Overview

Ravi Dutt Bajpai examines some of the pivotal episodes in the modern history of China and India to argue that their behaviours reflect the self-identity of a civilization-state. The book starts from the progression of China and India into putatively modern polities during the colonial period, as the two indigenous societies imagined their national identities and nationalist aspirations primarily by contrasting their civilizational attributes with the Western colonial occupiers. As newly independent nation-states, both believed that their international status flowed from their civilizational glories. Therefore, despite their material and institutional fragility, China and India decided to pursue complete autonomy to manage their domestic and foreign affairs. Indian Prime Minister Nehru’s policy of non-alignment, envisioning an alternate world order beyond the great power competition, was inspired by Indian civilizational ethos. The book also examines the Sino-Indian war of 1962 from a civilization-state perspective and argues that Tibet represented a conflict of civilizational influence. Chapters also explore some of the more recent developments, such as the Indian nuclear test of 1998, China's ambitious Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure project aimed at reviving the ancient Silk Road, and India's campaign to regain its civilizational status of Vishwa Guru, as the continued manifestations of the two civilization-states endeavouring to regain their past glories in the contemporary world.

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Civilization, both as a human phenomenon and as a conceptual framework, is less hard-edged and more fluid, and is, therefore, able to reveal more links and connections in global politics and world history than the commonly used approach of methodological nationalism. Even amidst the apparent ongoing high politics and geostrategic rivalry of international relations, a civilizational approach can paint a more nuanced and perhaps more accurate picture of global interactions. This is exactly what Ravi Dutt Bajpai’s fascinating book Civilization-States of China and India has done. It not only unveils a more complex and more entangled history between the two civilization-states, but also critically examines how civilization itself has been used in the changing discourses of the two countries to construct each other. In doing so, the book provides a rare insightful alternative account of the China–India relationship, one of the most important and perhaps most misunderstood relationships in the 21st century. -- Chengxin Pan, Associate Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, University of Macau, China Dr Ravi Dutt Bajpai’s interrogation of Indian and Chinese international policy reveals an unprecedented form of world politics, wherein civilization is not viewed as an instrument, a vanity or a pretext. Instead, it serves as an identity resource that concurrently motivates, restricts and empowers its representative actors to navigate global politics both bilaterally and multilaterally, each according to their own terms. -- Shih Chih-Yu, Professor, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University, Taipei Ravi Bajpai’s book could not have come at a better time. Dealing with the civilizational stratum of the India–China relationship, it rightly underscores how vastly bypassed this is in western writings. Bajpai weaves the civilizational strand into the nation-state phase of India–China interaction, deftly and sensitively, and shows how this many splendored concept, often taken at face value, offers alternative approaches to understanding the India–China engagement. More importantly, it helps visualise distinctly promising futures. -- Alka Acharya, Honorary Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi and Chairperson at the Centre for East Asian Studies, SIS, Jawaharlal Nehru University The term ‘civilization’ has been lazily used in International Relations, and much damage was done to an investigation as to what it meant by Samuel Huntington’s proposition that the world was entering a phase where Western ‘civilization’ was challenged by others in an argument of such generality that it brokered no understanding at all of individual cases. Although there has since been discussion of China as a ‘civilizational state’, and recent concern about the direction of India towards becoming a fully Hindu state, no one has compared the two, even though they are neighbours who have both fought and cooperated together. But there are deep histories to why they fought and cooperated, based on ‘civilizational’ foundations and impulses. Ravi Bajpai’s brilliant new book is the first to make such a study, starting from the early days of independence in India and taking in the different approaches of the two countries to Tibet. Nuanced and penetrating the book opens many doors and makes the lazy use of the term ‘civilization’ henceforth impossible. Richness and complexity are unveiled and the dynamics of conflict, cooperation and understanding are laid out in an erudite and deep fashion. -- Stephen Chan OBE, former Dean of the Faculty and Professor of World Politics, SOAS, University of London As Western dominance fades, the re-emergence of India and China is a crucial factor in shaping a ‘multiplex’ world order, a key feature of which is the encounter among civilizations—especially China and India—in conflict and cooperation. As the first systematic academic study of their role as ‘civilization states’, this book is an extremely timely and valuable contribution. -- Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor of International Relations and The UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance, School of International Service, American University, Washington D.C.

Author Information

Ravi Dutt Bajpai has a PhD from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He is currently a visiting researcher at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden and an adjunct lecturer at St. Xavier’s College, Ranchi, India. He is also the co-author (with Harivansh) of Chandra Shekhar: The Last Icon of Ideological Politics (2019) and has published several journal articles, book chapters and popular media pieces in both Hindi and English.

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