International book – “China-India: The War of the Worlds”, by Emmanuel Lincot

RFI: Emmanuel Lincot, you are a trained sinologist. How did your interest in India begin?

Emmanuel Lincot : L’IndeI finally encountered it late, by detours, since my previous work, during these last years, focused on the Chine and its peripheries, and in particular China and the Muslim world, in particular China and Central Asia. And when we are interested in Central Asia, we are led naturally, not to say culturally, to India. Quite simply because one of the great Indian dynasties, the Mughals, was founded by Babur, who was from the east of what is now Uzbekistanfrom the Ferghana valley. So, one thing leads to another, obviously, we are bound to meet in one way or another.

China-India: The War of the Worldsthis is the title of your work. How should we interpret the hyphen that separates the names of the two countries on the cover?

As for the choice of title, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was my editor, Jean-François Colosimo, whom I salute, who found the right formula. This hyphen, which you underline, can designate both long-term desires for rapprochement between two large areas of civilization and at the same time a separation. To extend the metaphor a little, we could say that this hyphen can really appear like a wall, like a dam, that of the Himalayas in particular, which separates these two enormous continental masses. And this title is sufficiently broad and vague, indeed, to address questions of geopolitics, but also and above all questions linked to cultural history. In short, how do we see India from China in the long term and vice versa? And there, it becomes absolutely fascinating because we are interested in places of memory, in particular in the monasteries which truly constitute a network and so many Ariadne’s threads connecting India to China by means of the Tibetmajor region. I also think of great intellectual figures such as Salman Rushdie, Tagore, Gao Xingjian and many others.

What were the highlights of this cultural history between China and India?

Ça commence roughly with the emergence of the Silk Roads which were points of contact, routes of passage. As for Buddhism, it was a very long process. The disappearance of the Buddha took place in the 6th century BCE, and it was officially necessary to wait until the 2nd century BCE, that is to say eight centuries later, for Buddhism to finally make its official entry into Chinese territory. Then, there will be a major geopolitical fact which occurs in the Middle Ages: it is the Turkish-Muslim invasions which will stop quite suddenly, precisely, these spiritual and artistic exchanges, but momentarily, I would say, because the place of conservation of these exchanges, which will reinterpret Buddhism from a in a very particular way, by infusing another spiritual dimension, this is precisely Tibet. And Tibet, geographically, is at the point of articulation in the Himalayan region, between the Chinese world and the Indian world precisely. Tibet – this is one of the theses of this book – will most certainly once again become a major point, if not of confrontation, at least of exchange in one way or another, given the importance of this region, recognized by Beijing in particular. The center of gravity of Asia is very likely to shift towards this region where the stakes are high. On the mining level for example. We think of the exploitation of lithium, so important for the manufacture of our electric cars. Tibet is also central in terms of water resources. Virtually all of Asia’s major rivers have their source in Tibet. We can say that Tibet is the water tower of almost all of Asia.

What memories does the Chinese collective memory keep of Sino-Indian cultural exchanges?

The Chinese world and the Indian world have been interconnected for a very long time. They still are fundamentally, with places which are points of crystallization of these collective memories. Indeed, and I mention a certain number of them in this book, for example, in China itself, you have the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, which is a major place in the history of Buddhism, since it is at its feet that the Buddhist monk Xuanzang, returning from India, created one of the first schools of translation of texts first written in the Indo-European language, therefore in Sanskrit, into Chinese. This place, precisely the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, the former imperial capital of China, was, from 2014, chosen by the Chinese authorities as a place of visit for the Indian head of state, Narendra Modi. But since then, practically all foreign heads of state have gone there. So that’s also quite interesting from the point of view of the history of Chinese communist protocol. Until then, we favored visiting the Great Wall. And from 2014, we favor a place of memory which aims to be more consensual, more open to the world. And not just any world, given Chinese geography, to the west of China, the West of China. So, obviously, it makes sense. And reciprocally, the Indians chose for example the temple of Mahabalipuram, which is a major place linked to the personality of Bodhidharma, better known in China under the name of Damo, who also made the link between the two worlds.

Besides Tibet, what are the main disputes between India and China today?

With the advent of the communist regime in China and the invasion by the Chinese army of the Tibetan highlands, well, for the first time in their history, China will become India’s neighbor, which was not the case until now. And so, from the 1950s, the Indian side affirmed the historical legitimacy of the border lines which had been decided elsewhere by the British, the Durand line, the McMahon line, etc. Well, except that the Chinese never recognized these border lines, not only in the imperial era, therefore at the end of the 19th century, under the Qing dynasty, but also not in the Republican era and even less in the current era, that of the People’s Republic of China. So there is a very significant dispute over 3,800 kilometers of common border, which is quite considerable. Without forgetting territorial disputes, therefore territorial disputes. Aksai Chin, for example, which is an extension of Ladakh, was purely and simply annexed by the Chinese army in 1962, obviously to the great displeasure of India. New Delhi, for its part, obviously demands the restitution of this territory. China, for its part, demands the restitution of Arunachal Pradesh, located in the extension of Tibet. There is a very, very important liability which portends the worst for the future.

This future may be closer than we think. Do you believe that the question of the succession of the Dalai Lama, which will arise soon, could see a serious crisis erupt between the two countries?

Generally, the question of Dalaï Lama is discredited in the West. We imagine that it is not very important. However, for many peoples, whether Hindus or Buddhists, the Dalai Lama is considered a living god. So, the question of his succession, if we translate this into political language, will obviously cause a crisis, with probably a desire, sometimes Indian, sometimes Chinese, to exploit this succession for their own benefit. And the Dalai Lama, it must be remembered, generally, we are not aware of this fact which is capital, is also considered as the spiritual leader of the Mongols, for example. So we are very far from the Tibetan world and the Indian world a priori. But so in return, this means a very considerable political matter in the eyes of Beijing, of course.

War of the Worlds is the subtitle of your work. In other words, according to you, peaceful cohabitation between the two neighbors remains improbable in the current state of their relations?

It will be very difficult, that much is clear. We have completely moved away from this irenic vision of rapprochement between peoples. Alas, we can deplore it, but it is the reality. We are in a Bismarckian order, that is to say with the reminder of the sovereignty of the States, the defense of their interests, with perhaps new configurations which have most certainly crossed the minds of the leaders. We are thinking in particular of a rapprochement “China,RussiaIndia” which is not a totally far-fetched project, because Russia still remains the ideological matrix of a large part of the Indian elite, but also of the Chinese elite. This tripolarity seems improbable to me, but nevertheless, when you think about it, it is completely obvious. And so clearly, you have there quite simply three quarters of the world or almost, which are represented through this tripolarity, which would ideally act as a counterweight, obviously, to the West. In any case, we are not at all moving in the direction of an appeasement of relations, quite the contrary, alas!

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