IN April 2018 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met for an informal summit in Wuhan, President Xi told Prime Minister Modi through an interpreter that the bronze statue of the ‘antlered crane’ that attracted PM Modi’s attention in the Wuhan Museum dates back to 433 BC and that it was discovered from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng of the Spring and Autumn Period (771-476 BC).

The Spring and Autumn Period was the time when Chinese silk had already entered India. India’s Arthashastra mentions of kauseyamcinapattascacinabhumijah (cocoons and Chinese fabrics are products of China), the Greek and Roman businessman sailed to India long time ago and bought Chinese silk in the Indian markets. The line ‘what characteristics does the moon have that it perishes and rises again? What is that good thing it has? Isn’t it that rabbit in its belly’ in Qu Yuan’s (343-278 BC) narrative poem Heaven Questioned, is believed to have come from the ‘rabbit on the moon’ legend of India. These are the findings of the great Chinese scholar Ji Xianlin on whom the Government of India conferred Padma Bhushan in 2008 for his contribution to Indology.

Professor Ji is of the view that the line ‘God releasing his disc and decapitating Yin from Yang’ from the above poem is a depiction of the Samudra Manthan story in which Indra decapitates Rahu and Ketu. If this cannot be treated as credible, we have Si Maqian (BC 145-BC 90?), the great Chinese historian narrating in his masterpiece, Records of a Historian: Foreigners in Southwest, that when Zhang Qian, a Han envoy in the western regions returned to the court in 122 BC, he reported to Han Emperor Wu (BC 140-BC 87) that while in Bactria in Central Asia he saw Sichuan silk and bamboo walking sticks there; he heard from local merchants that they were procuring these and other Chinese products from the Indian markets, thus establishing the fact that India and China had trade relations in the second century BC.

In the same vein, the selection of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram, which falls within the district of Kanchipuram, the capital city of the Pallava Dynasty (275-897), also reinforces the civilizational linkages between India and China. For example, the first ever reference to Kanchipuram found in the Chinese texts dates back to the 1st century AD. A detailed description of the sea route between China and Kanchipuram, spelled as Huanhzhi (Kanchi) is found in Chinese historian Bangu’s Han Annals.

The reference states that ‘Huangzhi is big and population huge, and abounds in exotic products… The interpreter, who is a royal official accompanied other assignees to the sea to buy pearls, beryl (vaduriya), precious stones and other exotic products and bartered these with gold and varieties of silks… During the Yuanshi Era of Emperor Ping (1st BC to 3rd AD) when Wang Mang executed government affairs, as he wished to show off the brilliance of his majestic virtue, sent rich gifts to the king of Huangzhi, in return Huanzhi sent an embassy along with the present of a live rhinoceros… To the south of Huangzhi lies the country of Sichengbu (present day Sri Lanka), it is from here that Han interpreter returned.’

 

It has been established that South India, from the 1st BC, had good trade and diplomatic relations with China. This relationship was further strengthened through the Pallava Dynasty (275-897) and Kanchipuram became one of the major trading centres between the Pallava and Tang Dynasty (618-907) of China. Chinese and Roman coins have been found at Mamallapuram, exhibiting that it was a global hub of trade during ancient times. The great scholar-monk Xuan Zang, who visited Kanchipuram in 640 records that the ‘city was six Chinese miles in circumference and that its people were renowned for their bravery, piety, love of justice, and veneration for learning.’ Bodhidhrma, the Pallava prince from Kanchipuram, who reached China in 547, is also an important link between India and China, as he is the one who is credited for disseminating Zen into China along with the Shaolin martial art.

These records demonstrate that India and China had robust spiritual and material exchanges since time immemorial and that both had connected histories for many reasons. First, Buddhism disseminated from India to Central Asia and then onward to China; it absorbed various components of other local cultures, especially Taoism and Confucianism, enriching itself as a religion and philosophy. It emerged as an entity creating innumerable new images such as Vimalkirti, Guanyin, and Mulian as well as some sutras unfamiliar to Indian Buddhism. Along with Buddhism travelled various thought systems of India and Central Asian polities, among them astronomy, literature, music and languages, enriching the knowledge systems of the region.

 

To cite an example, A Dictionary of Buddhism compiled by Japanese scholars lists more than 35,000 entries of Sanskrit into the Chinese language. According to Yu Longyu, ‘these entries are not coined by the compiler, but created by various masters through Han, Jin and Tang dynasties, and added to the Chinese language as a new component. Every vocabulary is a concept and it could be said that 35,000 new concepts have been added to the Chinese language.’ In the same vein, the mystery fiction in the Wei-Jin and Six Dynasties had a solid Indian imprint.

Second, technologies such as sugar making, paper manufacturing, steel smelting, silk, porcelain and tea, travelled from China to other countries and the world without being patented by anyone. For example, China learned brown sugar making technique from India, and India in turn the technique of making granulated white sugar from China.

Third, the unimpeded flow of people was instrumental in this exchange, understanding and harmonizing relationships between various polities, especially between India and China. The translation industry for example, created in China, had people from India, China and many Central Asian polities. Most importantly, these were the people who were responsible for creating the entire repository of Buddhist literature in China and Northeast Asia, which in fact preserved many of the sutras that have been lost in India.

 

The Kaiyuan Era Catalogue of Buddhist Canons and Zhenyuan, New Buddhist Catalogue records that in a span of 734 years starting from 67 A.D. to 800 A.D., in all 185 prominent translators translated 2412 sutras running into 7352 fascicles. The stories of Faxian, and Xuanzang and Yi Jing’s travels to Nalanda and Parmartha, Kumarajiva, Bodhidharma’s to China are known to all. Moreover, the biographies and travelogues they left behind have been instrumental in constructing various historical developments in South Asia.

It would be wrong to argue that all was hunky-dory; there were a few aberrations too. If we look at the Han Annals by Ban Gu, we will find references to a regime change in the Jibin kingdom and the killing of Azes II by Chinese forces. A similar incident happened in Kannauj when Harshvardhan’s usurper Arjuna maltreated Tang envoy Wang Xuance; Wang with the help of Tibetan and Nepali forces defeated Arjuna, and took him as a prisoner along with his family, to the Tang capital Xi’an.

During Zheng He’s voyages (1405-1433) in the Indian Ocean, there were also incidents of regime changes and kings being taken to China. For example China’s regime change in Annam (Vietnam), extending the Chinese tributary system to Siam (Thailand) and Java prior to Zheng He’s voyages, the defeat of Palembang (a Srivijaya principality) ruler Chen Zuyi and his decapitation in Nanjing during the first voyage, as well as the dethroning of Sinhala king Alagagkonara, and taking him all the way to China in 1411 during the third voyage (he was released and sent back the next year) were among some of the unpleasant incidents. However, it could be argued that in the history of two thousand years of exchanges, such incidents were miniscule. China did not seize territories overland as well as in the littoral states of the Indo-Pacific, even though it was in a position to do so.

 

It was perhaps during the colonial period that contemporary images of India and China find their foundations. As Qing China became apprehensive of the threat from British India, she sent officials to study the reasons behind the demise of the Indian civilization. These eyewitness accounts can be found in the writings of Huang Maocai, Ma Jianzhong, Wu Guangpei and Kang Youwei. If Huang Maocai evoked the nostalgia of the ‘Five Indies’, Ma Jianzhong and Wu Guangpei held Indian people responsible for their own fate – they called the Indians ignorant and their government impotent, as they failed to defend themselves against the British colonizers. Indians were treated as ‘people of a lost century’ and ‘no more than slaves’.

A little later the fugitive official of the Reform Movement, Kang Youwei, lamented how tragic it was to be a subjugated nation. So much so, Lu Xun despised Rabindranath Tagore as a ‘poisonous dhatura’ and the Indian people as ‘inferior slaves’ held in a cage. In his opinion, colonized India had become a ‘shadow country’, namely, a defeated country, and therefore, it was impossible for India to produce great writers and works any longer. Of course, the deployment of Sikh policemen in Shanghai and other places, and their involvement in some of the massacres, generated further hatred for the Indians.

Here again, irrespective of such negativity, there are stories of camaraderie and support and sympathy for each other. The anti-imperialist efflorescence of the Indian and Chinese people manifested in a major way as a challenge to the colonial order for the first time during the First War of Indian Independence (1857-59) in India and the Taiping Uprising (1850-1864) in China. For the first time Indian soldiers stationed in China switched over to the Taipings and fought shoulder to shoulder against the imperialists and the Qing government. The memoir Cheen Mein Terah Maas (13 Months in China) by Gadadhar Singh (1902) was the story of an Indian soldier serving in China who sympathized with the Boxer Rebellion, remains unknown to the people of India and China. This rapprochement continued when the Indian and Chinese people launched a more organized struggle for national independence.

 

It was due to the synergy between the cultures, and the plight of India and China, that the nationalists and revolutionaries of both countries developed deep mutual contacts and friendship amidst their anti-imperialist struggle. They became natural allies and thought of various ways to dislodge the imperialists from their countries. The supporters of B.G. Tilak, the leader of militant Indian nationalists, held commemorative meetings in praise of Shivaji, denouncing imperialism in places as far away as Tokyo, in order to make the Indian voice heard outside the country.

These activities had the active support of Chinese nationalists such as Zhang Taiyan and Sun Yat-Sen. In fact, Sun Yat-Sen developed strong links with various Indian nationalists and revolutionaries and by using his good offices, introduced them to the leading Japanese personages thus enabling them to carry out their anti-British activities unhindered. Nationalists like Surendra Mohan Bose, Rash Behari Bose, M.N. Roy, ‘Maulana’ Barkatullah, Lala Lajpat Rai and many other outstanding pioneers of the Indian freedom movement maintained good contacts and friendship with Sun Yat-Sen.

 

Activities of the Ghadr Party that vehemently opposed British deployment of Indian troops in China, and even joined the Chinese revolution in the 1920s, went unnoticed as these were people hounded by British intelligence. Apart from operating from Japan, Indian revolutionaries also made China one of their centres to carry out anti-British activities. Barring a few, most of them were members of Ghadr Party. Much of the activities were centred around Hankou, for it was the centre of the Kuomintang (KMT) government and Shanghai and Hong Kong as places where Indian settlers, including policemen and troops, numbered maximum. Their post Siam-Burma Plan activities found a link with the KMT and the Communist Party of China (CPC). Ghadar support to the Chinese nationalist government, and in turn enlisting the latter’s support, was a direct outcome of the formation of the First United Front in China between the KMT and CPC. Their activities came to an abrupt end with the collapse of the United Front in 1927, though some individuals continued to be active up to 1931-32.

During the War of Resistance and the Second World War, India dispatched a medical mission to China in 1938. Dr. Kotnis, a doctor of this mission became a martyr when he died while serving the wounded soldiers of the Eighth Route Army and other Chinese people. Tagore’s 1924 China visit and Nehru’s visit in 1939 made the bonds of friendship even stronger. With the formation of the India-China-Burma War theatre, China sought support of the Indian people when President Chiang Kai-Shek visited India in 1940.

 

Unfortunately, the historical baggage inherited by India from the British and China from the Mongols and Manchus marred the post-independence exchanges between India and China. The ensuing animosities culminated in the 1962 conflict and the subsequent diplomatic freeze. Though the people to people exchanges resumed with the restoration of diplomatic relations they, however, do not reflect the size of the countries, their potential, as well as the positioning of India and China in the evolving global order.

In this context, the first ever India-China High Level Mechanism on Cultural and People to People Exchanges, inaugurated on 21 December 2018 by the then Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and her counterpart and State Councilor Wang Yi in New Delhi, is quite significant. The second summit was held in August 2019. The mechanism is the product of the ‘Wuhan Spirit’ and the consensus reached between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the unofficial Wuhan Summit in April 2018. The summit marked the rebalancing of India-China relations after a dangerous 73-day military confrontation at Doklam.

What could be done to fully realize the potential of the people to people exchanges? First and foremost, Chinese and Indian studies in both countries needs to be encouraged and strengthened across the government and private sectors for a better understanding of each other. Though some measures were taken in the wake of the border conflict, and a decade back when an act of Parliament to establish new central universities was passed in 2009, so far only 20 universities in India offer Chinese language certificate and diploma courses, including Delhi University where courses began in 1964.

In recent years, though the number of Chinese universities offering courses in Hindi went up to around 16, it is not good enough given the large populations of India and China. Furthermore, the student exchange between the two countries is highly asymmetrical. Most of the Indian students studying in Chinese universities (around 25,000) are in the field of medicine, whereas the presence of Chinese students in Indian universities is miniscule (2,000). Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of the premier institutes in the country, hosts no more than 25 Chinese students.

 

The number of students on official cultural exchange programmes between the two is ridiculously low; the number has increased from 12 during the 1900s to 25 at present. The scholarships offered by the Confucius Institute provided for almost 500 Indian students to register in Chinese universities for various programmes. The numbers could increase manifold if Indian universities or educational institutes were to collaborate with Chinese universities for building capacities in Indian languages and in Chinese, in the respective countries. One big hurdle is the non-recognition of each other’s degrees, besides other bottlenecks like accommodation and accepting each other’s credit system. The removal of bottlenecks will enhance the flow of students, joint research and seminars between the two countries on the one hand, and a better understanding of each other on the other.

Second, the bonds between researchers and the publishing industry is an area that has not been accorded due importance. How many books from China and India are being translated and disseminated in both countries? It is worth recalling that it was the translators from India, China and Central Asian countries that built a huge repository of Buddhist literature in China and were responsible for changing the entire socio-cultural landscape of East Asia in ancient times.

 

The mutual translation of classics and contemporary works between India and China was a good beginning. The memorandum envisaged translation of 25 representative Chinese books and authors into Hindi and vice versa. Some of the books include The Confucian Classics (The Four Books), Records of the Western Regions During the Great Tang, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Dream of the Red Chamber, The Scholars, and the works of modern and contemporary writers such as Bing Xin, Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Lao She, Mo Yan, Jia Pingwa, and A. Lai. A connect between the publishing industry of both the countries is an excellent dialogue mechanism, which undoubtedly will have a huge impact on either side, for binding together intellectuals and think tanks. It is not only broadening the scope of the people to people exchanges but also promoting and creating consciousness for long-term understanding and friendship between the two people.

Third, tourism and pilgrimage would reinvent the bonding and nostalgia that existed between the two civilizations in history. Through these pilgrimages and journeys, the spiritual and material civilizations of Asia and elsewhere benefitted immensely from each other. A multilayered approach to strengthen bonds would include establishing sister municipalities, cities and provinces. At present, there are just 21 sister city agreements between India and China as compared to 214 agreements on friendly states and sister cities signed between the US and China.

India and China have a shared cultural heritage. Who in India and China will not connect the frescoes and rock-hewn Buddhist iconography of Ajanta and Ellora with Mogao, Yungang, Longmen, and Dazu in China. There is a huge scope for cooperation. A Buddhist corridor should be established to further connect other South Asian countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka. These measures would lay a solid foundation of connectivity for trade and commerce, and above all for robust bilateral relations.

Fourth, both India and China as members of many multilateral forums, such as the BRICS and the SCO, have signed many important people to people exchange mechanisms. For example, a comprehensive action plan for the implementation of the Agreement between the Governments of the BRICS States on Cooperation in the Field of Culture (2017-2021) was signed in 2017.

 

The action plan envisages establishment of a BRICS alliance of art museums, national galleries, libraries, media and publishing. The plan encourages international cultural and art festivals, joint programmes on archaeological research, cooperation across creative and commercial sectors including the performing arts, visual arts, audio-visual, music, gastronomy, fashion, literature, yoga, animation and games, new media, cultural and creative merchandise development, and the training the people engaged in these fields. The plan is indeed very ambitious; however, similar action plans need to be taken at the bilateral level that may yield more results. The increased presence of media personnel and objective reporting by both sides could lead to a better understanding of each other.

Fifth, as China undergoes economic restructuring, India and China need to give full play to their complementarities in trade and investment. It has been happening incrementally, but needs to be pushed by ameliorating the business environment. Today, about 2000 Chinese companies have invested in India providing employment to over 200,000 people. The supply chains as regards labour intensive industries such as mobile telephony, electronics, home appliances, auto spares among others, have been shifted to India.

For example, mobile phone manufacturing clusters in Noida, electronics manufacturing in Chennai, white electrical appliances facilities in Pune, optical fiber industry in Hyderabad, and solar panel manufacturing in Bangalore are some examples of China shifting their bases to India. This scope is likely to expand and diversify in other areas such as food processing and pharmaceuticals.

 

Finally, the people to people dialogue must be accompanied by a resolution of thorny issues, which call for abandoning the Cold War mentality and zero-sum games between the two countries. Both must negotiate mutual, equal and sustainable security as envisaged in some of the confidence building mechanisms. Both India and China need to be mindful of the fact that the bilateral security boundary is not just limited to the border issue, but has sprawled into various other fields such as maritime, river water, cyber security, counterterrorism and various other non-traditional securities. In view of this, both need to establish new dialogue mechanisms while substantiating or replacing the older ones. Both must agree that the India-China relationship is one of the most important relationships that will shape the future international order.