The Field of China–India Studies

The most pertinent question at the outset of this assessment is whether China–India studies can be designated as a field of research. Although publications focusing on China and India, examining either interactions or comparisons between the two regions, became popular in the mid-nineteenth century, it was the establishment of the Sino-Indian Institute in the former Austrian embassy in the Legation Quarter of Peking (now Beijing) by Alexander von Staël-Holstein (1877–1937) in 1927 that accentuated the importance and the academic value of studying China and India within a single framework. Established with funds from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Staël-Holstein and his Chinese, European, and American collaborators concentrated on the comparative examination of Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. A Sino-Indian research cluster was also set up at Harvard University by Staël-Holstein, who launched a related publication series, the Harvard Sino-Indian Series (Elisseeff Reference Elisseeff1938; Schierlitz Reference Schierlitz1937; Weller Reference Weller1933). Several people associated with the Sino-Indian Institute in Beijing were instrumental in developing the field of “Sino-Indian studies” in Shantiniketan, including Sylvain Lévi (1863–1935) and Walter Liebenthal (1886–1982).

Thus, by the time the two “Sino-Indian” journals mentioned in the introduction appeared in Shantiniketan, the study of China and India as a field of inquiry had already become a global endeavor. While some of these studies focused on the connections and comparisons associated with the circulation of Buddhist monks, texts, ideas, and art forms, others examined commercial and diplomatic interactions. There were also writings, as noted later, that compared Chinese and Indian encounters with colonialism, their religious practices, and the role of the youth in respective societies. By the mid-twentieth century, it had become evident that this field of inquiry had a distinctiveness of its own and that publications on the topic were neither random nor limited by themes, temporality, or disciplinary analysis.

The recent surge in publications on China–India issues and the establishment of research institutions devoted to the study of the two countries in many ways represent a revival of what took place in the early twentieth century. The outputs are now more voluminous and diverse in the topics covered, albeit of uneven quality. A quick subject search on WorldCat, for example, reveals that 2,980 books on China–India topics were published in English between 2008 and 2018, compared to only 726 in 1964–74 and 1,310 in 1986–96. The rationale for studying China and India comparatively or through the prism of connections is provided in some of these recent publications. Emphasizing the comparative angle, Peter van der Veer (Reference Van der Veer2014, 4) writes,

Similarly, Prasenjit Duara (Reference Duara, Sen and Tsui2021, 460), underscoring the connective aspect, argues that the “China–India relationship, in its different historical and contemporary configurations, remains very significant, not only because of the two nations’ size, growth rates, and impact on the world, but because it reveals interesting methodological insights from a non-Western (though not anti-Western) global perspective.”

Such justifications have been validated by the establishment of several institutions around the world to promote the study of China–India topics. These include the India China Institute at the New School in New York City, the India China America Institute in Atlanta, the South Asia program at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in Kunming, and the Institute for Chinese Studies in Delhi. Research on contemporary China–India relations also forms a crucial component at institutions such as the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in Beijing, and the Observer Research Foundation, a private think tank based in New Delhi. Most of these centers publish newsletters, working papers, and edited volumes on issues dealing with India and China. These institutions have played important role in promoting new research, developing curricular initiatives, and training new generation of China–India scholars.Footnote ⁴ In addition, the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Sichuan University, and Oxford University Press have book series devoted specifically to China–India topics. During the past few years, there also have been individual collaborative initiatives, some of which are mentioned later in this essay, to address the lacunae in the field of China–India studies.

Despite the century-long history of research and publications, the scholarly justification, and the institutional support, there was a complete neglect of discussion of conceptual and methodological issues until recently. Some of these issues, including the definition of the field and its methodological possibilities, are outlined later in this essay. What is important first is to outline the various strands of studies—comparative and connective—that have emerged since the mid-nineteenth century. It is apparent that the historical context and events affecting relations between China and India have had a significant impact on the emergence of new strands of China–India research and publications. Thus, the review here is presented within three temporal frameworks: the colonial phase, especially the period after the Opium Wars (1839–60); the pan-Asian phase, spanning the first half of the twentieth century; and the post-1962 phase, with the 1962 China–India border war constituting a watershed in China–India relations and studies.Footnote ⁵

The Colonial Contexts

In 1848, Alexander Cunningham (1814–93), an engineer in the British Army in India, a passionate archaeologist, and eventually the founding director of the Archaeological Survey of India, vehemently defended the validity of the Chinese monk Xuanzang's 玄奘 (600?–664) seventh-century record of India. “The minute accuracy of its details and the faithful transcription of the native names of men and places,” Cunningham argued (Reference Cunningham1848, 477), “give it a vast superiority over all the Mussalmán works that I have seen, excepting only that of Abu Rihán.” Cunningham (Reference Cunningham1871) and the Bengali Orientalist Rajendralal Mitra (Reference Mitra1878), the first Indian president of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata), laid the foundations for an approach that blended the study of ancient Indian history and archaeology with the examination of ancient Chinese records.Footnote ⁶ The recently translated records of the Chinese monks Faxian 法顯 (337?–422?), Xuanzang, and Yijing 義淨 (635–713) became the main sources for such studies. It was against this initial background that publications examining the connections between China and India through Chinese historical records emerged.

In addition to its importance as an era in which the field of China–India studies developed, the colonial period was also significant for the vibrant interactions between China and India, featured in several recent studies. The triangular commercial exchanges between Britain, India (both British India and the princely states), and China, highlighted by the opium and tea trades, have been extensively examined (Liu Reference Liu2020; Siddiqi Reference Siddiqi and Thampi2005). While some have analyzed the impact this trade had on the development of Bombay during the nineteenth century (Thampi and Saksena Reference Thampi and Saksena2009), others have explained the role of Parsi merchants, including Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy of Bombay, in facilitating and profiting from the sale and transportation of opium (Bickers Reference Bickers, Bickers and Howlett2016; Farooqui [Reference Farooqui2006] 2012; Guo Reference Deyan2005; Siddiqi Reference Siddiqi1982,). In fact, there are now several books and articles on the presence of Indians in China who were closely associated with these commercial exchanges during and after the Opium war (Atwill Reference Atwill2018; Cao Reference Cao2017; Jackson Reference Jackson2012; Markovits Reference Markovits, Bickers and Henriot2000; Thampi Reference Thampi2005).Footnote ⁷ This period also witnessed the migration of Chinese to India through various maritime and overland routes and the establishment of new networks of connections, such as those related to education, banking, anticolonial resistance, smuggling, and spying, between China and India.Footnote ⁸

British India's involvement with Tibet prior to Francis Younghusband's (1863–1942) expedition to Lhasa in 1904, including initial attempts by the British governor-general Warren Hastings (1732–1818) to gain entry into Tibet and the Qing capital (Cammann Reference Cammann1951; Petech Reference Petech1950; Stewart Reference Stewart2009; Teltscher Reference Teltscher2013), the ways in which the engagement with the region shaped Qing China's perception of India (Mosca Reference Mosca2013), and the frontier survey and intelligence work carried out by the so-called Pandits in Tibet on behalf of the British (Waller Reference Waller1990) have also been the focus of a large number of publications.Footnote ⁹ These studies make it evident that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the connections between China and India were driven not only by British policies and interests but also by Kashmiri and Parsi traders, Chinese migrants, and other itinerants who often exploited the colonial networks to advance their own goals and objectives. These works also reflect the need to understand these connections in more global settings of mobilities, economic dependencies, and the circulation of knowledge, religious beliefs, and objects.

The period after the Opium Wars witnessed significant increase in the presence of Chinese in India and Indians in China, which included government officials, soldiers, and migrant populations. This resulted in the emergence of new writings about China and India, such as Chinese travelogues that differed significantly from the earlier records of Buddhist monks. These were the writings of the Qing officials Huang Maocai 黄楙材 (1843–1890), Ma Jianzhong 馬建忠 (1845–1900), and Wu Guangpei 吳廣霈 (1854–1918) who visited India between 1878 and 1881 on survey missions. Qing officials were also sent to India to investigate the production of tea and its impact on Qing exports (Liu Reference Liu2020). Their aims included compiling information about India and assessing the possibility of British expansion into Qing territories. These writings were especially instrumental in informing the Qing court, intellectuals, and, in some cases, provincial governments about British policies in India and the situations in their frontier regions. These records are still relatively unknown, since they have not been translated into English.Footnote ¹⁰

In fact, there are several facets of colonial connections between China and India that are yet to be explored in detail. These include the networks involving the Jesuits who used Goa as the base for their activities in Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) China. Also lacking are analyses of the Islamic connections, especially those related to the Muslims of Xinjiang and Yunnan who made the pilgrimage to Mecca through either Calcutta or Bombay (Thum Reference Thum2017, Reference Thum, Takahiro, Brophy and Yasushi2018). Similarly, the circulation of commodities and the movements between China and India triggered by the Dutch and the French presence in the region require more thorough investigation.

Comparative studies in the realms of statecraft, resource utilization, science, economic and industrial development, military affairs, literature, and art, some of which are touched on in the recently edited volume by Sheldon Pollock and Benjamin Elman (Reference Pollock and Elman2018), remain generally neglected. Unlike the precolonial period, a variety of sources from South Asia, albeit with their own shortcomings, record engagements with China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Footnote ¹¹ Together with sources from China and the European colonial archives, they could be used to undertake more inclusive interdisciplinary studies of how the two regions encountered each other during the colonial period and the ways in which the interactions between them contributed to broader regional and global entanglements.

The Pan-Asian Inspiration

In 1901, a few years before Okakura Kakuzō 岡倉 覚三 (1863–1913) declared that Asia was “One,” eventually leading to the popularity of the concept of pan-Asianism, Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), the Qing official who inspired the Hundred Days Reform in 1898, arrived in Darjeeling, northern India. Like Huang, Ma, and Wu before him, Kang also penned a travelogue. However, the key aim of his writing on India was to highlight its social and administrative problems and to argue that, if China were to pursue policies of regional autonomy as in India, a “similar misfortune” could befall it (Liu Reference Liu2012). This “misfortune” of India was at this time rapidly becoming an important part of the Chinese discourse on India, which saw India as a “fallen/subjugated country” (wangguo 亡國) that had been so weakened by its religious practices and social divisions that it had become a slave to a few thousand British colonizers.Footnote ¹²

Almost at the same time that Kang was expressing his views on India, a very different type of book appeared in Lucknow in 1902, written in Hindi by a “subaltern” Indian soldier named Thakur Gadhadhar Singh. Formerly a member of the British army in China fighting the Boxers, Singh's critique of British imperialism included in his China diary was published under the title Chin Meh Terah Mas (Thirteen months in China). This diary is perhaps one of the first works of the early twentieth century in a popular genre that advocated solidarity between Indians and Chinese against imperialism (Yang Reference Yang2006, Reference Yang, Bickers and Tiedemann2007; Yang et al. Reference Yang2017). Another Indian in China who contributed to the study of China and India was the sociologist Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949). While living in Shanghai in Reference Sarkar1916, Sarkar published a work on Chinese religions and later wrote several other works on China in both English and Bengali, including essays (Sarkar Reference Sarkar1922) that argued for the cultural unity of Asia through shared beliefs and practices. These are among the earliest examples of a comparative analysis of China and India in the twentieth century.Footnote ¹³

In Japan, writings on China–India interactions within the framework of pan-Asianism emerged during the first decade of the twentieth century, when young revolutionaries from China and India gathered in that country. Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1869–1936) and Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) were two such Chinese intellectuals who were deeply influenced by the ideology of Asian unity promoted in Japan. Zhang wrote several articles highlighting the importance of India in Asia and of the ancient connections between China and India (Shimada Reference Kenji and Fogel1990, 76–83). Liang did the same, mostly in the 1920s, apparently inspired by Tagore's visit to China in 1924. In fact, it was Liang who invited Tagore to China shortly after the latter became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Even before his visit to China, Tagore had taken a keen interest in developing China studies at Visva-Bharati. Two leading European scholars, Sylvain Lévi and Giuseppe Tucci (1894–1984), traveled to Shantiniketan in 1922–23. Both continued to add to translations of Chinese historical writings on India. Some members of this group, which included the French Sinologist Édouard Chavannes (1865–1918) and his student Paul Pelliot (1878–1945), had been writing about the historical interaction between China and India since the late nineteenth century. The establishment of Cheena Bhavana and the presence of Tan and Bagchi there in the late 1930s and 1940s led to the flourishing of the field of China–India studies that had been essentially established by Staël-Holstein.Footnote ¹⁴ Like Cunningham, Staël-Holstein was inspired by Xuanzang and his travels in India. Born in imperial Russia, Staël-Holstein did doctoral research at Halle, Germany, on a brahmanical text titled Karmapradīpa. In 1909, he was appointed to teach at the Russian Imperial University shortly after giving a public lecture on Xuanzang and the importance of examining his writings in studying Indian geography and archaeology. In 1916, Staël-Holstein traveled to Beijing, where he eventually worked at Peking University examining Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhist texts. The Sino-Indian Institute that he directed undertook linguistic and comparative analysis of Indic and Sinitic texts. The respective research programs at the Sino-Indian Institute and Cheena Bhavana were linked through the academic network of Lévi, who served as Bagchi's mentor in Paris.Footnote ¹⁵

Between the 1920s and the 1950s, several Chinese scholars, such as Lin Li-Kouang 林藜光 (1902–45), Chen Yinque 陳寅恪 (1890–1969), Zhou Yiliang 周一良 (1913–2001), Rao Zongyi 饒宗頤 (Jao Tsung-I, 1917–2018), and Ji Xianlin 季羨林 (1911–2009), made pioneering contributions to China–India studies through Chinese- and English-language publications. There were other Chinese scholars at this time who also published on aspects of China–India connections in English, including Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895–1976), Zhang Junmai 張君勱 (also known as Carsun Chang, 1887–1969), Feng Chengjun 馮承鈞 (1887–1946), and Jin Kemu 金克木 (1912–2000); the last-named scholar was an alumnus of Cheena Bhavana. Many of these scholars, such as Zhang Taiyan and Liang Qichao earlier, were also influenced by the ideology of pan-Asianism.

Increased Japanese military expansion in China in 1937 resulted in frequent political exchanges between the GMD and members of the British government, as well as with representatives of the Indian National Congress in India. Some of the major exchanges, such as Jawaharlal Nehru's visit to China in 1939 and Chiang Kai-shek's trip to India in 1942, have been the subject of published studies or doctoral research (Samarani Reference Samarani2005; Yang Reference Yang, van de Ven, Lary and MacKinnon2015; Yang Reference Yang1974). Some of the earlier negotiations and disputes between the British government and China over Tibet have been explored in more detail because of their relevance to the later China–India border dispute (Lamb Reference Lamb1989). These include studies of Younghusband's invasion of Tibet in 1904 (Mehra Reference Mehra2005) and of British diplomacy with Tibet carried out from India (McKay Reference McKay1997).

One of the less well-examined aspects of the early twentieth-century links are the artistic exchanges that took place between China and India from the 1930s to the 1950s. This period witnessed the curating of exhibitions related to ancient and contemporary arts in the two countries (Wang Reference Wang2019). Some of the paintings by artists such as Gao Jianfu 高剑父 (1879–1951), Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻 (1895–1953), Ye Qianyu 葉淺予 (1907–95), Nandalal Bose (1882–1966), Y. K. Shukla (1907–86), and Beohar Rammanohar Sinha (1929–2007), all of whom traveled between China and India, show mutual influences and borrowing (Bhattacharya Reference Bhattacharya2014) and need to be further investigated by art historians and intra-Asian specialists. Equally neglected is the topic of commercial exchanges, beyond those related to tea and opium, which took place through multiple routes between China and India, involving many different actors and regions. The commodities traded along these routes were similarly diverse, and the markets included those beyond China and India (Sen Reference Sen, Bajpai, Ho and Miller2020, 74–77).

There is a tremendous amount of unexplored archival materials on China–India interactions during the first half of the twentieth century available in China, India, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They range from British intelligence reports and the GMD analyses of the Indian independence movement to documents on Tibet and border demarcation.Footnote ¹⁶ There are also a significant number of travelogues by Chinese and Indian writers from the 1930s to the 1950s that provide comparative insights into China and India.Footnote ¹⁷ These sources need to be harnessed in order to comprehend the complexities of China–India interactions and the comparative responses by China and India to a changing world transiting through two major wars into the phase of decolonization.

The 1962 Conflict and Beyond

In the years immediately following Indian independence in 1947 and the establishment of the PRC in 1949, a new form of pan-Asianism, albeit very much rooted in the early twentieth-century formulation, connected China and India. Although this new manifestation, emerging against the backdrop of the Cold War, broadly emphasized solidarity among the third-world countries and Afro-Asian unity, a key facet involved the promulgation of the rhetoric of an impending advent of “Asian Century.” The friendship between China and India formed a central narrative within this rhetorical concept and was publicized by politicians, media outlets, scholars, and a few associations and organizations in the two countries. The Bandung Conference of 1955 marked the pinnacle of this “friendship” rhetoric. The conference was described, particularly by the Asian media, as a success for a non-Western framework of international relations.Footnote ¹⁸

However, the latter half of the 1950s witnessed a rapid deterioration in China–India relations, leading to a brief war in 1962. This armed conflict triggered a massive interest in the border dispute between the two countries. For the next two decades, publications on this conflict and the geopolitical rivalry of the two Asian powers dominated the field of China–India studies. The huge volume of writing produced during this period included detailed studies of the history of border demarcation, analyses of the reasons for the military conflict, and a polemical literature that attributed the blame to Nehru and Indian foreign policy or else condemned the Chinese as betrayers. Following this initial phase of such publications, new and more introspective writings on the China–India border dispute and the two countries’ bilateral relations have appeared in the past two to three decades.Footnote ¹⁹ It was not until the 1990s, however, that scholars based in China started openly engaging with analysis of the China–India War and the border disputes. Some, such as Dai Chaowu 戴超武 (2014, 2019), have written in both Chinese and English. One important contribution of these new works is the analysis of previously unexamined archival sources from China and India (Guyot-Réchard Reference Guyot-Réchard2016; Khan Reference Khan2015). Also noteworthy are the publications that have recounted the “lost” histories of the 1962 war related to the internment of several thousand ethnic Chinese migrants in India (Chowdhury Reference Chowdhury2018; Ma and D'Souza Reference Ma and D'Souza2020).

Despite the dominance of publications relating to the China–India conflict and wider geopolitical concerns especially among publications from India, tremendous progress has also been made in the study of earlier historical interactions between the two countries. Published mostly in the United States and Europe, these works have challenged older interpretations and offered new perspectives, especially on the Buddhist exchanges.Footnote ²⁰ Also now published are collections of Chinese historical writings, which, as mentioned above, triggered the initial study of China–India interactions. These have been extensively collected by Geng Yinzeng (Reference Yinzeng1994), and some of them have been translated by Haraprasad Ray (Reference Ray2004–). More importantly, new translations of the accounts of Faxian (Deeg Reference Deeg2005; Li Reference Li2002), Xuanzang (Li Reference Li1996), and Yijing (Li Reference Li2000) have appeared in recent years.

Comparative studies have recently become an important element in China–India studies. Such examinations deal with issues ranging from literature and art history to contemporary economic policies, information technology and rural industries, political systems, urbanization and energy.Footnote ²¹ The end of the Cold War, the rapid economic growth of China and India since the 1990s, and the growing academic interest in the issue of globalization have catalyzed these comparative studies. Additionally, social and print media have surfaced as alternative forums through which views and opinions about China–India relations have appeared and have become another subject of study (Shen Reference Shen2011). Similarly, Bollywood cinema in China (Van Fleit Hang Reference Van Fleit Hang2013), comparative media studies (Jeffrey and Sen Reference Jeffrey and Sen2015), and scientific research connections between the PRC and the ROI (Phalkey and Lam Reference Phalkey and Lam2016) are new areas of research that continue to diversify the field of China–India studies.

Pan-Asianist-type publications reappeared in the 1980s and 1990s, many by writers based in China and India who wanted to move away from the intensive debate about the border issue and the geopolitical problems between the two countries. The authors of essays and books promoting the notion of an “ageless” cordial relationship between the two countries were overtly selective and less critical of primary sources, made extensive use of jargon and brushed aside the realities of contemporary geopolitics (Tan Reference Tan1979; Tan and Geng Reference Tan and Yinzeng2005). This type of idealistic writing, sometimes sponsored by the Chinese and Indian governments (see, e.g., Joint Compilation Committee Reference Committee2014), took inspiration from the term “Chindia” (Ramesh Reference Ramesh2005), which was initially meant to underscore the relevance of India and China to world affairs and was not the catchphrase that neo-pan-Asianist writers have tried to make it out to be. Studies of Tagore's visit to and impact on China have become increasing wrapped up in this nostalgic framework.Footnote ²²

Epistemology of China–India Studies

Based on the various publications outlined in this essay, one could surmise that the field of China–India studies is an attempt to place China and India within a single investigative framework. These works offer comparative or connective analysis using sources and data from, but not limited to, China and India. Geographically, these studies pertain to China and India, but they may also hold relevance for other parts of Asia and the world. The common element that ties these diverse strands of research and publications together is the effort to explore and explain China and India conjointly. Beyond the disciplinary focus and the occasional employment of theoretical concepts of international relations (Miller Reference Miller2013), the methodologies of comparative and connective studies applicable to China–India topics, or, for that matter, the reasons for their absence, are seldom articulated. Moreover, how the China–India inquiries differ from other cross-cultural and cross-regional examinations is rarely discussed. The aim of this section is to explore these problems and offer some methodological and conceptual interventions.

At a basic level, the possession of language skills and access to information, either archival or ethnographic, are key concerns for those engaged in the study of China–India topics. Language constraints often prevent scholars from directly engaging with and evaluating primary sources, whether historical or contemporary. The use of outdated translations and questionable sources of data and the lack of ethnographic research are evident in many publications. Those with language skills also encounter problems in accessing sources and data, as archives in India and China are not always welcoming to foreign (or even sometimes local) scholars. This is especially true of materials that relate to the post-1940s period, and specifically to documents on the border dispute. Similarly, ethnographic research is constrained by government rules and policies, as well as visa regulations, in both China and India.

The critical analysis of sources and data is the next methodological requirement. As noted earlier, the records of the Chinese monks Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing have long been used as the main sources of information for China–India interactions during the first millennium. Often these records are used uncritically, assuming that they are accurate and faithful accounts. Recent analysis has cautioned that sectarian agendas, biases, and inaccuracies are integral to these narratives (Deeg Reference Deeg2012, Reference Deeg and Juelch2016). The same is true of the Chinese dynastic histories, which are the main sources for examining the diplomatic exchanges between imperial Chinese courts and South Asian polities. The problem is accentuated by the paucity of sources from South Asia that explicitly mention contacts with Chinese polities.Footnote ²³ Critically analyzing the one-sided perspectives presented in the Chinese sources and developing plausible histories are fundamental to recovering the precolonial interactions between China and India.

Another fundamental concern, similar to what Arjun Appadurai (Reference Appadurai2000, Reference Appadurai2010) and Arif Dirlik (Reference Dirlik2005, Reference Dirlik2008) have highlighted for cross-regional studies in general, relates to the use of political geographies and nation-states as the foundational frameworks. “China” and “India” are often viewed as fixed geographic entities, territorialized by the modern nation-states and the connections and comparisons that are perceived within these constrained spaces. In reality, in both the contemporary and precontemporary periods, the connections were spatially more wide-ranging: the peoples involved frequently transcended geopolitical boundaries and identities, and the sites of interactions included places in the frontier and coastal regions, as well as those beyond the present-day PRC or ROI (Sen Reference Sen2017). Framing such multilayered exchanges within a simple “China–India” context does not reveal the uniqueness and multidirectionality of these connections, nor the agency of local innovations and global actors. The broader relevance of China–India studies thus cannot be properly understood with the rigid boundaries of nation-states in mind.

There is also a tendency to imply, intentionally or not, that examining China and India together inevitably denotes or helps explain Asia at large.Footnote ²⁴ Examination of China–India issues rarely includes analysis of other regions of Asia. Without adequately addressing or explaining issues of connections and comparisons with these external sites, it is best not to use “Asia” as a substitute for China–India. This is not meant to suggest that issues pertaining to China–India topics have no bearing on the rest of Asia. In many cases, such as the spread of Buddhism, the networks of maritime and overland traders, the colonial enterprise, and contemporary geopolitics, China, India, and several other regions of Asia have been intimately intertwined or shared common concerns. It is thus important to clarify such relevance without simply alternating between “China–India” and “Asia.”

Broader relevance and local intricacies are also lost when comparisons are made in the context of either the two nation-states or “presupposed geographical or cultural areas,” instead of decentering them (Felski and Friedman Reference Felski, Friedman, Felski and Friedman2013, 3).Footnote ²⁵ Problems with comparisons could arise, for instance, when contrasting literary works in different languages (e.g., overwhelmingly Sinitic languages from China with Bengali/Hindi/Urdu/Gujarati writings from India) or analyses of poverty and literacy in Chinese and Indian provinces and states without adequately explaining the rationale for comparing China and India, the specific units of examination, the validity of the data used, or the local variables.

Broader relevance, local intricacies, and some of the constrains of nation-state frameworks have recently been addressed, as noted earlier, in works that probe and bring to light neglected archival material on various topics (Atwill Reference Atwill2018; Guyot-Réchard Reference Guyot-Réchard2016; Khan Reference Khan2015; Mosca Reference Mosca2013; Stolte and Fischer-Tiné Reference Stolte and Fischer-Tiné2012; Thampi Reference Thampi2005). Here, too, however, the problems of comparing and contrasting remain, as scholars have focused only on one set of archival materials and neglected relevant documents that are preserved in a wide range of other archives and libraries.Footnote ²⁶ Libraries, such as the National Library in Kolkata and the Khuda Baksh Library in Patna, house works in Indian vernacular languages that are rarely used to study China–India topics. To address this problem a collaborative project titled Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s–1960s examined archival material in multiple locations and in several different languages.Footnote ²⁷ The result (Sen and Tsui Reference Sen and Tsui2021) confirmed the subjectivity of imperial archives, demonstrated the need to critically analyze one narrative or record by assessing them alongside other renditions or recollections, highlighted the importance of language competency, and strengthened the arguments for questioning nation-state categories, the idea of a homogenous Asia, and the use of artificial temporalities. The project also demonstrated the need for collaborative initiatives and interdisciplinary analyses, as well as the urgency of conceptualizing theoretical frameworks.

Conceptualizing and developing theoretical frameworks are pressing needs because they could serve as heuristic tools for gaining deeper and broader understanding of China–India topics. The first step in this endeavor should be to dismantle the mold of area studies. The field of area studies, with its artificially constructed regions across the globe, emerged within the context of the Cold War. It was already in the 1960s that a serious critique of the field, especially of Asian studies, took place, with the formation of the Committee for Concerned Asian Scholars and its Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (Lanza Reference Lanza2017). The debate was reignited in the 1990s by the argument that area studies was being “swamped,” as David Ludden (Reference Ludden2001) put it, by the discourse on globalization in academia. This resulted in calls for the “deterritorialization” (Ludden Reference Ludden2003), “remaking” (Wesley-Smith and Goss Reference Wesley-Smith and Goss2010), “decentering” (Goh Reference Goh2011), and “recentering” (Edmond, Johnson, and Leckie Reference Edmond, Johnson and Leckie2011) of area studies and Asian studies. In the past two decades, arguments have been put forth to introduce social and cultural theories (Miyoshi and Harootunian Reference Miyoshi and Harootunian2002), to use “Asia as method” (Chen Reference Chen2010a), to conceptualize the idea of “Asia redux” (Duara Reference Duara2010), and to examine Asia in a global setting (or “Global Asia”).

While the attempt to “rethink” (Gordon Reference Gordon2004) area studies has now witnessed several decades of debates and discussion, a critical discourse on China–India studies has only begun recently. This discourse has primarily focused on highlighting the comparative dimension, especially for the modern and contemporary periods, and by discounting the connective aspects. The Taiwanese scholar Chen Kuan-Hsing 陳光興, for example, has in several venues proposed the idea of “China/India as method.” This “method” calls for an examination of the similarities and differences between China and India to develop non-Western- and non-nation-state-focused methodologies as analytical tools. Chen argues that while the study of India could benefit from comparisons with Chinese experiences and developments, the examination of Indian/South Asian issues would also provide insights into China. Chen's proposal for a “South-South” examination is part of his larger emphasis on “Asia as method.” Explaining this, Chen writes (Reference Chen2010a, xv),

Peter van der Veer, while also recommending the need to compare developments in modern China with those in modern India, has noted that this alternative method should not come at the cost of “provincializing” Europe because, he explains (Reference Van der Veer2014, 13), “Europe and the United States are crucial in the formation of Indian and Chinese modernity.” Van der Veer underscores the importance of comparative studies in general, which, he argues (Reference Van der Veer2014, 14), is “not a relatively simple juxtaposition and comparison of two or more different societies, but a complex reflection on the network of concepts that underlie our study of society as well as the formation of those societies themselves. It is always a double act of reflection.” Van der Veer critiques the tendency to compare India and China on the basis of the Hegelian “observation that China is all state and India is all society,” which resonates in the analysis of the contemporary state of economic development in the two countries framed within the context of regime types: socialism in China and democracy in India.

A recent volume edited by Prasenjit Duara and Elizabeth Perry has also asserted the need to go “beyond regime types” in comparative analyses. Instead they suggest an approach that demarcates the historical trajectories of China and India from the late 1940s to the present through the idea of “temporalities” (Duara and Perry Reference Duara and Perry2018, 15–20). A temporality is defined as “a complex of related topics or problems associated with the dominant governing principle of a period of time—say import substitution or state building.” Duara and Perry (Reference Duara and Perry2018, 15) further explain that “in each temporality, dominant circulatory forces interact with local or internal institutional processes to produce a distinctive though comparable situation.”

Closely associated with the above conceptualization of China–India research, but one that interweaves elements of comparison and connections, is Duara's (Reference Duara, Sen and Tsui2021) idea of “convergent comparison.” This conceptualization combines the notion of “circulatory connections”—indicating that “Circulatory processes, ideas, and forms may develop in Society A and travel to Societies B and C where they are reshaped and travel elsewhere in those forms. They may sometimes even return to Society A, though they may be recognized as something else”—with the assertion that “many different factors and institutions in different societies [ . . . ] can often be understood comparatively through their responses to the common factor that impacts them” (Duara Reference Duara, Sen and Tsui2021, 464–65). This method of interweaving connections and comparisons—what could be termed a symbiotic method of analysis—might help scholars generate new and more methodologically grounded scholarship instead of exclusively focusing on comparisons or connections.

The ideal symbiotic method of examining topics related to China and India, therefore, is to combine comparative and connective frameworks with analyses that are not confined by geographic, temporal, or sometimes even disciplinary borders. The reason for this is the intertwined nature of connections and comparisons that exist at multiple levels. Comparative studies often disregard the connections between China and India that may be relevant to a particular topic.Footnote ²⁸ A comparison of the monastic rules in Chinese and Indian Buddhist monasteries is likely to benefit from an examination of the connections that took place between these institutions through the visits of monks, as well as the procurement and translation of texts.Footnote ²⁹ Likewise, a comparison of Chinese and Indian painting styles in the 1930s and 1940s needs to explore the exchanges of artists and the mutual influences of this exceptional period of cross-cultural interactions in this realm.Footnote ³⁰ The encounter with colonialism, the discourse on modernity, the genres of literature, the experience of decolonization, and so on are topics of comparison that could be contextualized within the interactions and exchanges that took place between China and India, either directly or indirectly. These exchanges, through Buddhism, trade, pan-Asian collaboration, anticolonial cooperation, the circulation of Bollywood movies, the establishment (and the failure) of the Panchsheel idea, and even the links formed through rivalries and disputes make China–India interactions distinctive and, in many cases, are important for comparative analysis.Footnote ³¹

An intertwined analysis of comparisons and connections need not be limited to within a single temporal period. The longue durée interactions between the regions that now constitute the PRC and the ROI make it a necessary to also consider the discourse on comparison and the multifaceted nature of connections that took place in the past. Several facets of precontemporary exchanges, including issues of translating and transforming Indic ideas as they entered the Sinitic cultural setting, as well as the “reverse transmission” of some of these fused elements to India (Sen Reference Sen2017) bring a unique element to the field of China–India studies that was recognized by Cunningham, Staël-Holstein, and Bagchi, among others. In other words, a vertical examination of topics pertaining to the historical intercourse between China and India, where comparable horizontal issues—such as those related to literary and performative influences (Mair Reference Mair1988), the discourse on distinct Chinese and Indian historiographical traditions among the Chinese Buddhists during the Song period (Jan Reference Jan1964), or even the diplomatic rivalries and armed conflicts between Indian and Chinese polities and involving sites and regimes in Central and Southeast Asia (Sen Reference Sen2003)—are integrated, could be employed as heuristic device to gain holistic and distinctive perspectives on China–India topics.

Indeed, the rationale for discarding the geopolitical framework, discussed earlier, similarly applies to the fixation with the temporal framework, by which China–India relations are divided into three distinct phases: the Buddhist phase during the first millennium, the dark colonial age of the second millennium, and the pre- and post-1962 periods. This prevents a fuller and deeper analysis of a number of China–India topics, given that contemporary issues and events often have roots in earlier eras. The long and multifaceted interactions through Buddhism and the colonial linkages through the trade in opium and tea, as well as the movement of migrants and indentured labor, for example, are closely associated with contemporary attempts to promote public and cultural diplomacy, or to depict a common humiliation under colonial powers.Footnote ³² The British rule over India is, in particular, linked to the border dispute, as well as the status of Tibet. Other contemporary topics, including urbanization, economic development, literary and artistic production, and so forth, are intimately tied with the connections existing before the establishment of the ROI and the PRC and are therefore worth exploring in elucidating the contemporary issues.

Crossing disciplinary borders might provide additional insights into China–India topics that might be otherwise overlooked as a result of the constraints of a particular disciplinary focus. An examination of ROI–PRC relations during the 1950s through the prism of international relations fails to recognize the fascinating array of exchanges in the fields of the performing arts, literature, science, and commerce that all form crucial elements of contemporary China–India relations.Footnote ³³ The same holds true for the earlier periods when religious, economic, and political issues overlapped, requiring interdisciplinary inspection. While interdisciplinary studies have their own strengths and shortcomings,Footnote ³⁴ they can offer multiple angles for understanding the complexities of China–India topics. In many cases collaborative work on archival material and sources in different languages could also provide new and distinct ways of examining issues related to China and India.

Such a symbiotic method could not only reveal the linkages among several thematic issues pertaining to China and India, but could also show the temporal connections between past encounters and present concerns. This method might also provide important insights into the role of other polities and societies, within Asia and beyond, in fostering connections, instigating rivalries, or offering comparative models. Furthermore, it can demonstrate the multidimensionality of “convergent comparison” when employed to examine China–India topics. More essentially, it could contribute to furthering the discourse on developing other methods to conceptualize and theorize the field of China–India studies.

Concluding Remarks

Despite the flurry of publications on China–India topics and the establishment of related research institutions in recent years, little progress has been made toward conceptualizing the field or creating the methodological frameworks to challenge disciplinary structures. This is primarily due to the demands of educational institutions across the world, where interdisciplinarity and broader geographic research do not fit the discipline-based structure. And when there are interdisciplinary departments, the merits, shortcomings, and methodologies of interdisciplinarity and cross-regional research are not a curricular requirement. Similarly, think tanks are overly concerned with producing policy papers on contemporary affairs and contribute little to epistemological issues. This lacuna is also related to lingering problems within area studies, as they continue to foster the Cold War–era focus on subregions and nation-states. Area studies organizations have only recently started addressing the constraints of colonial geographies through “border-crossing” initiatives but without making the necessary structural changes to their antiquated regional categories. Moreover, the publication industry encourages studies that highlight conflicts and disputes, address current issues, or speculate on the future of world affairs. A thorough discussion of methodologies, the complexities of sources, and even extensive use of notes often prove to be too esoteric even for some academic presses. The recent trend of speculative op-eds about China–India relations, written for uncritical online media platforms has also diverted attention away from a serious engagement with the shortcomings of the field.Footnote ³⁵

The knowledge production aspect of China–India studies, emphasized at the beginning of this essay, is rapidly becoming saturated with underwhelming analysis, questionable use of sources and data, and repetitions of earlier findings and conclusions. The tremendous surge in publications on China–India topics has not been matched by improvements in the quality of research or attempts to conceptualize methodological frameworks. For the future development of the field, there has to be a clearer sense of methodologies and a willingness to cross geographic, temporal, and disciplinary borders in order to theorize topics that connect, compare, and interweave China and India.Footnote ³⁶ In this way, the field of China–India studies, in addition to being topically relevant to a broader audience, will be able to contribute methodologically to the “rethinking” of area and sub-area studies.