China” rarely appears in Indian textbooks, and China-related content mostly appears in history and politics textbooks. However, it is interesting that these two types of textbooks often contain different views on China. Politics textbooks:
Chinese people eat all kinds of animals.
Chinese people like drinking tea and smoke opium, although the number of people with this bad habit is gradually dropping.
Chinese people wear a long gown and pants.
Chinese people’s lifestyle is very simple, but their language is very complicated.
These sentences about China appear in the political science textbook “Political Theory and Practice” for India’s third-year senior high school students.
Of course this does not imply that every Indian has this impression of China; no Indian has ever asked me, “Do you smoke opium?” when they learn that I am Chinese.
This is simply a “rigid” reproduction of the stereotypes about China prevalent in India.
First let us look at the China portrayed in the politics textbooks
“China is located north of the Himalayas and is the world’s most populous country with one fifth of the world’s population. Like India, China is one of the oldest countries in the world. Historically, China has always benefited from India; Indian civilization gave the Chinese knowledge about mind and spirit, and the two countries also strengthened economic ties through trade.”
This is the first paragraph of a China-related section in “Political Theory and Practice.” China-related content appears only on two pages in the last chapter, “India and the World,” of the book, and is just a small part of “India and neighboring countries.”
Politics textbooks often gather state rulers’ mainstream and even biased or stereotypical viewpoints. For example, it says in “Political Theory and Practice” that most Chinese are farmers who mainly engage in growing rice and tea; other occupations include fishing and pottery making; and industry is also gradually developing.
As they both have a long history, a huge population and are in the stage of economic take-off, China and India are similar neighbors. Whenever Westerners mention either China or India, they always like to compare them. Indians’ feelings toward China are complex and delicate; the formation of the politics textbooks reflects the fact that they neither consider China as a rival or enemy, nor can they open their hearts to treat China as a friend.
The textbook first acknowledges that India and China have a 2,000-year history of friendly exchanges. “Since Before Christ (BC), India and China have maintained friendly relations. Frequent overland and sea trade between the two countries created favorable conditions for equal exchanges.”
It mentions that Indian monks came to China to popularize Buddhism in 65 BC, and a number of eminent Chinese monks, including the infamous Faxian and Xuanzang, went on arduous pilgrimages for Buddhist scriptures.
It also mentions the harmonious relations between India and China of the early 1920’s, when the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore visited China.
History textbooks: China is inevitably mentioned
Compared to the politics textbooks, the history textbooks have more specific China-related content and more objective and appropriate arguments. They are even enlightening to a Chinese reader.
“Our textbooks contain little about ancient Chinese history, but China is inevitably mentioned in connection with ancient Indian history. This is really very interesting because a large part of ancient Indian history is based on the records of Chinese people, such as the books written by monk Xuanzang about his travels,” said Saroji, a high-school history teacher at the Tagore International School in New Delhi, India’s capital. He added, “I believe that each student should therefore know the stories of monk Xuanzang.”
Indian high-school history textbooks contain unexpectedly detailed modern and contemporary Chinese history. The history textbook for the 11th grade contains modern and contemporary world history and covers important events in all countries between the 19th and 20th century in chronological order, just like Chinese history textbooks. China is therefore inevitably mentioned.
In particular however, the textbook contains a special “the road to modernization” topic, which covers the modernization of all Asian countries. There are 10 to 11 pages about China’s modernization, including the two opium wars at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Old Democratic Revolution, the founding of the Republic of China, the War of Resistance against Japan, the development of the CPC, the founding of New China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and post-1978 reform and opening-up.
At the beginning of that section of the textbook is the statement: “China’s modern history always centers on how to safeguard state sovereignty, end colonial rule by foreign countries and strive for equity and development.” This part of the textbook is not in chronological order. It respectively covers the rise and fall of political powers over the period, including the fall of the Qing Dynasty and traditional Chinese culture, the bourgeois democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founding of the Republic of China, and the establishment of the CPC and New China.
Aside from texts, the textbook also contains more vivid content such as photos, maps and graphs. The textbook also has a special column explaining the Chinese imperial examination system, the eight-legged essay and their adverse impacts.
Chinese people are very familiar with this part of history, but the Indians have a novel way to write about it. For example, Indian text compares the modernization of China and Japan, and analyzes the differences and their respective advantages and disadvantages.
The book states, “The histories of China and Japan show how different the paths the two countries took, driven by different historical conditions in building independent modern countries. Japan successfully carried forward its traditions and made them suit the new era, although the top-down modernization process also led to radical and aggressive nationalism. In contrast, China chose to abandon traditions, destroy the old and establish the new.”
Moreover, the textbook also incorporates China-related recorded material by some contemporaries, including a small special topic named “how the discriminated unite,” which cites the diaries of Bark Crichton, an African-American jazz musician who lived in Shanghai in the 1930’s. The diaries reveal the situations of Chinese people at that time as well as their hatred and struggle against foreign colonists from the perspective of a foreigner. Yantaoju
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