China's past in the present

Book review of Gazing Eastwards: Of Buddhists Monks and Revolutionaries in China

This book by the well-known historian Romila Thapar is a record of her travels and work in China in 1957, unmediated by hindsight and, therefore, evoking a past that comes sharply alive. She was in China for only a couple of months, undertaking field studies at two of the country’s outstanding Buddhist sites, Maijishan and Dunhuang. But her book is not about art history as much as about the country and the people she encounters during her travels. She feels comfortable in her relationships with individual and ordinary Chinese, even a strong affinity, and yet, as she observes, India and China are such different civilisational entities. Chinese ideograms are unique as is its obsessive recording of history. In India, the written word has little value and history is a distraction.

We get a sense of China undergoing a revolutionary transformation but one whose impulses diminish in strength as one moves away from the political centre. The book describes a diverse country. Beijing is the capital and yet has a certain provincial air about it. Shanghai has been “cleaned up” of its free-wheeling and decadent habits and yet its residents retain an air of style and sophistication that harks back to that very bourgeois past. At a time when there is an easy relapse into monolithic images of China and its people, Gazing Eastwards is a timely reminder of how distorted and misleading our perceptions become through a prism of uninformed prejudice.

Dr Thapar is impressed by the brilliance and sophistication of China’s artistic and cultural heritage but disappointed by the overlay of Soviet-style ponderousness and uniformity. The Sino-Soviet split was brewing but these were still the days of socialist alliance. This was also the phase of   Hindi-Chini bhai bhai and there is an extraordinary account of both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai attending a reception by the Indian ambassador R K Nehru during then President S Radhakrishnan’s visit to Beijing. And yet within just two years in 1959, the “brothers” would be slipping inexorably towards a border war whose ugly echoes still resound.

Gazing Eastwards points to the unexpected twists and turns of history that imparts such tentativeness to political assessments. Dr Thapar, it must be said, was remarkably prescient, in several of her observations. She was in China soon after the launch of the infamous “rectification” campaign that targeted independent-minded intellectuals, writers and artists for expressing criticism of the Communist Party and its leadership. This after Mao himself had encouraged such free expression of views under the “Let Hundred Flowers Bloom and a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend” movement. This had a chilling effect on scholars and writers. Dr Thapar found it difficult to meet scholars in her field and if and when she did, they were mostly guarded and wary in expressing any opinions. She relates this ugly trend as an unmistakeable marker of authoritarian rule. It did not take long for China under Mao to plunge into the destructive chaos of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, with its demand for ideological uniformity and unreserved obedience to a single undisputed leader.

Gazing Eastwards: Of Buddhists Monks and Revolutionaries in China

Author:  Romila Thapar

Publisher: Aleph

Pages: 340: Price:Rs 999

Dr Thapar’s account reflects the ambiguities that characterise India-China relations. People of each country hold stereotypical images of the other. The director of the Dunhuang Research Institute, who had studied in France, thinks she is Greek despite the fact that she is wearing a sari. She should take heart from the fact that I was once introduced to a Chinese dignitary as being the Somalian ambassador — and this was in the 1980s! But as she recounts, Bollywood had already made its way deep into Chinese hearts. Wherever she went, her being Indian invariably triggered enthusiastic renditions of  Awara Hoon. Raj Kapoor was then as popular as Amir Khan is today.

But the defining and enduring medium through which China and the Chinese have, over the centuries, related to India is, of course, Buddhism which since its entry into China in the 2nd century CE became an integral component of Chinese culture. The art history project that took Dr Thapar to China itself reflected that history of cultural borrowing and assimilation that eventually transformed China into an alternate Buddhist universe with its own places of pilgrimage and doctrinal interpretations. India attracted Chinese monks in search of authentic Buddhist scriptures and much besides. Indian monks came to China to preach and translate Sanskrit texts for their patrons. But while the Chinese visitors to India left behind invaluable accounts of the country they called the Western Paradise, we find little reciprocal interest or curiosity among their Indian counterparts. This lack of curiosity has continued and there are very few people in India with a deep and granular understanding of China and its people. Despite her short stay in China, it is truly remarkable that Dr Thapar formed impressions of China that appear far more discerning and insightful than many scholarly readings available today.  There is just one minor mistake. Lao She, the celebrated Chinese writer, is not female as mentioned in the book.

Dr Thapar has a very brief epilogue. The most valuable insights are embedded in the narrative itself and need no recounting. This is a book well worth a read.

The reviewer is a former foreign secretary and a senior fellow, CPR