Kang Youwei’s Journey to India: Chinese Discourse on India During the Late Qing and Republican Periods

Abstract

This paper examines Kang Youwei’s perception of India as well as his impact on the Chinese discourse on India during the late Qing and Republican periods. The analysis is pursued on the basis of a letter entitled ‘A letter to Liang Qichao and other students on [the fact that] the Fall of India [as an independent country] was due to the Independence of Its Provinces’. Kang wrote this letter to Liang, his closest student and associate who was also a famous intellectual, when Kang was in Darjeeling in May 1902. Kang was keen to diagnose India’s collapse to British colonialism for the purpose of helping China avoid a similar fate. This essay argues that his journey to and writings about India were of great significance in shaping the modern Chinese perceptions of India. He, for the first time, explicitly made a comprehensive comparison between China and India and positioned India as a negative example for the Chinese. From then on, India’s image among many Chinese intellectuals was that of a failed nation unable to confront imperialism.