Saturday, November 17, 2007

Pride (though I doubt it cometh before a fall)

It seems like Indians often feel a competition with China. They like to denigrate China as much as Americans like to denigrate the French (but seriously, how can you not make fun of a bunch of lazy frog eaters). You see little digs against China all over literature and the news.

This tendency seems to spawn partially from the Sino-Indian War of 1962. After Independence, Nehru extended an olive branch to China and started discussing a great China-India alliance. In 1962, China unexpectedly invaded India to recapture two small and rather unimportant states on the northeast border. It seemed to be more of a power play and nose snub than any real concern about the territories. Nehru took a lot heat politically for not anticipating the attacks but he did not expect one Socialist power to attack another. After this incident, Nehru's health began to decline and he died two years later. China made it clear that it's interest was being the big dog in Asia and it didn't need any help.

In that vein, the Hindustan Times ran an article about Forbes newest list of billionaires. Within the first three paragraphs, they pointed out that the top 4 Indians on the list have more than the top 40 Chinese on the list.
link to article

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Unabashed anti-slantism?! Maybe I would like it in India...