Since Independence, India has always been unable to be at par with China, forget about dominating them, but has India ever dominated China? Yes, Home Minister Rajnath Singh quoting a Chinese scholar claimed that India "culturally" dominated China for over 2,000 years. If that isn't enough, he also shot another salvo quoting a French writer that Banks of Ganga is where culture globally has got influenced.
These remarks were made by Singh during Valedictory Session of the maiden Maritime India Summit to justify how important sea routes were and are for India.
Addressing a gathering, the home minister borrowed Chinese philosopher's knowledge and twisted it by saying: "When Chinese revolution was on, there was a vice-chancellor of Peking Univerity, Hu Shih, who also represented China in the UN. He has written that "India has dominated and culturally controlled China for more than 2,000 years without sending a single soldier". The message has truly gone to China as well, that Indian culture has influenced it and it might have gone through only through the sea route," and via land despite it being so close to each other.
The fact is that Hu Shih, the Chinese philosopher in his book 'Chinese Philosophy and Intellectual History (Volume 2)' has mentioned: "Such a theory is inadequate because, in the first place, it ignores the historical fact that China was at one time under the cultural domination of Buddhist India, which country was revered by the Chinese people as the 'Heave of the West,' and from which has come the religion of Buddhism that has for 2,000 years remained one of the three national systems of religious belief and moral teaching." (sic)
The other remark asserting India's cultural importance and dominance was Indian culture influencing other cultures around the globe. Singh quoted a French historian Voltaire and said: "I am fully convinced that everything has come from the Bank of Ganges."
The comment on India's "cultural" dominance on China comes in the wake of China blocking India's bid in the United Nations to blacklist Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar will be visiting China on April 17 for four days, after having announced strategic tie-up between India and United States on using Indian Armed Forces bases.
After the Modi regime came to power, in the past, there have been various attempts to showcase India as being the first in various fields. These claims were criticised and laughed at from sections of the society. Among the various claims was Indian Rishi having given guidelines for making aircrafts (paper in Indian Science Congress) to possibility of plastic surgery to get elephant's head on a human body to Mahabharata stating of Karna not being born from his mother's womb, "this means that genetic science was present at that time" which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in October 2014.
