Chinese and Indian Attitudes Towards the Past: A Paradoxical Appropriation

Abstract

What is modernity if not the projection of something experimented in the past? Does the logic of this projection differ from one country to another? One cannot understand the nature of modernity and its political and cultural acceptances without glancing at the past. Many common points are observable in the quest of modernity of India and China, one of the most important being the daily presence of the past through various practices: reading of the Classics, religiosity and identity, physical training and medicine, and even the production of cultural goods within the past is often depicted as a Golden Age. In the building process of political and national modernity, both in China and India, the past is often used as an ideological tool. Many Indian novels are exploring the so-called tradition, like the bestselling mytho-fictions by Amish Tripathi, and sometimes linking them with very current trends, such as environmental issues. The globalized publishing industry has produced huge amounts of management books inspired from The Art of the War by Sunzi, and it is interesting to witness the same kind of books coming from Indian philosophy by Indian writers. By making use of the works of Sinologist Pierre Ryckmans, this chapter undertakes comparison between India and China’s attitudes towards modernity, in the context of the literary genres they produce.