Top Ten Things to Know about India in the Twenty-First Century

The defeat of Indian forces by the Chinese in 1962 ushered in a phase after which India tended to be cowed by the growing economic and political might of China. Sino–Indian Relations The first thing to know about India in the twenty-first century relates to the future of Sino–Indian relations. The relationship between India and China has undergone three main phases since the middle of the twen­ty-first century. The first phase may be described in hindsight as a roman­tic phase. The vision of this relationship was that India and China, the two longest-surviving cultures in the world, were great civilizations that were laid low by the West in the age of imperialism and were now to take their proper place in the comity of nations. These two civilizations had enjoyed peaceful relations for thousands of years, and the two emerging giants were expected to provide an example of harmonious coexistence to the world, somewhat like the way America and Canada exist as neighboring countries. This vision received a rude shock after the Chinese occupation of Tibet, which brought the whole issue of the border between India and China into the limelight, an issue that remains unresolved to this day. The occupation of Tibet by China, although acquiesced to so far by India, led to the flight of the Dalai Lama to India. This did not go down well in the long run with India because the guarantees of autonomy that the Chinese had offered as a quid pro quo of the acceptance of its suzerainty over Tibet were not honored. The defeat of Indian forces by the Chinese in 1962 ushered in a phase after which India tended to be cowed by the growing economic and political might of China. Now, we stand at the threshold of a third stage in which India has shown a new spirit in dealing with Chinese provocations, as exemplified by Doklam (a plateau claimed by both China and Bhutan) and Ladakh. The evolving nature of this relationship is difficult to define because it is at the moment in its incipient stage, but it is something to watch as it unfolds. It reminds one of the struggle for supremacy between the United Kingdom and France in Europe in the early nineteenth century, which has sometimes been compared by historians to a contest between a whale and an elephant.

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