Internationalist Indians, including regulars at New Delhi's India International Centre, have always held India outside the ambit of 'Asia'. Sure, India is recognised as part of the Asian continent. But the idea of us being 'Asian' crops up beyond geography only in the puckered lip service of this being 'the Asian Century' and somehow magically India being privy to that bounty.
But as Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan points out in his October 2025 Lowly Institute paper, 'The Myth of the Asian Century,' the term is a simplistic cliche. The relationship between Asian countries is complex - and India's with 'Asia' tenuous. For us Indians, the term 'Asian' has become what the term is for Westerners: think Asian cuisine, Asian movies, Asian pornography - these all pertain to what we deem to be 'Far Eastern'.
After Thursday's 'G Jinping' meet - what Trump described as a 'G2' meet - in Busan, maybe India could consider acquainting itself with Asia, rather than be a brown branch of the West with 'Indian characteristics'? Asia could provide the buffer against China India needs. Remember, Asian countries like Japan and South Korea aren't quite under the thrall of communistic-capitalist China as Hollywood Halloweens make such a threat out to be.
It's much more than about pivoting towards a 'new soviet' to keep one's strategic autonomy (21st c. code for 'non-alignment'). It's about making an intellectual reset beyond the bumper stickers of 'Look East' and 'Act East'. In the post-colonial 'ekla cholo re' India template, India has been the country that meditates while others manufacture, that offers spiritual depth while 'East Asia' offers semiconductor chips. While Asia has moved on, we seem to revel - and be stuck - in our Western-hand-me-down 'Asiatic mindset' script of well-toned mysticism.
The Xi-Trump handshake was more than a photo-op. It was a signal, yes, of Chinese consolidation, but also of an Asian manner of engaging with the world - and with Asia.
Pankaj Mishra, in his must-read 2012 book, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, points us to the epochal event of Japan's victory over Russia in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Reacting to the news, then viceroy of British India George Curzon wrote that 'the reverberations of that victory have gone like a thunderclap through the whispering galleries of the East'. Rabindranath Tagore reacted to the news by leading his students in Shantiniketan in an impromptu victory march.
Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-sen, on his way back to China from London, was congratulated by Arab port workers at the Suez Canal - they thought he was Japanese. Even Mao Zedong, when faced with Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 recalled, 'At that time, I knew and felt something of [Japan's] pride and might [in a song he had learnt] of her victory over Russia'.
Mishra writes, 'From a Western standpoint'--and I'd add, 'from a Westernised standpoint' - 'the influence of the West can seem both inevitable and necessary, requiring no thorough historical auditing. Europeans and Americans customarily see their countries and cultures as the source of modernity and are confirmed in their assumptions by the extraordinary spectacle of their culture's universal diffusion... But there was a time when the West merely denoted a geographical region, and other peoples unselfconsciously assumed a universal order centred in their values.'
The Xi-Trump 'Entente Cordiale Lite' in Busan may not be our century's 'Battle of Tsushima', which Japanese journalist Tokutomi Soho described perhaps a bit prematurely, 'We are dispelling the myth of the inferiority of the non-white races. With our power we are forcing our acceptance as a member in the ranks of the world's greatest powers'. But the 'rare earths for chips' deal reportedly made by Xi and Trump - probably a 'ceasefire' for both sides to catch up in their respective shortcomings - certainly points to the firming up of a PoV not dictated by the West-US.
In this scheme of things, if 'Asia' via China seems to have understood that there's been a reset, it would only be wise for our internationalists to understand Asia, minus the constantly-translating West. Our younger lot seems to be tapping exactly that in K-pop and anime.
But as Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan points out in his October 2025 Lowly Institute paper, 'The Myth of the Asian Century,' the term is a simplistic cliche. The relationship between Asian countries is complex - and India's with 'Asia' tenuous. For us Indians, the term 'Asian' has become what the term is for Westerners: think Asian cuisine, Asian movies, Asian pornography - these all pertain to what we deem to be 'Far Eastern'.
After Thursday's 'G Jinping' meet - what Trump described as a 'G2' meet - in Busan, maybe India could consider acquainting itself with Asia, rather than be a brown branch of the West with 'Indian characteristics'? Asia could provide the buffer against China India needs. Remember, Asian countries like Japan and South Korea aren't quite under the thrall of communistic-capitalist China as Hollywood Halloweens make such a threat out to be.
It's much more than about pivoting towards a 'new soviet' to keep one's strategic autonomy (21st c. code for 'non-alignment'). It's about making an intellectual reset beyond the bumper stickers of 'Look East' and 'Act East'. In the post-colonial 'ekla cholo re' India template, India has been the country that meditates while others manufacture, that offers spiritual depth while 'East Asia' offers semiconductor chips. While Asia has moved on, we seem to revel - and be stuck - in our Western-hand-me-down 'Asiatic mindset' script of well-toned mysticism.
The Xi-Trump handshake was more than a photo-op. It was a signal, yes, of Chinese consolidation, but also of an Asian manner of engaging with the world - and with Asia.
Pankaj Mishra, in his must-read 2012 book, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, points us to the epochal event of Japan's victory over Russia in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. Reacting to the news, then viceroy of British India George Curzon wrote that 'the reverberations of that victory have gone like a thunderclap through the whispering galleries of the East'. Rabindranath Tagore reacted to the news by leading his students in Shantiniketan in an impromptu victory march.
Chinese nationalist Sun Yat-sen, on his way back to China from London, was congratulated by Arab port workers at the Suez Canal - they thought he was Japanese. Even Mao Zedong, when faced with Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 recalled, 'At that time, I knew and felt something of [Japan's] pride and might [in a song he had learnt] of her victory over Russia'.
Mishra writes, 'From a Western standpoint'--and I'd add, 'from a Westernised standpoint' - 'the influence of the West can seem both inevitable and necessary, requiring no thorough historical auditing. Europeans and Americans customarily see their countries and cultures as the source of modernity and are confirmed in their assumptions by the extraordinary spectacle of their culture's universal diffusion... But there was a time when the West merely denoted a geographical region, and other peoples unselfconsciously assumed a universal order centred in their values.'
The Xi-Trump 'Entente Cordiale Lite' in Busan may not be our century's 'Battle of Tsushima', which Japanese journalist Tokutomi Soho described perhaps a bit prematurely, 'We are dispelling the myth of the inferiority of the non-white races. With our power we are forcing our acceptance as a member in the ranks of the world's greatest powers'. But the 'rare earths for chips' deal reportedly made by Xi and Trump - probably a 'ceasefire' for both sides to catch up in their respective shortcomings - certainly points to the firming up of a PoV not dictated by the West-US.
In this scheme of things, if 'Asia' via China seems to have understood that there's been a reset, it would only be wise for our internationalists to understand Asia, minus the constantly-translating West. Our younger lot seems to be tapping exactly that in K-pop and anime.
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