India-China Dialogues Beyond Borders: Cultural, Social Economic and Political Perspectives

This book is a collection of contributions related to India–China relationship beyond the issue of borders. It focuses on those elements that play important role in defining, continuing, and strengthening the interaction between the two countries. In doing so, it explores roles of language and linguistics, history and culture, politics and economy, and philosophy and sociology that mediated ancient and modern interfaces. The book observes the role of silk route in the economic, political, and scholarly exchanges between ancient civilizations and in the movement of Buddhism to China and other Asian nations. The contributors highlight how the two countries have co-existed in various eras and tackled issues of conflict and cooperation during lows and highs in the past and present. It pays special attention to the role of language and linguistic competence as an important component of socio-cultural comprehension of a society and introduces major innovations and challenges inteaching and learning the Chinese language. The wide-ranging contributions make the book an attractive resource for academics, think-tanks, diplomats, and researchers working on Asian/India–China studies across the globe.

About the Author

Swati Mishra teaches Chinese at Banaras Hindu University.  Swati obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Chinese studies at the Centre for Chinese and East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She then joined the University of Peking on a Government of India scholarship where she studied Chinese language and Chinese history. Her research interest includes socio-political developments in contemporary China and India-China relationship in general. Her doctoral thesis was entitled “State and Society in Contemporary China”.

Ranjana Sheel is Professor in the Department of History at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. Her research interests are in social history and women’s studies with a focus on India and East Asia. She has been recipient of Japan Foundation and Shastri Indo-Canadian Faculty Fellowships and was Visiting Fellow at Asia Research Institute in Singapore. Her works such as The Political Economy of Dowry (Manohar, 1999), Thirteen Months in China (OUP, 2017) with Anand Yang and Kamal Sheel, research papers on marriage and migration, are some of the outcomes of her research interests.