“In China’s rearview mirror, India’s image keeps shrinking”

RFI: We could read your book How China sees India and the world as an Indian diplomat’s tribute to the great Chinese civilization. How was born your admiration for China, yet competitor and great rival of the nation you represent?

Shyam Saran : This exercise in admiration began with learning the language. When I entered the Indian diplomatic service in 1970, I had to learn a foreign language, before being assigned to an embassy. It turns out that the foreign language that was assigned to me was Mandarin, the Chinese spoken in mainland China. So I went to Hong Kong to learn the language. It took me two good years to master it.

Perhaps more than any other language, the Chinese language is a real window into the matrix civilization that is so different from other civilizations I know. Chinese culture is ancient, complex, and finally, as rich, if not more so, than that of the country I come from.

You recall that India and China became neighbors only in the 20th century, after the conquest of Tibet by Beijing. But the two countries had known each other for more than 2,000 years. What role did Buddhism play in bringing them together ?

Buddhism arrived in China, using the caravan routes of Central Asia and the sea routes that linked the coasts of Cormondel and the Chinese ports. Buddhist thought enjoyed wide prestige, as evidenced by the presence of Chinese pilgrims in India and that of Indian Buddhist monks in the country of Confucius throughout the first millennium of our era.

At the same time, there was a real circulation of knowledge, with the translation into Chinese of philosophical books, but also treatises on Indian medicine. Perceived as an alternative center of culture and civilization, India occupied a privileged place in the Chinese imagination of the time. In ancient Chinese chronicles, the term for India was ” xitian », meaning « western paradise “.

Unfortunately, this positive vision will become more problematic as we get closer to the modern era…

Indeed, after the decline of Buddhism in South Asia, India disappeared from the radar screen of the Chinese for several centuries. It will then be necessary to wait until the 19th century for these two countries-civilizations to speak again, when India was already part of the British colonial empire. For the Chinese, the land of the Buddha had become a slave nation “.

Moreover, during the depredations perpetrated during the famous opium wars, the Indian soldiers constituted the shock troops of the British colonial army. The nefarious role played by Indian merchants and soldiers throughout this period had a negative impact on India’s image in China. To see the extent of the damage, it suffices to leaf through the writings of the Chinese reformers of the late 19th and 20th centuries, who above all did not want their country to know the fate reserved for India.

The end of colonial domination did not bring the two countries closer together, as shown by the war they fought in 1962. What were the issues? ?

This war was the result of deep mutual misunderstandings. For the Chinese, by offering political asylum to the Dalai Lama, Nehru’s objective could only be to subvert the Chinese stranglehold on Tibet. It is difficult for a one-party state to grasp all the subtleties of the functioning of a parliamentary democracy.

In reality, whatever the color of the government in place in New Delhi, it could hardly refuse to welcome the Dalai Lama without being called to order by the people who had elected him. In this context of misunderstandings, the slightest skirmishes that broke out on the border separating the two countries were interpreted by Beijing as so many attempts to challenge the Chinese occupation of Tibet. As for the mandarins of New Delhi, they did not understand for their part what could well hide the susceptibilities of a Marxist and authoritarian power.

You write that today: In China’s rearview mirror, India’s image continues to shrink. » Did India definitely lose the match ?

It seems to me that the difficult relations between the two countries stem essentially from their asymmetrical powers. It is only by strengthening its capabilities in all areas that India can meet the Chinese challenge. She is quite capable of this, especially since her actions are measured on the scale of a sub-continent. Moreover, India can boast of being supported by major democracies such as the United States, Japan or the countries of the European Union, which are also the main holders of advanced technologies in the world and essential sources of capital.

These advanced democracies feel threatened by rising Chinese power. The threat has grown since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, which saw Moscow and Beijing strengthen their ties. Faced with this alliance of totalitarian states, the West turned to India, with which it shares a democratic tradition and which can act as a counterweight to China. This is an auspicious geopolitical niche for New Delhi. The whole question now is whether the latter will be able to seize the opportunity and put in place an appropriate battle plan, which will allow it to increase its levels of both military and economic capabilities. India needs political voluntarism to eventually catch up with China. This is the thesis that I defend in my book.

Your thesis also consists in reminding the Hindu nationalists in power in New Delhi that it is by remaining faithful to the values ​​enshrined in its Constitution that India will be able to take up the Chinese challenge. What are these values?

I argued that India’s main strengths are its civilizational plurality and the cosmopolitanism born of its age-old openness to foreign influences. It seems to me that the regime best suited to managing the plurality specific to the increasingly globalized world of tomorrow is the Indian democratic regime and not the Chinese autocratic model!