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Swashedens (talk | contribs) In fairness, background relationship is still relevant as the ROC government is essentially Taiwan; besides, other Taiwan foreign relations page also goes into ROC's background with different states Tag: Reverted |
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== Background ==
Despite [[China proper]] and the [[Indian subcontinent]], where two of the [[Cradle of civilization|four ancient civilizations]] of the world emerged, having shared thousands of years of extensive trade and cultural exchanges, primarily through [[Chinese Buddhism|Buddhism]], direct contact between Formosa and [[South Asia]] has historically been considerably more limited due to geographic constraints and distances. [[Tianzhu (India)|Tianzhu]] (天竺), situated in [[Buddhist cosmology]] at the "Western Heaven", has traditionally been regarded by Buddhists as an idealized holy land where their faith originated from, and subsequently served as a pilgrimage site for many who sought to receive [[Buddhist scriptures]], as romanticized in the [[Four Great Classical Novels|classical Chinese tale]] of ''[[Journey to the West]]''. According to historian Tansen Sen, during some of the Chinese dynasties, "[[South Asia]]...found itself occupying a unique place in the Chinese world order: a foreign region that was culturally and spiritually revered as equal to the Chinese civilization."<ref>{{cite book|title=Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade - The Realignment of India–China Relations, 600–1400|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Buddhism_Diplomacy_and_Trade/gUt7CgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=south%20asia%20unique|last=Sen|first=Tensen|date=11 September 2015|isbn = 9781442254732}}</ref> [[Hu Shih]], the ROC Ambassador to the United States from 1938 to 1942, commented, albeit critically, on India's Buddhism almost completely subsuming Chinese society upon its introduction.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://csua.berkeley.edu/~mrl/HuShih/ReligionChinese.html |title=Religion in Chinese Life |access-date=11 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080414144233/http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~mrl/HuShih/ReligionChinese.html |archive-date=14 April 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
<blockquote>
ASIA is one. The [[Himalayas]] divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilizations, the Chinese with its [[communism]] of [[Confucius]], and the Indian with its [[individualism]] of the [[Vedas]]. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the [[Absolute (philosophy)|Ultimate]] and [[Universal (metaphysics)|Universal]], which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the [[Mediterranean]] and the [[Baltic Sea|Baltic]], who love to dwell on the [[Particular]], and to search out the means, not the end, of life.<ref>Okakura, Tenshin (1904) ''[http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/ioe Ideal of the East]''</ref>
</blockquote>
While never having actually visited India in his lifetime, [[Sun Yat-sen]], founder of the Republic of China, occasionally spoke and wrote of India as a fellow Asian nation that was likewise subject to harsh Western exploitation, and frequently called for a [[Pan-Asian]] united front against all unjust imperialism; in a 1921 speech, Sun stated: "The Indians have long been oppressed by the British. They have now reacted with a change in their revolutionary thinking...There is progress in their revolutionary spirit, they will not be cowed down by Britain."<ref>[[s:Sun Yat-sen's speech on Pan-Asianism|Sun Yat-sen's speech on Pan-Asianism]]</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://ignca.nic.in/ks_40034.htm#_edn24 |title=In the Footsteps of Xuanzang: Tan Yun-Shan and India |access-date=16 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140316053112/http://ignca.nic.in/ks_40034.htm#_edn24 |archive-date=16 March 2014 |url-status=dead}}</ref> To this day, there is a prominent street named Sun Yat-sen street in an old Chinatown in Calcutta, now known as [[Kolkata]].
In 1924, on his major tour of several major Chinese cities giving lectures about using their shared Asian values and traditional spirituality to help together promote world peace, [[Rabindranath Tagore]] was invited to [[Guangzhou|Canton]] by Sun Yat-sen, an invitation which he declined. There was considerably mixed reception to Tagore from the Chinese students and intellectuals; for example, a major Buddhist association in [[Shanghai]] stated that for seven hundred years, they had "waited for a message from India", while others, mostly modernizers and communists, outright rejected his ideals, stating that they did not "want philosophy, we want materialism" and "not wisdom, but power".<ref>{{cite book|title=India and China in the Colonial World|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/India_and_China_in_the_Colonial_World/IZ5RdT5mHHIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=materialism|last=Hogel|first=Bernhard|date= 2005|isbn = 9788187358206}}</ref>
[[File:Nehru_Chiang_Gandhi_Madame_Chiang_10_Feb_1942_India.jpg|thumb|right|Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Song Meiling with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru]]
Believing that then-Republican China and India were "sister nations from the dawn of history" who needed to transform their "ancient friendship into a new camaraderie of two freedom loving nations", [[Jawaharlal Nehru]] visited China in 1939 as an honored guest of the ROC government. Highly praising both [[Chiang Kai-shek]] and his wife [[Song Meiling]], Nehru referred to Chiang as "not only a great Chinese but a great Asiatic and world figure...one of the top most leaders of the world...a successful general and captain in war", and Song as "full of vitality and charm...a star hope for the Chinese people...a symbol of China's invincibility". During his visit, Chiang and Nehru shared a bunker one night when Japanese bombers attacked [[Chongqing]] in late August, with Chiang recording a favorable impression of Nehru in his diary; the Chiangs also regularly wrote Nehru during his time in prison and even after their 1942 visit to India.<ref name="Transforming India-Taiwan Relations">[https://idsa.in/system/files/monograph35.pdf Transforming India-Taiwan Relations]</ref><ref>[https://www.globalasia.org/v12no3/feature/playing-with-fire-taiwan-and-indias-long-courtship_james-baron Playing with Fire: Taiwan and India's Long Courtship] ''[[Global Asia]]''</ref>
[[File:Chiang Couple Gandhi India 10 Feb 1942.jpg|thumb|right|The Chiangs with Mahatma Gandhi in Calcutta in 1942]]
Partially to enlist India's aid against both [[Empire of Japan|Japanese]] and Western imperialism in exchange for the ROC's support for [[Indian independence movement|Indian independence]], the Chiangs visited [[British India|India under British rule]] in 1942 and met with Nehru, along with [[Mahatma Gandhi]] and [[Muhammad Ali Jinnah]]. The Chiangs also sought to present their nation as a potential third option for the Indian people to ally themselves with, with public sympathies at the time sharply split between the British and the Japanese, who actively tried to sway India's population with pledges to liberate Asia if they would help their efforts against the British. Despite pledges of mutual friendship and future cooperation between the two peoples, Chiang argued that while Gandhi's non-violent resistance was not necessarily invalid for the Indian people, it was an unrealistic worldview on a global context; Gandhi, who had at the time insisted on India refraining from participating in any war unless India was first given complete independence, in turn later noted that, although "fun was had by all...I would not say that I had learnt anything, and there was nothing that we could teach him."<ref>{{cite book|title=The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Life_and_Death_of_Mahatma_Gandhi/e9WCDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=gandhi%20charmed|last=Payne |first=Robert|date= 6 June 2014|isbn = 9781899694792}}</ref><ref>[http://www.ace.lu.se/images/Syd_och_sydostasienstudier/working_papers/Samarani.pdf Shaping the Future of Asia] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140611065601/http://www.ace.lu.se/images/Syd_och_sydostasienstudier/working_papers/Samarani.pdf |date=11 June 2014 }}</ref> Some Western publications such as ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' also covered their meeting, noting that Chiang and Gandhi together ruled a third of the world's population and contrasting Chiang as a hardened "man of action" to the more detached pacifism of Gandhi, but also noting that despite their differences, he was "exceedingly polite" to all of India's leaders during his visit.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=G1EEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA23&dq=life+magazine+gandhi+chiang&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjdpKnsyNH4AhW-FFkFHVwRDngQ6AF6BAgIEAI#v=onepage&q=life%20magazine%20gandhi%20chiang&f=false "China Asks India Whether It Will Fight"]. ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]''. 27 April 1942.</ref>
In their meeting in Calcutta, Jinnah tried to persuade Chiang, who had pressed Britain to relinquish India as soon as possible, of the necessity of establishing a separate nation for Muslims in the subcontinent, to which Chiang, who apparently recognized [[Indian National Congress|Congress]] as the sole nationalist force in the Raj, replied that if ten crores of Muslims could live peacefully with other communities in China, then there was no true necessity as he saw it of a separate state for a smaller population of nine crores of Muslims living in India.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=MoTr7rCnMwEC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=Chiang+Jinnah&source=bl&ots=Yd8r8ISno8&sig=bWmOF2be1a1SyQbOsjH3VeZ8HUE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XA5-VLToOM2IsQTenIDICQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Chiang%20Jinnah&f=false The Cripps Mission: A Reappraisal]</ref> While the public reception to the Chiangs was mostly positive, some reacted less favorably to the Chiangs' presence in India, with Jinnah believing that Chiang Kai-shek lacked proper understanding of Indian society and feeling he was biased in favor of Nehru and Gandhi while neglecting the demands of other religious communities,<ref>{{cite book|title=India and Taiwan: From Benign Neglect to Pragmatism|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/India_and_Taiwan/As9qCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=alleged%20that|last=Deepak|first=B. R.|date= 2005|isbn = 9789384464912}}</ref> his newspaper ''Dawn'' calling him a "meddlesome marshal", while others such as [[Muhammad Zafarullah Khan]] expressed mistrust for the couple's motives, believing that their government wanted to eventually expand its influence to [[Indochina]] and the subcontinent after the British's departure.<ref>{{cite book|title=Madame Chiang Kai-Shek - China's Eternal First Lady|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Madame_Chiang_Kai_Shek/FRY0v7AH2ngC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=indochina|last=Tyson Li|first=Laura|date= September 2007|isbn = 9780802143228}}</ref>
For his part, Chiang apparently believed none of the major Indian leaders could help his government meaningfully. As an ardent nationalist who lived through China's internally turbulent years, he felt Jinnah was "dishonest", and used by the British to divide the peoples of British India and by extension Asia, he and his wife Song believing that cooperation between its religious communities was difficult but possible. At the same time, he also felt genuinely disappointed by Gandhi, whom he initially had high expectations, and noted afterwards that "he knows and loves only India, and doesn't care about other places and peoples". Having been unable to make Gandhi change his views about [[satyagraha]], even after arguing that some of their enemies such as the Japanese would make the preaching of non-violence impossible, Chiang, himself raised a Buddhist, blamed "traditional Indian philosophy" for his sole focus on endurance of suffering rather than revolutionary zeal necessary to rally and unite the Asian peoples.<ref>[http://125.22.40.134:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/2553/1/Mitter%2C%20Jiang%20meets%20Gandhi.pdf Jiang Meets Gandhi]</ref> Nevertheless, the Chiangs continued to commit themselves to supporting the [[Indian independence movement]] from afar, mostly via diplomacy, with Song Meiling writing Nehru encouragingly: "We shall leave nothing undone in assisting you to gain freedom and independence. Our hearts are drawn to you, and...the bond of affection between you and us has been strengthened by our visit....When you are discouraged and weary...remember that you are not alone in your struggle, for at all times we are with you in spirit."<ref>{{cite book|title=The Last Empress Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Last_Empress/4ZpVntUTZfkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=nothing%20undone|last=Pakula|first=Hannah|date= 2009|isbn = 9781439154236}}</ref>
Although their meetings had ended on a positive note, with Gandhi offering to adopt Song as a "daughter" in his [[ashram]] if Chiang left her there as his ambassador to India after she asked to be taught about his non-violent principles, and giving her his spinning wheel as a farewell gift, both sides were met with considerable obstacles in the aftermath.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0jVVCwAAQBAJ&pg=PP146&lpg=PP146&dq=soong+gandhi=source=bl&ots=tJEpHUkqPc&sig=ACfU3U0duqeazuCpxeiql6G573kiA4F6xQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx--WvzavtAhW1GVkFHXnZBiIQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage India's War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia]</ref> After the Chiangs tried to seek U.S. President Roosevelt's help in persuading Churchill to give India independence during the war, Roosevelt suggested splitting India's territory in two in the hopes of resolving tensions, to which Song replied that both she and Chiang felt that "India was as indivisible as China". Gandhi wrote to Chiang shortly afterwards, seeking to clarify his stance: "I need hardly give you my assurance that, as the author of the new move in India, I shall take no hasty action. And whatever action I may recommend will be governed by the consideration that it should not injure China, or encourage Japanese aggression. I am trying to enlist world opinion in favor of a proposition which to me appears self-proved and which must lead to the strengthening of India and China's defence." Chiang sent a cable to Washington upon reading Gandhi's letter, and advised Roosevelt that the best course of action would be to "restore complete freedom" to India, but Churchill reportedly threatened to end Britain's alliance with China should the Chiangs continue to try to interfere with Indian affairs.<ref>{{cite book|title=India and China in the Colonial World|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/India_and_China_in_the_Colonial_World/IZ5RdT5mHHIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=emphatic|last=Hogel|first=Bernhard|date= 2005|isbn = 9788187358206}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers · Volume 1|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Foreign_Relations_of_the_United_States/9iI5WSCjLmMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=assurance%20hasty}}</ref>
A division of the KMT's forces entered India around this time as the [[Chinese Army in India]] in their struggle against Japanese expansion in [[Southeast Asia]]. [[Dwarkanath Kotnis]] and four other Indian physicians traveled to a war-torn China to provide medical assistance against Japanese forces.<ref>[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-22599356 Why is India's Dr Kotnis revered in China?] [[BBC]]</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://cul.china.com.cn/lishi/2012-10/17/content_5410894.htm |title=蒋介石曾以"元首身份"访印度 与甘地谈6小时 |access-date=11 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131227235219/http://cul.china.com.cn/lishi/2012-10/17/content_5410894.htm |archive-date=27 December 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
After he became Prime Minister of an independent India, Nehru's personal friendship with Chiang gradually eroded, as their correspondence weakened after Communist China's takeover of the mainland and Chiang having fled to Taiwan. Nehru instructed his sister [[Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit]], India's Ambassador to the United States, to inform Madame Chiang Kai-shek that despite their cordial past and the fact that he was "very sorry" for her, Nehru could offer no support to the ROC government, given the reality of the situation and the possibility of domestic Communist unrest: "With all my friendship for the Chiangs...I cannot shut my eyes to facts and my own convictions." He blamed Chiang Kai-shek for failing to live up to Sun's true ideals and address the overwhelming needs of the ordinary Chinese people, arguing that many at first had no real sympathy for Communism, but simply wearied of his party's increasing corruption. Nehru also distanced himself from Chiang's attempts to form anti-Communist coalitions in Asia, stating that while India was not sympathetic to Communism and was fighting the ideology in its own way, he was averse to international alliances and favored a mostly [[Non-Aligned Movement|non-aligned]] foreign policy.<ref>[https://nehruselectedworks.com/pdfviewer.php?style=UI_Zine_Material.xml&subfolder=&doc=s2v12.pdf|12|524#page=447 Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru Volume 12]</ref>
Nehru would ironically form a similarly close friendship with Song Meiling's estranged sister and Sun Yat-sen's widow, [[Song Qingling]], whom he had first met in 1927, and whom had defected from the ROC towards the Communists, even as Song Meiling remained loyal to her husband and his government in Taiwan. Song Qingling, who shared many of Nehru's socialist beliefs even while part of the Nationalists, had long felt that Chiang had disgraced her late husband's revolution by failing to implement significant democratic reforms in China as its leader and serving instead as an autocratic ruler, even opposing Song Meiling's marriage to Chiang. However, she grudgingly later noted that for all of Chiang's faults, the two seemed to genuinely love each other, and that without her sister's moderating influence, Chiang "might have been much worse".<ref>{{cite book|title=Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n16IDwAAQBAJ&q=sincerely|last=Chang|first=Jung|date=September 2020|isbn = 9780451493514}}</ref> Despite their mutual lingering feelings for each other, in the end, Song Meiling refused to attend her older sister's funeral in the mainland after she died in 1981, feeling that her presence would provide the PRC with propaganda and that: "Although the flesh and blood are close, the road is the most important thing."<ref>[https://min.news/en/history/79af6911c34b03c2668369fbef7f269c.html After Soong Ching Ling passed away, Soong Mei Ling was invited to return to China to attend the memorial service. Soong Mei Ling only replied 8 words after her refusal.]</ref>
Over time, Nehru and other Indian government officials also grew increasingly disillusioned by American-allied leaders Chiang and [[Syngman Rhee]]'s "strong-arm tactics" under their largely authoritarian but pro-Western governments; Nehru especially found it difficult to understand why and how America justified supporting some of their controversial policies whilst simultaneously advocating world democracy.<ref>[https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=honorstheses Anger and reconciliation: relations between the United States and India, 1953-1956]</ref>
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