Asian Angle | Friends to foes: can China and India’s ancient links offer hints on mending rift?
- Across trade, migration, geopolitical fights and culture, the two countries have been deeply intertwined across centuries
- Sino-Indian history – that began over 1,000 years ago between southern Indian kingdoms of Pallava, Chola and Song China – is often overlooked in discussing China-India relationships
The foundations of that bond, the Nobel-winning poet noted, “were laid 1,800 years back with patience and sacrifice”.
With the similar concepts of “acceptance and peaceful coexistence”, Tagore and co-founder Tan Yun-Shan – a noted Chinese scholar and the first director of the Cheena Bhavan Institute of Chinese Language and Culture – worked to deepen Sino-Indian links; their efforts gained fruit intermittently throughout but more tangibly from the 1980s.
As the two nations sought to strengthen bilateral ties, a phrase emerged: “Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai” (“Indians and Chinese are brothers”).
But decades later, changing geopolitical realities and events like the Sino-Indian War in 1962 and the deadly Galwan border clash of 2021 have crushed the ideals of acceptance and peaceful coexistence. Relations further deteriorated after India banned Chinese apps and clamped down on Chinese-owned firms, while New Delhi’s Indo-Pacific calculations amid China’s rise are driving the once-friendly neighbours further apart.
