Just Friends: Sino-Indian Friendship and the Promises of Asian Solidarity, 1949–62

What did it mean to be ‘Asian’ after imperialism? Emerging from a century of colonial rule and internal strife following World War II, New China and Independent India accounted for nearly a third of the world’s population and more than half of Asia’s population, and despite their different political and economic systems, quickly pursued a policy of ‘friendship’ towards each other in defiance of emerging Cold War bloc politics. As this paper shows, through transnational exchanges of ideas, festivals, conferences, and delegations, Chinese and Indian activists imagined their countries’ friendship as the harbinger of a ‘New Asia’ that could overthrow imperialism and keep the peace between the two superpowers. Dense networks of state and private actors in China and India proclaimed that being Asian meant embracing friendship: a new type of solidarity that emphasized nation-building at home, opposing imperialism abroad, and respecting political differences. Drawing on rich archival sources, I argue that the Indian and Chinese states invoked their shared opposition against imperialism and bloc conflict to encourage disparate publics to act as nation-building citizens. Those same publics – from Buddhist householders in Beijing to land activists in rural Uttar Pradesh – used ensuing ideas of a common ‘Asianness’ forged through interactions with each other to tie their everyday politics to broader struggles abroad. Sino-Indian friendship thus encouraged an interconnectivity between domestic statecraft and international struggle that yoked inchoate national identities to a transnational one; being Indian or Chinese also meant being Asian. By drawing on their shared colonial past and dreams of a shared postcolonial future, the proponents of Sino-Indian friendship argued that their countries’ relationship could serve as a blueprint for a peaceful, decolonized Asia capable of creating a better world.