and Jadavpur University. I asked them, “Where is the language teacher?” But they said they would start it even with one language teacher. SINGH: Sir, let’s begin the second session of our conversation. DUTT: One thing that I mentioned in the last session was that I had found a link between domestic and foreign policy and the subsequent hardening of the foreign policy stance from 1958 on. I mentioned this to a very senior professor from the United States, Professor Doak Barnett. I met him in Hong Kong and gave him a copy of my book. He wrote me a handwritten letter saying that he appreciated my book. But somehow, he wondered about this link that I had made. Well, you had to live there to discover that link at that time. Nowadays, of course, everyone is linking domestic developments and the foreign policy of China, as well as other countries. But at that time, one had to live there to get a sense of the domestic developments and their impact on foreign policy.

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SINGH: As we discussed; you were mostly away during the war, then there was some interest in the US that you noticed, and then you came back. How far did the government of India show interest in China studies? DUTT: As I told you, when the war took place, I was at Harvard, and I got a telegram from Dr. Appadorai saying that the UGC had sanctioned five fellowships for China studies. So I wrote to him saying that it was a lifetime investment, one cannot expect people to be groomed in five or six months. However, that was a beginning for China studies in this country. SINGH: So, who were these first five people inducted under these fellowships? DUTT: We did not fill them immediately. For quite a long time, it was only two of us, my wife and me. What we used to do was to take the students who might get trained in China studies and then subsequently place them in posts at the school. That’s how [G. P.] Deshpande was taken. But the problem was the language; there was no contact with Beijing, so there were no opportunities for students to go to China and study the language there. So people were sent to Hong Kong. Now Hong Kong was all right as far as the teaching was concerned, but that’s not the place to pick up Mandarin. SINGH: At this stage, the government had also started sending its officials to Hong Kong? DUTT: Yes, at this stage, the government of India was also sending its officials to Hong Kong to study the Chinese language. [C. V.] Ranganathan was one of the earliest to be sent to Hong Kong for language training, and he picked up the language very well. Then, after 1980, the link with China was established, and people started going to China for language training. A number of people went; Anil Wadhva, Neelam Sabharwal, Rangachari, and others picked up Chinese very well and, more recently, Shiv Shankar Menon. SINGH: When did you go back to China?

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DUTT: Oh, it was after a long time. After 1959, I couldn’t go to China again until 1981. SINGH: In the 1980s, was China still more or less a revolutionary state? DUTT: Well, yes, but a lot of change had taken place. G. Parthasarthy was advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and he was also chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). He led the delegation of ICSSR to China, but he selected fairly high-level people like Dr. Gopal, Yoginder Alag, Dr. P. C. Joshi—not the Communists, but other academics. We all went to China and had a meeting with Deng Xiaoping, and that was the renewal of contact with China after a long time. SINGH: K. R. Narayanan had gone as an ambassador before that? DUTT: Yes, that was in 1976, but relations were still somewhat stressful. The Chinese themselves realized that they should do something to improve relations with India, so Huang Hua came here in 1980. That was the first important meeting. I remember I met Mrs. Gandhi at that time, before Huang Hua came, and she made a very perceptive remark about the Indian position. She said, “We cannot take a position that we stand here, or we shall stand here for all the time to come.” So my suggestion to her was to try to build a consensus within the country, as there was no consensus at all. She said, “If you move, and whenever you move, to settle with the Chinese, there is no consensus within the country.” I said there is no consensus in India either. However, I said it would be useful to build the relations. She wanted to move forward. SINGH: But there was also the movement before 1979, when Foreign Minister Vajpayee went to China? DUTT: Yes, Foreign Minister Vajpayee went to China, and I was a member of the [parliament’s] Consultative Committee on Foreign Affairs at the time. But at that time, virtually everyone advised him not to go, because it was clear that there would be an atmosphere of conflict over Vietnam. So, all of us said no to him, except two people who supported

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his visit. The rest of us said this was not the time. But still he went ahead, and then came an attack while he was there, and he had to come back. SINGH: So what kind of personal vision did he have at that time? DUTT: Well, [Foreign Secretary] Jagat Mehta was very keen that Vajpayee should visit China. But the problem was the rising tension between China and Vietnam, and it was clear that something would happen. But he had to return from there. Anyway, that was one effort made at that time. But the real movement started taking place only after Huang Hua came to India. He came in 1980, and then in 1981 this delegation went from India. So, the real movement started after China sent Huang Hua to India. SINGH: How would you describe that meeting with Deng Xiaoping? DUTT: It was good. Deng Xiaoping said, “Border issues are complicated issues, and they will take their own time. Let’s build up the trust; once you have built up the trust, these issues automatically get settled.” We were not very clear at that time, except we wanted the border problem to be settled first. Subsequently, when Rajiv Gandhi went there, he had almost accepted this. SINGH: There was an All India Congress Committee resolution also, DUTT: Yes, and Rajiv Gandhi’s long handshake with Deng Xiaoping was an indication that the Cold War had ended. SINGH: So, what was your reading of that famous Rajiv Gandhi visit? DUTT: It seemed to change a lot between India and China. For the first time, the Chinese mulled over faster improvement of relations with India and acknowledged it as a path-breaking visit in bilateral relations. SINGH: Let’s now shift to your writing of books and several articles. Would you like to highlight some of them? In a sense, they contributed as watershed points to the understanding of China in this country, like

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the one in which you mentioned the link between domestic politics and foreign policy. DUTT: I would like to make three points. First, we should make a balanced study of China, whatever our viewpoint may be. There is no need to be taken in just by the goodwill. We should have a balanced study of what exactly the Chinese motives are. I had written about it; it was a major mistake on our part to think that the Chinese wanted to come down the hills. Their objective was very limited, and that was to humiliate us. My second point is, apart from the border, their relationship with Pakistan and the lack of understanding, on the part of Indians and the entire world, of the depth of this relationship. As a threat point; I remember, I wrote a letter on 1st January 1969 to Mrs. Indira Gandhi, and I didn’t actually know her, that the USA and China would soon make up the deficit in their relationship, and India had to be prepared for such an eventuality and should anticipate the implications of such a possibility. She wrote back immediately and said she found it very interesting, and she was going to watch that carefully. My third point was that a major problem for China was going to be the Soviet Union in the future. So these are things I can recall now. SINGH: Would you like to tell us about the students you have trained? DUTT: Well, three of my students are in government service: Shiv Shankar Menon, [T. C. A.] Rangachari, Anil Wadhva, and Neelam Sabarwal—four, actually. SINGH: Shiv Shankar Menon is the former foreign secretary of India. DUTT: In fact, I tried to retain him when he was in the US and offered him various positions, but finally he made up his mind to join the foreign service. SINGH: Did these students retain contact with you after joining their services?

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DUTT: Yes, I would say that all of them have maintained contact with me. And others are also in touch with me; I may not be able to recall all of them. SINGH: But how was this association with other universities? We were discussing that China studies were going beyond ISIS and Delhi University. DUTT: We discussed this with the UGC in many of our conferences. The problem was we had no formal link with foreign universities. And Jagat Mehta’s view was that those who are inside the government are better than those who are outside the government. The UGC was planning to establish various centers for China studies all over the country, and my suggestion to them was that they should first of all strengthen the JNU and Delhi University departments. My advice was not to disperse the resources, as with limited resources they would not get a single China studies center in this country. What they did was give one language teacher to Chandigarh University and another to Calcutta University. At Visva Bharati, it was good; however, their focus was on ancient Chinese culture. Tan Yunshan was a great figure. He was, in fact, one of the earliest who promoted IndiaChina cultural relations. So, these are the problems when you deal with bureaucracy. SINGH: I think the sense is often there that bureaucrats think they know it all. DUTT: And, in fact, it took lot of time to establish a cooperative relationship with JNU. SINGH: So even the inter-university cooperation was not forthcoming? DUTT: It wasn’t there really. SINGH: But were these institutions in some way and at some time advising many senior leaders? For example, you were a part of the Consultative Committee. So, did it ever happen at the institutional level?

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DUTT: No, perhaps never. It was more of an informal nature and limited to an individual level. Bureaucracy used to maintain contact with scholars, irrespective of their foundational links. For instance, an incident had taken place in China, about which our foreign minister had to brief the house. When he was questioned about the sources of information, he said he was in touch with academics and scholars; he also mentioned my name, which was not true at all. But at the personal level, yes, they contacted us. T. N. Kaul had very good contacts with me, but these were all very informal, and there were no institutional contacts. SINGH: This is true even today, that only individuals are encouraged, and therefore no institutional inputs are received. DUTT: When Rajiv Gandhi was going to China, Narasimha Rao was foreign minister. He called me, and we had a long discussion. But that’s all, and these were all very informal. SINGH: But did you feel the fervor now that congress was willing to change vis-a-vis China? Was there a sense of China policy changing with Rajiv Gandhi’s visit? DUTT: China policy did change with Rajiv Gandhi’s visit. That’s true, but that did not result in any different relationship with academics, except at the personal level. Yes, some of us were frequently called. In fact, I. K. Gujral made good use of academics. When he was going to the USA to meet Clinton, he called many of us to discuss what we thought he should discuss in the US. Finally, he alone decided what he would discuss, but he wanted to know our views. When the Chinese foreign minister was on his India visit, a number of us were consulted. When the Chinese president was coming, we were again invited for a meeting. But these were all noninstitutional dialogues. SINGH: And this changed from foreign minister to foreign minister; some of them were very academically inclined, while others did not consult academics.

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DUTT: Yes, that’s true. I don’t remember Mr. Vajpayee calling us. That could be because of political reasons. Maybe he discussed things with other people, I don’t know. SINGH: But did China studies change over a period of time? Is there any sense of the ’50s, ’60s, or ’70s? DUTT: Yes, certainly there is far greater interest in China studies. The problem was and still is the language. Many of our good scholars on China are not really very well versed in China studies. I mean, they are not very comfortable with the language. That’s where our weakness lies. In comparison with us, people from the USA, UK, and other European countries know the language very well. It’s not like that there are no experts here. Some of them are really good. But then the problem is that those who are good in the language are not really good in studies, and those who are good in studies are not well grounded in the language. SINGH: But was this a problem that remained throughout? DUTT: Yes, it remained throughout. I think one reason was that there was a complete breaking of links with China between 1959 and 1979—no relationship at all. I think that made things quite difficult for China studies here. SINGH: So can we say that, thereby, Chinese studies remained at the periphery of interest in India? DUTT: Not now but, yes, it definitely was the situation at that time. SINGH: Was there a complete lack of skills and focus on China studies? DUTT: Well, when I joined Delhi University, the university had already sent five or six people to China on a Ford Foundation fellowship. Some of them had some knowledge of the Chinese language, not too bad. [Giri] Deshingkar was there, and Mohanty also went. I think [Manoranjan] Mohanty picked up language subsequently, because he was going to China very often. Mira [Sinha-Bhattcharya] also went; I am not sure whether she

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picked up the language well, but she had good contacts in China. Earlier, she was a second secretary in China. SINGH: It’s true that there was no contact for a long time, but was there neglect on the part of the government in patronizing or promoting China studies? DUTT: No, the government was promoting people, and some of them had a good understating of the Chinese language. SINGH: Or is there a general malice toward higher education? DUTT: I think that general malice is also there. But you see, the larger problem was of motivations and incentives. For a long time, area studies were peripheral, so why should one spend so much time in learning skills? At Delhi University, the UGC had sanctioned a number of fellowships. We advertised them; quite a few female students came, and when we told them they had to spend three to four years in learning the language, all of them walked out. SINGH: It’s also a difficult language to learn. DUTT: It is a difficult language, because it involves lot of memory work. SINGH: But minus the language skills, what are the other major problems you would pinpoint in China studies in India? DUTT: Our study of the Chinese economy has been very poor. For years, it was impossible to attract anybody who was good in the economics discipline to study language and become an expert on the Chinese economy. Perhaps that’s true even now. There are a couple of Indians who are abroad and working on the Chinese economy, but we still don’t have anybody here who is really working on the Chinese economy. SINGH: But at the same time, we consider China one of our very important neighbors.

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DUTT: This is the problem, you see; anybody who is really good in economics would rather work on Indian economics. He has the opportunity, and he has an incentive. So this is the problem. SINGH: But is the Chinese economy of high interest to Indian analysis now? DUTT: Very few people are working on Chinese philosophy, either. People are working on Chinese history, especially modern history. But there are very few working on ancient history; even Santiniketan doesn’t have an expert on ancient Chinese history. We now have a good number of people working on Chinese politics and foreign policy, but still no one on ancient Chinese history and civilization. SINGH: Do you think that China’s rise will help, since they are now opening new institutions? DUTT: The problem is you see that it is a lifetime investment, and I am not sure how many people would do that. There are students who are coming for the language now because of the requirements of the business sector. So you can clearly see the language programs of DU and JNU are flooded with students’ applications for the undergraduate courses. But at the MPhil and PhD levels, there are not too many. SINGH: But now I am seeing China is opening up these Confucius study centers all over the world. DUTT: Yes, they will eventually pick up. SINGH: So is it related to the rise of China in some way? DUTT: Possibly. Earlier, there were very few job opportunities, and people didn’t find China studies very profitable. But now, as the Chinese economic relationship with the US, India, and Japan is growing, there is a demand for people who know the language. So language is the field that will see the most impact. SINGH: Maybe because of business opportunities?

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DUTT: Yes, right, because there are opportunities; even the interpreters are doing well. They are paid very handsomely to interpret, even for one day. SINGH: So what do you think can be done? What kind of incentives should there be to motivate students to take up China studies rather than taking up interpretation? DUTT: I think it would be better if we start emphasizing language at the school and college levels. I think a beginning has been made in that direction by colleges and departments at Delhi University. At the college level, you have an option for language training, like French, German, and Chinese; then by the time you complete your graduation, you already have some language training. So having done the language at the school and college levels helps them to take up the studies, and they already have a foundation in the language. SINGH: What else is wrong with China studies today, other than language? I am trying to find out what the basic flaws of China studies are. DUTT: You know, a lot of people feel that there is greater scope in other areas, such as business management, so you find interests declining even in the sciences and students preferring commerce, economics, and business management to science and humanities. There is a shift within the social sciences, and also from the physical sciences. Science streams like physics, chemistry, and biology are no longer attractive to people. So there is a drop in admissions now. This may be a transition phase that we are going through. SINGH: But when you look back on your fifty years, what do you feel was your contribution? This is your own assessment of yourself. DUTT: Well, I am sorry, but that’s a very difficult question you are asking. That is for others to say. SINGH: I must say, sir, it’s been a pleasure to speak to you.

Reena Ganguly Interviewer: Dr. Avijit Banerjee Professor Reena Ganguly is professor of Chinese and a China scholar. She has been engaged for about thirty years in teaching at Visva Bharati University and is an expert on China studies. BANERJEE: I am Avijit Banerjee, and I am extremely delighted and honored to be talking to you. Today we will be talking about your contributions, experience, and exposures to China studies. Normally we begin with the first question of, during your childhood or adulthood, when did you first come across China? GANGULY: The period in which I grew up in India was the under the British rule. I remember clearly the Independence Day. I was ten years old at that time. I remember clearly the days of foreign rule and the domination of European culture, especially on the middle class. My family was one of university teachers and doctors. The education system was westernized. Both at home and in school, we were exposed to many ideas, many cultures, and many kinds of information. One subject that we were taught in school was world history, which many schools presently ignore. We were taught world geography as well. So at that time we were introduced to China and Chinese culture and history. BANERJEE: So was it mainly at the school level? GANGULY: Not just there, but at home also. My father was a university professor, and his specialization was international relations and political philosophy. In those days, students often used to visit teachers and professors, and I used to listen to my father talking to his students. That was when nationalism was beginning to rise in various colonies of European imperialist nations. My father was a part of the freedom movement. He

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started his revolutionary activities by throwing bombs in the state of West Bengal. So we had to leave Bengal, and we landed in Indore, the Holkar state. We naturally became party to the nationalist movement in India. It was also to a certain extent related to Chinese nationalism. BANERJEE: Please tell us something about yourself. Where were you born? GANGULY: I was born in Indore, outside Bengal. My mother was not Bengali. My father was a university teacher, and I belong to the fourth generation of university teachers. We all inherited a British system of education. My grandfather was employed at Madras Christian College as a Sanskrit pandit. So academics have been an integral part of our family. BANERJEE: What about your brothers and sisters? GANGULY: Three of my sisters are in the academic world. One is an artist, and she is at Nehru Kala Bhavan, and my brother is a retired army officer. BANERJEE: Your schooling was in Indore? GANGULY: Yes. I did my schooling at a missionary school. BANERJEE: And college? GANGULY: I did my 11th and 12th at Indore Christian College, which was also a missionary college, and then I came to Santiniketan. The purpose of coming to Santiniketan was definitely to study China. It was like this: my father was a member of the pre-UGC (University Grant Commission) body of government of India, in which all the eminent professors from all over the country were invited to form the UGC. In Delhi, my father used to meet scholars like P. C. Bagchi and Promodchandra Sen, who was a professor of Bengali here, but he was trained in history and was a well-known historian of that period. Professor Bagchi was the vice chancellor of Visva Bharati, and he taught regular classes there. He suggested that my father admit me and one of my sisters to the

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Department of Indology. He guided my career in the beginning. But he passed away soon after we joined Visva Bharati. He advised my father to admit us for the part-time course at Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center). At that time there was only a part-time course at Cheena Bhavan, so he advised us to take the part-time course in combination with ancient Indian history and culture. I did my Master’s in ancient Indian history and culture, and also got a certificate and diploma in the Chinese language. BANERJEE: What year was that? GANGULY: I joined Visva Bharati as a BA student, passed my MA in 1955, and also got the certificate and diploma during that time. BANERJEE: So you learned Bengali after coming here? GANGULY: Yes. BANERJEE: Who taught Chinese then? GANGULY: Oh, these were great teachers! They were scholars of great depth. Dr. Wei Kueisun took our classes for the text he taught, and these classes were held in the evening between 5:00 and 7:00 pm. We had fulltime classes in Indology. At that time, the honors course had a compulsory allied subject. The system was followed because it was Dr. Bagchi’s vision that each honors course would have training in some specific discipline, so we were given a choice of Sanskrit with Indology in the Sanskrit department or Pali and Prakrit or Indian philosophy. So I took Indian philosophy, and I had three papers in Indian philosophy and eight papers on Indology itself. We were also allowed to take one subsidiary course that was offered then. So I took English literature. English literature had three papers and compulsory English, and Dr. Bagchi told me to take Hindi instead of alternative English. So the general subjects, subsidiary subjects, English literature, and the allied subject of Indian history; these three papers were taught in the morning, and all the honors courses were taught in the afternoon from 2:30 to 4:30 pm. In those days, life on campus was more like an Ashram, where people live simply, like devotees. Dr. Bagchi himself

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taught the course, and he taught the paper on India-China. From 5:00 to 7:00 pm we studied the Chinese language. BANERJEE: So Professor Bagchi was the vice chancellor, and he also used to teach classes? GANGULY: Yes, and we sat under the trees. There were two wings, which are still there. Those were the hostels for foreign students from Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand. They were related to Buddhist studies and they were monks. Cheena Bhavan itself housed the Tibetan department and the Japanese department. They were mostly research scholars. So Cheena Bhavan at that time was mainly the research center with part-time language learning courses. There were full-time senior research scholars, like Professor Aiyaaswami, Sujit Mukherjee, and others. They were fulltime research scholars, and their job was to study ancient Chinese and Indian texts. BANERJEE: Where did you stay during your studies at Visva Bharati? GANGULY: I stayed in the hostel. That was the only hostel at that time. BANERJEE: Would you like to tell us something about your family? When did you get married? GANGULY: I was married in 1964, and my husband was a reader in the department of philosophy here. He came here from Calcutta University. He joined the group of young scholars who were working under Professor Kalidas Bhattacharya. Professor Bhattacharya was brought into Visva Bharati as a leading scholar of philosophy, and at that time they formed Darshan Bhavan. It was a separate Bhavan where the scholars and retired servicemen were brought in to study various subjects. My husband’s specialization was in positivist’s logic. My husband passed away when he was only forty-four years old. So I had the responsibility of bringing up my daughters. I happily made a decision to stay at Cheena Bhavan. Although the department of Chinese was formed at JNU, and they invited me to join them as faculty, but of the two

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I preferred to say at Visva Bharati. My daughters were trained in music by Mohan Singh. They started learning music at the age of seven, and they appeared for examination in music in Lucknow and passed. They were fully trained in Indian classical music. It was made possible only because they learned from Rabindra Sangeet at Santiniketan. They also had the advantage of studying with Rabindranath Tagore and the ability to live the life Rabindranath wanted the young to lead. BANERJEE: In which stream did they graduate? GANGULY: After doing their BAs, they decided to learn about the outside world. So the elder one went to Calcutta University for her MA in economics, and the younger one went to Delhi for an MA in mass communication at Jamia Milia University. BANERJEE: So when did you join Cheena Bhavan as a teacher? GANGULY: I joined here as a research scholar after I returned from China in 1961. We were sent in a hurry because the war made it impossible for us to stay there. After I returned from China I joined Cheena Bhavan as a research scholar. I was doing research under Dr. Wei. BANERJEE: What was your research topic? GANGULY: I was working on India-China relations during the Tang Dynasty. After I joined Cheena Bhavan, I was reading and studying under Dr. Wei. I started writing later. Then I was offered a job in Chinese at Lucknow University. In those days, very few people knew Chinese and teachers were very few. So Professor Tan asked me to go and join there. BANERJEE: What year was that? GANGULY: It was in 1967. BANERJEE: So that was the beginning of your professional career?

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GANGULY: Yes. Before that I was doing research at Santiniketan. I was there from 1967 to 1969, and I was the only teacher there. They started teaching the Chinese language under the department of English. BANERJEE: Was it a full-time or part-time course? GANGULY: It was a part-time diploma course in the Chinese language, and most of my students were government servants, mostly police officers from the Indian Police Service. BANERJEE: Did you bring any course materials from China? GANGULY: I brought a few books from China, but mostly I used the books from here. At that time a photocopying facility was not available, so it was difficult. I had to write the notes by hand and cyclostyle them. So it was very difficult for us. BANERJEE: Then in 1969 you got an appointment at Cheena Bhavan? GANGULY: Yes. BANERJEE: So when you joined Cheena Bhavan, who were your colleagues? GANGULY: The head of the department was Professor K. V. Ramananan. Dr. Wei, who was my teacher earlier, was a reader then. Professor Tan had retired by then, but his family was very affectionate to us. His wife was like a Guruma (mother) to me. The system in Santiniketan was such that you are closely familiar with your teacher and knew his house well. Talking to Professor Tan’s wife, I could practice speaking the Chinese language. She taught us the basics of Chinese cooking. She used to chat with us while she was cooking in the kitchen, and her daughter-in-law, Huang Yi-shu “Boudi,” Tan Chung’s wife. At that time they were in Delhi. Tan happened to be my classmate here in Santiniketan. Tan Chung came over from China with his wife, and he joined the BA class here. I was in the honors group, but at that time Visva Bharati had a parallel pass course, and most of my friends were in pass courses. There were only three of

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us students in the honors course. One student from Sanskrit and I were the students of Chinese, which was done under Professor Bagchi’s vision to train the students in disciplines to carry out research in classical and modern Chinese and China-related subjects. BANERJEE: At that time did you have four colleagues, when you joined Cheena Bhavan? GANGULY: Dr. Biswadeb Mukherjee and I were selected at the same time. He was my teacher and was in the Indology department; he taught the paper on Indian religion. BANERJEE: So Professor Mukherjee taught in the department of Ancient History? GANGULY: Yes, he was actually a part of Dr. Bagchi’s entourage. Dr. Bagchi brought with him some scholars from Calcutta University; Kalidas Bhattacharya, Mr. Jagtap, Koi Lan Ska, and Viswanath Banerjee were all part of Dr. Bagchi’s group who were in China-related research. BANERJEE: So when you joined, was it a certificate and a diploma course at Cheena Bhavan? GANGULY: The purpose of our appointment was to start a full-time course and, when I joined, it had just started. But it was called a postgraduate diploma course. And after I joined, within one year, they started a BA (honors) in Chinese language and culture. And we encouraged our BA students to take the MA course. BANERJEE: So the BA course was four years? GANGULY: No, it was three years. BANERJEE: What was the main content of the course you were teaching? GANGULY: We started with a language course, and the aims and objectives of this course were shaped by the thinking of Professor Tan, Dr. Wei, and Dr. V. Ramanan. They wanted the students to be first trained in

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language and then in Chinese history, Chinese literature, Chinese philosophy, and sociology. So we had to teach the Chinese language in the first year, and also literature in the first year. So we did that by first teaching elementary Chinese with the edition available at that time. After they had few months of elementary Chinese study, there were a selection of eight essays in Chinese; and it was done by Professor Tan and Dr. Wei. Unfortunately our students at Cheena Bhavan right from the beginning were not counseled the way we were, how we were guided by Dr. Bagchi and Dr. Ramanan to select the subsidiary subjects that were related to Chinese studies. For example, none of my students took history or philosophy, but they could have taken even Sanskrit as a subsidiary subject, not to mention the part-time courses that were open and available to these students. They did not have the energy or enthusiasm to join them the way we did. Despite having the full-time honors course, we attended this parttime course except for Wednesdays. At a personal level, I tried to persuade students like Avijit Banerjee [interviewer] to take history and philosophy. I asked them not to opt for easy and scoring subjects, and those that were not related to Chinese. Had they been trained in history, philosophy, and Sanskrit, even in one of the literature courses, like Bengali, it would have helped them in a long and indirect manner. We even included English as a subsidiary course, and the three papers were very well organized and the teachers were excellent. With so many facilities available later our students were not guided properly; they were not counseled. I regret it even now that they had no background or training in political science, and they tried to write papers on politics within China. BANERJEE: What was the class schedule when you joined? GANGULY: Well, initially we followed the old routine. But very soon the afternoon session was dropped and only the morning and the evening parttime courses were held. Since I was the junior-most teacher in the center, I had to teach most of the classes, and I really enjoyed taking classes. It so happened that the students of the full-time course were not as enthusiastic as those in the part-time classes; I taught part-time courses. I had

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one student from the chemistry department in the part-time course. He was very enthusiastic and involved, and later on I understand that after he passed his chemistry and did research in chemistry, he wanted to go to China. There were German students who used to come for classes very regularly. So occasionally I had one or two students who enjoyed learning Chinese. BANERJEE: Did Professor Tan Yunshan come regularly to the department in those days? GANGULY: He had a seat at Cheena Bhavan and he used to come regularly. But he left Santiniketan very soon; he left for Gaya in 1973. BANERJEE: So why did he leave Santiniketan? GANGULY: Professor Tan had a vision of spreading knowledge. He was unique in one sense and not very unique in another sense, that the scholarship in those days meant this kind of life, this kind of ideology. My father, Professor Tan, and Dr. Bagchi all belonged to the same school of thought and believed that scholarship should be spread. Rabindranath wanted the Visva Bharati and its system of education to be spread not only in India but all over the world. So Professor Tan moved to Gaya with the intention of establishing a new institute there. First he made long trips to Southeast Asia to collect the money; he spent a lot of time there and a lot of time in planning, and his two sons were major contributors to his plan of building a Chinese temple in Bodhgaya. He was very meticulous, and he watched every brick being laid properly like he did at Cheena Bhavan. He also had the idea of opening up a research center there, and he imagined it to be the World Buddhist Organization. He had a grand vision in his mind. But his home was here and his wife, Mrs. Tan, stayed here. I personally used to visit her almost every day. She was like a mother to me. My parents had immigrated to North America. One of her children was with us here. So this kind of feeling, which Santiniketan had at that time; was that of people relating to people. I was very fortunate to have Professor Tan as my guru and Mrs. Tan as my Guruma.

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BANERJEE: At that time, had Delhi University opened the course in Chinese? GANGULY: Yes, Tan Chung had become a professor there. BANERJEE: JNU also started at the same time? GANGULY: No, JNU started in the 1970s, I think. It was started by Professor Harprasad Ray and Vimla Saran. I knew Vimla Saran from the days we met in Beijing. Her husband taught Hindi in Beijing. So we used to visit their home, and Vimlaji was a good friend; she had taken the course in Beijing. Vimlaji was appointed a teacher in JNU. She had a very good background in Chinese. On account of my personal life and my love for Santiniketan, I preferred Cheena Bhavan. BANERJEE: You are from the first group of students from India who went to China? GANGULY: No, not really. In fact I was from the last group. I went in 1959. But before me there was Narayan Sen, V. P. Dutt, and several other good scholars who visited China. BANERJEE: So was it in the government-to-government exchange program? GANGULY: Yes, but it was not the language training only. We had a class of students who already had some base in Chinese, as I had at Cheena Bhavan. We were asked to study literature. We had a paper in modern literature and another in classical Chinese, which were taught to us by Luo Bailin. He was a young scholar of depth. We were taught these courses in Beijing. In the afternoon, we were also taught optional courses, like the history of Kong Zi. There was no examination for these optional classes, but we had a great opportunity to learn the history of ancient China, the history of the Chinese Communist Party, on which contemporary studies ought to be based, as well as the history of modern China. BANERJEE: What kind of language courses did you do in Beijing?

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GANGULY: In the morning we were taught language and grammar. BANERJEE: So how was hostel life in China? GANGULY: It was great fun. They had a separate hostel for foreign students. They had three old buildings; Yi-Yuan, Er-Yuan, and San-Yuan. So, while we were there, we had to vacate them and move to new buildings, and these old buildings were converted into heritage buildings. I was in San-Yuan, and the classes were held in Er-Yuan. San-Yuan was for female students, and my roommate was an Indonesian student. BANERJEE: How many students went from India at that time? GANGULY: Five were selected, but one did not get a visa. So three men went, and I was the only woman. BANERJEE: So were you the only person from Santiniketan? GANGULY: No, there were other students from Kala Bhavan (school for visual arts). BANERJEE: So how was China at that time? GANGULY: China at that time was very tough. China was going through very difficult times. I won’t comment on its political situation, but it was going through the worst kind of drought in the North and floods in the South. Chinese people were going through very difficult times. But the Chinese authorities had ensured that the foreign students would not suffer. We were moved to Ashi Lou from Yuans; these buildings were called Lou’s. The Ashi Lou was for foreign students. The ground floor was for female students, while the first and second floors were for male students. All foreign students were placed in Ashi Lou, and we had a separate dining hall for Indians, separate for students from Iraqi and Persian students, and separate for Europeans. Vietnamese and Koreans also had their separate dining halls. The reason why the dining halls were separated was the food habits. So, in order to make us comfortable, they served us the food we were used to so that we would not fall ill and were able to spend the

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maximum time on our studies. Also, the Muslim students did eat beef but did not touch pork, and the Indians did not eat beef. So the separate dining halls were necessary. BANERJEE: And the Chinese did not eat with you? GANGULY: No. They did not eat with us. At that time, every foreign student had one Chinese as a language partner who took care of everything, including Chinese terms and other daily needs. So I used to talk to these Chinese friends. And I casually used to ask them, “What did you eat today?” They often carried their lunch or dinner with them, and I watched them eating. I would see them having a full bowl of rice with some vegetables on top of it. And the quality of their food shocked me. But we never witnessed any kind of protest for the poor quality of food. BANERJEE: There was no protest? GANGULY: No. On the contrary, I witnessed that Chinese people, and not just the authorities, made sure that foreigners did not realize the difficult times they were going through. We were served heaps of fruit, cakes, suan nai (yogurt). BANERJEE: So when you were there, the Youyi Shangdian (friendship store) was open? GANGULY: Yes. BANERJEE: So, was it that in the market you could not get the things you wanted in 1959? GANGULY: No, we could get anything we wanted. We often used to visit the Haidian in the village. I did lot of my shopping there, buying things like toothpaste to other things of daily needs, although there was a cooperative store on the campus. But I would like to walk down to Haidian and buy the things I want. Tailors and dry cleaners were there in that village. BANERJEE: Was there a crowd on the roads?

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GANGULY: No, there were only buses and rickshaws. It was great fun riding in rickshaws. BANERJEE: So you went in 1959, and why did you have to rush back? GANGULY: We were selected for the two-year course. After two years we could, if we wished, apply for and get an extension, which many scholars of the previous groups did and then spent three years. I remember Mr. Parthasarthi was the Indian ambassador then. I often went to the embassy, and they took care of all the students. If there was any party or function at the Indian Embassy, the whole Indian community was invited. So I wrote an application, and luckily one of my friends was going to Hong Kong. He carried the copy with him and posted it from Hong Kong, and it was sent to the government of India, Ministry of Education. I knew that I also needed permission from the embassy. I gave the original copy of the letter to the embassy. When I met Mr. Parthasarthi, he told me that I was not allowed to stay. It was 1961, and India and China were at war with each other. Actually, our group was selected for the year 1958, but since the Dalai Lama fled from Tibet and was given sanctuary in India, there were problems between the two countries, and it was delayed for one year. Then Mr. Parthasarthi found out about this letter I had sent directly. You know, I was advised by some people, so I sent it. It was in the same way as I had applied in 1956; my father got the application form, and Professor Sishir Ghosh filled it in for me. I just put my signatures, and I got the fellowship. This time also, I followed the same method under the guidance of the person who posted it. Mr. Parthasarthi was very angry with me for not seeking his permission. I was so foolish that I didn’t even try to explain the situation to him. BANERJEE: So in 1961 you came back? GANGULY: Yes. BANERJEE: So after returning, did you start your research?

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GANGULY: No, not immediately, because we had a tough time in China. As Indians, we were kind of segregated and very often excluded from the activities of foreign students. BANERJEE: Why? GANGULY: This was because of the anti-India feelings of the authorities. Chinese people were very nice to us, but we hardly had an opportunity to interact with them. Nevertheless, we did meet Chinese students, families, etc. We visited Professor Wu Xiaolin’s home and the home of Professor Luo Bailin, who was our teacher of classical Chinese. But the authorities were very hostile to us because of the Dalai Lama problem. They were also claiming Arunachal Pradesh (a state located in northeast India). When we went to China, we were sent by plane from Calcutta to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong the consulate people put us on the train that went to Beijing. At that time, the Chinese had propaganda going in the public address system, and we could make out, with whatever Chinese we could understand, that they were provoking the anti-India sentiment by announcing that India was trying to occupy Tibet and so on. So initially when we joined the university the Chinese were cool and correct, but as the war unfolded the coolness and correctness turned into hostility. When foreign students were taken for a tour to Southern China, Shanghai, and Nanjing, we were told by the embassy staff that all the other foreign students were the guests of the Chinese government, and only the Indian students had to pay for the whole tour. The embassy paid for us. On the way, we had a tough time. All the foreign students had fallen ill because of food poisoning, and we were not treated properly, so the simple stomach ache later turned into colitis. BANERJEE: During your first visit to China, you visited Shanghai and Nanjing. Where else did you go? GANGULY: Tongquan, Nanjing. We were not allowed to travel at all except on visits organized by the authorities.

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BANERJEE: This was barred only for Indian students? GANGULY: Mostly for all foreign students, but for Indian students, there were more restrictions and they were stricter. My fellow Indian male students had applied for a visit to Datong, but they were denied permission. BANERJEE: How were the places you visited, and Beijing especially? GANGULY: Beijing, being the capital, was beautified to impress the people of China like any other capital of any other country. We happened to reach Beijing in the last week of September and on 1st October was the 10th anniversary of their independence. This was celebrated as a “National Day,” so I was fortunate to see Mao Tse-tung at Tiananmen Square. We had met Zhou Enlai at Santiniketan twice, once in 1956. BANERJEE: At that time, were you studying in the Indology department? GANGULY: Since we were the students of Cheena Bhavan, we had access to him. My sister, along with Professor Tan’s daughters, right up to Uttarrayan (national holiday celebrating the sun moving to the north), went to where he was put up and spent hours with him. BANERJEE: So did he deliver a speech in Santiniketan? GANGULY: Yes. He was celebrated, and he was awarded Deshikottama (an honorary title) and congratulations. BANERJEE: So he must have had several interpreters with him. GANGULY: Yes, Marshal He Long was also there. He was an important member of the Che Fan Jun. We were talking about the 10th anniversary of the Chinese Independence. Mao Tse-tung, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and others were at Tiananmen. With them, I was also fortunate to see Ho Chi Minh and Khrushchev, and being foreigners we could see the celebration from quite near. BANERJEE: Was there any security problem at that time?

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GANGULY: No, the Chinese are smart people. When Zhou Enlai visited Beijing, we met him for the third time. We were again introduced to him, but I could not see any visible security personnel around him. Most of the leaders were required to live inside the Tiananmen Complex. We understood that, but no one else knew where they lived. And whenever they went out of their fortress, there was no security personnel around them, which I liked the most. BANERJEE: So when was the next time you visited China? GANGULY: I never visited China after that. I only visited Hong Kong after that. I was on my way to Vancouver. I took my sabbatical leave and went to South Columbia. BANERJEE: What other countries did you visit? GANGULY: When I was teaching at Santiniketan, I was offered a job at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, which is near Washington, DC, and is a full-fledged university now. It was meant for the children of American diplomats to be able to attend university. I taught there for two semesters. But I had to hurry back; otherwise I would have lost my job here at Cheena Bhavan. They offered me a long-term teaching assignment, since they had the contract service system. But I preferred to come back. At that time, not only the anti-Vietnam war sentiments were at a peak, but the woman’s liberation movement was in full force. I participated in their rallies and attended meetings and so on, but the most horrible was the atmosphere of drugs. Young people were involved in consuming drugs. Now it was so common and easy, and people took it so lightly. And there was complete breakdown of the institution of marriage. I did not want my daughters to be brought up in that atmosphere. So I came back to Santiniketan. I had also been to the University of British Columbia. I attended meetings there, met various scholars, and studied for a long time. I attended a conference in Cairo in 1965. It was a conference organized by the AfroAsian People’s Solidarity Organization. The theme was modern social systems. It was attended by many Asian scholars. I enjoyed that confer-

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ence very much. I conducted a study on traditional Indian and traditional Chinese society, on the kinds of values and philosophy that were common to them. Then I attended another conference in Colombo in 2002. At this conference, many scholars exchanged their views of other Asian countries, and many Europeans also participated in that. BANERJEE: So what kinds of scholars have you interacted with during your travel abroad? GANGULY: I met Professor Odomal in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia. He wrote a preface for Professor K. V. Ramananan’s book, Nagajurna. He was very old at that time, and it was good to interact with him. BANERJEE: Who were the Chinese scholars you met with? GANGULY: I met many Chinese scholars, and it would be difficult to recall all of them now. In India last year, ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Science Research) Delhi organized a conference to which many Chinese scholars were invited, and I was there. BANERJEE: You have written some papers also. What are the subjects on which you have written your papers or worked? GANGULY: I did not really use my training and opportunity to write down the knowledge I had acquired. I mostly wrote papers on the history of China before liberation. I had the opportunity to learn about the vast Chinese history. China is the oldest civilization, with a vast history in the world. At Cheena Bhavan, I taught modern Chinese thoughts and movements. I would like to tell you, I again registered myself under Dr. K. V. Ramananan. He belongs to the group of scholars who define the modern history of China as beginning from the Opium Wars. Recently I came across many scholars who define modern Chinese history as being from 1911 on or from 1947 on. But for me, that is contemporary. Modern China was born before the existence of Marxism. The idea of a society where certain classes were exploited was already discussed in

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19th-century China, as well as the need for construction of the nation and rectification and cleansing of society of the feudal practices and warlords, similar to what happened in Europe during the Renaissance movement. So the fight against these social evils began in the 19th century in China. The process began when the Chinese compared themselves to the Europeans to understand why they were not as powerful. Once upon a time, the Chinese were very powerful but were defeated in a small Opium War. So many scholars and thinkers investigated why a few gunships destroyed the massive Chinese forces during the Opium Wars. However, to my mind, the investigation remained incomplete. Many Chinese scholars completely ignored this investigation, and also the Indian scholars dealing with China. Most of our students from Cheena Bhavan are today going for translation. BANERJEE: Are you associated with any kind of China-related organizations? GANGULY: During your academic life, you are always connected with some of academic organizations, as long as you have the ability to study and research. You can write your own views and publish your research. We have here Albert’s Institute of Rural Studies, and I was invited there. There are also some women’s organizations I am associated with. I do get an opportunity to participate in their conferences. Last time there was a delegation of Marxist scholars coming to Calcutta, and they were the guests of the West Bengal government. They visited many groups, so I was invited to join the group on history. They had prepared short papers to be presented, and I translated for them. In a similar way, I participated in a conference in Colombo. It was a conference of many intellectuals and scholars from Asia. So in such ways I am associated with many organizations. BANERJEE: So at Santiniketan you had so many students; please tell us something about your students. GANGULY: Like any other teacher I also had two kinds of students— some of them very good, while some could not live up to my expectations.

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But for those good students, I must add I had lots of expectations from them. For example, Avijit [interviewer]—I advised him on how he should pay more attention to certain aspects of his study. Hopefully, he will do that. I have a few other students as well. Another student is Sagnik Ray, who is doing well in China. As you know, in China studies we don’t have many students, and very few make it big. They are all doing well, and I am satisfied and happy for them. But I feel that more academic research work is required, and I look forward to them doing more research. I myself have not done much, but I hope to do it now. These days one has to be very fast, and the research has to be of high quality and original in nature to survive the competition. So I hope my students will do well in the future. Another difficulty is the single most productive platform for publication of China-related research in India: China Report. First, I am informing you, through this interview that, unfortunately, China Report is controlled by scholars who do not know the Chinese language. They are surely very good in their fields. Second, they publish work on China that is mainly related to political themes. Third, they are not interested in anything except for contemporary studies, almost to the times of Deng Xiaoping. Since they themselves do not know the language, they have no idea about Chinese history, particularly anything before Deng Xiaoping. This is a very strong statement, but this is the feeling that people like me often get. Again they are very selective. They have either rejected or edited the text of many articles. When Tan Chung was there, I submitted an article on China. The material I cited was mostly from Bengali sources. Tagore himself wrote his China experiences in Bengali, and I had also read a lot of Stephen Hey, and I quoted a lot of Stephen Hey. Tan Chung is in America now, and I hope he will hear what I am saying today. He rewrote my whole article. The thesis of the article was entirely modified. For example, in my paper I wrote that when Tagore visited China very few scholars and intellectuals invited and welcomed him, while groups of scholars and intellectuals opposed and boycotted Tagore’s meetings. Later, Tagore himself expressed his deep anguish and

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sadness over the way scholars reacted. My article had all that information, which was deleted by China Report. Tan Chung was a classmate and dear friend; he also happens to be my relative, as his brother married my sister. So China Report has been very biased, and thus whatever work I published I had to publish it from journals and other places where they do not specialize in China, for example, the periodical published from Calcutta, Itihaas, edited by Asim Das Gupta. They published one article on Lu Xun. But there was one sentence that Lu Xun was not very happy with; the Communist Party of China has angered many of these left intellectuals, who to my mind are not only sectarian, but are doing disservice to China studies in academics and in general by being sectarian. Any small criticism they cannot accept. This is a great pity. The truth cannot be revealed unless they agree with you. But truth cannot be revealed partially; this goes against academic principles. It happened again and again, so while I was teaching at Cheena Bhavan, I tried hard to revive the Sino-Indian journal. If you remember, we had a huge gathering of all the alumni of Cheena Bhavan. But the authorities here were advised by a group of people who, I don’t know for what reason, opposed the revival of the journal. BANERJEE: So you think the journal should be revived? GANGULY: Yes. We know that Chinese language is being taught in various places today. In Calcutta they have opened up. Santiniketan, Delhi University, and JNU already have it. BANERJEE: So what do you think should be the future of the Chinese language and China studies in India? Do you think they are going in the right direction? GANGULY: Chinese language is one part of China studies, and Chinese studies has been neglected to a large extent. But language schools and institutions are doing good work, in the sense that they get some good people who know Chinese, and the commercial world has great demand for people who know Chinese. Management trainees require language

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expertise. So many of our students have joined the corporate sector, where they are doing excellent work, and it could be further developed and exploited. Language schools can be better organized, and other students should and could be appointed as teachers. However, the meager salary they get in teaching, and the huge salary they get in interpretation work, results in them always opting for interpretation work and foreign jobs. But I would like to warn academia, and especially this forum, that China studies is doing very badly. It is essential for us to study China in a proper manner and perspective. For example, no Indian scholar could provide proper information on the development and history of China and Tibet relations. We all know that during the Qing dynasty, Tibet was conquered. That was since Tibet went into that deep feudal seclusion dominated by feudal warlords, which happened in many countries in Asia, and Tibet was not an exception. The Qing dynasty ruled Tibet, but what was the history of Tibet before the Qing dynasty, and what were the terms and conditions of the Qing dynasty regarding Tibet. Now, here I would like to tell you a brief incident that occurred when I was a student at Peking University. Our class comprised Mongolian and Indian students. The Mongolian students felt very uncomfortable towards the Chinese, just as we Indians did, because of the political conflict. A Mongolian student shared this with me. He is now a well-known professor at Ulan Bator University. They were all scholars, especially Sukha Bator and other students. When Mongolia was one nation and the Soviet Union was formed around the 1920s, all the Asian nations were given an opportunity to join the union and Mongolia chose not to join. Therefore, the Mongolia that is called Outer Mongolia, Waimenggu, by the Chinese was formed. Why was Waimenggu formed? Now the Waimenggu people feel very hostile towards this name, Kuthin. They said it very clearly in 1947: when China was making its last stand for independence, why were the Waimenggu people not given the option to join? Why were they not asked to be with the Chinese state? China took it for granted and forced the Mongolians to join them. But inside them, they feel very sad and

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even hostile. So the same thing applies to Tibet. At that time, when we were students, the daughter of the governor of Xinjiang, a young, smart lady pampered by Chinese authorities in Beijing, would often come and ridicule the Chinese for their attitude. Nevertheless, the point here is that whatever the political nature of an issue may be, history should be unraveled. We will come across many new insights. Look at the whole history of Manchukuo, Manchuria, becoming part of China, and how the Chinese have helped them to prosper. The few Manchurians would not have been able to defend themselves from the invasions of the British and Europeans. And traditionally so many Chinese have lived there, I don’t oppose its integration with China. But I think that the right facts must be recorded. They should record that the whole history of Tibet is like this. Why should the history of Arunachal Pradesh not be recorded, and why should the McMahon line be studied again? I am sure the bureaucrats must have studied it in detail. But, due to political reasons and professional compulsions, they cannot publish their findings. Young scholars must take up this challenge. Students are more interested in reading the party manifesto of the Communist Party of China than studying these living problems of the India-China border. BANERJEE: You being an alumnus of Cheena Bhavan, the oldest Chinese language training and research institution, what do you think should be done to heighten the prestige of Cheena Bhavan so as to make it the best institution in this country? GANGULY: Yes, certainly it has the potential to emerge as the best institution in this country. It was once upon a time the best institution. First, we need research scholars to be appointed. Government should arrange for more scholarships to encourage scholars to take up higher studies and motivate them to do long-term research. Full-fledged research scholars need to be appointed with scholarships at Cheena Bhavan. Second, the rules made by UGC are also peculiar. For example, the post of reader was advertised by UGC, and there was an excellent application from Banaras. I still remember the applicant’s name; he was Lalji.

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He was a scholar of Sanskrit and also had experience in Chinese, which he studied at JNU. But his application was rejected at the scrutiny level. Why? Because he did not have an MA in Chinese, his application was rejected. This is ridiculous. We lost a very good candidate. This is ridiculous because of the insensitivity of the bureaucrats at the UGC, who do not know that classical studies and science and technology are to be treated differently. Classical studies cannot even be compared to a discipline like economics. The whole mode of study is entirely different. Classical studies requires time and patience on the part of the researcher, as well as the authorities; it requires monetary support and a platform for publication. BANERJEE: In foreign countries options are available, but in India is this a problem? GANGULY: Yes, many scholars have sent their articles to China for publication and waited to get them published. Some were published, while some of them were not. But it is tough, and doing that is not practical. So I don’t understand why the authorities are so insensitive to this problem. I remember in 1970, when UGC visited Cheena Bhavan, they said the number of students does not justify the amount of money spent on Cheena Bhavan. At that time, we had very few students. This logic is extremely difficult. Now, even if we have only one or two students, I have to teach for two hours every day for the whole semester. Even if there is one student, I have to teach my class. There was a visiting faculty from the London School of Oriental Studies who expressed the same problems; nevertheless, their government makes the funds available. We have to remember that there is a huge building to be maintained and a huge library to be maintained. The library staff is ill trained and very inadequate for looking after the materials. There was no sweeper at Cheena Bhavan to clean the building. We teachers used to contribute on every weekend to get the building swept. This is why it was very depressing and frustrating, and the teachers became disheartened.

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In those days, the opportunity to go abroad was also of no use. They were all engaged in the new resolution of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. They were not at all interested in Sun Yat Sen and others. Certainly that was important at that juncture, but academics cannot be limited to the Communist Party in China. But every other student was involved in political analysis, ignoring the other domains of China studies. BANERJEE: In your opinion, what is the future of Sino-Indian relations? Will they go on improving, or do you see some turbulence in the days to come? GANGULY: In my view, we are very ancient and rich civilizations— materially and intellectually rich, as well as in natural resources and human resources—and for years we had cohabited peacefully. This border conflict was politically motivated. And for the ruling elite, it became convenient to propagate the anti-Indian feelings in China and anti-China feelings in India. So the Hindi China Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are Brothers) was very artificial. Traditionally, we knew that we had to coexist. Our civilizations were secular in the sense that, in India, many religions were coexisting, while in China three religions were coexisting. Religion and politics were never intermingled. They were always separate and different from that of west Asia and some parts of Europe. So the moment the political interests came up, both countries were locked in a conflict. So the rulers of these countries should not let their political interests curb the historical exchange between the two ancient civilizations. BANERJEE: Earlier you were talking about your teachers, who guided you in your youth at Cheena Bhavan. Would you like to say a few words about them? GANGULY: Yes. First, I am really grateful to this project that has given me the opportunity to express my feelings about my teachers. I pay my deepest homage to them. I also want to record here that Dr. P. C. Bagchi, the first teacher I had in this field, has been remembered by both India and China recently at the time of this 110th anniversary. I am happy that they

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remember Dr. Bagchi. Mostly Dr. Probodh Bagchi was ignored. Professor Tan Yunshan was one of the most wonderful personalities; I also pay him my deepest homage. The work he did was not only to encourage, but also to organize, Sino-Indian studies, and their friendship as well. There are some scholars who are never mentioned in the field of China studies. Dr. Wei Kueisun is a scholar who did his PhD at Aligarh University. He came to India as a scholar in the early 1940s, during the World War, and he stayed in India and did lots of research work. His work was not published by any journal or institution, and during the last days of his life, he lived a very sad life, all alone. He went out to Bolpur and, on a cheap printing press, published pamphlets on his research work, such as his work on the history of central Asia, India, and China. He did wonderful work, but he was ignored completely, because the people in the academic world also play politics, and that is becoming more dominant than the academic work itself. Another person I want to mention and I feel strongly about is Dr. K. V. Ramananan. He spent sixteen years of his academic life studying and publishing the work on Nagarjuna (an important Buddhist philosopher). His book, The Philosophy of Nagarjuna, is a big contribution to IndiaChina history, relations, and how they interacted in times of Buddhism. Ramananan was a scholar of great depth, with perfect knowledge of Sanskrit and classical Chinese. His classical Chinese was even better than the mainland classical Chinese teachers. He spent many years in China, Japan, and at Harvard University. But his work, contributions to SinoIndian relations and friendship, is completely ignored. Another scholar I would like to mention is Latika Lahiri and her book on Buddhist monks who spread the Buddha’s message all over East Asia. You will not find Latika’s name anywhere; her books and articles are difficult to find. Part of it is because the whole field is ignored, but also because, I will repeat here, the decision makers—who are going to decide how Sino-Indian studies are going to happen, how much money is going to be assigned to them, why and who will publish, and who will sponsor the

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seminar, in other words, the powerful people in the field of Sino-Indian studies—are themselves not qualified, not aware of, or can’t be bothered with Chinese culture, civilization, or history before 1949. BANERJEE: Thank you, madam; it was my pleasure talking to you.

Govind Kelkar Interviewer: Dr. Ritu Agarwal Govind Kelkar is senior advisor, Program and Research, Economic Empowerment Section, UN Women, South Asia Office; coordinator, IFAS-UNIFEM Gender Mainstreaming Program in Asia, New Delhi; and the founding editor of the journal Gender, Technology and Development, Sage, New Delhi. She has previously taught at Delhi University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, where she also founded the graduate program in gender and development studies. She has published numerous books and articles on gender relations in China and in South Asia. AGARWAL: How did you get interested in Chinese studies? KELKAR: It seems like an ancient story. It was really the post-’60s period, when relations between China and India were ruptured by the so-called border disputes. At Delhi University I was a young lecturer in history, and they had introduced language courses. So I thought of learning the Chinese language, because I had learned French and did not find it very interesting. I said to myself, “With China being a large country, and India a large country too, and they being neighbors, why not learn another language?” So my beginnings in Chinese studies really began with the language. I was also looking for a subject for my PhD. I was just beginning my PhD studies in modern Indian history at Delhi University, but I was not interested. So, I decided to drop that. I thought I would do something on Chinese studies or China’s political economy. That was my decision, to pursue my PhD on China’s political economy. To work at a PhD, one needed to learn the language. That is how I began to learn the language. So I did two years of a certificate course and one year of a diploma course at Delhi University, along with my teaching. I continued as a lecturer of history in Miranda

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House at Delhi University. Then I went to the University of Michigan for further studies. I took sabbatical leave, and I got a Fulbright-Hays grant. There I got admitted to do my Master’s degree in East Asian studies; at that time they called it Far Eastern studies. So I did another year of Chinese language along with my Master’s at the University of Michigan graduate studies program. Then I began to pursue my PhD after completing my Master’s over there. I was still on sabbatical from Delhi University, and I got a couple of additional grants—not only one, but two international student grants, and my scholarship was extended. I also got some support as a teaching assistant. So these are the things that I did. I was there for nearly five years; to be precise, I spent four years and ten months in the US pursuing Chinese studies or doing my PhD on the political economy of China. But I was registered before that at Delhi University. My formal degree is from Delhi University;however, except for revising the conclusion and dividing one chapter into two after I returned, I did all the work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. AGARWAL: Who are the scholars that you came across, who actually encouraged you in some way to go ahead in Chinese studies? KELKAR: There was Ernest Young, one of the professors there, who was very interested in my work. He was a China scholar, an American. I was very impressed, and he was very accessible. But there was another scholar, Albest Feurwerker; he was very tough. I did work with him in terms of taking courses on political economy, but the day-to-day interaction and pursuing of my PhD was with Ernest Young. These were the two scholars. There were language teachers too. The University of Michigan had a very well-known program in China studies. AGARWAL: So this was in the 1960s? KELKAR: In the ’70s, in the early ’70s. During the 1960s was when I joined Delhi University; that was 1968–1969, towards the end of the ’60s. And then, from 1971 to 1974, I was in the US pursuing my studies. I could not go to China at that time, being an Indian, to do my PhD because of

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the war and for other reasons; relations were not very good. So this was in terms of the background. But what is interesting is that, after I did my PhD, I came back to India and I started teaching at IIT—the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. I was there for two years and I taught the history of modernization and technology, teaching the modernization in China, using Joseph Needham’s work on China. I was teaching China, Japan, and India, the modernization process and technological changes. But after two or three years, I joined another institute called the National Institute of Bank Management in Bombay, and this was precisely because of my background on China. They were looking for the lessons learnt from rural development in China. This was the Maoist period of rural development in China. AGARWAL: What took you to Bombay? Did marriage take you to Bombay? When did you resign from the job in Miranda House, Delhi University? KELKAR: I resigned from the job in Miranda House after the years I spent in the US. I was given sabbatical for two years, and then I wanted an extension to pursue my PhD. In the meanwhile, I got married in the US, but it was not because of marriage that I wanted to stay. It was because I wanted to complete the work that I was doing. At that time there was hardly anything in India in terms of China studies or any other area studies. I negotiated for a further extension. I was given another year on the condition that if I did not return I would resign. So I resigned before the third year was completed, because I knew that my leave would not be extended, and I wanted to stay and complete the work. I continued to be associated with the Delhi University Chinese studies program as a PhD student, but not as a lecturer. When I came back, I got the job at the Indian Institute of Technology, because they were looking for a person who could teach the modernization process in Asia. Of course, in between I was offered a job in Delhi, in government, in the research and analysis wing. But I did not accept that. AGARWAL: What places did you visit in China?

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KELKAR: I visited Beijing, Shanghai, Shanxi, Yunnan, Mao’s village in Hunan, and Gansu. Those were the provinces. I visited nine cities and eleven villages at that time. Writing about China was a very important thing, so I thought it was my duty to present what China is like and how the Chinese think about China after Mao. First shorter versions of selected articles were published in Economic and Political Weekly. Then I went to the trouble of putting the whole thing together in the book, China after Mao. AGARWAL: You said that the people were very welcoming, and they were really so happy to see you, somebody coming from India. KELKAR: The unique experience of that time in China, which you miss now in most societies, is the uniqueness of the political character of the people. Why the political character of the people? Because they are so warm to foreigners. There were no jokes about women, for example. I lived in the US for five years, I lived in India all my life, and I have visited a lot of other societies, but in China at that time, I found that there were no jokes that would cast aspersions on other people. Another thing that impressed me was how urban people tried their best to accept people in the rural areas, not looking down at them as country bumpkins or something. There was no question of racism other such things. These things impressed me so much during the visit. And they go beyond that; I am not talking only of my personal experience in that they were warm to me. It was the political character of the people. demonstrated by how a foreigner had to be addressed as a “foreign friend” and how the women’s movement started. The peasants were given so much importance. These are the things that impressed me. Of course I was also looking for women with small feet, and I did notice some and took photographs of how the feet were bound, which I showed in the book, if I remember correctly. So from bound feet, how you become an empowered woman, that also made an impression. That impressed me most.

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AGARWAL: After coming back from your first trip to China, how were you received by the academic community in Delhi or in India? Was there any work on China at that time apart from you? KELKAR: Bombay is very different. The city has two major classes: one is the industrialist class and the other the working class. Then there are a few pockets of academics or intellectuals. One of the intellectual hubs was the Economic and Political Weekly, with the editor being the center of it. I was approached by the editor asking that I write about this visit to China. The Times of India and others had also carried some articles on my visit. They interviewed me and turned it into a somewhat odd thing when I talked about women’s freedom. The article stated, there is “no bra burning in China,” this is how China is. And I was very upset. Nevertheless, they wrote and word got around, and then I was called by the Economic and Political Weekly editor, stating that he would like to include my article in the Weekly. Another academic community, a very small community, is the National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM). From IIT, I moved to NIBM. They said that I could take as much time as I needed to write this book. So while working there, I wrote this book in the style of a travelogue. When I wrote my notes as a visitor, I had no idea that I would be writing any articles or a book. I simply wanted to record my impressions of China, because the impressions were so overwhelming. Then there was Bombay University. Bombay University invited me to give some lectures, and also I was repeatedly asked how I would address India’s problem in comparison to China. So there was a lot of discussion. Another institute was the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. They also invited me. So the Tata Institute of Social Science, Bombay University, and the Economic and Political Weekly, these were the places where the academic communities got very interested in my work. AGARWAL: After that 1978 trip to China, you wrote about all this and started working in the National Institute of Bank Management. After that, where did this take you?

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KELKAR: After my divorce, I moved in 1979 to Delhi. Since 1979 I have been in Delhi, and in 1979 I got the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) senior scholarship. Then I worked on India and China, but especially on India, with a perspective toward China. This was because ICSSR at that time did not have the mandate to work on China. But that was as a senior fellow, and I could be associated with any institute. I got into women’s studies at the Center for Women and Development Studies (CWDS). From CWDS I got the Nehru Fellowship at Teen Murti to work on the comparative aspect of the women’s movement in India and China. I wrote two or three working papers there. AGARWAL: During your first visit to China, what did you see? KELKAR: During the first visit, for a month in May 1978, I was invited by the Chinese Peoples’ Friendship Association with Foreign Countries, which was based in Beijing. I visited nine cities, eight people’s communes, five factories, three hospitals, and six educational institutions. Initially, I spent time in Beijing and met various officials, starting with those who represented the Friendship Association. Then I told them that I was interested in rural areas because I was doing work for the National Institute of Bank Management, comparing or learning from the Chinese model and implementing that in India. Dazhai was a big agricultural model at that time, so I visited Dazhai. Then I went to Yunan, because I wanted to see the caves where Mao lived, what he did, and how he mobilized people; that was the Shaan-Gan-Ning region, the field area of my PhD, so I wanted to go to that region. And, of course I went to the Great Wall and learned about its history. Then I visited Mao’s village in Hunan and went to Shanghai from there. I saw Suzhou and Hangzhou, the famous silk centers, and they are compared with Kashmir and the way in which commerce was developing in Guangzhou. I came back with a strong impression about what changes had taken place in China with regard to women’s position and how, as women in India, we could learn from the challenges they were facing and how they were struggling with those challenges. So this

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is really the sum total of what I can say about when I went there such a long time ago. AGARWAL: Did you visit those places again? KELKAR: I visited Beijing several times. I joined the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in 1991, and in 1993 I went to Yunnan for the first time. Since then, I have regularly visited Yunnan and the collective villages of China. That time, we visited Henan besides Beijing and Shanghai. I must have visited Beijing about ten times, Shanghai and Hangzhou maybe four times. I lived in a village while teaching at AIT. One of my students was from the nearby village of Hangzhou, so I visited her a couple of times. I quietly stayed in her village also, with her family, without worrying about whether foreigners were allowed. To the best of my knowledge, foreigners were not allowed. I visited Suzhou a couple of times, and Guangzhou too. I am not very fond of Guangzhou, but I went there three times. AGARWAL: What was your first impression when you saw Chinese women at that time? How would you describe them? KELKAR: Their dress and confidence in dealing with people were the things that impressed me most. When I talk of the trousers or any dress in which you do not have to cover your chest or breasts, I really think that this is one step toward a kind of freedom of movement and mobility. When I visited China, women came and shook hands with me, accompanying me. I was always accompanied by one man and one woman, the two interpreters. Maybe they thought it was necessary because I was a woman from India. That impressed me. Then the kind of work that women did at that time—in the fields, in the farms, and in the factories—that also impressed me. I come from a rural area, and I am familiar with how women work in agriculture. Now we see a lot of women working in agriculture in India, but I could see that nearly thirty years or twenty-eight years ago in China. So you see that difference of twenty-five years. China had really bad roads at that time; India had much better roads. I went by train, from which station I do not remember, but somewhere near Dazhai—Dazhai

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was a very semi-arid area, hilly area, extremely dusty, extremely cold— I took a kind of pick-up on this muddy and broken road that I traveled. I was thinking that, coming from a rural area, our roads are better. I was also asked what it was like in India, and I said that maybe our roads were better. But now you see the roads in China and the infrastructure in India —not only roads, but electricity and other infrastructure in China, even in the rural areas, and you see our infrastructure, so poor. We have never paid attention to infrastructure. The excuse made in the name of democracy was that people do not want to spend money on physical infrastructure. Of course they want to. I have seen Vietnam also. When change started happening in Vietnam, I was teaching at AIT and visited Vietnam. In Vietnam, attention was paid to the development of infrastructure. AGARWAL: Would you still like the older China or the new China after modernization and economic development? KELKAR: We need economic development. I am not really against economic development, whether it is India or China. I am not a strong critic of globalization, except that it has created disparity. The disparity needs to be addressed. What I really saw in China at that time was the warmth of the people—which I called their political culture—with regard to foreigners, women, and minorities. Indigenous people then were quite different from what they are today. Now there is a focus on money and economic development, which is really disappointing to me. I see these massive cities, these massive buildings, a totally transformed Beijing; I cannot recognize the areas. That’s why there is so much more dissatisfaction among the Chinese people now, and also the rural protests—the Chinese economic development process. There is a decline in the number of seats given to women, women’s position is eroded, and there is violence against women. I attended a meeting in which violence against women was discussed. I was amazed to find such things. The Han patriarchy has revived all of a sudden, and now we can see that it was bound to come up because it was not dealt with enough earlier. It was suppressed for the time being, in that people thought that it was not politically correct to agree with

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it. But soon all these problems cropped up. Those who were in charge— whether in the party or the government—were busy with economic development, so they did not look at the problems. Prostitution was not there at all, but now you see the massive problem of prostitution and the related issues of trafficking and HIV/AIDS. I would not say that all HIV/AIDS is because of trafficking and prostitution, but they have a major role in it. So several problems have come up. One of the villages in Yunnan that I visited and keep revisiting is in the Musuo area; they have the matrilineal system. There they have developed tourism, and you can see what kind of impact tourism has created. They could have taken care of these things. There is no need for tourism to include sex trade, and China is capable of controlling that. So they have lost a bit of ground on the sex trade. This is the difference between today’s China and the China of the late 1970s. AGARWAL: If we go forward to the 1980s? KELKAR: I first visited China in 1978, then in 1982 or 1983, and then in 1986. Then there was a gap of three or four years. Since 1993, I have visited China regularly, almost every year. In 1995 I went to the Beijing conference. I went again in 1997, 1998, 1999—almost every year. I had two PhD students at AIT, as well as several Master’s students and some abortive PhDs, which means they worked for some time and then dropped out. One of the successful PhD students is Yu Xiaogang, who is in Yunnan, and the other is Wang Yunxian. Then there were many Master’s students. Guo Ruixing, who works with UNIFEM in Beijing, also studied with me, and there are two three others. I was just looking at the period, and at the land question I wrote. I did this field work in Wang’s village in Hangzhou in 1998. AGARWAL: Maybe now we can come back to your Bangkok program. What was the institute? KELKAR: I want to bridge the gap between what I wrote in the ’80s… that was largely on women and property—the land rights of women, the economic rights of women, what can be learned, and what the challenges

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are that women are facing. I wrote about the household responsibility system and how it was impacting women. Then there is the land issue that developed in the People’s Republic of China when I was forty; I tried to write about that too. I also wrote an article, with Wang Yunxian, addressing the issues of the implementation of women’s rights in land, whether or not they were getting rights in the responsibility system, and what the loopholes were, which will be available in the Indian Journal of Labour Economics. I was once invited for a visit by the CIRD (Centre for Integrated Rural Development) in Beijing. There I saw the rural development program. There was a kind of collaboration between AIT and CIRD, as a part of which I was invited. So I visited Beijing frequently, and the surrounding areas, to see the industrialization and also women owning and working on the land. At AIT I started teaching different things on gender analysis. But I had Chinese students, who did their Master’s and PhD on China. That is how my interest in China took a different path, from interacting with different sets of students. AIT offers only graduate studies, only Master’s and PhD degrees. I had a group of six or seven Chinese students with whom I was closely associated. At that time, there were about 160 Chinese students at AIT. I had close contact with six or seven of them. Because of Yu Xiaogang, I repeatedly went to Yunnan. I was also given an honorary professorship, a distinguished professorship, by the Yunnan Academy of Social Science. Professor Guo Dalie and others were in charge at that time, and I knew Yang Fuquan—you have met Yang Fuquan. He is now a big boss, but at that time he was an associate professor. My second major area of interest in terms of work was looking at the matrilineal societies in the Mosuo area of China. That is the subject I addressed in my other book— I do not know if you have seen it—published by Sage and called Gender Relations in Forest Societies in Asia. As a result of that project, I also visited China several times, particularly Yunnan. Professor He Zhonghua, Professor Yu Xiaogang, and Xi Yuhua were all part of this study, which was done on the Mosuo and Naxi areas, indigenous peoples, and forest management. I was also looking at what was happening with regard to

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women. Tourism was introduced, so I started looking at tourism. Then, in 2005, I looked at the energy question in Chinese villages, why the improved cook-stoves were successful in China but not in India and Nepal, while the subsidy was higher in India. Then ENERGIA invited me to address just the gender question in energy; this is one of my favorite areas, dealing with the gender and energy question. Land and property rights is one area, and second is matrilineal society. To study matrilineal society, I stayed in the Mosuo area two or three times. I also studied the Naxi area, which is patrilineal. With the help of the commissioned studies and interactions with them, I became kind of a research team-leader on this. Then I began to look at whether there were any traces of the old China left. And I was surprised to find that in Henan there was this kind of brigade— several villages or people’s communes—who still sang Cultural Revolution songs. Dev and I went there and lived for about fifteen days. Economically, they were so far ahead of the rest of the country that the government could not attack them, because the goal was economic development. So if you develop economically by collective methods, then you cannot be questioned, so they continued with their collectives. That’s when I wrote The Collective Villages of China, a kind of monograph that was also published in Economic and Political Weekly. AGARWAL: About your work on witches, how do you relate this to your earlier work in Jharkhand? KELKAR: What we found in Jharkhand, among other things, is that witches largely “existed” because close relatives, and male relatives in particular—such as the husband’s brother or cousin, or his brother’s son— would denounce a woman as a witch if she was widowed and did not have support and control of whatever land and productive assets she owned. In Jharkhand, I also found that she would be given a warning. If in the first round she was not killed, she would be asked to leave the house and to run away, because now she was declared a witch. in the second stage, somebody got sick because she had cast a spell, and somebody else would be a witness that they saw her naked dancing in the middle of the night

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and chanting something. Then the ojha (witch-finder) would be called to read three grains of rice, and he would be able to see the face of a witch, and of course everybody knew who the person was who would be denounced. But all these rituals would be done before she was killed or driven to the forest. Most likely she would be killed in the forest, or sometimes she would be killed in the village itself. Largely it was related to the question of the land rights of the woman, because traditionally women have the use rights. It was not so much the legal rights, they had the use rights on the land, which was eroding, and it was passing into the hands of men through the imposition of Hindu patriarchy on these indigenous people. In China, we noticed that, in the pre-liberation to the post-liberation period, women were also displaced from their villages; they were not killed, but they were not allowed to intermarry or dine with others. They were the paraya in the community, without being killed. That was the major difference that we could find. This is also prevalent in Thailand. There you can also see the transition from matrilineal to patrilineal. Women goddesses would be worshipped, in what they call spirit-houses. Sometimes, the male organs would also be offered, and they would be hung at the door (in Thailand and also in Bhutan) to protect the household from witches. Here the spirit goddess would come, and she would attack any man. In Bhutan, I was surprised to see that they would paint the male organs on one of the walls inside the house, and I asked them why they did that. The response was that it was done to protect the house from witches. In matrilineal societies, women were seen as powerful, as producing a human baby, as at that time the man’s role was not known. So that is why they became very powerful. In the patrilineal system, you find that Shiv worship or Shiv lingam worship happen. In the Mosuo area, we did not find anything like this; they have a system of a visiting husband, and they also have a mountain goddess. But we did not find worship of either the female or male part. I do not know if that is why it is not there, because the transition from matrilineal to patrilineal has not taken place. In Thailand it is gradually happening; it is done to satisfy the female spirit. These are the things that need further exploration and need to be addressed. I have not

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gone into the area, but we plan to do some work on why the ojhas are all men, and witches are always women. There would be one or two personal cases in which the entire family would be involved in order to settle the score. But, by and large, you find this gender pattern in witchcraft, which you do not find even today in the Mosuo area. But in the Mosuo area, male control is also increasing, not through economic resources, but through knowledge resources, because in all matrilineal systems, what was noticed was that leadership, decision-making, and external relations (external meaning outside of the household) are under the control of the men. This was the division of labor: women had the economic resources, while men controlled the knowledge resources, in terms of management. With the increasing knowledge in society, people who interact either with tourists or with computers would be men. The Mosuo men were able to speak Chinese and Naxi, while the women were able to speak only Mosuo. So their role became very limited, and male control increased. This is the pattern that you find in Meghalaya, too, that today women are not allowed in darbors (the community decision-making bodies). If men were having a discussion and a woman came by, they would stop talking. So you can see that there is a total sex-based demarcation of the resource control. As a result, the Mosuo system might collapse after some time, because this is a knowledge kind of society. Then you have to deal, even in economic resources, with banks and other institutions. Some women would marry a Naxi or a Han person, so the patrilineal system made inroads through knowledge-based resources. This is another area that I have not pursued much in this book, but this needs further exploration. Even in agriculture, you find that agricultural technology is handled more by the men today. So it is not only work, but also control of land and technology, or the knowledge of technology, which are with the men. Some of the women researchers in China talk about the debunking of the feminization of agriculture. I recently wrote a piece on feminization of agriculture in Asia, and during my last visit to China I attended a meeting at CIRD on the feminization of agriculture. A scholar presented on the debunking of the feminization of agriculture at that meeting, and she sent me two or three

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papers. What she says is that women are absent from the management of agriculture. If women are not in the management of agriculture, then you cannot say that there is a feminization of agriculture. AGARWAL: Maybe you could say something more about your rural family background. KELKAR: I am from a very small village in Etawah district. Now the district name is Auraiya, and the district is divided. It is a very remote area, rife with attacks by robbers and dacoits, and with absolutely no access to education. So I did not have any schooling until seventh class, which I failed, and then I completed high school the next year, without any formal schooling. AGARWAL: It would look unbelievable now. KELKAR: Yes. And the next year because of my uncle, who was a landlord—ours is a zamindar (powerful, aristocratic) family, feudal, uppercaste Brahmin family—I was forced to attend high school; because my failure was not acceptable! So I went to and completed high school, and then I began my formal schooling from the so-called intermediate school at that time, which was in the Etawah district headquarters. So that is how my schooling started. With regard to the number of my siblings, I have four sisters and three brothers. One of them died four or five years ago, older than me. I was number two. Girls were looked down upon in my family also. Even though mine was a zamindar family, and there was no dearth of anything, only a limited amount of quality food was given to us girls. But girls did better in education than boys; all girls studied, but they never inherited any land or property. Sometimes the property becomes a kind of barrier against progress. Because my two brothers are in the village, and zamindari is now obsolete, they are managing the large amount of land after dividing it among themselves. Among my sisters, one is in Canada, now a Canadian citizen, and the other three of us are here in Delhi. One is a businesswoman and one is beautician. They are

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on their own. They did not get any support from the family, but managed their lives very well. AGARWAL: If we could come back to the AIT—after the AIT, where did you move in your profession? KELKAR: I was at the AIT for ten years, from 1991 to December 2000. It was quite a long period of time. I had never served at any other institution for more than five years. And then I came to Delhi, and I did not work for about four months. Beginning in April 2001, I joined as an Asia coordinator of the IFAD-WFP program for two or three years, from 2001 to 2003, at the World Food Program (WFP), another UN agency. There was an IFAD project that I was coordinating for Asia. But there was a problem between two UN agencies. So the program moved to UNIFEM, and from a project it progressed to become a program. So then I went to work with UNIFEM. From 2004 until 2010 I was with UNIFEM and not with UN Women. I coordinated UNIFEM’s program, Reducing the Feminization of Poverty and Exclusion, and I also coordinated the first program in the WFP. Before the AIT (Asian Institute of Technology), I was at Teen Murti. From Teen Murti I spent six months as a visiting fellow at Toronto University. I was barely able to complete my program before I got this AIT job, which insisted I join immediately, because the previous coordinator was going on maternity leave. So sometime in July 1991, I joined the AIT, and in December 2000 I returned from the AIT. But what has been really permanent in terms of my area of professional work is looking at questions of gender and development in gender studies, and also looking at the question of energy, economic development, and comparative perspectives on women’s development with attention to China. I have always maintained my interest in China. It did not become as rusty as my Chinese language. AGARWAL: You have a special expertise in guiding the Chinese students who work on China, and I think that will be very different. KELKAR: I am talking of Chinese students; these were the students coming from China to the AIT and going back to China. Only one person

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went to Canada, and I hear she is doing her PhD over there. And two other women I met recently graduated as PhD and Master’s students; one is in charge of UNIFEM in China, and the other is in charge of OXFAM in China. OXFAM Beijing is a part of Hong Kong OXFAM. I can think of three men who are doing very well. One is Yu Xiaogang, who was in Yunnan and Beijing. He won many international awards for addressing the issues of pollution and climate change. He has, of course, had some political problems as a result of his work. Then there were two other students; one is working for the Rural Development Institute, and another has worked for a number of years with the World Bank in China, but now he has gone back to the Rural Development Institute. Then one person is working in the Institute of Agricultural Development. So they have been placed in these various institutions concerned with rural development or agricultural development—NGOs newly emerged in China. That was a very good experience, going to China and not feeling alienated. I felt a part of it, as these students were there to show me around. AGARWAL: So how did you feel when you were actually supervising the Chinese students? What were their views on China? What were the kind of debates they had about China, the system? KELKAR: They became my friends during that period and, even now, when I go back to China, they are friends in terms of discussing what the underground political movement is, what people are questioning. Normally you do not get this kind of information. Visiting the family, living in their villages when it was not politically acceptable for foreigners to go and visit those areas, and discussing and debating—that way there was tremendous interaction on a day-to-day basis, and I feel very enriched. Because maintaining this kind of relationship with your students is very important, and I was able to develop my interest and knowledge on China, both were sustained and also enriched because of that. AGARWAL: So when you went there to interview these people, or when you went to study these areas, how would they treat you as a woman coming from India?

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KELKAR: These students are the link. I had been going to Yunnan, first as a tourist, and then of course it became a study tour looking at the matrilineal system. Then in this matrilineal society we launched a project along with seven or eight Chinese scholars, and we interacted with them. We learnt from them, and they of course said that they learnt from our ideas. So when we looked at this kind of tourism, then it became part of a continuation of that project. They were familiar with us looking at the Han culture. Dev visited that area too, and one of my main PhD students introduced me as Dev Nathan’s wife. I just kept quiet at that time; he had spoken in Chinese, but I could follow. Later I told him that I did not want him to introduce me in that way. All along he had been introducing me as Professor Kelkar. He said now people introduce like this; I said I did not want to be introduced in that way. So you look at the change in Han culture; I am just giving you one reflection regarding this man who had done his PhD with me, and he was introducing me as Mrs. Dev Nathan. I was talking of the Han culture, the revival of the Han value in the tourism industry. In the Mosuo village, which I looked at initially because it was a matrilineal village and the women were doing everything involving the economic management of the tourism, and they are still doing it. But the sex trade has developed, where they get these young girls. Of course, none of the women are involved in getting the girls—I did not find any women who were involved in procuring these girls. These were the men from Sichuan, neighboring places, who were getting these girls from very famished, poverty-ridden families in Sichuan, from remote, rural villages, and these girls were working in the sex trade in the most unhygienic conditions, and that was located one to two kms distance from the main village. So the villagers say that they have maintained their society free of sex trade, and they do not allow any kind of sex tourism; but everybody knew. I walked to that village, so it was close enough that one could walk the distance. So this was the situation with regard to the tourism industry. AGARWAL: Now what was your source of research funding over time?

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KELKAR: They are really not for research; they wanted China to be known outside and to India. There were people who were concerned about India. But I wrote it because I was basically a researcher and I thought that people should know. So first I wrote it in the form of a diary; that book had very limited analysis. But today it becomes kind of important; even the depiction of reality is important; even how China has evolved is important. Research funding is very critical, because in today’s situation research takes money. Research needs lots of money, in terms of travel, in terms of fieldwork, in terms of your own time, budgeting for the time. Research is needed for the effectiveness of development programs. But development agencies do not want to put money in research; they think that they want to support practical action and not research. That comes as a surprise. Where research acquires some importance is really in the private sector. So I would think that the government, the private sector, and the UN system as such, they all need research. They need to put some money imto research. I do research on my own in the UN system. Of course, they say that the little bit of research I am allowed to do is strategic research. Strategic research means research that will help them change their strategies; whether there should be a regional strategy, what should be a country’s strategy for development—that is the strategic research. But other research, like on China and other related aspects, I do on my own. One or two agencies are there in the UN that are known for research, and also the Indian Council of Social Science Research. AGARWAL: There is another thing: your involvement in policy consultation in the private sector on China. KELKAR: Related to risk analysis in the public and private sectors, I think the policy makers in the two countries are still in the mode of the ’70s if not the ’60s. There is an undercurrent of resistance. I am an Indian, so I know the Indian system more than the Chinese system in this regard. I would think that, although there is openness with regard to China and Pakistan, it is not so much at the policy makers’ level. We really need to

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learn what we can from each other’s mistakes and each other’s successes. That is not openly addressed in the policy analysis. Some efforts are being made by research institutes, but these institutes are not within the state structure, but outside. So this sharing of knowledge is needed. For example, I would be very happy if the Planning Commission, which is a think tank for the policy makers, would agree to learn from China’s development experience. Can there be learning from that experience? I do not find that it happens. There are political visits, and then there are visits by scholars who do not have much influence in the government. This policy-influencing kind of analysis is needed—risk analysis. I think that in the high-growth economy in India and China—9 or 10 percent growth—when there is a food shortage, then you import wheat. I consider this kind of risk analysis essential. One of the things that people in China repeatedly asked me in earlier visits was how India solves its food problem. They were very impressed by the Green Revolution; they were not willing to listen to any critique of the Green Revolution because it made India self-sustainable. In the last three years that has changed. India is not happy, and others would not be happy; this is the risk. Another risk is HIV/AIDS, and also deepening inequalities. So I think, how can we develop industries and tourism that can provide livelihood opportunities to people? We have had only one positive action in the current Indian government: we introduced the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, providing one hundred days of employment to all poor families, and I think this is a major change. But the continuing challenge is how to deal with the growing inequality. There is inequality in the informal sector, both in China and in India. It is difficult to implement labor laws in the informal sector. China has tremendous violations of labor laws, more than in India. Implementation of labor laws in the informal sector is the one area where India has better enforcement. China also needs to look at this. These issues are neglected because of the economic growth, but they will create serious problems. There is probably more rural unrest in China than in India. So another risk is that, if you do not address these prob-

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lems, your government could be in jeopardy. Loss of political freedom with growth is another potential risk. But the point is that we claim to be the largest democracy, which has been vibrant, and neither internal nor external forces have threatened that. And I think that it is a positive point; we can sit down and discuss anything about the present or past government in India. In China it is different. AGARWAL: How are publications on China received by Indian publishers? KELKAR: Actually, there is tremendous interest in China by Indian and other publishers. More books on China have been demanded by Indian publishers. An article that was published in the Indian Journal of Labour Economics last October was on India and China, and the discussant criticized it, saying that there is a lot more on China than on India. I was talking with somebody about whether the article was requested by that journal. I said that one critique is that it is more on China and not on India, and they said that we want more material on China, so this is good. This is also the case with the Economic and Political Weekly; they also need more on China. There is a tremendous interest in India on various aspects of China. AGARWAL: There are the Chinese who have some interest in India, and China has been sending research scholars every year; one or two scholars come and stay a long time in India. They collect material or data and then go back to China. KELKAR: When I returned, I found two kinds of transition in process, because I was away for about ten years. One is the university system, like JNU, Shantiniketan, and Delhi University, which have two major areas in China studies: research and language—language in order to have research abilities. They have been through ups and downs with the China studies program. That is one trend in China studies. The second trend is development of the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), the Observer Research Foundation, and the Chennai Center for Chinese Studies, as well as some private-sector interests. These institu-

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tions can be divided into two types, based on the personnel involved. People from Delhi University, JNU,and the ICS conduct more research; they visit China, but there is more of a research focus than the government programs. This was affected some by the ICSSR fund, because they depended heavily on Ministry of External Affairs funding. As long you are useful to the ministry, they will provide you the funds, but if you are not useful then the funds are not there. This has happened with various donor agencies. The Observer Research Foundation and the Chennai Center for Chinese Studies have their own agenda, but I have a feeling that they will be interested in many other things besides research. Their own expansion, their own name—they will be building their own institution. So institution building would be one kind of thing. The private sector would send their people to both the universities and these centers more, because they are less intensive, or else more intensive for a shorter period. They would not be subjected to academic surroundings, so their interest would be limited. I have not looked at it, but it is really important to look at how the private sector is managing to operate in China; or the clothing, all these markets are there in China, Indian traders are there. How do these traders manage without the language, and what do they do? I was once coming back from China and changed flights in Bangkok. There were two young men sitting next to me, and they started talking about my ring. So I asked how they knew about it. They said they were jewelers. Then I asked them where they worked in Bangkok. They said they had a shop in China and were from Jaipur. One had expanded his father’s business, and the other was his employee. The shop is in a very small town in China. I asked them what the Chinese buy, and they said lots of gold and colored stones, but not diamonds so much. So I asked about payment. They said there were no problems; the payment is very good, the business is very good. How is this private sector, this kind of trade, being managed? I asked them where they learned the Chinese language, and they said that they did not know any Chinese. These are the trends; probably when the language course starts, or restarts, at Delhi University, we may find that there are people who are coming for short-term language courses even for trade, and not only as

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researchers. So these are the three trends that I see in different areas of China studies: one is related to market development; another is research; and the third, which earlier we called defense studies, now will be more like either policy studies or what the Chinese government is really doing. Although research is carried on in different institutions, in my opinion the university system is best for various kinds of research on China.

Manoranjan Mohanty Interviewer: Dr. Ritu Agarwal Professor Manoranjan Mohanty is the Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social Development. He earned his PhD in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley, on “Chinese Revolution and the Indian Communist Movement.” At post-graduation from the University of Delhi, he was first in his class. He received the Karan Singh Award, the C. T. Chacko Prize, and the National Scholarship. He served the University of Delhi in the Department of Political Science at various levels. He is the co-chairperson and honorary fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies; visiting professor, Institute of Human Development, New Delhi; president, Orissa Research Institute; and fellow emeritus, Developing Countries Research Center, University of Delhi. He had visiting assignments at Moscow, Berkeley, Oxford, Amsterdam, Lagos, Los Angeles, California, and others. He has conducted a number of international studies, published articles and papers in numerous national and international periodicals, and has more than ten books in print. His interests in human rights and the peace movement, as well as Oriya literature, are noteworthy. AGARWAL: We are very happy to have you with us today, Professor Manoranjan Mohanty; your contribution to China studies has been very fascinating. In fact, it is difficult to adequately describe his influence, as he has been involved in China studies and contributed in many ways to the development of China studies, especially in India. Let’s start with you, sir. How did your interest in China studies develop? MOHANTY: Thanks, Ritu, for that very interesting question. I came from Orissa to Delhi to study political science, thinking that this is one place in India where Indian political thought is studied. In most places, only Western political thought is studied. After my MA, I wanted to specialize

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in Western thoughts. In fact, I had joined a Russian language course in my first year of teaching—not that Russia was Western, but it was different from English and the conventional West. I used to stay in Jubilee Hall and teach at Delhi College, now known as Zakir Hussain College. One evening, while taking a walk, I saw the board on Mall Road for the Centre for Chinese Studies, Delhi University. I walked inside the center, which was affiliated with Delhi University. It was September 1965, and the session had already begun. One of the Sanskrit lecturers had joined the Chinese language course, and Tan Chung and Wang He Shu were teaching it. I asked to meet these teachers. So with Dr. Sinha, who was the Sanskrit teacher, we walked onto the first floor of the apartment of Tan Chung and Huang I-Shu in Roopnagar, near Delhi University. They were absolutely delighted, and they happily allowed me to join the course beginning the next morning. They said they would find some way to work out my admission, so I began taking classes the next day. Since I had missed two months of classes, I had to work hard on pronunciations and other basics to catch up. My late admission was condoned by the vice chancellor. That’s how I got into Chinese studies, and I immediately said I would work on IndiaChina relations or on China-India comparative studies I decided to go abroad to do my PhD. I applied for different scholarships, but that same year Delhi University decided to send some scholars to various American universities through the Ford Foundation Fellowships. I was selected for Berkeley to do my PhD and specialization on China. So that’s how I went to Berkeley, completed my PhD, came back, and joined the Department of Chinese Studies, University of Delhi. AGARWAL: So tell us something about your Berkeley days, about your professors and other scholars who influenced you? MOHANTY: I was fascinated by China partly because it is non-Western and also partly because China had experienced much rapid development due to the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, my Marxist professors in India, especially Professor Randheer Singh, had opened my mind to a lot of debate and dialogue on Marxism. The Indian Marxist movement had

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split by that time, so I was already interested in Marxism. In Berkeley, I confronted three kinds of intellectual trends: a pro-Chinese Cultural Revolution Marxist trend; an anti-Chinese Cultural Revolution, meaning proSoviet, trend; and the dominant American social science methodology and ideology, namely social functionalism. In fact, I chose to work on revolution and revolutionary theory, and Thomas Johnson was famous in the field of political science at Berkeley during that time. He had written on Naxalism, the Communist movement, and power structure, as well as a book on revolutionary theory, the framework for the analysis of revolution, and so on. I took a seminar with him in my second year and, coincidentally, we became interested in each other’s work. From day one, he knew that I was a developing Marxist, and I knew that he was anti-Marxist, a conservative, and a functionalist. But we appreciated each other’s intellectual qualities, and I insisted on his being chair of my committee. I was asked to come back to India, so I thought I should choose a topic that would enable me to work in India and submit my thesis in Berkeley. I decided to look at the impact of the Chinese cultural movement on the Indian Communist movement. I worked on that topic, sent my thesis, and it was approved. By then I was already teaching at Berkeley. In 1974, I went to Berkeley to teach, and that is where I actually formed my intellectual agenda. I became a reader in China studies at Delhi University. So Berkeley influenced me in two ways. I was exposed to the great scholars in China studies and political science, for example, John Lekenson, who died when I was at Berkeley. There was Ernest Hearst, Seldon Wallice, Arthur Bullawaski, and Lesley Limpson, some of the great scholars of political science. So Berkeley set my intellectual direction to a large extent, but I was never swept off by its culture. I went with my non-Western orientation, I was deeply influenced by Randheer Singh in Delhi, and I stood firm as a creative Marxist with a determination to critique the Western social science trends of that time. That determination seems to have stayed with me for the rest of my life. AGARWAL: So what was the nature of China studies at that time at Berkeley?

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MOHANTY: Two things were very prominent in China studies at Berkeley. One was the interest in Chinese literature, culture, and language studies, and East Asia studies at Berkeley was very strong in language and literature. Then they started the Center for East Asian Studies and Chinese Studies as a part of it. The Centre for Chinese Studies, with Thomas Johnson, and later Ronald Ditmough, was really one of the pioneering centers for Chinese studies. They brought in fellows and some retired foreign service officials, such as John Seargent, who was involved in negotiations between Americans and Mao Tse-tung and several others. The other issue was Sino-Soviet relations, and in this they were really guided by John King Fairbank’s framework. I must tell you that I reacted to that framework, but I will come back to that later. So when I was helping shape China studies in India, we looked for a more open, universalistic, alternative framework, rather than the Fairbank framework. So Berkeley was also under the spell of the Cultural Revolution. Berkeley was the citadel of the antiwar movement, with lots of pro-Cultural Revolution scholarships, debates, student movements, and so on. Therefore, a lot of radical literature was created during that period. Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia took lead roles in the study of Mao Tse-tung and the Cultural Revolution. My contemporary, John Starr, wrote on the political thoughts of Mao. I myself wrote on the political thoughts of Mao, and several others also wrote on the subject, as a result of which a number of works came out. AGARWAL: You took language courses there? MOHANTY: Yes, I took a set of language courses at Berkeley, and I also took an advanced intermediate course on Chinese in Wisconsin. Mrs. Sung finally shaped my pronunciation. For three months she did not allow us to speak anything but Chinese, taking us out, to her home, and everywhere. Whatever fluency I developed in the Chinese language was from her. AGARWAL: So when did you come back to India? MOHANTY: I was in India after 1970. After that I went abroad only for three to six months or a maximum of one year. In 1971, I became a

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reader in Chinese studies. In 1969, the status of Chinese studies in India was minimal. We had a language program and certificate course at Delhi University. At JNU, the East Asian studies program had an area studies program. I first started teaching the China studies course in the political science department, and then V. P. Dutt, Tan Chung, and I joined the history department. So we had a small language program, a small discipline program, and an area studies program at JNU. There was a small language program at Chandigarh, and also a classical studies program at Santiniketan. So that was the total picture of Chinese studies. AGARWAL: How did you develop it further? MOHANTY: There were two stages: one from 1969 to 1990, and then from 1990 on. On 29 September, at Sapru House, three of us met: Girijashankar and I from Chinese studies and the then-undersecretary for China, Mr. Vinod Khanna. A friend from Berkeley had already informed them that I was coming back and that the three of us should meet. We decided to continue our discussion the following Wednesday in K. Subramanyam’s office in the Sapru House Annex. The following Wednesday, C. M. R. Rao, the editor of China Report, suggested we all meet in his office. We met a couple of times, then it was decided that we should meet sometimes at Delhi University and sometimes at JNU. So we started meeting like that. So the China Studies Group formation was a catalytic agent in 1969, and I am proud to say that this year is the fortieth year of our China Studies Group, and we hope to have a celebration in September. This phase saw an expansion in three dimensions. One was China Studies Group seminars. China Report had faced a crisis because the Asia Foundation was ousted from India, and therefore funding had dried up. So the Ministry of External Affairs started supporting it. Since this was an anti-Communist forum, it was funded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. So I would participate in that only after the disassociation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. After it got disassociated, the government of India started funding it. Then I started writing for it and became a member of its editorial board. In 1979, Rajni Kothari,

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chair of the ICCSR (Indian Center for Corporate Social Responsibility), invited us to locate the China Report at CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies). He invited me, as a young political scientist, to a Political Theory and Behavior workshop in 1965, in which I was selected to participate. Since then I joined his national election survey in 1969. He also decided to invite Giri Deshingkar as a full-time fellow at CSDS. That’s how China Report and the China Studies Group started meeting at CSDS from 1979 on. It became a regular forum of seminars. On the other two fronts, namely departmental and East Asian studies at JNU, China studies-related activities started gaining momentum. At Delhi University, Professor V. P. Dutt, the pro-vice chancellor and member of parliament, was quite influential at the national level, and that helped the department to grow. Tan Chung also took a lot of interest, and they guided all of us. So the first generation of our students came up. Very few stayed on from the first generation. Kamal Sheel started with me and then did his PhD in Wisconsin. But others, like Rao and Gopa Joshi, didn’t remain in China studies. K. R. Narayanan invited Tan Chung to come to JNU and start the Chinese language program. JNU had started an MA program in Chinese, and this was a significant development in Chinese studies in India. That produced a whole generation of scholars in India who know Chinese. After five years here, they went to China for further studies. At Delhi University, we had the distinction of combining China studies with the Chinese language, and this also began to flourish. I was equally active in China studies as in political science. I started teaching party politics in 1974. So these were the three dimensions. The China Studies Group had created a vision and intellectual ambience for developing Chinese studies; the JNU East Asian studies program was then supplemented by a language program; and at DU, the language and area studies programs began to integrate. In fact, Prasenjit Duara and Sremmati Chakravarti are the products of that advantage; they came from that discipline, and we inspired them to do their MPhil in language. After them came your generation. So, looking back, it hasn’t been too bad. It hasn’t quantitatively expanded too much. The second phase, from 1990 on, was a phase of

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institutional expansion. An important event during this period was that the China Studies Group became the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) in 1990. We organized a seminar in 1989 at CSDS on forty years of reforms, and a special issue of China Report was published. That is the year when Vinod Khanna, who was an original member, became the additional secretary. So I think your generation should celebrate Vinod Khanna’s role. Vinod Khanna, Giri Deshingkar, and I started the group. Mira Sinha and others joined later. Vinod Khanna, who was from the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) and was attached to the department of Chinese studies at DU, regularly visited our group at CSDS. He commended our work and encouraged us. He also offered to help. Until then, we were very independent-minded scholars who always stood against the tide of the time. We took the risk of being referred to in different ways, so as to evolve new perspectives on India’s China policy, and foreign policy in general: Mira Sinha on the India-China border, myself on ideological questions of understanding China and Chinese policies, Giri Deshingkar on defense policy, Tan Chung, as I said earlier, as an alternative to John King Fairbank. We provoked him to prepare an alternative historical framework for understanding China. So we were always fighting the tide, and we were well-paid university readers and later became professors. So we did not need any government support. But Ambassador Vinod Khanna was forthcoming and told us that the government was willing to support us to encourage us as academicians. So the government provided us the space at 9 Bhagwandas Road, and you were the first research associate at ICS under that program. Then I remember we met the present foreign secretary, who was then joint secretary and Shyam Saran’s predecessor, and his successor, T. C. A. Rangachari; they were all so enthusiastic because they were all our students. Rangachari, Shiv Shankar Menon, and Jaishankar were all our students in history. Tan Chung, V. P. Dutt, and I were all teaching Chinese history, imperialism, and so on. So we made a proposal for two lakh rupees, and we got it. Then, after two or three years, we got four lakh rupees. Rangachari really wanted to give a boost to this program at that time. He said the space was a temporary one, and we

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ought to get some permanent space. CSDS was getting its new building, and he suggested we get some space permanently in that building. That’s how the MEA got a full floor on a long-term lease from the new CSDS building for ICS and increased the grant to 13.5 lakh rupees. But today, when we look back, 13.5 lakh rupees was a very small amount and, despite this, our program has expanded tremendously. In the last fifteen or twenty years, two things have happened. First, our interaction with China grew tremendously. We have many MOUs at ICS. In fact, when I was director and my friend was a Ford Foundation representative, he was willing to support us and, in fact, gave us a grant of some hundred thousand dollars, which actually helped our first group of students for their long-term fieldwork. It was extended for another three years. That five-year period really supported our fieldwork, of which you are a product, along with many others. Interaction with China and fieldwork in China, and the Chinese government’s cultural exchange program with the Indian government also helped all of us. Our students went, our colleagues went, and then other foundations came in, like the Asian Scholarship Foundation and the India China Institute. So interest in China increased manifold. The last five years have seen yet another development in that trend, namely IndiaChina studies, because of the fast rise of both India and China. While remaining independent scholars, but with some government support, we tried to take initiatives for the future. We thought India, China, and Russia should come together. Mr. Treterenko first approached IDSA (Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis), but IDSA did not respond. They directed him to me. I was director of ICS then, and I was enthusiastic about it. Then we found that there are some China scholars also. So Marshallis Treterenko and I launched it. We had a workshop, and we started the RIC (Russia, India, China) trilateral, which has now become a formal forum. I met some Kunming scholars in Hong Kong at the Orientalists Conference and, at the end of my presentation, one scholar came up and introduced himself as Wang Chung Li, director of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences. He had a short meeting with me just before his flight took off. That was the initiation of the Kunming Initiative. So in couple of months

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I told Tan Chung, who was in Chicago, to come via Kunming, and then we invited the delegation, and that’s how we started the process. This was the so-called Kunming Initiative. Similarly, we had the Boao Forum. The Chinese took the initiative, and I was called for a preparatory meeting; we created some structures for the Boao forum and, while ICS is a founding member of that, FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) is also a member. So the government allowed us to take certain initiatives, which were found later to be very useful. We had many retired government officials, as well. We had been providing many policy papers and monographs over time, and in that way our relationship had already been very cordial and democratic. So these are the two stages from 1969 to 1990 and from 1990 to 2008. Today, of course, we feel that we have a new agenda to pursue. AGARWAL: We will go back into the past again. Tell us about your first trip to China. MOHANTY: My first trip to China was in 1979. That’s again a very interesting story. I was active in the India-China friendship movement, and I was also known to Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) officials. I did a project for them, which was published as a book titled The Political Philosophy of Mao Tse-Tung. The project was on revolutionary politics in China. So when I applied for a field trip, I got money for a six-month field trip, but then I needed a visa to go to China. I arranged to do research in Hong Kong at the Center for Asian Studies and at the University Services Center. Those days all the scholars used Hong Kong to do research on China, but I was determined to go to China. I applied for the permission of the Indian government, and that was when Vajpayee was getting ready to go to China. So therefore they permitted me, and they allowed ICSSR to grant me the money. Then I applied to the Indian Embassy and asked them to find me a host. So they found me a host, and I went in 1979. I spent one month in China first, and then in Hong Kong, and then again the last week in China. That’s how I managed that trip in 1979. Thereafter I found a host, so whenever I traveled to the West, I

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would go through China. In 1980, when I was returning from a conference in Toronto, I went to Beijing for two weeks. Then I went in 1983, again in 1985 for two months on an ICSSR trip, and in 1987 for a conference. I was part of the UN project on revolutionary transformation in Japan, China, Russia, and Mexico. The conference was held in Hangzhou. The book I wrote on the Chinese Revolution ultimately came out of that conference. After 1987, the Tiananmen incident happened and I was disappointed. I condemned the repression of the students. I was among the demonstrators outside the Chinese Embassy. AGARWAL: Sorry to interrupt you there, but 1979 was a turning point for China; so what was your impression of that? MOHANTY: 1979 was still a hangover of the commune period. However, many fundamental changes were announced. In 1979 I participated in their Children’s Day function, which was addressed by Hua Guofeng. So I witnessed the transformation from the cultural period to the era of reforms. AGARWAL: So how did the Chinese greet visitors to China? MOHANTY: I was a friend of China. The education ministry hosted me, and a professor from Beida (Peking University) accompanied me. Scholars at the university and other local people greeted me, and this is how my academic and friendship roles converged. But I wanted to work on the very commune on which the Beijing Review had published a series of articles. The ministry declined and suggested that they take me to another commune. So, likewise, they would make other changes. But I wanted to go Shanghai, Wang Chu, and so on, and they allowed me. And they did the same for my students as well. I arranged for my student, Arto Pran Naik, in the same way. I requested help and grants from the ICSSR, and I also requested the Beijing Friendship Association to help him. He went to Hong Kong for almost one year, and twice he went to China. AGARWAL: So who were the first-generation fieldworkers from India going to China under ICSSR funding?

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MOHANTY: I was the first one from India. I lived in a peasant’s home. I did fieldwork. In 1989, I was very upset by repression. Therefore I decided not to go to China, even though I was invited for the next several years. It was only in 1993 that I went again. So for four years I did not go. In 1993, I was asked to lead an Indian delegation from ICSSR for an ICSSR and CASS (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) seminar on urbanization in India and China, which led to a book edited by Amitabh Kundoo. That was a very important conference, organized by CASS. I had sociologists, demographers, and the registrar general of India on census with me. The Chinese had the Institute of Economics and Population director and Deputy Director Chai Fan. Interestingly enough, I had to edit the books on China in Chinese: my English book, Chinese Revolution and Comparative Perspective, and then a demography book, Urbanization in India and China. The Chinese insisted that I be the co-editor because I led the delegation. So Chai Fan and Mohanty edited the Chinese edition. For the Indian English edition, I thought a proper demographer should be the editor and insisted that Amitabh Kundoo be an editor of Equality, Urbanization, and Growth in India and China. After that, almost every year I visited China. AGARWAL: So tell us something about your new book. MOHANTY: Unfortunately, the book was delayed, and it is now in press. I hope it will be released soon. I feel that I should have written this book immediately following the first two years of my fieldwork. I got so busy in organizational work and institution building and so on that I did not have time to finish that book. There are two interesting experiences I had in the village. The locals treated me as one of them. Everyone welcomed me, and their homes were open to me. Then I made my last visit in September, and I took Patricia to show her my home in the village. It had been replaced by two multistory buildings. We had to trace where our people had been. So the thing is, I had seen the last days of the commune period, in 1985 and 1987, the height of the rural reforms, the success of rural reforms, and the debacle

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and problems of rural reforms. These are experiences I will keep writing about for the rest of my life. It was a great experience; I have used it to inspire many upcoming researchers to do the work, as well as advise them about the methodology of conducting interviews, how to overcome some of the official constraints and mediations by party people, and how to get to the reality as much as possible. AGARWAL: This is really very interesting, and perhaps you are the first one to understand China from the inside. Despite the overall atmosphere, dominated by India-China relations, foreign policy, and security policy issues, how did you decide and manage to study the internal and social developments within China? MOHANTY: In fact, the driving factor was that everyone was expected to concentrate on India-China relations and foreign policy matters. Indian journals and journalists, as well, were preoccupied with foreign policy matters and had no idea of domestic policy and internal developments. Therefore, very early I decided to focus on non-conventional issues. Very consciously, Mira Sinha and I divided our areas. Mira would study and guide the research on foreign policy issues, and I would concentrate on domestic policy issues. So that’s how it remained. I read a lot on foreign policy, but my work is predominantly on issues of domestic politics. AGARWAL: So what are the areas you covered in your research over all those years? MOHANTY: Basically, the party system, party politics, and grassroots democracy; the outcome of that was the seminar and the volume that I edited with Sen in 2007 on grassroots democracy in India and China. Then the ideological concern was that not many people were capable of comprehending philosophical and ideological issues—familiarity with Marxism and its theoretical and ideological depth, as well as Western liberal theory. And of course my weakness was Indian philosophy and, therefore, Marxism and Western liberal theory. I understood and could continue the theoretical and ideological analyses. These were the issues

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that I wrote about: grassroots democracy, state party politics, and rural development policies in China. Because I am also a democratic rights movement activist in India, I also looked at human rights issues in China. AGARWAL: In China, you must have interacted with a number of scholars during your visits. Who are the prominent scholars you remember? MOHANTY: The person whom I greatly miss is my escort, who was an associate professor in Hindi at Peking University. Unfortunately, he died when he was a visiting professor at Banaras Hindu University, and I miss him so much. My introduction to his supervisor, a great Indologist, Professor Ji Xianlin, gained my acceptance in China, because when Ji Xianlin came here in 1978, we received him. Tan Chung, V. P. Dutt, and I, with the arts faculty at Delhi University, received him. They took my visit to China as a return trip. So I was received by Ji Xianlin in China with grand hospitality. He presented me the original painting of Xu Zhimo and Xu Beihong. So the whole Indological scholarship and Beida scholars received me, and we received CASS scholars’ work in India; therefore they accepted me, my colleagues, and researchers with great warmth, and they supported us. Because of my role in India-China friendship on the one hand and my initiatives in China studies in political science at Delhi University on the other hand, I was a frequent contributor to the newspapers and so on, especially in the ’70s and ’80s. Another person was Ma Jiali, who remained on the forefront of India-China studies. Sun Shihai, who was in the embassy here, was well known to me. After his return, he joined CASS. Now he is the deputy director and practically the person in charge of India-China studies at CASS. Wang Hongwei, another CASS South Asia expert, and Chai Fang, director of the Population Institute, are also there. Amongst the collaboration of scholars last year is Ma Rong, my co-editor of Grass-roots Democracy in India and China. He is a sociologist, and we teamed up to do many things together, including this project. With my Berkeley connection and later my UCLA connection, I became a visiting professor at UCLA several times since 1998. Many Chinese

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scholars are attached to Berkeley and UCLA. So we would meet each other there. That’s where I met Li Chongkao, and he is now director of the China Rural Policy Institute. So he received our students, including Sanjeev Kumar and others. So in that way it became a network, and then we signed an MOU. My escort in Shanghai, first in 1993 and then in 1997 and 1998, became our collaborator at ICS. When I became chairperson of the Indian Congress of Asian and Pacific Studies, we involved a number of scholars from China, ten or fifteen years ago. So gradually this network converted to a community of scholarship on India and China. AGARWAL: If you look back, what is the nature of Indian studies in China? MOHANTY: I think it is very unbalanced, just as Chinese studies in India. But they are very strong in classical Indology. They have scholars in Sanskrit, Pali, and Buddhist studies. We don’t have similar scholars in India on Buddhism and Chinese classics who would know classical Chinese and do that kind of thorough work. We have probably given up on security and foreign policy studies; the same number is still there as earlier. They have more dispersed scholarship. We have concentrated it in Delhi and somewhere in Calcutta. They have at least four India study centers: in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, and Chengdu. I think they are weak in Indian economics, as we are in Chinese economics. There are a couple of people who have emerged, like Bhoumik and Mohan Guru Swami, who have the knowledge of language, have undertaken quality fieldwork, and have been doing research for ten or fifteen years. They have some scholars in language and literature, as we do also. But considering the need, we are still very weak. In history and political science, we have produced some quality scholarship. But I think Chinese studies in India is very weak, and Indian studies in China is also very weak. AGARWAL: So what do you think are the major constraints? MOHANTY: Three things come to mind. First, the investment in language studies has not been adequate. It is done is such a way that it does not inte-

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grate the day-to-day academics of any student. That’s why we have very few scholars educated in language. Area studies and language studies are so difficult in Indian universities, and they are equally separate in Chinese universities. As a result, discipline-based academics think that studying America is a discipline, but studying India is not, or studying China is not a part of discipline study. One reason is that preoccupation with the West dominates the discipline in both countries. Second, both countries are interested in immediate policy-relevant studies support and not in a systematic, long-term, school-level training program as part of the study of the world. Third is the problem of interactions and exchanges and the obstacles to the free flow of people for studies and field research. So we have to intervene at all three levels. AGARWAL: Are the governments from both sides taking a lukewarm approach? MOHANTY: I think they have, until now, taken a very lukewarm approach. Now things might change; they are talking of the rise of India and China, peaceful emergence, and so on. So things might change. But the governments have not done the right kinds of things. AGARWAL: The rise of China reminds me, from your first visit to China in 1979 until now, how do you see China? How has it improved? MOHANTY: China is now visibly developed. The urban landscape has changed: there are high-rise buildings, modern facilities, infrastructure, highways, railways and airports, and so on. Even rural facilities have improved tremendously. But there are a few new and lingering old problems in terms of disparity, alienation, corruption, and environmental destruction. China has become a fast developing world power. In a way, China has emerged significantly, but this is not the China that the Cultural Revolution had envisaged. The Cultural Revolution had envisaged the modern, equitable, just and democratic, and socialist China. On these fronts, they have a long way to go.

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AGARWAL: So, after contributing so much and taking China studies to this extent, what would you like to advise the coming generation and emerging researchers in China studies? MOHANTY: I don’t believe in giving advice, first of all. I would just state what my vision is for the rest of my life and for the next generation. I am determined to ensure the transition in leadership of Chinese studies, and my colleagues and I are active in that direction. The new leadership has completely taken over, and we are slowly moving out of the picture now. I am glad that the new generation is in charge. Look at the chairs of three departments at three universities. There are new people with new ideas and a new vision, and they have our best wishes and best support. Now I want them to learn lessons, analyzing our achievements and failures very frankly. I gave a talk at JNU about three years ago when Alka took over as chairperson, “Chinese Studies Tasks for the Next Generation.” So we have had three failures. First, we have not been able to ensure the depth and fluency of language, a must for every China scholar. There are both structural and practical reasons. For our generation, that could be understood. But for the current generation, there is no excuse. If people still read English written literature, and they themselves can’t conduct an interview in Chinese, that is a shame. Second, even I, having done work in political science and revolutionary theory, have failed to locate the insights of China studies into the core of political science. This is true of all disciplines: history, philosophy, sociology, economics, anthropology, and so on. The core theory is still a Western theory. As I told you, when I came to Delhi, I launched this mission of Indianizing education. Otherwise, it is mainly Western dominated and what passes to the next generation is Western theory. It needs to be universal so that we can bring in the traditions of all actors on equal terms to form a universally equitable discourse. We have failed in political science. We thought we had people in China studies, Latin American studies, and so on in the core political science department. What I

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had the chance to do in political science, Suresh now has the chance to do in political science. You don’t have a chance to do it in your center, but through your research and teaching of courses in other schools and in the MA program, you can do that. That is the reason I told you to sustain your interest in gender and justice, which is your field. Then you take China, India, and the world as your empirical universe. From that empirical universe, you must make a contribution to the theory of gender justice. So I hope that before I die, I will see that impact on social and political theory on the basis of our study of China, Japan, and Korea. So first is language failure, and second is failure in informing core theory and deparochializing or universalizing the core social science areas. Third, the structural roots of the China program, on the Sapru House lawns, have still not been transcended. The informality and poverty of resources still persist. It was a group of very close friends who developed the program; the China Studies Group and the ICS are carrying it on, but still with a paucity of resources. I call it a purity of methodology, that without money you should be able to do great things, revolutionary things, and democratic tasks. We ourselves formed a fact-finding team and gave a report. Modern institutions cannot be built with informality and paucity of resources. All the institutions I am connected with are groups of friends doing work voluntarily, without depending on anybody, and this should change. We have a right to institutional space and resources. I think this group has given so much to the country. But their successors should not face the same problems; they need institutional support. The structural roots of China studies in India are on the Sapru House lawns, which informs the informality and paucity of resources that persist, with structural limits that we cannot do anything more about. Now we want to spread Asian studies all over the world. We want Asian studies to inform social science theory. We want Asians to inform each other, support each other, for which you need institutional support and a framework of resources. That is the central point in my vision. With that we can improve our quality of research, the effectiveness and quality of our academic training, and its relevance to state and society.

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AGARWAL: You have always combined political science and China studies in your academic endeavors, while simultaneously pursuing a lot of other initiatives. How did you manage all that? And during your days as a professor in the political science department, how did you encourage students to take Chinese studies? Who were the students, and what kind of work did you supervise? MOHANTY: I feel really proud, and I must say that you are the first properly trained scholar in Chinese studies and political science. You honed your language skills before your fieldwork. Yours was the first kind of research I instituted, which is fieldwork based on theoretically informed research work. Research is so important in gender theory, as well as movement and policy relevant work. You have been doing that, and I hope you will prove your competence in the future. When I moved to political science in 1980, some of my colleagues were disappointed. They said that without me they were much weaker. Tan Chung had already left for JNU, and Girijashankar left soon after for CSDS. I told them that I had a lot of resources from political science for them. Earlier, I was invited into political science, and now I was offering and structuring the courses for their programs. And you, Anurag, and Mohanty are the people who really illustrated my efforts to combine political science and Chinese studies the way I have been attempting to do. Some of the first-generation students did well. Naik became a professor and head of Cheena Bhavan, but since he had to teach language, he began to develop his expertise in language. So he abandoned workers’ issues and development issues and so on. But he is a very competent language professor. For me, academics was a platform to enable me to intervene in society at the levels of thinking and action. Why I chose academics was because, to me, it opens a realm of freedom of thought and study, and I can work for society. I chose political science for that reason. You must have noticed that I began to redefine politics from day one, from studying China and developing countries, studying political science inside the classroom, and changing the university, the department, and my sphere of influence into a sphere of democratic struggle. I was a member of people’s movements for democratic rights since 1978.

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I remember in 1975, Narayan asked me to write a paper on Orissa for his volume, State Politics in India. I was deeply engaged in China studies and told him that I was not in touch with what was happening in Orissa. He wrote to me saying that there were very few people he could ask to write a paper, and I was one of the few. He also informed me that I would always be called upon to write on Orissa. He said, “You have to think and respond to the matters of Orissa, so why not do it systematically?” Last month, I gave the Narayan lecture, and I said thank God he wanted me; so I had Orissa and Wuxi together. I have studied them, and I am equally competent on both. After writing a paper for a volume by Francine Frankel, she asked me whether I was still doing China studies. I told her that China studies was my bread and butter. I am glad that I did both along with my comparative development study. Of course, issues of China, Orissa, and the Third World have been difficult. But in the Calcutta Seminar on Grassroots Democracy in India and China, I realized that I was the only scholar familiar with both theory and practice. I talked on democratic and political theory, and also on empirical studies. I was equally proficient on both India and China. So I thought, it’s not been a wasted life; it’s been difficult but finally rewarding. AGARWAL: Tell us something about your books, especially the one on the political philosophy of Mao Tse-tung. MOHANTY: It was an enjoyable experience. I learned everything about Marxism, Western theory, democratic theory, the Cultural Revolution, and its critique. I started doing that as a part of my study on the Cultural Revolution, and later on I just focused on Mao and wrote that book. After that, I wrote many theoretical essays, but never brought them together as a book. AGARWAL: What was so fascinating about Mao that influenced you? MOHANTY: Two things especially: I had already been exposed to Gandhi and socialism, and I found many socialist and Gandhian things in the Cultural Revolution, interpretation of Mao, and Marxism. So I was fascinated. Then the Naxalite movement here challenged those things. I studied

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the Naxalite movement and kept a close watch on these developments. So all these things together aroused my interest in Mao, and I kept writing on them. AGARWAL: So what are your views on the Cultural Revolution in China? MOHANTY: I think it was a great experience in the alternative version of socialism, whose value will be recognized now after the crisis and reforms. It degenerated into a power struggle and military factionalism, fighting each other and settling scores; however, the theoretical and ideological value of the Cultural Revolution will remain. AGARWAL: Do you think Mao is relevant for India now? MOHANTY: Mao is only partly relevant. The other day, we had the Hindswaraj Seminar, with aspects of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Marx, feminists, environmentalists, etc., so each generation and historical moment has its own challenges. Today you cannot have a framework of policy without Ambedkar or feminism, or without new environmental issues. We have to analyze the range of contradictions at different times. Some things that Mao did were for his times. Using Marxism, using dialectical and historical matter in meaning, contradictions, and understandings, and hierarchizing them are things we should do today. AGARWAL: If you look at present-day China, what do you think they are heading towards? Are they missing Mao? MOHANTY: I think they are missing Mao. More and more interest in Mao is evident, but they are not forgiving Mao for certain mistakes. It is Mao the leader of the People’s Democratic Revolution, the leader who inspired them to create the destiny, the Mao who raised the qualitative questions about socialism, democracy, and mass participation creating new socialist human beings—those are his ideas that will be attractive to the Chinese. AGARWAL: So do you have any memories of your travel in China?

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MOHANTY: Yes, in 1979, everybody was calling each other tongzhi (comrades), and suddenly in 1985, it became Lao Wang and Xiao Wang. In a similar way, husband and wife treated each other in a very equitable way in the early years. Visiting China is so wonderful even today. Now I just don’t even call; I land and arrange my things and walk into people’s houses and meet them. Once, I had completed my Bu Shi fieldwork and returned to Hangzhou, and I had to fly back to London. I was then teaching at Oxford. When I came back to Hangzhou, I could not afford to go back to the Hilton because the seminar was over. I had to stay for one night in a cheap hotel, and I had not made any arrangements. In one of the hotels where I found the charge reasonable, I asked for a room for one night in Chinese. I said that I had a flight in the morning. Now, because I was from India and I spoke Chinese, the person said, “We don’t have a room, but we will make some arrangement for you.” They enclosed a part of the lobby with a partition, fixed a bed, and allowed me to stay for the night. I paid them the next morning. That is something I will never forget. Another time, I had a free evening when I was in China, and whenever I had a free evening I went to a Chinese movie or some kind of opera. He actually arranged for me to get tickets. So there are many things like that. On my very first trip, I was traveling with my wife and two small kids, Sanju and Jeni, from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and they played “Aawara Hoon” for us. We were the only Indians. It was so touching. And the conductor came to us humming the tune of the Bollywood Hindi song. So there are many such things. Then there is another historic story of getting a daughter-in-law from China. I had gone to Bu Shi, and they took me to the Asia Pacific Fishery Institute, and at the end of the lunch they said, “Why don’t you send any Indians here? We don’t have any Indians.” AGARWAL: So I think we are ending on a happy note.

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MOHANTY: Yes, but I must tell you, you are my best token of inspiration for all I did for Chinese studies. It feels so good to say all these things to you AGARWAL: Thank you very much, sir, and it was indeed a great pleasure to listen to your views and experiences and to learn much more from you

Biswadeb Mukherjee Interviewer: Dr. Avijit Banerjee Professor Biswadeb Mukherjee has contributed much to Chinese studies and is still contributing. He has worked at Cheena Bhavan (Department of Chinese Language & Culture), Visva Bharati University, in Taiwan, and also in Germany. BANERJEE: I am Avijit Banerjee. My first question to you is, when in your childhood or in your adulthood did you first confront the word China? MUKHERJEE: I would like to tell you of the time when I encountered China or Chinese culture academically. That happened after my MA. My teacher, Professor Sutakant Chatterjee, at Calcutta University, asked me to enroll in Buddhist studies at Santiniketan. Dr. Bagchi, who was an internationally acclaimed scholar of Chinese and Buddhism, interviewed me. He suggested that I should study Chinese Buddhism, and that was the beginning of my study of Chinese Buddhism. That was in 1954. I started learning the Chinese language under Professor Tan Yunshan and Dr. Wei. After some years, Dr. Venkataraman returned from abroad, and I started attending his classes in classical Chinese. and Buddhism. BANERJEE: Please tell us something about your birthplace, school, and college education. MUKHERJEE: I was born and brought up in Calcutta. I joined school for the first time in eighth standard. My father used to teach us at home. It was Bowbazar High School in Calcutta where my father was either president or secretary. From there I completed matriculation and joined Scottish Church College. I could not continue my studies because I was suffering from typhoid and meningitis. I had to give up my BA (Honors) in geog-

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raphy from Calcutta University, so I completed my BA at a neighborhood college. Then I studied Sanskrit at home, after which I applied for ancient Indian history and culture with four special papers on religion. I studied religion during my three years staying at home. I was going through my father’s library and came across Kathamrita. I found it very interesting; I quickly went through all five volumes of Kathamrita and got interested in Indian culture and philosophy. I had four papers: Buddhism, Jainism, Puranas, Vedic literature, and so on. That was at Calcutta University. In the meantime, Sutakant Chatterjee used to teach me Shako Histo and other subjects. He joined here as head of the department, and Dr. Bagchi said to me, “If you are interested in learning Buddhist studies, then you have to study the Chinese language, because 80 percent of Buddhist literature is in Chinese.” So I started learning the Chinese language, but those days they used to teach only modern Chinese. After that Dr. Bagchi gave me a book —a 5th-century AD book—and its grammar was completely different. Using my knowledge of modern Chinese, I could only understand a few things. So I started learning classical Chinese myself. There was nobody to help. Dr. Venkataraman taught us Confucius, but Confucius was far earlier than the Buddhist text I was reading. I wouldn’t even call it classical Chinese. It was archaic and ancient Chinese. That I did myself. I had to figure out the rules and regulations myself. There were a few books in our libraries, like Warton, and those books were good. Then I got the Humboldt scholarship, and I went to Germany. Dr. Yu Hung was internationally famous for Buddhist studies. He knew Tibetan, Pali, Prakrit, and Sanskrit. His main job there was to identify dilapidated Buddhist manuscripts in Xinjiang Province and to restore them. For example, old scripts are often torn and have holes in them. He had to figure out what was written there, and he did it very methodically and scientifically. When I applied for the Humboldt scholarship, my article had been published. I wrote that nobody knows the perfect date of birth of Buddha. In those days there was not much interest in the date of birth, but in the date of conception, because that is the first step for descending onto earth, and earlier Buddhists were not interested in that. They got interested in Buddha only

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after his enlightenment. So that date was lost. Poornima are the traditional sacred dates in India due to Vedic sacrifices. And they added these dates to Buddha so that he would get respect from ordinary people. Actually there are eight to ten Buddha dates. All of them are not authentic. In reality nobody knows the exact date of Buddha’s birth. That was my first article. Dr. Bagchi was very happy. He asked me to get it published. Dr. Chatterjee published it in Indian Historical Quarterly. That article was one of the reasons I got the Humboldt scholarship. I did not know with whom to work. Somebody suggested that I work with Waldschmidt. Then I got a fifteen-page-long form from the German Embassy, which I sent back, and then I was awarded the fellowship. One day, after taking a class, I came to the desk where I worked. My room was opposite the room of the head of the department. I found a very tall European standing there. He asked me, “Are you Mr. Mukherjee?” I replied, “Yes.” Then he asked me briefly about myself and about my work. I said, “I am working on Buddha’s life.” He discussed a few more things and abruptly went away. Then I found out he was Professor Waldschmidt. He did not disclose his identity to me. He came to Delhi to participate in a conference. From there, rather than going back, he came to Santiniketan to find out who Mr. Mukherjee was. He did it perhaps to assess me and to see how seriously and actively people were working. Then I got the Humboldt scholarship. Professor Waldschmidt told me, “You must know the Sanskrit language chronologically,” and he taught me Vedic text, Brahmana text, Upanishad text, Ashokan inscriptions, and then Pali. That helped me a lot. Many words are identical to the Vedic words. However, there are semantic nuances that I would never have understood if I had not studied the Sanskrit language chronologically. That was one part of my studies. He advised me to study classical Chinese thoroughly. And I did five years of Chinese. BANERJEE: This was during which year?

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MUKHERJEE: I was there from November/December 1959 until June 1966. I got my doctorate from there. My thesis was published from there as a book. I did my PhD under Professor Waldschmidt. Almost 90 percent of the sources were from classical Chinese. There was another coexaminer, I forget his name; he was an expert on ancient Chinese archeology. I was associated with George Austintown University, Nottingham. I worked at the university after my doctorate for some years before I returned to India. BANERJEE: I would like to know more about your family and your parents. MUKHERJEE: My father was a mathematician, and he did his MSc in mathematics from Calcutta University. I am the youngest in the family. My middle brother was very bright and an intelligent student of mathematics. During his Master’s study, his papers were published in France and Germany. Due to social upheavals of that era, he gave up academics, applied for civil services, and cleared his Indian Police Service. But then again he left that service, worked as a magistrate, and finally became the home secretary of West Bengal. BANERJEE: What about your father? MUKHERJEE: My father worked for the Reserve Bank of India. He was joint governor next to the British manager. But Gandhiji gave a call for non-cooperation, and he resigned from his job. Despite having eight to ten people dependent on him, he quit his job. He used to write books on adult education and scientific education among the masses. He established a society called the Bengal Math Society and established several schools. He was associated with three to four schools as a president or secretary. So, the overall atmosphere in my house was totally academic, and when my middle brother joined the civil services, we were not very happy with his decision. We all believed he would have done well in academics. BANERJEE: So is your ancestral home in Calcutta?

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MUKHERJEE: No, actually my grandfather was from Meerut. But he eventually became a monk, and my father grew up in Hazaribagh. My grandfather had formed a Bharatbramha Society in Banaras, and he published scriptures in seven or eight different languages—Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Pali, etc. — in Banaras. He was a member of the committee to select the Shankaracharya (head of a matha [monastic or similar religious establishment]). There is a committee to appoint Shankaracharya. He was a member of that committee for some years. BANERJEE: When did you marry, sir? MUKHERJEE: I married after I got my doctorate degree, after returning from Germany in 1966 and coming to Cheena Bhavan, Visva Bharati University. I married in 1968. BANERJEE: So Professor Paddalochi Mukherjee is your wife, and she is in the Japanese department. MUKHERJEE: But she was originally in the Sanskrit department. She is good in Sanskrit. BANERJEE: What about your daughter? MUKHERJEE: My daughter, Abhirupa Mukherjee, received her MA from here. But she was not good academically. She had been to China. She got a scholarship. She speaks Chinese quite fluently. She was interviewed, but I don’t know how well she did. She got a scholarship in Singapore for a course, but she did not complete it. She got married and went to the USA with her husband. She was also in Australia for three years. BANERJEE: So during your research period in Germany, did you go to China? MUKHERJEE: During research, I mainly studied languages. And Professor Waldschmidt asked me to do research on Devadatta and nothing else. In Germany they don’t help you with anything. You have to find your own source and reference material. The professor only makes sure

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you know what he wants from you. The moment I entered the domain of Chinese language, I came to know that one version would not do. In China there are six versions. At that time it was a must to go through all the versions and make a comparative study. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to reconstruct Devadatta. My task became twofold. I started with Devadatta and showed the gradual development of his career, what he achieved, and what sort of person he was. At the same time, it gave me insight into the development of Buddhist Vinaya, gradual bifurcation, and original stream —how it was and how it was divided. I translated all these. BANERJEE: At that time, what was the state of Chinese studies in Germany? MUKHERJEE: Chinese studies were flourishing in Germany. We had several good professors at that time. Professor Waldschmidt was the doyen of Buddhist studies. There were many other professors. In Germany, the emphasis was on accurate, objective translation of the text. They taught you the methodology. Suppose the word has fifteen meanings; they taught the one that is the most suitable meaning. They were also good in classical grammar. There were many others, and the department was flourishing. BANERJEE: During that period, what was the state of Buddhist studies in India? MUKHERJEE: It was not bad. There was Professor Bapat, Professor Gokhale, and Professor Venkataraman. Professor Bapat was in Pune. Banaras Hindu University and Sanskrit University were the places to read the original Buddhist texts written in Sanskrit. In Dharamshala, Tibetans have established a good library. One can learn Buddhism from Tibetans without going to Tibet. BANERJEE: So you came back and went to Cheena Bhavan? MUKHERJEE: I came back and I met Professor Sutakanta Chatterjee, head of the department of Indology. He was an expert on ancient Indian

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history. At that time, he had to look after his own students, and he did not have any openings. So he suggested that I go to Cheena Bhavan. BANERJEE: What was the condition of Cheena Bhavan then? MUKHERJEE: At that time, we had Professor Tan Yunshan, Dr. Wei, and Dr. Shu-lu—he was a Buddhist—and they all used to stay around Cheena Bhavan. BANERJEE: At that time, what was the course structure and curriculum? MUKHERJEE: Well, modern Chinese was studied only through certificate and diploma courses. BANERJEE: So at that time there were no graduate courses? MUKHERJEE: No. We introduced that later. I introduced many things there. I also emphasized the study of classical Chinese and Buddhist Chinese. I prepared course outlines, and Jayeeta Ganguly was one of our students. We asked the government to allow us to have Chinese language experts, and we were successful in doing so. Then we developed modern Chinese. Professor Narayan Sen joined us later. My professional career started here at Cheena Bhavan. In Germany, my academic career got a definite direction. I was too busy teaching classes here. Because of that, sometimes I could not even do my work. BANERJEE: Sir, when did you visit China the first time? MUKHERJEE: I went to Taiwan in 1981–1982. I stayed there for ten months. But then I came back, since nobody was here to look after the department. BANERJEE: Where did you stay in Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: I stayed at the Chinese Cultural University. But afterwards they discontinued Buddhist studies. When I went later, I joined another professor at a Beijing institute. BANERJEE: We were talking about your first Taiwan tour…

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MUKHERJEE: Yes, I taught Sanskrit and Pali there. One period was used for a general lecture on Buddhism, and another one for linguistic studies and text. I had three periods a week and two hours for each period. After that I joined another institute, which was located on top of a mountain in South Taiwan. I was there for one year again. I finished my studies here, I retired in 1989, and they gave me a five-year extension. During the extension period, I again went to Taiwan despite the opposition of many others in the university. I was with the Institute of Advanced Studies, which is now a recognized university. I started working there, with the precondition that I produce a monograph every year and lecture for five to six periods a week. I had to teach Buddhist text and always compare it with the Chinese text. That is very helpful, because you not only understand the Chinese text better, you also understand the Indian text better. Chinese translation was the earliest interpretation of Buddhist text, and that was done with the help of Indian scholars. Only renowned scholars were sent to China, and not just anybody could go there. The Chinese scholars were very renowned, so theirs were the finest products and earlier interpretations of Sanskrit texts. Take, for example, the word “Upeksha.” I was saying earlier, in India everybody translates it as ignorance or indifference. This is not the meaning. It is a meditative term and was used the first time in meditation. Suppose in meditation you have to get rid of different thoughts. “Upeksha” means you have gotten rid of thoughts of “Sukha and Dukhha.” And when you get rid of these things, you get rid of ‘I’ and ‘Me’ from your mind. And only then does your mind become a suitable instrument to know an object absolutely objectively. And with our object, we never know the object as it is;it is always colored with subjective colorings. So Buddhism teaches one how to see an object the way it is, and with that mind one attains the Bodhi (enlightenment or awakening). They got three Vidyas (knowledge)and, on the basis of the Vidyas, they have determined that Bodhi or Buddha would never be born, and my work is done in regards to Bodhi. This is one of the most inspiring contributions of Buddhism, not only to the culture of India but also to the culture of the world. How do the Indian scientists not know it? And how can one know an object objectively? Scientific knowledge is

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all conventional knowledge; we call it “Vyavharik Gyana.” It helps serve your purpose, but it can never let you know the object truly. Buddhism is an enlightening subject and helps one to understand the intricacies of life. BANERJEE: How long were you in Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: I went in 1992 and returned in 2002. BANERJEE: For ten years? MUKHERJEE: Yes, and before that in 1983. BANERJEE: What are all the activities you carried out in these ten years? MUKHERJEE: Well, other than lecturing, I published some eight to ten monographs. BANERJEE: And where did you live? MUKHERJEE: Well, they arranged my accommodation within the campus of the institution. They had arranged for everything—banking, transportation, and everything—so that I could focus completely on my studies. BANERJEE: But at that time Taiwan was not as developed as it is today. MUKHERJEE: It was much more developed than India. Economically it was developed, even more than China. Even today, the overall development of Taiwan is faster than India and China. The shipping industry is very vast and highly developed. BANERJEE: What about the people? Were they very helpful, especially to foreigners? Can you recollect any of your experiences? MUKHERJEE: Many experiences. For example, whatever I needed they provided me. Another thing is not so very important but shows their nature. They like to give very much as in Buddha’s culture Dana (generosity), and through that they attain peace. So they like to give voluntarily. Whenever they came before a Guru, they placed a red envelope

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before him. And the envelope would contain at least 10000 Yuan. Whenever I went out, three persons would accompany me, and they would always pay the fare, and I never got a chance to pay it. In return, all I could do was to invite them all to an Indian restaurant in Taipei. BANERJEE: Who are the professors you visited in Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: There were Tung Lee, Li Chia-fu, and many others. There, the monks are extremely important. They are doctorate degree holders from Japan, and most of them teach in American universities. I came to know two very important monks—Hsin-yun Nimh and Sheng-yan Pasal. The former was an expert on Bodhisattva (enlightened existence) and had many American followers. He had established a huge monastery on about fifty or sixty acres of land near Los Angeles. But Sheng-yan Pasal was an academic. He was a Buddhist monk, and he got his doctorate from Japan and taught at many universities. He was a very learned monk. BANERJEE: Have they visited India, and which places do they often visit here? MUKHERJEE: They do come here and visit Buddhist places, and they also participate in various conferences in Delhi and Sarnath. These monks are highly educated people. People often mistake them for theologists. BANERJEE: In Taiwan, were you associated with any Buddhist institution? MUKHERJEE: These are all Buddhist institutions. They had their separate institutions and associations. Monks dominate the Buddhist institutes because of their academic profoundness. They are all invited by American university professors. BANERJEE: And what is the situation of exchange of Buddhist scholars between China and Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: China could not offer much. In fact, Taiwanese used to go there and teach. Chinese Buddhism is destroyed to some extent. Hung

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Su-fu and others came to meet me when I was in Taiwan and expressed their concerns in this regard. BANERJEE: You have supervised a few students also? MUKHERJEE: I supervised MPhil students on different types of subjects on Buddhism, and generally I gave them subjects that would help them learn the language. I would give them some important Pali or Sanskrit text; important parts of the texts would be translated by me for their benefit. Then I would ask them to make indices: both a Sanskrit-Chinese and a Chinese-Sanskrit index. In that way, they discovered many new things that were not found in the dictionary. BANERJEE: What were those things? MUKHERJEE: As I told you about the word “Upeksha,” there are many such words. Each word was translated, and in some part they did it literally. I knew how the Chinese understood the Sanskrit word and what the Chinese translation was. All these dictionaries were made from those translations. The students also had to write textual criticisms about these translations. Which one was earlier, the Sanskrit text or Chinese translations, and why? What were the discrepancies, and what did they indicate? Textual study was encouraged. BANERJEE: So you published monographs and books? MUKHERJEE: Yes, all monographs, and large and small articles were published from there. In addition, I delivered an extempore lecture, which was also translated. I pointed out certain things, like the importance of Bodhi, about which I told you earlier. It was the new thinking of that era and is new even today. A few days ago,I gave a presidential lecture. I again referred to this Buddhist method of knowing an object objectively. This is the most important thing. Any scientist who knows this will never have two opinions about anything. But one has to spend five to six years to develop that concentration. Another important aspect of this concentration is that one arrives at the result without going through the logical process.

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You think of it, and the answer comes to you. To tell you from my own experience, when I was doing this comparative study in Germany, I had a difficult time. I thought in a number of ways for days and nights, and I could not get any sleep. I used to work there for five to eleven hours at night, and on my way back the next day, when I got into a bus I got the answer. I established the answer of that question logically when I wrote. But I didn’t get the answer through a logical process. So we all go through this kind of phase. I supervised MPhil students. After I came back, they sent me the doctoral dissertations of several students for my comments and assessments. BANERJEE: So you have visited Germany and Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: Yes, I have also visited the Tuttichys Institute, where Professor Waldschmidt sent me to collect some documents, manuscripts, and other literature. BANERJEE: From where did you collect these research materials? MUKHERJEE: They were mainly the Pali texts and some Sanskrit texts, and 80 percent came from Chinese sources. BANERJEE: So you got them in Germany? MUKHERJEE: Yes, I got them there. They have a huge collection of Chinese literature. Their library is very resourceful. They have at least two to three different sets of Chinese books. They spent millions of rupees on buying books. BANERJEE: So, sir, why have you not been to mainland China? MUKHERJEE: No, I have only been to Hong Kong, and that was accidentally when I was going to Taiwan; I waited there for my visa. The Chinese once asked me to deliver a lecture at Peking University, but I did not dare to go because of their problems with Taiwan.

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I was also in Paris for fifteen days. Before I went to Rome, I went to Paris to collect materials and to interview and interact with scholars there. That was a good experience. Here also I was guided by many scholars, including Professor Sutakanta Chattarjee and Professor Murlinath Datta, who were international scholars on Buddhism. BANERJEE: During your stay in Taiwan, how was the Taiwan-India relationship? MUKHERJEE: The Taiwanese used to come to India, but two things about Indians used to disturb them. They felt we were friendlier to China and that we were more socialist than democratic. So I always used to dispel their apprehensions by saying that we were a democracy. There was a kind of socialism, but not like in the Soviet Union or other places. They appreciated many Indian scholars, and they often questioned why, despite being a populous country, India remained at an economically low level. That created a bad impression. Chinese are very practical people. Another disturbing thing for them was the corruption here. During one of their conferences, when I was introduced to their scholars, they discussed with me how much they spent on bribes at Indian airports. I was embarrassed by that. I told them there was corruption, but that there were good people as well. BANERJEE: After you came back, what kind of studies were you involved in? MUKHERJEE: As far as research work is concerned, previously I was only concerned with Vinaya. Then I shifted my emphasis to Nikaya and meditation. Currently I am working on “how the Buddha became Buddha.” Another thing: for Buddha, becoming a Buddha was not the highest goal at that time. After attaining Bodhi, he had to experience Nirvana in this world. That was the highest goal. I found what sort of meditation he did, why he did it, and how he realized Nirvana. I have already finished some of my work. You can summarize it in a few words:

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as Buddha and Buddhist’s meditation or the spiritual life of Buddha. I got literature from Nikaya and Agama regarding Chinese translations. BANERJEE: During your interactions with these students, what were the qualities that you liked most? MUKHERJEE: Well, I was satisfied with them. I used to use the German method that had been taught to me. Suppose we were starting a text in the next week; in the previous week I would give notes and an introductory lecture. Students had to come prepared for class. They had to translate the text into both Sanskrit and Chinese. If I was not satisfied with the translation, then I would ask them to help me understand their interpretation. I would evaluate their work critically. But the students were hardworking, sincere, and curious enough to learn more about India even in informal conversations. BANERJEE: What about the Indian students? MUKHERJEE: Well, I did not have Indian students there. But other Indian students in the science field were doing well. Most of them finished their courses early, earned their degrees, and returned to India. There was a big Indian society there. I used to attend their meetings as well. But they were mostly from the business community. They had offices in Taiwan, America, and the Middle East. I am very fond of music, and through these meetings I used to get hold of new compositions. BANERJEE: What kind of music do you like? MUKHERJEE: I like Rabindra Sangeet, classical songs, and Bhajans (devotional songs) especially. BANERJEE: Did the business community sing Bhajans there? MUKHERJEE: Yes, very well. They are mostly from the Sindhi community, and they are all devotees of Saibaba. They often used to invite me to lecture them on Buddhism and other things.

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BANERJEE: Were you ever associated with any kind of joint TaiwanIndia project? MUKHERJEE: People in Taiwan often thought about sending their students to universities in Delhi to learn here. They always wanted a joint project for those who could do it. But their methodology was very different. We all used modern critical methodology. But they did not. The Chinese have now started using that model. BANERJEE: Tell us something about the monographs you have published. MUKHERJEE: Possibly this Buddha which I am currently working on will be a long monograph. I only published books in Germany. BANERJEE: What books did you publish in Germany? MUKHERJEE: Devadatta in Vinaya and Nikaya. It was published from Germany in the German language. BANERJEE: What kind of academic associations did you have in Delhi and other parts of the country? MUKHERJEE: In Delhi I was connected with Latika Lahiri and others. She was at Delhi University, and I was also connected with scholars from Banaras Hindu University. BANERJEE: What were the subjects on which you delivered lectures? MUKHERJEE: Well, different topics, but always related to religion and philosophy, and also about methodology, because I thought methodology was not very clear here—the comparison of Chinese text with Indian text, etc. I was also at Nalanda. Professor Saatkori Mukharjee was there. He was a brilliant Sanskrit scholar, but he knew Chinese as well. Once the Chinese delegation was visiting India, and he could understand what they were talking about. His book, Buddhism in flux, is very well written and is a well argued book.

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BANERJEE: What are other Buddhist organizations you are associated with? MUKHERJEE: In Bengal, I am associated with many Buddhist organizations, like Dhamrakarvihara, Bahuvaja. They had a journal, and I wrote an article for them. In Ajanta there is a painting of an elephant attacking Buddha. Now, these paintings are done in Ajanta on the basis of oral tradition. Oral tradition is based on not one scriptural text, but many, and unless you knew them, you would not be able to follow the paintings there. I got material from Mulshravasa in Chinese, and I also collected other sources in Pali. I wrote an article for Dhamrakarvihara, rewrote it scientifically, and published it from the Asiatic Society. I also have an article published from the Ramakrishna Mission. This was a big volume that they published about the heritage of India, written by scholars from all over the world. There, Venkatramanji wrote about Buddhist texts, and I wrote about secular Indian books in China. The Chinese received many benefitsfrom us. They learnt trigonometry from us, and our astronomy was much more advanced than any other nation in the world. We lost those books in India, but some of their translations are available in China. BANERJEE: So can we retranslate them? MUKHERJEE: I went through some of them. I found a few of them and referred them to Professor Lalji also. He made a three-volume catalogue of Buddhist books in China. Dr. Lalji’s small book on India and China is again very helpful. BANERJEE: Sir, did you personally meet Professor Tan Yunshan? MUKHERJEE: Yes, Dr. Wei also did. Professor Tan was a good person. But he was more spiritual than scholarly. He was a scholar but not in a modern scientific sense. He knew a lot, he read a lot, and he understood the old Chinese text quite well. But his main interest was in spirituality. He was a great admirer of Aurobindo and read all his books. He was a very good organizer; the library in Cheena Bhavan is his contribution. Cheena Bhavan is actually his contribution, and he met Tagore in Singapore. He

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wanted to establish another major Buddhist institute in Bodhgaya. And he invited me to come and join it and become a manager or secretary or anything. But I did not go there, mainly because it was in the inception stage and if I went there I would have to give up my study and job here. I would not get enough remuneration to look after the family. Also, he was not very clear about his ideas. He had some big things in his mind, and if he would have lived longer he would have done those as well. But he passed away early. BANERJEE: Other than Cheena Bhavan and Banaras Hindu University, which other universities in this country focused on Buddhist studies? MUKHERJEE: Pune and Nalanda. BANERJEE: What about Delhi? MUKHERJEE: Well, Delhi also, but more important work was done in these places from original text editing, translation, writing articles from the best of the text itself, etc. The scholars here were more serious and productive for Buddhist studies. BANERJEE: In your opinion, who contributed to the development of Buddhist studies in India? MUKHERJEE: I should mention a few names. In Banaras it was Jagganath Upadhyay. He also visited Taiwan. He was a Buddhist scholar of Sanskrit and Tibetan. He did not know Chinese, but he went to China and saw how people worked there. Then Dr. Tiwari was an expert in the grammar of Buddhist text. Another very senior and bright scholar I met was Ram Shankar Bhattacharya. He was not in Buddhism but in Puranas, Sanskrit grammar, Yoga, and Sangya; he was a master in all these fields. I studied Yoga with him at Banaras. He was my friend. BANERJEE: When did you study in Banaras? MUKHERJEE: I was in Banaras for ten months or so. I went there because I had some trouble here in Cheena Bhavan. After I got married I was asked

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to join Sanskrit University, and I had to go to Banaras. I had applied for the post here in Cheena Bhavan and somebody misplaced my application. But fortunately Professor Bapat was the chief examiner and also the senior and renowned scholar, and he ensured that I was appointed. He said, “You do not have anybody here more deserving than Mukharjee. I have gone through his doctoral thesis published in Germany and I am satisfied. He should be appointed.” BANERJEE: What was your experience during your stay in Varanasi? MUKHERJEE: It was very good. I used to teach German there. I stayed in Germany for nine years. I did my study and research in Banaras. I also assisted Gaurinath Shastri in administration and stayed in his guest house. He introduced me to Gopinath Kovirak, and he was simply brilliant. I participated in many conferences with him. BANERJEE: So how many languages do you know? MUKHERJEE: Sanskrit, Pali, Pakrit (not so well), English, German, and I used to even follow French a little and Bengali and Hindi. I read many Hindi books. BANERJEE: So Delhi was not so important for the development of Buddhist studies; is there any other institute where this kind of work was done earlier? MUKHERJEE: Well, in Delhi there are not Buddhist institutions, but Tibetan institutions. Dalai Lama used to come there often, and Samdhong Rinpoche used to visit Delhi. He was an official representative of the Tibetan government in exile. You know, due to the war many things changed. The interacademic dialogue was hampered. Chinese studies suffered. Earlier, China studies was strong. In Germany they have maintained scholarship on both. They have enough modern scholars to focus on China studies and language too. Indian scholars know the modern methodology of translation, which monks may not always know. Thus they can trace the semantic differ-

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ences—which words mean what and belong to which century. Indian scholars can contribute better than anybody else regarding Chinese or Japanese. I wanted to introduce the Pali language so that the students could get a working knowledge of it. It’s an easy language, and in one year you can learn it very well. How do they teach Sanskrit in Germany? Well, in the initial six months they have a basic grammar book that takes care of all the fundamentals and basic rules. They master it, and they have to appear for an examination. They are supplied with texts, which they have to translate as a part of their assignments. To learn a language it is always better to translate it word by word using standard sentence structure. And after three or four years they can handle Indian texts very well. They must show their proficiency in Indian languages, for example ancient Indian languages. BANERJEE: Here in Cheena Bhavan, what are the different subjects for doctoral research students? MUKHERJEE: One of our students is pursuing her research in Chinese Buddhism. Dhriti Roy, she is in China now for one year. She is working on Chinese Buddhism under Professor Jayeeta. I don’t know the exact details of her research. Others are also doing research on language and literature. BANERJEE: So all of them have to read the original text? MUKHERJEE: Yes. In Taiwan what they do is they print the introduction first, then Indian text on the next page, its translation on another page, and then you study it, which gives you a very thorough knowledge of the text. BANERJEE: So sir, do you think that Indian scholars can contribute to the development of Buddhist interpretations? MUKHERJEE: Yes, they can still contribute a lot. Consider that when I did Vinaya, I got so many new things that had not been published, so they published my book from Germany. In Taiwan they used to say, “Sir, you identify so many new things which we cannot do.” Such are the kinds of critical attitude of Indians; they are more analytical.

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BANERJEE: Is there any scholarship to study Chinese Buddhism? MUKHERJEE: Yes, in Taiwan one can get it. BANERJEE: Have you ever come in contact with the government level during your career? MUKHERJEE: Yes, UGC (University Grant Commission) came here few times. I told them in this institute they were stressing modern Chinese. “We also do it but you should also look at the other aspects of the study,” I told them. They agreed to it and thereby we could arrange for our students to go to China and for Chinese students to come to India. For the first time it happened in my time. BANERJEE: So there are still scholarships in Taiwan that students can apply for, aren’t there? MUKHERJEE: Yes, they have more than enough money, and to find good students they will create more scholarships. BANERJEE: Sir, can you throw some light on Buddhist studies in mainland China and in which part they are based? MUKHERJEE: They have institutes and journals; this is a healthy indication. They are mainly in Beijing and Nanjing and may be in other places like Hong Kong. But I am not conversant with the actual status of the discipline now. They do not give up anything, as part of their character, and now they are paying attention to Buddhist studies. During the Cultural Revolution there were lots of problems, but now it’s regaining the lost ground. BANERJEE: Do you have any plans to go to Taiwan and any other country? MUKHERJEE: I had invites from Taiwan but I could not go. And I think my family would not allow me to travel abroad. In next April I will be eighty years old. But I am very ready mentally. It’s all a question of my health and family.

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BANERJEE: Are you part of some interview boards? MUKHERJEE: Yes, many times, and in Delhi as well. I once rejected a Chinese scholar. BANERJEE: When was it? MUKHERJEE: Tan Chung was there. I told him Chinese is your mother tongue, and you speak it very well. If you read it you will get an idea about the meaning of the sentence. But you have to teach the students, and there is a need to explain to them. For that, grammar has to be taught. If you compare Chinese with English, then it will be easy for them to understand. I asked her some grammar questions, and she could not understand. So we had to reject her. BANERJEE: Sir, there are so many Chinese migrants staying in Calcutta, have you ever come in contact with anybody? MUKHERJEE: No, but there is one Chinese scholar from Taiwan; his name was Li Chi-fu. There was another Li who was teaching in Banaras and in Nalanda for some time. I got him here, but he died suddenly of an unfortunate accident. BANERJEE: Did he come to Calcutta? MUKHERJEE: He knew the Chinese society in Calcutta very well. He was married to a Nepalese girl. He taught in Cheena Bhavan for one or two years. BANERJEE: Did he specialize in Buddhism? MUKHERJEE: No, he was specialized in modern Chinese. He was good in journalism. BANERJEE: During your days in Cheena Bhavan, did any Chinese delegation visit? MUKHERJEE: Yes, they gifted many books. Zhou Enlai came once.

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BANERJEE: What was your experience? MUKHERJEE: They were very interested. BANERJEE: Did you meet Zhou Enlai MUKHERJEE: Yes, he was a very jolly person. He went to the kitchen and danced with the students. And that was also the time when the Chinese army was entering India. It was during 1955–1956. That was a very paradoxical situation. He was on a friendship visit, and Chinese soldiers were entering Indian borders. BANERJEE: So after Zhou Enlai, did any other delegation of that level visit Cheena Bhavan? MUKHERJEE: Yes, but they were from the lower echelons of Chinese government. BANERJEE: Isn’t it true that Chinese government donated lots of books to Cheena Bhavan? MUKHERJEE: Yes, Zhou Enlai donated lots of books and also supervised the old collection. And the collection we have here, even they don’t have as much [some collection of books are not even found in China]. However, they are not properly catalogued. BANERJEE: The Chinese professors have come here for this purpose, do you know? MUKHERJEE: Okay. I did not know about it. It’s a very constructive step towards strengthening China Studies. You can tell them that there are different editions of a single dictionary and ask them to write one or two lines on the title page; that will be helpful for them to record it properly. BANERJEE: You were talking about the significance of Buddhism to Chinese culture. MUKHERJEE: I told you China was very rich in terms of preserving their scriptures. But their vision was limited by the imperial interests. They

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have found out the statues of one of the leading Chinese emperors in the 3rd century BC. We can see the mausoleum of the king surrounded by twenty thousand statues of soldiers. Different types of dresses and different peoples. The Chinese army was made up mostly by the central Asians. The paintings on women, their daily life, servants serving and decorating them, and so on… but they had no idea that sages are not important. The importance of sages increased due to Buddhism. Thus first came the statues of Buddha, and then they started making statues of Confucius. That was one of the important contributions of Buddhism to general Chinese culture. Buddhist culture was entirely contributed by Buddhism. When Indian culture went to China, it had many Greek elements, like Gandhara, which were absorbed into Chinese culture. But one of the important contributions of Buddhism, not just to Chinese culture, but also to world culture, is how to look at any object objectively. How to know it objectively. They have learned the methodology of doing it. That is the earliest part of Chinese Buddhism. When Buddhism was in a phase of revival, the spiritual part was revived. These are three main contributions that come to my mind now. There are many, like secular literature, astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. You can see the article that I wrote in Indian Heritage Volume. These are the things people don’t know, such as sages, their paintings, and statues are in Chinese culture due to Buddhism. The methodology of looking at things objectively to avoid what they call Maya (illusion). Whatever you see may not always be the truth, and they know how to view things without Maya. BANERJEE: Sir, how do you see the future and prospects for Chinese studies in India? MUKHERJEE: There are so many students who are interested in learning the Chinese language, but then you have to create a suitable atmosphere. You have to give them scholarships. To prepare them for getting a job, you first have to educate them for three to four years at a minimum. Second, you have to arrange for special types of teaching. Research scholars are required to undertake different kinds of study, while for undergrad-

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uate students a different kind of training and practice is required. These things have to be worked out in detail. If you create the right atmosphere, hundreds of students will join. BANERJEE: We are increasingly seeing that students are opting for translation and other corporate jobs after finishing their studies. How are we to encourage them into long-term academic research? MUKHERJEE: You have to first understand why they are leaving after graduation. They are leaving mainly for making a fortune. You have to give them scholarships to encourage higher study and research. For Buddhist studies, you have to especially encourage the students of Sanskrit and Pali. Sanskrit can be taught in one year if it is taught properly and sincerely studied by the students. For Pali language, barely six months are enough to understand the language. It is difficult to be a real scholar in any subject, but to carry on your job it is not so difficult. BANERJEE: Do you still have contacts with supervisors and examiners who have guided you? MUKHERJEE: They have passed away. I have no contacts now in Germany, but only in Taiwan. I often write to the monks there. BANERJEE: Sir, amongst your students in Taiwan, is anybody in a good position? MUKHERJEE: Yes, some of them did well and got jobs in America. Some of them are good. They were awarded scholarships. The trouble with the girls is that they get married. Some of the monks I taught were also good students, but I don’t know what they are doing now. BANERJEE: These days you are busy writing the book, Inner Life of Buddha. Are you now concentrating on that book? MUKHERJEE: Yes, I want to finish it. I have got all the material. I have to sit down and write it out. It is a very important thing. Buddhism, even within households, made much more progress that people are not aware

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of. They are so many legends and stories about his departure. But he left in a day’s time, and his parents were weeping because they knew about it. It is the earliest part of Nikaya. But that is not part of my study. I am focusing on how he developed his mind; you can call it inner life. BANERJEE: What are your views on the current state of the India-China relationship? MUKHERJEE: I see it in this way: China sees India as a future rival. In modern times it is necessary to have a friendly relationship for trade and development. But they may do something that may keep us engaged. For example, the atom bomb in Pakistan—it was done only with the help of China so as to keep India in check. BANERJEE: Is there any role for culture to play? MUKHERJEE: If Indian and Chinese people become friendlier as they were earlier, then this policy is bound to change. China is an imperialistic nation. It is in their blood that they would always like to expand. They always have the idea that India should not become like them. India should be happy with the boundary they have carved. India should not initiate any action against China. China-India relations at the people-to-people level are good. All issues arise at the government level. It is, to a certain extent, the outcome of a Communist ideology. They always talk of struggles and fights. They perhaps missed the flip side—that of peace. If changes occur in China and their government structure gets modified, for instance more democratic like rest of the world and less Communist in their views, I think China will become more developed. BANERJEE: So during the 1962 war, you were in India? MUKHERJEE: No, I was in Germany. Germans were very much with India. They said how they can just walk inside IndiantTerritory. The Himalayan Mountains are very extreme; you haven’t defended it properly and thereby have given the Chinese an opportunity to walk inside your territory. They were very angry with Nehru, they said under the Hindi-

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Chini Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers) rhetoric, he forgot to defend India’s territorial integrity while the Chinese were constructing roads along their border. Let me tell you one thing, the Chinese government, not the people, seldom reveal their interest. This kind of diplomacy every nation deploys, but the Chinese are inherently masters of that. And Germans were very disappointed over the Indian performance in the war. Germans felt that only a few thousand Indian soldiers could have easily prevented the Chinese aggression due to the kind of Himalayan terrain. But nowadays there is a better opinion about India and its military. After the 1971 war the Indian army improved its image. BANERJEE: What is the nature of people-to-people interaction between India and Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: They have a very friendly opinion of India. They still feel that India is the land of Buddha. But at every juncture, if they have to pay the bribe then that good image gets dented. BANERJEE: Are there lots of people who believe in Buddhism? MUKHERJEE: Yes, many…many. Buddhism is the major religion in Taiwan. After Buddhism there is Christianity, Confucianism. But numerically, Buddhism has the highest number of followers. BANERJEE: So Buddhist monks and monasteries must be there? MUKHERJEE: Yes, there are Buddhist monks in Taiwanese society, and their monasteries are very beautiful. You will be fascinated after visiting them. BANERJEE: Have you visited all places in Taiwan? MUKHERJEE: Both Taiwan and Germany, the latter through the Humboldt scholarship on a fourteen-day tour that was arranged for the awardees. BANERJEE: So you have been to Germany, you have been to Taiwan. Are there any other places you have visited?

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MUKHERJEE: Egypt also. In southern Egypt I visited the pyramids. There also people are very friendly. BANERJEE: Was it was just a tour, or was it for some academic purpose? MUKHERJEE: No, it was just a tour to see pyramids and all other ancient things. In Paris and Rome, I did some academic work. In Austria, I went to Kings Brooks Mountain, where the ice skating is done. The ice was so thick, it used to reflect like a mirror so I couldn’t skate. I went to the top of mountain by the ropeway, and it was so cold that I had to order a hot glass of beer. It was very cold—around -20 degrees. BANERJEE: So you have traveled to various countries. MUKHERJEE: I met with scholars from different parts of the world on my tours abroad. All my Taiwanese students were very hard working. Whatever I asked them to prepare, each one of them would come prepared for class. They are very sincere and hard working. These days there are scholarships for students going to China. But other than China, the Indian government should also send them to Taipei and America. If somebody has done well in both China and Taipei, then he can get the American scholarship on his own. I find Chinese teaching in the USA very onesided. They teach economics and modern politics, and to an extent it’s not very neutral. But in Taipei, you are exposed to all kinds of books and learning that helps you form an opinion. You can study anything, including ancient literature, classical Chinese, Buddhism, etc. Religious documents can be studied, and one can see for oneself that monasteries are alive as they were; monks are living the way they were living earlier. You can see the picture from here. In mainland China, the situation is like a prison. What I mean by that is their scope of action is very limited. In Taiwan, the meditation schools are flourishing, so also in Japan and Korea. BANERJEE: Did you meet Japanese or Korean professors during your stay in Taiwan?

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MUKHERJEE: Yes, I met Japanese professors. In Santiniketan, Tanaka was there, Arayi was very good, and Azouna was a good organizer. If you talk to him you will find his interest was more political. He was a good teacher. BANERJEE: So Buddhist studies are still flourishing in Japan? MUKHERJEE: Yes, and they are very good in making these dictionaries, indexes, and in editing works. In interpretative studies, I don’t know how much they have advanced. I haven’t read much about it, but two of the Japanese scholars were doing philological research in Germany. BANERJEE: Do you think Indian students must also be sent to universities other than Beijing? MUKHERJEE: Yes, they must get all kinds of exposure. BANERJEE: So, there must be some cooperation between the various institutes of Buddhist studies centers in India? MUKHERJEE: Yes, they must encourage exchanges between them to see what others are doing, to avoid repetition. Five students from BHU (Banaras Hindu University) and Santiniketan must visit Pune and stay there for some days. BANERJEE: Which institute in Pune? MUKHERJEE: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. BANERJEE: Is there any Chinese teaching there? MUKHERJEE: Well, once they used to teach Chinese. It is mainly a philological institute, and they deal with linguistics. Students must exchange their research findings and experiences. Another important thing is the seminar. In classes, the professor delivers the lecture and the student takes notes. In seminars, you have to work with the professor. Students must be engaged in these kinds of seminars. They must come prepared thoroughly. It is not just at the pre-doctoral levels, but at the lower levels as well. In my

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classes I used to ask them to translate, even in classical Chinese. Thereby, they learned the art of translation. If you just give them ready-made notes they will never learn. I forgot to tell you I worked on a dictionary for six years. In Germany they were compiling the Buddhist dictionary from the Indian manuscripts found in Xinjiang province, which were restored by Professor Waldschmidt and other professors. BANERJEE: Was it from Sanskrit to Chinese? MUKHERJEE: No, from Sanskrit to German. I will tell you how it was done. Suppose there is one word and it has five meanings. They would write one meaning, and at each place they would give a small quotation. So you could see that this word was used in that place and at that time. They sometimes used to give the Pali parallel, or sometimes, if the Pali meaning was different, they would point it out. My professor was good in Chinese, so sometimes he helped with Chinese translations. I worked for five years on this dictionary project. It’s a hybrid Sanskrit dictionary. But I learnt a lot about Buddha and the subject. You take a small text and translate it and then see for yourself. BANERJEE: Were you involved in any other kinds of projects besides this dictionary work—a book or any other specific output? MUKHERJEE: Well, objective translation and methodology is always done in Pali, especially Buddhist text. You can easily see this word means this in this century and in this part of China. Several revelations are made if one compares the translations, when the same text is translated into the languages of all time periods, then sometimes you can also see the differences. And you can account for those differences, linking them to the century in which the text was done and in which part of China it was done. Translation work is very important, especially comparative translation. BANERJEE: Do you think that in the future these kinds of studies will develop in China?

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MUKHERJEE: Yes, I am very optimistic. BANERJEE: Do you see a consistent development for China, or will there be turbulence? MUKHERJEE: China will develop in the modern way, but the people will also develop spiritually and culturally, and they will revive the ancient studies as well. They would not like that other people know more about them than they know of themselves. They will do it and, in fact, they are doing it now. It is just a matter of time. BANERJEE: Thank you, sir. It was my pleasure talking to you.

Vasant V. Paranjape Interviewer: Dr. B R Deepak Vasant V. Paranjape is an Indian diplomat and a China expert. He went to China in mid-1947 to study Chinese at Peking University and lived in China for a decade. He is widely known for his near-native Chinese language skills and as an interpreter to Nehru and Radhakrishnan during their China visits in 1954 and 1956. He also took part in the 1960 border negotiations between India and China in the capacity of an advisor from the India side. More interestingly, he was perhaps the only Indian diplomat who witnessed the collapse of the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) rule in China, the “awakening of the Chinese giant” under Mao, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” after reforms under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin’s “three represents,” Hu Jintao’s notion of a “harmonious world,” and China’s rise as the second largest economy in the world. DEEPAK: Would you please tell us about your family background and what facilitated your first journey to China? PARANJAPE: My father was a professor of Sanskrit, and I was his student. So I studied Sanskrit under him from the age of five through twenty. I did my matriculation, Bachelor’s, and Master’s in Sanskrit. I took Sanskrit with grammar and studied Vedas (ancient religious texts written in Sanskrit) for some time. So my basic educational training is in Sanskrit, and it is due to my father. My father was a very intelligent person, very extraordinary in a sense, and he never believed in the ordinary. He believed that life is absolutely useless if you only do day-to day-activities. Apart from that, he never spoke loudly or unnecessarily. He was very quiet. In my private discussions with him, he told me the stories of Harappa and Mohenjodaro.

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In his early days, he worked as a secretary of the Bhandarkar Research Institute in Pune. Bhandarkar was a great Indian scholar. My elder brother also studied Sanskrit, and he was in Germany for ten years. My second brother was a chemist, and my third brother was in a different town. I have one elder sister who is now ninety-five years old, and another sister passed away. I am the youngest in my family. DEEPAK: What about your own family? PARANJAPE: Well, I married very late. I married at the age of fifty. I have two sons, both of whom are in the UK, and my wife is also there with them. They will be coming to Delhi in fifteen to twenty days. My wife took good care of them, and she had a great role in their upbringing. Both of them are earning handsomely in the UK. They are bankers. But I haven’t seen them for ages. I am very fond of my younger son. But my elder son is also very smart. He works at Accenture International. They do business mainly with America and Europe. But they are not interested in coming back here. I asked him [younger son] to come back several times, but he has no interest. DEEPAK: Sir, what about your schooling and higher education? PARANJAPE: My father was a life member of the Deccan Education Society, founded by Mr. Agarkar. He used to get a very low salary, just 140 rupees, despite having a French doctorate. But we lived in a bungalow provided by the school. The entire school and college education was free. DEEPAK: What about the curriculum? PARANJAPE: The curriculum was the same as the university system, other than that it was in Sanskrit. DEEPAK: How do you compare the institutions and learning between when you were studying and now? What kinds of changes do you see? PARANJAPE: Tremendous changes have taken place. Nobody teaches Sanskrit any more. Today, Sanskrit has no meaning except in philos-

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ophy. There is grammar in Sanskrit and semantics. Semantics is the oldest thing invented in India. It’s very difficult to explain all this. There were Prashachtyagas. These are the Vedic books, which tell you about the ancient Vedic translations. The Indian Devnagri script is very scientific, and our semantics are among the best in the world, and we don’t even know it. DEEPAK: Panini also wrote about it in Mahabhasya (a commentary on selected rules of Sanskrit grammar). PARANJAPE: Yes, it’s a very good book, but it is about grammar and not about semantics. DEEPAK: One of the senior scholars in China, Professor Ji Xianlin, also wrote about India’s ancient tradition as he studied Sanskrit. PARANJAPE: I know him. He was very young when he joined us. Ji Xianlin was very good in Sanskrit. He studied Sanskrit in Germany. His main area of focus was Central Asia. But Jin Kemu was much better in Sanskrit. DEEPAK: But in China, Ji Xianlin is known as a scholar of very high repute. PARANJAPE: I know how the Chinese present their scholars. I read his recent book. I do not remember the title of it. I know his caliber. Jin Kemu was far better than him. Jin Kemu was educated in Sanskrit at Banaras, so he knew grammar. He was a real scholar and personally my good friend also. I attended his marriage as well. DEEPAK: So tell me, sir, how did you develop an interest in Chinese? And when did you first encounter the language and China studies? PARANJAPE: That’s because I went to China. That was in 1947. At that time, Professor Wu Xiaoling was a professor at the university. All our professors were good. I learned Chinese well because of two things. First, I got a lot of help at the university. Second, I attended lectures from 8:00 in

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the morning until 12:00 at night. No one else attended so many lectures. I was interested in learning, not in anything else. So I spent nearly ten hours a day learning Chinese, and it is a very fascinating language. DEEPAK: Which university was this? PARANJAPE: This was at Peking University. We used to stay near Peking University, and Wu Xiaoling stayed next door. He took us to temples and sometimes to restaurants. Luo Changpei was an especially renowned linguist, and there were also Tang Lan and Zheng Zhenduo. DEEPAK: How come you got interested in Chinese? PARANJAPE: You see, I went to China, and mixed with the Chinese. All my friends were Chinese. I had an excellent rapport with Professors Wu and Lo. They were not only my professors, but friends too, and they used to take me to the temples; restaurants, etc., and they introduced me to the variety of Chinese life. There were a few very good authors like Lao She. DEEPAK: Oh, did you also meet Lao She? PARANJAPE: Yes, he was a friend of my professor, so I met him. Things were very different at that time; you could meet many people. Many were Communists, and I met people working underground in Beijing. You see, Professor Wu was very liberal and a generous man. He never bothered us unnecessarily. So there was a lot of activism amongst the students against the Kuomintang government, because it was corrupt. My own colleagues, who were basically party workers, were very serious and committed. They used to leave their books and literature on Marx in my room because of the Kuomintang threat. DEEPAK: What kind of lectures did you attend? PARANJAPE: In the beginning, what the government had done was very good. They placed us in an American school, which was meant for beginners. So we started learning there. In the beginning, I did not understand anything. But slowly I started mingling with the rest of society and inter-

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acting with people from the university, visiting markets and other places. So, in that sense, it was a very different society. They mostly used to teach Confucius. They taught us in the traditional manner. We could not understand a few things, since they were very philosophical. Our philosophy has much higher standards in terms of thinking, which they never had. But they were good in terms of their manners, such as when you are inviting someone or going to visit someone, you must offer gifts. The gift culture was always there; if you were invited to dinner, you always went with a gift. They ate well, drank well, and exchanged presents. DEEPAK: What about your daily routine apart from attending classes? PARANJAPE: I had no routine other than learning Chinese. I used to stay in the hostel, and we ate together there. Other than that, there were so many things to learn in Chinese. In the first six months of my university studies, I could not understand a single lecture; all lectures were in Chinese, and many of the words were simply unknown to me for a long time. Finally, I wrote down everything in English and, fortunately, the other students were very nice, and they helped me understand the words. I used to attend classes with Chinese students only. DEEPAK: Any reflections on your exchanges with Chinese students, teachers, and eminent personalities of that time? PARANJAPE: I did not meet any eminent personalities. I met Mr. Panikkar. He was our ambassador. I also met Mira Sinha and Mr. Sinha. DEEPAK: When did you first go to China, and how long did you stay there? PARANJAPE: I stayed there for ten years. The first time was in 1950, when I just went for a few days. Nehru invited me. Yes, Menon knew me; he is Shiv Shankar’s grandfather. That time I had decided to move to Santiniketan for teaching, because there was no other place. He phoned me and asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “Nothing.” “Then why don’t

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you come to Delhi and work as an interpreter to the ambassador in the Chinese Embassy. Do you have any problem?” I said, “No.” Mr. Menon was very nice to me. He was the first foreign secretary of India. He took me to Prime Minister Nehru. So Nehru asked me, “Will you be able to work with us?” I said, “I will give you my best.” Then he asked me, “How are you going to come this evening?” He was hosting a dinner, and he invited me for that. I said, “As usual, in pants and a shirt.” He said, “You can’t come like that. You have to be in formal dress, so you have to be in Chicken Kurta and Chudidar Paijama (traditional Indian dress).” I said, “I don’t have that because I came from Pune.” He said, “See, your size is similar to that of Mr. Mathai.” He called Mathai and told him to show me his wardrobe to see if there was something that fit me. So I put on the Chudidar and Kurta with some difficulty. DEEPAK: Was that the start of your professional career? PARANJAPE: Yes. Then I joined the foreign service. In the first fifteen days, I had some problems. Fortunately, I had a friend in the ministry, Mr. Thorane. He was very enterprising and also worked as an interpreter. He took me on his cycle to the Air India office. Air India had an external services division in which I was appointed as supervisor for the Chinese division. I got some money, and I stayed in Delhi. In the meantime, KPS Menon asked me to wait for a time. He said, “We are going to advertise a post, and I am sure you will satisfy the eligibility criteria.” So, after four months, the advertisement was posted, I applied, and I was selected. The selection was done by the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission), and Mr. P. N. Chakaravarti was there. So then I was sent to Beijing. DEEPAK: This was your second visit to Beijing? PARANJAPE: Yes, it was in 1951. In 1954, Nehru visited China, and in 1956, Zhou Enlai came to India. I was more familiar with Nehru. I virtually acted as his secretary when he was in China. Nehru liked me too, and

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everything went off very well. We went many places, such as Shanghai, Canton, etc., and then Nehru asked me to come to Delhi. Subsequently, I went to Delhi and worked there. DEEPAK: During your second visit, the Communists were in power. What kind of changes did you observe? PARANJAPE: Tremendous changes had taken place in China. DEEPAK: How did the people react to this transformation, and to what extent did it affect them? PARANJAPE: People were subdued. The Communist government had established firm control over China, and it was very ruthless in its approach. There was little corruption. Mao and Zhou Enlai were in firm control. No doubt, Mao was very brutal, but Zhou Enlai was much more restrained. Life was absolutely strict, and there was no freedom. Luxuries were banned, and many restaurants were shut down. Later, they reopened, but initially it was a very austere period. DEEPAK: You witnessed Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Deng, and even Jiang and Hu Jintao’s times; you have keenly watched them. How did you find each generation different from its successors? PARANJAPE: Mao was very strict. Mao did a great job for China until 1956, but after that he got power and changed completely. So he was a very different man and dictatorial in nature. Deng changed Mao’s economic policies. He liberalized the Chinese economic system and entirely changed it. Deng was a man of great vision. I met him with Foreign Minister Vajpayee in 1979. At that time, Vajpayee had proposed that we find a solution to the border problems. But Deng didn’t have a clear reply. He said what was required was to build trust to achieve such an objective, so we needed to move on and restore our relations in other areas. He suggested we start with economic cooperation.

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DEEPAK: But there is a popular perception among our generation of China scholars that Deng was only interested in maintaining the status quo in post-1962, which was not acceptable to India. PARANJAPE: The border problem was discussed in 1960, but it was very minor then. But then Deng came and maintained the status quo, so then it was entirely different. This brought up different issues, which were not there earlier. You know the border problem, I know the border problem… we had discussed it for years. DEEPAK: Were you party to the 1960 border negotiation group? PARANJAPE: In 1959 [1960] Zhou Enlai came, and he was far more open to the negotiations. He said that, to some extent, if you want this you [the interlocutors on the Indian side] take this. DEEPAK: So when you were part of the border negotiation group with your Chinese counterparts, what were the strategies of the Chinese and the Indians? PARANJAPE: The Chinese were very generous. Zhou Enlai was very receptive to the Indian side, and he especially emphasized harmonious relations with India. DEEPAK: But now it is more complex; Zhou Enlai and Nehru could have resolved it. PARANJAPE: Zhou Enlai could have resolved it, because he had that stature. Mao heavily criticized Zhou Enlai in 1959. But the prestige of Zhou Enlai in the party was still very high, and Mao could not bring that down. Mao tried to change Zhou Enlai until the end. Until 1976, he tried to get rid of him but couldn’t manage to. DEEPAK: Some in China say that Zhou Enlai died early because Mao wanted him to die before him.

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PARANJAPE: Mao did many things against Zhou Enlai. Mao even replaced the doctors treating him. But Zhou Enlai was patient. He was a very different leader. Yes, Mao raised many questions. DEEPAK: Any reflections on your interactions with Nehru? PARANJAPE: Well, I didn’t have many formal or informal interactions with Nehru. It was mostly on diplomatic occasions and not on any policy consultations. DEEPAK: Was he an arrogant person? PARANJAPE: No, no. He was very formal and regular. DEEPAK: How do you compare those two personalities, Mao and Nehru, since you watched them so closely? PARANJAPE: There is a huge difference between them. Mao was quite harsh. He had his own way of doing things; sometimes he was quirky too. Nehru was an idealist, especially in foreign policy matters. Mao understood politics very well. DEEPAK: Mao used diplomacy and the military very well? PARANJAPE: Well, China has a large military. In that sense, Gandhi and Mao had certain things in common, but not with Nehru. Gandhi’s whole idea was different, and as far as issues of bringing the nation together, Mao was better. DEEPAK: Sir, going back to the negotiations of 1954 and 1956—from the Chinese side, Zhou Enlai was very much a part of the negotiating process, a senior leader with his young group. Who were the main negotiation participants from the top leadership of India? PARANJAPE: What top leadership? It was mainly Mr. Jagat Mehta. DEEPAK: So, at that point in time, Indian diplomacy failed?

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PARANJAPE: There was no Indian diplomacy. Jagat Mehta was not a diplomat; he was a Navy man. Somehow these people got recruited and put in charge of diplomacy. DEEPAK: Mishra was also there. PARANJAPE: Yes, but he never intervened. He was sensible and showed good judgment. He became principal secretary during Vajpayee’s tenure and was also national security advisor. He hailed from a diplomatic family. His father was very renowned. DEEPAK: Considering the history of the India-China border problem, and with you being a lifetime witness to this problem, do you think that the two countries are now heading in the right direction? PARANJAPE: No. Basically, Indians are suspicious of China. If China eliminated that suspicion, then things could improve. PARANJAPE: The whole problem with the government is that there is no policy regarding China. Now that China has become important, our policy has started to develop, but we don’t know what to do with it. They want a lot of business people. The diplomatic community in India doesn’t know China. Of course, there are a few exceptions. DEEPAK: It’s true that in order to understand China you need to have knowledge and understanding of Chinese. PARANJAPE: Yes, Chinese classics too, and once you know those, then you realize that our Sanskrit is much better than Chinese. This is just a comparison, but our students don’t bother to learn Chinese. There are so many counselors, but the students have no interest. China is a huge country, and there are plenty of things to learn, but they don’t have the knowledge or the interest. DEEPAK: In this atmosphere of political misunderstanding and mistrust between the two countries, what should we do to build a constructive relationship?

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PARANJAPE: The Chinese will trust you only if you demonstrate strength. So we must have economic strength and a strong defense. If both of these are there, the Chinese will automatically be nice to you. But if you are weak, the Chinese will not care about you. The other thing is that the Chinese are practical people. They know that there is not much advantage to gain from India. DEEPAK: Yes, we are at the periphery as far as their foreign policy is concerned. PARANJAPE: We are nowhere on their policies. Even though we are a big country, we do not have material power. Besides that, both our government and our governance are ineffective. What kind of cabinet do we have? China is a very easy country to deal with. If they were interested, they would deal with us. If we want to, we could be economically powerful. DEEPAK: Yes, but the trade and economic relations between the two countries are improving rapidly, and the growth rate is very high. China has already replaced the US as our largest trade partner. PARANJAPE: Yes, but we are importing more from China and exporting our raw materials to them. That does not show our strength. Our strength lies in higher exports and production. These are the things that should be discussed consistently at the higher levels. DEEPAK: But in this scenario, don’t you think India should fund China studies more seriously and promote research institutes? PARANJAPE: No one is interested, because Chinese is a difficult language. There are now a few people going to Chinese universities for business purposes. But the government does not pay attention to them. We should support more students to go to Chinese universities, but in reality there is no policy, so there is a big vacuum there. DEEPAK: I am talking about pedagogical approaches in Indian universities to strengthen Chinese studies.

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PARANJAPE: Let me tell you few things. If there is employment potential in an area, more students will come. Amongst the students so far, there are many females and very few males. Now there are some men coming because they are getting hired as interpreters. The level of their interpreting is not too bad, but also not very good because of their lack of effort. Interpretation is nothing. For example, I was interpreting for Zhou Enlai and other people. I learned slowly. I remember that once, during Radhakrishnan’s visit, he asked the joint secretary to write a speech for him. The joint secretary told me to do it. So I asked him, “Could you give me some ideas as to what I should write? I would like to have some advice.” I was a young man. He told me that he never wrote any speeches, but spoke extemporaneously. Then I checked all the earlier speeches he had made at different places. Most of them had a similar content. So, I just wrote the speech, and he was impressed. DEEPAK: Sir, you must have seen the Chinese leaders’ observations of Indian leaders. How did the Chinese leaders perceive Indian leaders at that time? PARANJAPE: Well, amongst the Chinese, especially Mao was highly skeptical of Indian leaders. He was courteous to them but, apart from that, there were no talks or discussions. The Russians were different. Amongst the Indian leaders, Nehru was very charismatic, but he could not relate well to Mao, because Mao was a different person. DEEPAK: What about the Indian leaders? PARANJAPE: Indians tend to be vague at times, because precision doesn’t enter into our thinking. DEEPAK: How can we come out of it? PARANJAPE: Well, it is only by concentration. If we concentrate, we can be precise. You see, Gandhi used to speak with great vigor. He used to concentrate. He thought about everything. For example, when it was a question of our independence, Gandhi focused precisely on the means for

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attaining it. This is the problem with our present leadership: there is a lack of clarity of goals. DEEPAK: Sir, you have been on various selection committees. How do you rate the quality of the students getting selected? PARANJAPE: The quality of the students is not bad. In fact, they are good. There is no doubt our people have brains. They achieve their own objectives but forget everything else, and their personal goals become the end point for them. Indians have brains, but we don’t utilize them properly. I can tell you, what was said in Upanishad five thousand years ago, even Western scholars cannot philosophize to that extent today. Indians brains are among the finest in the world. However, what we need is concentration, practice, and education. You see, this whole pursuit of money is spoiling our generations. You must concentrate on your education. DEEPAK: What do you think of China studies in India? PARANJAPE: Chinese studies in India is very poor, but is excellent in China. During my college days, I studied Sanskrit. But when I went to China, Chinese teaching is very good. Literature, phonetics, semantics, and classics—everything was good. In India, we do not have this quality, and we are not bothered by that, either. Our professors hardly teach subjects. They teach only textbooks, and they will not go beyond textbooks. DEEPAK: The textbooks we teach were compiled by the Chinese. Don’t you feel that we should compile our own textbooks? PARANJAPE: Well, it’s good if we compile our own books, depending on our understanding and knowledge of the language. That’s why I think JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) scholars are good. So you should teach Chinese as much as you can, and many different aspects of it. Chinese literature is vast. Chinese poetry is vast. The new

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generation of students must know this. Therefore, only you can improve the standard of JNU. Use reference books besides textbooks. Since you are teaching at JNU, don’t just teach textbooks; let them understand China. They should have a complete understanding of China. Expose them to literature and history. DEEPAK: I am translating Chinese classical poetry into Hindi, and it will be published in a few months. PARANJAPE: That is very good, and we must study these kinds of things, which are more important and lasting. Textbook teaching is an inappropriate model of teaching in India. In the UK, they teach reference books in detail. I met one scholar, and his knowledge of Maratha history was illuminating. I appreciated him. Just acquiring degrees is not important. What is important is whether you know your subject or not. Whatever the subject may be—Marathi, English, Hindi, or Chinese—you must know the subject. This is precisely what our university education lacks. DEEPAK: There are drastic changes at social, political, and economic levels in China, and these need to be incorporated into our classroom teaching. PARANJAPE: But as far as society is concerned, the party is doing many things today, which is not correct. I told them this explicitly, but you see, when the party becomes strong these things often happen, and they tend to ignore these things. So there is lot of resentment amongst the people now. The Taiwanese have a tremendous advantage, but they don’t seem to realize it because of their inferiority complex in relation to mainland China, and because of the previous war records. But today Taiwan is a democratic country. They have ventured into democracy, and they are also very advanced economically. So I personally feel that they should not be so defensive; they need to adopt an aggressive posture. DEEPAK: The Chinese are proud that they have gained material wealth and that their standard of living is quite high. Especially when we are there,

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they say that we have nothing. They say that our growth rate is 9 percent, but where is the manifestation? There are no buildings, no infrastructure! PARANJAPE: They have improved their country a lot; there is no doubt about that. And to that extent, their confidence has grown, and they are now earning more. The Chinese demonstrate the quality of hard work. They have a work culture. They have infrastructure in their universities. So there is a consciousness among them. But we behave as if we owe something to someone. The Chinese work culture is very good; there is no question about that. There is a consciousness about doing things. Suppose you ask a Chinese to come in at 5:00 pm; he will be there by that time. In India, we are rarely on time. You ask a Chinese to perform a certain task, and you will find that the task has been accomplished. These kinds of traits are inherent in the Chinese. Unfortunately, we Indians don’t have them. DEEPAK: Therefore, don’t you think that, in the context of a rising China, it is important that China studies in India is strengthened at various levels? PARANJAPE: Well, you are right. In ministries, there is not much interest. Indians are capable of doing many things, yet there is no leadership. When Gandhi was here, he was a leader in every way. Although he was poor and never lived ostentatiously, he had ideas. Now we do not find such leadership. DEEPAK: If India needs to understand China better, we must strengthen China studies in India, for which we require infrastructural support and an institutional base. PARANJAPE: You are absolutely right. But for this, the government must be convinced first. The first question is if our China policy becomes important. But in our case, there is no China policy. Second, China is important, and you know that we need to engage with it at every level. I feel that China is important, but investing in China studies is a longterm affair. We do not have policies for long-term interests. We have very

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short-term goals; we want everything to be done in one or two years. If there were a stronger government, and if they had a vision, then everything would change. That doesn’t happen because there is no vision. I was in Delhi, and I knew many things, but what’s the use of it. Nehru was very conscious of his responsibilities. Whether right or wrong, that was different; he was awake for twenty-four hours when necessary. That kind of vision is no longer there. DEEPAK: While in Delhi, you were involved in many debates on China, theoretical as well as of practical significance. How is the situation since you moved to Pune? PARANJAPE: I don’t go anywhere, and no one comes to me these days, except for scholars like you. DEEPAK: Sir, when I was in Beijing last time, I met Mr. Narendra Jadhav, the vice chancellor of Pune University. He was contemplating starting China studies at Pune University. PARANJAPE: I have no idea, and I am not convinced, the way the university is functioning. I am also not satisfied with the way things are happening in the ministries. Bringing third grade teachers will not help us in China studies. There must be proper studies. Forget about Chinese studies; the state of affairs in other studies is also worrisome in Pune. DEEPAK: So your interaction with China studies is reduced after coming to Pune? PARANJAPE: When I was in China, the Chinese were very much interested. They still used to come here and talk. I had a talk with a Taiwanese, as I told you, and I told him that what Taiwan is doing at this stage is wrong. We should cultivate the Taiwanese. They are not inferior in any way to mainland China.

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DEEPAK: This is very strange. A person of your stature, despite having seen the entire transformation of China from KMT to date, the government did not bother to consult you on any occasion? PARANJAPE: The government did not bother. When I was in service I was very keen on China. People are not interested now. You see, I knew JNU, and I knew DU. Tan Chung was at JNU. Tan Chung was better in many ways. But then I told him to give more importance to phonetics and semantics. He never did that. He used the same teaching textbooks. That will not do. You train people to understand China and to know something more about China. So we must send the maximum number of students to Beijing. DEEPAK: Sir, tell me about your last trip to China and how long you stayed there. PARANJAPE: I stayed there for just one week. I went only because they wanted me to come. My difficulty is that I can’t walk. In fact, I stayed at the university. So I met many people—they used to come to discuss things with me. I told them I am not interested in China. I am interested in Indians learning Chinese, and that is more important to me than anything else. The Chinese are very devoted to doing things properly. But I think the success of the Chinese also relates to their speed of catching up with developed nations, especially America and Europe. Since Mao, Deng Xiaoping, and until the present generation, they just want to catch up with the developed world. Especially these two, fu and quan (riches and power), have been their dream for centuries. The Chinese always wanted to be powerful. In the case of Mao, he organized the people. The problem with KMT was that it started off well, but later it became very corrupt, to an extent impossible to recover from. Whoever had the power was enjoying his life. So Communists came up with change, and Mao was very strict about it. Poverty was a major issue, and Mao prioritized eradicating it; others were opposed to that. But Mao

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was convinced that poverty should be eliminated. Deng Xiaoping was smarter, but Mao used Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai very well. DEEPAK: Any other experiences of your visits, conferences, seminars, and so on in China? PARANJAPE: Well, I attended many conferences at different times for different reasons and on different subjects. But I enjoyed conversations with the Taiwanese people. I was in Taiwan many times. The Chinese ambassador to Korea and I became friends, and later on he became a foreign minister of Taiwan. DEEPAK: Any present association with Taiwan? PARANJAPE: No, some people come; a few Taiwanese journalists came recently. Pune is a different place—no one comes here. Delhi is different as it’s a political center. DEEPAK: How do you see the future of China? PARANJAPE: China’s future is good. It’s a different world. People are working there. DEEPAK: In 1980, they formulated a three-stage strategy for their economic development. By 2050, they are targeting the economic level of France and Italy. Do you think they will be able to achieve that target? PARANJAPE: I think they will achieve that. You see, China is already a big economy. DEEPAK: How do you see the future of India-China relations? PARANJAPE: At this stage, I am very pessimistic. The bilateral relations are going to be influenced by what kind of governments we will have. In China, the government is fairly objective. DEEPAK: Do you feel that a stronger China will try to dominate and trigger conflict with India?

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PARANJAPE: Yes. The Chinese are not interested in dominating India, but certainly they can simply brush us aside, and we will be reduced to one of the irrelevant powers in Asia. In areas of trade and commerce, Chinese will overtake us. Our businessmen are good, but they do not have the government’s support, and they do not get that many opportunities. DEEPAK: Finally, what about the different China studies communities in India, such as JNU, DU, Santiniketan, and BHU (Banaras Hindu University)? PARANJAPE: We have it in many places, but are they performing up to the mark? At JNU, you are there. At DU, there is scope for improvement, and there are a lot of unnecessary politics. DEEPAK: I think, sir, that we will stop here. Thank you very much. It was indeed a pleasure talking to you.

C. V. Ranganathan Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Born in Tuticorin (Tamil Nadu, India) on 22nd September 1935, Chetput Venkatasubban Ranganathan was India’s ambassador to China (1987–1991) and France (1991–1993). During his tenure as a diplomat of almost thirty-five years, he spent almost twenty years either in China or Hong Kong, or in New Delhi dealing with China. He was one of the people who were key to the successful visit of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to China in December 1997, which was the first visit by an Indian political head of state to China in over three decades. He coauthored a book with Ambassador V. C. Khanna titled India and China: The Way Ahead (2000). Since his retirement, he served as the convener, National Security Advisory Board, India, which is appointed by the prime minister. He is also an honorary fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. SINGH: I am honored to have an opportunity to talk to you, a stalwart in diplomacy who has contributed greatly to China studies. You were the first head of mission whose entire staff spoke Chinese. You also have extensive knowledge of the Chinese language and, with your keen insight on China, have made a significant contribution through your writings. When was your first interface with China? RANGANATHAN: When I entered the foreign service in 1959, we were asked to choose a language for specialization. This was during the time when India’s traditional relationship with China was going off the rails. So I felt it would be a challenge if I opted to learn the Chinese language. Earlier, people like Mira Sinha, Natwar Singh, and Sudershan Bhutani went to Peking University to learn Chinese. But with the atmosphere of India-China relations becoming less congenial later on, the ministry decided not to send foreign service probationers to China anymore. So it

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was decided to send me to Hong Kong University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies. I had no official duties then, but I had excellent peers at the university. There were people from the British Foreign Office, some of whom rose to a very high stature. David Wilson, who later became Lord David Wilson, was one of them. He served his tenure at the foreign office and was also editor of China Quarterly. Then he became a political advisor to the governor of Hong Kong. In 1962, when the armed conflict broke out, I was in Hong Kong. There was not a single Chinese interpreter at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). V. V. Paranjape, our leading Chinese language expert, was already posted, I think, to Indo-China. So I was asked to return to Delhi. I left Hong Kong in the first week of November by boat. When I arrived on 21 November, Deputy Secretary A. P. Venkateswaran asked me, “The Chinese are very close to Assam. Do you think they will step over?” I said instinctively, “I don’t think the Chinese will cross over their claimed line. Also, the Chinese are not going to stay here because they cannot sustain physical occupation of the area for long.” The same evening the Chinese declared unilateral ceasefire! Venkateswaran, J. N. Dixit, and I were the three people in the China division. Work was very hectic in those days. We had to deal with the aftermath of conflict, which included the return of our prisoners of war, material, and equipment. I wore a Red Cross band and went to various places on the boundary, particularly the North East Frontier Agency, as well as Ladakh, to collect our prisoners of war from the Chinese. It was a great learning experience. In 1963 I had my first distant rub with academia, because that year the Ford Foundation came forward to sponsor students to go to universities like Columbia, Berkeley, and other centers of Chinese area studies in the USA. Before that, except for Santiniketan, there was no particular attention paid to China studies or the Chinese language. I was involved in the recruitment of senior people, who later became very senior academics, such as Ranbir Vora, Mira Sinha, and D. Shankar. I used to sit on the interview board. At

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the same time, Giri Deshingkar came to see me with C. R. M. Rao, who was a humanist in the mold of some of the best intellectuals of Bengal. They proposed that the ministry should fund a China studies quarterly. I concurred because I believed that, amidst the anti-China hysteria, we needed objective analysis of China. So China Report was born. Tan Chung was already at Delhi University. SINGH: Was there a sentiment in the MEA to be nice to the Chinese in India? RANGANATHAN: Oh, yes. SINGH: Even after Indian soldiers were lynched on the border? RANGANATHAN: Yes, indeed. We, in fact, got the cue from Pandit Nehru that there was no enmity with the Chinese people, though there might be disagreements with the government. That was a good inspiration, and we tried to lessen the blow, particularly for those who were working in All India Radio, which already had a very well-established unit. SINGH: What was the atmosphere in Hong Kong when the war started? RANGANATHAN: The majority of the Chinese there, including some of our teachers who were from the mainland, were embarrassed about what was happening. In those years, the people in Hong Kong were extremely wary of mainland China. Those of us who learned Mandarin and spoke it didn’t get much feedback from the people on the streets. Cantonese was the lingua franca, so we interacted mostly with our teachers, with whom we used to have great social events. Our knowledge of the Chinese language was immediately leveraged into social contacts, particularly with an influential group of Chinese intellectuals who had themselves left the mainland over the years because of the Japanese or the Communists coming in. SINGH: Was there an exodus of Chinese, especially from North East India?

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RANGANATHAN: No. We came to an agreement with the government of China that all those who volunteered to go to China would be allowed to do so. We also agreed to their sending ships to take them. Two boats came to take them to Madras Port. I was asked to participate in assessing whether their desire to go to China was really voluntary. Between 1,000 and 1,500 decided to go to China as family units. SINGH: Were any of these people in touch with you later? RANGANATHAN: Yes, quite a few when I went back to China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. In 1963 China Report also got a good start with a subsidy from the MEA. Those early issues concentrated on culture and cultural links and contributed to defusing the charged atmosphere. SINGH: I understand that soon after the war there was an effort to organize a peaceful march to China. Jayaprakash Narayan was involved in that effort, which emphasized empathy, sympathy, and close relations. RANGANATHAN: I don’t think much came of that. There were various such goodwill efforts. SINGH: I understand that it started in Gandhi Samadhi and went through Shahdara and Meerut right up to Darjeeling. RANGANATHAN: Well, it was not a serious effort to go to China. In any case, in those days there was no question of crossing Tibet. Even earlier, starting in 1961, conditions became very difficult for our consulate general in Lhasa and for Indian traders going there, partly because China was already suffering from famine, and tradable commodities were very few. Since the Chinese were mobilizing their army all over the border, it was not at all easy for them to let our traders across. Our consulate general and trade post in Yangtze went through some extremely difficult times. SINGH: Were there any incidents as such?

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RANGANATHAN: For example, Yangtze had a flood, and the Chinese refused to repair the trade office. In Lhasa there was a shortage of things and obstacles to importing essential commodities from India, even for sustenance. Then there were demonstrations outside the consulate office. Particularly when the Dalai Lama left Tibet for India, there was a huge show of security there. SINGH: Does that mean that when the Chinese finally came, we were prepared in some ways? RANGANATHAN: Well, I suppose we were sure in some ways that there would be a larger military involvement than, shall I say, our leaders expected. There were warnings of that. Until August or September 1962 we were talking of negotiations. This was followed by the unsuccessful visit of Zhou Enlai. After that visit, there were numerous proposals for negotiations, but the basis of negotiations was never accepted. For instance, we talked about how in Ladakh the Chinese should withdraw and go back behind the original lines and India would do the same. The Chinese said the same thing about the North East: why only ice-clad Ladakh, and so on. So the ground for starting negotiations was never agreed on, even by September 1962. We always made certain dates a benchmark for withdrawal. We then talked about changes in the situation in the North East, which was violated in September 1962, so we told the Chinese, “You should withdraw from that area.” The Chinese said, “You want us to withdraw even to areas further north of the McMahon Line. In fact, it is you people who have violated the McMahon Line,” and so on. Incidentally, being in the ministry from 1962 to 1965, many of these white papers would be edited, produced, or contributed by me in very pretentious governmental jargon, which is not even worth reading today. It is just a historical footnote. SINGH: So you were there in the thick of the moment? RANGANATHAN: Yes, because I was the under-secretary preparing all the notes that went right to the top, based on reports from the army on

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violations. But the period between 1962 and 1965 is a very sad chapter in our relations. In 1965 I went to China. From 1965 to 1968 we did not have an ambassador. The ambassadorial relations were downgraded in 1961. Between 1965 and 1968, I was the under-secretary in China. Those years were marked by the Cultural Revolution, which started roughly in 1965. This is a period in Chinese history of which the Chinese themselves are ashamed, and they also suffered a lot. SINGH: Some of your acquaintances must have been victims of the Cultural Revolution. RANGANATHAN: We had a lady interpreter, Kong, who traced her ancestry to Confucius. One morning she told me in a sad tone, “Sir, I have to go to the countryside, and I have to leave.” Likewise, thousands and thousands suffered. SINGH: Did she contact you later on? RANGANATHAN: No. This very act of being sent to the countryside was humiliating. Some of them would not have survived. Later, when things became easier, many of them went abroad. At the Indian Embassy we were amongst the best reporters of the literature on the wall—the wall posters and all the rest of it. Many foreign correspondents used to quote us, and quite a few books on the Cultural Revolution paid tribute to individual members of the Indian Embassy and their interpretation of events. We foretold, for example, the decline in the fortunes of the mayor of Beijing, Peng Zhen, to the day. As a corollary, we forecast that people like Lo Shuqin and Deng Xiaoping would be in trouble. The rise of Lin Biao was also a predictable event. SINGH: Did any Indian diplomats get into trouble for reading the literature on the wall? RANGANATHAN: At that time the Red Guards were a law unto themselves, and the official machinery was helpless to curb them. The Red Guards caught two of our diplomats and made cases against them, which

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were rubbish. There is a full note about this in White Paper 14. In retaliation for what happened in Delhi, there was a blockade of the Indian Embassy, where we were told that the security of Indian nationals in China could not be ensured. So we were forced to bring the families of the staff into the embassy compound, and we were there for two or three days. Because of the brilliant management of Mr. and Mrs. Sathe, we could all camp there. Despite this, I must say that the Indian Embassy suffered far less than the Russians, the British, and the Indonesians. SINGH: Why these three? RANGANATHAN: Well, the British suffered because the British government in Hong Kong arrested people who carried on Red Guard activities. The Russians suffered because their bilateral relations had deteriorated to a very great extent. The Indonesians suffered because of the aborted coup of the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia). The Russians suffered badly due to blockades and demonstrations for months. The British Embassy was burnt down. But I recall the great solidarity within the diplomatic corps. East and West Europeans, Asians, and Indians were all victimized; the Burmese, the Nepalese, we all suffered. It was a unique time, both exciting and horrifying. We are thankful that we ultimately survived. SINGH: Was there any normal activity, like diplomats meeting people and doing their duties? RANGANATHAN: Not at all. There were no contacts between foreigners, especially diplomats, and the Chinese. The Chinese required permission to meet embassy personnel. SINGH: Recently, there was an incident when the Indian ambassador was called at midnight. Were there such incidents in that era? RANGANATHAN: Much worse. I was regularly called at 1:00 a.m. But at that time the foreign office was close to the embassy. Thousands and thousands would be demonstrating, screaming outside the embassy, but the officials failed to act.

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In 1968 I came back to Delhi. India’s relations with China continued to be very poor. In 1968, I was again asked to renew financial support from the government for the publication of China Report. Between 1960 and 1970 I was learning Chinese, both in the ministry and outside. In 1970, I was transferred to New York for two years, but I was earmarked a “Chinaman” in our UN mission. It was again a very important period, because during that period the PRC entered the United Nations. SINGH: Successive predictions you made turned out to be true? RANGANATHAN: You see, I maneuvered my way through all the delegations to find out how they would vote, or that they would not even turn up for the vote. Then, of course, there was the war and Bhutto’s histrionics in the Security Council, in which I again had a role. They had their first representative, second representative, number one, number two, and so on. The first secretary did all kinds of drafting work, including the speeches. I also had an official role as advisor. Dixit, Haksar, and I drafted the numerous speeches that Swaran Singh gave, mainly to stall for time. The United States’ sole interest was not to prevent the dismemberment of Pakistan, but to see to it that when the military action started in the western sector, India would not overrun Pakistan. We made it clear to them that was not our intention, that all we intended to do was to remove the Pakistani military from the erstwhile East Pakistan. SINGH: What about the story of the Seventh Fleet coming into the Bay of Bengal? RANGANATHAN: Sitting in New York, we were least bothered by this because we knew they were just showing off. SINGH: What was your interaction with the Chinese in the UN? RANGANATHAN: Curiously enough, their number two was a man whom I knew in Beijing. Since all the parliamentary procedures of the UN were new to them, he would constantly approach me for explana-

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tions about how things worked: where to get documents, how to apply to become speaker, and things like that. An important development in 1972 was the admission of Bhutan to the United Nations. We wanted it done before the Chinese got into the Security Council. So it was a race against time. SINGH: Was that also a time when debate about certain changes in the nuclear policy was taking place? RANGANATHAN: Not in 1972–1973. The main change came after India’s peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974. In 1973 I was transferred to Bonn. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt visited China at the time. One of his ministers knew me from earlier times when he was in New Delhi. They used to ask me what Helmut Schmidt should do in China, what places he should visit, and things like that. The Germans especially had to go through enormous negotiations over the issue of the two Germanys. SINGH: They did not want China to have relations with East Germany? RANGANATHAN: No, but they realized it was impossible to require that beyond a certain point. But the aspirations were there for German unification, although the East Germans did not like it. The Chinese always had their Taiwan problem, so they could not object to divided countries unifying. SINGH: But you were in Bonn when India conducted its Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE). RANGANATHAN: Yes, that was a tough time, because the Germans threatened to cease aid, and we were still very much dependent on grants and aid to tide us over the foreign exchange crisis. We had a few high-level delegations, including Homi Sethna, to explain the full nature of the PNE, what we intended to do with it, and that we would never weaponize. This was not untrue at the time. Fortunately, the Socialists were more persuaded that India did have peaceful intentions in developing nuclear energy.

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SINGH: Were you in Bonn during the emergency too? RANGANATHAN: Yes, from 1976 to1983. After Mrs. Gandhi lost the 1977 election and Morarji Desai came in, India’s appeal immediately increased enormously. Suddenly, countries like Japan and others started visiting India. The Chinese also followed up on a random statement made by A. B. Vajpayee in Bombay. When he was asked whether he would visit China, he said, “Yes, if I am invited.” The Chinese picked it up. SINGH: But were you joint secretary when we sent our ambassador to China? RANGANATHAN: No, that happened just before I returned to Delhi. In Delhi we were rather anxious how to brief Vajpayee on our Tibet policy. He said, “In all those years, I was in the opposition, and now I am in power and I will follow your advice.” He was very pragmatic. He made his statement in parliament, and the Chinese were very quick to follow up on it. They sent the famous Wang Ping Nan, who was then president of the Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. He wanted to meet Vajpayee, and Vajpayee readily agreed. Wang Bingnan told Vajpayee that the Chinese would be very happy if he visited China, and Vajpayee very gracefully agreed immediately. SINGH: But Vajpayee was foreign minister, and the invitation was from the Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. RANGANATHAN: No, Wang Bingnan acted as a messenger on behalf of the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Foreign Minister Huang Hua, who used to be the permanent representative in New York, said, “I am inviting you very informally.” Vajpayee readily accepted, but to set the meeting was extremely difficult, because of the problems within the ruling coalition. We had people, like Madhu Limaye in parliament, who were very proSoviet and very anti-China. SINGH: But Vajpayee had to cancel his visit, and he went to AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences).

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RANGANATHAN: Yes, a diplomatic illness. He did eventually go, in February 1979. It was a very good visit, and I was joint secretary. SINGH: That visit was also cut short? RANGANATHAN: No. To say that the visit was cut short is a huge exaggeration. The official part of the visit was finished, and it was the cultural expedition that was shortened. SINGH: You mean the official part was completed. RANGANATHAN: He met Deng Xiaoping and Huang Hua, who was then almost a nonentity. He had sessions with Huang Hua. Many issues were discussed, such as Chinese assistance to the people of Mizoram and Nagaland, and so on, and they said all that was in the past, then they gave us a long explanation of the Maoist period and what China’s policy was in the post-reform period. SINGH: And you were part of the delegation? RANGANATHAN: This was in 1979. I was joint secretary from 1976 to 1980. SINGH: How serious was this promise not to support the rebels in Mizoram and Nagaland? RANGANATHAN: Fairly serious, because after that no fresh evidence of Chinese support was recorded. Curiously, even on Sikkim, which was then annexed by India, they said, “It is your internal affair; don’t ask us to formally take a stand on that.” Deng Xiaoping suggested that we have a package agreement, which was more or less along the lines of what Zhou Enlai said, but not much came of it. SINGH: What package was it actually? RANGANATHAN: The package was never fully described, but it was mentioned in the very same breath that China could take a realistic attitude towards the North East.

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SINGH: The package was offered as an approach and not as a substantive package? RANGANATHAN: Correct. It was never spelled out but was more an approach based on current realities. That situation changed in 1985 from the Chinese point of view, but that’s a different story. Coming back to the visit, it was a success in my opinion and cut short only in its cultural component. SINGH: Obviously, the attack on Vietnam was the reason it was cut short. RANGANATHAN: Yes. There were so many critics in India who were far more inclined to support the Soviet Union that this whole visit was unnecessary. The Soviet ambassador in India often visited me and asked, “Why are you doing all this?” But a few important things happened because of this visit. First, Vajpayee’s visit resulted in an improvement of contacts. SINGH: Was there a sense of promise on the North East and Sikkim being part of an internal issue? RANGANATHAN: Correct. SINGH: Would you describe any other major advantages of this visit for India? RANGANATHAN: I think just this offer of a package settlement. SINGH: Because very often it is implied that India keeps making concessions and the Chinese do not. RANGANATHAN: I think that is overstated. One should also look at it from the point of view of what alternatives and leverages India had. If one had enormous leverages, one could talk of concessions in a less principled manner. What was the American policy? What was the British policy? Did they ever recognize Tibet’s independence?

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Getting back to China studies, the years from 1976 to 1980 brought more support for China Report. The germination of a full-fledged Institute of Chinese Studies and other events hadn’t taken place. SINGH: Did the MEA have any say in what kind of publications would go into China Report? RANGANATHAN: No, and they had no desire to do so. The idea was to have an objective analysis of China. Obviously, there was an absolute lack of rigorous scholarship on China, and the same few continued to write. But mind you, China Report was very hospitable to the idea of improvement of relations with China and how China had resolved boundary problems with other countries. This was because people like Mira Sinha were writing with a great deal of support, at least from the ministry. SINGH: Was it their own decision to write, or were they asked to write? RANGANATHAN: It was their own decision, and there were no expectations on the part of the ministry. SINGH: Then eventually it evolved into a group of people and their students? RANGANATHAN: Well, that was also related to internal matters at Delhi University and V. P. Dutt, and so on, but it was good that the China Studies Group was formed. SINGH: Were you involved with that group? RANGANATHAN: Very much. I made quite a few appearances. It was before the MEA provided meeting facilities. SINGH: I think they used to meet at Sapru House. RANGANATHAN: No, I think it was at Delhi University itself. I remember going there on quite a few occasions to brief them on current developments, such as Vajpayee’s visit and then Huang Hua’s visit in 1981. Then I transferred to Hong Kong on my own volition. So in 1982–

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1983 I was in Hong Kong, where I could see the birth of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), and I was there for the inauguration of Shenzhen SEZ. I witnessed the foundation stone-laying ceremony of Shenzhen SEZ. After a few years, I visited Shenzhen officially, when I was ambassador. It was startling to see how a fishing village had transformed into a miniManhattan. Another notable event was Mrs. Thatcher’s visit to Beijing, when the handover of Hong Kong was discussed. It was a pretty tense time in Hong Kong, because the Chinese position on Hong Kong was clear. So for the best part of a year or more in Hong Kong, we had to ensure that the large Indian community there would not be squeezed out of their businesses or suffer in any way because of the Chinese takeover; clearly the Chinese would not kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The Indian traders in Hong Kong had opened up so many markets for the Chinese, which they could never have done on their own. I am talking about places like Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. Using Hong Kong as a base, they were actually exporting Chinese products through the Indian trading community worldwide. SINGH: There is a common belief that Deng Xiaoping had taken the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into confidence, and they had a major role to play in the success of SEZs. RANGANATHAN: The PLA was very active in business in any case (which I understand was later curbed by Jiang Zemin). They apparently had certain investible surpluses and also had a lot of clout in their system of land allocation, because much of the land was also under their dispensation, particularly in areas adjoining South Canton and other places. So the PLA was one of the beneficiaries of the establishment of SEZs. They went into hotels, software, and other manufacturing companies. They certainly didn’t raise any objections to the promotion of SEZs. Later I went to places like Ethiopia and Moscow. In Moscow (1985–1987) it was again an extremely interesting time. Gorbachev was in power, and

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he definitely wanted to change things around. Through my contacts in the Chinese Embassy there, I found that they were very nervous about what Gorbachev was doing, and they predicted with certainty that he would not succeed. SINGH: Gorbachev was engaging China seriously. RANGANATHAN: Yes, Gorbachev made historic statements about and gradually worked toward reconciliation with China. After he became president in 1985, the obstacles that the Chinese objected to were formally resolved by 1987: namely, removing Soviet troops from Mongolia; lessening support to Vietnam over the Kampuchean invasion; and taking some progressive steps on the boundary issue. This satisfied the Chinese. In 1987 I was in China. The fall of the Soviet Union led to enormous heart searching within China, and Deng Xiaoping decided to make certain changes in the party. He was aware that lasting support of the party would only occur if they were able to improve the living standards and income levels of the people. That’s exactly why, when the reforms got bogged down, particularly after the 1989 Tiananmen incident, inflation was again high in 1992. Deng Xiaoping gave impetus to the reform process. There was a period of intense debate on what the role of the party should be, and it was very clear that, unless the party was able to provide better governance and better standards of living, it would get wiped out as happened in the East European countries. SINGH: Was part of the evolution that things changed with India and a major visit of Rajiv Gandhi took place? RANGANATHAN: That visit took place in 1988, and the Soviet Union disintegrated later. But India was a clear beneficiary of the foreign policy changes Deng Xiaoping introduced in the early 1980s, namely to reconcile with all neighbors, to withdraw support to Communist parties, particularly in Southeast Asia, and to make Chinese foreign policy serve the larger objective of peace in the neighborhood of China. It was from that factor that India benefited, and there were frequent invitations to Rajiv Gandhi,

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the most authoritative Indian in 1987. I was very privileged that the visit took place when I was ambassador to China. The visit was important for at least two reasons. The Chinese were, shall I say, upset all the while that the previous visit of their prime minister in 1960 did not succeed. So the Indian prime minister’s visit was seen as a big event. Rajiv Gandhi, being very young and his wife being very pretty, made a deep impact on the Chinese public. This was quite visible in the placards of Rajiv Gandhi in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, saying, “Rajiv Gandhi 48 and Deng Xiaoping 84,” to show that India had a young leadership. SINGH: So much has been written and said about that handshake, and I am sure you were standing right there. RANGANATHAN: Yes. SINGH: Is it that we read too much into it, or did the Chinese really want to convey something out of it? RANGANATHAN: There is no doubt that the Chinese really wanted to say something. Deng Xiaoping was very warm to Indian guests, and he made a few resounding statements. People talk of this being an Asian century, but this cannot be an Asian century unless India and China develop. Deng Xiaoping made a statement to Vajpayee: “Let’s not make the boundary question hold the bilateral relations hostage, and let’s move ahead in various fields.” A few agreements were signed, like civil aviation, a cultural agreement, a new trade agreement, and so on. So the impact of the visit on the Chinese was very high. In India we have raised, as far as China is concerned, a variety of issues, and we judge every highlevel exchange by what progress has been made on such issues as the boundary and Sikkim. Naturally, critics looked at the progress in these kinds of issues to see if there had been any breakthrough. SINGH: From your point of view as ambassador then, how intense was the preparation?

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RANGANATHAN: The preparation was very intense, particularly in consideration of how the boundary question should be handled so that it might not become contentious. The briefings were already made in Delhi, and there were preparatory visits by the foreign secretary and others. I was also called for consultations on at least two occasions. On one occasion, I was made to speak to a group of congressmen, which I felt was not really the role of a civil servant, and I told this to the prime minister. Anyway, Rajiv Gandhi sent a number of delegations, including members from the Congress Party, journalists, and other eminent people from different quarters of society. The journalists had a variety of high-level interviews in China. The Chinese mainly assured that there would be a very warm welcome to the Indian prime minister and nothing controversial would be taken up—not just from the instabilities or sensitive issues but substantively, considering that such a visit had not taken place for so many years: twenty-eight years since the last Chinese visit and thirty-four years since the last Indian visit. Given that long hiatus, it was a very substantial and important visit. SINGH: Were there any concrete gains? RANGANATHAN: One important outcome was the willingness to move ahead in all fields and not hold up the relations due to the boundary dispute. It was the beginning of a huge increase in trade. That year, the two-way trade volume was 250 million dollars. And in the perspective of future growth, you would always see the exponential growth. Besides trade, there was a huge intergovernmental exchange in a variety of fields, and every successive visit after that added only newer and newer items: security, terrorism, and so on. It was followed by Narasimha Rao’s visit, when he proposed new Confidence Building Measures and signed new agreements. After that, new joint working groups were formed. But the important point of reference was that the Soviet Union and the Chinese were keen to replicate that model.

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SINGH: Tiananmen Square happened in the meantime, which forced the Chinese to temporarily suspend their foreign policy, but India showed warmth and kept sending its delegates and officials to China. RANGANATHAN: Yes, Tiananmen didn’t impact the relationship with India. There was certainly advice from both ministries and embassies that there was no need to follow the Western line. In fact, one of the Congress Party’s general secretaries, Ghulam Nabi Azad, went to North Korea and returned via Beijing. The Chinese immediately set a meeting for him with new General Secretary Jiang Zemin. SINGH: So, during this crisis, India was one of the countries that continued official exchanges with China. RANGANATHAN: Lots of intergovernmental panels and exchanges in science and technology, and that continued in the following years. After every high-level delegation, you would see the entire listing of memoranda of understanding. That happened in terms of the enormous amount of exchange that was constantly taking place. The first step was that the issue of civil aviation was settled between the two countries. After that, in 1992, I went to Paris and retired from the foreign service in 1994. Since then, I have been associated with the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS). SINGH: Your association with the ICS is another strong association of yours with China. RANGANATHAN: In the ICS, what was important at that time was to try and reach out to certain Chinese academic institutions. One major initiative was the Russia, China, and India initiative, which came from Professor Titarenko of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences. We in the ICS felt it was a very good idea. It also had the blessing of the ministry.

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SINGH: So the ICS in a sense moved away from just being an academic institution to building institutional linkages? RANGANATHAN: Yes, and such institutional linkages and networks were being built with institutions within India. When I joined the ICS in 1994, there was hardly anybody from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). It was all the old lot from Delhi University and no young scholars. I am glad that doors were opened to many young scholars from JNU; and I guess you are one of the active participants. SINGH: Were there any linkages you had other than the ICS? In your long career, several people must have come in contact with you who continued following China studies in India or abroad. RANGANATHAN: Obviously, quite a few Americans I knew steadfastly continued their academic career. The most important contribution through the ICS is the reconciliation with China after the nuclear test in 1998. At that time there was a team from the China Center for International and Strategic Studies, Beijing, visiting India. Some old ambassadors, like Chen Ruisheng, were its members. We took the initiative that Chen Ruisheng should meet the president, and the meeting coincided with the 26th January reception. We briefed President Narayanan, and he made a resounding statement that after 1998 India should sort out its relations with China, which was reported in the People’s Daily. The ICS itself made a visit to CIISS (China Institute for International Strategic Studies) in early 1999, during which lots of ground was covered. It was clear that the Chinese were not so much against India conducting tests as in favor of inflating the China threat. Later, I wanted to ask whether, if Defense Minister George Fernandes wanted to visit China, the Chinese would invite him. They said, “Of course.” So I met George Fernandes and told him, “I think you should take an initiative to visit China,” and he did. SINGH: So in a sense, the persona of ICS changed because you came and Ambassador Khanna came in.

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RANGANATHAN: Khanna was one of the earliest directors, and he helped in improving funding from the ministry. The venue for the ICS was at the Society for International Law, where the ministry rented half a floor. And later the ministry made a big investment in getting the present place, which is on a long-term lease with the CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies). The ICS was not able to build its own research team, partly because it is under-funded and partly because it does not offer long-term job prospects; it only provides temporary placements to people who are doing their PhD studies. However, it played host to a number of visiting delegations. It has acquired stature in more important ways, and of course it produces China Report. Incidentally, the individual scholars from within and outside the ICS produce a lot of books and other research works. SINGH: Can you tell us something about your book, coauthored with Ambassador Vinod Khanna? RANGANATHAN: That project came up partly because I was awarded the Nehru Fellowship. I didn’t find too many Indian works on the impact of the Sino-Soviet dispute on the boundary question. I thought I should concentrate more on this underreported and under-researched aspect of the Sino-Indian boundary question. Mao’s desire to teach the Soviet Union a lesson was due to his paranoia that India was not non-aligned, but was doubly aligned. In addition, the Soviet Union had started on what he saw as a very dangerous path of peaceful coexistence with non-socialist countries with so-called progressive leadership. With India, there was also the boundary dispute and the issue of Tibet. I felt that, at that time, we needed to de-emotionalize the boundary question and look upon it rationally. Throughout this whole business of the nuclear deal with the US, we had extremely close strategic relations aimed at China, and that should restrain China in its behavior toward us. The Security Council membership supported us in the whole nuclear agree-

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ment, and the US did us a great favor with the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group), but let’s not pretend that this sort of relationship would somehow keep the Chinese in check. Our scrutiny of others is not as strict as it is with the Chinese, because of the pattern of damage done in 1962, and also to a great extent because of Chinese insensitivity. SINGH: Is it just a pattern of damage, or do we keep getting bombarded by the Western media? RANGANATHAN: That is a very good point you are making. This is where the ICS has made a contribution in the sense that its scholars have tried to develop an autonomous Indian view of China directly, rather than going through derived wisdom and analysis. What people do not realize is that every American analysis ends up centered on American interests, which is natural— for instance, considering how China’s economic or military strength will affect the USA. SINGH: But even the contemporary generation shows tremendous skepticism when it comes to China. RANGANATHAN: For the contemporary generation, it is a case of overexposure to Western literature. The younger generations have also become far more nationalistic than earlier generations. One needs to debate whether it’s a healthy nationalism. In particular, the electronic media are very pejorative towards China, and their quick sound bites leave an impression of blame fixing. SINGH: There is also this whole issue of patrolling. Is it a deliberate Chinese attempt to move into Indian territory? RANGANATHAN: Every incursion is deliberate. It is partly to assert their control and partly to deter any Indian attempt at exploration. And that is calibrated. Our own presence at the boundary is qualitatively different from what it used to be, particularly in the northeast. We are right there.

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In the western areas, we are not being provocative. But we are not seeing any Chinese advance. SINGH: The PLA again has its own problems. They are manning Tibetan territory, after all. RANGANATHAN: Both sides have reached a stage of ultimately guarding their boundaries defensively. SINGH: What is missing in China studies in India? RANGANATHAN: One is the support by industry for research on important aspects of the Chinese economy, society, and other things, unlike in the West, where industry supports research institutions. Career prospects for those who graduated in China studies are also weak. The MEA is now far more active than it was earlier. They have a separate division on public policy, which has vastly improved the interface between academics and government policymakers. But what we are looking for is more government funding for institutions like the ICS to support research staff on a permanent basis. Also, China studies are too Delhi-centric, which is a major lacuna. SINGH: Is there anything indigenous about China studies in India? RANGANATHAN: There is certainly something distinctive about Indian studies on China. This is a traditional feature that from colonial times there has been a lot of interest in civilizational history, civilizational contacts, and clearly very revered scholars like Bagchi and others who talked about the link between Indian and Chinese cultures. That, of course, is a very distinctive contribution. I did not view the fact that China was governed by the Communist Party as essentially something bad and that India should be alienated from China. So from that point of view, you have a few scholars who looked at the Chinese growth with objectivity and with some admiration, until much later when it became evident that Mao’s personal ideas and the Cultural Revolution were leading China on the path of destruction. In addition, when it comes to the reform period, there was much sympathy

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and envy on the part of businessmen and others about the way China was growing. People always looked at the Chinese economic growth with a mixture of envy and competition. China is seen as an alternative business destination for cheap production costs. More and more businessmen are investing directly or indirectly in China and getting to know that country better. SINGH: Are they becoming a new constituency or lobby for China? RANGANATHAN: I am not sure if they are becoming a lobby for China. On the other hand, you do not hear the same anguished cries about Chinese competition as you used to hear some years ago. That refrain has died down, partly because people are able to cope with more liberalized market conditions and more Chinese products coming in. So, on the whole, I would say there is a mixed picture of China. The strategic community has one view, and the business community has another view. Those in cultural center have another view, and tourists have another view. Successive governments have not just remained non-confrontational, but have fostered a positive friendship with China. SINGH: Is the MEA soft on China? RANGANATHAN: We are neither soft nor hard; we simply work for our own interests, and the way you pursue your interest is a mixture of soft and hard. I don’t think we have been particularly soft or hard when it comes to expressing our displeasure with Chinese behavior when it hurts us or could hurt us, whether it’s a nuclear relationship or nuclear knowledge exchange with Pakistan or the behavior over the NSG meeting in Vienna and China’s reluctance to endorse our entry into the Security Council. On these things our views are forthright. It doesn’t necessarily mean that our expression of views in a forthright manner can make the other party change its views. SINGH: Thank you, sir.

Harprasad Ray Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Dr. Harprasad Ray was a Sino-Tibetan research scholar in Chinese at Calcutta University from 1953 to 1956. In 1959 he joined the Ministry of Defense as a Chinese language expert, and held various positions of responsibility. He transferred in 1975 to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. After retiring from JNU in 1996, he was successively made senior fellow of the Society for Indian Ocean Studies and the Indian Council of Historical Research. Presently senior fellow at the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, Dr. Ray is now engaged in exploring data on South Asian history from Chinese sources, covering the earliest history through the late nineteenth century. He has already completed three volumes. SINGH: I am Swaran Singh, and I am happy to be interviewing Professor Harprasad Ray, who has spent more than half a century working on China studies and is also a person of great repute in the area of Chinese language. We will begin by chronologically starting from where his attention on China began; sir, maybe you could start by telling us something about your childhood, family background, and how you first heard the word China. RAY: Thank you, Swaran Singh. Thank you for your kind words, which I don’t deserve, In fact, we are from Assam. My mother tongue is Hindi; I speak Bhojpuri with my wife and Bengali with my daughter. My grandfather came from Gajipur in Orissa. My grandmother was a very beautiful lady; she had four children—three sons and one daughter. Out of four siblings, only my father got a good education, due to his tenacity. He graduated from Rajsahi College. He was the most respected man in town. He died about fifty years ago. We settled in a place forty miles east of Cooch-Bihar.

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SINGH: So your father was a teacher? RAY: Yes, he taught Hindi, but he was also an expert in Bengali and Sanskrit. In 1941, he was getting sixty rupees as salary per month, but we were very well off. In 1942, when Japan blasted Pearl Harbor, America joined the war, which wreaked havoc on our lives. During this period of austerity, my father used to provide home tuition to three students; in the process we were almost neglected. My mother was illiterate. SINGH: Havoc, because of the war? RAY: Yes. As army supplies had to be maintained, civilian supplies were scarce. It took a whole day to collect our rations. My father trusted me, as I used to return every single penny, which my elder brother would not do. Somehow I managed to study. My elder brother could not pass the matriculation. He died soon after he joined army in 1947, at just twentyone years old. SINGH: So you managed to continue studying even in difficult situations? RAY: My father passed away right after his retirement in 1947, and at that time I had just finished my intermediate (12th) and was planning for my BA. I was thinking of applying for admission at Banaras Hindu University (BHU). I was interested in literature, philosophy, and Sanskrit. I applied and was admitted, but could not join the session in July, as my results came somewhere in late August. Soon after that, my mother died. It was a big tragedy for the family. During my intermediate studies, I took Sanskrit, philosophy, Bengali, and English. I matriculated at Calcutta University, and got my intermediate and BA at Guwahati University. After finishing my BA at Cotton College Guwahati, I came to Calcutta University. I completed my MA in August 1952, and then I went to my village and started teaching in the village school. SINGH: What subjects did you teach? RAY: I taught all subjects from the 3rd to the 10th standard, except for mathematics. But soon after, owing to the Assamization of the

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region, Assamese was made a compulsory medium [of instruction]. I started applying to other places. At Calcutta University, the SinoTibetan Research Scholarship was offered for Chinese, Tibetan, and Pali languages. I applied and got it. At that time there was no UGC (University Grant Commission) fellowship, and scholarships were available at very few universities. The head of the department (HOD), Professor Satkadi Mukherjee, was an authority on Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan language, and Jainism. It was he who insisted that I must study Chinese. At that time, Sino-Indian studies meant Buddhist studies or classical studies. Luckily, after independence, the first group was sent to China to study Chinese. Mr. Shibrurkar, who was an advisor at the home ministry, V. V. Paranjape, Satiranjan Sen, A. N. Tagore, and others went to China and came back after some time. Paranjape stayed on. At Calcutta University there was also the department of foreign languages. They taught German, French, Tibetan, and Chinese. The head of my department introduced me to Mr. Satiranjan Sen and told him that I was interested in learning Chinese. There was no textbook for learning the Chinese language. Yale University had prepared the books Read Chinese I, Read Chinese II, and Read Chinese III for war recruits. Then there was another book on conversational Chinese by an individual. The HOD wrote to Yale University and got Read Chinese I. I had enough time since I was a research scholar, so I studied six classics: Yi Jing, Jing li, Confucius, and others. There was another Chinese teacher, Mr. Zhang Jin, who was the headmaster at the Xinhua School in Calcutta. He was a good teacher, but he did not know English. He asked me to translate one Chinese book into English, and I did that. That era was marked by an alienation of Chinese people in this part of India, owing to the deteriorating relations. My association with the Chinese teacher, albeit for a short time, really helped me to learn the Chinese language. In 1955 the department organized a huge conference attended by Pandit Sunderlal, president of the India-China Friendship Initiative. The Chinese delegation was headed by Wu Hanzhi. I think

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he was the same Wu Hanzhi under whom the Cultural Revolution was augured. I could speak some Chinese and went to the conference. The Chinese delegates liked my not-so-fluent Chinese and invited me to the Grand Hotel, where they put me up and presented me four books on the Chinese language, which I later gave to the JNU library, along with about five hundred other books. I donated another two hundred books to the Netaji Subhash Institute, as they had also started China studies of late. There was a Chinese consulate general’s office on a lower circular road, which is now a foreigners’ registration office. The staff there used to invite me to every meeting; soon I was made a member of the central committee of the All Bengal India-China Friendship Association. The secretary was Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s father, Mr. B. N. C. Bhattacharya. By then, I could read and write Chinese well. Around 1958, I started applying for jobs. Since I had no teaching experience, every interview was a non-starter. Luckily, through some good connections, I got a job at a college in Diamond Harbor, where I taught Sanskrit beginning in January 1957. But after some time I left the college and joined Shri Chaitanya College in North 24 Parganas, again as a Sanskrit teacher. I wanted to introduce new things, like Mrichhakatikam, Desakumarcharitam, and other works, but nobody listened to me. I was fed up and started to look for other avenues. There was a gazetted officer’s post for a Chinese translator in Delhi. They did not declare that this was under the Ministry of Defense. At the time of my interview I met Tan Chung. I was selected for that post. Tan Chung was selected for the post of lecturer; Shibrurkar was selected for the home ministry. The defense officials carried out extensive verification and scrutiny. But after joining, I was confused as to whether to continue or not. But by that time, I was already married and had no option. I joined government service in January 1959. SINGH: Did you experience any major changes in terms of work culture when you moved to a government job?

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RAY: Yes, I did. When I went to army headquarters, the officer was a civilian. I didn’t know it was a military intelligence department. A few wartime scientists were also there. It was a dark and scary room. After joining, I felt oppressed. Those army people, they talked big things; they came on time, left on time, and did nothing. A special cell of military intelligence (MI), the MI directorate, started with me. I was the first one to join. There were telegrams to be intercepted, translated, and sent back again. There was lot of information about the border crisis, but I was alone. Moreover, there was a complete lack of basic ground facilities to assess intelligence. SINGH: Once Paranjape mentioned that, Nehru increasingly felt that India required more experts in the Chinese language. Was the political leadership getting concerned about the need for Chinese language experts in India? RAY: India and China had an agreement in 1947, and again in 1956, for the exchange of scholars. After the Hot Spring incident, the frequency of exchange should have been increased rather than reduced. In 1959, they advertised the national scholarship for China but were no longer interested in it after 1962. Since I was a government servant, they did not even allow me to apply. The atmosphere was stifling. SINGH: During late 1950s, relations were deteriorating; what impact did that have on the kind of work you were doing? RAY: It did impact my work and me. With the kind of work we were doing, the surveillance on us was becoming more and more strict with every passing day. But after a few days, Zhou Enlai came. He was very charismatic and thoughtful. Our information was that Zhou was in favor of India retaining the McMahon Line and China getting the Aksai Chin region, since it was strategically important to them in terms of their worsening relations with the Soviet Union. After Nehru said we would consider this kind of agreement, Zhou became more assertive and rigid. That did not work.

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SINGH: How did you go to Hong Kong for further language training? RAY: I went there on a government of India scholarship through the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Defense also paid for us. K. Raghunath was in charge; V. M. Ojha and Raghunandan were senior fellows at the Institute of Chinese Studies. SINGH: C. V. Ranganathan? RAY: He joined one year later. SINGH: Vinod Khanna? RAY: Khanna, Ranjeet Sethi, they all came later. They made their own arrangements. The high commissioner made no arrangements for me. I stayed at the YMCA, which cost twenty-fours dollars per day. Our friend Deshpande was also there. SINGH: GPD? [G. P. Deshpande] RAY: Yes, he was an Asia fellow. The Chinese called it a CIA organization, so they stopped everything. SINGH: What year was this? RAY: This was in 1963, immediately after the uproar in Indian establishments in 1962. They made the announcement continuously for two or three years. SINGH: So, how many of you went to Hong Kong? RAY: In all, there were about twenty-four or twenty-five candidates. SINGH: So this was your first visit to Hong Kong, which was now a territory of China. You had not visited China before this? RAY: Yes. Our teachers at the institute were all very qualified people, and they all had fled from mainland China. In India, too, there were many fine Chinese scholars from the mainland. Li Zuiying was a well-known

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scholar in literature; Sung Jiazhu was in All India Radio. But they were all forced to leave. SINGH: What was your experience after the 1962 war in Hong Kong? So far you had only read about China, now you were actually within Chinese society. How long did you live there? RAY: We lived there for two years. After the war, the Chinese completely changed; they befriended Pakistanis. When we visited the local market, the attitude of the people was anti India. But all our teachers were nice. They did not discriminate against us. SINGH: How did your two years in Hong Kong change your understanding of China, and in what sense? RAY: It completely changed my understanding about China. My knowledge of the Chinese language became more thorough. All our teachers were Chinese and were excellent teachers. They were refugees from North China. They conducted the classes for individuals. We had the freedom to decide what we wanted to read. I decided to focus on classical Chinese literature, through which I wanted to discover China. I read Honglou meng (The Dream of Red Chamber), Rulin Waishi (The Scholars), etc.; the idea was to understand classical Chinese. SINGH: But before that you had not done classical Chinese? RAY: No, I read classical Chinese in James Legge’s translation. But that was not enough to lay the grammatical foundations of the Chinese language. Classical Chinese language is very complex. It has its history of change and background. SINGH: After coming back from there, how did you get out of your government job? I can see a shift here. You moved on and became a teacher again. RAY: No, I continued for some time but was looking for another outlet. In 1968 I applied to Delhi University; the joint secretary issued an order

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allowing me to work there. I was told that if there was a vacancy in the School of Foreign Languages, the chief administrative officer would recommend me. When the vacancy was announced, I joined the language school. SINGH: Is it still under the MOD (Ministry of Defense)? RAY: Yes, it is still under the MOD. They run it for the entire defense establishment. The position was for thirty-four months. I taught the basic Chinese language course for six months. When I joined, I found that the books were too old. I replaced these with new sets of books from China. Since Delhi University or De Francis was teaching a book on geography and maps, I also introduced it in the language school. SINGH: By this time, Delhi University had also started teaching Chinese. Was there any collaboration or coordination between the two? RAY: There was no collaboration. The courses were also different. They were doing modern Chinese. First it was classical Chinese, then Buddhist studies. Then V. P. Dutt received grants from the Ford Foundation, and they started the Centre for Chinese Studies. Tan Chung was also there. Initially, he was with the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs), but was brought to the center along with his wife Huang. He was very influential; his father was well known to Indira Gandhi. When I was in Hong Kong, I found out that he had some issues with the embassy personnel, so he resigned and joined Delhi University. At the same time the department opened, and it started doing well with their integrated course. In 1975, there was the first Visva Hindi Sammelana (World Hindi Conference). Vinobaji wanted that the Nagri Lipi (Hindi script) should be a scientific script and be widely popularized. One day Paranjape approached me and said, “Vinobaji wants Chinese to be written in Nagri script.” I initiated the process, and we were successful. The book was released in 1975 by the vice president of India, Mr. B. D. Jatti. The All India Nagri Lipi Parishad (council) was also established, and I was made the secretary of the parishad.

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SINGH: So can we say that you made a pioneering contribution to writing Chinese in Devnagri? RAY: Yes. In every one of my books, I included a transcription table. Most people couldn’t distinguish between zhi chi shi and ji qi xi. I wrote the book, and Vinobaji was supposed to write a preface for it. But in 1975 he was in Maun (observing silence). SINGH: So in terms of your exposure to China studies from 1952 to 1962, did you see any expansion of China studies in India after 1962? RAY: After 1962, the government took initiatives to strengthen China studies. The Ministry of Defense started language training in Panchmari [in Madhya Pradesh], and the Ministry of Home Affairs started their language courses in Bangalore and Mysore. They hired two Chinese teachers, Wang and Chai from Hong Kong. Delhi University had started modern Chinese; BHU also introduced China studies, and later Allahabad followed too. SINGH: When was your first visit to China? RAY: My first visit to China was in 1984. SINGH: And where were you teaching then? RAY: JNU. SINGH: Well, before we move to 1984, how did the shift from foreign language to SIS (School of International Studies) and the School of Foreign Languages happen? RAY: In 1962, when I joined the School of Foreign Languages, I thought I must continue what I was destined to do. I started teaching again and was giving lectures on scientific translation. In the meantime, V. B. Nag Choudhury had come back as a scientific advisor to the Ministry of Defense. With great difficulty, I was relieved from the Ministry of Defense, and Mr. Chaudhary brought me to the School of Languages at

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JNU in 1975. There was another lady, Vimla Saran, who was a documentation officer at the School of International Studies. She was my colleague. SINGH: So you were the first proper teacher of Chinese to come to the School of Languages [presently the School of Language, Literature, and Culture Studies]? RAY: Yes, both of us were the first faculty members. SINGH: So you virtually had to start new courses? RAY: Yes, I had to start everything new. Everything started with the two of us, but under what circumstances? There was a strong anti-Chinese sentiment all over the country. The school began teaching only the Arabic and Persian languages. The center was called the Center for Asian and African Studies, but Chinese was junior-most. We had no representation, no voice. Initially, a three-year course was developed, and later, after a lot of struggle, we got the four-year course; by this time, we had become the Center for East Asian Languages. SINGH: So Yap Rahman and Tan Chung came after you were there? RAY: They all came much later. SINGH: So you set up the entire course there? RAY: Yes, I singlehandedly set up the entire structure. I was the only teacher. There were no other teachers. I did not know where to get new people. I went to All India Radio, where there were two Chinese. I asked them to join. Of course, Munish Raja was very encouraging. They joined as part-time teachers. Narayan Sen, a friend of mine, also used to come as a part-time teacher from the Cabinet Secretariat. When we introduced Chinese cinema as part of the oral course, there was a hue and cry about it. Murthy accosted me and asked whether I would bring the Chinese agency to the campus. By 1978, Yap Rahman came. She was from Singapore, had graduated in France, and was looking for a job. Our former rector, Mahale, called me and said, “Ray, since you are in need of teachers, you

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can take her. She speaks Chinese well.” I called and talked to her. She was good, and she joined us. Meanwhile, I got acquainted with Tan Chung. When he saw that we had lasted at JNU and were moving in a new direction, he expressed his willingness to join JNU in 1978, during his sabbatical from DU. I introduced him to Professor Mahale, and he was hired. The vice chancellor had warned me earlier that if Tan came, my future may be jeopardized. I said, “Sir, I am thinking of my students, not my personal career.” SINGH: The students must have benefited a lot. RAY: Yes, it was good for the undergraduate students, but Tan was not at all helpful to the students after MA. He had nine PhD scholars under him, but not one of them received a PhD. SINGH: So, sir, the problems were more internal rather than purely due to India-China relations? RAY: Yes, there were many internal issues, because the anti-China Communist lobby was very strong. SINGH: So when did the change begin, that studying China became more acceptable, and the Chinese language became a more appropriate career? RAY: As the economic advancement began in China, it became more open to the rest of the world. They started improving. The real beginning happened in 1978, when they sent a trade and cultural delegation. I was an interpreter there. The commercial delegation was followed by a cultural troop under Wang Bingnao. Ji Xianlin was part of that. They came to Delhi and, after visiting DU. they came to JNU. They were very happy to see our department at JNU. SINGH: Can we jump to 1984 when you first went to China? RAY: I went to Peking University, and from there I visited their National Library, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Suzhou, Wuxi, and then Shanghai and Hangzhou. I wanted to go to Kunming but couldn’t.

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SINGH: So you had studied Chinese records about India, you had studied Chinese; now you were in China. RAY: Yes. The problem in China was that most of the documents prior to 1950 are not accessible to foreign nationals. I asked Huang Xingchuan. He had a student who was an external librarian to the National Library, and he helped me. At that time, one teacher or one scholar would be assigned to take you to the places you wished to visit. Geng Yinzeng took me to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where Professor Zhou Shanchuan was in charge of the history section. Geng helped me collect all the important articles from my research point of view. I came back and registered in the school of social sciences at the history center. Then Professor Satish Chandra went through my manuscript, but there was a problem deciding on the supervisor. I suggested the name of the late Professor Ji Xianlin. Ji Xianlin appreciated my work and wrote, “He has the right historical perspective of the cultural relations between China and India. It is a centralized manifestation of his achievement in this area.” SINGH: During your research, did you get to see the original travelogues? RAY: Yes, they sent me the catalogues of so many things, then I sorted it out. I wanted to photocopy them, but they did not allow me to. I had a copy and compared it with the original; wherever there was a mismatch I made a note of it and corrected it. I did this for nine days. Finally, I wrote a report in Chinese and sent it to China, to Ji Xianlin. There was a hue and cry there—how could a foreigner do this kind of quality research? They roped in Tan Chung and said they did not consider it a discovery. Then I sent it to Taiwan, to Dalu Yasan, one of the oldest magazines. They wrote back and agreed to publish it with some corrections. I decided not to hurt the Chinese sensitivities, so I named it “The Findings of the Mongol Expeditions of China.” The English version was published by the Indian Ocean Review, from Australia, and titled “China and the Indian Ocean.” People’s Daily carried a headline, “India and China lost Document.” There

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was also news in China Times. Hindustan Times wrote, “300-Year-Old Manuscript Found.” PTI (Press Trust of India) also gave coverage to it. My thesis was published in 1993 by R. K. Jain’s Radiant Publishers. SINGH: How did you end up here after retirement? RAY: When I was about to retire, I applied for the senior fellowship at ICHR (Indian Council for Historical Relations). Owing to the cumbersome procedures involved in the continuity of the fellowship, I went back to Calcutta after two years; it had been forty years since I left. I left as a Sanskrit scholar and came back as a Chinese scholar. But I knew the people here in medieval history; they used to call on me for talks and lectures. I gave five lectures in the archeology department and two for the Asia Society. The Asia Society showed interest and asked me to join them. I began working for them in 2008, and since then I have produced three original translations for them so far, without any outside help. SINGH: I would like you to tell us about your publications. When did you write your first book? Where did you publish it? What was the response? You have written several books and articles, so if you could, tell us something about them. RAY: As far as my writing is concerned, I told you about my first writings on the Chinese language. After that, I wrote an article, “The Formation of Chinese Technical Terms,” which I translated into Hindi, and it was well received. After joining JNU, I started to write on Chinese society and literature. In 1981, we had Lu Xun’s centenary; I wrote a long article comparing Lu Xun with Sarat Chandra. I submitted it to China Report, but it was not published because it was referred to Tan Chung, and he never went through the text. Later it was published in the Journal of the School of Languages. But the real scholarly work was the book, which I showed to you, The Trade and Diplomacy between China and India. Another project I did was “South India and China in the 15th Century” for the UGC. I completed the project in 1996 and submitted it to them before my retirement in March, but it was not published. I still have it

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and would like to publish it now. I will finalize it in the next two years. South Indian publishers are very eager to publish it. I published all the articles associated with this project separately. Other books that I have completed are: India, South-east Asia and China: Some Historical Issues (1999); North-east India’s Place in India-China Relations and Its Future Role in India’s Economy (2003); Trade and Trade Routes between India and China, c. 140 BC–AD 1500 (2003); Chinese Sources of South Asian History in Translation; Data for Study of India-China Relations through History/Ages, vols. I, II, and III. Volume III is in press and will be out very soon. It is about three hundred pages and contains all of the important information about the historic route in North-east India, popularized as the “Silk Route.” SINGH: Burma Road? RAY: Yes, Burma Road. You know what happens—scholars mostly study secondary sources, and those who study primary sources miss out on a few things. You see, in the first century AD, Ming Di dreamt about the route, but how would he dream unless he had heard about it? So Buddhism must have entered China long before. SINGH: You are saying before the first century? RAY: Yes. Officially it was during the first century AD, between the years 58 and 75. But an unofficial record confirms, and unofficial records are as correct as official records, that it was in 2 BC, therefore the first century BC. I have written an article, “Entry of Buddhism in China: When and How?” which is a long article published in the Journal of Asiatic Society. So I have cited all these instances; if one reads them carefully then they will know about it, and I have made it clear in my introduction also. The second volume talks about our links with South-east Asia and China through water. Then there is another book titled Shui Jingzhu. SINGH: And what is the next book, the next volume?

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RAY: Well, this one and the earlier volumes are not translated. In this new part I have picked up the portions that speak about the origin of the Indus and Ganges regions. It is very interesting how they go, where they move, and what the branches are. Most of the information is in Buddhist scriptures and the lore of various travelers. However, some of the books of other travelers are non-existent. Monks and priests are not known, but are quoted. SINGH: Will there be another volume? RAY: Yes, there is a second part as well, which I have included in volume III. The only thing is that they [the Chinese] do not officially recognize the foreign writings. But the Buddhist language was recognized as a foreign language and was given a place in imperial writings. In a history of the Wei dynasty, there is a chapter on Buddhism and Taoism, which belong to the third and fourth centuries. That was translated a long time ago. So I thought I would translate the three important Buddhist scripts, and that will complete my goal for the time being, the entire quota for the early sixth century. So I named it “Buddhist Trilogy,” three stages with an introduction. The fourth volume I have yet to complete. SINGH: You are also working on a fourth volume? RAY: For the fourth volume, I have already completed about 50–60 percent of the work. It is about 250 pages. It contains an earlier account of the sixth- to seventh-century Sui dynasty and the dynasty that preceded the Yuan. It’s an Indian account of these dynasties: the Sui dynasty from 581 to 670 AD, then the Tang Dynasty from 680 to 907 AD. So it includes the historical account of these dynasties. Apart from the official history of China, there are two histories of the Tang dynasty, New History and Old History. This is the golden era in the history of India and China. Fa Xian came earlier, then Xuan Zang, and Yi Jing visited during this period. One Korean priest also came. I collected the account of his visits from the Korean Embassy. So there is a plethora of information, and it is really difficult to decide what to include and what to skip. But I have selected

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some of them. I numbered them, and so far I have completed about 112 notes. SINGH: Your work is very innovative in some ways on the Chinese sources for Indian, South Asian, and South-east Asian history, relations, and trade. But let’s shift now to your students. Many of them are teachers now. RAY: The first group of MA students came in 1978. There were five of them. There was Mr. Joshi and his wife. She had started a language training course in Bombay. Then, of the other two, one was a scientific translator. Joshi was more of a politician. He used to work in China Radio. He came back and joined a Hindi newspaper. Then came the second group; Manik was there, and his wife was also in the same group. She is in All India Radio. Then Sheela Murthy was there, wife of Professor Murthy. She retired from Delhi University. SINGH: What about in the current faculties at JNU and Delhi University? RAY: At JNU all the present faculties are my students; Priyadarshi, Sabaree, and Hemant. Aaditi Jha and her husband Kamal Datta are at BHU, and they were my students. Deepak joined late. He is another person who has done much work on China studies. SINGH: Professor Kamal Sheel? RAY: Professor Kamal Sheel was at BHU. He did his MA there. His father was in Wisconsin. In 1973, when I registered for my PhD, he was there for some time at Delhi University. There was a very good course on research methodology started by Delhi University. At that time, Chinese at Delhi University was in the history department. Professor R. S. Sharma was head of the department. V. P. Dutt, the politician and founder of the East Asian Studies Center at DU, and Tan Chung were also from history, Mohanty was from the political science department, and K. P. Gupta was from the sociology department. So these people were there, and we had a methodology course that was extremely good.

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SINGH: So when you came out of the government and became a part of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, did that link help you to promote China studies in the academic world? RAY: Yes, it helped a lot, because I was in touch with the Panchmani Institute, and I used to invite them to our university. There was an academic exchange with Delhi University also. SINGH: Was there any financial support from DU? RAY: No, it was purely academic. I maintained my contacts with government officials so as to ensure jobs for my students. At MEA they did not have a Chinese interpreter’s course. I realized that and, through Raghunath and others, I created two posts there. The government wanted to centralize the intelligence system, the way it is in the US. The only thing the government did was form the Cabinet Secretariat, where all the intelligence agencies work under a centralized intelligence cell. When the Cabinet Secretariat was established, they were very well funded, so the first time they hired seven students. By the time I left in 1996, twenty-four were there. Twenty of them were my recruits from university and institutes. SINGH: So you were an important link with the government agencies for their academic requirements? RAY: Yes, I tried my best to cater to their academic requirements. Not only that, but I also used to give them important Chinese newspaper cuttings with translations, because I had seen a lot of misconception growing in administrative circles about China. One thing I realized was that our misconceptions about China and other regions of the world grow from the Western world. The Chinese as a whole do not nurture the anti-India attitude. Because they feel that India was a British colony, they will remain inclined towards Britain. SINGH: You had a long career as a teacher. Did you see any changes in the way the Chinese language and China studies are taught in the Indian system?

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RAY: The institutes that are conducting the courses on Chinese languagerelated studies are still using the books that were published in the 1970s and ’80s. These books clearly reflect the political influence of Mao on China. The new terms, or life in rural China, which is chiefly a non-political component, are missing from these books. Of course, now they are coming up with a lot of new books, audiocassettes, and CDs and distributing them to universities all over the world. SINGH: Are they reaching our universities? RAY: In Visva Bharati, they are distributing the whole lot of new study materials regularly. I am also a member of the board of studies on China, where they have shown me the new study materials. SINGH: The board of studies of Visva Bharati? RAY: Yes, the board of studies of the China department at Visva Bharati, Cheena Bhavan. At JNU, you have a board of studies for the entire school. At Visva Bharati there is a board of studies for each department. SINGH: Are they also starting the Confucius Centers? RAY: Confucius Centers are promoting China and Chinese society. The students are benefiting from the new books we have introduced. Student strength is also increasing. Earlier, the cutoff point for admission to JNU was 40–45 percent. But last time, in 2005, when I visited JNU, the cutoff had been raised to 70–75 percent, which is a good sign for the research. Very few foreigners are getting admission because of the local talent. SINGH: Is there an entrance examination for JNU? RAY: Yes. They are conducting entrance examinations for every center at JNU. Very bright students are now coming to study the Chinese language. They are picking up very quickly, show a lot of interest, and are very enthusiastic. SINGH: In your time, the last forty to forty-five years of your career, how many new departments and centers have opened up in various places?

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RAY: In my time, Calcutta University had a part-time Chinese language studies center. Visva Bharati also had both part-time and full-time courses. Of course, the part-time course had been stopped, but the full-time courses are continuing. Allahabad University also has a course, but it is not very impressive. Lucknow University had also started a course, but I am not aware if it exists anymore. Chandigarh University started a course in 1955 or 1956. Then down south, Aurangabad University, which is now called Babasaheb Amebdkar Marathwada University, started a course in Chinese language about twenty-seven years ago. Recently in Wardha, the Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University opened a Chinese department. About five or six years ago, Tejpur University also had two fulltime Chinese language teachers. Many more are coming up. SINGH: Okay. You said interest is really growing at JNU, and many good students are coming recently. Is that happening in other universities and centers also? RAY: Yes, and also at Visva Bharati the department is reviving. You know the problem with Chinese language studies, or with any other foreign language studies, is that one must have a native language trainer to help you. We struggled for that and got it done under the government-sponsored exchange program. However, during NDA (National Democratic Alliance) time, they were not very happy with JNU, so they stopped sending trainers to JNU. SINGH: About the techniques of teaching, was there any change from the way you were taught as a student, and what new things came up in Chinese language teaching? RAY: When I was studying, there were two methods: the “direct method” and the “grammatical method.” Using the direct method, one starts speaking directly through conversation. We were trained through the grammatical method. However, later on it was found that the grammatical method is not the most suitable way to learn a foreign language. For conversational Chinese, you need a good language laboratory; we did not

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have one and the Chinese were not giving this to us either. Our language laboratory, departments, and language school are like an Indian Brahmin, who lives on donations (Daan). All these labs are presented by foreign governments. SINGH: So when did we get our first laboratory? RAY: We don’t have our own laboratory. It is a Japanese one that they are using. It was donated by the Japan Foundation. SINGH: But what about providing resources to students for a field trip or one-year stay in China; how did that happen? RAY: At Delhi University, language is part of a studies department. Those who did the research (PhD) would get funding from the UGC for threemonth field trips, initially to Hong Kong and later to China. Later on, in 1978 and 1979, the exchange scholarship between India and China was revived. The scholarships existed before the war, but stopped after the war. The first group went to China in 1979. The scholarship was for two years, and most of our students made use of it. SINGH: In the last sixty years, you have focused on China studies. There is tremendous interest in China today. How has our country looked at China studies? RAY: In the early 1960s there was a wave of Sino-centrism, and most of the modern intellectuals focused on Buddhism. But that was not a very healthy attitude. In China studies there are two or three schools. One is a classical school. I am in the middle and have been involved in both modern and classical studies. Now I have taken classical studies, such as Buddhism and other things. After the 1950s, there were actually two groups I could clearly identify; one pro- and the other anti-China. The main reason for the divide was ideology. China had invaded Tibet, which was considered an independent country. Owing to this, the anti-Communist sentiment was strong.

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SINGH: Let me ask you a very important question. Would it be correct to say that China scholars in India have been far more ideologically influenced? RAY: But this was also true in the case of the Soviet Union. There were pro-Soviet and pro-Western groups. When the Soviet Union started giving us aid, there was a clear pro and anti lobby in the government. SINGH: So was this ideological divide influencing China studies in any way? RAY: Yes, which is why it has not developed. In the ’50s, people from Calcutta were very enthusiastic. They had institutional support as well. A very well-known poet, Vishnu De, translated Mao Tse-tung’s poems into English. In 1958 and 1959, those who were enthusiastic about China studies started losing interest because of the growing animosity between the two countries. Many scholars who had certain vested political interests managed to let the air out of China studies, and they benefited from that. The implications were seen later, when China studies did not develop. SINGH: So China studies did not develop because China was seen as an enemy? RAY: Yes, it was portrayed as an enemy, and China studies suffered. Moreover, academia was also not objective. Yes, now there is a change. The entire academic study was moved to Delhi. It started at Sapru House. Then the Institute of Chinese Studies had a course on China studies with language. They used to send students to China through the Asia Foundation. At Delhi University, all the scholars were very determined to do advanced research on China. I must say the Ford Foundation trained all the students, and some of them became very good scholars, like Mohanty, Shibrukar, and V. P. Dutt. SINGH: Were there any other problems that discouraged the Chinese language and China studies programs?

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RAY: In the language school, there was a strong anti-China sentiment. The anti-China lobby never wanted China studies to grow. This lobby always benefited by depriving us of grants and new faculties. We had to fight and fight for every trivial thing. All kinds of administrative hiccups had a strong basis in ideological bias. SINGH: Did NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) produce some good books on China? RAY: No, why would they? They are not at all concerned about China studies. They are concerned only with producing school textbooks. SINGH: Have we produced good books on the Chinese language, or are we still using the books prepared in Beijing? RAY: No, that Hindi-Chinese language book, which I wrote, is the only book we have in this country for language. We also compiled a ChineseHindi dictionary, a project of the Central Hindi Directorate. One HindiChinese dictionary was completed and produced, but when the ChineseHindi dictionary was being compiled, I left and Deepak took over. SINGH: So where is China studies heading now in India? RAY: China studies has a great future. Now the Chinese are also very interested in advancing the studies. They are coming up with newer and newer proposals, and this Confucius Institute is one example. They also help in providing teachers and books wherever needed. They have taken various new initiatives by offering field trips to scholars for three-month, nine-month, or twelve-month exchange programs. There is lot of encouragement from the Chinese side. They have announced that, over the course of the next five years, they will take one hundred students and scholars per year to China. There is a strong feeling of, “Let us know each other, let the friendship grow, and simultaneously let the competition also grow,” which is very obvious and natural. In the process of knowing each other, we can find the opportunities for mutual cooperation.

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SINGH: For the last thirty years, CPM (Communist Party of India [Marxist]) and China had a mutual comfort level. So why is China studies not promoted here in West Bengal? RAY: It is not promoted because they are more concerned with internal politics. You see, when I approached the Netaji Institute of Asian Studies and asked about how much funding they could provide for China studies, they said only 5000 rupees! It is good that ORF (Observer Research Foundation) came. They will get good funds; they will bring good advisors and scholars with them and will start good research. SINGH: So what is happening to the younger generation? Is there a next generation of scholars that will be as deeply involved in understanding China as your generation was? RAY: Yes, there are students who are very interested and, given proper guidance, they can become good scholars. Recently I went to Jadavpur University. I went for a seminar there in the Chinese Studies Center. The students are very interested. It also depends on the economy. Earlier, from the late 1950s on, it was Russian. People were obsessed with Russian. After Russian, Japanese took over. The Japanese used to send every third Indian to Japan. Then Suzuki came; India received a lot of investment and Japan got many other intangible benefits. Now the Chinese are coming up in a big way. You know that the greater the economic cooperation between the two countries, the more people will study the language, because in general people are concerned with their career and money. Therefore, at least in New Delhi, there are two serious institutes, JNU and DU, where Chinese and China studies are promoted. SINGH: So with the expansion of the China-India economic relationship, you see the expansion of interest in China studies and the Chinese language, and you assume that some serious scholars will come out of this growing relationship?

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RAY: Yes. Definitely some of them will think differently, do something different. There will be scholars. Among 10,000 people, only one aspires for Siddhi (attainment of knowledge). SINGH: Briefly, how do you see China-India relations in the future? Will China continue to be stable, peaceful, prosperous, and a good friend of India? RAY: Now it is at the governmental level. Tibet is the main issue. It is the only snake. Pakistan is not a factor. At some point, Pakistan realized that it cannot isolate China from India any more. China has also disconnected its policies towards India from those involving Pakistan. This is an important change. I think the approach of the Indian government is quite balanced, because their task is very tricky. The border clash with China was mainly due to Tibet and India’s inclination towards Russia. SINGH: But what is the Indian perception on Tibet? RAY: The Indian perception is very friendly and normal, because Tibet is a Buddhist country, and we do not see China as a Buddhist country. But as our contacts with China grow, Tibet will become a secondary issue in bilateral relations. SINGH: Will it become secondary if we stop taking interest in Tibet? RAY: Even if we stop taking interest, China is looming in a big way; so, in any case, it will be a secondary issue. The people in Dharamsala are not at all happy; they are somehow managing with American money, but that is only possible while the Dalai Lama survives. SINGH: So is there a cost involved, that our good relations with the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile will gradually erode? RAY: It does not mean erosion, but it will remain very low profile in nature, because the Tibetans defend their relations with India, calling it a very special relationship. However, we should focus on the opportunities and move on. Tan Chung used to describe India and China as the two

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Himalayan twins, and we are going to stay. That’s why we have to make our people conscious and train them. And for us, the intellectuals who are in education, we have to do our bit. SINGH: What would you advise upcoming scholars? How can we ensure that these young scholars remain objective and simultaneously ensure the rigor? RAY: This all depends on their training. Now you take Chinese at the higher secondary level. But it is more important for MA students. You can also take it after the MA and conduct further research in China studies. For these students, unless and until there is a proper orientation course it will be difficult. SINGH: Do we have any orientation courses for Chinese language teachers in India? RAY: No. SINGH: So they go to China? RAY: When UGC started the Academic Staff College at JNU, they wanted JNU to start a similar program in languages, but JNU did not care and did not start such a program. But that did not happen, because the influence of SIS was very strong. They wanted the staff college for themselves, and they got it. SINGH: We look forward to your guidance on China studies and Chinese language studies in this country. Thank you, sir.

Narayan Sen Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Professor Narayan Sen, born in 1928 in Khulna district (now in Bangladesh), holds the distinction of having lived, traveled, and worked in China during the initial years of India-China relations. He has worked both in and outside government; taught in academia; lectured across Asia; and produced a prodigious amount of literature on India-China relations. He also has a large number of acquaintances and friends in China. SINGH: At what point in your life did the word China first register on your mind? SEN: I was brought up in a village that is now in Bangladesh. I matriculated in 1944 and came to Calcutta. Mine was a lawyers’ family for generations, and I was expected to study law. One of my lawyer uncles in Calcutta had a large Chinese clientele. They used to maintain their accounts in Chinese. So I thought that, purely for professional purposes, I must study the Chinese language. At Calcutta University there was a part-time course, three days a week, for Chinese. I enrolled there. I had one Indian teacher and one Chinese teacher. The Indian teacher had formed an organization called ChinBharat Sanskriti. He suggested that I should go to Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center) at Santiniketan to study Chinese further. I gave up the idea of becoming a lawyer and started learning Chinese and Tibetan. In 1954, Nehru visited China. They agreed on a cultural exchange, as a part of which both countries were to send three students each. In August 1954, the Union Ministry of Education invited applications for scholarships to go to China. I applied and was selected.

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At that time it was the state governments that used to issue passports. I sailed to China on 14 January 1954 and reached Hong Kong after nineteen days of sailing via Rangoon, Penang, and Singapore. Then I took a train to reach mainland China. The train went up to Kowloon. We had to get down and cross the bridge to enter the People’s Republic of China. When I crossed the bridge, one Chinese gentleman approached me and asked in English, “Are you Sen from India?” He had come from the Chinese Ministry of Higher Education. In Canton I had to exchange pound sterling currency into yuan. One yuan was equal to a cent, and I was given huge bundles of currency, which I gave to my escort for handling since I was unfamiliar with it. To reach Beijing we had to cross the Yangtze River by ferry boat. The railway tracks were covered with snow, and it was biting cold. China was then considered a backward country, and my father expected me to have problems with material comforts. So I had carried many essential items, including bedding. But my room at Peking University was well equipped. I was given a spring bed, on which I tossed and turned for the whole night, unable to sleep. My escort, Wang Yaozhang, also worked in the department, teaching Chinese to foreign students. The next morning I told him I wanted a wooden cot. He said wooden cots were only for Chinese students. But on my insistence, they provided me a wooden cot. Mine was a two-year course, and I had missed the first semester. I was asked to take a test. I was given one paper for précis, another for sentence construction, and was asked to write an essay on “Why I want to learn the Chinese language.” Chinese is not an alphabetical language, and there were new concepts and new characters. My test paper had words like bourgeoisie, communism, petty bourgeois, proletariat, etc., with which I was unfamiliar. It was

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totally unfamiliar political terminology. (It turned out the test material was taken from Stalin’s work.) The next day, after assessing my performance, the dean said that I could join the second year directly. But since there were many Chinese characters I did not know, I thought it better to join the second semester of the first year. I completed the two-year course, got a diploma, and then pursued research on Lu Xun, who is known as the father of modern Chinese literature. The chancellor of the university gave me a certificate for my thesis, which was equivalent to a PhD degree. Being the first Indian student, I was pampered. Not only did the Chinese Ministry of Education take care of me, Indian Embassy officials also took great care of me. When, after completing my course, I went to the embassy, Ambassador Raghavan said, “Sen, I don’t know about you, but it’s very difficult to stay here without Indian tea.” I said, “It is my problem also.” So he presented me with one Brook Bond Red Label tea packet. I used to be invited to all the embassy functions. There I met Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and various artists and writers, such as Mao Dun and Lao She. I returned to India in September. The scholarship given to me was only for two years, extendable by one year. I had taken one and one-half years of the scholarship for just the initial language training course and then two years for writing my thesis. The embassy wanted me to complete my thesis. The ambassador wrote to the Indian Ministry of Education to extend my fellowship, but they declined. The fellowship was Rs. 200, equivalent to 103 yuan and 20 cents. After I returned, one of my teachers at Calcutta University inspired me to join his mission. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, a great linguist, was also my patron. Both wrote to Pandit Nehru requesting a meeting with him for me. My teacher accompanied me to Delhi. The meeting was at 9.30 in the morning at South Block. Pandit Nehru talked to me for about twenty minutes. Then he took us to meet the foreign secretary, Dr. Subimal Dutt, in another room. After Nehru left, Mr. Dutt asked me, “What is happening

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in China? They are using men as machines.” Nehru came in again, called him aside and discussed a few things, and left. Mr. Dutt then remarked, “He is prime minister of the country, but he never calls me for discussion. He himself will come and talk to me.” Nehru’s modesty impressed me a lot. Meanwhile, the director of Cheena Bhavan, Tan Yunshan, sent me a telegram appointing me as a research fellow at Visva Bharati (a central university in Santiniketan). In December 1958, I went to work at Visva Bharati. I was asked by a quarterly journal called Bharat Cheen to write on Chinese literature, language, society, and politics. The India-China Friendship Association, Calcutta branch, published that journal. SINGH: Did you face any problems after India-China relations nosedived? SEN: It became very difficult for anyone to publish anything that was not anti-China. But I kept writing and justified it. I said, “We are in Rabindranath Tagore’s institute; shouldn’t we work for restoring the IndiaChina relationship?” But it created lots of problems for me, and I also lost my job. SINGH: At Cheena Bhavan? SEN: Not at Cheena Bhavan. My teacher founded China Sanskriti. He asked me to teach Chinese language there once a week. During that time, many articles published were highly critical of China. Most of them were deliberate propaganda. I reacted to that and wrote letters to the editors. I wrote a long letter to the editor of the Statesman, which was published in a condensed form. I also wrote an article for a Chinese newspaper. I mentioned that the root cause of the problems over Tibet and Taiwan was American imperialism, because they did not want India-China friendship. This article along with my letter to the Statesman reached the government

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of India. One day, after I finished my class, I was given an envelope with a check for Rs. 200 and a letter terminating my service. SINGH: What was the role of the Chinese community in Calcutta during this period? SEN: Within the Chinese community there were two groups, one showing allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek and the other to Mao’s mainland China. The latter used to wave the flag of PRC on 1 October and the other on 10 October in favor of Chiang Kai-shek. When the situation started deteriorating, the government of India took action against some Chinese. My Chinese teacher was expelled and many other Chinese too. Many Chinese were taken prisoners and brought to a camp at Deolali in Rajasthan. After the war, a treaty was signed between India and China, and the Chinese government sent two ships and took all the Chinese citizens back. I was not arrested because I did not hold membership in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM). But I was harassed several times. I was interrogated several times because of my association with the newspapers, and I was attached to all the front organizations of CPIM, like the IndiaChina Friendship Association and the Indo-Russian Friendship Association. SINGH: How long did you stay at Cheena Bhavan? SEN: It was not a permanent job. Before coming there, I was offered a job by intelligence, but I was not interested. My director, Tan Yunshan, took up my case and spoke to Panditji and also the vice chancellor. Then I was made a lecturer in 1961. In the meantime, the Chinese teacher in the China studies department at Calcutta University also left, and I was offered the job as a part-time teacher. For three years I taught in both Calcutta and Santiniketan, and finally I was appointed as a lecturer at Calcutta University. SINGH: Did you bring about any changes in the methodology, the content, or the way of teaching?

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SEN: My colleague at Calcutta University was sticking to the old syllabus. (He came from a Sanskrit background.) All the textbooks were published by Yale University. I insisted on teaching the newly published books from Peking University. So, modern Chinese literature was introduced. By that time, China had Romanized its script. After the war, in January 1963, Vinobaji visited Santiniketan on his Padayatra (march on foot) as a part of his Bhoodan (land donations) movement. He visited Cheena Bhavan. He said, “I want to learn the Chinese language,” and then, pointing to me, he said, “He will be my guru.” The department allowed me to accompany him on foot. Vinobaji used to call me whenever he had time. He told me to convert the Chinese sounds into Devnagri (Hindi language script), which I did immediately. He asked me to write a book on the Chinese language in Devnagri script, but I could not complete it because the Gandhi Peace Foundation had decided to send a group on foot from Delhi to Beijing on a friendship march. SINGH: How did this come about? SEN: We were getting mostly censored newspapers from China, and a few copies were confiscated. I wanted to see for myself what the border problem was, since both countries had started taking a hostile attitude and committing aggression. When I looked at the maps at Cheena Bhavan, I found that the actual border, the McMahon Line, was not demarcated. “Boundary Undefined” was written in the western sector, Aksai Chin. When Chinese troops came to Long Zhu to pursue Tibetans who were fleeing to India, we felt that China had committed aggression, and later it was found that Long Zhu was on the side of Tibet. SINGH: But what happened to Maitri Yatra [the journey of friendship]? SEN: I think on 28 February 1963 Rajendra Prasad died. The Maitri Padyatra (March for Loving-Kindness) was to start the next day. Because of the death of Prasad, there was discussion whether to postpone this padyatra, which was to start from Gandhi Ghat.

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This initiative was started by the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Bertrand Russell persuaded them. Penguin published his book, Unarmed Victory, in 1963. After seeing that India-China relations were deteriorating and there was an armed clash, he wrote a letter to Pandit Nehru and Zhou Enlai to settle the dispute amicably. There was a strong pro-Soviet lobby in the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs), and the whole India-China conflict was based on incorrect information, or rather misinformation. Russell wrote, “When the Sino-Indian border conflict began, I thought India was right and China was the aggressor. I telegraphed both Zhou Enlai and Nehru urging a ceasefire. In consequence, both the Chinese and Indian high commissioners came to see me and put forth their respective views, which they substantiated with documents. I found that the Chinese side was very much stronger than I had thought, and also it is very much doubtful whether the Chinese were the first aggressors. I continued to urge ceasefire. Nehru refused, and Zhou Enlai went ahead with what I had suggested and the direction I had advocated.” He said, “Clearly I hate the Chinese Communists openly, but India misused their symbol of peace and showed its determination to fight the Dragon. Because of all this I was convinced that China did not want war.” This book opened the eyes of Gandhians in India. China was then in trouble, both domestically and internationally. Many of these troubles started when, in 1958, Mao Tse-tung started the People’s Commune, the Great Leap Forward. China was facing a huge food shortage, and domestically it was having its worst economic crisis because of the People’s Commune, which was Mao’s dream project but was completely unrealistic. I have written a book, titled Rural Economic Development in China, published in 1990 from Beijing. Before publishing that, my department arranged a trip for me to go to various villages in China. I visited many villages and especially tribal areas and found that changes were emerging there. I visited these areas in 1985 and 1986.

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The problem between Mao and Khrushchev started with Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in the 20th CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union). Mao did not like criticism of Stalin. Then some problems came up between the two countries over border issues. The real problem was ideological, which deteriorated, and this ideological problem split Communist parties throughout the world. That was on a question of peaceful transition to a parliamentary system or bloody revolutionary struggle. Mao was in favor of revolutionary struggle, and Khrushchev argued in favor of peaceful transition. Recently I bought a book that has a chapter on the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute. It is mentioned there that the Soviet Union proposed to China to have a joint nuclear-powered submarine base in China’s coastal areas and to install some radar and reconnaissance equipment. Mao wanted it to be under Chinese control, but Khrushchev would not agree to that. At that time, the domestic compulsions loomed large for Mao. It was a domestic compulsion for Mao to maintain friendly relations with India, and the international compulsion also was there. In 1959, Lu Shan was critical of the commune, so he was dismissed from the party. There was a division within the Communist Party itself but, since Mao was supreme, no one objected to him. In 1959 Mao stepped down as president of PRC. So domestically, there was a compulsion to maintain good relations with India. Then in April 1959, the Chinese Foreign Ministry gave Chairman Mao the text of replies the Chinese sent to Indian Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt on the India-China border differences. This note is usually sent for comments and approval. Mao noted there that India was one of the nations friendly to China. At the domestic level, Mao faced setbacks. They started community kitchens, which flopped because of their unfeasibility. Agricultural production had gone down, and there was a problem with the distribution of wages. In 1959, a recorded sixty million people in China died of starvation.

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So there were domestic and international compulsions. The international compulsions arose because he considered US imperialism as the main enemy. He did not consider India as China’s enemy, but it was specifically directed against the US, South Korea, and Japan. Differences with Khrushchev were also there. Internationally, Khrushchev was supporting India’s cause, because the Soviet Union also had an unresolved border dispute with China. Mao did not want to be hit from all directions. He believed in maintaining friendly relations with India, and internationally India was supporting China’s entry to the UN Security Council. This is explicitly mentioned in the Chinese documents that are available now. I believe that Nehru never wanted a clash with China and wanted India to pave the path of industrial development, not military development. At the MEA, there were two groups, one very pro-Soviet and the other which wanted constructive and normal relations with China. By that time I had become a full-fledged lecturer, and it was not permissible for me to be absent for many days. Only Chancellor Nehru had the power to give long leaves. So Professor Tan and I made an appointment with Panditji. Panditji said, “You proceed until you reach the border. Then we will review the situation. Now it is premature to make any decision.” Then we met President Radhakrishnan. He said, “We will give you the green light, but the Reds will show you only a red light.” And that is precisely what happened. At the Chinese Embassy, we raised the issue of visas for participants in the peace march. The Chinese ambassador, who was speaking in Chinese, suddenly switched to English and said, “Jayaprakash Narayan is a reactionary. We will not give you visas.” After two days, the march started from Gandhi Ghat. Michael Scott from the British side came, and the American Peace Foundation also came. The previous evening, there was a meeting on the Sapru House lawns. Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), Michael Scott, and others were to speak on the objectives of this mission. But then Jan Sangh (Indian People’s Alliance)

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activists showed black flags, because Michael Scott supported the cause of Nagas (hilltop-dwelling tribes) in India, and the Jan Sanghis were also against any kind of reconciliation with the Chinese. JP ignored that and made his speech. The next day at Gandhi Ghat, the Jan Sanghis did the same thing. Finally, the padyatra started, after finishing certain Gandhian rituals and doing Pradakshina (rite of moving around a sacred object) to Gandhi Ghat. The first stop was Shahdara, six miles from Gandhi Ghat. From Shahdara I came back to Delhi because the next day I had to leave for Santiniketan. When the march reached Guwahati, they asked me to join them and to teach them Chinese on their way. I took my wife, whom I had married recently, to Guwahati and we stayed there in Gandhi Ashram. How to cross over to China without a visa was a big issue for them. There was one American participant, George Murray, I think. He was a rich man. He told JP that if we could not cross the land border, we could fly to Hong Kong and then cross. JP had written to the British prime minister to give visas to the German and other international participants. He said he couldn’t. I stayed in Guwahati for two weeks or so. From Guwahati we went to Shillong, planning to cross the border. JP had a meeting with the director of the American Peace Foundation. They were assisting the march financially, buying jeeps and other logistical requirements. But then I came back in October. I was there to teach the Chinese language. They did not know where to cross or how to cross, and the march got bogged down near the border. SINGH: How long did you stay at Santiniketan? SEN: Well, that is an interesting story. In 1964, my wife and I went to Delhi, supported by Visva Bharati funds, to collect literature from Sapru House on my research subject. One evening, we had gone to Connaught Place to have coffee, when we met Mrs. I. J. Bahadur Singh. Mr. Bahadur Singh used to be my counselor at Peking University. He was very fond of

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me. at that time he was director of the external publicity division, Ministry of External Affairs. Mrs. Bahadur Singh said, “Narayan, Indrajeet [her husband] was asking about you. Why don’t you wait for a time, he will be coming shortly.” When Mr. Bahadur Singh arrived, he said, “Why don’t you come to Delhi? We need someone to head our Chinese broadcast by All India Radio (AIR).” At AIR, after some time, they gave me an English news bulletin about ten minutes long to translate into Chinese to read aloud. I did it comfortably. That was in June. The year passed, and 1965 was also passing. At the end of May, the deputy commissioner of police, security control division, visited Santiniketan. He visited me and started discussing Chinese literature and language. Then he said, “Why don’t you join government service?” I said, “The government of India would never select me. Don’t you know my background? Intelligence will never permit them to do so.” He said, “Fine, we will look into the matter.” One of my relatives was additional secretary, police division, government of Bengal. He said, “Narayan, why are you working here? They are just paying you 200 rupees. Why don’t you join government service?” However, my teacher, Tan Yunshan, was reluctant to relieve me. When All India Radio agreed to my terms of employment, I asked them to write to my university that they were taking me on loan, since I was the only Chinese teacher left there. I served with AIR for a year then returned to Santiniketan. In March 1967, Tan retired. His successor, Professor Venkataraman, was very conservative in his outlook. He had nothing to do with language. He had studied philosophy in classical Chinese. In the Chinese language many characters had been simplified, and I wanted them to be introduced to the students, because all the publications from mainland China had these simplified characters. If we did not introduce them, we would lag behind. Venkataraman had left China in 1950, and he did not like innovations.

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In the meantime, many Chinese had left AIR. The supervisor of the Chinese unit was deported to China in 1962. The post was vacant. I was offered that post with a pay package and amenities. Again, I was lent to AIR for three years. But after one year, Vice Chancellor Viswabharati wrote to me, saying “You need to come back. There is no one at Cheena Bhavan now. It is almost vanishing.” Then the Naxal movement (militant Communist groups) started in that region, and the Naxals wreaked havoc at Cheena Bhavan and Santiniketan. SINGH: Why was Visva Bharati, an academic institution, targeted? SEN: Their purpose was to create chaos and to get headlines. Finally, I resigned from Visva Bharati. SINGH: Can you tell us something about the Foreign Service Broadcasting Unit at AIR? SEN: Chinese language broadcasts from AIR were in official Mandarin and Cantonese. We had two Cantonese-speaking Chinese. There was nobody to broadcast in Mandarin. I did it for some time. SINGH: Were there instructions to add to or censor the content? SEN: After the 1962 war, AIR had started a program titled “India and Dragon.” This was less of a program and more of a criticism of China. Besides reading news, we used to broadcast the talk show and newspaper reviews. Music and entertainment were also included. The news for all external broadcasts came to us from the central newsroom of AIR. Being the supervisor, I had the liberty to accept or refuse certain news items. If I wanted to skip any news item, I had to contact my deputy director. But the editor used to work under another deputy director. That’s how the unwanted items were deleted. Every morning I went to Sapru House, collected the material there, and met my friends at the Indian School of International Studies. By 3:00 I

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would go to the broadcasting house. I used to leave by 6:00.. So I had enough time for both my research and broadcasting work. SINGH: Did you not think of working at the Indian School of International Studies? SEN: By 1972, the school merged with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). It was functioning from Feroze Shah Road and the JNU campus. Mr. Parthasarthy, who was ambassador to China earlier, was vice chancellor of JNU. He agreed to my teaching an evening part-time course in Chinese, from 5:30 to 7:00 pm. AIR had recruited one gentleman from Hong Kong. He was made head of the department in the Chinese Center at JNU. For Chinese, there were only certificate and diploma courses. Mr. Azad, who was head of the Afro-Asian Languages Center, told us to formulate the courses. But this Chinese gentleman, Mr. Sei, had no academic experience. So I was given that responsibility. Mr. Sei was strongly anti-Communist, and he did not want any book published from Beijing as a textbook. He was also against the introduction of simplified characters. The problem was that at AIR, he was under me, and at JNU, I was under him. It was a very peculiar relationship. We started this long-term course with lots of students in 1972. There were lots of pro-Naxal elements amongst them. Three or four probationary IFS (Indian Foreign Service) officers who were going to be posted to Beijing also became my students. They knew about the changes to the syllabus due to Mr. Sei’s objections. They complained to Professor Azad, but he said he couldn’t do anything because he was not the head. So the proNaxal students protested, demanding that the courses should be revamped, keeping in tune with the realities on the ground. He succumbed to the pressure, so the Chinese books and course readers on modern Chinese literature were introduced. In the meantime, JNU advertised for the post of reader, professor, and lecturer in Chinese. I applied for readership. During the interview, I was

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asked some embarrassing questions. Later I received a letter appointing me an assistant professor on a lecturer scale, but I declined. That was my tryst with JNU. For news and other programs we had to follow government policy. Have you heard of Subrahmanyan Swami? In 1969, the decision came from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that all discussions on China would be written by Swami. He was teaching at Delhi University. He joined the Jan Sangh, and he used to write very critically about China. Previously, we had asked V. P. Dutt or Jamal Hussain to write the scripts. In the first script, Swami wrote a Chinese quotation incorrectly. The secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), had studied at Harvard. Swami was also there at the time. So when Swami came back to Delhi, this secretary proposed to the director general (DG) at AIR that Swami write the scripts for the Chinese broadcasts. In 1975, the World Table Tennis Tournament was held in Calcutta. I felt it was a good occasion to pull in an audience. I wrote a proposal to the DG that we should take this opportunity to popularize our service and broadcast live commentary of the Table Tennis matches. The proposal was accepted, so our entire team went to Calcutta. We broadcast various programs plus the commentary. Many teams came. One big team came from China, and there were other teams from Korea, Scandinavian countries, and North Korea. SINGH: This was in 1975? SEN: Yes. Even at that time bilateral relations were very tense. There was no exchange of ambassadors between the two countries. By 1975, thousands of Chinese had been deported from India. I thought we should start some other programs, like dance, drama, and entertainment, as in Hindi language service. I contacted a Chinese school principal. I asked him to take students who could perform in a drama for audition rehearsals and recording. I started with Shakuntala. Then there was another drama

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in Chinese and some songs in Cantonese and Mandarin by teachers and students here. SINGH: How long were you with AIR? SEN: I left in 1981. SINGH: What is your recollection of the events surrounding our cultural delegation to China? SEN: In 1977 the Janata Party came to power, and in 1978 China sent a delegation led by a very renowned person, Wang Bingnan. The government of India decided to exchange cultural groups with China. In 1978, Vajpayee was to go to China. He was to lead his political delegation, and there was also a cultural troupe. The Ministry of I&B sponsored me to accompany that cultural troupe. At that time, Mrs. Gandhi was contesting her parliamentary election from Chikmagalur in South India. Someone advised Vajpayee not to go to China, because if something positive happened then, the Congress Party would fuel the anti-China agenda during the elections for its own benefit. Vajpayee fell ill, was admitted to AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), and his visit was cancelled. But the cultural troupe went. The group was to go to Beijing and some other cities in China, and from there to North Korea. I asked my department to allow me to stay in China to survey the receptivity of the Chinese audience to AIR. I stayed there for a month. In December 1978 we came back. That month, China initiated a major reforms process and assessment of Mao Tse-tung’s era. That was the period of the gradual emergence of Deng Xiaoping. SINGH: Did you discover anything interesting during your stay in China? SEN: The Radio Beijing correspondent there happened to be my classmate in China. I asked him what was happening in China. We were taken to the cities for sightseeing. Then we were taken to an underground city near Beijing. This was their project, Defense against War. We were taken to the ground floor, the door opened, and we saw the stairs going down deep.

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It was a big illuminated cavity where all the arrangements were. Every major city in China had this kind of structure, because Mao Tse-tung was concerned about a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. It was like a city under a city. I asked my friend how much expense was incurred in the project. He said, “No expenses. It was done by bonded laborers,” making the Chinese the biggest bonded labor users in the world. At Peking University, my professors were quiet. I asked them about the Cultural Revolution. I was told they were all to be sent to the villages. They were all either busy or tormented by the Cultural Revolution, so there was no awareness of what was happening in the rest of the world. SINGH: How did your tenure with the Chinese come about? SEN: In May 1981, a second secretary in the Chinese Embassy met me to tell me that their Foreign Publication Press wanted to appoint me as an expert of the Bengali Division. Since I was working with the government, I wanted to go there on loan and asked for clearance through our embassy in China. I understood from the latter that the I&B ministry said that I was indispensable to them. The Home Ministry wrote that my activities were not in conformity with government of India service conduct rules. Then I gave a notice of contract termination and, because they did not accept it, went on medical leave. I came to Santiniketan and sent them the medical certificates regularly for nearly a year. Then they said, “All right, but you have to work for one day to be able to resign.” Then I resigned and the same night I flew to Beijing. That was in March 1982. I had then just translated one book of Dr. Kotnis into Chinese. SINGH: How many years did you stay in China? SEN: From 1982 to 1992 I stayed in China and translated many Chinese short stories into Bengali. I also wrote three books. SINGH: Would you describe the changes you noticed and Indian awareness towards China?

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SEN: Since the 1950s, Chinese culture has been widely criticized in India. I told my colleagues that Chinese culture is predominated by Indian culture through Buddhism. Chinese literature, art, medicine, and religion were greatly influenced by India. The whole Chinese ideological concept was influenced by India. Whenever I was criticized as pro-Chinese, I used to say, “Yes, I am, because it is a pro-Indian culture.” China originally had only one culture, Confucianism and Taoism. But with the advent of Buddhism in China in the first century of the Christian era, a gigantic change took place, not only in their mental and spiritual domains, but in almost every domain of life. SINGH: What changes did you observe in India-China relations? SEN: From 1980, the bilateral relations started improving with many accomplishments, such as the exchange of delegates, an increase in the number of scholarships, and the number of students between the two countries also rising. Chinese scholars in art, literature, and philosophy cannot discuss Chinese culture without touching on India. Lots of Indian literature has been translated into Chinese. We have done nothing in return. SINGH: What is your overall impression of China studies in India? Is it improving in terms of higher education and studies? SEN: Delhi University and JNU are doing well. Knowledge of the language is a must for studying Chinese literature and politics. SINGH: Is academia in China changing the policymaking? SEN: There has been a change since 1978. In 1992, I wrote a book on rural economic development in China, purely on my own understanding of what I saw in two different epochs. Since it was an official publication, lots of changes were made in the text. But during my visits in 2004 and this year, I found that Chinese scholars are more open, and they are very critical in their analysis. SINGH: Have Indian academics’ linkages with government and policymaking improved?

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SEN: In India we have a bureaucratic system. How many Indian policymakers take scholars into account? I don’t know. I don’t think government discusses major issues with academics. However, the issues are widely debated in the media, and that is an advantage for us. SINGH: Compared to India, do you feel that Chinese academia is more effective and active? SEN: In China, when Deng Xiaoping became powerful in the CPC (Communist Party of China), two very important institutions were established under the Academy of Social Sciences. One was the Institute of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Thought. It was established to understand the intricacies of Marxist philosophy, theory, and practice. Another institute was for Soviet and East European studies. These institutes submitted their studies to the government and various Chinese leaders. This sort of rapport between scholars and policymakers does not exist in India. Chinese politicians carefully view various aspects of an issue. They have established a committee of scholars to identify the areas of conflict arising due to income disparities and inequalities in both urban and rural areas. The CPC has already taken note of these issues. Can you expect such a thing to happen in India? SINGH: The India-China war might have pushed the government to make China studies irrelevant for policymaking. But were China scholars consulted at all? SEN: Initially, China scholars were very limited. First, two groups went 1946 and 1947, and I went in 1955. That went on until 1959. After that there was no revival until 1978, so the number of scholars was very limited. SINGH: Were those four groups who went to China to study ever consulted by the government? SEN: They numbered hardly twelve. Amongst them, four or five were already working as government employees, so they were more concerned

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about their positions. Those who joined academia like me, V. P. Dutt, and Latika Lahiri—she was at Delhi University in the Buddhist Studies Department— Mr. Chattopadhyaya, and I were at Santiniketan. There was little consulting of China experts. Only Professor V. P. Dutt later emerged as a policy consultant. I was completely out, because I was framed as proChinese, and I was also very vocal. SINGH: What kind of methodological changes did you bring about at either AIR or Santiniketan? SEN: In India, the academic system does not allow it. In an institute, you have the dean and the head of the department. If he or she is not willing, what kind of changes can you expect to happen? That was my experience at Santiniketan and also at JNU. But at AIR I brought innovation. I brought new programs on Chinese drama and dance, with the help of the Chinese community in Calcutta. We broadcast the commentary of the World Table Tennis Championship. All this I could do because I had relative freedom, and my superiors never obstructed me. SINGH: How would you define Chinese characteristics? SEN: It is important for us to know how Chinese scholars and theorists define Chinese characteristics, rather than understanding it from any Western perspective. Mao said, “As a Communist you should be nationalists, but you should also be in conformity with the condition of the country.” Makesizhuyi Zhongguohua is Sinification of Marxism; later on Sinification was deleted and it became difanghua, which is localization of Marxism. This was Mao’s basic conception of Chinese Marxism. Mao earlier wrote about the local development of Marxism and Leninism. What we are interested in is understanding the development of the Marxist perspective. Lenin said that Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action. Mao said, “Seek truth from reality.” So the Chinese view capitalism as reality and reconcile it with socialism. They have taken a positive attitude towards economic development. There is a transition from a planned

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economy to a socialist market economy. A socialist market economy is different from market socialism. SINGH: What is the difference? SEN: Market socialism started in some East European countries, and market has a role in that socialism. According to Marx, the market will wither away, the state will wither away, and the exchange of commodities will happen through money. When the Soviet Union was formed, it was the only socialist country and had to deal with many capitalist countries, so Lenin and Stalin both had to bring some elements of capitalism into practice. Tito also started reforms in Yugoslavia. So the model is that there is a role for the market, but it has to be encompassed in the socialist model, with planned economy and regulation. The market is there, but it is regulated by socialism. In the Chinese socialist market economy, the planning model is secondary. The planning process is there, but more power is devolved at the provincial level. They have not totally done away with planned economy, but planned economy takes a secondary role. The socialist market economy in that sense has a mixed pattern. It is predominated by state economy, but alongside that there will be private business. Joint ventures and cooperation, etc., are also there. How China is globally capturing the markets is impressive. When the economic reforms started, they started with foreign capital and technological know-how. But it is the reverse now. China is exporting capital to many African countries. By 2003, China exported some three billion dollars of capital. China has now got all the biggest multinational corporations in the world based in their country. Their productivity is high, and the atmosphere is peaceful. There is no trade unionism in China. Whenever any such activity comes into the picture, the CPC tackles it in its own way. When the PRC was formed, it was much more backward than India. Mao wanted to establish new democracy in China, but due to the international situation he deviated from his thoughts, and China faced the worst kinds of problems. But it managed to bounce back with its own strength and

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its unique characteristics. The benefit China has over India, I believe, is single-party control over politics. The way we practice democracy does not happen in China. But given the kind of system it followed with the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, it grew gradually and, with this kind of socio-economic system, it thrived as a big power in a short span of time. It is now a major power from both the economic and military points of view. Marx would never have imagined that an Indian company would become the world’s largest steel giant. During his time, capitalism had only one color, and that was white. Now you will find capitalism is multi-colored, with Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Chinese, and Arabs emerging as capitalist giants. The world has changed a lot, and it has become more globalized. We have seen what happened to the Soviet Union. No country in the world can develop and prosper in isolation. China itself suffered, but now, since it is open for global trade, it is prospering. That is the mantra. China has opened all its doors to the world. However, certain things in China are still worrisome, but I am sure that in the future they will be handled properly. SINGH: Are China studies changing in India? SEN: What do you mean by China studies? In India, research is done at the individual level, and we have the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) as a funding agency. One particular scholar cannot do it. It has to be done by various experts to study various aspects of it. It may be the field of art, science, medicine, literature, politics, economics, history, philosophy, religion, society, etc. At the Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi, what is their focus area? You, as a China scholar, will focus on issues of Chinese foreign policy, international relations, military developments, economics, etc. Aside from that, what about Chinese culture? There is lot of Chinese work that I think needs to be translated. Recently I came across a book, written by a renowned Chinese professor, which has a lot of information on Eastern China and its linkages with Northeast India.

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You should not compartmentalize China studies to politics and international relations or economy. You should also embrace other subjects. The problem is that we do not have many scholars who know the Chinese language. I believe in doing fundamental research based on Chinese source material. I am not interested in using what the American or British scholars are writing for my research. I can only use it for collecting a bibliography. For me, the Chinese opinion is important, how they view their own politics, international relations, economics. We must know this and disseminate it amongst Indian society, academia, and polity. There is a lot of literature available, but who will work on it? What you need is an interest in and knowledge of the language. SINGH: Other than language, what other limitations do you see for China studies in India? SEN: I think maybe encouragement. Scholars who are not versed in language must collaborate with the language experts. There should be a more interdisciplinary approach for China studies in India. You must start interdisciplinary courses in universities and departments. When I was at Santiniketan, I invited those studying history to learn Chinese and work on the historical Chinese writings on India. I also invited economics students to study the Chinese language and then to specialize in their own discipline. SINGH: What could be the best encouragement for students? SEN: Compensate them monetarily, so that they can pursue their work in comfort. The scholarships that the government of India provides for China studies are inadequate. This is not the question of academics only; it is also a question of long-term policymaking. SINGH: We have the Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi, which has some kind of collaboration with the MEA.

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SEN: They are doing some work in China studies, but still it is just a center and not an institute. Given the potential for research between the two countries, it is meager. You go to South India, and no one is working there. India is such a big country but, except for in Delhi and Calcutta, there are no China studies in India. In China, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is located not just in Beijing, but every provincial capital has a branch of the social science institute. Many local scholars are engaged in different academic work, and they are doing good research. I don’t know in India at how many places China studies research is done. SINGH: There is the Chennai Centre of China Studies. It’s a small initiative recently begun in South India. SEN: Well, I have no idea about it. SINGH: Thank you, sir.

Tushar Shah Interviewer: Dr. Reena Marwah Tushar Shah, from Gujarat, India, is an economist and a management specialist by training. He got his PhD from the Indian Institute of Management in 1978. He worked on agriculture and India’s daily economy. He has worked on groundwater irrigation around the world. Dr. Tushar Shah joined IWMI (International Water Management Institute) in 1999 as leader of the Program on Policy, Institutions, and Management. Shah also built and led the IWMITata Water Policy Program in India—the first-ever collaboration between an international center and an Indian foundation. In 2002, Shah was selected for the CG award for Outstanding Scientist of the Year. Shah specialized in development economics and strategic management. He was formerly the director of the Institute of Rural Management at Anand during 1987–1995. He also serves on the Academic Council of the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy (CCAP). Most recently, Shah served on several committees of the government of India for developing the irrigation component of India’s 11th Five-Year Plan, as well as a committee of the Indian Planning Commission on Sustainable Groundwater Management. MARWAH: May I ask you to tell me about yourself, to begin with, and then how you got associated with China studies and how you have engaged with issues of agriculture in China? SHAH: My name is Tushar Shah. I am an economist and a management specialist by training. I am a Gujarati. I got my PhD from the Indian Institute of Management in 1978. Although I was trained to be a banker, it was not long before I started working on agriculture and India’s economy. For the past twenty-seven years, I have been working on issues related to groundwater irrigation around the world. I began working in India, but then in 1999 I joined the International Water Management Institute, where

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there was an opportunity to also look at similar problems elsewhere in the world. That is how I got drawn to China, because in many ways China’s groundwater economy is very similar to India’s; and besides, China and India together are very different from the rest of the world in the organization of the groundwater economy. So it became very important for me to understand the groundwater irrigation economy of North China in order to understand the Indian groundwater economy better. Thus, I began working or reading about the North China plains in 1999 and 2000, and then, working in collaboration with the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy, I visited China several times and also did fieldwork. That is how my association with China began. MARWAH: So, in 1999 you started studying about China, and your first visit to China was the same year; any special memories? SHAH: My first visit was in 1994 to attend a conference on participatory education management. That gave me an opportunity to interact with the university students, and I found it very revealing. They were very warm and very inquisitive about India. MARWAH: And what was their perception of India, or what kind of exchanges had happened until then? SHAH: They knew very little about India. I felt that the Chinese youth were far more interested in America than in any other country in the world. Some students asked questions about our economy, our beliefs, our religion, and so on. In the following visits, this impression got more confirmed actually. There is this colleague of mine in CCAP, with whom I work very closely, and she once mentioned to me that the Indians are fixated on China. But in the Chinese mentality, India has a very small place. An average Chinese wants China to compete with the US, outdo the US, and achieve supremacy. MARWAH: And any other personal memories that you have gathered?

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SHAH: I found China fascinating. As a researcher, it’s a very interesting contrast to India. There are very important similarities. There are also very important institutional, political, and cultural differences, which make comparative analysis of South Asia and China very interesting. MARWAH: Which areas, villages, or provinces have you visited? SHAH: I traveled a good deal in Shandong, around Beijing, in Hubei, Hebei, and Henan. Once I also went to Sichuan. I went to Henan two or three times. MARWAH: What did you feel about the general living conditions of the people in the rural areas, in contrast with the city life? SHAH: The contrast between the city and a Chinese village was kind of…very stark. And the contrast between a Chinese village and an Indian village was also quite prominent. In western parts of India, for example, the people of Punjab villages or Central Gujarat villages have the kind of prosperity that you can see in North China villages in the agrarian economy. You find tractors, motorcycles, scooters; the houses have electricity and television sets. An average Chinese village, the impression that I have, is more prosperous, more dynamic, more humming with all kinds of economic activities than an average Indian village. MARWAH: But how did you start your study on China? What were the studies that were available? SHAH: Basically, all my professional interest has been in irrigation institutions. So every time I go to China, since time is limited, I always seek out farmers and try and engage them in conversation about agricultural productivity, how they irrigate, how they get their electricity, what they use for pumping groundwater, how they organize their irrigation activities, who owns the tube-wells, what the role of the village party leader is, what the role of the village secretary is, what the village committee is. Those are the issues that are of greatest benefit to me, because I want to bring some of those ideas here. Our groundwater economy is a complete mess; we have

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experienced a boom in groundwater irrigation, and now that the whole economy is developing, there is talk about regulating and how to manage this important resource, and what can be done when there is groundwater depletion. So there is a lot of interest in our country about the experiments that have been tried elsewhere. China is very important, because only the Chinese have a groundwater economy very similar to India’s, and almost every small landholder in China has his own bore-hole and a pump, and there is no licensing. The administration does not even know who has bore-holes and who is withdrawing how much water. In India, it is different, as every state wants to make a law for getting groundwater overdraft. However, states that have made laws are not able to enforce them. But in China, you find that, when the Chinese got new water laws in 1984, there were some efforts to impose those. And I was curious how it was possible that, in a singular disorderly irrigation economy, they have been able to do some amount of enforcement, whereas in our case, the laws have never been enforced. I was also interested in the interaction between the party organization and the administration of law. I found that an important contrast between an Indian village and a Chinese village is that our village Panchayats (assembly of elected elders) have virtually no authority to enforce regulations. In China, it was the other way around. Not only were the village development council (VDC) and the party cadre able to enforce some of the laws and regulations from Beijing, but they had created their own norms and local rules, which had no sanction from the laws of the state. There were lots of unwritten rules that were enforced. This created a very different mosaic in the Chinese villages that I visited. In fact, the presence of a very significant local authority structure is something that sets a Chinese village apart. That is an institutional reality that I think is very important. MARWAH: And the village-level administration controls how many houses or families? Or what area is mostly covered by the VDC? SHAH: Pretty similar to Indian villages, they would vary a great deal in size, but the links between the village development committees and the

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county-level water bureaus were stronger there than the links between block-level committees in India. Also for water, for example, they have water bureaus at the county level, as well as at the province level, and they have tentacles that go right down to the village level. In every village, I found one functionary, who was paid part wages and part incentives from the county water board. There were also very interesting links between the electricity bureaus or the electricity companies. At the county level in the areas that I visited, there were electricity companies that supply the electricity, and they had, depending on the size of the village, one or more electricians who were in charge of maintaining the transformers and rural electricity structures, as well as meters and power supplies to houses and commercial enterprises. So the electrician was very critical. There is one part of my work for which he was very important, because in India, as you know, electricity subsidies are big issues, and many of us are trying to deal with that. I have worked on that problem in some depth, and I think that the main issue that we have is that if you have one hundred thousand electricity consumers in a town like this, it is a lot easier to meter them and collect electricity charges from them than if the same hundred thousand are scattered over a vast countryside. So, electricity subsidies in our context came in because the cost of metering and collecting electricity charges became very high. Therefore, some states changed to flat tariffs for agriculture, which eventually became subsidies. So now many states are trying to go back to the earlier system, but they still face the original problems with transaction costs. So it is important to understand how we can contain these transaction costs: metering, billing, and collection. I was interested in looking at how the Chinese were managing this. They have never subsidized electricity. Actually, when I was working there, I found that the farmers were charged higher rates than domestic users, and so were the local cottage industries. MARWAH: Were they able to sell their products? SHAH: They were stealing; farmers I met everywhere were stealing. I also found some counties where farmers had refused to pay, and therefore

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those county electricity companies had built up huge arrears of electricity charges. MARWAH: They were unable to pay? SHAH: They were unable to pay, and many of them also did not understand and questioned why they should pay higher rates than the domestic consumers. So I was also trying to find out whether there is electricity pilferage and theft of electricity, cases of which are very common in India. But they have been able to control this because of the village electrician. What I found very interesting was that the electricity company had turned this electrician, who was originally like our electricity meter reader at the local level, into an employee of the electricity board. And so he remained as an employee but was incentivized, like many local-level bureaucracies. Then he became an interlocutor, because he basically was no longer just an employee but is an agent; he has become a concessionaire of the electricity company. The electricity company provides power to him at the transformer level, where it is metered, and the meter readings there are recorded by the company. The company then charges the electrician for the power that is measured at the transformer level, and he has to pay for 90 percent of that, so a 10 percent loss is allowed. But he is expected to recover the full cost from the users, including households, farmers, and industrial and commercial users. If he is able to save on those losses, he can benefit. So the village electrician has two incentives: number one, he has to be very efficient in making sure that the power that he is metering is as close to the power that the company meters at the transformer; and second, he has a strong incentive to pass on all costs firmly to the final customer. MARWAH: So that he can get his incentive? SHAH: In India, Orissa tried a similar kind of a reform in 2004, when they first created village vidyut sanghas (electricity cooperatives). They organized village electricity users and entrusted them with the responsibility of metering and collecting the electricity charges. But that did not work.

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So then they appointed private agents, under similar terms as the Chinese electricians. But that also flopped. And the reason it flopped is that our agents here are unable to pass on all the costs to the users, whereas the Chinese village electrician was able to do that because he was backed by the party secretary. The party secretary is very powerful. So I found that was a major factor there; it shows that in Chinese villages you can create a sense of order. MARWAH: Which will work, and the models that are tried can be easily replicated also. SHAH: So, for example, try a simple thing like using a smart card for electricity, and you do not worry about metering. Farmers receive cards, like mobile cards, and they charge it by paying up-front, and then they can stick it in and use as much power as they paid for. In India, I have been trying to advocate the use of smart cards, because that would overcome the high transaction costs of electricity. But there are no takers for that. In China, they are able to try it in many provinces, simply because there they have the authority of the party leader. MARWAH: But is that acceptable to the farmers over there? SHAH: No, it is not. There is great deal of unrest. It is very difficult to get the real picture in China, because people, even researchers, do not talk openly about these things. MARWAH: So your research has been more of primary research, like going yourself, visiting and talking to people? SHAH: Yes, and also talking to other researchers, but with other researchers you can never be sure. So I commissioned a Chinese student to do a study of two or three counties where the county electricity companies were trying to introduce these smart cards for tube-well owners. They gave me a fifty- to sixty-page report, and one of their tasks was to specifically study farmers’ responses. It was very important for me to find out whether it would work here. So I commissioned one study in China and

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another study in South Africa, where the South African electricity utilities were also trying to promote these smart cards among black homelands, where they were trying to increase the supply and do it in a viable manner. In South Africa, of course, the study showed that if the farmers can just hook on to the power line, then it will not work. What the farmers do is take out the cable and bypass that gadget. But in China, it was not possible to do that, and therefore, there were a lot of pent-up feelings. And only at the end of this fifty-page report, in the last two or three lines, did they state that in some areas there was resistance, and then I went and visited those specific areas. In two villages, some farmers actually told me that all the farmers came together, and they almost revolted against the county electricity company. Then I read in newspapers that this issue was very important; farmers felt that having to pay two or two and a half Yuan per kwh of power resulted in their spending 30 to 40 percent of the value of agricultural output for the usage of electricity alone. So it is a big issue, but it has never been highlighted. I could never really get my hands on how very important and serious that issue is. One thing that I find very striking about the Chinese is how reluctant they are to be critical of their society or government in the presence of outsiders. I don’t know whether among themselves they are equally careful, but that’s a character that you do not find among Indians. MARWAH: So your writings on China have covered aspects related to irrigation and groundwater usage. SHAH: Yes, irrigation organization institutions in general, irrigation policies, and water policies. MARWAH: And your overall perception is that they are definitely more organized, which is why their productivity levels, per capita productivity levels, are much higher. SHAH: My impression is that there are several things that they are doing at the national level, as well as at the provincial and county levels, that are not working.

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MARWAH: They are doing things, but they are not working? SHAH: No. And whatever little work is at the ground level is because of the authority structure that they have. So, how much of that we can replicate here is an open issue and is something that I think needs to be closely probed. As to why the Chinese farmers are so much more productive, I think it’s partly the climate; at least in the North China plains, the climate is much more conducive to agriculture. I also do not see landlessness, which is a very important advantage. I did not see any sign of underinvestment in the Chinese farms. There are all kinds of rotations that are occurring now in both land ownership and access to water, which are kind of interesting, and they all promote greater productivity and efficiency. In the North China plains, all over, I think they are abusing natural resources like we are doing. MARWAH: Is this sustainable? SHAH: I think the Chinese understanding of why this is happening is more comprehensive than ours. We normally try to blame the farmer and say that the farmers are irresponsible. I think that the Chinese perception is that the long-term viability of smallholder farming is open to question. Therefore, I read in the People’s Daily, when I was coming back from Beijing four or five years ago, of a plan to move over four hundred million people, over a period of thirty years, from farms to eco-cities that they are trying to build. I thought that was a good idea; whether it works out or not is a different issue, but it could be the ultimate solution. In India also, I think there is no way that one million unemployed families can subsist on 130 million hectares of land, and eventually we will just have to take population out of agriculture. I think in our case it will probably happen by default, while cities keep getting crowded. The Chinese are at least thinking about it, and that newspaper report mentioned that they are hiring some very fine eco-architects from the US to design and make plans for those eco-cities, in which they are going to settle. Even thinking along those lines is very futuristic. I do not see that happening here.

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MARWAH: But then, they have so much more land than we have; their problems are different. SHAH: Yes, but most of their agriculture and agricultural production is concentrated in North China, just as most of our food production is concentrated in Punjab, Haryana, and two or three states. The cottage industry boom is also very important. It is apparent, when you go to a village in China, the farmers’ or people’s dependence on agriculture as the only source of livelihood has reduced. This has taken some of the burden off agriculture. MARWAH: They have done that effectively. What about the poorer provinces? SHAH: I have not been to Inner Mongolia and some of the provinces further east. That’s the part of China I haven’t seen. MARWAH: What about their food security issues? SHAH: In the east and further up, I do not think the pressure on the land is anywhere near as high as you find in the North China plains. So you have large holdings, with a lot of nomadic farming traditions, and I do not think food security would be a major problem; that is my impression. MARWAH: Any other personal experiences that you would like to relate, engaging with Chinese policy makers, politicians? SHAH: When I went to conferences and meetings, I found that the politicians I met were better informed than many of our politicians. I also found it interesting how people move up the party cadre in China. Many of the researchers that I met or I worked with were themselves party cadres, and if you did well in your career, you scored brownie points, and if you did well in the party, then too you scored brownie points. There was a nexus between your rise in party hierarchy and in your career. There are complementarities, so there was a very high reward for compliance.

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MARWAH: That means your recognition is quite quick, and you are rewarded. SHAH: Even in science, I was told that if you do not have the sympathies of the party bosses, you cannot make much headway. In centers, for example, the directors or heads of the centers had to be either party members or… So that was quite interesting. I found all of them very China-centric. I think among South Asians, we tend to look outside for possible solutions to our problems, while, in contrast, the Chinese think that all the wisdom is with them. MARWAH: They do not have to look out; they do not have to learn from others. SHAH: Except the USA. MARWAH: It’s only the USA from whom they can learn? SHAH: Exactly. For example, there is this huge movement for making water logs. So we are looking at water logs from several countries, I even looked at Jordan and other countries that have similar problems to India’s. But all the Chinese provinces that I visited have just taken water logs—the Colorado water log; California water log; Texas water log—and they have analyzed them from any aspect you would like them to. But they have not looked anywhere except the United States. Especially at the provincial level, they look at the US as the best-organized society in the world, the most powerful and the only country, the only power that China needs to reckon with. I would like to go back and question some of the observations I made of the Chinese perceptions of India and the US. The trade between India and China is also booming, like never before. Every time I come from Delhi or Bombay to Ahmedabad, I see a delegation of Chinese shopping for all kinds of things; for instance, there was one group of Chinese that was trying to buy red chilies, and they found one place in Saurashtra where the chili is the hottest.

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MARWAH: But it is like China is exporting more and selling more to the rest of the world than they are buying from the rest of the world. SHAH: There is this feeling of awe about the Indian IT (information technology); they are very envious. MARWAH: How important do you think the knowledge of the Chinese language is for people wanting to do research in China? SHAH: It is very important, especially because the Chinese are not upfront. If we use an Indian interpreter in India, chances are that you will get 60–70 percent of what is going on between you and the respondent. The interesting thing about China is that I must have been to seventy or eighty villages across six or seven provinces, but I did not stay there. I just spoke to farmers and spent five to six hours in each village. In not one of these villages was I left alone. There was always a delegation; besides, of course, my research partners and interpreters, there were local water bureau officials, provincial water bureau officials, and sometimes national water bureau officials accompanying me. And they would always mediate the discussion between me and the farmers. So when I asked any questions, the first response would come from them. They just would not allow the poor farmer to talk. It is so difficult to engage in conversation with a farmer. MARWAH: You cannot have a one-on-one conversation with a farmer? SHAH: You can, but since you do not understand the language, even if he says something, somebody will translate it. And if the interpreter says something that is not acceptable, then he will be interrupted, and the provincial or the Beijing guy will say no, that is not what said, this is what he said. You thus receive sanitized versions. So I found that the only way to directly engage with peasants was on long trips, when you were driving along on a road, or if you found somebody and just stopped there and spoke to him, because these people would not accompany you there. There you only have the driver, the interpreter, and the researcher. So that is the only way I could actually talk to farmers.

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MARWAH: But then, did you find the farmers quite vocal? Are they honest? SHAH: Yes, I found that. On the way to, I do not know which city it was, it was a long drive and I had spent the whole day without talking to a farmer, so I was getting very impatient. I was telling this colleague of mine that we must stop and talk to somebody, and we found a poor farmer working on a small plot of land. We just stopped and had a fortyfive-minute conversation with him. He happened to be one who was very bitter about the village leadership, including the party leader, as they had taken away all his land. MARWAH: Why so, and did he get no compensation? SHAH: He got no compensation, and he looked very poor. He was cultivating about three-quarters of an acre of land with his own hands. So it was very unusual, and we had a long interview with him. The Village Development Committee is the only way that they can organize, the only way I found that they were organized. All the other institutions were basically creatures of the VDC. So, for example, in some villages every farmer owned a small bore-hole and could manage it the way he wanted. In many other villages, the VDC decided that this was not the best way of organizing the irrigation; only in critical locations in the village, the VDC will make the bore-holes and every farmer can have his own small pump, for pumping groundwater. MARWAH: And you pay for the water also? SHAH: No, you do not pay for the water. You just pay for the power. In some other villages, the VDC decided to have their own tube-wells and appointed managers to provide irrigation services. In India, you find that the irrigation organization is completely spontaneous. MARWAH: But the majority of our land depends on natural rainfall.

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SHAH: No, the majority of our land has now come to depend on groundwater, some sort of irrigation from groundwater. But we also find institutions—farmer-organized or markets—that are completely left alone by the state. In China, I found that even local-level institutions were designer institutions, created by the VDC. MARWAH: But this farmer whose land had been taken away, he has no recourse, no way he can get help from the VDC? SHAH: The VDC itself was responsible. The only appeal against the VDC chairman was through the party leader or the village party secretary, and if the party secretary and the VDC leader were together on a cause, then the farmer did not have any other recourse. MARWAH: No compensation given? SHAH: Land is a big issue, because the compensation involved would be very high. Many village party secretaries told me that the land did not belong to the farmers, it belonged to the government. MARWAH: So they do not have this feeling that they are taking away something; it was always theirs. SHAH: Actually, giving compensation is seen as doing a favor. MARWAH: Any experiences related to publications on China, papers that you may have published? If so, how well have they been received? SHAH: Yes, I think in my particular field the comparisons between India and China are quite well received because of the importance of understanding. In 2004, I did a paper in which I wrote an overview on the groundwater issue, and the Chinese were impressed, because all their water administration is dominated by engineers who like large canal structures better than small pumps, just as in our country. So their water knowledge is lopsided. They know a lot about canal irrigation, but very little about groundwater, which is diffused and fragmented. So, I did this review of the global situation, and I also compared the experiences of the Middle

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East and North Africa with South Asia and Chinese issues, which they thought would be useful for them. They translated my paper and shared it with policy makers. MARWAH: How many trips have you made so far to China? SHAH: Well, eight or nine times for conferences or field tours. Mostly CCAP, but sometimes we also organized some of our meetings there, like the Food Policy Research Institution. So the CG system—Consulted Group on International Agricultural Research—to which INI, IRI, IFPRI all belong, we keep doing things with China. CASS (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) organized a conference to which I also went. Sometimes I attached a four- to five-day field trip to a conference. But it is very difficult to organize a field trip to China unless you have an escort. MARWAH: Did you visit any universities? SHAH: Yes, I visited the Hydrological University in Beijing; also a couple of others that I cannot remember now. But I did not have much time. MARWAH: Did you deliver any lectures at any institutions, other than at the conferences? SHAH: Just once or twice. The CCAP organizes a biannual meeting to which it invites social scientists from all over China, so that’s one occasion where I normally speak. MARWAH: And how would you like to see the evolution of China studies in India? SHAH: Regardless of whether China is interested in us or not, I think that we should engage more and seriously upscale our work in China. MARWAH: Suppose you had to do something, how would you like to start or make a beginning in China studies, say in Gujarat? SHAH: I would like to start with a Chinese partner who is interested in India, and we will build a partnership that is mutually rewarding and valu-

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able. I think that it will be equally, if not less, difficult for an interested Chinese to work in India. So if there is somebody interested in Gujarat, yes, I would be very happy to work. MARWAH: And in your own personal engagement with China, studying China, do you feel there is a lot to be done? SHAH: Yes, I think I would like to go back whenever there is an opportunity, and come back wiser than before. MARWAH: And also have some references to bring home? SHAH: In every field, I find that understanding China has significant value, not only to India but also to other parts of the world, because the Chinese do many things differently from the rest of the world, so it is a very interesting study in many ways. For example, I was trying to study water-saving devices, how to get farmers to save water. One of my tricks was designed around that, so I just went around, roamed the Chinese countryside, trying to find out what the local government’s rules are, what the farmers do. In Shandong, for example, I found that every hardware shop had huge rims of black polythene. I tried to talk to these storekeepers and asked them why they were keeping tons and tons of that. So this guy told me that in the last three to four years, farmers had taken to BT cotton, and they found that in BT cotton if you spread this black polythene sheet on your field, then not only do you have to irrigate the crops two or three less times, but the crops are also much better and the yields are higher. So the local water bureau spread this message, and they had this two- to threeminute television clip, which they would telecast in a station wagon from village to village. In one year, it kind of became a revolution, as it spread in the entire cotton-growing area. MARWAH: And the yield was much more? SHAH: We interviewed a number of farmers, and they said that they had done this because the others had found it beneficial. MARWAH: So they have saved water, and they have grown better cotton.

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SHAH: So it kind of became a revolution, something that started as an idea eighteen months ago and was taken up by thousands and thousands of farmers in just eighteen months’ time, which I found extraordinary. MARWAH: So fast! That is wonderful. Any other experiences? SHAH: Something like that in India would take at least ten years, and we would not be sure even after that. Just to relate another experience. In India, for example, giving a small dam to Ethiopia would involve three or four layers of procedures, paperwork, and the environmental impact assessment, while Ethiopia would have to suffer all this while. The Chinese work very fast. If you want a dam, they will build the dam and help the country generate its own electricity. So the Chinese would build a dam for two hundred million dollars, which would take the World Bank a billion dollars and ten years, whereas the Chinese would put it up in eighteen months. I think in many African countries, the Chinese are earning goodwill, although the outside world thinks that they are exploiting these poor nations. MARWAH: These are the kind of articles that are being written, for example on China’s greed for resources, their quest for resources. SHAH: In effect, they are displacing the multilateral institutions just because they are responding to those governments’ priorities better. To tell Tanzania that building water infrastructure is no good for them is complete nonsense. The Chinese go there, and they just gift infrastructure. And Indians just go and give lectures! MARWAH: They deliver very fast! SHAH: They do deliver very fast. They are decisive, and that is very important for us to understand. I also did some work in Cambodia, where India has as much presence as the Chinese. Indians have an age-old relationship with Cambodia, and we are trying to participate in Cambodia’s development, and the Chinese are also participating in Cambodia’s development. And the Chinese are so brisk, so businesslike, they make commit-

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ments and they fulfill them, and we make commitments that are wishywashy. So the Chinese see development as either building diplomatic capital in those countries or actually contributing significantly to the development. We need to put our house in order; maybe we can learn a lesson or two from the Chinese. I think our private sector is doing that better. MARWAH: The business houses, that is, the private sector? SHAH: Yes, I think so. The Tatas, for example, have much better goodwill. People in countries like Ethiopia, Tanzania, even Burkina, South Africa, Zimbabwe, ordinary people talk about Tatas with greater respect than the government of India. Last month I was in South Africa and I was interviewing an Afrikaner farmer, who was building an interesting relationship with three hundred black farmers. Suddenly he found out that I was from India, and he just said Tatas. He said, “Can you believe it, I used to drive Mercedes trucks, and last month I wanted to buy a truck, so I went to the Tatas, and they make the same truck, with the same Mercedes engine, and I paid one-fourth the price. How can they do it? So I bought two Tata trucks.” So there is a great deal of respect for the Tatas. MARWAH: So government to government, you feel there are issues, but the private sector has a huge reach in China because they can be more decisive and stick to commitments? SHAH: I think so, yes. Even in the international soft-power, the Indian private sector can be… MARWAH: Can be the handmaiden of getting good relations? SHAH: But I think the government should also get better, we should be more strategic. It is a very complex area, and I do not think that I am qualified to talk about that. But as a researcher who interacts with a lot of ordinary people, I feel envious that the Chinese are laying out their global cards so quickly, and we are watching like a country bumpkin.

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MARWAH: But what is your experience with the funding of China research in India? SHAH: There is no funding. If you need 50,000 rupees to make a trip to China, you do not know where to go. But your network… MARWAH: Basically, we are all academics and scholars, mainly in the teaching profession. We are all teaching and doing research. In China, the academics who are established there, or the scientists who are established there, like sort of your contemporaries or counterparts there, do you feel that they have more facilities for research? SHAH: I do not think they do much research. In fact, I found that the social science research is much richer and much more vibrant in India than in China. This was especially true in the Mao era, when the social scientists were boycotted, as well as the scientists. It is very difficult to find good economists in China. For my research, I operate at two levels. I have some detailed questions that I keep probing in my field. And there is this fascination with China: Chinese society, Chinese politics, Chinese economy, and the Chinese mindset. How do their minds work? That is an abiding interest, but I am not able to pursue that as much as I would like to. MARWAH: But when you go there the next time, would you also like to visit certain other areas, which remain grey areas for you, physical areas? SHAH: I have not been enough to South China, which has a lot of interesting water institutions, so I would like to go and see some. Then I would also like to keep going back to Shandong, because every time I go, I learn new things, and things keep changing too. MARWAH: And Shandong is one place where you have been going? SHAH: Yes. Shandong, Hubei, Hebei, Henan—these are the four places that I keep going. MARWAH: And you have seen lots of changes over time.

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SHAH: Yes. For example, on one trip I went to a village, and there was no black polythene, and the next time I went to the same village, all the farmers were using that polythene. MARWAH: Was the infrastructure much better each time that you have gone? SHAH: Now, I think in many areas there is not much scope of building any new infrastructure; they have already built everything that needed to be built. MARWAH: The road connectivity. What about e-learning and e-connectivity for the farmers? You said that there was this two-minute slot, and the message was conveyed to everybody that this was going to be good for them. So do you think they are using a lot of toll-free learning, kiosks, and telecenters? SHAH: I did not see many of these; maybe I will see them when I go there next time. MARWAH: Then how do they communicate, though the VDCs? SHAH: They communicate through the television and the VDCs. They also probably travel a good deal to nearby towns, because of their commercial links. I read an article that said, in dealing with wastewater, the Chinese had a great anathema. So most Chinese cities had very poor wastewater management systems. Then, suddenly a wave came, and something happened, and every city wanted the fanciest wastewater management systems. MARWAH: Is this because of global warming and environmental and ecological balance? SHAH: This is only a new fad, just like building roads, big roads. Building good wastewater plants was also the “in” thing, and they suddenly found that it was just the thing to do. Suddenly, in five years, some eight hundred to nine hundred fairly big wastewater plants were built in Chinese cities.

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MARWAH: Even if the wastewater was not that much? SHAH: In this case, the wastewater was always there; it was just being diverted untreated to rivers, causing river pollution. But when it came, it came in a huge way. MARWAH: That’s what you see, that projects come up and are immediately implemented all over. SHAH: It is the city and provincial governments that drive a lot of infrastructural development, and the banking system seems to feed it. Maybe one big part of the problem of the viability of the future Chinese economy is how well the banking system does, because that seems to control the economy. I think they certainly have greater respect for authority; they instinctively abide by the law of the land and, probably as a corollary, give contracts and commitments and promises more weight. I think they generally make promises that they intend to keep, which we don’t do. MARWAH: Do you think it is easier for Indians to go to China than for Chinese to come to India? Do you have any thoughts on visas, their openness, or other issues affecting travel? How do you feel about China’s future in the context of the way they are building relations with the rest of the world? You mentioned their presence in Africa and Cambodia, as well as other countries of Asia and the world. SHAH: I think China is systematically building its super-power, almost imperialistic, and they are going about that in a very strategic and deliberate manner. We are so preoccupied with our own problems. That way, I think that in twenty years China will be in a class apart. MARWAH: And we talk about a Shanghai-Bombay comparison. Do you think we will be able to catch up with them? SHAH: I think our weakest point is the government and the politics. All the change that we are seeing is entirely because of private enterprises, and

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I do not think that they have built Shanghai just through private enterprise. The role of the government, as the role setter, is very important. And in our soft state, I think giving a rule of law is a major shortcoming. Having a democracy is one thing, but having free-for-all anarchy—what we have is anarchy. MARWAH: And is this why we cannot get things to work? SHAH: I think it’s certainly a big part of why we are behind. A strong state, a democratic one, is important. The US is a democracy and a strong state with rules, laws, and order. They try not to make laws that are not going to be enforced, and if they have a law, they enforce it. We have such a huge corpus of laws, most of them redundant, and we keep making hundreds more laws every year, not worrying about their enforcement. So I think the state is a big part of our problem. MARWAH: And will India never be able to catch up with China? SHAH: Well, I think we will do only as much catching up as will be done by private entrepreneurial talent, and the state will only play a role by getting out of the way, rather than taking a decisive and positive part. MARWAH: Do you think the trickle-down effect in terms of poverty reduction is more visible there than here in India? SHAH: In poverty reduction, I think they have certainly done much better, and I think we can learn from them. Also, regarding the horror stories that we have heard about the poverty in Chinese villages during the Mao era, I have really not even seen an iota of that. MARWAH: And the sanitation facilities? SHAH: Better. Village infrastructure is better, village management is better, their cities and towns are much better managed than ours. MARWAH: And their quest for resources is not going to be inhibited by any stories.

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SHAH: So, I think the Chinese are doing the right thing, paying lip service to it, but then not allowing their growth rates to come down as a result of that. MARWAH: What of the Panchsheel [the five-principles agreement China and India] history? And what about this water issue because of the Tibet plateau? SHAH: Yes. The Brahmaputra and all the major rivers arise out of that. It must be a thousand sq km area. So that is a potential flash point in India and China relations. MARWAH: So water is also a major political issue between India and China, the geo-politics of it. SHAH: Absolutely, it is a big potential. MARWAH: What are the possibilities, what can happen? On a pessimistic note, what can happen? SHAH: On a pessimistic note, I think basically China will divert all of the rivers. Some of them might involve a lot of drifting, but China’s water needs are very high and growing. MARWAH: How much of the water resources would we be deprived of legitimately? SHAH: I have no idea, but it would be huge. It could be up to 15 or 20 percent of what we have now, of our total water reserves. The only surface river basin that we have is Brahmaputra; that is the only system. This entire river-linking project, of linking the Himalayan Rivers with Kaveri and Godavari, is based on that premise. The only river system where there will be warm water that can be used is the Brahmaputra system, and the difficulty in harnessing that water is that we do not have good sites for building dams. So the only way we can use that resource is by transferring water to other rivers. MARWAH: Through canals?

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SHAH: Yes. So if we do that, then the plan is to transfer two hundred cubic kms. This is much bigger than the North-to-South transfer in China, which totals ninety-eight cubic kms. Our estimated total water resources are eleven hundred cubic kms, so it is a good 18–20 percent. And if there is a great Chinese intervention on that river, then obviously we will have problems; it will be a source of conflict. MARWAH: It can become a potentially huge source of conflict. So, is it better that we start planning ahead, rather than only doing crisis management and then being the much weaker side? SHAH: I had seen a lot of newspaper reports on the potential flash points on the water side, but when I talked to the government, the water resources secretary, I found that they give very little importance to that. They consider this so remote. MARWAH: Remote? But how can it be ignored? SHAH: Unless we make a lot of investment in the Northeast, what is a potential now does not actually become a resource. So the competition will be in terms of who builds dams, reservoirs, or infrastructure first. And our own internal vision is mired in all kinds of controversies. Vajpayee wanted to create a lot of hydro-capacity in the Northeast, and it has been mired in a discussion between environmentalists. China has no such problems. MARWAH: Do the Chinese come here and study the way you study their systems? SHAH: No. They come and attend conferences. Even there I find that my Chinese partners do not see great value in actually going out to the field and getting first-hand information. MARWAH: The research that they do is not empirical, it is all secondary? SHAH: All secondary data and modeling. So you actually have to pay them to go and visit villages and do field research. That is a tradition that

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in India is better developed than China, because social science itself is so well developed here. I think the Chinese are now noticing India. MARWAH: Only noticing India, but we say it in the same breath—the rise of China and India or the elephant and the dragon. But do you think it is more an Indian viewpoint? SHAH: Yes, I think it is more an Indian viewpoint. MARWAH: In China, what are their views on water harvesting or alternative sources of energy? Are they looking at it? SHAH: I think they are putting their urban water scene in order more quickly and better than we are doing. In Delhi, for example, we have had this water problem now for fifteen years. I do not see any quick solution to this, just because of the lack of regular action from the Delhi Development Authority and Delhi Jal (water) Board. MARWAH: What about the cities? SHAH: In China, there is no water law, national water law, or that kind of thing, which created a basic wherewithal for imposing order on the water economy. Now they have found it very difficult to impose that in the countryside because of too many tube-wells and too many farmers. It was a cosmetic enforcement, but in cities they took these laws more seriously. They used the cities, for example, to seal all the private tube-wells. They gave five to six big water companies licenses to pump groundwater and supply the whole city. So over a ten-year period, they actually reorganized the entire groundwater system. Just imagine sealing all 350,000 private tube-wells. How many tube-wells are there in Delhi? And linking all those households with five to six water companies is such a big task. I think it would take fifty years in India, but in China they did it in five or six years. MARWAH: But their cities are also growing so rapidly, like Shanghai, but they have done it before.

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SHAH: Absolutely, and water is a fundamental thing. I think we should bring all kinds of perspectives into our study of China. I have been looking at a very small part of China, yet I find it so instructive. MARWAH: I have taken so much of your time. Thank you very much for the interview.

Shri K. Natwar Singh Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Shri K. Natwar Singh had a long career, three decades, in the foreign service as a seasoned diplomat, and also two decades of a remarkable career in politics, including as minister of External Affairs, and is of course a renowned personality, author, and statesman. I could describe him in many ways. His career straddles several aspects of foreign policy, literature, and many other fields, but we will confine our conversation with him especially to his interest and his sustained contribution to China studies and understanding of China from the perspective of Indian foreign policy. SINGH: Sir, you wrote an interesting book, The China Diary, which is a historical document of primary sources as to what was happening between the two countries and how you perceived those events and relationships at that time. It’s indeed an honor to be speaking to you, sir. We usually begin by asking this question to every scholar: at what stage of your life did you become conscious of China? NATWAR SINGH: I was studying at St. Stephen’s College from 1949 to 1951, and I was doing BA (Honors) in history. I remember, when I was in my second year, newspapers reported on 1st October 1948 that the People’s Republic of China had been established. So that was the first time it registered on my mind. After a few years, I qualified for the foreign service. In those days, after the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) selected you, the foreign service probationers were individually interviewed by then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. And when I appeared before him for an interview, the first question he asked me was, “Kya Hume Chin Se Koi Khatra Hai?” (Do we have any direct threat from China?) I replied, “Hai Bhi Aur Nahi Bhi Hai (There is; and also there is not.). China, your nearest neighbor happens to be your good friend, as well

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as your worst enemy.” After that, when we had to choose our language, I opted for Chinese. In a sense, I was the first person to come from UPSC and opt for Chinese language. I was in Cambridge when I appeared for the interview. Then I went back to Cambridge and started Chinese, after studying history, but I didn’t do too much work. When I was posted to Beijing, in May 1956, Chinese studies had started. I read Edward Reid’s book on China, which deeply influenced my thinking on China. SINGH: But, I suppose you had language training before that in Hong Kong? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, I did it at Peking University. Three of us had it together: Mira Sinha, Sudarshan Bhutani, and I. I remember we used to drive together from our houses to the department. SINGH: Any memories of interacting with Chinese scholars, teachers, etc. during those times? NATWAR SINGH: You see, there was a different branch for foreigners. We didn’t mix with Chinese students at all, and our teachers were separate. None of them knew English. They were Germans, Swedish, Slovaks, and so on. So the whole class was foreigners. After that we had to appear for examinations. Usually the papers were sent to the language school under the Ministry of Defense. But since we were studying at Peking University, they decided to accept our results. But the Defense Ministry asked us what the qualifications were of the teachers who would examine us. So at that time, the first secretary was Mr. Ashok Badgaonkar; he died as our ambassador in Cairo in 1976. So he replied to the ministry, “I don’t know the qualifications of the teachers, but their names are Mao Tse-tung and Zhou Enlai.” So they were accepted. I did well in the examination and scored fairly high marks. SINGH: At that time, two of your contemporaries, Ambassador Bhutani and Professor Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea, later emerged as great personali-

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ties and contributed extensively to China studies. So was it out of a passion to understand China? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, there was immense passion to learn about China. The Chinese leadership of those days was impressive. Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, etc., shaped the destiny of modern China. At that time, life was very austere. Being an Indian, the climate was different, and it was difficult to adjust in the new atmosphere. But things changed as time passed. In 1954, when the Chinese cultural delegation visited India, I was attached with it. They visited Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, and Santiniketan. Then, in 1955, Song Qingling visited India. She spoke very good English and was a friend of the prime minister. I was again attached with her. So when I went to China, our first assessment was through her, and she immediately recognized me. SINGH: At that time, there was a lot of obsession about European countries in the foreign service. How was our being a young diplomat interested in China viewed by your contemporaries? NATWAR SINGH: You see, very few people knew what was happening in China. And we had gradations in postings, and China had ‘C’ grade. So many asked me why I wanted to go there. But I knew it was a very important country. I had a chance to go to Austria and could have gotten any other country as well. But the events of those times in China, like the Long March, and its leadership attracted me. Living in China was not very comfortable at that time, but then I didn’t go to seek comforts there. Since there were only twenty-three embassies there at that time, Mao and Zhou Enlai often used to be there for banquets and dinner and so on. SINGH: So somehow, it was a fascination beyond a career? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, I was deeply interested in what was happening in China then, and our relations with China were very good. At that time, Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are Brothers) was very popular. Zhou Enlai visited India, and Panditji (Jawaharlal Nehru) had been to China in October 1954. If you read the records of talks between

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Mao and Pandit Nehru, there was no meeting of minds between the two. That was written in Selected Works on Nehru; Paranjape took notes. But they received him well. They had a great respect for Nehru. SINGH: So what was your reading of Mao, since you saw him on quite a regular basis? There were all kinds of perceptions about Mao. His talk with Khrushchev was also problematic. So it’s not only that he disliked Nehru. NATWAR SINGH: No, it was all right at that time. It was during the Bandung Conference; Zhou Enlai got the feeling that Nehru did not recognize him properly. SINGH: In a sense, Mao was a very self-confident person and had strong likes and dislikes. NATWAR SINGH: Well he was. You see, at a normal function, there used to be Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping, but when Mao appeared, everybody used to be overshadowed by his appearance, because he had a very powerful presence. There was no doubt he was in command. But at that time, there was a strong camaraderie and a sense of equity. It was only later, after 1962, that subservience came. During the Cultural Revolution, that camaraderie was demolished. There were differences of opinion among them. Mao took a strong interest in People’s Daily. Then they had this peculiar habit of working at night. Once I had to visit a place where Mao was at around 12:30 at night, and he was there until 3:30 in the morning. The interpreter was seated beside him, and Mao was in a blue suit, while everybody else was in gray. I took the photograph, you can see it there [shows a few pictures in his study]. Being an Indian diplomat, nobody used to stop me from clicking. But it was difficult to get the photos developed. The studios there were not well organized. SINGH: Despite the material difficulty, you enjoyed your stay there? NATWAR SINGH: Yes. First of all, I was young and a bachelor with a deep interest in China. I never complained that there were no petrol pumps,

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no shopping centers, or no cinema theaters. Language was a problem, as I did not know it, it was difficult to understand, and so on. Despite this, I enjoyed my stay. SINGH: You were very fascinated by the various phenomena within China. But there was a common complaint back home in India, that we did not have a strong interest in China studies. NATWAR SINGH: We had Santiniketan doing well in China studies at that time. I met Han Suyin there. When I was in Cambridge, I met King Foster and continued to correspond with him on Chinese issues. Shi Lin also came to China for the first time. We helped her get a visa. SINGH: So she was not Chinese? NATWAR SINGH: Her mother was Chinese, but she stayed in Belgium, so she spoke French, Chinese, and English. She wrote one book on Mao and one on Zhou Enlai. Later, she was married to Zhou Enlai. She wrote one more book, Many Splendid Things; this was a world bestseller. SINGH: So how did you meet Han Suyin? NATWAR SINGH: One day I went to the Xin Qiao Hotel. Every foreigner used to go there. I saw a beautiful lady sitting there and thought I had seen her somewhere, but I was unable to figure out where. I had already read her book and saw her photograph on the book cover, I recalled. So I sent her a brief note, asking, “Are you Han Suyin?” She replied, “Yes.” So I introduced myself, and then she took me to various places around Beijing. Other than that, you could not make friends with any Chinese. They would not invite you to their homes. We used to invite them to the embassy, but for that we had to send invitations to the foreign office, and they would decide who could attend. At the top level, it was a different thing, but if I were to invite anybody, I had to get clearance from the foreign office. But we had to be careful, because we were the bourgeoisie. SINGH: So did you make any other friends in the diplomatic core?

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NATWAR SINGH: Well, as I said, it was truly difficult to make friends there. But I was privileged to meet and see very closely various dignitaries. James Cameron visited China, and I briefly met him. Then a whole Communist generation, including Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Sukarno, visited China during that time. Then I also got to know Mei Lanfang, the great dancer, who used to play the female role in Chinese operas. SINGH: Yes, I read one of the reviews of his movie recently. It was said that he played those roles so perfectly that many men fell in love with him. NATWAR SINGH: Yes, he was a very influential artist. It was nearly impossible to get a ticket to his show. Since I knew him, he used to send me tickets. So I was truly interested in meeting them. No diplomat used to go and meet them. I met Lao She, a famous novelist who lived in America. He became very famous with his novel, Rickshaw Boy. So he was invited there and very much respected there. SINGH: In your first tenure, in 1958, you came back to India. The Great Leap Forward had already started, I guess? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, the Hundred Flower Movement was already there. And we thought the whole thing would change. But then Mao intervened, and the whole thing stopped. SINGH: So how do you describe this brief period of opening up? NATWAR SINGH: This was exclusively limited to the press and the university system. There was tremendous brainstorming. People came out on the streets in protest. But then everything stopped, and the protestors were brutally repressed. All kinds of brutal things were witnessed during this time. Then there was a campaign to kill blue sparrows. We were ordered to shoot all the sparrows sitting on the rooftops of the embassy. SINGH: That is bizarre; was it ordered in writing? NATWAR SINGH: Yes. We all went on rooftops and did what was ordered. They later realized that it was hazardous, because sparrows eat all

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kinds of germs and worms and, due to the killing of sparrows, there was a rise in worms. Then there was another bizarre campaign for killing rats. Everybody participated in killing sparrows and rats all over the country. The one who killed the most was a hero, which is crazy. SINGH: So you had immense interest in China, but when you came back to India in 1958, what did you do? How did you sustain your interest? NATWAR SINGH: In 1958, when I came back, I was not put in the China division, I was in administration. Only in 1960, when Zhou Enlai came, I was asked to act as liaison; otherwise, I was dissociated with China. From 1958 until 1984, I couldn’t do anything involving China. Then in 1984, I led a delegation to China for bilateral talks. SINGH: But when you came back, was there a sense in your mind that we in India did not care much about China? NATWAR SINGH: Nobody knew, and nobody was even interested. We were all Oxford or Cambridge educated. So there was an inclination and liking for the Western intellectual culture. SINGH: So what triggered your interest in China, despite your strong Western intellectual base? I am sure it must have been a tough decision. NATWAR SINGH: You see, I was fairly impressed by the great personalities within China, as I told you earlier. Also, most of my IFS (Indian Foreign Service) batch mates were opting for French, Spanish, English, and so on. Then again, there was a desire on my part to do something different than others. So I opted for Chinese. Everybody said that it’s a difficult language, but I still went ahead. SINGH: And, of course, two of your fellow diplomats were with you. [Mira Sinha and Sudershan Bhutani] NATWAR SINGH: Well, Mira came two years later and Bhutani one year later. But we were together for one year. Bhutani stayed on for four years. In 1958 they built a road in Aksai Chin, and we didn’t know about it. The

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news item published in the Chinese newspaper was so small that it was difficult to make out its larger implication for India. Since 1958, a new trend had started in India-China relations, and I was not in China at that juncture. SINGH: After you came back to India, was your interest in China acknowledged adequately and your experience and contribution utilized properly? NATWAR SINGH: Not at all. Nobody was interested. What they did was put me in the China division as an undersecretary. Except for Jawaharlal Nehru, nobody was inclined towards China. There was lack of a proper orientation towards China. There were very few books on China and a poor knowledge of Chinese history. SINGH: It’s a very important point you are making that, other than Jawaharlal Nehru, who was at the topmost level and gave the India-China civilizational link a new dimension, nobody in the administration took China seriously, even as a professional career. NATWAR SINGH: People used to avoid the China posting. There was nothing available. For everything on China you had to go to Hong Kong. Luckily, a Korean used to come once a week to bring the diplomatic bags, and everybody took their turn to collect them. Now certainly things have changed. SINGH: Is a posting to China now a way to rise in your diplomatic career? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, it started only after Rajiv Gandhi’s visit in 1988. The situation was really bad. We had terrible experiences during the Cultural Revolution. Two of our foreign service probationers, Ranganathan and Pillai, were in a restaurant once taking photographs, and they were arrested for allegedly spying and were condemned to death. SINGH: Really?

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NATWAR SINGH: Then they were ordered to be sent back after serious diplomatic influence. They were put in trucks and beaten up with brooms. Finally the poor men came back, and I had to receive them at the Delhi airport. So those were tough times. The British Embassy was incinerated by Communist guerrillas, and our embassy was badly vandalized. Then Mr. Sathe was the chargé d’affaires. [Ambassador Ram] Sathe knew China and Chiang Kai-shek. He was posted to Beijing during the British rule. Later he became foreign secretary. SINGH: So we were not a friendly country, in a sense? NATWAR SINGH: Well, the relations actually changed for the worse after 1958. At the time of the Bandung Conference, Nehru insisted on inviting China. At that time, the Chinese did not have many contacts outside the socialist world. Very few countries recognized them. So Nehru introduced Zhou Enlai to many leaders, whom he didn’t like; he felt patronized by Nehru. SINGH: And that’s where the China-Pakistan relationship is said to have begun? NATWAR SINGH: Until 1960, we were the conduit for Chinese leaders. Nehru introduced them to many other world leaders. But after that, the great success of Bhutto’s foreign policy was to wean China away from India without allowing America to intervene. Then, in 1958, Radhakrishan, the vice president of India, went to China as Mao’s special guest. I accompanied him. He had been put up in Mao’s official guest house and had long conversations with him, and I was there and took my camera to Mao’s house. Mao was fairly impressed by our vice president’s scholarship, and their conversations were all recorded. Later, when the original versions came out, we sent them to Chairman Mao, and he kept them very respectfully. I could do this because I had close access to the vice president and, of course, to Chairman Mao. His delegation-level meetings used to be at

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night only. Even Nixon, when he visited China for the first time, met Mao at 11:30 pm. And interestingly, when Nixon started talking foreign policy matters, Mao said, “Here we discuss only philosophical matters. Foreign policy issues you discuss with Premier Zhou.” Another thing that Mao did was that he never answered any phone calls. SINGH: In the 1960s, Nehru was pretty upset about China, its actions. There was a dearth of experts on China, who could understand China, but you were there at that time with tremendous experience and an inclination towards China. NATWAR SINGH: I was very junior at that time. Though I knew Nehru and used to interact with him on these issues during lunches and dinners, there was an order of hierarchy. Mr. Jagat Mehta was a deputy secretary and knew nothing about China. Foreign Secretary Datt, who was also a principal advisor to the prime minister, was never posted to China. And in the embassy, Paranjape was posted to Beijing with Ambassador R. K. Nehru. So, in the foreign office there were people who were socalled China experts, but who had no knowledge of the Chinese language, history, and culture. I was witness to all of this. Zhou Enlai’s visit in 1959 was a total disaster. He came to settle the dispute with India, and he said so openly. But you see, Morarji [then in Nehru’s Council of Ministers, later prime minister of India] was constantly quarreling with him. Radhakrishan [vice president of India] was preaching, and the Indian media was very offensive. There were disagreements over a few hundred kilometers, and after the war we lost several thousand kilometers. In private, Nehru agreed that China was going to emerge as a major rival. But in public and in his writings, he took a very romantic view, that both countries had not fought against each other in last two thousand years of their existence, and they were not likely to do so in the future, which was implausible. The Chinese were enthusiastic about Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai, precisely because of their Communist brethren in India, the Communist Party of India. The difference between Chinese and Indian Communists

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was that for the Chinese, the center of gravity was China and not Moscow. But for Indians, it was neither Moscow not Beijing. In 1956, the Dalai Lama came to India. I was in China at that time. In 1956, he came to Delhi when Zhou Enlai was there. They met briefly. Nehru assured the Dalai Lama of his return to Tibet, and Zhou Enlai promised that there would be no reforms in religious policy in Tibet. SINGH: But that must have upset Mao, that he had to make a compromise on Tibet policy because of Nehru’s influence. NATWAR SINGH: I can’t say for sure that Mao was upset. When the Dalai Lama came in 1959 to Delhi, I was with him. He had meetings with Nehru and other leaders. I told him I was in China, but he hardly spoke English at that time. So I met him again after thirty-one years. He was coming out of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s room, and I was walking in, and he suddenly called me Mr. Natwar Singh. So it was pleasant to see him. However, Zhou Enlai’s visit was totally mishandled. What happened in 1962 resulted in various parties being blamed—the Intelligentsia, foreign office personnel, and so on. But it was also in part a misjudgment by our leaders. SINGH: What was it? Over-trusting of Zhou Enlai? NATWAR SINGH: First, the parliament was kept away from the whole controversy, and the issue was romanticized. Zhou Enlai came prepared for the summit, our side was still debating the issue, and there was lack of consensus on any compromise to be made. Zhou Enlai said they would not give up claim on Aksai Chin and that they recognized the rest of the McMahon Line. Nehru was fairly unaccustomed to the issue and did not realize the importance of the Chinese stance. He did not think of the possibility of actual war, which later came to him as a shock. Then in Colombo he said, “I have ordered the Indian army to push the encroachments.” You see, we tried our best to play it down, but the war was somehow inevitable.

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SINGH: Was it only his romantic view of China, or did you generally perceive Nehru generally as a romantic in policy making? NATWAR SINGH: Well, he was not an illusory person, but in the case of China, he perhaps failed to read their minds. Nehru visited China after World War II. He met Chiang Kai-shek, and the latter also visited India. There is a very famous photograph of Chiang Kai-shek with Mahatma Gandhi. Nehru, despite being an intellectual of such high stature, couldn’t read the Communist’s mind. After all, there was a power struggle within the Communist Party, also, despite their being socialists. The whole struggle between Khrushchev and Mao was over leadership and ideological prominence, and the Chinese were really tough. When the dialogue between them failed and the Communist Party took over in China, Chiang Kai-shek moved to Canton. The only ambassador to move with Chiang Kai-shek was the Russian ambassador. When Mao visited Russia for the 30th anniversary of the October revolution, Stalin didn’t receive him. Stalin said, “They are peasants.” Of course, he was Stalin, he was boss at that time, and Mao accepted him, but not Khrushchev. So Mao was different. SINGH: But you had some of the closest encounters with Mao. NATWAR SINGH: Well, his Cultural Revolution was a totally crazy idea. It had disastrous effects on China. He was a man oozing with power. He used to say he was a peasant, but he read a lot and had a fairly bright intellect. His speeches and commentaries reflected it. SINGH: So, “power” in a rather comprehensive sense? NATWAR SINGH: Power of mind, personality, struggle, ruthlessness; if a person had to be killed, he had to be killed without any inhibition and regret. The way he treated some of his comrades, like Liu Shaoqi, He Long, and others... During the Cultural Revolution, he spared only Zhou Enlai because he was ill. He did not even attend the funerals of many of his close comrades. Then he used to write very good poetry, and in his later days he was obsessed with women.

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SINGH: What did the Indian leaders think of China? NATWAR SINGH: You see, the USA viewed India from the British point of view. In the same way, we used to view China from the Western point of view, and hence Chiang Kai-shek was more acceptable than Mao. But we did recognize Mao’s China immediately in 1949. The switch to Mao was quick. In a sense it was quite an unusual foreign policy decision. Even to this date, we find it difficult to come to terms with the leadership in Myanmar. We are still juggling between supporting Aung San Suu Kyi, but we have to deal with the Myanmar junta. But in the case of China, we recognized Mao’s regime quickly. And the Chinese even didn’t thank us for that decision. At the time, there was tremendous British influence on Nehru that the commonwealth should be recognized as a whole. It was an absurd idea. Until the Korean War, the Chinese media continued to abuse the Indian government’s policies. Later, they realized that they were wrong. In fact, India helped China in Geneva on Indo-China issues, and the Chinese admitted the Indian friendship. SINGH: As a young diplomat with experience in China, did that sense of not being utilized influence your later decisions when choosing people and appropriately placing them? NATWAR SINGH: This is very common in the foreign office, that an expert in Spanish affairs would be placed in the Middle East division. This mismatch is fairly common. America didn’t recognize Mao’s China for twenty-one years. But suddenly, after 1971, everything changed. There was a lot of brainstorming on how to prevent Mao’s China from entering into the UN Security Council as a permanent member by proposing reforms, and various formulas were under consideration, like India, Japan, Germany, and South Africa groupings should be incorporated as new members, and so on. But to this date, it is clear that both the US and China were opposed to India

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joining the Security Council as a permanent member with veto, and the Indian Parliament would not accept India joining without veto. Unless India emerges as a big economic power to force its way into the Security Council by compelling other members to amend the charter, it’s a difficult proposition. SINGH: I was told that when Ambassador Ranganathan was in the embassy, the entire embassy staff knew the Chinese language. If I am right, you were at the helm of the affairs; you became secretary and later a minister. Did you make sure that the people were allowed to keep their specialization and not be diverted into unknown areas? NATWAR SINGH: Well, I ensured it to the best of my ability. When I became minister of state [for External Affairs], Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister and took advice very seriously, though there were dissenting voices at that time because of the holdover from 1962. SINGH: So was there an unfinished agenda on your mind? NATWAR SINGH: I can’t claim to be the ultimate authority on China, but I had some understanding of how the Chinese think. Even though they now have one nation and two systems, they will not compromise on certain Marxist fundamentals. The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) is not happy with the current state of liberalization. SINGH: But wasn’t the PLA a force during this whole process of liberalization? NATWAR SINGH: It’s because Deng Xiaoping was chairman of the PLA committee, and he took them together. Now things are different, as you are watching them very closely. Rajiv Gandhi ensured when he visited China that the India-China border would remain tranquil for the next twenty years. SINGH: I believe you had a critical role in making Rajiv Gandhi’s visit a success. So was there a sense of an unfinished agenda from 1956 to 1958,

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so that when you came into a position of influence, you really wanted to accomplish it? NATWAR SINGH: Well, I told him [Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi] clearly that, while it’s important to improve our relations with China and keep abreast of the border issue, he was the only person to raise the issues at this point. He took that as a challenge, and it fortunately paid off. SINGH: So, was there a process of sending notes in the background as preparation for the 1988 summit? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, of course there was. There was intense preparation for eighteen months, and P. N. Haskar took extraordinary care in devising it. SINGH: But there were many senior leaders who opposed this meeting, correct? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, but when it finally ended successfully, everybody was quiet. The most important part of that relationship was the economic cooperation, and when the interest of a common Indian and a Chinese is involved, things fall into place politically. Today, the overall image of China in the Indian mind is changing. But in those days, it was difficult to sell any decision related to China to the common Indian public. The knowledge about each other’s country is still very poor. How much does an average Indian know about China? They know all the major cities and states and countries in the USA, but if you ask them about the same in China, the answer would be negative. Chinese don’t know Dr. Manmohan Singh; they consider Sonia Gandhi as the Indian leader. I remember arranging the meeting when I met Hu Jintao in Kazakhstan. In a sense, Chinese are well aware of the affairs within India. In India also, we now have two generations of experts, including you, who are studying China. China is now becoming an important country in our consciousness, and it actually goes back to 1988. It was a turning point, when we openly

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expressed that here is a country that is one of the most important neighbors we must engage with. China did not intervene in the 1971 Bangladesh War, knowing well that Russia was on our side. Krishna Menon’s theory was that Pakistan was our enemy and not China’s. However, we paid a price for ignoring it. SINGH: So did you convince the young Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on China policy? NATWAR SINGH: I asked him a simple question: “What is your vision of India’s foreign policy?” He asked me a counter question: “What is yours?” I replied, “We have bad relations with the USA, Pakistan, and China. What are our diplomats doing? Why shouldn’t we improve our relations with all these countries?” So, he asked me for suggestions. I said, “Why don’t you visit China? Since 1962, no Indian leader has made a successful visit to China, and the prevailing status quo helps China. So on how many fronts should we fight?” He was aware of the need for change in our foreign policy direction and, despite all the criticisms of the visit, he went ahead with his visit. SINGH: So, what kind of difficulties did you face during preparations for the summit meeting? NATWAR SINGH: Well, we were mired in Sri Lanka, and the visit took place with that in the background. Then, within the Congress Party there were opposing voices. Narasimha Rao [then foreign minister, later prime minister of India] opposed the visit. SINGH: You also had the Tiananmen Square incident after that? NATWAR SINGH: Well, we went at the right time, so the visit was successful. Everybody said China would transform in next twenty to twenty-five years, and there would be a democratic transition. To this date nothing has happened.

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It was also the month of December, a very cold season to go to Beijing. It was very cold. But adequate arrangements were made. Cars, rooms, and conference halls were kept sufficiently warm. It was only when we visited the Great Wall that we felt the cold. SINGH: So what was the mood of the prime minister after the visit? Was he happy with the visit? NATWAR SINGH: Yes, he was very happy. He wrote personal letters of appreciation to all of us. He asked me to continue my interactions with all the new-generation leaders of China, which included Li Peng, a junior foreign minister. He had brief meetings with both of the young ministers, and they were well prepared. SINGH: But in the last four years, the relations were full of turmoil. There are lots of irritants over Indo-US cooperation, trade-related disputes. The last visit of President Hu Jintao [November 2006] was not a success, and also Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit [January 2008] failed to achieve a major breakthrough. Do you see any lack of understanding vis-a-vis China? NATWAR SINGH: Well, there are irritants, and it would be premature to pass any definite judgment, given the sensitivities involved in all these issues. To a certain extent, the Indian media is also responsible for overblowing the issue. Well, free media has its own set of hazards, but I am not hereby suggesting any regulation. SINGH: You have published an important book on China, as I said earlier. Is there any relationship you have with China studies scholars? Do they engage with you or invite you for academic activities? NATWAR SINGH: Not really, and due to old age, I am not very keen anyway. SINGH: How do you see China as a focus of China studies outside and within the Ministry of External Affairs?

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NATWAR SINGH: We should have the same interest in China studies as that of US and European studies. China studies should be given greater emphasis, due to the language. SINGH: The Chinese are now establishing Confucius centers all over the world. NATWAR SINGH: Well, they should. Mao had destroyed everything. Eventually they had to go back to their fundamentals, which are deeply rooted in Confucianism. It is an important initiative to document and spread philosophies like Confucianism. In that sense, we have enough to do within India. The Chinese not only spread their culture, but also collected from others and preserved it. When we visited China, Chinese officials showed us what Fa Xian brought from India. In those days, the visits were very peculiar, as they carried scriptures that have enormous knowledge in them. And imagine the physical fitness that was necessary to cross the mighty Himalayas while carrying them with you. SINGH: Also in prioritizing what you wanted to carry with you. NATWAR SINGH: The religion of Korea, Japan, and China went from India, and then it lost its connection. So somewhere there is also a tendency to establish these contacts. The tremendous fascination for knowledge, rather than just for physical wealth, is also there. Yes, but we have this problem of multiple languages in India, as far as the preservation of knowledge is concerned. But they have the same. We are managing this diverse country. This in itself is an astronomical responsibility. These days, certainly the English language helps. SINGH: How do you see the evolution of the last five decades of engagement with China? NATWAR SINGH: China and Chinese officials have always been ambiguous. At times, some general would make a statement intentionally, which the foreign office would later deny. So there is significant confu-

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sion about the way the Chinese think and react. There is more Indian investment in China than Chinese investment in India. The Chinese have invested immensely in Africa. SINGH: Moreover, do you believe that foreign investment flowing into China is continuously growing, but the same is not happening in India? NATWAR SINGH: Well, they have confidence. SINGH: Is there anything you believe has changed in India’s foreign policy circles that makes us better equipped to understand China? NATWAR SINGH: I think we learnt a few practical lessons from 1962. Some of the tactical lessons included better equipment for our forces, better border infrastructure, and better management of security. As far as policy is concerned, we have better knowledge of events, and some of the best public commentaries and analyses were written. We have a number of academic and policy research centers available all over the country. In 1962, there was practically nothing available. In the foreign policy establishment, you also had a number of first-rate experts on China. The former foreign secretaries, Nirupama Rao and Shyam Saran, for instance, are extremely competent people. This change happened after 1962. In one of her letters to me, Indira Gandhi, former prime minister, clearly indicated the lack of expertise and urged a change in the course of affairs. SINGH: How do you see China evolving in the next twenty to thirty years? NATWAR SINGH: Well, the current growth of China is likely to continue unless something happens within the US economy. China’s next generation of leaders are already in place to take over the mantle of power and groomed in the same ideology and system of governance. So, all the talk of transition turmoil is exaggerated. The Communist Party, in my view, is likely to remain the center of power. SINGH: Thank you very much, sir, it was a pleasure talking to you.

Amitendra Nath Tagore Interviewer: Professor Swaran Singh Amitendra Nath Tagore was born on October 9, 1922, in Calcutta, received his education at Calcutta University and National Peking University, and acquired his PhD from Visva Bharati. He was a lecturer in Chinese at Visva Bharati and at the National Defence Academyfor five years. He also contributed translations of various classical and modern Chinese literary pieces and journals. SINGH: We begin by asking you about your family legacies, as well as your connections as a child when you first became conscious of a phenomenon or country called China. TAGORE: It is difficult to remember exactly how I came in contact with the term China. In Calcutta, where I was born, there was a big area in the city where the Chinese merchants lived permanently. They were merchants who came from the south part of China, and we used to refer to this as the cheenapatti, or the area where the Chinese people live. We heard about this from our grandfather, who often went there to buy shoes. The Chinese were excellent leather merchants who were also manufacturers of shoes. They would keep a wooden model of one’s foot in their area. If you went to a shop in those days, they would keep the wooden model of your feet first, and they would manufacture a shoe that fitted your feet exactly from that particular wooden stock. This was the way they started their work. Bengal has a long connection with China. Merchants used to come and go—silk merchants. Chinese silk was very popular in the old days, and you would be astonished to know that in our family the first person to visit China as a visitor, not as a businessman, was Prince Dwarkanath Tagore’s son and father of Rabindranath, Debendranath Tagore. He visited

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China and brought presents for family members. He gave my great-grandmother a model of an ivory ship built possiblyin Hong Kong, where he went. In those days ships went from Calcutta to Canton and Hong Kong, and he took one of those ships and went to China. So the connection with China and the Tagore family was a long drawn-out process. My own grandfather, the artist, Abanindranath Tagore, has a fascination for things Chinese. When I decided to make Chinese my main study, I was a student of commerce at Calcutta University. I gave up commerce after my degree and went for language studies and started learning Chinese at Santiniketan, and my grandfather, the artist, was very enthusiastic about this. This was during the early 1940s, because I graduated in 1942 from Calcutta. SINGH: That was the very early stage of Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center) also. TAGORE: You might say so, because we were the first five students in India who started learning Chinese at Cheena Bhavan. There were two Biharis from Bihar; one was Krishnasingha, who joined the HindiBhavana in Santiniketan as a teacher, and another was a Buddhist from Bihar called Shantivikshu. There was one Sinhalese monk. His name was Pannasree, and he was my classmate at Cheena Bhavan. There was another gentleman, Shatiranjan Sen, belonging to a famous kaviraj family. The people who practiced Indian medicine in the old days were called the kavirajs. His main idea was to study books on Chinese medicine. My idea was to study more on Chinese literature, modern and old. So, the five of us were the first students who were the core of the Cheena Bhavan. SINGH: Could you say something more about these five very different people who learnt Chinese at Cheena Bhavan. TAGORE: First, there was no other place where we could learn Chinese and, second, there was a thirty-rupee student scholarship given to any student who would learn Chinese at Cheena Bhavan. It was a scholarship that was given by Chiang Kai-shek as a personal gift to Cheena Bhavan.

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But, unfortunately, we never received thirty rupees because Santiniketan was not a central university then; it was a poor university with very little money, so the cashier gave us less than thirty rupees. SINGH: But Chiang Kai-shek was connected to that situation. TAGORE: Yes, Professor Tan went to China to collect money. He collected money from all sources: business people, politicians, and Chiang Kai-shek, who was then the head of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). SINGH: If I understand, thirty rupees was a substantial amount in that period. TAGORE: Yes, quite true. But, at least that was the first outside source that came to Santiniketan as a gift for students. Before that, big rajas and maharajas (kings), nizams of Hyderabad, and others gave money to build —some built the Tata House Complex, some built the ladies’ dormitory— but hardly any money was given for scholarships. This was more or less the first time that Cheena Bhavan had money enough to spend on five students, 150 to 200 rupees a month, from an unknown source outside India. That attracted me and was the first money that I earned. I studied there for five years, but there was no language lab or anything like that in those days. We had to repeat and we had to write, so we wrote Chinese script much earlier than we spoke Chinese, because there was no standard spoken Chinese. All the educated Chinese, even today, speak the Beijing dialect (Guoyu), but the majority of Chinese in India are from Canton. And Canton Chinese is something like the people who speak English in London’s slums. SINGH: Professor Where was Tan Chung from? TAGORE: He was from Hunan. His Chinese was difficult to follow, as it was not standard Chinese. Professor Wu Xiaoling was really our first teacher who spoke standard Mandarin Chinese. He himself was a student at Peking University, and he taught us some spoken Chinese. That was the

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beginning of spoken Chinese. Written Chinese was introduced earlier. We learnt three kinds of written Chinese: first, the ancient written Chinese, which was from the books of Confucius, Lunyu, or Dao De Jing. These are not spoken Chinese at all. Then we also did some work with Buddhist Chinese, like in Sheng Jing. All Buddhist scripts were in Jing in those days, which were the Buddhist sermons, and Sheng Jing was jataka [fables about the previous lives of the Buddha]. ‘Sheng’ in Chinese means birth or life, and ‘chin’ of course means tales or gathas. I translated some of them into English, with the encouragement of Dr. P. C. Bagchi, who was also our teacher in those days. Dr. Bagchi was a student who learnt Chinese in France. He was Sylvia Levi’s student, and he learnt Chinese from her. So Dr. Bagchi’s Chinese was French-oriented Chinese. It was a very interesting group of people who gathered at Cheena Bhavan in those days, and we were very lucky to meet most of the early proponents of Chinese studies in India. SINGH: At what level did they introduce classical texts? TAGORE: Classical texts were difficult, but both classical and modern texts were studied side by side. We used to attend classes for three to four hours a day, but despite that our Chinese scripts were sometimes written better than by the Chinese themselves. We started learning copybook Chinese as they printed them. I have not studied the modern abbreviated Chinese at all. When Rajagopalachari was governor-general, just as Mountbatten was leaving, the government of India offered a scholarship to students who were interested in going to National Peking University in Beijing to study Chinese. It was 1946–1947. Besides me, others from Santiniketan who were selected were Shatiranjan Sen, Ms. Jaya Appaswamy, the artist Nihar Babu, V. V. Paranjape, and Venkataraman. We all went to the university, and Dr. Hu Shih was then principal of the university. There were no hostels at all for foreign students to stay in, so after a few days Dr. Bagchi, who was then also visiting Beida, asked Dr. Hu to arrange accommodations for us. We were given a house near the

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university, which once was the prison house for Japanese turncoats during the Japanese occupation of Beijing in the old days. SINGH: You must have been a good team. TAGORE: It was a good team. It was just one year before our independence, and by 1946 we had settled down at Beida (Peking University). We were away from the country when independence was declared. By the way, we also had a Muslim gentleman with us from the department of archaeology; he later went on to become important in Pakistani archaeology. We called him Khan Sahib. There were eight students, and we had separate cubicles. As it had been a prison, every room was separate. We arranged for the furniture from an old store. We fixed up the place quite well. We had a Chinese cook, and we taught him how to make fish curry. SINGH: What are your memories of 15 August, because you were not in India then? TAGORE: We received letters and newspaper clippings from time to time. After independence, the first ambassador to Beijing was a famous historian, who wrote a book on India and the Portuguese connection in the old days; he was a friend of Dr. Bagchi. So we were a close group of ten to twelve Indians. I completed my degree in social sciences, which is the MA degree from Beida. SINGH: When was the Indian Embassy opened? TAGORE: Even under Chiang Kai-shek’s Republican China in Nanjing, the Indian Embassy was working. India recognized Mao’s China as well. India was the first foreign country to recognize Communist China. We did not have much interaction with embassy officials. SINGH: When the new China came, was there any change in your relationship with China? TAGORE: Yes, there was a change in the relationship, because then Khan Sahib became a Pakistani, and he received his scholarship from Pakistan

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and not from Delhi. However, he continued to live with us and dine with us. We had gala 15th August, 1947, celebrations in our dormitory, with Chinese friends being invited too. I still remember some very interesting things that used to happen to us. When we went out into the streets, Ms. Appaswamy would be wearing her sari, and the street children would start chasing us, pointing fingers and saying, “Waiguo ren (foreigners)!” We suffered that for some time. After we started learning Chinese, we would turn around, point fingers at them, and say, “Zhongguo ren (Chinese people), keep quiet!” We spoke Chinese very quickly and well. We had also joined, with the help of Beida, the Yale University Language School, which was very close to the university. We started learning spoken Chinese at the school. Most of us started with the language lab at the Yale School of Chinese Studies, and there were a few Americans who were also studying Chinese there. We became more attached to the American students who were learning Chinese. SINGH: Did you make any friendships at that time? TAGORE: Oh yes! I had a very close friend called Jinti, who was a language teacher at Beida, and he used to play an excellent game of tennis. I used to represent Calcutta University in tennis. I was very eager to play tennis at Beida, and we played together. I was there for three years until I came back in 1949. After Mao came into power, Beijing was liberated much earlier than Nanjing was liberated. They came down from the north and occupied Beijing right away, and we were asked to go to the police station under the new government. So we all went. They asked about our background in the course of the police interrogation. SINGH: So when you came back, was it that all of you came together, or did you come at different times? TAGORE: No, I think I came back last because I had to submit my thesis. SINGH: And when you came back, the relationship with China was getting very close? Did the government make use of your stay?

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TAGORE: No, we never had that kind of an opportunity. You must understand that students were never considered as handmaidens for political diplomats. SINGH: For instance, Nehru is known to have said that they did not have Chinese language experts in the Foreign Ministry when the relationship was initially booming. Then, wouldn’t your group have been important after returning to India? TAGORE: Once Shibrukar was there; he probably joined the government. V. V. Paranjape also later did join. SINGH: So in a new relationship, you were the group of people who could be put to use. TAGORE: I was not interested in politics; my grandfather was very apolitical. When I came back, I started teaching at Cheena Bhavan as a lecturer. I married after I returned. I had to go back some years before my marriage. After I came back, the Calcutta police were after me, thinking that, since I had returned from Beijing’s China, there was something Red about me. I came by boat from Hong Kong to Calcutta, on the S. S. Tairea. It used to run from the China coast, Hong Kong included, to Calcutta, and I had two big boxes of books with me. However, they dropped one of the boxes, and I lost many of my library books in that accident. I received a Shuoshih degree, the equivalent of a Master’s degree. Now that Peking University has become much more modernized, it does not run in the old Chinese style at all. It has taken over the old Yanching University, which was an old American university outside the city limits, and that has become the Beida. The old Beida was the red building. SINGH: Then you came by boat, and the Calcutta police, you were saying… TAGORE: Yes, the Calcutta police interrogated me, and they kept a watch on my house where I used to live. I was at Santiniketan, Cheena Bhavan, for five years. After five years, I got an offer of a one-year Fulbright schol-

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arship to study and teach at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. So I went to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and was studying with Dr. Derkbodde. SINGH: You were also talking about your marriage. TAGORE: I married the daughter of the general manager of Eastern Railway, who was then in Calcutta. SINGH: Did that have any influence on your interest in China? TAGORE: No. My son lives in Michigan. He has nothing to do with languages; he works with computers. On 27 January 1953 I got married. I was then teaching at Cheena Bhavan, and my salary was Rs. 400. I said that I could accept this Fulbright scholarship to go to the United States, provided that the United States paid for my wife and my son. SINGH: How would you describe your groups of students when you started teaching at Cheena Bhavan? TAGORE: It is interesting that, from the original group, none taught except Venkataraman and me, who both joined Cheena Bhavan. Paranjape became a diplomat, and Shibrukar became sort of an intelligence fellow, so everybody went different ways. Shibrukar was an interesting fellow; he had a lot of Chinese girlfriends. After I went to China, among the new students that came to Cheena Bhavan was Narayan Sen. One of my female students is now also teaching at Cheena Bhavan. She also went to Beijing on a scholarship, came back, and started teaching. I think Narayan Sen went to Taipei, came back, and then went to mainland China also. SINGH: So when the two of you came back from China and became faculty at Cheena Bhavan, was there any change in the culture at Cheena Bhavan? TAGORE: Well, yes, by then the university had become a central university, and there was a big group of scholars who came from new China to visit Cheena Bhavan, so we showed them around. There was a contin-

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uous exchange of writers, poets, and artists between Santiniketan and the scholarly areas of China. I still have a portrait done of me by Ye Chen-yu; he was a famous cartoonist in China. He came to stay at Cheena Bhavan for a while. After returning from China, I taught some classes, but my main focus was on my own work. I was translating Dao De Jing in those days. I took three years to translate Dao De Jing into Bengali, because it was not easy to translate in those days, particularly into Bengali from Dao De Jing. But I used to take classes every day. SINGH: In terms of the expansion of faculty, did you recruit more people? TAGORE: I tried to recruit more people who were able to speak Beijing Chinese. I was also at the National Defence Academy(NDA) in the early 1950s, where I was teaching the cadets. General Shankar Roy Chowdhary was my student. He used to play table tennis with me. SINGH: You went to Philadelphia after the NDA? TAGORE: Yes, I went in 1955 after the NDA. SINGH: Why I am asking this is, during the India-China war, were you in India or were you abroad? TAGORE: No, no, I was here. I was walking on Park Street, and there was General Manik Shaw having a cigar and coming from the other side. He was my head in those days; we were in the JSW, Joint Services Wing. I had left Cheena Bhavan; I was lent to the Ministry of Defense by Cheena Bhavan. SINGH: So you came back and then went again in 1964. Was there a teaching assignment? TAGORE: Yes, I taught at the University of Philadelphia for some time. My wife was working in a hospital at that time. I was teaching Bengali and Chinese. In 1964 we went to Oakland University. The university had been started by a lady just before the India-China war. (I donated my Chinese art collection to the university in Beijing.)

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SINGH: I was a little curious to know where you were during the war period. TAGORE: I was in Philadelphia, America, during the war, from 1960 to 1961. SINGH: Did you come back to Cheena Bhavan again? TAGORE: Cheena Bhavan—yes, because I was lent to the Defense Ministry, so I came back to Cheena Bhavan again. The one-year Fulbright scholarship was completed, and after one year we came back, as arranged, to Cheena Bhavan. I rejoined my position. There was that one-year gap, and then again in 1964, when I was given this position at Oakland University in Michigan. I was selected to teach American students about both China and India. It was in 1964. So between 1962 and 1964, I was at Cheena Bhavan. I had to teach Chinese to American students, besides teaching Indian history, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Asia, and everything. The American students used to ask me how a Bengali Indian was teaching Chinese. A second question was why I was not called Mr. Chen or Mr. Wang. Then I used to tell them that I have a Chinese name, Tai, which means ‘the great,’ and my wife is Tai Tai. SINGH: During the war, how was Cheena Bhavan? TAGORE: I do not know as I was not there during the war. I was told that Professor Tan was shocked and that he donated his money and his golden bangles to the India-China War Fund. SINGH: Did the war impact the China program at Cheena Bhavan? TAGORE: No, there was no impact, because the new government, the Red government in China, immediately took up where Chiang Kai-shek’s government left off. They sent library books to Cheena Bhavan. They sent teachers to teach Chinese at Cheena Bhavan, so there was no gap as such. SINGH: In the India-China war of 1962, most people in India believe that China studies came to an end.

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TAGORE: No, it may have come to an end at Jadavpur University, but not at Cheena Bhavan. Jawaharlal Nehru was then chancellor of Cheena Bhavan and of Visva-Bharati University. Visva-Bharati had by then become a central university, and it was under the government of India. So, there was no way that China studies came to an end here. Instead of less focus on China studies, there was more pressure on Cheena Bhavan to produce more students who were proficient in Chinese, and the Indian government would not make the mistake of ending Chinese studies because there was an attack by China. Is there any ending of Pakistani studies in India because Pakistan is continuously bombing Kashmir? Actually, the war with China was not over, the Chinese just retreated. While you say that India was defeated, I would say that China retreated, so where was the defeat? Of course, there was loss of faith, but not loss of faith as far as India was concerned. The Hindi-Cheeni bhai bhai (Indians and Chinese are brothers) phase was over. Then again, when Zhou Enlai came to India for a visit, I was working at NDA, interpreting for them from the Indian side, so I met Zhou Enlai. He was a very fine man. I gave him my collection of poems by Wen Yiduo, who was a very famous Chinese poet during the war years, during the Sino-Japanese war. He was based at Kunming in Yunnan those days. Wen Yiduo had penned three books— collections of poems. SINGH: It is said that Zhou Enlai and Nehru were the most charming and scholarly people of that era. What did you think of them? TAGORE: They were very similar. When someone says that Zhou Enlai betrayed Nehru, I do not believe it. It was a party policy of China that betrayed both of them. A mutual bond between them was very evident. So I do not believe that Zhou Enlai personally betrayed Nehru. That is impossible, that could not have been done. It was the party that threw people in or out; it was the party that decided whether there would be a war or not. SINGH: Recently, some of the archives were opened in the United States, and I read some of these papers, one in which Kissinger wrote some

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minutes of the meeting with Zhou Enlai, where he says that Zhou Enlai was very negative about Nehru. He related how Zhou Enlai said, “Now you know it, and you can write it for the world.” TAGORE: Nehru had said that he would manage things properly. This happened after the Bandung Conference, where all the prime ministers of Asia met for the first time, and I presume that Panditji (Nehru) thought that he would automatically be selected to speak for the entire group. This probably did not happen; everybody spoke for themselves. SINGH: This was also the first time that China was in the Afro-Asian movement. TAGORE: Yes, but I still feel that, by nature, if someone says that Zhou Enlai personally betrayed Nehru, I just cannot believe that. Although I met Zhou Enlai for less than half an hour, he brought us home in his car. There was no prime ministership about him. When you meet a cultured fellow, at least I immediately feel that one can talk to this guy. But then again, politics makes strange bedfellows. If Mao was mad enough to marry that film star, his second wife, anything can happen. SINGH: It is also said that, other than Zhou Enlai, most Chinese leaders remarried after the liberation, so Zhou Enlai again was an exception. He had some orphaned children he looked after. TAGORE: Zhou Enlai was taught in France; he had a French education, so he could speak French quite fluently, and French was in those days the international language. Even in Moscow they used to speak French. It was the language of diplomacy. I thought that he was a very cultured fellow, and it is very difficult for me to believe that he could betray Nehru. Personally, I think there was no betrayal. It was a national move on the part of the Chinese themselves to come and occupy these areas. SINGH: As this whole period was evolving, were there other centers of Chinese studies appearing in India during that time?

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TAGORE: What I remember is that there was an attempt then at Bodhgaya to start Buddhist studies, and Professor Tan was again consulted. He was a Buddhist himself, and he died at Bodhgaya. But JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) started teaching Chinese very late. In Calcutta, there was an old institution, but there were no Chinese teachers there. When Bagchi was here, he taught in Calcutta, then he went to Paris and wrote his thesis, in French of course, on a Chinese topic. He learnt his first Chinese in France, in Paris, and then he continued with it here in India. I think he first went to China along with us, when we as a group of eight to nine students went to China on an Indian scholarship, Dr. Bagchi was also sent to Beida. SINGH: After that visit, were there more frequent visits? Did you go back to China? TAGORE: No, I have been to Hong Kong, but not to Beijing or any other place. After my studentship in China, I have gone to Hong Kong and Japan, but I have never been inside China. I had a suspicion that if I did go, there might be trouble at home, so I just did not try to go. SINGH: But you had invitations? TAGORE: No, I did not have any invitations. I had several visits here, in this house, from Chinese who came from China to find out more about Xu Beihong, the artist, who was in Santiniketan. They were arrested by the police at Sealdah station because they were taking photographs. I helped get them released, so they came to see me and thanked me. SINGH: Calcutta did not have any Chinese professors coming to teach here? TAGORE: I do not remember knowing or seeing any. But strange, isn’t it? You have a government that is left-inclined here, and you do not have a visiting teacher in Chinese studies. There is a strong Japanese studies program, though. And they always outweigh China in different areas. SINGH: In other parts of India, were you involved with any new initiatives to start Chinese studies?

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TAGORE: Nobody consulted me about starting Chinese studies. Of course, if they seriously wanted to start Chinese studies, they had to get people who could teach Chinese. That is the one suggestion that I gave to Visva Bharati from America. I visited Visva Bharati once, as a visiting scholar, on a leave from America. I was in America for twenty-three years. I came here as a government of India visiting professor from Cheena Bhavan and, on my return, they asked me to write suggestions on what could be done about Chinese studies at Cheena Bhavan. My suggestion was very simple; it is not possible to increase people’s interest in Chinese just by having a school where you teach the language; you have to have an area where interest in Chinese history, Chinese art, Chinese culture, Chinese society, Chinese civilization is stimulated. Interest in Chinese must be aroused before one can think in terms of, first, appointing more teachers of the Chinese language, and second, when to appoint teachers in different areas of the university, At Visva Bharati, whether in the history department or the arts department or the language department, they need to find out whether the prospective art teacher has any interest in Asian art or in Chinese art. If he has any interest in Chinese art, I think he should get more consideration as a teacher forKala-Bhavana (Center for Visual Art at Visva Bharati). I think if he is interested in Chinese history or Asian history, he should be looked upon with favor in the history department. In this way, a group of people who are basically Oriental oriented could be gathered within Visva Bharati. With such a group in place, students would come automatically, whether to learn Chinese art, Chinese history, or the Chinese language. But if you only insist on Chinese language studies and nothing else, that cannot be done. I do not know what happened to the proposal I gave to the government. SINGH: You were in Michigan for a long time. How did Chinese studies move there? TAGORE: In my university it went very well. In fact, after I retired, I appointed two Chinese teachers; I was previously the only Chinese teacher. By that time, there was a need for two teachers as a number of

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students wanted to have two sections. There were several students in what was called the area studies department, but the Language School had a Chinese studies department. SINGH: So you had a dual role there? TAGORE: Yes, area studies was meant for Asia studies, both Japanese and Chinese. You would not believe the little knowledge that American students had of Indonesia, and the students were going to fight in Indonesia at that time. I had to teach them which part of Asia they were going to. Geography as taught in American schools was very poor. I do not know if it still is. My wife was invited to deliver a talk to a very elite ladies’ club, and she was introduced as Mrs. Tagore from Bengal, Africa, or something like that. So that is the problem, making people conscious of your land and your area, making people conscious of the contribution of Cheena Bhavan and Visva Bharati towards Oriental studies as such. Visva Bharati should publish an anthology of all the works on Oriental subjects written or published by Visva Bharati scholars. There is no such anthology, there is no such compendium. Even their library is very poor. If you want to hear which Chinese books Professor Bagchi has translated into English, you would naturally go to Professor Bagchi’s library or to Visva Bharati’s library, where he was the vice-chancellor. The infrastructure there is very inefficient, very poor. You cannot have a big building without any contents. How many students of Cheena Bhavan can go and read the books that are there? They took my entire Chinese library to Cheena Bhavan. I do not know in what condition they are now. I had thousands of Chinese books, and my collection of modern Chinese literature have all gone there. I gave them away. I contacted them. SINGH: You taught in Michigan for twenty-three years; during that time did you renew any contacts with Beijing or Beida? Did you have any connection with Chinese or Indian professors who teach there?

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TAGORE: No, I did not have any connection. No Indian teachers. There were Indian teachers in physics, chemistry, and biology who are still there, but no one in Indian languages. SINGH: So you taught twenty-three groups of students in Michigan, and the number, as you said, was growing. TAGORE: Yes, naturally, after twenty-three years, the population of the country was increasing, and their interest in China was also increasing. SINGH: So would you say that Oakland University has a strong department with a focus on China? TAGORE: Their language lab is very well equipped. We started the language lab; we had language labs in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, French, and Spanish. SINGH: When you were in Michigan, did you travel back and forth to Calcutta? TAGORE: Nearly every other year we visited our parents, and we used to go to Santiniketan to see our old teachers and students. I always talked to the students in Cheena Bhavan when I went there. SINGH: Did you see any changes occurring during that whole phase at Cheena Bhavan? TAGORE: Yes, I saw one thing that changed. The number of students rose, from five to about twenty-five students, and they had five teachers, faculty who are Indians, who had learnt Chinese. Besides, Delhi University gave me an offer for a Chinese professorship. I knew about Delhi University from my friend Sayyed Mustafa Ali, who was both a teacher and a great scholar of German. He used to talk to me about Delhi University; JNU was not established at that time. I knew that if I was appointed from the United States as a professor, over the heads of several others, I would be in trouble. I refused the offer; however, I agreed to be a visiting professor, if needed.

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SINGH: Was it only an administrative problem, or did you know some people who were teaching at that time, like Manoranjan Mohanty? TAGORE: No, I did not know Mohanty. The only other people who taught or knew Chinese were H. Ray, who I used to talk to, and Narayan Sen, who was our student at Cheena Bhavan. SINGH: Regarding your classmates following different paths, would you have liked to replace any of them? TAGORE: As far as my own personal direction is concerned, I am not the least bit upset that I did not make a lot of money, go for a government position, or become a big shot in the Foreign Ministry. I was very satisfied with my position as a teacher and as a worker who translated into Indian languages and explained all the different kinds of Chinese cultural expressions, such as its philosophy, literature, wonderful paintings, art, and music. That was my idea, and I was satisfied that I tried to do as much as I could, both in India and abroad. As a result of that, I was fortunate enough to travel to different parts of Asia, Europe, and America. So I visited a number of countries, where I would never have been able to go without my background as a teacher or as a man who could speak about Asia, India, or China. So that was sort of a big advantage that I had. Whenever I visited a university, the first thing that I would ask was whether they had a department of Oriental studies or not. SINGH: Did you notice an upsurge in Europe or in the United States in major departments, any new focus on Oriental studies? TAGORE: Let me say this: the United States was very fortunate that, following the Second World War, gradually they started what they used to call area studies, which was not quite a study of history, society, or literature of any country—that is different. This was a total attitude towards a nation. If you would like to study India, you go to the area studies department of an American university, the Indian studies department. The Chinese studies department will always comprise Chinese art, Chinese music, Chinese history, Chinese literature—anything Chinese will be

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accepted. As a teacher at Oakland University in Michigan for twenty-three years, I was instrumental in studying a group of people, American AngloSaxon people, who had no connection whatsoever with anything Asiatic. I was able to rouse their interest in things Asian, and they were very grateful to me. In fact, most of the students did not like that I retired so early and wanted me to teach some more years at Oakland University. SINGH: Another major complaint that we often hear about Americans promoting area studies is that area studies became a simple effort to replicate a country’s culture or music, as you said, or translate that country’s history or culture. So there were also repeatedly issues of methodology in social science. TAGORE: Let me put it this way, every teacher has his own particular bias, as you say. For example, my bias in teaching Chinese was literature; someone else’s bias in teaching Chinese might have been Chinese philosophy. Both are equally important as far as Chinese area studies is concerned. But unfortunately, when I was in America, at my university, I was the only Oriental individual who could put fingers in two pies, those of both China and India. That was an advantage for both the university and for me, because I could, with whatever little knowledge I had, function in both the Indian and Chinese areas. And that was a great benefit because I had to study the English translation of Vedas to understand my ancient land’s background. I did not study Vedas before. Of course I could read Sanskrit and understand Sanskrit. I could look up Sanskrit dictionaries and find out things. This was an advantage for me, that I could revise my school experience with Sanskrit for my students in the United States. When we were there, that was the beginning of area studies, and we were allowed to expand our areas of work any way we wanted. There was no step-by-step methodology as such. Every teacher, every professor had his own way of putting things together. We were quite free, and it was very interesting and illuminating for me. SINGH: But within the United States, were you in touch with other departments doing Oriental studies?

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TAGORE: Yes, I was in touch with the Chinese philosophy department at Chicago University and others. I gave talks, but most of my addresses were about Chinese literature, both classical and modern. SINGH: Were there other Indians teaching Chinese or Oriental studies at other universities when you were there? TAGORE: No, I do not remember anyone. I was told of Sanskrit at Harvard and at Chicago University; probably there were Indian pandits teaching literature or old languages, such as Pali and Sanskrit, there. Ours was a small university. When I went to Oakland University, it was more less a pilotprogram that we were allowed to develop in any way we saw fit. We were not called upon to follow the Harvard University-type or the Yale University-type or the Columbia University-type program, nothing like that. In fact, we had the great University of Michigan right next door. We were not even asked to follow the University of Michigan-type program. We were allowed to prepare our course in our Oakland way, and I think we were successful enough. SINGH: You said that you specialized in Chinese literature. There must have been other Chinese teachers at other universities. TAGORE: Yes, I had great connections, particularly with University of Michigan Chinese teachers and others. Every year there used to be American Oriental Society meetings in different parts of the United States, and our university gave us leave of four to five days so that we could go to other parts of America where the American Oriental Society was holding its meetings, so we could meet people of all types. Traveling and publishing one’s work—these are two things that any American university encourages. SINGH: For the time you studied Chinese and Indian literature, would you describe it as something related to the realities on the ground, or was it a bit more abstract?

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TAGORE: My basic studies were very realistic; my thesis was on leftist movements in Chinese literature in the early years of the ’20s and ’30s. That is nothing to do with classical Chinese, but I have translated Lunyu into Bengali for the Sahitya Academy. I have also translated Dao De Jing into Bengali for the Sahitya Academy. So these are works I have spent a lot of time on—for three to four years I studied these works while translating them. SINGH: Was there any distinction between Chinese literature and Indian literature, or in some ways were they similar? TAGORE: They are literatures of different nations because they are dissimilar; similarities rest on areas such as imagination, expression— how you describe, for example, a lady in Sanskrit literature. In China there is no mention of religion at all, even in earlier times. They were extremely practical; their religion was the king. It was the king who was the religion, the head; whatever he did was right. There was no question of any extraterritorial area. Of course, they were raided from time to time. Chengiz Khan and others were there. In fact, one of the Mongols, who was an outsider, defeated the Chinese emperor and established a Chinese dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty. But our attitude towards religion and the Chinese attitude towards religion are very different. Our religion is a matter of faith. There is no such thing there, except in modern times, when Catholicism came to China, then maybe there was a mention of faith. But I have never met a Christian Chinese. SINGH: Is this talk also about mutual influences—the whole conversation about characters like Wu Kong in Journeys to the West and Hanuman being so similar and conceived in the early eras when there was no connection? TAGORE: When Fa Xian and Xuan Zang came to India, they took back with them our ideas of Ramayana and Mahabharata stories, so I am sure they were there.

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SINGH: Also, one hears that the Chinese, just like the Japanese, take prolific notes whenever they travel. However, Indians are not so used to doing that, historically, in terms of recording civilization. Is there much literature, like memoirs of these journeys, in the case of China? TAGORE: Yes, that’s true. There are lots of memoirs. Chinese traveled a lot. They had big junk ships in which they traveled. SINGH: In the Indian case, our stories are either intellectual debates or pure fiction based on realistic themes. What about the Chinese? I know Fa Xian produced two to three books after he returned to China—possibly from his notes. TAGORE: Of course he did, but there was a lot of imagination in his books. They were certainly not travelogues. Whatever he wrote, he wrote after he went home. Xuan Zang also wrote his travel accounts and memoirs after he went back to China. He may have written something while he was studying in Nalanda, but I do not know whether he could take notes while traveling. SINGH: There were descriptions of Indian courts, court systems, kings, and how decisions are made in India. TAGORE: Probably he did take notes in those days. SINGH: Do you imply that Chinese literature is more practical, compared to Indian? TAGORE: Yes, it is far more applicable to daily life. Our literature is much more fictional. In the old days, there were very few Chinese novels, but there are thousands and thousands of poets and poems. Nearly everybody in China could more or less write poetry. If you were a scholar, you must have been a poet, otherwise your scholarship was no good. SINGH: In some ways, that is also about how China and India stayed out of the industrial revolution experience, because our intellects are very different.

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TAGORE: I think so. As I said, Chinese daily life does not involve religion at all. Going along the streets, if you see a Buddhist temple, people might go there to burn an incense stick, but I do not think that they remember that for long. They have always been family oriented throughout their lives. The earthquake in the Sichuan province must have been heart-rending for most of the families. There are about 5,000 children who cannot find their parents; this must be absolutely horrendous from the Chinese point of view —not to have a family, not to be living under one roof. SINGH: The response has been very intense, in China and outside, so this is also the Chineseness in some ways. TAGORE: Yes, they always group together wherever they go. There is a Chinatown in nearly all the big cities of the world. Every nation has groups living in the same area; all the Marwaris (an ethnic group originating in the Rajasthan region of India) in Calcutta live in one particular area, in the Bara Bazaar. It is quite normal. SINGH: It is also said that the Chinese were far more conscious of Indian literature in ancient times than Indians were of Chinese literature. When did several monks and others get the Indian works translated into Chinese? TAGORE: Monks in the old days never traveled by air, railway, or car; they always walked. As they walked, they gathered much knowledge about the nation in which they were walking and staying. SINGH: What was the pattern of Chinese official patronage to such people? TAGORE: We must understand this: traveling in China in the old days was on foot or by horse. Traveling in India was also by horse, elephant, or on foot. The majority of the people traveled by bullock carts. That is why traveling was a slow process, and once you took a trip outside your village, you were more or less thought to be gone, never to return. As far as India is concerned in the Chinese mind, it is basically the birth-land of Buddha. Buddhism traveled to central Asia, and from central Asia it

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went east through the Gobi Desert. I have been to Dunhuang, for example, the great cave temples of Xinjiang, and I have seen paintings of an Indian wrestler, in his Indian dhoti (male Indian’s traditional garment), and he is doing exactly what wrestlers do before they wrestle—they tap their hands on their thighs. I have seen these paintings with my own eyes, on the walls of the Buddhist caves; they were obviously not done by the Chinese. There must have been Indian monk painters who visited these temples as they walked through Kashmir, through central Asia, to the Tang Dynasty in China, the Tang court in Xian. These traveling monks, like Fa Xian and Xuan Zang, were most remembered because they recorded the history of the places they visited in China. When Xuan Zang visited Assam, he was told by the king of Assam that he had heard about Taoism. But Xuan Zang was a Buddhist and did not know much about Taoism. So when he went back to the Tang court, he requested that the Taoist monks explain to him about Taoism so that he could translate that into Sanskrit and send it to his friend, the king of Assam. It was a big thing in the old days, because these were the kings and travelers from the west and the east who came to India so that we were exposed to Chinese ideas, and they were exposed to ours. SINGH: Regarding Indian culture and civilization, beyond Buddhism, what was the Chinese consciousness of India, and Indian literature in particular? TAGORE: In literature, beyond Buddhism, there is absolutely no mention of India in the ancient Chinese literature. Tao never mentioned India, so there was no mention of India. The first link, I think, is Buddhism. SINGH: In Chinese literature regarding Indian institutions, other than your work, were there other works of translation or or institutions that made Chinese literature something to be talked about? TAGORE: Satiranjan Sen was doing work on some ancient Chinese medical studies, but I do not think towards the end of his life he did work. At Santiniketan, there was no research; nobody did any research on Chinese.

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SINGH: And you had your PhD. Was that the first PhD from Cheena Bhavan? I also believe that you have stayed in close contact with Cheena Bhavan. TAGORE: Yes, mine was the first PhD. I always go to Cheena Bhavan when I am there to find out how the library is doing, how the students are doing. SINGH: You have seen it for the last sixty years, so how do you describe it? It is like the core center of original work on China. TAGORE: It may have been the core center, but I do not think it is practically going anywhere now. More and more people know only the basics of Chinese. But if you get a degree in a language—not a degree but a certificate—that is not enough. We had the inquisitiveness to find out what Chinese is all about. Most of the modern students at Santiniketan are not inquisitive. I do not see any students from other departments coming to see what kind of books this library has and what these things are about. SINGH: In some ways, it means that the original idea of Cheena Bhavan was to be an important center of Chinese art, music, and culture. TAGORE: That is true, that is how the poet Tagore wanted to have it developed. Santiniketan never had any great favorite as far as politics were concerned. Gandhiji was always revered there, and everybody talked about the congress party because congress had given so much. Nobody talked about Communism. It was, in fact, one of poet Tagore’s nephews, Soumendranath Tagore, who became a Trotskyite and was in Moscow for a long time, and then he had to leave Moscow. He was anti-Hitler and was in Germany for a long time. He wrote a book called Hitlerism. So he was a man who was directly linked with politics in our family, this uncle of mine. He was a journalist in a Malaysian newspaper when Tagore contacted him. He was convinced by Tagore about the possibility of starting a language school in India, at Santiniketan specifically, and he came here and settled. But once he was gone, there was no one. Most of the scholars who went to

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China, with Indian government or any other scholarship, came back and stayed in India. Some of them who did not study gave up Chinese and did something else. SINGH: I was told that Professor V. P. Dutt was sent to the US to study Chinese. There was a fellowship at that time. Possibly it was some American agency that was facilitating Chinese studies in India. There was obviously a lack of institutional buildup or follow-up in terms of where these people were trained. TAGORE: If you compare what happened at Cheena Bhavan and what happened elsewhere, you would find the difference immediately. At Cheena Bhavan, it was done with an ideal that the people of China and the people of India should be together and know each other. Tagore felt that there was a lack of our consciousness towards the East, towards the Japanese, towards the Chinese, towards Laos, Cambodia, Indo-China. He visited all these places separately; he used to call it the greater India because Hinduism was a big thing in Indonesia in the old days. He went to Ceylon and wherever there was the stamp of ancient Indian culture. There was no Indian culture in Japan, of course, but he was fascinated by Japanese art. He visited their Shinto shrines; these visits are all recorded. Paranjape practiced diplomacy; he never did anything from China directly. He himself was a good Sanskrit scholar, and his father was a very famous Sanskrit scholar in Pune. SINGH: Even those who went into government made their contributions, either in policymaking or facilitation. TAGORE: Yes, and Paranjape still does. He visits Delhi from time to time. In China, in Beijing, they know Paranjape more than anybody else, because whenever anybody comes from Beijing or from mainland China, they always get referred to Paranjape and try to visit him. SINGH: So you were saying that their own contribution was one aspect; however, why is it that none of them were able to produce or create institutions?

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TAGORE: No, you must understand that interest in Oriental things disappeared after the atom-bomb age, and interest in the Oriental is emerging again, now that it has been accepted that China is an atomic power. Today there is a lack of acceptance of Japan as a great power in Asia, but in the olden days Japan was one of the greatest powers of the world. SINGH: Chinese are visible everywhere but are not acceptable; they are not able to make their literature available everywhere. TAGORE: I agree with you that they do not impose their way of life, their way of thinking, their ideas on others, but neither do we. Indians do not go out of their way in Germany, in Italy, or in Spain to teach people. One namaskar (customary Indian greeting) is all right, that is about it. SINGH: Is there something Oriental about it that we are not assertive or aggressive in selling our things? TAGORE: Yes, I think so, because we are less mechanical minded; we are much more idealistic, much less realistic. But we are getting more realistic now, slowly and gradually. China has always been very realistic. You cannot deny the Chinese invention of arms, as all modern firearms are Chinese inventions. SINGH: In terms of the availability of Chinese literature in this country, for people who are studying Chinese or Chinese literature, has that been easy throughout or has it become difficult? TAGORE: It was difficult for us to get modern Chinese books. That is the reason that, when I came back from China, I had those huge crates, and I am so sorry that one of those crates was lost. If you go to Cheena Bhavan, you will notice that they have put all my books in cupboards. I am not sure how they are being looked after. But my main collection was modern Chinese literature since the First World War. SINGH: I remember that, about six years ago, getting a Chinese dictionary was not easy in Delhi. Even today, buying Chinese material and books is very difficult.

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TAGORE: You can go to Cheena para (the Chinese neighborhood) in Calcutta and find some shops where they sell Chinese books, but I do not know what kind of books they sell, as I have never been to those shops. SINGH: But what do you think causes this difficulty after sixty or seventy years of China now being a great power? TAGORE: There is hesitancy on the part of India to think of China as a great power. Our mindset is that we still think America is a great power, we still think England is a great power. You cannot get rid of England because England has ruled India for one hundred years;the Mongols also ruled India for one hundred years, but we do not remember the Mongols. From the Chinese side, it is and has always basically been about business. Ordinary Chinese who came to India came for money and for business, at which they are very good. You have never heard of a Chinese business that has failed in India. You may have heard of British businesses failing, but never a Chinese business; they always prosper. SINGH: What is the picture of China studies, if you were to look at it decade by decade? What did it look like in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, or ’70s; any ups and downs? TAGORE: No, there were no ups and downs. There was a steady, very slow uphill, but it is still my firm conviction that we will not be able to go ahead with Chinese studies by only teaching the Chinese language. We have to have an Oriental mindset in which to do things. If we still think that we have to go to Cambridge or Oxford to be educated, then it is out of the question. But when we think of going to Peking University, then education in Chinese will be different. SINGH: But, how central is the knowledge of the language? TAGORE: How can you communicate with a new society unless you understand some of their languages? How could the English have communicated with us? They had to employ a translator at every step, and these translators who translated for the English people became millionaires.

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How many Chinese will we employ so that when they retire they become Chinese millionaires? We do not employ people like that; we try our own way as far as we personally can. But if we are really serious about it, then every university in India should have a Chinese department, and it should be under a good, well-read, and well-versed Chinese professor. SINGH: How would you compare China studies in the US and China studies in India? TAGORE: China studies in the US is much more progressive because they have an Oriental studies department in nearly every small or big university equally. It is open to all; everybody can study Chinese in the United States. SINGH: The relationship is very similar—India’s relationship with China had difficulties, the US relationship with China has difficulties, but you are saying that the US has approached China studies very differently? TAGORE: Very differently and very practically. Americans espoused the idea of starting a language laboratory. Why not in India? Why do we have to borrow tapes from Yale University, Harvard University, or Chicago University to start a Chinese language lab here? Why cannot we produce our own language lab tapes? We do not! SINGH: Now, of course, the Chinese are setting up Confucius institutions to promote China studies. TAGORE: They are doing so, and so are the Japanese. Today we have Nippon-Bhavana (center for fostering Indo-Japanese relations) at Santiniketan, like Cheena Bhavan, so there is competition. But there was a break in Japanese studies at Santiniketan because Rabindranath was absolutely furious when Japan attacked China, and his connection with a famous Japanese poet was broken because of this. SINGH: Are there any areas in China studies in India that have been completely ignored? We look at economic relationships, we look at Chinese literature and medicine, and we now particularly focus on the

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Chinese defense buildup. Is there any major area that you think we have completely ignored? TAGORE: You see, we can come into close contact with certain nations, like my connection with China—I was there for three years, in close contact with the Chinese every day. Thus, we naturally develop sympathy for them, and they also develop sympathy for us. This sympathetic understanding of each other is a goal that must be achieved for a full understanding of another nation and of another culture. And we have not yet developed a full understanding of the Chinese mindset, Chinese civilization, or Chinese culture. This is the problem. SINGH: One often hears about the bifurcation of China studies in India, Sinophiles, and Sinophobes. Has that been undoing China studies in India? TAGORE: Like you were saying yesterday, during the war in 1960– 1961, when the Chinese attacked north of Assam, the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), there was a great anti-Chinese phobia. Instead of saying “Hindi-Cheeni bhai bhai,” we were saying “Hindi-Cheeni bye bye.” It was very quick. As soon as you thought that you knew a country, you were found out that you did not know enough. Naturally we thought, how could China attack us when we were talking to them in Bandung (site of the first Asian-African Conference in 1955) as people with nonaggressive ideas? But by that time we should have learnt about Chinese strategies, because they had already occupied Tibet. I was asked this question in one of the interviews in Delhi, before I joined the NDA. One of the questions asked of me was about my thoughts on the Chinese occupation of Tibet. My answer was very simple. I said that there should be an international forum that should find out what the Tibetans desire. Nobody asks what the Tibetans want; instead everybody says that the historical position is that Tibet was once a part of China, and so it can now be China again. Even our friend Nehru said that Tibet should remain as a part of China but remain free to develop in its own way. That never happened, and it will never happen.

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SINGH: What was wrong with the Tibet movement? TAGORE: It has continued mainly because the Tibetans come and take shelter in India. If the Tibetans had gone to some other nation to take shelter, India would not have been affected. In fact, we have lost our Buddhist ideas totally, with the exception of people visiting Bodhgaya and other places. There is no Buddhist movement in India. This is the land where Buddha was born, and we have totally forgotten him. SINGH: Do you believe that the Tibetan refugees have revived Buddhism in our own country? TAGORE: I do not think so. You must understand that Tibetan Buddhism is very different from our Buddhism or Ceylon’s Buddhism or Burma’s Buddhism. The problem with religion is that, in the long term, it becomes a cult, an ideology. If a religion turns into a cult system, then it is futile. SINGH: In that way, the Dalai Lama’s struggle has continued to be peaceful. It is probably the only peaceful struggle for national liberation. All other national movements have become violent now. The Tibetan movement is a peaceful one. SINGH: What about the quest for resources by emerging economies? TAGORE: The future of the world is going to be affected by this phenomenon. In the very near future, once the North Pole and South Pole melts down, the sea water will rise and destroy land, people will die, the heat will increase, and we will become another Mars, a red planet. SINGH: A number of Russian scientists are presenting the counter-argument that such things have happened in human history several times, and that all this talk about climate change is very World Bank-driven for controlling the economic systems of the world, and also discouraging China and India from higher consumption and industrialization, so in some ways being neocolonial.

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TAGORE: You and I know for sure that the climatology of India has changed. Tell me why it has changed. In the old days, rains used to come regularly in Bengal, but now they don’t. SINGH: Another idea that is being floated is that, after this debate about energy, the next big conflict over resources will be for water, as China controls most of the water in Asia. TAGORE: It is not only the question of water; we will all be filled with water. Once the ice caps melt in the north and the south, the oceans will rise and the whole land will be submerged. How can there be fresh water if Himalayan snow and glaciers melt? People who have been visiting Gomukh say that the mouth of the Ganges is getting smaller and smaller. People who visit Amarnath (a place of worship for Hindus) say that there are no droplets from the top to keep the Shiva-linga (sacred symbol of the Lord Shiva) white, long, and big like before. It has all dried up. The Russians should come and see these changes. Our pilgrims see these things, so they have their own idea in spite of all the science of Russia. India has the knowledge of big oceans coming in and rivers sinking. The whole city of Dwarka went under water—why? Why did the Arabian Ocean rise? This is not just a question of imagination, these are facts. We have been talking about Chinese studies, how people can maintain the mindset needed to study things so satiric as the Chinese language, unless there is an urge from inside that this is something that is interesting. People should be inquisitive, and we are not inquisitive anymore. SINGH: So in some ways, there is this lack of either direction or enthusiasm. Should this be primarily government driven? Should there be patronage as well? TAGORE: Patronage should be there. Most of our so-called patrons are short-sighted patrons; they would build a temple and give money for the temple, which would be in their mother’s name or in their father’s name, and that is the end of it. SINGH: Is it that we as teachers are not able to inspire younger people?

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TAGORE: No, I think we have failed. We just cannot inspire the young because time is against us. We need time to do things. I can think back and say that if I took three years (after learning Chinese for so many years), to translate Dao’s teaching into my mother tongue, then how can the young children coming out of college spend years to learn a new language? Our main aim has always been to earn a living. My father had a factory, and I was an apprentice there, but then because of the Japanese attack on Calcutta, people were evacuated and we all left work. My family and I went to Santiniketan to stay there. SINGH: Would you, for example, remember any of your teachers or seniors as being really inspiring? TAGORE: Speaking honestly, I don’t, because either they do not publish or they probably print in foreign journals, which I do not get. But certainly, most of the Indian people, like Narayan Sen, do not write in Bengali. They are Chinese scholars. They should write about things in China in Bengali—why don’t they? Most of my books about China are written in Bengali. My collection of Chinese short stories is in Bengali; my collection of Chinese ancient and modern poems is in Bengali; my collection of Chinese philosophers, Dao De Jing and Lunyu, is in Bengali. The only book that I wrotein English, because my PhD thesis had to be in English, is my translation of Moments of Rising Mist, the Song Dynasty landscape poetry, which I translated from Chinese to English. SINGH: Do you remember some people in China studies in India who you think have inspired you? TAGORE: Yes, Wu Xiaoling, who came to Cheena Bhavan from China with his family. He stayed here and taught us modern Chinese and the Beijing dialect. Professor Tan never taught modern Chinese; he was basically a Chinese Buddhist. SINGH: How would you locate yourself in India’s China studies?

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TAGORE: Because my main work has been done in the United States, where I taught Chinese, I did not have many students learning Chinese from me in India; but I certainly have a large number of students who studied Chinese. SINGH: There were also not many institutional linkages with Indian institutions. TAGORE: No, neither did I have any linkage here. I left India because I had to earn a living; I just could not go on with thirty rupees a month as a scholarship holder. In some ways there is neglect; there is also lack of opportunity. I do not want to get into the personal side of it, and I like to look at it from the outside, that Chinese studies in India can only be developed so long as we highlight the fact that Chinese studies is not developed in India by learning the language in India. If you really want to learn the language, you have to go and stay in China for a long period of time, where you will study, you will learn the language, speak the language, practice the language; unless you do that, you really cannot master the language itself. Even I cannot say that I have mastered the language because my studies are bookish. Very few of us can actually continuously chat in Mandarin Chinese or even in Cantonese, although there are a number of Cantonese in India, in restaurants or in shops. SINGH: Did it make a major difference that you went to the US and others were carrying on here? TAGORE: I had correspondence with some of our friends who were in India, but most of the friends with whom I went to China were not in teaching or academics as such; they all went to different areas of work. My only connection was with Professor Venkataraman, who was teaching at Cheena Bhavan also. He was a philosophy man; he translated Nagarjuna’s philosophy from Chinese into English. SINGH: Did going to the US help you to grow as a scholar?

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TAGORE: Yes, certainly, because I could leave the “looking after the money” side to my wife and focus on my studies completely, without any problem. She did her Master’s in psychology in the United States. SINGH: How do you see the current status or the future of China studies in this country? TAGORE: I always look at things and think that everything will be better in the future. I do not think that, because we have established more schools, therefore we have more Chinese students and scholars. Basic Chinese-knowing people in India will be more in number but less in depth. There will be interpreters who will specialize in thesubjects they have to interpret. I do not believe they will know anything outside of their own areas. If I give them a Chinese recipe and ask them to translate it for me into English, I do not think they will be able to do so. SINGH: Is it that, in China studies, the depth of understanding among China scholars seems to have decreased over several decades? TAGORE: Yes, it is more operational, more functional, and more a question of where you can make a better living. There is not that inquisitiveness, nor is there any urge. SINGH: So it seems that the depth of China studies has reduced over a period of time. Do you have anything to say about how that depth can be achieved again? TAGORE: If depth is what you want, you will need to import regularly, year in and year out, qualified teachers from China to teach Chinese here in India, where they will not only teach, but they will also write books that would be convenient for Indian students to learn from. That is how it can be done and, as I said before, it is not just a question of language; you have to get people interested in Oriental things—Chinese art, Chinese history, Chinese philosophy, Chinese literature. A big field is open for everybody to go into and find out for themselves. The university should encourage teachers, students, alumni, everybody to go in for such work.

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SINGH: Even in the USA, the twenty-three groups of students who passed under your guidance, do you think some of them really went into more serious work on China? TAGORE: No, I do not see anyone pursuing China studies seriously. SINGH: In some ways is that true for both the US and India, that the depth really seems to be reducing? TAGORE: Receding is a better word to use, but once we get to the bottom and realize that there is nothing but muck at the bottom of the pool, we will automatically rise, I am sure of that. One day we will realize that we have made a big mistake, that we have given up our Oriental programs in universities, and that we do not put enough confidence in our teachers of Oriental languages. SINGH: Is there any way the rise of China will help us? TAGORE: It has helped us in the sense of understanding that you cannot believe in any people, anywhere, at any time. The word inscrutable would be a better word, that we better learn how to be inscrutable ourselves. SINGH: But how do you see China’s rise contributing to China studies around the world, including India? TAGORE: I think you have to, otherwise how would you understand when they will drop the bomb on us, if they want to drop a bomb? SINGH: Is there also a possibility that the Chinese bear part of the responsibility for enhancing China studies in India? TAGORE: I think the Chinese should understand. In the olden days, our monks used to go to China, and Chinese monks would come to India; there was the tradition of a great give-and-take relationship between the two nations. But thousands-and-thousands-year-old traditions become brittle, and they do not remain traditions any more. We repeat this again and again, but under today’s circumstances, in this century, there is very little memory of such exchanges.

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SINGH: Also, how do you see the rise of China? Is it going to be peaceful, is it going to be rattling other people, is it going to be good for the Chinese? TAGORE: As far as I can see, I am sure there is going to be trouble in the future, because China will rise, automatically, gradually. China will not hesitate to use force, and India should be ready for that. Why should it hesitate? If America can use force in Iraq, why should China not use force in its neighboring countries? It has occupied all the islands in China seas; the Filipino people are always complaining that China is occupying territories that are part of their islands. Gradually they have occupied a part of Kashmir. SINGH: But the Chinese are now insisting on China’s peaceful development in a harmonious world, and they say the Chinese would do things differently than Americans. They believe that they are a civilization and America is not. TAGORE: The Americans do not think so. Americans think that they are the biggest civilization in the world, which can never lose, and the war in Indo-China was just an exception. They are going to lose in Iraq, they cannot win in Afghanistan, and they cannot do anything about it. SINGH: If you were to relive this whole period, would you change things? Would you do things that you missed doing? Is there something that you wanted to do? TAGORE: I wish that I had a better Chinese library to work with. SINGH: Would you, first of all, move away from commerce to China studies? TAGORE: That was an accident of the Japanese war. If Japan hadn’t bombed Calcutta in those days, I would still probably be attached to my father’s old factory. It is so strange that everything is so accidental in my area. Even when I went to Santiniketan, I did not consider studying Chinese there for five years. I studied Chinese for five years, and this is

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possibly the longest period any student in India had studied. I did not get a degree or even a diploma. SINGH: So what made you stay on? TAGORE: I stayed on for five years because I thought that I was learning something, things that were unknown to me would be open to me. For the first time, I could understand certain people who were there, who had their own ways of doing things, their own civilization. It was a new area for me. SINGH: Was there any inspiring force at that time that made you continue, or was it a selfless service in some ways? TAGORE: No, it was not a selfless service, it was a very selfish service; I was enriching myself culturally. There was no other pressure. Nobody asked me to earn a living; my thirty rupees and eight annas were quite enough. SINGH: Anything that you think you missed doing in this whole five to six decades of China studies? TAGORE: I wish I could have lived in China for a longer period of time, but I could not travel too much. I could have traveled in China if I wanted to, but I restrained myself because I thought that if I stayed on in China, I would be cut off from the rest of the world. It was easy to go to China, but once one started working there, it was not that easy to get out of China. SINGH: But for field trips or functions? TAGORE: No. How many Chinese professors come for field trips to India? How many Chinese professors go to America for field trips? We opened up much later. You must understand that I was a Kennedy man when I was in the United States. Kennedy was the president, and he had an appointment with all the Fulbright scholars. So all of us—the Fulbright scholars, everybody who was there in Washington—were waiting for the president to come and greet us, but instead Robert Kennedy, his brother,

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came in and greeted us. He was then the lawman. So he came and told us that the American troops had gone to attack Cuba at that time. SINGH: And when you came back, did you try to be part of the Calcutta community of scholars or conferences? TAGORE: No, there was no Chinese conference in Calcutta. I was secretary of the Oriental Congress of the World here in Delhi. SINGH: The Observer Research Foundation (ORF) has opened a chapter of ORF in Calcutta. It opened about two to three years ago. I hear that they are doing a few things on China. TAGORE: No, I do not know of this. They do not care to communicate; you are the only man who has communicated to me on things Chinese. There is a great deal of jealousy about these things in India. SINGH: Thank you, sir, for the interview.

Tan Chung Interviewer: Professor Chih-yu Shih Mr. Diptimoy Bhattacharya has worked with government of India as a Chinese linguist and he was also a teacher at Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center), Visva Bharati University in West Bengal, India. BANERJEE: I am Avijit Banerjee, and I am extremely delighted and honored to be talking to you, sir. I would like to begin by asking at what stage of your life you became familiar with China. BHATTACHARYA: I first confronted the word China through China Khabar (Food of China) in which there were recipes for Chinese food. My family was fond of Chinese food. So through that I became familiar with the word China. BANERJEE: Sir, please tell us something about your family background. BHATTACHARYA: I belong to the Bhattacharya family of Nadia district: Nadiyarpara, Krishnanagar West Bengal. It is one of the oldest families of Bengal. Bhattacharya is not our original title; we were originally the Bagchi. Our ancestral house is in Krishnanagar. It is a very old house, huge and U–shaped, with vacant land on its three sides. In front of the house, there was an open square where the Durgapuja and Navami Puja were conducted regularly. It was an old house with many traditions. It was probably built during the times of Maharaja Krishnachandra, and when Sirajuddaullah was the Nawab of Bengal. I heard that our ancestors had offered some puja [prayer] in the Royal Palace, and the king conferred upon them the title Bhattacharya. But otherwise, originally we were the Bagchi. Most of that house is now sold; only a small portion is left where the family of my youngest uncle resides. There are so many historical

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incidents associated with this house, and especially the open space in front of it. During the days of the freedom movement, leaders like C. R. Das and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose addressed the people of that locality. The revolutionary poet Kazi Nasrul Islam sang songs there. But now we are completely disconnected from that place. I am the only son of my parents, and I have one sister. My father was in government service in the postal department. BANERJEE: Was your father in Krishnanagar? BHATTACHARYA: Initially he was in Krishnanagar. But then he came down to Nadia district, to a small place called Maldah. BANERJEE: What about your mother? BHATTACHARYA: My mother was from Krishnanagar itself. She is from the place called Chaukherpara. They belong to the family of Dewans of Raja Krishnachandra. You must have heard of Dewans Kartikchandra, Umeshchandra, etc. The great singer Dilip Roy was my mother’s uncle, and my maternal grandfather was treasurer for the Royal family of Krishnachandra. So both the sides were from Krishnanagar. BANERJEE: When did your schooling start? BHATTACHARYA: My father was transferred from Krishnanagar to a city in Nadia district. That’s a small place where, at the age of eight, I was admitted to the New English School in class three. I was there for three years. Again, after three years my father was transferred to Chuadanga, so my family moved there. It was in Nadia district. At the time of partition, a part of Nadiya district came to India while some was transferred to Bangladesh. So now it is in Bangladesh. The school’s name was Chuadanga Victoria High School. I studied there for three years, and my father got another transfer to Nawadweep, where I graduated from Bakultala High School. I was ranked first in all the standards and very much loved by all my teachers. They felt that I worked too much on my studies, but it was not so.

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BANERJEE: Was this until matriculation? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, then I was admitted to Krishnanagar Government College. I used to go daily from Nawadweep to Krishnanagar College, crossing the Ganga by ferry, and then I used to go back. Although I had an ancestral house in Krishnanagar, my family was in Nawadweep. I passed my matriculation in 1946, and soon after I lost my father. He died prematurely. He was still in the service. He was young, about forty years old. That was a catastrophic event for us. My sister was twelve years old and studying, and I was sixteen. That was a hard time for us, and nobody helped us. The postal authorities offered me a job, but I had my studies, so I refused their offer with thanks and told them that if they needed me, I would be able to join only after my studies were completed. BANERJEE: So you continued your studies at Krishnanagar College? BHATTACHARYA: No, I was confused where to go. One of my maternal aunts lived in Calcutta. So I went to Calcutta and explained the whole story to them. They gave me a place to stay, but told me that I had to make my own arrangements for college. The Aashutosh College is here in Bhavanipur. Dr. Panchanan Sinha was the principal. I showed him the transfer certificate, and my matriculation result was good and, considering the entire situation, he was sympathetic to me. I was figuring out how to manage my expenses, because I had to send some money to my family as well. I got my sister admitted to a local school. After the death of my father, we had to vacate our government-provided housing., so we rented part of a house in another area of Nawadweep. While doing all this, I give home tuition [teaching students at their homes]. So one day, while walking on Aashutosh Mukharjee Road, I saw a huge, two-story building. I asked whose building it was. Somebody told me that it was Sir Aashutosh’s building. I realized Shyamaprasad Mukherjee must be there. They said, “Yes, he is here.” He was a minister in charge of commerce and industry. He was a great leader, educator, vice-chancellor, and so on. One day he was standing in front of his house. I climbed the stairs and saw the library ahead. A tall man was standing there; he looked at me and asked who I was

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and what I was looking for. I told him that I was a student at his college and requested that he allow me to explain my difficulty. He was very kind and listened patiently to my situation. After listening to me, he asked me who had told me to visit him. I told him that I had done so on my own. He asked me to speak to the principal. As I was hesitant to do so, he himself spoke to the principal, and after that all my fees were waived. I got all the help possible from the college, and I was even allowed to borrow reference books from the library. At that time one very young lecturer had joined the economics department. I was admitted first in intermediate arts, and then BA (Honors), and economics was my major subject. I met the young lecturer. He was initially a parttimer and very friendly to me. He was introduced to me as Kusum Dutta. He advised me on how I could make some more money through giving home tuition. In that way, I became a part-time tutor to the daughter of the director general of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, Raisaheb Mukherjee, from Baubajar. This helped me to continue with my studies. One of my classmates, Mr. Hariyanand Birari, who became the Director of Intelligence and later the Governor of Haryana, advised me to transfer to Presidency College. However, my financial situation did not permit this, and I did my BA (Honors) at Aashutosh College. But later on I met him in the MA program in economics at Calcutta University. However, due to some family problems, I had to discontinue my studies just before the final MA examination, and I had to take a government job. BANERJEE: So you started your professional career with a government job. BHATTACHARYA: It was in Calcutta with P & K Audit. Later, in 1958, I was transferred to Calcutta telephones. I rented a house and stayed with my mother and sister. In 1956, during the days of Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai (Indians and Chinese are Brothers), students like me and those who were not satisfied with their jobs were frantically trying to get out of that service and were trying to do something different. I was preparing for compet-

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itive examinations. I had to appear for my IAS (Indian Administrative Service) examination. In the meantime I got my sister married. They were all attached to me. But my sister was having a daughter and, on the day of her delivery, she passed away suddenly. I could not go for my examination and lost my last chance to appear for the IAS exam. So I was trying to find some other job. It occurred to me that I should learn a foreign language. In the same way as Shyamaprasad Mukharjee, I went to Sudharma, residence of Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatarjee. I told him my background and told him that I wanted to build a career in foreign language. He was a great linguist and a professor of comparative philology, and later he was chairman of the Legislative Council of Calcutta. He suggested that I should study Chinese. All other people were scared of learning Chinese, according to him. In his opinion, it was the most difficult language in the world. He said that he could not do two things in his life: first, learn Chinese completely, and second, go through Vedas thoroughly. “I am not telling you to do Vedas, but you should do Chinese studies for me.” He said, “I, being a student of comparative philology, must know all the languages, but I know only bit of Chinese. I can test whether you know Chinese or not, but I have no time to learn it thoroughly.” So he suggested that I study Chinese, and at that time I was serving in the telephones department. One day I read an advertisement in the newspaper that Chin-Bharat Sanskriti had decided to open a city branch in Calcutta, offering afternoon classes. The venue was the India National Hall, and I went along with my friends. This is where they were going to open the city branch of Chin-Bharat Sanskriti. A gentleman was speaking there in a very peculiar voice. He introduced himself as Satiranjan Sen. I asked him if he was going to be the teacher. He said he was and that other Chinese teachers would be coming from time to time. His was the first group that went to China from Santiniketan—Satiranjan Sen, Amitendranath Tagore, Venkatraman, and Dr. V. Kumar, who was the Chinese intelligence officer later on. He also served as an interpreter for Dr. Pannikar when he was Ambas-

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sador to China. He wrote a book titled Inside Two Chinas, because he saw the regimes; the KMT (Kuomintang: Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Communists. T. K. Shibrurkar also went with them to study the Chinese language. Satiranjan Sen was from the Kaviraj family. His topic was related to Chinese herbal medicine. So, after he returned from China, he started an organization in Thakurpukur near Jokha along with Dr. Chatarjee. At that time Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatarjee was president of both the India-China Friendship Association and the India-Soviet Friendship Association. He told the audience that the institute had Maha Upadhyay Shastri as its president and himself as its vice president. It was in 1956–1957. He asked us why we were going there to learn the Chinese language and what the purpose of learning Chinese was. One of my friends said that the purpose was “knowing about China, going to China.” Another friend, who was an amateur actor, said, “Sir, I want to become an ambassador.” That was the first and last day of his studies there. I studied there for two years. One year I took a certificate course, and the next year I did the advanced course. BANERJEE: What were the books you studied there? BHATTACHARYA: Very few books were available: Speak Chinese, Read Chinese. These were Yale University (USA) publications and some books published by Stanford University. Chinese books were not available at that time, and a dictionary also came much later. So this was the state of affairs at that time. I was in regular contact with Dr. Chatarjee, and he used to enquire about the progress of my studies. He took a keen interest in that. He said, “Bhattacharya, you should go to Calcutta University also.” Calcutta University at that time had a course on Chinese studies. One of the Chinese gentlemen there, Phang We Shun, was a very good teacher. He was a Chinese bureaucrat and came to Calcutta as manager of a branch of the Bank of China. Despite earning a hefty salary, he gave up his job and joined the primary school as a teacher. He later moved

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to Calcutta University and was a great scholar. He became a friend of mine. His wife was a doctor. I used to visit their house. I think that they had a mission to create some kind of desire among Indians to learn the Chinese language. I was doing the two things simultaneously. When the Chin Bharat Sanskriti moved to Calcutta, it was renamed Prachyavidya Vihar—The Institute for Oriental Studies. Prachyavidya means Sanskrit. Tibetans, Chinese, and Russians were taught there. We actually operationalized it. From fixing signboards to distributing pamphlets, everything was done by me personally. It was located in a Chinese Buddhist temple near the lake area. There were as many classrooms as there were in the Chinese Department, Tibetan Department, and so on. The great scholar Shiosi Nara was there. Now he is a professor and head of the department of comparative philology, Tokyo University. He used to take classes at the Golpark Institute of Culture in Calcutta. He joined us in the Japanese department. After that, Dr. Mukherjee told me to teach some classes. He said there was a shortage of teachers. I brought Tan We-shi here for Prachyavidya Vihar. Another gentleman, Raman M. Bose, used to be there and was my teacher. He asked me to create an interest in learning Chinese among the students. Earlier we used to bring the students and convince them to read Chinese so they could get a good job. So in that way I was very well known. One evening, with my little knowledge of Chinese, I was teaching a class. Suddenly the police van came, and I got nervous. Professor Chatarjee was along with them, and he introduced me. “He is our young teacher teaching Chinese.” They were Dr. Humayun Kabir, the minister in charge of education and culture, Mr. M. L. Bhattacharya, and other gentlemen, but I don’t want to mention their names. Initially I got frightened. He told me not to be nervous, but to go on teaching while they sat on the last bench. I was a bit shaky, but then I went on explaining things to the students. I was in any case popular among the students, so they were impressed and went away. In April 1959 or 1960, I don’t clearly remember, they asked me to go to Delhi to attend an interview.

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BANERJEE: You did not apply there? BHATTACHARYA: No. Then I went there; I had to join the department under the Home Ministry. After joining, they told me that I had to undergo some training. I told them that I was not a Chinese expert, but just a beginner. They said they were contemplating providing me with the best training. Then I took the charge. After a few years, they asked me to go to Mysore. BANERJEE: Was there an institute at that time in Mysore? BHATTACHARYA: It was going to start. So I was there initially for one year, and some people from Delhi also came there for one year. One great scholar from England, Mr. Sahou, also came there as an instructor. At the same time, the Sino-Indian border problem started. There were Indian instructors, and Mr. Sahou was the main Chinese instructor. Later I came to know from him that he is a born Chinese. He was born during the times of KMT and had experienced the war and recession. He suffered a lot in China. His education was in Michigan. He got a law degree from there. From there he went to Indonesia and was a great friend of Dr. Sukarno. Later on he became a British citizen. He was a scholar of both classical and modern Chinese. In Mysore there were so many students coming from the language branch. BANERJEE: At that time was there no school of foreign languages? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, it was there in Delhi. There they completed their certificate course and came to Mysore for advanced courses. BANERJEE: Who were the Indian instructors? BHATTACHARYA: One was Mr. Sharma, and the other was Mr. Gupta. BANERJEE: Was the training there in both classical and modern Chinese? BHATTACHARYA: When we went, there was no syllabus or anything. Everything was eventually formulated. Initially we had only newspapers as our reading material, all the Chinese and English newspapers.

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BANERJEE: Did you get the Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) during that time? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, it was there. BANERJEE: So, from where did you get the newspapers? BHATTACHARYA: Well, the department used to provide us with so many newspapers. Later on, books were available and then military documents too. BANERJEE: Sir, was it under the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs)? BHATTACHARYA: Yes, people from the army, navy, air force, foreign service probationers, and intelligence to local police also. Mr. Bhaskar Mukherjee came from the West Bengal police. That was the only government school for higher and technical studies in Chinese. At the end of the course we were asked to take the interpretership examination at Delhi under the School of Foreign Languages. BANERJEE: Who was teaching there? BHATTACHARYA: Mr. Shibrurkar was there, and some others were there. Initially, they did not allow me to take that examination, since I had not passed the preliminary and advanced courses at the School of Foreign Languages. At that time there were no BA or MA courses, but the fulltime, four-year interpreter’s course was considered the highest degree. I sent the syllabus and letter to Calcutta University. He strongly recommended my case to the principal, saying that this is a prestige issue for them. He said Mysore was a cool place and they would be having their examination in May in Delhi, which would be experiencing hot weather. He requested one extra month for acclimatization of his students in Delhi. I got one extra month to appear for the examination. I went to Delhi, studied day and night, and topped the list. That was in 1964 after the war. BANERJEE: Now I am asking you some personal things. When did you get married?

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BHATTACHARYA: Well, I got married in 1958, when I was in telephones. During my training, I took my family along. They were in Mysore and then in Delhi. BANERJEE: So tell us something about your family. BHATTACHARYA: My wife could not finish her studies since she had to accompany me to Mysore. So she was with me the whole time. My daughter and son were also there. My son was very young, but my daughter started her schooling in Mysore. Later I was transferred to Siliguri with this job. Actually, after we passed our courses, Dr. Sahou kept two people with him, Mr. Sukhranjan Maitra and me. Mr. Mathalingam was also retained for some special training in cursive writing that he specialized in. Bhattacharya was to take charge of this institute. He had so much faith in me. Ultimately, he died in Mysore. His family was in London, so his body was sent there. I went to Siliguri, and from Siliguri I went to Calcutta. So when I was in Calcutta in 1974, Visva Bharati advertised for the post of lecturer, and my department asked me to apply there. BANERJEE: So before going to Visva Bharati, please tell us something about your children. BHATTACHARYA: My daughter studied in Calcutta until higher secondary, and then she graduated from Visva Bharati University. She passed her MSc in physics from Shikha Bhavana, Visva Bharati. She was in the first group of trainees at the Indian Statistical Institute. After that she got married and went to work at the Asiatic Society. There she compiled a book titled Cultivation of Science under the guidance of Professor R. M. Sen. His research was in the history of science. After that she finished her PhD in atomic physics from Jadavpur University under Professor Arnab Ghose. Currently, she is head of the department of physics, Aashutosh College, Calcutta. Her papers are published at Harvard University.

Patricia Uberoi Interviewer: Dr. Reena Marwah Australian by birth, and now a naturalized Indian citizen, Patricia Uberoi was educated at the Australian National University (in East Asian languages and civilizations) and the Delhi School of Economics (PhD in sociology). She has taught sociology at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was reader and then professor of social change and development at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi (1993–2007) and honorary director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (2003–2008). In the last capacity, she was involved in the promotion of a number of track-two India-China initiatives and in overseeing a program of India-China comparative studies. Her research interests center on aspects of family, kinship, gender, and popular culture in respect to both India and China. Among her numerous publications, the most recent one is Freedom and Destiny: Gender, Family and Popular Culture in India (2006). From 1992 to 2006, she was coeditor of the prestigious sociology journal, Contributions to Indian Sociology. MARWAH: Could you please begin with your early education and family background? UBEROI: Yes, I will begin by telling you that I never actually had a job in Chinese studies. I was actually excluded from teaching courses on China at one point in time, and I decided to take another direction, so I went on to do a PhD in sociology. I have not taught or supervised students who were engaged in China studies, though I did do some teaching in Australia. In India, I sometimes taught a paper on Chinese studies, but I was a member of the sociology department and not considered as belonging to the China Study Group. My own studies were in Oriental studies of the old fashioned variety. Basically, my family was very much into education, and this is

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true of my immediate family as well. I am married to an Indian, and we have ensured that our children are well educated too. To tell you more specifically, I was educated in New South Wales, and I went to country high schools in different parts of Australia. My father was in the education sector; in fact he was a headmaster of a school. We traveled to different places as a result of his work. We were in Canberra after New South Wales. My father was a headmaster in a Protestant school in Canberra. The syllabus was the state syllabus, so we studied according to the curriculum. I was considered a very good student; of course, we had a lot of freedom, too, but I made sure that I did my homework, etc., very diligently. Later, after schooling, the honors part of my study was for four years, out of which the first three years provided insight into a wide array of subjects, but the fourth year was an honors syllabus and of a much higher standard. In schooling in those days, there were sort of grades, and we were supposed to do languages. I did two foreign languages and one paper on English. I was always in the three-language stream: I did French, English, and Chinese. In those country schools, education was taken very lightly, but I was one of the outstanding students. I did my homework meticulously, so my schooling was very good and comfortable. There was no undue pressure of the curriculum on the students, and it was quite effortlessly that I was usually at the top of the class. Sometimes boys would do well in mathematics and science. One never noticed that sort of competition, or even felt any challenge, so I was a bit confused as to what I would do. There were several options. Australia was very liberal with scholarships, especially at the university level. So I applied for one of those scholarships. In fact, in those days it was quite easy to get a fellowship too. I was determined then never to be a teacher. While looking through various university profiles, I decided to opt for the School of Oriental Studies. I was among one of the first few groups to pursue Oriental studies.

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My parents were a little hesitant, especially because they were not sure that I could get a job afterward. So they were concerned in their own way, and it was important that I could get a job. In fact, if they had their way, they would have liked me to pursue studies pertaining to the Western countries. MARWAH: When was that? UBEROI: That was in 1959. I decided to pursue Oriental studies. The course was a combination of the exotic and the appealing. In those days, it was necessary to study Japanese if one wanted to pursue Chinese studies. So I went in first for the general Bachelor of Arts. Everyone had to opt for a language for this, so I took Japanese; we had to have social science so I took history; and then we needed to have a math and logic paper. We also had to have a science paper, so this was the profile with which I began. I was interviewed before I was accepted as a student, and the director asked me whether I would be taking the Chinese language. And he told me that I would need to take Japanese as well, because it was important to know Japanese in order to undertake studies on China. Though I wanted to study history, he told me that I would have to opt for Oriental civilization. As I was very keen to join the course, I immediately accepted whichever basic courses he prescribed for me. In one blow, I changed from going in to study history to studying Oriental civilization. I was overwhelmed by his advice, and I could not refuse. So that is how I got into the China stream. The BA was a four-year program. In fact, the BA was at the semi-research level and is comparable to the Master’s degree that we have in India. MARWAH: Can you tell us more about your China studies program? UBEROI: On the first attempt, if I recall correctly, our ‘civilization’ course got stuck in the Tang dynasty, after which we studied other Oriental civilizations—Japan and India—rather in the same mode (respectively, G. B. Sansom’s Japan, originally published in 1931 but still, incidentally, on the syllabus of Delhi University’s East Asian studies department, and A. L. Basham’s The Wonder that was India). The next year we reached the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, where we lingered lovingly on multilingual chronicles:

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our teacher was the renowned Mongol expert, Igor de Rachewiltz. The following year, we made it to the Ming dynasty—the period specialization of our professor, Otto van der Sprenkel. Otto was researching Ming genealogies at the time and wanted to share every detail of his exciting discovery of female infanticide in the Ming period. Whenever Otto got on to his bailiwick (and it was quite routine), we would sigh with despair and put down our pens, knowing that we would eventually have to mug up the rest of the official course for ourselves in order to face the exams. A brief course in Chinese law, administered by Sybil van der Sprenkel, awakened an interest, which has been with me all my life: comparative jurisprudence is such a fascinating topic. Once again, we studied this exotic subject diligently, wondering what of use it could possibly be and longing to get to present times, so that we could figure out what Red China (or alternatively the Yellow Peril) of the Australian Cold War imagination was all about. Finally, gratefully, we entered the Qing (Manchu) period, and even made it to the 1911 revolution. It was during my fourth year that I took the fellowship during which I went to Hong Kong. At that time I researched a literary theme, taking a collection of poetry. It was also at that time that I was introduced to Rabindranath Tagore through a photograph, which was a real photograph of Tagore taken by the Chinese during his visit to China. Tagore appeared to be wearing Chinese dress, and he looked incredible in that dress. There was then a tendency for people to opt to undertake research on one poet or an author. Although I don’t have a poetic disposition, I managed to write a long essay on the Chinese poet that I studied. Indeed, looking back to our Australian National University (ANU) Oriental studies training, I shudder to reflect on my impudence in writing a twenty-thousand-word paper on the fourth/fifth century Chinese poet, Tao Yuanming, or a threehundred-page literary biography of the modern baihua (written vernacular Chinese) poet, Wen Yiduo, with no better training in literary studies than a very “Anglo” Australian high school education!

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I only stayed in Hong Kong for one year, because my future husband was pursuing his research in Australia, and we had decided to get married. I went back to Australia for a brief time, and I taught the third-year students of Oriental civilization. I made sure that I taught my students not only about the Qing and Ming Dynasties, but also about modern times. I would not do to them what had been done to us. Our teachers had only taught us what they were interested in about China. After that we came to India, and we went to Shimla to the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS). That was where my husband had been given a research fellowship. I was prepared to be just a wife and look after the children. However the director, who was a great intellectual, encouraged me to take on a project for the institute. He guided me in that direction when he heard that I had studied Oriental civilization. He asked me to take on a project on China’s Cultural Revolution and its impact. Although there were not many library resources, it was fortunate that I had a library of my own, which was a fairly wide collection of books comprising the social and cultural aspects of Chinese life. During my stay in Shimla, I published a few papers. MARWAH: Were there any anti-China feelings during the late 1960s? UBEROI: In the late ’60s, there was in fact a great interest in China, especially in Mao and the Cultural Revolution. There were civilizational and other theoretical issues that were discussed. MARWAH: Was China studies popular at that time? UBEROI: Although the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies had wonderful seminars and several discussion meetings on the development of China, there was not much scholarship on China. MARWAH: What about your husband’s educational background. UBEROI: My husband had been away from India for twenty years. Before he went to Australia, he studied at a private college in Punjab. That was in 1947. He thought he would never return to India, but then this opportunity

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at IIAS in Shimla changed that. So, coming back to where I was from, we moved to Delhi, where my husband joined Delhi University after a brief stay in Delhi. In those days, there was a coterie, a system in which jobs were generally obtained through the recommendation of an influential person. However, my husband was averse to such managing of positions and I, too, did not want him to knock at anyone’s door for me. Being largely domestic then, I wrote an article which was published in China Report. I joined a group that discussed issues related to China. The meetings began in the department, but later we moved to Sapru House, where we had the Wednesday meetings. Later we moved to the Institute of Chinese Studies in the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies on Rajpur Road. At some point, in retrospect, we realized that the problem with our fouryear apprenticeship in the Chinese language and civilization at ANU was not simply that we forever started at the beginning and shunned modern times, or that we could figure out Mencius but not the People’s Daily. The problem actually went much deeper. It was one of discipline—or rather, the lack thereof. What was the disciplinary perspective in Oriental studies, now discreetly renamed Asian studies? What were our methodologies for understanding China? Knowledge of the language, contemporary and classical, written and spoken, is critical, but it does not and cannot substitute for disciplinary training and a point of view. Most of us just drifted into doing Chinese literary, historical, or political studies, or what have you, without ever having had a basic foundation in literature, history, or politics. Translocating as a foreigner to India in the mid-1960s, I myself took up sociology and social anthropology, remaining thereafter—administratively speaking—always on the peripheries of the regular China studies establishments. Excepting, perhaps, on contemporary India-China relations, India’s best China scholarship continues to be done offshore.

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It took us time to recognize and verbalize this problem as the malaise that afflicts and threatens to cripple China studies in India. Meanwhile, many of us went to great lengths, through drastic career path changes, to acquire skills and establish our credibility in various social science/ humanities disciplines. MARWAH: When did you come to India, and how did you get involved in China studies here? UBEROI: As a temporary teacher in the same department shortly afterwards, I took the precaution of beginning with the Qing—with the Opium Wars in point of fact—and in that way, guided by Reischauer, Fairbank, and Craig’s newly published East Asia: The Modern Transformation, we clawed our way up to 1949. My Australian students were quite appreciative. However, when I taught some classes in Tan Chung’s Delhi University, the M.A. history course on modern China just a few years later, it came as a rude surprise to realize that the so-called Fairbank or Harvard approach was the object of impassioned critique—by Professor Tan himself, famously, and galleries of radicalized students, including Shahid Amin. These were the radicals of our times and somewhat under the influence of the Mao doctrine. Later, I started teaching at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Living in the north campus area and commuting to JNU everyday was quite time consuming, but I stayed there for eight years. It was at JNU that I included some teaching on China in the courses on cultural anthropology and social anthropology. I was then made an expert on China studies, especially because I was innovative with the curriculum, as well as getting into textbook writing. Later I got associated with women’s studies. Known as a sociologist, I was involved with the journal on sociology, and that became my main responsibility. MARWAH: When did you visit China for the first time? UBEROI: I went to China for the first time in 1997 for one month. Prior to that, I had been to Taiwan for some time. The world of China studies

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changed significantly over this period of time. It was more of an AngloAmerican sort of Oriental studies. In India, I did not have many opportunities to go to China, mainly because I got the cold shoulder and was looked at with suspicion. Being an Australian, living in India, and being interested in China was a mix that people really could not understand. Even when I was asked to take over as director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, the Australian factor was always there. However, one has to agree that the political scene in the post-liberalization phase underwent a change in perception. MARWAH: What memories do you have of your first trip? UBEROI: It was a wonderful experience. We were all well looked after and, as you know, it is customary for the Chinese to always take you around for sightseeing. I wanted to travel across China and do my own research. It was in the late 1990s that China reorganized their administrative divisions. However, it was difficult to move around on my own, so it was the Chinese who decided the places I was to see. MARWAH: What about your later trips? UBEROI: I got a Ford Foundation Project in the Yunnan province. I wrote an article after that trip, and it was published. That was when there were writings about peaceful cooperation and popular culture, which interested me. Later, my visits were for a week or so each in 2005 and 2006. Thus I can say that I am one of least traveled of scholars on China, partly because I was never recognized as a real China expert, and partly because of my own personal reasons. MARWAH: What are your views about China scholarship in India? UBEROI: For fourteen years I taught sociology and social anthropology. My interest in China had continued ever since my university days and I believe that in India there is very little scholarship on China. There are no area studies, and it is more in the Western countries that China has been studied.

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MARWAH: Do you think the Chinese are interested in studying about India? UBEROI: In my opinion, the Chinese are more interested in India, and they have always studied us more deeply. They are particularly interested in assessing comparative development. In our country, there is a hierarchy of China scholars, and there are others who are greater experts compared to me. Thus, on current issues, it would be useful to speak to others. MARWAH: As a well-known sociologist, what is your opinion of the structure of China studies in India? UBEROI: Well, from a sociologist’s perspective, this is what I can say: My disciplinary perspective as a sociologist (in India, sociology is usually understood to embrace also social and cultural anthropology) provides another standpoint from which to look at the enterprise of China studies in the Indian milieu. One of the activities that I have recently engaged in is a biographical history of sociology/anthropology in India—an examination of the lives and careers of a number of founders of the discipline through the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods. First—and the practice of anthropology throws this issue into relief—one is reminded that Indians do not seem to have a self-conscious tradition of studying societies other than their own excepting, in a way, Europe/ America, which remain the implicit, if not explicit, mirror for self-reflection. In India, there has been very little scholarly interest in other societies in Asia, let alone elsewhere in the world—Africa, Central or South America, or the Pacific. From this perspective, brief moments of pan-Asianism command special attention. For instance, early twentieth-century nationalism had a panAsian dimension, as did Tagore’s universalist experiment at Santiniketan, both ultimately foundering on the reality of Japanese aggression on mainland Asia. More recently, the 1950s saw the brief euphoria of Bandung, soon enough compromised by the eruption of Sino-Indian hostilities. There has also been the vision of a Greater India, extending its culture,

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via Hinduism and Buddhism, to East and Southeast Asia. And nowadays one observes that the rise of India, following on the rise of China and East Asia, has generated its own little research industry in India, China, and elsewhere. The general lack of interest in studying other, including Asian, societies has given rise to a great deal of soul searching on the part of Indian sociologists of an anthropological persuasion, for it is anthropology’s selfdefining principle that one must understand the “other” in order to know oneself (or to understand human society). On the other hand, Indian sociology (like Chinese sociology on its part) has seen that its relevance in response to the immediate problems of Indian society—and all comparative reflection, such as it is—is mediated through the prism of the Western social science theory of the day. Almost no one, since the initial enthusiasm for US-style area studies after wars with China and Pakistan, thinks it is important to invest in studies of other societies. Shamefully, the most enabling programs of South-South academic collaboration have been facilitated by non-South agencies (The Netherlands, Japan, the Asian Scholarship Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc.). Second, it is a matter of remark how little we in India care for preserving the materials of our institutional history. With a few exceptions, such as the filial retrieval of the story of Cheena Bhavan (China Studies Center), Santiniketan, by Professor Tan Chung, there are no records, no archives, no oral histories, no repositories for letters, field notes, photographs, etc., to mark the trail of Indian China studies. Indeed, listening to V. P. Dutt at the China Studies Workshop, one was reminded of how little one knows of the institutional history of area studies programs in India, altogether a rather sorry story whose details will soon enough be lost to history. This brings us to a third reflection, also voiced from the perspective of China studies in the present forum. Perhaps much more than others in the social sciences, Indian sociologists/anthropologists are intermittently challenged to develop an independent (i.e., non-Western, so-called indigenous) social science. Yet, notwithstanding this concern for an independent

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point of view, they must reconcile themselves to the fact that professional recognition is dependent on conforming to global paradigms. In the international system of knowledge, Indian social scientists remain credible informants on their own society, but can rarely stake claim to an independent role as producers of theory, innovators in methodology, or interpreters of other, non-South Asian cultures. (Subaltern studies may be a possible exception here.) Similarly, China scholars in India often claim to seek an independent point of view, whether from the narrow perspective of Indian strategic and security objectives, or from a broader civilizational perspective in dialogue with other Asian traditions. However, as already observed, while a number of Indian scholars have won global recognition as commentators on India-China relations, few— except those already assimilated to the Western academy—have achieved recognition as China scholars per se. In any case, limited access to Chinese materials and, for the most part, inadequate command of the language mean that knowledge of China continues to be filtered through Western, primarily US, sources. Fourth, one might observe that Indian sociologists/anthropologists have continually reflected on the problem of their relationship to the state. On the one hand there is a critical stream within sociology that attributes to the state responsibility for the “development of underdevelopment” within a world system of dependency. It is the job of the conscientious sociologist to tear away the veil of self-deception to reveal how power operates to shape knowledge, both globally and locally. On the other hand, some sociologists see it as their prime duty to focus on immediate social problems, and to do so in a way that yields practical policy recommendations. Scholarship for the sake of scholarship, not with long-term but rather short-term objectives and outcomes, cuts little ice with potential sponsors—whether government, non-government, or international agencies. As a result, research orientations are unrepentantly fashion driven. Worse

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still, there is a distinct danger that the researcher may end up forever dancing to the official tune—and out of step at that. (Ravni Thakur has commented here on a similar dilemma for Chinese social science.) So, while one realizes that independence can easily become an excuse for ivory-tower isolationism, or plain laziness, knee-jerk responses to issues of immediate public concern may yield only superficial and media-driven scholarship: the Spotlight Professors Syndrome, we used to call it in the days when All India Radio was our sole entertainment. Sociologists are routinely called upon to comment on any and all social issues (especially those that defy the rational analysis of economists and political scientists). Similarly, China studies scholars become instant experts on any and all aspects of China’s politics, society, culture, and international relations. This is something quite strange to me, and I feel that there needs to be a much greater, in-depth study. As a final point of reflection derived from my long innings as a teacher of sociology and editor of one of India’s foremost sociological journals (Contributions to Indian Sociology), I would like to revert to the question of discipline raised earlier. Every research project requires a theoretical anchorage and methodological self-consciousness, but all too often this is substituted by what passes as common sense, whether the common sense of everyday experience or the common sense of received, everyday knowledge. Several of the subfields I have worked in, especially those at the disciplinary margins—sociology of the family, of women, of literature, of cinema, of popular arts, etc. —seem to attract a sort of arrogant amateurism, where the authenticity of personal experience and common sense smother disciplinary rigor. Similarly, in the China studies field, one finds research students writing dissertations on social science themes in China, such as urbanization, industrialization, migration, gender, the family, literary movements, etc., with almost no critical awareness of the comparative or theoretical dimensions of their work. In the old Oriental studies model, familiarity with Chinese language sources was effectively the substitute for a social or

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human sciences disciplinary training. Regrettably, many China studies researchers in India lack even the fig leaf of language competence. MARWAH: What is your opinion about the Organization of China Studies? Is it more language or discipline based in India? UBEROI: There is no doubt a tension between language-based area studies and social/human science disciplines. There can be no China studies of global credibility without language competence and access to Chinese materials. But, as already observed, language competence, and even wider acquaintance with Chinese history, culture, and civilization, does not of itself ensure adequate analytical rigor. The question is how to organize China studies to create maximum synergy between language and social/human sciences competence. At present, several models coexist and interpenetrate. There are language study centers/courses, which, by unquestioned osmosis, tend to take on board literary and cultural studies (and even, to some extent, the social sciences). And there are area studies centers, where language may also be taught, but where language skills may or may not be a formal requirement for research students at different levels. There was also a program, almost stillborn in the late 1960s/early 1970s, where faculty with area studies training (the areas being China, Pakistan, and Northeast India) were to be recruited to teach in discipline departments. Each of these models has its problems. Here I will merely flag those issues that previous contributions to this forum have already addressed before offering a further reflection of my own, based on my experience with another type of interdisciplinary activity relatively newly introduced into the Indian university and research institutes’ systems: women’s studies. First, for those students who want merely to learn the language with an eye on employment, purpose-specific diploma and certificate courses should be adequate, and may even be more efficient than the pretense of a university liberal arts degree. But, given the few native Chinese speakers employed in Indian educational institutions, such basic training needs

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to be supported and supplemented by a sojourn in China or a Chinesespeaking location. To some extent, the expansion of existing fellowship schemes, and the newly established Chinese “soft-power” Confucius Institutes will take care of this (though there will always be a case to be made for more and more of the same), and in any case many Indians are now finding their way to China and becoming proficient in the language on their own initiative. Clearly, there is also a need to support gifted language students in top-quality interpretation courses: the want of good interpreters is pathetically evident in dealings with the Chinese at all levels and in all fields. India seems to be merely waiting for the Chinese to improve all the levels and fields. It is quite unfortunate that India seems to be merely waiting for the Chinese to improve their linguistic skills, which they are doing with typical singlemindedness, rather than build up an adequate body of trained Chinese language translators and interpreters in this country. Important though Chinese language training is, that in itself does not guarantee analytical skills and research competence. This includes the field of literary research, which appears to be a natural extension of university-level language courses that typically include the study of selected literary texts. While many talented individuals in India, as elsewhere, succeed in re-educating themselves, others appear oblivious to the challenge. From the perspective of producing solid researchers in the social sciences, it is probably a more productive option to give language training to social science graduates than to try and turn language students into social scientists. The only trouble seems to be that there are not many volunteers among potential and qualified social science researchers willing to forsake lucrative careers and immediate rewards to invest years of hard work in Chinese language training. Clearly, they need to be offered adequate incentives and support, with an eye to long-term capacity building in China studies.

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MARWAH: What about the Organization of China Studies? UBEROI: The creation of separate area studies centers (with or without built-in language courses) is another model, well established throughout the world. Such centers are typically, though not invariably, interdisciplinary. And they have their advantages. At the same time, they are vulnerable to the waxing and waning of funding support. Better students continue to prefer to remain in their discipline departments, with an eye on employment prospects, and faculty feel isolated from their disciplinary moorings. Several articles in this forum expand on these issues. Besides the language studies and the area studies models, a third model for the development of China studies is one in which faculty administer China-related courses in their own discipline departments. (The skeletal remains of such a policy are still to be found in the courses on Chinese society, history, and politics in the relevant departments of Delhi University.) While students thereby get their qualifications in a basic discipline, which is an advantage, the critical mass of faculty necessary for making a difference and consolidating a distinctive program of research cannot be achieved. In many places, coordinating, or umbrella, centers are therefore added and drawn together with personnel with area studies competence scattered through different departments and institutions of the university. In India, over the years, there has been quite a proliferation of interdisciplinary centers and institutes in response to local or individual efforts, or top-down initiatives to promote specific thrust areas of teaching and research. Some of these, no doubt, are created as personal fiefdoms or ambitious satraps. Many are worthy attempts to circumvent the rigidities of university bureaucracies and the well-entrenched prejudices of geriatric boards of studies. The initiative I know best in this regard is the women’s studies program, which has grown exponentially since the mid-1980s. Though not an area studies program like China studies, the dilemma is similar. Should women’s studies be integrated into the disciplinary structure of the univer-

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sity so that the students of many disciplines may have the option of doing some women’s studies papers? How can this process be brought about, given the premium on departmental autonomy within university setups, and how can the separate women’s studies enterprises, fragmented through different departments, be consolidated to represent a definite pedagogic thrust? Or should women’s studies be made into a separate, interdisciplinary center and, if so, should its functions be primarily teaching, research, or networking among different component units? If the center is to undertake teaching, or even give research degrees, do students emerge with market-friendly qualifications? Can teachers/researchers in such centers maintain their disciplinary moorings and reputations, or do they get consigned to the disciplinary margins in consequence, never to return to the mainstream? Unfortunately, whether women’s studies or China studies, it is not possible to start with a blank slate. One has to carry the weight of entrenched interests, of personal antipathies and jealousies, and of institutional legacies. Sometimes it seems that the only thing to do in the face of bureaucratic inertia is to set up yet another specialized center with an eye-catching and contemporary title (and of course a large private benefaction)—but that is scarcely the answer! On the whole, the Indian academic scene remains hostile to cross-disciplinary activity, not least because of considerations of the eventual employability of graduates. But there are successes, too. From the outset, the Jawaharlal Nehru University had a commitment of interdisciplinary studies, allowing students to opt for a certain number of courses in other centers, but over the years this commitment seems to have been constrained by inter-center rivalries and turf wars. There are also a number of new experiments currently underway that deserve both encouragement and critical appraisal. The new Bachelor of Arts (BA) syllabus of Delhi University (involving gender/environment/human rights cross-disciplinary courses) is a good example. Is there potential of the same kind for Asian studies, one wonders? And if so, who is to take the lead?

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MARWAH: Is there a role for the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) in promoting credible scholarship on China in India and providing inputs to policy making at the governmental level? UBEROI: To say so, one might offer a perspective on behalf of the Institute of Chinese Studies, an interdisciplinary network of scholars of China and East Asia from universities and research institutes in the Delhi area. Once a few lonely souls “whistling in the dark” to keep interest in China and an alternative politics alive, the relatively oppositional and critical role of the ICS in its earlier days has now been overtaken by events: the new dynamism of India-China relations, and the simultaneous rise of China and India in global consciousness. China studies in the era of neglect and indifference is and will be different from China studies in the new era. And we will have to learn to live with the wages of success, public visibility, and high expectations. This is a time for rethinking our research programs, our institutional structure, our agenda, our relationship with government, etc., in light of the challenges mentioned above and addressed in several of the contributions to this forum. In fact, although I am the director of the institute, it is rarely that we are ever consulted by the government or asked to express our opinions on various issues. In general, I believe that the ICS should recognize and try to build on its assets; play an advocacy role in devising institutional means to correct current deficiencies in Indian China studies; seek to strengthen its facilitating role in supporting and expanding China studies throughout the country; and avoid unnecessary duplication of the work done by other institutions. Some brief explanatory comments are called for by way of conclusion and self-reflection. First, we should recognize that ICS is privileged to embrace a wide range of talent across several social and human science disciplines. From a national perspective, two policy-related foci in China studies are destined to require the attention of specialists already involved. I am suggesting

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that, as a group, our multidisciplinary character and China studies background can afford a more nuanced, indeed civilizational, perspective on Chinese developments than conventional security/strategic or economic studies. All too often we find economists treating China as just another developing country, with a phenomenal record of economic growth and social development, and advising emulation of the same, with minimal awareness of the particularities of the Chinese political system and party organization, or strategic experts who count China as just another Big Power with specific military capabilities, without cognizance of the structure of party/army/government relations in the Chinese context. The “Bamboo Curtain” is more permeable than before, but, compared to India, for instance, China studies in any discipline must be informed by a broader consciousness of China’s history, political system, social organization, and culture. A multidisciplinary dialogue is crucial for this. There are lessons to be learnt both ways in the India-China comparison, and certainly comparison needs to go beyond the cross-tabulation of trade and development indices, to consider more complex questions of the nature of the state, state-civil society relations, social and cultural policy, etc. In terms of the themes of my personal research—sociology of family, marriage, gender relations, etc.—I fully believe that the comparative study of India and China can strengthen our own understanding of Indian society, expanding our mental horizons beyond the Indian subcontinent to subvert the Western model as our default “Other.” There is another area that critically requires advocacy, namely, the provision of opportunities for conducting relatively long-term fieldwork and library-based research work in China. While well-qualified language students are often able to avail of fellowships for language studies in China, very few social scientists, junior or senior level, are able to spend extended periods in the field. This lack has serious consequences for the credibility of China studies research undertaken in this country. Many of the problems with Indian China studies have been discussed before, at great length, in several different contexts, and with equal history

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of Indian sociology and anthropology; one might wonder whether it is necessary to flog the same old horse, again and again, generation after generation. This can lead us to the following questions. Why is it that every cohort begins again from the beginning, as though previous scholars had never reflected on these issues, and in similar terms? Why is our record not cumulative? Are we completely lacking in institutional memory? Since there is broad general agreement on the problems, why is there so little follow-through? Are the problems so fundamentally intransigent that the most one can hope for is a swinging pendulum to correct and then recorrect imbalances, or the infinite multiplication of remedial measures and institutions? Or are we, as one skeptic recently remarked, so collectively self-absorbed that we fail to see the whole picture in which, to be honest, China studies is the most pampered of all the area studies programs in India in terms of government encouragement, initially, and now private sector and international agency support? Despite the appearance of sameness, perhaps there are indications of a changing mindset. If the China studies of the 1960s and 1970s were driven by security concerns as the bottom line, and China studies by public preoccupation with the race of the hare and the tortoise, the competition of dragon and elephant, or whether India can catch up, developmentally speaking, with China, the present juncture opens a new phase. The earlier preoccupations continue, of course. Nonetheless, recognition is slowly gaining ground that comparative studies of India and China not only have the potential to transform the academic disciplines we practice, but also have relevance on a global stage where the rise of China and India— whether in competition or collaboration—has a bearing on human security worldwide. Thanks and that will be all. MARWAH: Thank you, Professor Patricia, for your very valuable time and for your kind cooperation.

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Index

Africa, 254, 458, 532, 563, 579, 621 Aksai Chin, 473, 500, 552, 555 All India Radio (AIR), 81, 301, 304, 447, 475, 478, 484, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 513, 624 America, 11, 194, 343, 408, 421, 426, 441, 470, 521, 574, 578, 582, 591, 600, 601, 621 Anhui Province, 99 Arunachal Pradesh, 137, 138, 198, 202, 295, 338, 346 Asia, 199, 229, 232, 249, 263, 310, 345, 348, 349, 360, 581, 590, 595, 621 Assam, 85, 260, 466, 469, 470, 471, 587, 593 Australia, 11, 12, 239, 399, 480, 613, 614, 616, 617, 619 Austria, 421, 547 Bagchi, Probodh C., 51–52, 61, 74, 126, 326, 327, 331, 332, 333, 348, 349, 395, 396, 466, 568, 577, 579 Banaras, 65, 80, 83, 88, 99, 127, 385, 399, 400, 411, 412, 422, 409, 443, 470, 477, 484 Bandung, 593, 295, 306, 548, 553, 576, 621 Bangalore, 86, 153, 154 Bangkok, 359, 371 Bangladesh, 132, 185, 206, 216, 237, 241, 495, 560 Bay of Bengal, 452 Beida. See Peking University.

Beijing, 30, 79, 137, 216, 241, 242, 254, 262, 295, 315, 330, 334, 339, 346, 354, 356, 357, 358, 360, 366, 382, 386, 414, 428, 430, 441, 450, 462, 463, 490, 496, 500, 507, 509, 533, 546, 549, 553, 554, 555, 561, 569, 571, 572, 573, 577, 579. See also Peking University Bengal, 326, 447, 505, 579, 595 Berkeley, 374, 375, 376, 377, 386, 446 Berlin, 219 Bhutan, 362, 453 Bodhgaya, 127, 333, 411, 577 Bombay, 176, 242, 353, 355, 454, 484, 529, 540, 547 Bonn, 453 border clash (1962), 13, 18, 19, 20, 34, 75, 148, 159, 192, 196, 240, 300, 310, 351, 434, 503, 506, 574, 575 Bowbazar High School, 395 Buddha, 126, 128, 279, 280, 296, 349, 396–397, 402–403, 407–410, 417, 418, 420, 423, 568, 586, 594 Burma, 195, 328, 482, 594 Calcutta, 37, 176, 207, 208, 211, 214, 215, 219, 220, 232, 263, 338, 344, 386, 415, 471, 481, 489, 495, 499, 517, 565, 566, 572, 577, 586, 591, 595, 600, 602 Cambodia, 259, 535, 536, 539, 589

648

On China By India

Cambridge, 182, 227–231, 233, 242, 546, 549, 551, 555, 591 Canada, 239, 364, 366 Canton, 262, 431, 447, 458, 496, 506, 509, 556, 566, 567, 597 Ceylon, 589, 594 Chartarjee, Suniti Kumar, 209, 210, 211, 215, 218, 497 Cheena Bhavan, 18, 37, 38, 40, 47-49, 51, 54, 56, 57, 65, 73, 74, 93, 169, 218, 219, 285, 327–329, 331, 333, 334, 339-342, 344, 346, 347, 390, 399, 400, 401, 410–415, 486, 495, 498, 500, 506, 566, 568, 5715755, 578–581, 588–590, 592, 596, 597, 622 Chengdu, 262, 386 Chennai, 38, 85, 100, 202, 227, 232, 547 Chiang Kai-shek, 55, 146, 147, 195, 431, 499, 553, 556, 566, 567, 569, 574 Chicago, 381 China, 15, 61, 88, 98, 101, 112, 123, 169, 193, 194, 196, 201, 205, 229, 238, 251, 259, 267, 277–278, 307, 320, 322, 339, 342, 349, 368, 433–435, 442, 451, 455, 474, 483, 485–486, 491, 495, 505, 508, 509, 512, 552, 566, 577, 593, 601, 617 China: agriculture in, 19, 113, 187, 519, 528 China and the world, 39, 173, 197, 199, 202, 231, 298, 305, 317, 321, 345, 416, 459, 482, 509, 533, 541, 557 China as a model, 111 China as aggressor, 501 China as atomic power, 590

China as business ally, 467 China as civilization, 1, 14, 17, 31, 34, 70, 71, 75, 78, 83, 94, 123, 124, 263, 323, 341, 348, 350, 578, 593, 600, 623 China as culture, 325, 395 China as developing country, 630 China as great power, 539, 591 China as India’s partner, 248 China as India’s rival, 338, 419, 489, 500, 511 China as language studies, 37 China as nation state, 1, 17, 31, 75, 78, 94, 110, 118, 124, 173, 263, 265, 275, 284 China as neighbor, 545 China as rising power, 199 China as subject of study, 37, 210. See also China studies China as world’s factory, 245 China and BCIM initiative, 241 China and border dispute, 75, 503 China and Buddhism, 61, 67, 223, 244, 287–288, 404, 410, 413, 414, 423, 482 China: business with, 34, 85, 282 China and Cheena Bhavan, 572 China: collectivism in, 357, 361 China compared with India, 246, 540, 543, 630 China compared with past China, 359 China compared with Taiwan, 403 China and democracy, 248, 384, 391, 514, 515 China: development of, 68, 95–96, 100, 101, 102, 117, 251, 358, 369, 437, 511, 525, 535 China: enterprises in, 96, 236 China: exchanges with, 79, 80, 83 China: field research in, 110, 488

Index China: image of, 1, 13, 59, 263, 289, 556, 559 China: Indian studies in, 241, 386 China and Indira Gandhi, 318 China: interest in, 27, 235, 267, 551 China and languages, 62, 315, 328, 529 China and modernization, 246, 353, 423 China and Nehru, 183, 193, 310, 430, 553 China: policy and politics in, 67, 99, 115, 165, 254, 268, 294, 332, 335, 381, 385, 431, 466, 528, 547, 564, 590 China: publication on, 88, 201, 295, 304, 498, 532, 596 China: religion in, 348, 584 China: rise of, 34, 41, 103, 109, 244, 267, 387, 439, 599, 600, 622, 629, 631 China and scholarship, 29, 76, 186, 194, 329, 372, 421, 480, 537, 543, 554, 624 China: teaching on, 154, 313, 613, 619 China and Tibet, 128, 129, 136, 345 China: transformation of, 112, 561 China: travel to, 239, 539, 586 China: viewed by India, 198, 240, 510, 560, 589 China:visit to, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 232, 233, 234, 261, 298, 316, 333, 340, 354, 355, 357, 381, 441, 453, 477, 559, 560, 565 China: war with, 448, 506 China: water in, 526, 529, 537, 544, 595, 522 China Centrism, 290, 291. See also Sino-centrism

649 China Report, 38, 40, 258, 259, 260, 268, 343, 344, 377, 378, 379, 447, 448, 452, 457, 464, 481, 608, 609, 618 China studies, 12, 184, 187, 193, 194, 197, 199, 255, 264, 307, 440, 549 China studies as area studies, 13, 37, 71, 76, 93, 94, 353, 622, 625 China studies as discipline, 72 78 387 China studies as language studies, 16, 51, 71, 76, 93, 94, 344, 485, 491, 625 China studies as security studies, 93, 103, 265–266 China studies as specialization, 84 China studies and Bagchi, 328 China studies: Buddhism in, 59 China studies: capacity of, 626 China studies and China, 223, 269, 271 China studies: China-centrism in 6, 9 China studies and Christianity, 13 China studies: conditions in, 3, 42, 89, 94, 242, 322, 324, 516 China studies and cultural studies, 2, 7–8 China studies and development, 109, 116 China studies: elsewhere, 5, 11, 36, 89, 163, 220, 249, 309, 412, 562, 592 China studies: Euro-centrism in, 4–5, 6, 9 China studies: evolution, 12, 47, 93, 370, 533 China studies and field research, 17 China studies: future of, 267, 490, 537, 598

650

On China By India

China studies and identity, 3, 4, 7, 9–10 China studies in Delhi University, 323 China studies in India, 13–14, 28–29, 37, 43, 44, 170, 241, 245, 293, 315, 436, 439, 592 China studies in JNU, 77, 323 China studies in Mumbai, 66 China studies and India foreign policy, 150 China studies: oral history of, 42 China studies: passion of, 41, 547 China studies and rise of China, 10, 13 China studies: Sino-India relations, 15 China studies and social science, 2, 13, 31, 389, 390 China studies and Tibet, 17 China studies: training in, 114, 300, 315, 343, 619 China studies: transformation of, 41, 321, 388, 515 China studies and TVEs, 102 China Study Group (CSG), 40–41, 78, 79, 168, 169, 184-5, 613 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 97, 113, 146, 162, 164, 165, 261, 271, 334, 344, 346, 348, 466, 512, 514, 556, 564 Chinese Nationalist Party, 210. See also Kuomintang Colombo, 341, 556 Confucianism, 49, 59, 67, 84, 246, 263, 265, 266, 284, 290, 294, 420, 511, 562 Confucius, 246, 247, 248, 323, 396, 417, 429, 471, 568

Cultural Revolution, 14, 188, 192, 201, 229, 231, 255–256, 361, 374, 375, 376, 387, 391, 392, 414, 448, 450, 466, 472, 510, 548, 552, 556, 557, 617 Dalai Lama, 20, 126, 128, 130, 135-6, 138-9, 165, 220, 244, 337–338, 412, 449, 492, 555, 594 Darjeeling, 127, 448 Delhi University, 184, 185, 256, 268, 291, 300, 301, 313, 314, 319, 321, 322, 324, 334, 344, 351, 352, 353, 370, 371, 374, 375, 377, 378, 385, 409, 441, 443, 447, 457, 463, 475, 476, 476, 477, 479, 484, 485, 488, 489, 491, 508, 511, 580, 603, 615, 619, 627, 628 Delhi-centrism, 88–89, 103, 466 Deng Xiaoping 96, 97, 102, 310, 316, 317, 343, 431, 432, 441, 450, 455, 458, 460, 509, 512, 515, 547, 548, 559 Deshingkar, Giri, 75, 78, 173, 261, 321, 379, 447, 607, 608 Dharamsala, 127, 130 Diamond Harbor, 262, 472 Dunhuang, 587 Dutt, Subimal, 151, 497, 498, 502 Dutt, V. P., 75, 173, 184, 202, 254, 256, 257, 334, 377, 378, 385, 476, 484, 489, 508, 513, 588, 606, 622 East Asia, 66, 154, 164, 249, 273, 349, 622, 629 England, 212, 228, 242, 591 Ethiopia, 535, 536 Euro-centrism, 86, 87, 101 Europe, 11, 89, 198, 291, 321, 342, 348, 426, 441, 581, 621

Index Fa Xian, 274, 276, 483, 562, 585, 585, 587 Fairbank, John King, 194, 300, 307–308, 376, 619 Ford Foundation, 73, 184, 191, 197, 264, 321, 374, 380, 489, 620, 622 France, 89, 220, 398, 442, 478, 568, 576, 577 Gandhi, Mahatma, 147, 189, 248, 278, 279, 280, 398, 433, 436, 439, 556, 588 Gandhi, Rajiv, 136, 199, 218, 317, 320, 459, 460, 461, 552, 555, 559, 560 Gandhi, Shrimati Indira, 218, 283, 316, 318, 454, 476, 509, 563 Ganges region, 133, 483, 595 Gansu Province, 354 Geneva, 148, 219, 220, 557 Germany, 11, 398, 399, 400, 406, 409, 412, 413, 418, 420, 422, 426, 427, 558, 588 Great Leap Forward, 34, 113, 299, 501 Great Wall, 246, 285, 288, 294, 356 Guangzhou, 277, 356, 357, 393 Guilin, 28, 30, 235 Guizhou, 235 Guomindang, 146, 147. See also Kuomintang Hangzhou, 68, 356, 357, 393, 479 Hanoi, 51 Hebei Province, 521, 538 Henan Province, 357, 361, 521, 538 Himalaya, 20, 76, 124, 126, 419, 492, 541, 562, 595 Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai, 208, 310, 348, 420, 547, 555, 575

651 Hong Kong, 11, 85, 148, 166, 232, 239, 257, 259, 260, 308, 314, 315, 337, 338, 340, 380, 381, 393, 406, 446, 447, 451, 458, 474, 475, 476, 477, 488, 496, 504, 507, 546, 552, 566, 571, 577, 616, 617 Hubei Province, 521, 538 Hunan Province, 354, 567 India, 1, 11, 12, 15, 39, 42, 61, 75, 77, 83, 87, 89, 101, 103, 146–147, 183, 192, 238, 241, 249, 259, 277-8, 310, 323, 325, 343, 370, 349, 356, 358, 403, 408, 420, 447, 456, 483, 503, 544, 561–562, 558, 563, 581, 585, 587, 591, 595, 599 India: academics in, 34, 436, 513, 615, 627 India: agriculture in, 19, 113 India: anti-China in, 348 India as China’s neighbor, 89, 90, 123, 280, 351 India as civilization, 14, 15, 43 India as land of Buddha, 420 India as nation state, 123, 265 India as residence, 620 India as superpower, 290 India and Buddhism, 50, 64, 67, 400, 402, 411, 422 India and China, 28, 33, 93, 102, 132, 192, 200, 221, 240, 280, 416, 520 India: China policy of, 15, 150, 160, 186, 257 India: China studies in, 32–33, 78, 159, 308, 314, 322, 344, 620–621 India: China’s border with, 434, 464 India: China’s exchange with, 88, 488, 529

652

On China By India

India: Chinese studies in, 68, 75, 215 India compared with China, 95, 110, 115, 356, 435, 521, 532 India: in conflict with China, 309, 310, 337, 442, 503 India and Dalai Lama, 449, 555 India: democracy in, 384, 391 India and development, 103, 109–110, 162, 237, 369, 456, 519, 525, 541 India: geography of, 52, 541 India: government of, 218, 516 India: history of, 50, 277, 349 India and language, 35, 62, 571, 597 India and Pakistan, 305, 452 India: poverty in, 95, 540 India: rise of, 244, 387, 629, 631 India: scholarship in, 119, 568 India: Sinology in, 51, 74 India: social science in, 111, 537, 543 India and sugar, 277–278 India and Taiwan, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 407, 409 India and Tibet, 125, 128, 134, 140 India: Tibetans in, 500, 594 India: unemployment in, 100–101 India: visit to, 282, 454, 539 India-centrism, 86 India-China relations, 49, 55, 77, 78, 79, 85, 93, 130, 133, 154, 165, 186, 222, 253, 270, 281, 295, 304, 310, 319, 329, 348, 349, 384, 419, 452, 479, 482, 492, 511, 552, 618, 623, 629 Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), 153, 169, 170, 216, 316, 341, 356, 368, 381, 382, 383, 515

Indian School of International Studies (ISIS), 39, 73, 75, 253–255, 300, 301, 308, 312, 319 Indo-centrism, 101 Indonesia, 232, 278, 280, 281 Inner Mongolia, 243, 528 Inner Tibet, 129 Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), 20, 38, 80, 152, 162–168, 170, 172, 184, 272, 297, 380, 612 Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), 20, 37, 38–39, 41, 78, 79, 80, 73, 130, 132, 162, 163, 167, 168, 242, 258, 259, 264, 265, 371, 379, 380, 381, 386, 457, 464, 466, 474, 489, 618, 629 Jaipur, 101 Jakarta, 281 Japan, 5, 11, 12, 61, 79, 148, 153, 154, 166, 194, 217, 249, 254, 259, 273, 295, 323, 349, 353, 382, 389, 404, 454, 503, 558, 562, 589, 590, 592, 600, 615, 622 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), 37, 39, 40, 73, 75, 76, 79, 81, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 127, 154, 168, 169, 185, 219, 256, 260, 265, 266, 314, 319, 328, 334, 344, 370, 371, 377, 378, 388, 390, 436–437, 441, 443, 463, 477, 479, 481, 484, 485, 486, 491, 493, 507, 511, 513, 604, 619 Kala Bhavan, 335 Kashmir, 66, 127, 356, 575, 587, 600 Kolkata, 37, 47, 101, 127. See also Calcutta Kong Zi, 334. See also Confucius

Index Korea, 11, 61, 154, 166, 202, 249, 259, 389, 442, 508, 562 Kowloon, 496 Kunming, 57, 165, 264, 380, 386, 479, 575 Kuomintang, 72, 145, 210, 212, 229, 428, 441, 567 Lake Mansarovar, 234, 243 Lhasa, 129, 285, 448 London, 214, 219, 228, 232, 245, 273, 285, 393 Madras, 38, 176 Malaysia, 11, 232 Mao, Zedong, 109, 147, 186, 188, 189, 190, 196, 230, 247, 274, 278, 286, 288, 304–305, 311–312, 339, 354, 376, 381, 391, 392, 431–4333, 436, 441, 466, 486, 489, 499, 501, 502, 509, 510, 513, 547, 548, 549, 550, 553, 554, 556-8, 562, 569, 570, 576, 617 McMahon Line, 129, 202, 346, 473, 500, 555 Michigan, 212, 574, 578, 580, 582 Mohanty, Manoranjan, 73-75, 78, 80, 98, 117, 130, 173, 258, 321, 484, 489, 581, 607, 608 Mondal, Bhakti Bhushan, 222 Mongolia, 11, 128, 129, 235, 249, 250, 345 Moscow, 198, 228, 458, 555, 588 Mumbai, 66 Myanmar, 237, 241, 249, 557 Nalanda, 64, 65, 127, 409, 411, 415, 585 Nanjing, 48, 216, 222, 338, 414, 569 Needham, Joseph, 5, 229, 230, 231, 278, 353

653 Nehru, Jawaharlal 73, 75, 126, 130, 135, 176, 182, 183, 187, 193, 195, 196, 199, 257, 280, 286, 287, 298, 300, 302, 306, 309, 311, 430, 431, 433, 436, 473, 495, 497, 498, 501, 503, 545, 547–548, 553, 556 , 575, 576, 577, 593 Nepal, 184, 221, 229, 361, 415, 451 Netherlands, 182, 281, 622 New Delhi, 28, 29, 34, 37, 40, 66, 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 101, 127, 135, 136, 140, 148, 149, 152, 154, 184, 211, 295, 314, 453. See also Delhi New South Wales, 614 New York, 452, 454 North East India, 449, 456, 482, 515, 542, 625 North Korea, 462, 508, 509 Orissa, 85, 373, 391, 469 Outer Montolia, 345 Outer Tibet, 129 Oxford, 182, 393, 551, 591 Pakistan, 132, 164, 199, 216, 305, 318, 419, 452, 492, 553, 560, 568, 622, 625 Panchsheel Agreement, 20, 128, 130, 135, 541 Paranjape, V. V., 298, 471, 309, 476, 548, 554, 568, 571, 589 Paris, 51, 61, 219, 407, 421, 577 Peking University, 48, 284, 299, 301, 306, 382, 385, 406, 428, 445, 479, 496, 504, 510, 546, 567–571, 579, 591 Pune, 400, 411, 422, 426, 440, 605 Punjab, 38, 64, 85, 127, 314, 528, 617 Rome, 407, 421

654

On China By India

Russia, 11, 39, 79, 128, 165, 167, 264, 291, 374, 380, 382, 556 Sanskrit, 19, 49–53, 62, 63, 66–69, 74, 125, 267, 275–277, 280–283, 285, 286, 327, 347, 374, 386, 399, 402, 405, 408, 409, 411, 412, 413, 423, 425, 426, 427, 434, 470, 472, 500, 582, 589 Sapru House, 78, 185, 377, 389, 489, 503, 506, 618 Sen, Satiranjan, 52, 53, 55, 209, 210, 471, 587, 568 Shaanxi Province, 99 Shandong, 235, 521, 537, 538 Shanghai, 98, 114, 195, 241, 262338, 354, 357, 382, 386, 431, 479, 544 Shantiniketan, 18, 37, 47, 48, 51, 55, 61, 65, 73, 74, 93, 125, 127, 169, 182, 216, 217, 218, 222, 224, 285, 326, 329, 330, 333, 335, 339, 340, 344, 370, 377, 395, 422, 429, 443, 495, 498, 499, 505, 510, 513, 516, 549, 567, 571, 577, 587, 588, 592, 596, 600 Shanxi Province, 114, 354 Shenzhen, 458 Shibrurkar, 210, 213, 471, 489, 472, 571, 572 Sichuan Province, 118, 138, 234, 241, 521 Sikkim, 126, 132, 202, 456 Sino-centrism, 287, 488. See also China-centrism South Africa, 536, 558 South Asia, 77, 150, 164, 532 Southeast Asia, 12, 77, 150, 165, 259, 460, 482, 622

Soviet Union, 186, 193, 219, 305, 318, 345, 407, 456, 459, 489, 514, 515 Special Economic Zonge (SEZ), 458 Sri Lanka, 277, 278, 306, 328, 560 Suzhou, 356, 479 Tagore, Rabindranath, 15, 38, 47, 48, 57, 73, 125, 280, 285, 329, 333, 343, 410, 498, 565, 588, 592, 616, 621 Taipei, 27, 149, 151, 421 Taiwan, 11, 17, 20, 61, 76, 85, 88, 145, 148, 152, 153, 189, 239, 401–403, 406–409, 411, 413, 414, 418, 420, 438, 440, 442, 480 Tan, Chung, 75, 77, 81, 277, 330, 343, 374, 378, 379, 381, 385, 441, 447, 472, 476, 478–481, 484, 492, 567, 619, 622 Tan, Yunshan, 19, 38, 47–48, 52, 57, 61, 73, 217, 319, 329–333, 339, 401, 410, 498, 499, 567, 577, 596 Tawang, 138, 202 Thailand, 11, 95, 259, 328, 362 Tiananmen incident, 40, 221, 339, 340, 382, 459, 460, 462, 561 Tibet 17, 51, 64, 66, 70, 123–127, 128, 165, 182, 189, 198, 234, 235, 243, 244, 250, 253, 261, 338, 345–346, 400, 448, 449, 454, 456, 464, 492, 555, 593 Tibetology, 20, 49, 50, 125, 126

Index United States, 11, 75, 148, 154, 165, 186, 187, 189, 193, 197, 219, 232, 245, 263, 291, 295, 301–303, 306, 314, 318, 320, 321, 323, 354, 399, 421, 435, 446, 452, 465, 503, 529, 540, 559, 560, 572, 581–583, 592, 597–599, 601, 623 University Grant Commission (UGC), 32, 200, 314–315, 319, 322, 326, 346, 347, 414, 471, 481 University of Delhi (DU), 37, 39, 40, 63–64, 73, 75–79, 84, 101, 127, 153, 168–169. See also Delhi University Vajapyee, Atal Bihari, 136, 137, 316, 317, 321, 381, 434, 454, 509, 541 Vietnam, 11, 12, 197, 219, 316, 317, 340, 358, 456, 467 Vihar, Prachyavidya, 211 Visa Bharati University, 38, 40, 47, 48, 51, 54–56, 73, 80, 82, 83, 88, 125–127, 138–139, 169, 214–218, 222, 224, 314, 319, 326–327, 328-9, 330, 399, 486–487, 498, 504, 506, 575, 5789

655 Wenzhou, 282 West Bengal, 37, 85, 205, 326, 398 West Pakistan, 132 Wisconsin, 376, 484 Wu, Xiaoling, 51, 56, 338, 428, 567, 596 Wuxi County, 98, 99, 101, 117, 391, 479 Xinjiang, 243, 294, 250, 346, 423, 587 Xuan Zang, 52, 61, 64, 65, 66, 238, 277, 282, 286, 483, 584, 587 Yangtze River, 235, 246, 298, 448, 449, 496 Yunnan Province, 67, 117, 234, 241, 354, 356, 357, 359, 360, 366, 575, 620 Zhejiang Province, 99 Zhongdian, 234, 243 Zhou Enlai, 55, 148, 183, 217, 274, 283, 286, 295, 306, 309-311, 339, 340, 415, 416, 430–433, 436, 442, 449, 473, 497, 501, 546–549, 551, 553, 554, 555, 556, 575–576

About the Editors

Chih-yu Shih teaches civilizational politics, intellectual history, China studies, and political psychology at National Taiwan University as well as National Sun Yat-sen University. Professor Shih is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Ethnicity and author of over 70 books, including Civilization, National and Modernity in East Asia; Autonomy, Ethnicity and Poverty in Southwestern China; Collective Democracy: Political and Legal Reform in China; The Spirit of Chinese Foreign Policy, and many others. He received his Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University and PhD in international studies from the University of Denver. Swaran Singh is chairman of the Center for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament in the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Dr. Singh is also the president of Association of Asia Scholars, general secretary of Indian Association of Asian and Pacific Studies, and a mentor at Center for Conflict Resolution & Human Security. The most recent volume that he coedited is Emerging China: Prospects for Partnership in Asia. He sits on the editorial boards of a few international journals. Reena Marwah is the secretary general of Association of Asia Scholars and an associate professor at Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University. She has an MPhil and a PhD in international business. Dr. Marwah is the recipient of the Robert McNamara fellowship of the World Bank and the Asia fellowship of the Asian Scholarship Foundation. She has five coauthored books, the most recent one being Contemporary India: Economy, Society and Polity. She is on the editorial board of Millennial Asia, an international journal of Asian studies.