How do India's middle school textbooks portray China?
- Source: Peopel's Daily Online
- [17:40 September 02 2009]
- Comments
Chinararely 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.
