“India conquered and dominated China culturally for two thousand years without ever having to send a single soldier across the border.…Never before had China seen a religion so rich in imagery, so beautiful and captivating in ritualism and so bold in cosmological and metaphysical speculations. Like a poor beggar suddenly halting before a magnificent storehouse of precious stones of dazzling brilliancy and splendour, China was overwhelmed, baffled and overjoyed. She begged and borrowed freely from this munificent giver…Chinas indebtedness to India can never be fully told”, said Huh Shih, a Chinese nationalist scholar and diplomat in a paper presented at the Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Science in 1936. ... it is one thing for our leaders to visit the ‘Forbidden City’ and be feted and be told of our past cultural links but it requires an altogether different mettle and vision to create anew a dream that earns world recognition. While our hosts in Beijing have formulated theirs and seem to doggedly work towards its fruition, the essential question that we need to ask ourselves is: Have we even begun formulating ours or are we acquiescing in the rise of a single dream in the region?
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 06:14:11 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015