Reimagining Chindia: Cultural-Diplomatic Contacts Between South India and China

Reimagining Chindia: cultural-diplomatic contacts between South India and China

Objective

• The study aims to offer an alternate narrative on inter-state contacts and inter-cultural interaction in the context of India and China. The aim is to build up an original study over the medium term that consolidates a selection of case studies from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra that reveal intergroup exchanges (sites of cultural, diplomatic and commercial interaction) with the Chinese. This effort would, in lay-person terms, offer new insights on the connections that once existed between South India and China. This would help improve the overall bilateral relationship currently singularly mired by the burden of boundary skirmishes.

Description

• Explore historical aspects of inter-group exchanges between India and China., Investigate China's role in local disputes between Cochin and Calicut., Examine how Kerala's pepper trade evolved from a precious commodity to a common item in the Ming court., Uncover the forgotten connection between Chinese prison workers and tea production in the Nilgiris during the mid-19th century.

Impact

• Chinese public perception of India remains in a state of relative neglect, and Indian public opinion on China has been held hostage to recent war-history, for the most part. Overall, the project would allow new imaginations for Chindia (the neologism for the geographic-economic space of India and China) through an effort to present an alternate narrative on imagining China in India (and vice versa).