Interviews

Between the Lines with Sugata Bose

The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia after Europe is a bold new interpretation of the period, focusing on the conflicting and overlapping ways in which Asians have conceived their bonds and their roles in the world. Tracking the circulation of ideas and people across colonial and national borders, Sugata Bose explores developments in Asian thought, art, and politics that defied Euro-American models and defined Asianness as a locus of solidarity for all humanity.

Impressive in scale, yet driven by the stories of fascinating and influential individuals, Asia after Europe examines early intimations of Asian solidarity and universalism preceding Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905; the revolutionary collaborations of the First World War and its aftermath, when Asian universalism took shape alongside Wilsonian internationalism and Bolshevism; the impact of the Great Depression and Second World War on the idea of Asia; and the persistence of forms of Asian universalism in the postwar period, despite the consolidation of postcolonial nation-states on a European model.

Diverse Asian universalisms were forged and fractured through phases of poverty and prosperity, among elites and common people, throughout the span of the twentieth century. Noting the endurance of nationalist rivalries, often tied to religious exclusion and violence, Bose concludes with reflections on the continuing potential of political thought beyond European definitions of reason, nation, and identity.

In conversation with HarperBroadcast, Professor Bose talks about his engaging new book Asia after Europe.

Q. How did thinkers like Okakura Tenshin and Rabindranath Tagore contribute to shaping the idea of Asia in the context of cultural and political exchanges between East and South Asia during the early 20th century?

Sugata Bose: Okakura Tenshin was a key theorist of the oneness of Asia. He wrote an influential book titled Ideals of the East (1903) during his stay in India in 1902. As Sister Nivedita put it in her introduction, Okakura had shown Asia “not as the congeries of geographical fragments that we imagine, but as a united living organism, each part dependent on all the others, the whole breathing a single complex life.” He then sent Japanese artists, including Yokoyama Taikan, to India, leading to artistic conversations and collaborations across Asia. Abanindranath Tagore’s iconic “Bharatmata” was painted, deploying the Japanese wash technique. Rabindranath Tagore met Okakura both in Calcutta and later in Boston in 1913, where Okakura was curator of Asian art at the Museum of Fine Arts. Much later, in 1924, he made a moving reference in Japan to Okakura as a pioneer in the quest for Asian universalism.

Q. How did the dissolution of Asian brotherhood, particularly the rivalry between India and China in the 1960s, impact the intellectual quest for “Asia as method,” and what role did it play in redefining the idea of Asia beyond geopolitical conflicts?

SB: The struggle against Western imperialism had undergirded a sense of Asian solidarity in the first half of the twentieth century. The bonhomie among Asian countries coming into their own continued during the 1950s. I narrate many instances of cultural exchanges across Asia, not least between India and China, in the immediate aftermath of independence. I explain the slide from solidarity to animosity with reference to the inability of new citizens to pursue anti-colonial aspirations and the penchant of managers of post-colonial states to prefer post-colonial continuity in defining sovereignty and borders. Even as nation-states, including India and China, descended into rivalry and conflict, I argue the intellectual quest for “Asia as method” was not abandoned but rather renewed. Takeuchi Yoshimi, a Japanese scholar of Chinese literature, advanced this idea in 1960. Nandalal Bose resorted to the Japanese sumie style to depict the Indian countryside in his art during the early 1960s.

Q. How did the opium trade between India and China contribute to the broader economic decline of Asia in the 19th century, and what role did European imperialism play in shaping these historical connections?

SB: There was nothing ancient about Asian poverty. It was a modern phenomenon that can be dated to the second decade of the nineteenth century. That is when Europe acquired wealth, and Asia fell into poverty. However, economic historians of this great divergence have so far neglected to take account of the European manipulation of intra-Asian connections to bring about such a decisive shift in the global balance of economic power. The British colonial conquest of India and the use of Indian opium to pay for Chinese tea, which had replaced Indian textiles as the most valuable item in the East India Company’s trade, proved crucial in turning the tables against Asia.

Q. Considering the historical events and exchanges depicted in the book, what lessons can we learn from the relationships between Indian, Chinese, and Japanese thinkers in the early 20th century? How did these interactions influence or question existing ideas about nationalism and unity in Asia?

SB: Asian interactions spanned a wide spectrum of intimacies, affective bonds, solidarities, and alliances that transcended the nation’s boundaries. I go beyond Indian, Chinese, and Japanese thinkers to encompass key figures from Southeast Asia and West Asia as well. For example, Tokyo was an anti-colonial metropolis in the early twentieth century, drawing scholars and political activists from India, China, Turkey, Vietnam, and the Philippines. In 1915-1916, Benoy Kumar Sarkar met and interacted with every major Japanese and Chinese intellectual figure and felt an affinity with Chinese Muslims. Exploring the intellectual and cultural conversations across the continent reveals Asian notions of universalism and cosmopolitanism, embracing multiple races and religions, and defying the constraints of European concepts of reason, national identity, and federation.

Q. Considering the complex relationships between political ideologies such as Bolshevism, Asianism, and Islamism during the 1920s, what lessons can we learn about the difficulties and possibilities for different movements working together for independence in Asia at that time?

SB: During the 1920s, anti-colonial nationalism had a range of extra-territorial dimensions. Far from being a Wilsonian moment obsessed with national self-determination, the immediate years after the end of World War I were characterized by competing universalisms of the Islamic, Bolshevik, and Asian assortments. The early 1920s witnessed a degree of accommodation among these internationalist affinities. In addition to their anti-imperial stance, they shared a steadfast refusal to accept the nation-state as the normative or natural political unit. However, I analyse how a combination of ideological conflicts and tussles over power led to the unravelling of these intertwined trends in Wuhan, China, in 1927 and in Indonesia around the same time. Yet Asia remained a venue for the play of what I call colourful cosmopolitanisms compatible with patriotic sentiment.

Q. In the course of your book, Tagore’s statements and actions are frequently referenced. What prompted your selection of Tagore as the pivotal intellectual figure to convey this narrative?

SB: I have chosen a cast of characters – some well-known like Tagore and others whom I have rescued from undeserved oblivion. They reappear in successive chapters. It is a literary device that works especially well with Rabindranath Tagore, who engaged with the idea of Asia from the 1880s until he died in 1941. I weave together the threads of connected stories to present an Asian tapestry. Tagore also works well as a pivotal figure because of the consistent warnings he issued about navigating the potential rise of Asia. As he put it in 1932, “If a new age has dawned in Asia, let Asia give it utterance in a new authentic voice. If instead Asia merely imitates Europe’s beastly cry, were it even to be the lion’s roar, it will be a loss.”

Q. What served as the inspiration for your exploration of post-colonial Asia for your book? Furthermore, were there any unexpected discoveries or insights that emerged while researching or writing the book?

SB: I could see that Asia stands today at the end of an era as alternative futures beckon. By delving into the history of Asia as a connected zone during the long twentieth century, I wanted to identify which inheritances we should take from the past to take with us on the uncertain journey ahead. Apart from the discovery that the idea of Asia was even more pervasive and resilient than I had assumed, my stories got intertwined in startling ways. For example, Yone Noguchi saw Taikan’s Kali and Hishida’s Saraswati painted in 1903, still hanging on the walls of Sarala Devi Chaudhurani’s home in 1935. And the Chinese painter Xu Beihong, who spent time in Tagore’s Santiniketan in 1940, inspired M.F. Husain in his Beijing studio with his fabulous horses in the early 1950s.

In conversation with Nandini Bhatla for HarperBroadcast

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