Is India ready to invade China?

johnee

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New Indian Express
Soft power to ‘conquer and dominate’
R Vaidyanathan
First Published : 29 Jul 2009 12:18:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 29 Jul 2009 12:56:04 AM IST

Religion is no longer derided in China. The keynote speech by Communist Party general secretary Hu Jintao to the 17th party congress in October 2007, devoted a paragraph to religion. He stressed that religious people including priests, monks and lay believers played a positive role in the social and economic development of China. Hence religion is no more the opiate of the masses.
The state-controlled Xinhua stresses freedom of belief. It says religion could play an important role in realising a ‘harmonious society’, which is the new political role of the party. That is the main issue we in India should note. A study by two professors of China Normal University based on more than 4,500 people in 2007 concludes that more than 300 million people, namely 31 per cent are religious, and more than 60 per cent of those are in the 16-40 age group. The number of followers of Christianity has increased to 12 per cent from less than eight per cent in the Nineties.
This last fact is interesting since a huge underground church has developed in China and Zhao Xiao, a former communist party official and convert to Christianity, thinks there are up to 130 million Christians in China. This figure is much higher than the official figure of 21 million — 16 million Protestants and five million Catholics. If the former figure is true, then there are more Christians in China than Communist Party members, 74 million at the last count.
The major change in China is not related to growth rates or the Three Gorges dam, shopping malls and Olympic stadia. That is a typical Western way of viewing China. The main change is in religious affiliation, and the assertiveness of Islamic followers and development of a large-scale underground church. The middle classes have given up rice (perceived to be for the illiterate poor) and are embracing Christianity as it also helps job mobility, particularly in global companies where the heads could belong to the same church.
The Muslim population is more concentrated in specific locations like the western parts. But there is also a growing interest in China about its past. The white marble Ming dynasty tombs in Beijing were painted red during the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties. Even today labourers are trying to restore the white, without success. The guides are not reluctant to talk about it. The 10-handed Buddha in the summer palace of the Qing dynasty near Beijing has many similarities with Vishnu, and even this is mentioned clearly. More importantly China is opening ‘Confucius Institutes’ in more than 50 countries, similar to British Council efforts, but more focused on China’s ancient wisdom. The first thing we should learn is to stop looking at China with Western glasses.
Economic growth bereft of spiritual underpinnings in the context of the death of Marxism will be a great challenge for China. India as an elder brother should facilitate an orderly transformation based on our common shared ancient wisdom. Let us remember that China too is a multi-cultural and multi-religious society but interested in our shared past. In the words of Hu Shih, a former ambassador of China to the USA (1938-1942) “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without having to send a single soldier across her borders.” We should be using our soft power to ‘conquer and dominate’ China.
We need to print million copies of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and start some 50 Bharatiya Vidya Bhavans in China. This is the only way to destabilise our younger brother, by de-legitimising communism. Actually China needs this more than USA even though all our soft power is currently on show in the USA.
We should recognise China’s weak point and the need of its masses in the absence of communism. Many Chinese even today believe that their next birth should be in India to reach salvation. Culture and religion are not taboos any more.
There are other issues. Officially China recognises or permits only five religions, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Protestantism and Catholicism. Hence we should take steps to include Hinduism as well. The point is that our soft power in culture is interwoven intimately with religion. You cannot separate it however much you try it. Carnatic music without Bhakthi is neither music nor art. The strategy should be to encircle China with music, dance, art, yoga. ayurveda, spiritual texts, etc, and capture the hearts of the middle-classes as we have done for centuries.
The second issue is related to our own mindset. We tend to look at China either through Western spectacles or through local Marxist spectacles — which have thicker glasses. We need to come out of it. Policy formulators are still living in the Sixties and Seventies while China is undergoing a gigantic social crisis due to material prosperity and spiritual vacuum.
The foreign secretary-in-waiting was India’s Ambassador to China. She should send someone to China who grasps the strategy and fashions the responses and our actions. Unfortunately, as a Chinese colleague of mine commented, “both our countries are ruled by rootless deracinated foreign educated wonders that do not have any idea of the civilisational roots or the cultural richness of our lands.”
But this is an opportunity too good to pass up, especially as there is every likelihood that the next two superpowers will be from Asia. In the process we would be destabilising the current dispensation and the remnants of communism. Are we ready to undertake such an ‘invasion'


Link:
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/...onquer and dominate’&artid=jtqfayDq0UA=&type=
(The author is professor of finance, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. E-mail: [email protected])
 

johnee

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I think the above article is self-explanatory. What do the members think about the suggestion of the author on extending India's soft power to China through our arts and culture. IMO, they are very practical suggestions.
 

no smoking

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Well, it is true that china is facing a serious problem called "belief crisis". The ordinary chineses are suffering from the mental vaccum: chinese need a new religion to instruct our behave in daily life and a new religion to release our mind from highly compeitive world, one by-product of modernizaiton.

But i don't think india could help. Because this problem is caused by modernization, going back to ancient world cannot get answer. I also believe that india will face the same problem when their reform get into certain stage in the future.

We have to study west world: how they resolve this problem during industrilization. The answer can be the combination of west's experience and chinese cultrural.
 

johnee

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Well, it is true that china is facing a serious problem called "belief crisis". The ordinary chineses are suffering from the mental vaccum: chinese need a new religion to instruct our behave in daily life and a new religion to release our mind from highly compeitive world, one by-product of modernizaiton.

But i don't think india could help. Because this problem is caused by modernization, going back to ancient world cannot get answer. I also believe that india will face the same problem when their reform get into certain stage in the future.

We have to study west world: how they resolve this problem during industrilization. The answer can be the combination of west's experience and chinese cultrural.
A honest reply. I congratulate you for that. As for whether India could help, I think you have made up your decision without proper awareness. The cultures, traditions and religion that are being proposed are suprisingly suitable to modern lifestyles. For instance, the author mentions ramayana: Here is the link to Valmiki Ramayana's net version.Valmiki Ramayana Check it out for yourself.

Lastly, IMHO, India and China should not look to west for directions in social engineering. They have failed themselves and aping them will lead us to destruction as well. We should rather look to each other for the guidance and perhaps to our old customs and religions.
 

wilsonnadar

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Good article indeed. but divide of reality. true Indian culture and religion was the core of Chinese civilization for last 2 millennium. In fact someone said India conquered china without sending any soldier to fight. And you go to any temple in China, Emei, Lehshan, or the Pagoda in Xian you will see Indian in it. All said, its a new country now. so i kind of agree to what no smoking said. Chinese people look up to American as their role model in every way of life. including religion. In fact they want to get married in church wearing white dress. At least take a picture so they look like a western bride. End of the day India with all its glorious past and all the religion and God & Goddess we are less of a human then western people in humanitarian level. First with all our religion we should prove our self better before we expect someone to follow us.
Regards
wilson
 

IBRIS

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Military capacity is not the only or even the most important correlate of war. Most obviously, weaker oponent often strike stronger adversaries when there can be little hope of military success. This may be because of faulty assessment of the likely outcome, the result of a judgement that war can be waged successfully for limited aims, or because the result of not attacking would be inteolerable. For this reason, it is worth considering scenarios in which military technology has some bearing factors. The most likely contributions of technology to the risk of war and indeed there are cases identified in this study, comes when technology makes the outcome of armed conflicts more difficult to predict, when the imminent acquisition of a technology by a potential foe makes preventive war appear more diserable than standing idly by.
 

IBRIS

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The Chinese nervousness has been increased by the outbreak of violence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on July 5, 2009, and the failure of their Ministry of Public Security, which is responsible for internal intelligence and security, to detect the preparations for the violence by the Uighurs. The Ministry of Public Security was as badly caught napping in Xinjiang in July as it was in Tibet in March last year.
The Lhasa riots of March, 2008, and the Urumqi riots of July, 2009, have underlined the weak intelligence capabilities in the peripheral regions. The security authorities did well in preventing any undue incident anywhere in China during the Beijing Olympics of August last year, but their subsequent performance in Xinjiang was unsatisfactory.
Muslim fasting period of Ramadan, which started on August 23, 2009, coincides with the weeks preceding the October celebrations, which start on October 1, and will end when the celebrations start in October. Restrictions on the movements and gatherings of Muslims become very difficult during this period and often prove provocative.
The security agencies in all these places were caught napping.
Thousands of militia soldiers have also been deployed to watch key infrastructure such as bridges, overpasses, railways and highway tunnels, according to the police bureau.
Beijing Radio Administration Bureau is screening radio devices in the city, especially near Tian'anmen Square, Chang'an Avenue and three "parade villages" where civilians and troops participating in the parade are exercising.
Gas stations have been asked to be wary of customers buying gasoline with containers. Stations are required to question the purpose of the purchase, and keep a copy of the buyer's ID card and contact information. threats to National security is more likely to come from inside the country than from abroad.
India doesn't need to invade China afterall. But China could attack India to take it's poppulations attention away from internal unrest.
 

proud_hindustani

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Let the dragon sleep peacefully. Don't poke your finger on dragon's ass while he is sleeping.
 

ajtr

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article is rubbish.soft power,non violence etc are the words of cowards and powerless,only cowards try to hide thier cowardice behind these words.today india is being heard in the comity of nations coz of its hard power not the soft power.
 

mattster

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Damn.....I wish I could get my hands on whatever drug this IIM Bangalore Professor (who wrote this article) is smoking.

It sounds like he is on a really good "trip"

The Chinese do have a God - its called Money.
They do have a spiritual life - its called Nationalism. LOL !!

Now in all seriousness, I am not saying that all Chinese are devoid of any spiritual impluses or yearnings. Obviously Falun Gong is there, even if it is practised in secret.

If you want to write an article about soft power influence in China, then you had better have lived and worked and played and spent years around the Chinese people. I dont think this professor has done any of that since he does not seem to understand the Chinese mentality.

The Chinese are not a very spiritual people(does not matter where they are in the world). China is a very old civilization and the closest thing to any form of spirituality that has come out of China is probably Confucianism and even that hardly qualifies as a spiritual practice. Even Taoism is very much from the Tibetan Buddhist lineage which originally comes from India.

Compare that to India - about 4 major world religions Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism originated from India proper. Look at the number of religions that are found in India - virtually everything from Judaism to Bahai to Sufism, and virtually every Hindu, Muslim and Christian sect has thrived in the Indian subcontinent.

There is a very good reason why nothing spiritually inspiring has ever come out of this very old Chinese civilization......its because they are not very spiritually inclined as a people.

BTW, that is also the reason why Communism was such a good fit for China and by corollary; it is also the reason why communism would never, have had a chance in India.

India does indeed have soft power. Indian spiritual life and the culture is one of those draws - they are probably more active Yoga practioners in the US than all of India. Indian sadhus/holy men/yogis are treated like celebraties when they come to the US by various followers. Thousands of westerners go to India to seek some kind of spiritual awakening. But then again, the western mind is open to such spiritual ideas and values as they have a tradition of exploring and a tradition of faith.

But please dont expect throngs of Chinese tourists visiting India seeking sadhus, or listening to Deepak Chopra tapes anytime soon.
Maybe in the next lifetime !!
 

amitkriit

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Indian self-made intellectuals have a reputation of getting carried away with these "Soft-Power" theories. We don't need these dillusioned people to lead our policies. India will conquer China in whatsoever way, once we manage to conquer our own ghosts like poverty, illiteracy, corruption etc.
 

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