Centuries before the Christian Era, Central and West Asia were predominantly Sanskrit cultures. And they continued to flourish till the advent of Islam. Such has been the affinity and closeness that Kumarajiva (344-413 AD), a foremost Sanskrit scholar and translator, studied Buddhism in Kashmir, but for Vedas, he chose to visit Kashgar, today’s Xinjiang region, located near China’s border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The story of Kumarajiva, born to a Kashmiri father and a Kuchean mother, is a stark reminder of not just India’s deep connection with the Central Asian region but also how much its civilisational/cultural spread has shrunk in the last two millennia. For those not well averse with India’s real history, Kucha, in the northern Tarim basin, was a centre of Buddhist learning, and it was from here that Indian music had spread to China. Here it needs to be mentioned that Yarkand and Khotan (which tradition says was built by King Ashoka’s son Kutsan) in northern Tarim valley were centres of Mahayana Buddhism, while Kashgar, Kucha and Turfan were the hub of Hinayana Buddhism.
Kumarajiva’s story is significant because it singlehandedly — and quite forcefully — brings out in the open the civilisational/cultural footprints of Hindu/Buddhist India. Historically and civilisationally, thus, India’s claim over Tibet and Xinjiang has been far stronger than China’s.
Cut to March 2024, China renewed its claim over Arunachal Pradesh for the fourth time within a month, saying the state has “always been” its territory. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, “Zangnan (the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh) in the eastern sector has always been China’s territory.” China had all along exercised effective administrative jurisdiction over the area “until India’s illegal occupation”, he said, claiming this as a “basic fact that cannot be denied”.
“In 1987, India formed the so-called ‘Arunachal Pradesh’ on China’s territory under India’s illegal occupation. China issued a statement right then to firmly oppose it and stress that India’s move was illegal and null and void. China’s position remains unchanged,” Lin continued.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar took the Chinese challenge head-on, denouncing its repeated claims on Arunachal Pradesh as “ludicrous” and that the northeastern state was a “natural part of India”.
Jaishankar is right in calling China’s claim “ludicrous” and ahistorical. Bharat should, therefore, not waste its energies in telling the “deaf” what’s obvious. Instead, the time has come for the Narendra Modi government, under the able generalship of S Jaishankar, to open a new front: To cross the diplomatic Lakshman Rekha unilaterally drawn by the Indian leadership in 1949 and question the one-China policy.
In fact, historically, as the Kumarajiva saga suggests, India’s claims over Tibet and Xinjiang are far stronger and credible than China’s. But then Jaishankar and his team need to realise that this Chinese characteristic of loot and scoot of both resources and territories isn’t an aberration. Unlike the China of the past, which saw its relationship with Bharat in a guru-shishya terminology, the communist dispensation of the day has long discarded such civilisational mores. While ancient China would fight its neighbours for getting a scholar — in 383 AD, Chinese forces attacked Kucha when it refused to send Kumarajiva to China; the Sanskrit scholar was later taken to the Chinese court where he taught and translated Buddhist scriptures into Chinese — today’s China invades its neighbours for land and resources. Communism has altered China’s DNA beyond recognition.
So, who is this Dragon today? And, what makes it so difficult for China to never say never to its neighbour’s territories, which it believes it can annex, intrude into, or at least lay claims at?
To understand today’s China, we need to realise that it’s a heady mix of the old and communist China. In 1965, historian RC Majumdar wrote in an article in Organiser: “Thanks to the systematic recording of historical facts by the Chinese themselves, an almost unique achievement in oriental countries… we are in a position to follow the imperial and aggressive policy of China from the third century BC to the present day, a period of more than 2,200 years… It is characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she would regard it as a part of her empire forever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it.”
Today’s China is a blend of traditionally imperialistic China with communist deception and doublespeak — and the result is outright dangerous, to say the least. This has allowed China to act as an agent of imperialism and then pretend to be a victim of the same too. While it claims to have lost its territories to its neighbours, including Bharat, it in reality has grabbed two-thirds of the land that makes today’s China — historically, traditional China was just a third of the area it occupies today. No wonder, Han China has nothing in common with Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. It’s time we start asking these inconvenient questions to Xi Jinping and his men. Also, Bharat should start engaging more closely and constructively with Taiwan. One-China is a myth. It’s time new India calls this Chinese bluff.
In the past seven-and-a-half decades since India’s Independence, China has had it easy. While it continued to openly question this country’s territorial integrity, whether in Arunachal Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir, India, in a good neighbourly manner, continued to be generous and graceful. China sees this as a weakness. A weakness in Indian character. China only understands tough language, something which new India has started using in recent years, whether it is at the Line of Actual Control (LAC) where Indian and Chinese troops have been standing face to face for the past four years, or in the neighbourhood, as one witnessed this very month when India openly and decisively sided with the Philippines against growing Chinese hegemony.
Once the Dragon knows that it would get as hard as it gives, it would be tempted to act responsibly. Till now, it has not even been encouraged to be reasonable. Being a bully has worked to its advantage. New India, under Prime Minister Modi, should go as far as Xi Jinping’s China has gone. So, if the latter questions the one-India policy, time has come to give them back by debunking the one-China notion, which is in any way a lie.
Arun Shourie has brilliantly deconstructed the Chinese bully psyche. In Self-Deception: India’s China Policies, he writes, “Make no mistake: China watches… the feeble, confused, contradictory ways in which our governments, and even more our society reacts each time it advances a claim. And it pursues its policy: Claim; repeat the claim; go on repeating the claim; grab; hold; let time pass. And they will reconcile themselves to the new situation. Has the policy not succeeded in regard to Tibet?”
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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