Understanding the current scenario between India and China Part 2
Part 2 looks into further evidence of how China perceives India with the help of many recent examples of popular culture
In the first part of this series of articles, the main theme was that the colonial legacy of modern India is one of the critical lenses through which China perceives the current Indian state.
One of my readers reminded me recently after my first article that in the Chinese mind, resentment against India has been growing over centuries because of the involvement of Indian traders like the TATAs in the infamous Opium trade and then the contribution made by the Indian Jawans as part of the British Indian army efforts during the wars of the British Raj. These examples reminded me, that during the COVID second wave, Global times, the famous Chinese Internet publication came up with a creative picture named “the last G7”, mocking the G-7 grouping of the nations that was convened by the beleaguered US president Joe Biden to shore up an united front against China.
Image : The Last G7 (courtesy: Globaltimes, Beijing, China)
What was the most interesting thing about this picture was how the different countries have been depicted as animals around the dining table. The postures and gestures displayed by these animals in this picture resembles the positions taken by individual countries on the most important issue of the day which happens to be the rise of China. The US has been depicted as the egoist Eagle standing at the centre of the table and looking to lord over others and currently exhorting others to fall in line under it’s leadership against China, the British as the Lion, the Canadians as the Beaver, the Japanese as the cunning fox and the Australians as the Kangaroo all eagerly listening and willing to go against China under the US leadership. The French rooster, the Italian loan wolf and the German hawk are visibly not interested to gang up against China because of their economic relations with China.
India depicted as an elephant, sits at the floor just outside the table with an oxygen cylinder and a saline channel attached to it. There is a small komondol depicted in front of the elephant indicating the same as carrying the gow mutra. The message that this picture conveys is quite clear about the way India is perceived by China. A legacy colonial empire, very much impoverished and enfeebled by superstitious and unhealthy beliefs, always overeager to work with for the erstwhile colonial masters although considered unworthy to be treated as equal by the very same colonial masters.
It is very interesting to compare this backward, enfeebled image of India in the modern Chinese mind to how the contemporary India perceives China with this poem by Ashutosh Rana. Most interesting are these lines from the same poem about China.
“keya kehte ho mere bharat se wo Chini takrayenge ?
are Chini ko hum pani me ghol ghol ke pi jayenge.
Woh borbor tha woh ashuddh tha humne usko shuddh kiya,
Humne usko Budh diya to usne humko Juddh diya”
The meaning of these lines are like “How can the Chinese fight with us Indians when we can easily drink the Chinese with a glass of water. The Chinese were Barbarians whom we civilized by offering them the Buddha while these Barbarians misunderstood our good intentions by attacking us in 1962.”
The contrasting views of India and China towards each other are very clearly depicted in these above cultural examples. Whereas the Indians complain that the Chinese do not perceive them as civilizational equals, the Chinese consider the Indians as impoverished, backward colonial coolies unworthy of being treated with equal respect.
This outlook of India as a backward colonial impoverished empire has further strengthened in the Chinese mind with the COVID calamity and subsequent economic troubles in India. China perceives that India as a fractured colonial empire with various faultlines which seemingly aggravating further due to the various changes brought in the last few years. In the Chinese view, India like any of historical empires is going through tremendous changes due to the COVID and various administrative changes such as the Kashmir issue, demonetization , GST, farmer’s bills etc over last few years. China believes that these epochal changes in the Indian political economy will open up many new and old faultlines inside India distracting New Delhi. This will help China to further consolidate the Chinese position in the places like Ladakh and Arunachal pradesh.
China believes that due to India’s recent policies, a lot of potential rifts have and will come up between India and her other smaller South Asian neighbors. This provides China with further opportunities in future to bottle up India into a geopolitical cul-de-sac inside South Asia itself. We will look into all these in our next article about how China plays with smaller south Asian countries to further limit India inside her own region.