16th Giri Deshingkar Memorial Lecture by Kamal Sheel

Kamal Sheel delivered the 16th Giri Deshingkar Memorial Lecture on ‘India in the Chinese Quest for Nationalism & Modernity’: Perspectives from Chinese Travel Writings’.

Abstract

India has been at the forefront of Chinese intellectual world-view since ancient times. While China and India shared a civilizational bonhomie, the shift of China from a civilization-state to a nation-state during the eventful late nineteenth and early twentieth century is marked by the beginning of national anxieties in modern Chinese discourse on India. Dilemmas and predicaments that shrouded the concept of civilization and its linkages with the modern concept of nationalism and modernity, brought India more in the picture. This can be seen in travel narratives by modern Chinese intellectual-visitors to India. In this context, an attempt has been made to present how India figured in the first two substantive modern travelogues by Huang Maocai and Kang Youwei. These texts provide a valuable prism in gauging the mind of the early twentieth century intellectual and Chinese modernisers, as they grappled with the challenges and uncertainties of those times with India as a reference point.

Huang Maocai, a trained Chinese cartographer in the service of the Imperial Qing state. “Civilization” and “nation” both figured in his exploration of the situation in India. His various observations and descriptions of the travelled region are inscribed in two short volumes entitled, Xiyou Riji [Diary of the Travel to the West] and Yindu Zazhi [Miscellaneous Notes on India], published in 1886. A maverick intellectual and modernizer of late 19th century China, Kang Youwei was the leader of the famous Hundred Day Reform Movement of 1898. His 1901-1902 travelogue, Yindu Youji [Record of Travel to India], contains observations on history, politics, society, religion, and art and architecture.

About the Speaker

Kamal Sheel was Professor of Chinese language at the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, until his retirement in 2016. He is now an Adjunct Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. His research interest primarily lies in the area of social and intellectual history of China, and cultural interaction and encounters in Asia with a focus on India and China. His major publication is Peasant Society and Marxist Intellectuals in China (Princeton 1989). His works with Professor Ranjana Sheel have been published with titles, Kang Youwei Engages India: His Travel Narratives (1901-1902) and Predicaments of Civilization and Nation and Territorializing the Chinese Nation: Cartography, Geopolitics and Huang Maocai’s Mission to India (1878-1880) by Routledge in 2024.

Tuesday, 20 August 2024, 5.30 pm, Conference Hall-II, India International Centre, New Delhi