INFOCUS | INDIA-CHINA | CULTURE
The Bard in Beijing If one day the cultural relationship between our two countries can reach the same extent as in the glorious days when Buddhism entered China, let us not forget Gurudev, for he was the pioneer and the very symbol of this revival of international cultural collaboration. Sampson C Shen
R
abindranath came to China at the invitation of the Lecturer’s Association of Peiping, which was organized by various universities and colleges in that city, with the late Prof Liang Chi-Chao as its president. Starting from that ancient city, he toured all the big cities in China to the extreme south, and wherever he went, he was cordially welcomed and anxiously asked to deliver speeches on Indian culture and civilization. During this visit, he negotiated with Chinese cultural leaders on exchange of scholars and professors. According to the plan mapped out at that time Pandit Vidhushekhara Shastri and another scholar of Santiniketan were to be sent to Peiping to teach Sanskrit and to study the Chinese language. On the other hand, Liang Chi-chao and some others were to go to Santiniketan to help the institution in Chinese studies and to study Sanskrit. A lump sum of
Rs 20,000 had been donated by Seth JK Birla to the Visva-Bharati to build a special guest house for the coming Chinese scholars. But due to the instability of the political situation in China, the scheme was unfortunately foiled. But his visit was not in vain. He made a deep impression upon the Chinese mind. He loved China and was loved by the Chinese. Since then, almost all of his works in English have been translated into Chinese, one after another. He came to China just when the latter was beginning her Renaissance and his visit certainly gave a great impetus to this new movement. His poems of “Stray Birds” and “The Crescent Moon” have created new styles of prosody in the new Chinese poetry. A Crescent Moon Society (for poetry) and a Crescent Moon magazine were started immediately after this event by the late Mr Hsu Chih-mo and Dr Hu Shih. Dr Hu was later hailed by some Americans as the counterpart of Rabindranath in China. “As for the Poet’s ideal and hope
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to unite Asiatic cultures and to revive the Indian and Chinese cultural relationship,” a Chinese professor once said, “all of our Chinese scholars have the sincerest sympathy with him and our leading scholars and leaders have also cherished for long the same idea and are willing to co-strive for the common goal with joint endeavors. Now is the time for India and China to resume and strengthen their cultural relationship.” Actually, Tagore had been given a Chinese name, ‘Chu Cheng-tan” when he was in China. After that, he became an ardent lover of China and understood China better than any foreigner of that time. Prof YS Tan, who was teaching at Santiniketan remarked: “I found in the modern world two great savants who knew China and her people and culture best: one was Gurudeva, another is Bertrand Russell. But, after all, Russell is a Westerner and Gurudeva is an Easterner. A Westerner’s comprehension of an old eastern country like China and her
Rabindranath Tagore ( Chu Cheng-tan ) January-February 2011 India-China Chronicle |49|
people and culture anyhow cannot be so deep, so intense, real and genuine as that of an Easterner.” How true this statement is needs hardly to be verified by the following words with which Tagore expressed his profound understanding of the Chinese culture: “Can anything be more worthy of being cherished than the beautiful spirit of Chinese culture, that has made them love the things of this earth, clothe them with tender grace without turning them materialistic? They have
instinctively grasped the secret of the rhythm of things – not the secret of power that is in science, but the secret of expression. This is a great gift, for God alone knows this secret. I envy them this gift and wish our people could share it with them”. Then the Sino-Indian Cultural Society came into existence in Nanking in the year 1933. The next year, Prof YS Tan was sent to India, and with the help extended by Tagore, set up the Indian headquarters of the Society in Santiniketan. Tagore became its
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first president. Its charter stated: “The object of this Society shall be to study the Mind of India and China with a view to an interchange of their cultures and cultivation of friendship between the peoples of the two countries for the purpose of promoting peace and unity in the world.’ The program of the society include the following items: Organizing Indian cultural delegations to go to China, and Chinese delegations to come to Indian for conducting research work, and delivering lectures on Indian and Chinese cultures; recommending Indian students to study in China and Chinese students to study in India; establishing an Indian Institute in China and a Chinese Hall in India; publishing book and journals embodying the result of researches; etc. At the time of the inauguration of the Society in Santiniketan, Tagore, as its first president, sent the following message to China: “My friends in China, “The truth that we received when your pilgrims came to us in India, and ours to you, – that is not lost even now. “What a great pilgrimage was that! What a great time in history! It is our duty today to revive the heroic spirit of the pilgrimage following the ancient path which is not merely a geographical one, but the great historical path that was built across the difficult barriers of race difference, and difference of language and tradition, reaching the spiritual home where man is in bonds of love and cooperation.” (April 23, 1934) In the last few years, the Society has done much for the revival of cultural intercourse between the two countries, its greatest achievement being the inauguration of the Cheena-Bhavana (China College), as a department of the Visva-Bharati (International University). Since then, Santiniketan has become the nucleus of Chinese studies in India with Rabindranath as its first and most enthusiastic patron. Chinese studies had been conducted in Visva-Bharati even before the appearance of CheenaBhavana. In 1922, there was Dr Sylvain Levy, the eminent French Orientalist, coming to Santiniketan from Europe
to start the course of Chinese studies. When he left, the work was continued by Prof G Tucci, the Italian visiting professor. A little while later, the VisvaBharati authorities formally organized Chinese studies under its research department Vidya-Bhavana, with Pandit Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya Shastri as its head. After Tagore’s visit to China, though Liang Chi-chao and others failed to come, time was ripening for the establishment of a separate department in Visva-Bharati to conduct Chinese studies. The first Chinese scholar holding regular classes in Santiniketan was a Mr Lin, who stayed there for about two years. But the CheenaBhavana only came into being through the efforts of his successor, Prof YS Tan, who was also founder of the SinoIndian Cultural Society, as already mentioned before. Prof Tan was editing a Chinese newspaper in Singapore when he met Tagore for the time in that colonial capital. Being a devoted Buddhist, he had long been interested in the resumption of cultural and religious communications between India and China. When he saw Rabindranath and learned of his attitude toward China, he found it was a great chance and grasped it. He came to Santiniketan the following year to teach Chinese, five students at first. Prof Tan returned to China in 1931, preparing for the organization of the Sino-Indian Cultural Society, and stressing the importance of setting up the Cheena-Bhavana before the Chinese public. With his zealous endeavor, he won the sympathy of both the official and private circles, especially among the Buddhists, including such eminent persons as H.E. Mr Tai Chi-tao, President of the Examination Yuan and the Rev Tai Hsu, President of the Chinese Buddhist Association. Prof Tan returned to Santiniketan in 1934 to open the Indian centre of the Cultural Society and went to Nanking, the then capital of China, again in the latter part of the same year to raise funds and collect books for CheenaBhavana. These he brought over by sea when he came to India for the third
time in 1936. The construction of the Chinese Hall followed soon afterwards. On April, 14th 1937, which was the Bengali New Year Day, the Hall was formally inaugurated by Rabindranath personally. Prof Tan became its first Director. The object of the Cheena-Bhavana, which is the official name of the hall, was “to establish and promote cultural exchange between China and India, for which purpose it will provide facilities for Chinese scholars to study Indian languages, religions and philosophies, – as well as for Indian scholars to study the Chinese languages, religions and
all of our Chinese scholars have the sincerest sympathy with him and our leading scholars and leaders have also cherished for long the same idea and are willing to co-strive for the common goal with joint endeavours. Now is the time for India and China to resume and strengthen their cultural relationship. philosophies, Buddhism being regarded as the nucleus of all such studies.” Since then, Santiniketan has had a special significance to China, and any party going from China and India, private or official, should not fail to pay a visit to this ideal University of Gurudev Tagore’s. The Chinese Goodwill Mission headed by President Tai Chi-tao (which visited India some years before) and Cultural and Educational Mission headed by ViceMinister Ku Yu-hsu (both in 1943) stayed in Santiniketan for a few days. The poet Hsu Chih-mo and artist Hsu Pe-on remained there for months. During President and Madame January-February 2011 India-China Chronicle |51|
INFOCUS | INDIA-CHINA | CULTURE
Chiang Kai-shek’s historical visit to India in 1942, Visva-Bharati was the only educational institution on their itinerary. Tagore, with his spirit of universal love, has established an everlasting friendship with the Chinese leaders and people. Though his body has gone, his spirit is still linking Chinese and Indian together. Recently, through the efforts of Director YS Tan, Prof Wu Hsiao-ling, Pt Vidhushekhar Shastri, Prof Sujit kumar Mukhopadhyaya and others, the Cheena-Bhavana has attracted students not only from India and China, but also from Ceylon, Siam and Java. In 1944 Mr Krishna Kink Sinha, an ex-student of that institution was selected to go to Kunming in southwestern China to teach Indian language and culture. In view of its short history, what Cheena-Bhavana has achieved is not negligible and its future is promising. But it must be remembered that without the unreserved help given by the late Gurudev, there would have been no Cheena-Bhavana at all. Of late much interest has been aroused both in China and in India for the revival of Sino-Indian cultural collaboration and not a few things have been done in this direction, both officially and privately, such as the exchange of research scholars between the two countries, the establishment of scholarships by the Chinese Government in India for Indian students to study Chinese history and culture, the opening of departments of Indian languages in at least three universities in China, Sir S Radhakrishnan’s visit to China at the invitation of the Chinese Government in 1945, and the exchange of missions of various subjects of science (notably, agricultural and medical). If one day the cultural relationship between our two countries can reach the same extent as in the glorious days when Buddhism entered China, let us not forget Gurudev, for he was the pioneer and the very symbol of this revival of international cultural collaboration. (An excerpt from a paper published by the IGNCA) |52| India-China Chronicle January-February 2011
INFOCUS | INDIA-CHINA | CULTURE
paces of a new dance form. It was not easy but Uma persisted and as her Guru was to later affirm, she was a diligent and agile student who soon fell in step with the dance form and her life in Delhi. Interest in Indian dance forms among Chinese students have been on the rise, and include the irrepressible Bollywood style too. And as Uma takes a break from her vigorous workout and settles down for a chat, she wipes her sweat and says, “Pasina.” Uma had picked up some Hindi too. Text & Photo: Prashun Bhaumik
Our Experience, Your Imagination
Guru–Shishya M
y first sight of Uma was of her delicately poised in a mudra while her teacher was busy perfecting the angles. This was at the famous Gandharva Mahavidyalaya’s ground floor studio – the teacher Odissi’s famous exponent Madhavi Mudgal and student Uma Li. Yes a Chinese girl who had travelled all the way to learn the exquisite Odissi dance form. Like so many Chinese girl Li Qian Qian was trained in ballet but on a trip to India with a friend the young and pretty Li fell in love with Odissi. And thus began her journey. On a scholarship and a new name Uma – given by the then India’s Ambassador to Beijing Nirupama Rao (now Foreign Secretary) – came to live in Delhi and work the |54| India-China Chronicle
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