This is an article which will analyse in-depth the recent Chimerica cold war and the position of India sandwiched between the two. The phrases like “wolf warrior diplomacy”, “salami slicing”, “Sun Tzu’s art of war”, “winning without fighting”,” Chinese Checkers” etc. have become frequent in the newspapers.
American psychology is simple. The country was founded in 1776 by slave traders and risk-takers who had enough of the extortionary taxation policies of the British East India Company. After the protests erupted after the Boston Tea Party episode which allowed them to sell Tea from China without paying taxes. They were aided by the French off course in their war with imperial Britain, the favour which they returned during the French Revolution uprising after 1789. Although, Thomas Jefferson is quoted as “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, Blacks were emancipated by Abraham Lincoln “accidentally” in 1861 and had to wait another 100 years for voting rights. Meanwhile, they amassed wealth by exploiting their colonies and allowing big companies to take the lead meanwhile turning everything into a commodity and every endeavour of theirs into a transactional in nature. After coming out as relatively unscathed in the two world wars, paved the way for American Hegemenon which translated into de facto dominance after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the climax of the cold war in 1989. They have forever been on the lookout for a new frontier. This stems from the Christain dogma, that taking a new faith to ” newly discovered lands” and bringing “heathens” to the only true faith, characterised by their Human Rights lobbies to belittle different countries and direct military intervention in Oil or some other resource-rich country like Iraq, Vietnam, Korea etc. in recent times.
China meanwhile is the only country in the world with the widely available “Histographic Tradition” (Most documented History available, precisely dated and labelled) and a country characterised by frequent peasant rebellions. Their ancient philosophy is best summed as extracting “truth from facts”.They consider them as the “middle kingdom” is the kingdom between heaven and Earth and that it’s neighbours on the periphery being subordinate to it and paying its emperor obsequious. After their “100 year humiliation” (1842-1949) at the hands of western powers which ravaged and plundered their country, they have been vowed revenge and remain firm in their outlook. Even after Mao’s Communist revolution, they have digested communism into their Confucian ethics, not losing their tradition. You see this in the way how China refuses to follow world norms like that of WTO or opening up global internet. Or how they compete in the Olympics, just finishing 2nd after the USA(contrast with India!). While China is producing state of the art work in modern technology(AI, genetic engineering etc.), India struggles to put one university in top 200. Now they have been buying up people by honey trapping for just paying the required sum and even wishing to dislodge the Dollar as the gold standard. They even publish a Human rights violations report for America whenever the USA tries to scold China on their own misdemeanours. The are often at hammer and tongs with the Vatican and the Ummah stating that their intereference in China is foreign.
Henry Kissinger famously commented that “American exceptionalism is missionary in nature, whereas China’s is civilizational” and that “China is a state without a civilization (as the communist revolution destroyed all of it but they still claim leadership of Buddhist Civilizations) whereas India is a civilization without a state.” Where does India stand in the global Kurukshetra?
India is the only civilization which has not succumbed to Islamic or Christain ethics, but also the only one whose History is still controlled by western scholars. It’s high time that India take it back. Most of India’s opinion on world affairs comes from western think tanks. Who will analyse them from an Indian perspective? Watch some Foreign documentary, and you will find Chinese even Arabic subtitles but not one Indian Language.
Indi and USA do not have much in common except that both are democracies and that Indian diaspora has played a pivotal role in America’s growth while exorcising their own American Dream. Meanwhile, India and China as Shyam Saran noted in his book, “How India sees the world from Kautilya to 21st century” that China sees India as:
- Land of Cosmic Chaos due to its varied diversity in contrast with Chinese Societies characterised by Order from Confucius to Mao and now Xi.
- Land of great Knowledge and wisdom which not only angers them but also is the primary reason for their fears and insecurities.
As Hu Shih, a Chinese ambassador quoted fittingly “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.”
Fa-Hien and Xuazang for some Chinese Buddhists who came to India to study Buddhism, followed by people from all over the world. Bodhidharma, the First Chinese Buddhist is known of taken Buddhism to the East(China, Korea and Japan) and also the patriarch who pioneered Shaolin which were later adapted to Chinese Martial arts. As Buddhism was wiped out from India by Islamic Invasions and Buddhism declined in China with the rise of communism, the bond between India and China rather subdued and complicated by India’s colonization by Britain, unsettling border questions and opium wars and other semi colonisers of China. Opium to China was imported came from India which crushed the Chinese society and their economy subsided.
Most experts fail to see this but American and Chinese interests converge when it comes to India. China sees India as the only threat who can defeat them somehow, while America does not want another China to irk them.
Krishna is not coming to save Draupadi’s honour this time. India needs to be assertive and firm in her grit and perseverance. She should declare herself as the sole custodian of the world’s Vedic/Buddhist civilization and take control of their destinies, not paying much heed to Sun Tzu she is able to emulate the vision of Chankya. As British historian Toynbee said, the world having th western start will have an Indian end.India’s rise is only inevitable.
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