Sometimes in early 1970s, I had read a very famous book entitled ‘The Chinese Looking Glass’. Today I have only some faint ideas about the subject matter of the book. But the main thrust was to project the great cultural heritage of the country since the ancient time. It was known as the Middle Country as the emoerors believed that China was in the middle of the earth. They treated the rest of the world far far inferior to them. They had been defeated by Japan and even Tibet but still they treated themselves as invincible.
With this background, even the modern Chinese is a victim of this superciliousness. After the strained relation with India since 1959 and the unprovoked aggression of 1962, an average Chinese does not carry a good impression about this country. For them, I am quoting below a para from the speech of a great Chinese scholar, diplomat and philosopher, named as Hu Shin. He was speaking on the occasion of the tercentenary celebration of the Harvard in 1936. Shin was addressing the conference on science and arts.
“India conquered and dominated Chinese culturally for two thousand years without ever having to send a single soldier across the border …Never before had China seen a religion so rich in imagery, so beautiful and captivating in ritualism and so bold in cosmological and metaphysical speculations. Like a poor beggar suddenly halting before a magnificent storehouse of precious stones of dazzling brilliancy and splendour, China was overwhelmed, baffled and overjoyed. She begged and borrowed freely from this munificent giver …China’s indebtedness to India can never be fully told”.
The story is 77 years old but will remain relevant for ever. Things are bound to undergo a salubrious change, if the present Chinese leadership preferred to steal a leaf from Shin’s book and acknowledge this debt.
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