India and China in a Multipolar World: Can their Golden Age Return? - Professor Tansen Sen
Professor Tansen Sen is a renowned historian of India–China relations and Asian interconnections.
He is Professor of History at NYU Shanghai and Director of the Center for Global Asia. His research spans Sino-Indian interactions, Buddhism across Asia, and maritime networks that shaped the region’s history.
He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 and India, China, and the World: A Connected History, both of which have become foundational works in the study of Asia’s past and its global links.
He is considered to be one of the world's leading historians in Sino-Indian relations.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Trailer
00:53 The Importance of India-China Relations
02:46 Understanding Pre-Modern Interactions
08:26 How Xuan Zang Brought Buddhism To China
12:21 The Sinicisation of Buddhism
19:34 How Sinicisation Works Today
22:49 How was Nalanda University like?
26:23 Why Does It Look Like India Influenced China More?
30:07 Impact of India and China on The World
32:22 Colonial Impact on India-China Relations
39:32 The Birth of Nation States and Historical Narratives
41:37 Border Issues and Trust Deficits
45:24 Flashpoints of Distrust Since Independence
52:42 Pathways to Improved Relations
59:19 Advice For A Fresh Graduate
This is the 52nd episode of The Front Row Podcast.
Keith 00:00:00
India and China are the two great civilisational superpowers of Asia today. At the end of World War II, there was huge optimism that these two great nations would be united and together they would create a better world. But today, China and India have their relations marked by distrust and mutual suspicion. How did they get here? What lessons does the history of ancient India and China offer to us?
To answer these questions, I spoke to Professor Tansen, the professor of history at NYU and the director of the Centre for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai. Given the unprecedented access to historical archives and the comprehensive research he has done on India and China that dates all the way back to the first and second centuries, he is considered to be the world's leading historian of Sino-Indian relations. If you want to know how India and China relations evolved over the many centuries and what lies ahead for these two great powers, this is the conversation for you.
There is a lot of emphasis and attention and focus on the US-China relations in understanding where the world is headed towards, mainly because they're at the same time rivals but another time one of the closest economic partners in the world. But at the same time India and China - there's not much attention placed onto it even though they're both continental and some might argue civilisational powers. The first question I have is why.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:01:27
It's very clear why China-US relations are so important. It impacts global regions - not only just China and the US. Europe is impacted. Asia is impacted. Africa is impacted. So in a global sense, US-China relations are quite important both international politics-wise but also culturally - the movement of students, for example, between China and the US or other places. It affects more than just the two countries as such.
China-India has an impact regionally within Asia. It has a huge impact not only because these two countries are nuclear powers. It also involves Pakistan on one side but also Southeast Asian countries. Anything between the two countries will have an impact within Asia. So I would say after US-China relations, India-China relations are the most important ones both globally and regionally.
Regionally you can say perhaps US-China is still an important factor but I think close to that is India-China relations given the fact that there have been number of instances of military confrontation and there are continuing problems between the two countries. So we don't know where these two countries are going as far as bilateral relations are concerned.
Keith 00:02:42
Before we cast our eyes to the modern times it might be useful to take a much more macro perspective and cast our mind all the way back in a time where India and China did not exist in the sense that we know them today as nation states. You argue that is often insufficient to purely see India and China through the prism of interstate relations, right? Can you help me understand a little more what was the world like when India and China were not just countries?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:03:18
That's important. I now know that you have read the book thoroughly because that was my main argument that when we look back on the history we should not constrain ourselves in the boundaries of today's China and today's India because things were more dynamic than that. Because there were sub-regional contacts that happened - for example between Kashmir and Tibet, between Yunnan and Assam. These regions, the sub-regions, contacts were very limited, focused but also very important.
Sometimes we lose the idea that there were this smaller micro-level interactions going on in a macro world that you are talking about. I think that's important as well because there was no such one country either in China or India before the 20th century. So it's very important to understand the dynamics of what happened when people, commodities, ideas move from one place to another. It went through many different regions.
So for example, things moving from India, Buddhism for example, moving to China would go through Central Asia or Southeast Asia. Their people also mattered. I mean they contributed to this spread. So we have to think of the pre-modern, let's say pre-20th century, from a point of view that there were multiple actors. Some of them were involved sub-regionally, some of them were involved trans-regionally. So we have to assess those kinds of views, contributions to understand that it was not between two entities that we today call India and China. There were multiple entities, multiple different actors who didn't have any nationalities. They did not belong to one state.
If you ask them where are you from, they would perhaps not say that I'm from China. They would perhaps say I'm from the Tang dynasty because that was a dynasty that this person was travelling from. So I think it doesn't make sense to impose a very contemporary nation state framework to understand the pre-modern interactions.
Keith 00:05:19
So what is the right framework to understand those pre-modern interactions? I ask that because it seems to me that the nation state framework is primarily the way we interpret the world. We think about conflicts, we think about challenges, we always think about it as maybe a transnational challenge, international challenge. So the word national is something that figures heavily in almost the way we conceive of maybe international relations today.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:05:49
So I have struggled with that. I mean what kind of terms can we use? And if you don't use India-China it becomes very complicated because you need to explain what is it that you really want to use as a framework. So sometimes the easiest way is to say ancient India and ancient China. Because you differentiate between ancient India with a nation state of Republic of India or ancient China with People's Republic of China. So that may be the easiest way to say that I'm talking about the ancient period where these kinds of nation states did not exist.
The other thing is to perhaps periodise it. During the 10th century, for example, there was the Song dynasty and the contacts between the Song dynasty and a polity called the Cholas in southern India. Because that was a very important connection. You are talking about a specific period in Chinese history and a specific locality in India.
So sometimes that helps that you are talking about a specific Chinese dynasty and a specific location in India. So I think those needs to be called out and saying that I'm not talking about northern India, I'm talking about southern India where there was this polity. I'm not talking about Yunnan but I'm talking about the Song dynasty that did not have authority over Yunnan at that time.
So geographically it's a shifting thing. I mean you see many dynasties in China, they have their own geographies. India has its own polities located in eastern India, southern India, western India. So I think sometimes if you want to make it bit more complicated you have to specify rather than just ancient India or ancient China because those are also difficult terms to say. I mean how ancient is India, how ancient is China? What period are you talking about?
So I would say there are these two stages. One to simplify everything and saying ancient this and ancient that, and then specify the more local regions that you want to focus on and say that specifically this period and this polity or country.
Keith 00:07:53
So in a sense you really have to zoom in and be very specific about how those interactions played out and involved.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:07:59
Yeah, but zoom in and zoom out as well because as you zoom out other places become relevant. They may not be nation states. For example Indonesia is a nation state now but there were empires like Srivijaya, Majapahit - these places and they ruled over places that are not part of Indonesia anymore. So you'll say okay there are connections between China, Song China and the Cholas in Southeast Asia is the Srivijaya Empire.
So we take us back to Tang China where we had the beginning of I would say much more deeper relations between ancient China and ancient India.
Keith 00:08:41
From a layman's point of view, you had Xuanzang that went all the way west and that's where the Journey to the West myth came about.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:08:48
It's quite an amazing feat that he accomplished. I think we have to recognise that in the 17th century going over this terrain of Gobi desert and going into various kinds of mountains into the Gangetic Plains where Nalanda was located - this is amazing journey. I mean it's not easy to do it and he and others have recognised that many failed. He succeeded. I mean there are couple of Chinese who did that but there were also many who did not succeed to come back and write about their journeys.
So first we have to credit him for making that journey and coming back to write about his experiences as he travelled. Then the issue is why was he going? Why was he going to Nalanda? Nalanda in the 7th century was the seat of learning in the whole of Asia. There are students from many different parts of present day Asia going there to study Buddhism, science, medicine. There were people from Korea, people from Southeast Asia, people from Sri Lanka all coming together to learn about Buddhism, learn about science, mathematics.
And then Xuanzang was going to learn about specific aspect of Buddhism because by 7th century Buddhism has taken deep roots within China. Tang China was the flourishing period of Buddhism. But it had taken about seven centuries to reach that stage for Xuanzang to learn what he thought was not really available in Tang China at that time - Yogacara Buddhism that he was really interested in learning. So he thought Nalanda was the place to go and learn about this new aspect, he thought, of Buddhism.
So he went there and he stayed there and he came back and then he became very close to the Tang Emperor. So his third role is how then he worked with the Tang Emperor to actually promote diplomatic interactions between Tang Empire and one of the Indian polities located in the Gangetic Plains - a very important Indian ruler at that time called Harsha.
So one is his travel, second is his education, third is his diplomacy that makes Xuanzang really an exceptional figure in the ancient interactions between India and China.
Keith 00:11:11
And what does that tell us about how connected they were as maybe pre-modern polities?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:11:18
The connection is an issue. It's not that every day there is a flight going from one place to another. It's quite limited. I mean the connections are taking place but perhaps not as frequent. Maybe in a year there are five or six caravans going back and forth because it takes long time to travel from this place where Xuanzang went to Nalanda to Chang'an in Tang China, or by the sea route it will take couple of months to do that.
So you won't see that there is a frequency that appears in today's world. So the limited interactions that are taking place but they are connected. It does not mean all connections has to be a vigorous connectivity. It's limited but it creates, as far as knowledge circulation is concerned, knowledge about the other side. Even if there are very few people going back and forth, certainly during the Tang dynasty perhaps it was the most important as far as connections are concerned, as far as back and forth are concerned. But still, if you compare it present day, quite limited.
Keith 00:12:22
You talk a little bit about the sinicisation of Buddhism and it took about 700 years. It seems to me that it's not apparent why Buddhism specifically took root of, say, many religions out there in the world and why it came to the point where even the emperor adopted it. Can you help me understand how did that come to be?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:12:46
It's a very interesting process as you said. Why Buddhism? Hinduism as we know, or Brahmanism as people call it, came to Southeast Asia, had a huge impact in many places Southeast Asia but it doesn't go to China. It is not successful in China as Buddhism is. So the reason is why Buddhism from India - not Hinduism from India - became successful in China. And there are many reasons and very interesting reasons.
So one thing is when Buddhism goes to China in the first century CE there's already a very established religion called Confucianism. People have this idea if Confucianism is religion or not. But clearly there is a philosophy there. It's a guiding life for many people. There's also Taoism that's emerging. So Buddhism goes into a place where there is already a pre-existing views of what it means to be a person, what it means to be part of a family. So it has to address those kinds of issues.
And Buddhism is successful in my opinion because it is able to address those differences. So for example, one of the key things of Buddhism is that if you want to become a monk you leave your family, become, join the monastic institution. In China as a Confucian family it's very difficult - you have to take care of your parents. How would you convince them that you should leave your parents and go and become a monk? So it had to struggle with that issue and it became a very interesting aspect when Buddhism says that you can practice Buddhism as a lay person and stay with your parents.
And you don't have to necessarily shave your hair and go become a monk. Buddhism is available to you. Be a husband, be a son, be a father, but you can still practice Buddhism. So that was one of the keys that you can practice Buddhism - you don't have to become a monk to do that.
Why is that important? Because you as a lay person, if you incorporate that, Buddhism makes an inroad. And you start worshipping Buddha as if he is some kind of a deity and that's the earliest evidence of Buddhism that we have - lay people thinking of the figure of Buddha as one of the deities that they are worshipping for long life or protection against some kind of illness. So they say you can do that - you don't have to be a monk to worship the Buddha. You can as a lay person, as a trader, as an official do that.
So that was one of the major inroads Buddhism techniques. And you don't have to follow Buddhism as monks prescribe you to do it - be liberal, do whatever you want.
The second is language. In Hinduism you have to use Sanskrit - the ancient sacred texts are in Sanskrit. You have to learn a different language in order to read those texts. Buddhism you can use whatever language you want to proselytise. So what becomes a very important factor in the success of Buddhism in China is the translation of Indic texts, Indian texts in Sanskrit mostly into Chinese and the spread of Buddhism in China takes place not through Sanskrit but through Chinese language.
So you address the lay people, use their own language, and when it becomes successful initially then gradually the number of people at the lay level starts practicing Buddhism and the rulers then see oh I have all these subjects who are following this religion - a foreign religion - but I have to do something. So it becomes a bottom-up process in which Buddhism really enters the Chinese society and spreads.
Unlike Hinduism in Southeast Asia which was mostly top-down - the rulers use Sanskrit, the rulers use Hinduism and then the lay people had to abide by the power of Hinduism. In China it was a bottom-up process and it was a very well organised bottom-up process. Gradually translation of Buddhist text started to take place.
People who did not understand Indian concepts - one of the important differences between Chinese worldview and the Indian worldview is what happens after you die. In India after you die you reincarnate, you come back in another physical form. It can be human, it can be animal. Chinese did not have that notion. Chinese also did not have a notion of hell and heaven as such. But Buddhism had all these kinds of depictions that if you have bad karma you can become an animal or you can go to hell and get penalties for that.
So that whole notion, the whole view about what happens to you after you die which is such an important concept of every religion, complicates the Chinese life but it also makes it very interesting. Okay if I die do I go to heaven, do I go to hell? So all these stories start appearing.
So one of the ways in which Buddhism is proselytised among the Chinese is not through philosophical texts - it's through stories, paintings, images. So that becomes the way and said look if you do bad karma this is what happens to you - look at the picture of what happens to you when you go to hell. So this mechanism that Buddhism uses makes it very successful.
And it was very difficult then for Hinduism to do the same thing. There are various kinds of records that say Hindus also came to proselytise in China but were unsuccessful. So one of the important reasons why they were unsuccessful is this whole caste system - what we call now the caste system. The society is divided into how you are born, which class you are born in. Then where will you fit the Chinese? Because you are not an Indian, which class do you belong to?
So imposing that kinds of social hierarchy in China with an existing framework of Confucianism and Taoism would have been very difficult. So Buddhism was successful because it was very flexible, because it used really means that were able to address the needs of the Chinese people throughout the seven centuries before the Tang dynasty.
Keith 00:19:03
It's so fascinating to see what actually gets digested by China as a society, as a culture and what gets maybe discarded or not adopted.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:19:16
Certainly. I think the process of Buddhism becoming successful is also discarding things that they think will not be successful in China. So that's the way in which Buddhism was successful - introducing something, changing something, discarding something.
Keith 00:19:30
Does this same process of sinicisation still remain alive today?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:19:37
Yeah, I mean Islam - Islam when it enters China is also getting sinicised. It becomes - this is I would say the power of Chinese society that if you want to enter the Chinese society you have to change certain things to make it available to the Chinese audience. Again the fact that there was pre-existing religious and philosophical ideas in China mattered. So by the time Islam comes in it faces the same issues.
So 7th, 8th century - how do you introduce Islam to a society that has a very different view than in Arabia? So everything that goes into China including Islam and later Christianity had to address the issue that the Chinese accepted things differently than other societies.
Another aspect of sinicisation that I found interesting personally is just how Marxism or communism has been successfully sinicised to the extent where I have friends in China they joke that Marx is Chinese.
Keith 00:20:40
That's something that if you take maybe a two or 300 year view that doesn't seem self-apparent.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:20:48
So yes, Marxism as you are absolutely right - Mao sinicises Marxism so that it can be applied to the case of China. That's exactly what Buddhism does. That's exactly what Islam does. I think that's a good comparison that you use - the contemporary way in which Marxism was then introduced into China and then adopted in China is very different from other places. Soviet Union had a different kind of ways in which they accepted Marxism. So yes, that's a good comparison.
Keith 00:21:19
How did Mao sinicise Marxism?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:21:27
Well so he realised that what Marx had said really does not fit the context of China. For example, if Marx is talking about something that is based from the city level - I mean the labour movement - but China is an agricultural country. How does that apply to the farmers? So for him the importance is perhaps not the cities but the farming villages. So land reforms - those kinds of things for him was appropriate for the Chinese situation.
And so how do you put Marxism in the context of the Chinese society which is predominantly agriculturalist, not urbanist? So Marx is talking about from that urban centre view and then China is totally different. So that's why I think Mao was very interested and then the whole revolution happens from the villages rather than from the urban centres. So the farmers were the ones who were supporting the revolution. So that made sense that Mao would address that - Marxism needs to change in order to apply for the Chinese situation.
Keith 00:22:31
So from the proletariat to the peasants.
Keith in the edit here. Real quick, I realised that 85.3% of you guys have not yet subscribed. It would do a great deal of help if you could hit that subscribe button so that I could get better guests on for you in the future. Thank you.
Keith 00:22:48
Nalanda University at the height of its powers - what you say was a great seat of learning where Xuanzang went to study and to learn. But I think not many of us are aware of the kind of weight that it held then. In a sense of like was it the Cambridge of that time? How far was its impact? To what extent did it shape the way people treated scholarship?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:23:23
By fifth century we don't know exactly how it came about, the full-fledged Nalanda, but by fifth, sixth century it was quite a famous institution. Comparable to Cambridge today or Harvard. There was this desire to go there and learn. As I said before, not only Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy but sciences as well. So it became clearly a seat of learning, a very famous seat of learning so that people from other places - not just northern India or southern India but other Asian places - would go and study there.
So there seems to be some sort of entrance exam that you had to be qualified to get into. And Xuanzang is supposed to have said about that - it's not easy to get into Nalanda, you have to be qualified. So it seems like in the contemporary universities you have to take SATs or GRE to get in - there was some sort of qualification that needed.
But what is quite important is what kind of subjects you learn. It's not this religious institution. You learn about religion, you learn about philosophy but you learn about mathematics which is quite an important field of study in India at that time. There are people who are talking about how do you then see the movement of stars and then planets. So astronomy connected to mathematics. So mathematical astronomy that you learn.
So there are many different people and you have to imagine that at this place just like in any US or European universities it's a different groups of people for speaking different languages who have come together. So Koreans, Sri Lankans, Chinese all living there together learning things. So it must have been a really fascinating place where people exchange ideas, learned from their teachers, took back what they learned to their own places.
I mean so Xuanzang went back carrying different kinds of texts and so forth. And the same with the Sri Lankans. But there are also people who did not go back which is really fascinating - that people thought this is the place to die and then they just died around Nalanda. So Nalanda is a learning place, is a place where people were attached to both spiritually and intellectually.
Keith 00:25:44
The cultural sway of Nalanda is something that I think unless you really dig deep into you wouldn't appreciate. There was this follow-on question that I had which I think I've been struggling with as well. When one understands for example that period of time in history, it feels like the flow of information overwhelmingly seems one way. In a sense, the Chinese would go to India - or once again I'm simplifying things - but they would go, Xuanzang will make his pilgrimage to Nalanda and India was seen as like maybe the holy people where they go to learn. But it doesn't seem clear to me that China has a particular strong influence on India. Is that true?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:26:32
We don't know if it's true but we don't have much information about what happened in India. Unfortunately, the textual tradition in ancient India and ancient China were quite different. Chinese would produce various detailed records of foreign polities, kingdoms and so forth. Indians did not produce that kind of textual records.
So that's why we do not know how the ancient Indians thought about China. What did they think about the Chinese emperors or so forth or the Chinese monks who came to Nalanda for example? We just don't have those textual records. But that does not mean that there was no opinion about China or there was no understanding or knowledge about China. We just don't have the textual records when we compare it with the textual records in China. It's more about lack of sources and not the absence of influences.
Keith 00:27:26
So it's basically a matter of whether you have enough hardworking historians in the background keeping tab on how things are holding up.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:27:32
Yeah. I mean so one explanation is that the Indian literati, intellectuals were more interested in other things and not writing down the histories of foreign countries. The Chinese tradition was quite different and they were interested in writing about foreign kingdoms and then so they have various records starting from their first dynastic history to other sources that talk about foreign kingdoms and what people do. India just didn't have that tradition.
So it's again emphasising that it's the absence of textual traditions rather than absence of any knowledge that we can presume that Indians didn't have.
Keith 00:28:05
What do you think explains the divergence or preference? It's just different traditions.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:28:16
I mean this is important. This is important to acknowledge that the Indian traditions and the Chinese traditions are very different. Buddhism links the two but as I was saying, Buddhism links it by changing itself so that the Chinese can accept it. So these are very different societies, different traditions linked through Buddhism in a very different way. So yeah, so you have to acknowledge that we should not expect the ancient Indians to do exactly what the ancient Chinese did. And this is why I think Asia is more diverse than unified.
Keith 00:28:48
When I was reading the part on Xuanzang, what I found fascinating was how serious he took the textual tradition and almost how accurate it was. I think you recall that I think Alexander Cunningham or something - he was the archaeologist, a modern archaeologist - that used Xuanzang's writings to locate the different historical sites in his journey.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:29:16
Yeah, sometimes he would not find because I think Xuanzang's record sometimes would not be as precise as he would have wanted. But the general area - it became a manual. You know we say when Christopher Columbus started looking for India and China he carried Marco Polo's book to find but look where he ended up. But yes Alexander Cunningham was the first archaeologist to really use that text because they had become available in English and French translations at that time.
So he said "Oh, where is this Nalanda place and where are these other places?" So it became sort of a manual, but it was not meant to be really a manual to find places that Xuanzang wrote.
Keith 00:30:04
At the height of their exchange between ancient India and China, how did they influence the world around them? If you look at other places beyond ancient India and ancient China?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:30:15
Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, Central Asia - all were involved in many different ways between ancient India and ancient China. So Buddhism is one aspect that all these places contributed to, accepted, adapted things that were going back and forth between ancient India, ancient China.
Commodities - I mean goods that were either exported from ancient India or from China were going through these places. So it affected their economies as well because the demand may be on the two sides but these places in between were playing an important role in transferring these goods from one place to another.
So in one case Southeast Asia became quite an important place to perhaps supply goods coming from ancient India to China or vice versa. Porcelain later on, for example, silk earlier on, Indian goods, spices that came through Southeast Asia, goods from other parts of India coming through Central Asia into China.
So there was back and forth - economic aspect, cultural aspect but also knowledge aspect. And knowledge not meaning geographical knowledge but scientific knowledge. Also many of these things don't stop in China. They come to China and then they either get modified and is passed on to Japan and Korea.
So from Japan, Korea all the way to Iran I would say were all linked up in these ancient India and ancient China interactions. They were very much part of it. They contributed their own ideas and goods, but they were also affected by these exchanges that were taking place between India and China. And I'm talking about before 1500.
But after 1500, it's more globally influenced - both China and India. When the colonial powers take over India and China, it creates a very different dynamic and that makes India and China more globally oriented through opium for example. But before 1500, I think there was already a very interesting connections across much of Asia, at least from Iran all the way to Japan and Korea.
Keith 00:32:30
Even when you speak about Asia, you've expanded the kind of mental map of what Asia looks like, right? Even just in trying to understand the kind of scale of their influence. So maybe if you take us to the 1500s, what happened when the colonisers - the western colonial powers - came into this part of the world? As you shared, the dynamics completely changed. What changed?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:32:59
Very much changed because the idea was to use these places as an extraction of resources, commodities and things and making European stockholding companies like British East India Company or the Dutch East India Company stockholders rich. So their interest in Asia was not contributing anything to the people of India, China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia but to extract resources, take it back to Europe and become rich.
So that created dynamism which was related to oppressing the culture, society and economy of many Asian societies and that then created a very different dynamic. For example, opium. Why did opium trade which was cultivated in India then exported to China?
So that was a result because the British wanted tea initially because it had become an important commodity not only in England but also in Europe. But in exchange of tea what were they giving the Chinese? They were giving silver and soon they realised that they were spending so much silver in importing tea that it did not make sense to them.
And then they found a replacement for silver which was opium and they extracted opium from India and sold it to the Chinese and got silver from the Chinese back to Europe. This was a profit idea that the British had. But what did it do? It made many Chinese opium addicts. It made many Indians cultivating opiate dependent on the British government to make money.
So it created a very strange kind of relationship between pre-modern India and China because they were linked not through intellectual cultural activities anymore. They were related, linked by these kinds of extractive profit-mongering European colonisers. And that then resulted in a very different set of exchanges.
They were traders more importantly involved in opium traders working with the British from the Indian side. The Chinese were also very much into this kind of opium trade. So it was Chinese opium dealers who were also involved in having exchanges with Indian traders. So it created a very different dynamics which no longer included Buddhism. It really included cultural things. In the 15, 1600s it was all about profit. It was all about profit by the British colonisers, other European colonisers, some very rich traders in India and China.
Keith 00:35:43
I think it's something that figures heavily into national imagination today. I think you alluded to it as well when India and China became nation states - they talk about this interlude. They refer and then I think you talk about the Hindi-Chini bhai - that's the idea of like maybe India-China solidarity and they kind of reference the colonial interlude as something that disrupted and perhaps so discord between India and China relations. But you also make the point that perhaps that's a too sanitised view of their own history. What do you mean by that?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:36:18
One of the things that everybody knows was in China is the opium war. And opium war is about the British defeating the Qing government and imposing the treaty of Nanking which gave them access to different ports in China. But who fought the war? I mean who are the people fighting the war? They were Indians. So the Indians were fighting the war on behalf of the British against the Chinese.
So why not talk about these people who were actually doing the fighting against the Chinese? What did they think? I mean there's actually a very interesting diary from 1900 about a soldier who was employed by the British and fighting the Boxers in China. And then he writes this diary saying "Why must I, a colonised person, fight to colonise another Asian entity, another Asian country?"
So that's a very interesting thought that is taking place among one soldier who is working for the British but it has really created a way in which Indians and Chinese are fighting for the British. How do we think about that? That's the sanitised version that I'm talking about. Why not really see what's happening between Indians and Chinese directly who are fighting with each other but for the British government?
Then from the Chinese side it is also very interesting - what do the Chinese at that time think about India, colonised India? And the portrayals are very negative. "Why this ancient civilisation falls or collapses to British colonisers?" And people start making fun of that. "Look, the Indians were meditating. They were Buddhists. They were meditating. Did not know how to fight a war. And of course, they were defeated by the Britishers."
So they make Indians weak in their perspective. So that kind of a perspective that India is a weak lost civilisation is very popular in China in this time - late 19th century - to explain why India gets colonised. So negative views emerge as well between India and China.
Very different. Buddhism no longer is this cultural entity that is brought from India to China but Buddhism is seen as responsible for the collapse of the Indian civilisation. So this is what the Chinese start and then we need to understand that kind of thinking which is very changed from pre-1500. So it's a very different world. The perspectives change, the connections change, the objectives of relations also change.
Keith 00:39:03
If we fast forward to today when the nation states - or when we look at the independence of China and India and the reason they started using that sanitised version of history, what was the incentive? Because if you look at China and India, I think they were only independent for a year apart. You came but they had very different ideologies, founding ideologies. Why this emphasis on solidarity?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:39:36
You know when nation states are founded, they create histories because India established - Republic of India established in 1947, People's Republic of China in 49. Their history starts from there. The history of Republic of India starts from 47, People's Republic of China starts from 49. But they want to push back, go as far back and say no - People's Republic of China is same as China. So it's 5,000 years of history. India says that as well.
And then when they are nation states when they realise that they have problem, how do you define the territories and the borders? Because India and China are neighbouring places. How do you address that kind of a legacy of a border creation that takes place with the establishment of nation states?
The first thing they would say, "Let's avoid conflict and let's talk about the ancient relations through Buddhism and all these other cultural activities. Forget all the negative stuff even during the colonial time and say that we have always been happy together, interacting, harmonious, peaceful."
Almost every nation state wants to do that just to make sure that in the contemporary times that becomes the kind of a discourse you want and not really highlight the conflict. So it's a means of not putting conflict at the centre stage but putting the previous historical relations as a way to avoid talking about contemporary politics and conflict.
Obviously we know that did not work out as well. So after the creation of independent India and the People's Republic of China, the 1950s were actually very interesting period when people started looking back at the historical interactions. They had some kind of a vision that since we had these kinds of historical interactions maybe despite the different political regimes in the two places we can create this notion of Hindi-Chini bhai that Indians and Chinese are brothers.
There was this cultural expectation that the past could actually teach us and help us have a new binding. And it was very clear this is a communist socialist state in China. This is a democratic state in India. But despite that can two Asian nations have a harmonious interaction? So in the 50s they really tried. I mean again they opted not to look at the border issue and they tried to emphasise the cultural aspect of relationship.
It was not successful because the borders interfered. That was the actual issue that no matter how you emphasise cultural interactions, friendship, long historical interactions, ultimately nation states are concerned about borders. So when the border became an important aspect then the two nations started fighting military fight.
I mean then also there was an issue of Tibet and then when Dalai Lama then sought refuge in India - whose Tibet is it? I mean it became a very important issue for China that India must recognise Tibet as an integral part of China. And India did it in 1954 - India did recognise that Tibet was an integral part of China. But still with the defection of Dalai Lama 5 years later, it created a problem where which side is Indian government on - Dalai Lama and Tibet side or China's side?
So that created this trust deficit amongst the Chinese. "Can we really believe the Indians to acknowledge that Tibet has been part of China?" So that became a very important point other than the border itself. So there's a border issue, there's a Tibet issue.
Keith 00:43:30
What exactly about it agitates both countries to the point where given the fact that there's been such a rich inter-civilisational exchange that there is still such a deep deficit of trust?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:43:47
Yeah. I think borders trump all this long historical interactions because nation states are concerned about borders. Its sovereignty is based on the borders that it has created. The problem between India and China borders is that it was never clearly demarcated. So the British tried to do it on the map. So many of the places between India and China are not really properly mapped geographically. So you don't know which side belongs to which country.
So now the troops on each side would try to occupy as much as possible from either side. So that has become a problem. The borders are not clearly demarcated. So that has to be done and that has to be done through dialogue. Otherwise you'll fight and that has what has happened in the recent times that they have ended up fighting that "this part belongs to me and that part belongs to you".
It's - people would say it's a colonial legacy that the British tried to draw the borders and gave it to India and China. But we have been independent since the 1940s and there have been dialogues amongst us but it has not resolved. "Okay you take the side where you belong or you occupy and we'll take the place that we have occupied." But that kind of dialogue has not taken place.
And unfortunately that's the problem because there needs to be geographers sitting down with the governments and saying that "okay this is the actual border that we have to do" - it over the hills or the rivers - but that needs really a focused demarcation of borders. And unless demarcation of border takes place these kinds of episodes that happened few years back, five years back in Ladakh will continue to take place.
Keith 00:45:29
Unfortunately outside of the two issues of the borders and the Tibet issue, I wanted to ask like were there any flashpoints since independence that further deepened that distrust? Let me elaborate a little. I think you pointed out that in 1962 there was the India and China conflict and that left a very huge psychological scar within the Indian polity. And then since then even today we still see that although there's supposed to be maybe not aligned, but part of BRICS, they're supposed to have more closer economic relations, that deep distrust still lingers.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:46:08
The 50s was a period when there were an expectation that these countries would live in peace and harmony. I think that narrative was overplayed throughout the 50s. So when the war happened Indians saw this as China betraying the trust that they had in the 50s. "We are trusting the Chinese government which is communist government but we are trying to have a cultural relationship with them and suddenly there's a war." I mean this is something that was played on in the Indian media.
So people, common people really got into this notion, this idea that the Chinese cannot be trusted because they stab us on the back. And so that was the narrative that was propagated by the state, that was a narrative that was propagated by the Indian media. So it took deep roots that these Chinese can never be trusted. "Look, we tried to be good with them and they stabbed us back."
So that's what I call the psychological scar because they perhaps did not understand this border issue was continuing behind the scenes and the governments were debating about it for a long time or not addressing it. But all they saw was this bhai thing and forgot that they are fundamental issues between two nation states. We have emerged now as nation states, not civilisational states anymore. So we have to deal with border - that was not done. And common people had no idea that there's all this border problem. What they saw was 1962 - China attacks India, occupies the land.
So that has remained as a scar that is not just about the Chinese state - it's about the Chinese people as well. The Chinese people cannot be trusted. So that becomes a huge issue, for example getting visas to go to India. Chinese always complain "we can't get visas to go to India". Why? I mean, so this is part of this psychological scar. Can we trust any Chinese coming into India or not? Perhaps every Chinese is a spy.
So during the war from 62 to 65 to 66, many Chinese living in India, for example, were interned and many people don't know the fact that Chinese were rounded up and put into prison in India. Something similar also happens but in a lower scale in China with Indians being arrested. So whatever happens with the nation states has an implication on the people and that is what I would say creates the trust deficit when the people start distrusting the other side. It's very hard to bring that back and 62 was the turning point when it happened.
And for a long time until 78 India-China really did not have a good political relations or commercial relations between each other. So you can imagine 62 to 78 - there were no exchange of students. There were nothing taking place between the two countries.
And then another entity emerged that created a problem which is Pakistan. India and Pakistan got into these kinds of conflict, military conflict as well, and China - India alleged - was supporting Pakistan. So beyond the border and Tibet, Pakistan became a third important issue in which the two countries and the people of the two countries more importantly were not trusting each other.
We don't know how much the Chinese people knew about what was happening because the media in China was controlled. So it is said that for many Chinese they had no idea that 62 happened. So they did not have the psychological scar that the Indians had. So India has a very deep-rooted psychological scar.
The Chinese people more recently have now become very nationalist and have been going back and seeing what has happened over the last 40, 50 years and they are realising that India is perhaps also not trustworthy. Chinese social media has a very different kind of a narrative about India. It's a dirty place. It's a place that has not developed as China has developed in recent times.
So their psychological perception of India is very different. It's not a scar like it is for the Indians. It's a deep-rooted perhaps regarding India as an underdeveloped state. So the perception of India as not as good as China is a different kind of psychological thinking. So both sides have these psychological issues.
Keith 00:50:42
My question will be then - if the past is prolonged, would there be a better way forward for these two nations?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:50:48
See I mean the distinction I made with the historical and contemporary is that Tong Empire was not involved in Xuanzang's travel. So he travelled on his own and then he made the journey, came back. Now everything is dictated by nation states. If you want to travel, you need a passport, you need a visa. So nation state impinges on the movement of people.
It's not that there are no Indians in China. There are about 10,000 Indians studying medicine in China. There are students there studying medicine. That's amazing number. Never has happened that so many Indians have studied in China. Now the Chinese are teaching Indians how to do western medicine and they go back to India. So this is an important thing.
But that does not play any role in normalising, as you said, the relations between the two countries because it's a state-to-state affair ultimately. The border issue has to be solved by the states. The Tibet issue has to be solved by the states. The Pakistan issue has to be solved by the states.
So what do you do? I mean so the nation states have to make some accommodating initiatives or offer something that then the two nations will acknowledge that "okay now the nation states can live in peace". So the people can move around peacefully, harmoniously. They don't have to worry about getting visas or anything. But it's now in a very different situation when the nation states and what they do really matters in the interactions between the two countries.
Keith 00:52:18
I know you're not a political scientist or politician, but you're a historian who has taken a very long view of India and China. You've pointed out the three kind of areas of contention - it's Tibet, Pakistan, and the border issue. I guess my follow-on question would be then if there was a way to kind of mediate this conflict at a state-to-state level and perhaps you had the chance to speak to a higher level official, what would your word of advice be for them?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:52:48
I think both sides have to make some kind of offering to the other side and I think the Chinese side should make the first offering because of the psychological scar. I think that's the biggest problem that exists not only amongst the people but many different levels of the Indian government as well. "Can we trust the Chinese government and the Chinese people?"
And there's an easy way for the Chinese to make some kind of an offering to the Indians. So when PRC was established, Republic of China Taiwan was still a member of the Security Council and the Indian Prime Minister Nehru, who was really in love with Chinese civilisation - under whom the war happened - insisted that PRC should be the representative on the Security Council. Even after the war he would say that.
And now Indians would say "Look at PRC - they are the ones objecting to our becoming member of the Security Council". It just takes China to say that "We support India to become one of the members of the Security Council." That will be a major offering by the Chinese without any other expectations from India. So unilaterally if China could do that, it's a way in which saying that "Look, you have not trusted us and you think that we objected to you becoming Security Council member. We come out now and tell the world that we support India becoming member of the Security Council."
So if China could do that it will really help the psychological scar that the Indians continue to have.
From the Indian side they have to say that "We are ready to negotiate the border" because India had always - it seems - objected to give and take. "You take the place that you have under control and we'll keep the place we have under control." So it says that Zhou En-lai when he met Nehru had made that offering - Line of Actual Control LAC - "you keep what you have and we'll keep what we have". And that was again it seems offered to Rajiv Gandhi by Deng Xiaoping.
And India - Indian side was the one who supposed to have rejected that. But Indians have to do because India as a democratic country - elections - if you do that the party which decides to do that will lose the elections. But they have to come up with this conscience that "We the people of India can only have peaceful relations with China by settling the border issue." They have to convince the people and say that "We are okay with line of actual control - undemarcated line. Let's demarcate that."
So they have to make some kind of a thing that's saying that "We are ready to really talk and solve the border issue" and show it to the people and take people in confidence that "Look, we are doing it for our better society as we go on".
Keith 00:55:59
And I suppose the reason why you advocate for China's first move was because it also alleviates the political pressure for India as a democratic state.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:56:10
Exactly. I mean so I think that China should take the first step in making some kind of an offering to the Indian nation state but the Indian people as well.
Keith 00:56:22
And there is a case to be made. I know Henry Kissinger is one of the people that really came on supporting that India should be one of the P5 members. He suggested replacing the UK because the UK... so it's not a completely illogical leap.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:56:35
Yeah. And now we have a very good opportunity given the relations of two sides with the US. So this is a time - the Chinese foreign minister was just in India yesterday and Indian Prime Minister is going to China later this month. It's an opportunity where India and China can come closer to each other and say that "Our relationships really matter and we can solve it".
Right now that both China and India are being imposed with tariffs by Trump, "Can we have this kind of a relationship that is about us not forgetting that US really does matter to both sides and it will continue to matter and it's important for India and China?" But it's an opportunity to think about what we can do ourselves - just shifting gears and shifting the gaze from the west to each other and see what can be done.
I think there is this lack of long-term thinking about what can be done by both sides. I think the nation states again create this problem that they want to talk to the nation on the other side and forget that the people can also talk and come up with some kind of ideas and then free movement of things.
No, they want to hold on to their views and their methods and that is limiting because nation states have their concerns which many people - Indian people and Chinese people like each other. I mean they move from each other. I mean there are lots of Chinese tourists who used to go to India and then thought India is really a spiritual land. I mean that kind of a tourism for Chinese would be really fascinating.
So that's again something Indian government could do - as an offering to the Chinese people - that "Come to India. We'll give you visa-free access to India" in exchange for what China does with the Security Council. India says "Look Chinese, please come and visit Nalanda, come to all these Buddhist sites. We'll give you visa-free entry." Amazing. I mean this will be really very important if they could do that as part of this shifting the gaze from the west to each other and make that kind of an initiative.
So in a way it's ironically - or maybe in a way it's positively - emphasising the cultural relations as a way... No, trust issue - this is how you address the trust issue. It's not just building culture - is perhaps a way in which you resolve the deficit, a trust deficit that we have. Small steps but these are important steps.
How do you make other side trust us? I mean free access to India - come. China says "become a member of the permanent Security Council". So these are small steps but important steps. For India and China, I think make the offerings as soon as possible to make sure that trust deficit goes down.
Keith 00:59:24
Last question I have for you - if you were to give a piece of advice to a fresh graduate entering the working world, what would that be?
Prof Tansen Sen 00:59:30
Don't just fall for something that you can make money with. There are more interesting things that you'll find. Broaden your horizon, learn more and then find out where you want to go.
Keith 00:59:48
With that, Prof, thank you for coming on.
Prof Tansen Sen 00:59:53
Thank you. Nice chatting with you.