Manoranjan Mohanty A Theoretical Note All cultures are intercultural. They have evolved through a process of interaction among people of different regions, especially neighbouring regions, exchanging ideas and practices over time. Sometimes this interaction might appear to be one-way traffic but, when viewed over a long time-span, the interaction may actually turn out to be two-way. This two-way process may not always be a benign exchange. It may have moments of triumph for one side or the other, or of the attempted imposition of a value system by a victor facing resistance by a victim. But seen through the historical process, the totality of the experience presents the many dimensions of the interaction: as struggle, as mutual complementarity, or as charm. Ultimately the interaction constitutes a process of mutual learning. The history of civilisations is thus a dynamic process of intercultural evolution. When a nation, a state or a people of a geographical region is seen for the uniqueness of its culture, ignoring its intercultural formation, a major dimension of history is missed. Herein lies the distinction between the ‘geo-political’ paradigm that governs much of state policy and international relations in the modern era, and the ‘geo-civilisational’ paradigm that Tan Chung advocates and which is his main contribution to the study of history and culture. In this theoretical note, written incidentally not by a historian or a cultural studies expert but by someone interested in the methodological questions involved in the study of ‘terms of discourse, we will first stress the significance of Tan Chung’s enterprise and then discuss the meaning of the terms ‘interculturalism’ and ‘geo-civilisational paradigm’. This is then illustrated by reference to Tan Chung’s studies of India–China interactions extending over two thousand years, interactions which he characterised, at various points, with the descriptors, Sino-Indic civilisation, Himalayan twins, Chindian civilisation, Himalayasphere and, finally, China: A 5000-Year Odyssey. The Tan Chung ‘perspective’ is thus considered as a contribution to the emergence of an alternative historiography. A significant perspective Based on a lifetime of intensive research on India and China, Tan Chung has developed a ‘geo-civilisational’ approach to analyse historical processes. In India and China: Twenty Centuries of Civilisational Interaction and Vibrations (Tan and Geng 2005, hereafter referred to as Twenty Centuries), Tan Chung and Geng Yincheng present a perspective of what can be called ‘creative interculturalism’—a process of cultural interaction that enriches the creative potentiality of all the participating units. This perspective not only explains the nature of the India–China interaction over the two millennia period but is a general theory that can apply to the understanding of the civilisational history of humankind on a global scale. That is where the importance of this perspective and of Tan Chung’s contribution is located. The significance of Tan’s perspective lies in the fact that intellectual history in the modern world is premised on theories of cultural conflict based on a gradation of cultures and civilisations. European colonialism put European culture on a high pedestal and, using its economic and military power, promoted a knowledge system that propounded the superiority of western civilisation. In the course of the anti-colonial struggle, many philosophers and thinkers of Asia questioned this assertion. In India, M. K. Gandhi presented a thorough critique of western civilisation in his Hind Swaraj in 1909. Rabindranath Tagore had a different response. Tagore upheld the strength of Eastern values and thought, and evolved a universalist paradigm for the liberation of humankind. In doing this, Tagore deeply reflected upon the cultural and civilisational legacies of Asia, particularly of India and China. To institutionalise that reflection he set up the Cheena Bhavana for the study of Chinese culture in Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, and invited Tan Yunshan to lead it. Tan Chung pursued the Tagore quest further, carried forward his father’s mission and delved deep into researching the historical interaction between India and China. He led many intellectual initiatives in India and China in course of his distinguished career of teaching, research and institution-building at the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and many other research centres. His findings from this lifelong investigation was that India and China have engaged in a mutually enriching cultural interaction very different from the conqueror-conquered relationship that produced the perceived “superiority of colonial culture”. This intercultural perspective challenges much of the colonial era literature and its subsequent versions. The theories of culture that informed the policies of the colonial regimes also influenced foreign and security policies during the cold war. Max Weber’s theory of the differentiation of cultural systems that favoured the growth of capitalism and those that inhibited it has been a dominating framework guiding the understanding of the modern era. Weber’s works, The Religion of China and The Religion of India, showed how these two cultural systems possessed values and behavioural features which were in sharp contrast with those of the protestant societies of Europe. Therefore, according to the Weberian framework, not only capitalist industrialisation but also liberal democracy were unlikely to succeed in China or India, or for that matter in Eastern societies in general. Much of this has been disproved in practice in recent decades as both capitalism and democracy in their local variants have continued to grow in these and other non-western societies. As against the Weberian theory of culture, Tan Chung’s notion of interculturalism sees the plural and dynamic character of all cultures. One does not have to strain and reinterpret Confucianism to demonstrate that it is compatible with the capitalist entrepreneurial development under way in contemporary China (Tu 1996). One does not have to trace the origin of capitalism to the evolution of the Vaisya caste and the Bania community in India. An alternative perspective on how civilisations evolve would enable one to capture such trends in societies resulting from interaction among groups engaged in different trades in production processes within a region or across regions within a country. Interculturalism can avoid the pitfalls of cultural determinism. Critique of Sino-centrism During the cold war, a formulation that drove the imagination of western, particularly American, academics as well as policy-makers was ‘sino-centrism’, a term which was coined by the eminent American historian John King Fairbank (Fairbank 1968). China was believed to see itself as the ‘middle kingdom’— the literal English translation of the Chinese term for China, Zhongguo—considering itself as the centre of the world, and implying that it had a sense of superiority vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The Opium War was waged by the British to destroy that sense of superiority and defeat Chinese resistance to Britain’s opium trade and to establish British control over much of the Chinese economy. The Chinese Revolution, according to Fairbank, was mainly a nationalist movement to regain lost honour. Tan Chung had presented a detailed critique of this whole argument on ‘sino-centrism’ in a two part article in China Report as early as 1973 (Tan 1973). Going into the genesis of the terms Zhongguo, Tianxia and Tianzu and the terms used for foreigners (yi) he rebutted point-by-point the alleged ‘hierarchical and non-egalitarian’ sino-centric view of the external world which, as he put it, had ‘justified imperialist aggression on China and cold war politics’ (ibid.: 51). Thanks to the intellectual monopoly that the West enjoys, the ‘sino-centrism’ argument persists in the western, and latterly the global, mind. Now that China has risen to the status of a world power, this notion is used by many to show that the Chinese rulers as well as the people had always had a ‘middle kingdom complex’. That notion provides the theoretical backdrop to the notion of a ‘Çhina threat’ which many security analysts propound. Even Xi Jinping’s call to realise the ‘Chinese Dream of Rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ has been put in the framework of ‘sino-centrism’ by western analysts (Economist 2013). Xi Jinping’s active global policy after the Nineteenth Party Congress of 2017, especially the Belt and Road Initiative have been interpreted by many commentators as a reassertion of the ‘Middle Kingdom complex’, but is also subject of much debate. ( Acharya 2019). Tan Chung and many others have provided much historical evidence to substantiate the point that the concept of the ‘middle kingdom’ referred to the central kingdom which consolidated power by defeating the surrounding kingdoms and thus leading to the creation of a unified state of China in the third century BC (Tan 1973; 2009; 2018). If interculturalism challenged the theoretical propositions governing colonial and cold war discourses and policies, it is in fundamental opposition to ‘the clash of civilisations’ thesis of Samuel Huntington which has guided the thinking of western leaders during the era of globalisation and the post-9/11 mindset that governs US policy (Huntington 1993). According to him the world had seen conflicts between princes, nation-states and ideologies in the past; in the future it is likely to see the clash of civilisations – civilisation defined as the ‘highest cultural grouping among people’. Huntington talks about the civilisational faultlines that have become manifest between Western and Islamic civilisations, and ‘the Çonfucian-Islamic connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power’ (ibid.: 10). Suffice it to say here that Huntington’s thesis that Western civilisation was bound to come into confrontation with the Islamic-Confucian civilisations betrays an extremely narrow concept of civilisation with boundaries which according to him seem impregnable. The Huntington thesis has several assumptions about history which can be questioned. Politically, it may have turned out to be a self-fulfilling policy mis-guiding the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and their global counterterrorism operations, but already that phase of history seems to be waning. The emergence of many regional formations such as BRICS as catalysts of global transformation defies the çivilisational fault lines that Huntington talked about. The decline of Western domination of the world is a historical trend not anticipated by Huntington who had theorised on the bounty of the fall of the Soviet Union and the tide of global expansion of the market economy. As against the Huntington thesis, Tan Chung presents a view of interculturalism that is based on the connected histories of peoples and regions of the world (Tan 2009). This history highlights the interaction among human groups across the globe, and the movement of ideas and theories, values and technologies, and natural products and arts. Thus Tan Chung’s notion of interculturalism is a theoretical tool that challenges the cultural theories of the colonial and the cold war eras and joins the present battle for a cultural understanding of the future of humanity in the twenty-first century. With the upsurge of cultural identities all over the world as people seek political power to govern themselves and protect their language, culture and dignity and interact with one another as equals, it is very important to comprehend the notion of interculturalism and the politics underlying the cultural discourses of the past and the present. The concepts of interculturalism and Geo-civilisation Interculturalism (without a hyphen between ‘inter’ and ‘culturalism’) emphasises the fact that the interaction between cultures has produced a new level of synthesis between cultures. A simple definition of culture is that it is a pattern of beliefs, values and behaviour of a body of people. A civilisation, simply understood, is a cultural milieu of a large number of people that extends over a long span of time and a relatively wider space. A civilisation is also about beliefs, values and behaviour, but those which acquire a long presence in history and take form in music, art, literature, architecture and rituals embodying worldviews. A civilisation has in it knowledge systems that inform humans about relationships with nature and among humans. We shall use these working definitions to proceed with our analysis knowing fully well that definitions of such concepts are always problematic. As against the prevalent modes of thinking along cross-cultural and multi-cultural lines, the perspective on interculturalism that emerges from Tan Chung’s studies of the history of interaction between India and China is that of a relationship of mutual exchange where the partners respect each other and do not claim superiority—where they allow critical understanding of each other’s traditions and thereby the ability to constantly enrich the learning process. Our discussion on Tan’s study of India–China interaction will shortly illustrate this. We have used the term ‘creative’ before ‘interculturalism’ to further stress two essential features of this perspective. One is to combine interconnection with the autonomy of each entity, and the other is the inherent dynamic or transformational characteristic of each phenomenon, including culture (Mohanty 1998). Ji Xianlin’s statement that neither India nor China would have been what they are today without the other, or Tan Chung’s ‘Chindian’ historical paradigm illustrate interconnection as well as specificity, and their evolution and change. This perspective is based on the assumption that humans are creative beings and that each and every human social group and region possesses creative potential. The history of civilisation, both past and future, is thus perceived from the angle of the realisation of the creative potential of humans and societies on planet Earth by constantly overcoming various constraints encountered in the process. In this way, the term ‘creative interculturalism’ captures the essence of Tan Chung’s geo-civilisational paradigm. Interculturalism can be best appreciated if the meaning of the geo-civilisational paradigm is understood. Perceiving the evolution of human civilisation in terms of civilisational interaction among people of different regions gives cultural exchange a certain meaning which is different from the geo-political paradigm. According to Tan Chung, the geo-political paradigm is based on the competitive pursuit of power among nation-states, regions and groups, whereas the geo-civilisational paradigm inspires humans to seek the fulfilment of the aspiration for the happiness and enlightenment of all. The following quotation from Tan Chung puts his perspective succinctly: “I think the trouble we are facing (in the contemporary world full of crises) is symptomatic of the malaise of the prevalent geopolitical paradigm, five manifestations of which are as follows: (a) people are obsessed with money, materialism and consumerism, indulging in profit-grabbing and hedonistic consumption; (b) countries are egocentric without genuinely noble altruistic motivations; (c) powerful countries monopolise the limited resources and opportunities available in the world, making it difficult for the weaker countries to develop, exacerbating the scramble for power and creating endless tension and conflict; (d) development means only horizontal expansion of spatiality: hence countries feeling threatened when emerging powers rise, and international harmony becomes a non-starter; and (e) humans ruthlessly exploit Mother Earth leading to environmental deterioration and climate change and to handing over toxic assets and heritage to posterity (Tan 2009: 187).” The above statement presents Tan Chung’s sharp critique of the dominant development model that the West has promoted during the capitalist epoch and that the current regimes of India and China are pursuing under the drive for economic reforms and a high growth strategy in the current phase of globalisation. In other words, a civilisational critique of the current development strategy emerges from Tan Chung’s study of the history of India and China. He presents an alternative perspective that he calls ‘geo-civilisational’. Let us quote again: “In the new geocivilisational paradigm countries should cherish the ideal of universal harmony such as shijie datong (grand harmony in the world) aspired to by the Chinese civilisation, and vasudhaiva kutumbakan (world as one family) aspired to by the Indian civilisation. In such a paradigm, people can expand their spiritual spatiality which is not a horizontal development, and does not clash with the spiritual spatiality of other nations and countries. In such a paradigm, people of all countries, rich or poor will live much more happily with moderate wealth through utilitarian consumption and promotion of spiritual enlightenment. In such a paradigm, empathy and selfless altruism prevail, totally eliminating the clash of civilisations (which should read un-civilisations). In such a paradigm, humans love Mother Earth and hand down a green universe to future generations (Tan 2009: 188).” Thus the crucial element in the meaning of interculturalism is a process of mutual exchange of ideas and practices with respect for each other. (Note again that we have dropped the hyphen in interculturalism, just as in internationalism). This is the characteristic pattern of the twenty centuries of India–China interactions that Tan Chung has analysed. More importantly, interculturalism is an element of the civilisational perspective on human history. The human habitat is important in Tan Chung’s ‘geo-civilisational’ paradigm but, as he puts it, it is not a horizontal spatiality that is a spread in one direction backed by military power. It is a spatiality that is multidirectional, with each one influencing the other and all gaining spiritually or culturally across regions. That is why, from Tan Chung’s perspective, countries like India and China should regard themselves as civilisation-states rather than nation-states. That is the message from the two millenium long historical interaction between India and China. China-India: Himalayan Twins, Chindian Civilisation, Himalayasphere Tan Chung’s writings on the historical interactions between India and China carried two enterprises rolled into one: one as a unique successor to the Tagore legacy, and as a cultural historian of the first order. The first put him in a responsible role of an intellectual who commanded respect, affection and enjoyed credibility both in India and China to play the role of a bridge-maker between the two countries. This role acquired special significance in the wake of the tense relations between the two countries through which he and his family lived in the 1960s. He not only sailed through those difficult years but assumed a key role in the 1980s and thereafter to create institutional frameworks for reviving the twenty centuries old relations. It should be remembered that Tan Chung, soon after his birth in Malaya, was brought to Cheena Bhavana, Santiniketan, where his father Tan Yunshan had already started the China Studies programme under Tagore’s encouragement. (Tagore fondly gave him the name Ashok which only the Santiniketan families continued to use.) Tan Chung undertook the task of thoroughly documenting and analysing Tagore’s China visits and the work of his father (Tan 1996; 2010) The professional historian in Tan Chung had to reckon with the hostile academic environment of the Cold War period. His work on the Opium War, which proposed a very new hypothesis combining the political economy of the opium trade with the cultural dimension of the Western challenge, opened a new debate (Tan 1978). His critique of John K. Fairbank’s much used notion of Sino-centrism was a landmark contribution. Thereafter, he undertook a systematic documentation and analysis of historical contacts between India and China leading to the publication (with Geng Yinzeng) of the Twenty Centuries in 2005, and several publications thereafter. In celebrating the centenary of Tagore’s Nobel Prize and on many other occasions he articulated the Tagore perspective which he clearly shared. (Tan 2010) In these writings his formulations on interculturalism and the geo-civilisational paradigm crystalised. The two roles merged into one because Tagore’s framework for looking at India and China set for him the foundational premises on which Tan built his very modern geo-civilisational paradigm to challenge the geo-political paradigm. Liang Qichao’s welcome speech and Tagore’s response in the Emperor’s Tea Room in Beijing in April 1924 put the perspective in unambiguously intercultural terms: “We are brothers. India is our elder brother and we are the younger. This is not only an expression of courtesy. We have got ample proof of that statement in history…. India did not covet anything of China. They gave us sadhana of freedom and maitri. Along with that message came the wealth of their literature, art and education. We had inspiration from them in the field of music, painting, architecture, sculpture, drama, poetry, etc. They brought with them great gifts of astronomy, of medicine, of social and educational institutions. They were never stingy with their gifts and all their gifts were accompanied by deep love and friendship (Sen 1994: 77-78).” Indeed there are marks of abundant generosity in Liang Qichao’s acknowledgement of China’s cultural debt to India during the first 800 years of the first millenium. But as the research of Ji Xianlian and Tan Chung and their colleagues has shown, it was a two-way process. Tagore’s response set the parameters for the geo-civilisational paradigm: “After long, long years in the dawn of the future age, we have met again…. If India gets back her lost brother then India too will be blessed…. China is not merely a geographical country. China means a culture and a civilisation. It represents a fulfilment and progress of many social and human ideals…. Europeans believe only in so-called progress, which is nothing but cruel and scientific exploitation. These power-intoxicated people wish to keep India and China ever fettered to the wheels of that inhuman chariot. If we do not consent then they abuse the oriental peoples in all possible filthy language. They are great in wealth and power; that cannibal-might is barren; it cannot create anything; it is only destructive…. China and India seek culture, seek religion. The central mantra of India is ‘Do not covet’. Your old teachers also repeated the same thing. So here we are one. Today, India is poor and powerless. The message of India has no meaning in the market of the world. China’s message is also equally ignored, because China also cannot kill efficiently. Today’s civilisation means efficiency in killing. We are not civilised because we have not developed the science of killing…. We must unite among ourselves because our isolated messages of peace and wellbeing are united, they may get a little more strength. We do not wish to destroy anybody by our union. We want creation, the wellbeing of all humanity and anand for all. Let all humanity be fulfilled… (Sen 1994: 80-81).” Even while talking about how Europe had produced narrow nationalism and jingoism and used science in the service of narrow interests, Tagore acknowledged at the same time the contribution of Europe to world civilisation. This is where the universalist in Tagore is evident, and Tan Chung carries that forward: “China and India both need Europe and all humanity needs Europe wherein she is great. We are terribly pained when we see that Europe does not recognise the dignity of her own spiritual greatness. China and India do not ignore the great ideals of Europe; but in Europe the idealists today are ostracized and ignored (Sen 1994: 82).” This is the template Tan Chung inherits from Tagore as the base on which he builds his geo-civilisational paradigm to locate the India-China brotherhood. REFERENCES CITED Acharya, Alka, ‘Deconstructing Xi Jinping’s Global Perspective’ in Manoranjan Mohanty (ed.) China’s Turning Point. New Delhi: Pentagon. The Economist. 2013. ‘Chasing the Chinese Dream.’ 4 May. Fairbank, John King (ed.). 1968. The Chinese World Order. Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No 3), 22-49. -----. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. Mohanty, Manoranjan. 1997. ‘Swaraj and Jiefang: Freedom Discourse in India and China’, in Neera Chandhoke (ed.), Understanding the Post-colonial World. New Delhi: Sterling, 104-16.. -----. 1998. ‘Social Movements in Creative Society’, in Manoranjan Mohanty et al. (eds), People’s Rights: Social Movements and the State in the Third World. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 63-81. Sen, Kshitimohan.1994.”Meeting of Brothers with Gurudev in China” originally published in 1947 reproduced in Tan Chung (ed). 1994. India and China, special Issue of Indian Horizons ( New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations) Tan Chung. 1973 ‘On Sino-Centrism: A Critique’ (2 parts), China Report, Vol. 9, No. 1, 30-51; and Vol. 9, No. 2, 30-51. ----. 1978. China and the Brave New World: A Study of the Origins of the Opium War. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. ----- (ed.). 1994. India and China, Special Issue of Indian Horizons. New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations.. ----- (ed.). 1998. Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House for IGNCA. ----- (ed.). 1999. In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-shan and India. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House for IGNCA. -----. 2008. Rise of the Asian Giants: Dragon-Elephant Tango, edited by Patricia Uberoi. Delhi: Anthem Press. -----. 2009. ‘Historical Chindian Paradigm’, China Report, Vol. 45, No. 3, 187-212. ----- (co-ed.). 2010. Tagore and China. Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press. -----. 2012. ‘Himalayasphere is the cradle of Chinese and Indian Civilization Spheres’, Lecture at Fifth All India Conference of China Studies at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan on 15 December 2012. [Text circulated as Chapter One of the forthcoming book.] -------. (2018) China: A 5000 Year Odyssey, New Delhi: Sage Publications Tan Chung and Geng Yinzeng. 2005. India and China: Twenty Centuries of Civilizational Interaction and Vibrations. New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilisations. Tan Chung and Hara Prasad Ray.1994. ‘Trans-Himalayan Habitat’, in Tan Chung (ed.), India and China (1994), pp. 291-312 Manoranjan Mohanty is a Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi. An earlier version of this article appeared as Creative Interculturalism: Tan Chung's Geo-civilisational Paradigm in: Sabaree Mitra, Patricia Uberoi and Manoranjan Mohanty (eds.).2013. ( New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House for Institute of Chinese Studies)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
CategoriesArchives
January 2025
|