Speech at the "West Heavens: India-China Summit on Social Thought"

It is my great honor to have been asked by Mr. Chang Tsong-Zung and Mr. Gao Shiming to assist in organizing the WEST HEAVENS: INDIA-CHINA SUMMIT ON SOCIAL THOUGHT. They perhaps invited me to participate because in my role as an editor of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movement (IACS), over the last ten years I have had a lot of contact with critical thinkers from all over Asia, and particularly those from India. Of course, I was more than happy to take up their invitation, and one of the duties assigned to me was to write an introduction for the READERs introducing the distinguished scholars who will be visiting as part of this event. For me, it is a welcome opportunity to explain the intentions behind this dialogue between India and China.


When we founded Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movement ten or so years ago, we wanted to make our contribution to changing the condition of knowledge that exists today. We wanted to establish communication and integration among Asian countries, at least within our own circle of academia. The editorial committee was made up of over twenty scholars from every part of Asia, and they were unanimous on one important understanding of our objective history: throughout the 20th century, the gaze of Asian thinkers was fixed on Europe and America. For a hundred years, the basic frame of reference for all knowledge revolved around the Euro-American experience. This framework developed over the course of a century into a highly resilient knowledge structure that created enormous difficulties for Asian thought. It brought about a narrowing of critical perspectives, excluding diverse historical experiences, which should have provided alternative frames of reference. Even more worryingly, Western modes of knowledge became virtually the only paradigm for knowledge. Of course, history has shown that this kind of knowledge is woefully inadequate as we try to comprehend, control and explain the environments in which we exist. At IACS we wanted to generate exchanges between thinkers from each Asian sub-region, make them see each other, turn the historical experience of each region into a potential point of reference for other Asian regions. To create new modes of knowledge and better explanations, we must transform and diversify the frames of reference that contain us. This shared understanding of Asian epistemology has been our guide for more than a decade.


When reviewing the past we would find that our effort has not been in vain. There may not have been a revolution, but the bonds of knowledge structures mentioned above have been loosened considerably. Changes over the last ten years are bringing about a world moving towards diversity. The shift towards the Left in South America, the forming of ASEAN 10+3, the rise of China and India, sustained economic growth in Africa, the handover from Bush to Obama, and the expansion of the EU...At the end of the 1980s, it felt as though 'globalization' meant the collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet regime, and the unopposed primacy of the United States. But over the past decade the development of multiple political and economic centers seems to have brought an end to the unipolar age. Knowledge systems that were once undeniable and rigid are quickly falling apart, along with their deeply believed values. The highly confident explanatory framework based on the historical experiences of Europe and America faces unprecedented challenges. In this period of transformation, it is time to slow down and take stock, to reconnect with all our intellectual resources rooted in the modern historical experience, to create the pathways we need to new conditions of knowledge. Ten years is very brief. IACS has not yet constructed a mode of knowledge ready for presentation, but we have at least made a start, made an attempt to follow the path of 'Asia as method'.


In Asia, as in other third world regions, responsibility for the long persistence of 'Euro-America as method' must be ascribed to world history. Continually pushed out from the Western centre, China, India and other regions are cast in the permanent role of catch up/overtake (overtaking the UK; struggling to catch up to the US). We learn from Euro-America (including, of course, learning Euro-American values). Academia and the production of knowledge are upheld as the key to the modernization of the nation and its people. Even if we set aside the inherent pitfalls in a knowledge structure predicated on catch up/overtake (does it not conflate normative goals with objective historical explanation?), we must at least start to ask this question: a century on, what exactly has the process of modernization turned these 'latecomer' countries into? We learned democracy, we learned science, but what has the application of these concepts brought us? In other words, should we not pause, and take a moment to share our experiences of catch up/overtake? Should non-Western regions not hold up a mirror to each other, uncover the routes they have taken to bring themselves to where they stand today? Moving forward depends on our ability to see, understand and fully explain. In this process, we may even find that the road of catch up/overtake has come to an end, and that it is time to change the direction.


The goal of knowledge is not some kind of unsupported knowledge for its own sake (presupposing a Truth with a capital T which encompasses the whole world and yet lies outside the existence of history). Knowledge is for explaining the problems and situations of each region, within the context of world history, and from a diverse range of historical experience perspectives. Through a process of comparison and cross reference, we gradually distill knowledge propositions which are relevant to world history. None of the theoretical propositions currently held to be universal are mature. Theories grounded in the reference system of the Euro-American experience can at best explain the histories of Europe and America. Expecting them to explain the historical condition of other regions is absurd. On the contrary: explanations in non-Western regions must be in terms of the region's own historical and developmental experience and pathways. One cannot simplistically, improperly apply the Euro-American experience as a measure by which to assess ourselves. I believe this is what visiting subaltern scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty means by his program of "provincializing Europe". It is also very much in the spirit of Professor Mizoguchi Yuzo, who passed away just this July, and his program of "China as method, the world as object".


If the Euro-American historical experience is only one possible reference, and comparing with the development experiences of latecomer countries, there must be a greater gap, then we must seek to transform our knowledge. Tejaswini Niranjana, feminist thinker, has proposed a strategy. She suggests that we create alternative frames of reference for non-Western regions. We move beyond the Euro-American reference frame, and by diversifying it, creating new mutual reference relationships among Asian and third world regions. Through the change of reference, we can use the differences among us to develop better explanations for our own historical environment. Niranjana's program takes it as axiomatic that closing off the region is unproductive; that the closed methods of nativism and nationalism can never clearly perceive the self that has been swept into modernity. All they can manage is to the smug satisfaction of basking in the glow of the past. But even if we are open to other countries, an openness oriented around the catch up/overtake of Euro-American has equally lost its meaning. We must find new reference systems, beyond the ideologies of nativism and cosmopolitanism stuck as they are in the nation-state and in Euro-America.


I believe as China's thinkers become conscious of the problem of developing new modes of knowledge, recognizing India as method will become a productive part of their research. However, a precondition for a dialogue between China and India is that they must both abandon the epistemology and methodology of catch up/overtake. They can no longer seek to compare themselves on measures of how backwards/advanced they are, on modernization, or on pace of economic growth. As I understand it: we must first set aside normative comparisons, and start with analysis. China and India must perceive our differences, then start to suggest explanations immanent in their own history.


India and China are enormous countries on the world scale and farmers make up the bulk of their populations. The latest data suggests that India is at present the second largest country by population, and by 2026 it will have overtaken China, with 1.5 billion people to China's 1.35 billion. In 2015, economic growth rate of India will surpass China's. In other words, if historical and cultural issues are left aside, from a sociological perspective, of all the countries in the world, India is the most comparable to China and no other countries match these two.


But there are enormous differences between the two states. India is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural nation, and it has no official language yet, deliberations in Congress are carried out through interpreters. Many important Indian thinkers, including Ashis Nandy, do not believe that India is a nation-state in the European sense at all. Rather, it is a civilization. In 1947, it freed itself from the identity of the colony. Before being taken over by the British Empire, India was not a united political entity. After independence, it struggled to tell a single national history covering its thousands of years of civilization. It has had to understand its past in a more multiple and complex way. Histories of many Indians groups is the legacy of the caste system, and that social principle still operates today. The political system must deal with this culture. Cultural process cannot simply be eradicated, so instead the polity creates mechanisms by which members of the lower castes can participate in the political process. Because of the many languages, cultural differences intersect with politics. There are local political parties, and some local politicians (such as provincial governors) even win election by virtue of regional fame and pride, having been stars in films in their local dialects. In this sense, India is the world's largest democracy, and the operation of democracy is based in the local. In order to govern effectively, national political parties must find ways to ally with local political forces.


On my own visits to India over the last decade or so, I always have more questions than I have time to ask them. The South Asian experience is very different to the East Asian, and comparing the two, the latter seems more unified because each region of the country has the same language and the surface of nation state is clear, and it does not have a multiple political parties. These interesting differences could be the basis for comparative research. However, most of my Chinese friends, no matter mainland, Hong Kong or Taiwanese, are all stuck in the habit of competitive comparisons via the logic of catch up/overtake: India, they say, was a colony for too long, so China is in a better position (never mind that Taiwan and Hong Kong were colonies, and Chairman Mao once said China is a "semi-colony", not even a whole colony); India's political system is a product of its colonial past, so China's is better, because it was established through the revolutions of Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong (again discounting the experience of colonies, and ignoring post-war third cosmopolitanism); India has the caste system, so China is better, having eradicated its feudal systems (but never pursuing how elements of India's past are linked to contemporary society, or looking back to see how their own society connects with the past, and whether it is really no longer feudal); Less frequently it is claimed that India's problem is its multiplicity of political parties, and Taiwanese who raise this point temporarily forget that Europe has many multi-party systems, and try to impose the USA's two party system, claiming that two parties is progress (but without the ability to ask the historical question: how did India's multiple and regional political parties form?); Sometimes I hear that India has cows roaming the streets of its major cities, it's not as advanced as China, we couldn't possibly take India as a reference point. For those determined to apply the simple logic of catch up/overtake, the simple logic of modernization as defined by Euro-America, we will see the economy of India overtake China's, for it to achieve global power status, before it is noticed by the Chinese. Until then, the future will tell!


In fact, communication and exchange must be two-way. And there will be many unavoidable misunderstandings along the way. For example, many of my Indian academic friends are interested in China not because of its economic rise, but for a variety of other reasons: the relationship between China's postwar socialism and its current economic development; the relationship between politics and long-term developments in peasant culture (this is a key concern of research into the working classes, exemplified by the work of Partha Chatterjee); women's liberation and the socialist system, and their interaction; how China understands the relationship between economic development and capitalist systems; what new, non-Western viewpoints China's greatly expanded academia will bring to the world; how China's scholars distil explanations of world history from their own historical practice. Third world scholars have a basic respect for China, and have certain expectations of Chinese thinkers. Both respect and expectation are very much connected to China's socialist political tradition; they are not a function of whether China has advanced, or whether it has achieved modernity. However, these issues are not the ones interest in Chinese thinkers, nor ones on which they are prepared to carry out a dialogue. (Even more frustratingly, as the third world looks forward to establishing a dialogue with China, it often finds that China's thinkers do not return the compliment. For the Chinese thinker, there is only Euro-American and China. They tell me: Don't play at political correctness! Asia does not exist, what value can there be in a dialogue with the third world.)


I hope that I have made clear the motivation behind 'India as Method'. Understanding India is a way to understand afresh oneself, China itself and the world. But our current condition of knowledge is enmeshed in a method of catch up/overtake that is difficult to escape. Euro-American values permeate academia. Even in socialist mainland China, intellectuals are following and even outdoing postwar Taiwan and Hong Kong in their eagerness to "escape Asia, join Euro-America". The speed at which Chinese thought is embracing Euro-American knowledge systems is shocking, far faster than our economic growth. So I do not hold out great hopes for this attempt to start a dialogue between China and India. All I can hope for is that those friends who want to find another avenue for understanding can begin to perceive India, in preparation for future exchanges.


The invited scholars, Prasenjit Duara is already familiar to many, because the history of China is his field of study, many of his works have been translated into Chinese, and the other scholars, whether currently residing in India or not, their structures of knowledge that are rooted in Indian society and history. They represent three generations of Indian scholarship: Ashis Nandy, born in 1937, is already a scholar of global renown in the 1980s; Partha Chatterjee, just retired, widely respected in India and internationally; while cultural theorist Tejaswini Niranjana is in the prime of her career, having made major contributions to post-structural translation theory in the 1990s.The translation of this READERs has been a major undertaking. We are aiming for giving readers in the World of Chinese an opportunity to understand the Indian society, history and culture in which these thinkers are. According to my understanding, this is not the first time any of these scholars has visited mainland of China. Each of them has a level of understanding and insight into China. We hope that their visit will give Chinese academia the beginning of an equally deep knowledge of India. It will be an opportunity for us to practice the self-transformation.


Finally, I must thank personal friends for agreeing to participate: feminist theorist Tejaswini Niranjana; social thinker Ashis Nandy; working class historian and political theorist Partha Chatterjee; working class historian Dipesh Chakrabarty; and historian Duara Prasenjit who is already so well-known in China; the art theorist Sarat Maharaj, whom I have not had the pleasure to meet; and world-famous postcolonial theorist Professor Homi K. Bhabha, whom I met on one occasion in Taiwan. Appreciate them for making time to come to China, and for granting us translation rights for the essays presented in these READERs.


I'd also like to give special thanks for the ready assistance offered by my friends Wang Xiaoming and Wang Anyi, and for the support of President Xu Jiang and professor Lu Xinghua, they have been responsible for organizing the dialogues with our visiting scholars. Thanks also to friends from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland who have agreed to be interlocutors for the discussion sessions.


This has been my first opportunity to work with Chang Tsong-Zung and Gao Shiming, and it has been a great pleasure. From them, I have been lucky enough to find alike minds with a common goal, and I have treasured the opportunity. Their boldness, openness and wisdom have reminded me that so long as we can come together and pool our contributions, there's always a hope.

Speech at the "West Heavens: India-China Summit on Social Thought"

It is my great honor to have been asked by Mr. Chang Tsong-Zung and Mr. Gao Shiming to assist in organizing the WEST HEAVENS: INDIA-CHINA SUMMIT ON SOCIAL THOUGHT. They perhaps invited me to participate because in my role as an editor of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movement (IACS), over the last ten years I have had a lot of contact with critical thinkers from all over Asia, and particularly those from India. Of course, I was more than happy to take up their invitation, and one of the duties assigned to me was to write an introduction for the READERs introducing the distinguished scholars who will be visiting as part of this event. For me, it is a welcome opportunity to explain the intentions behind this dialogue between India and China.


When we founded Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movement ten or so years ago, we wanted to make our contribution to changing the condition of knowledge that exists today. We wanted to establish communication and integration among Asian countries, at least within our own circle of academia. The editorial committee was made up of over twenty scholars from every part of Asia, and they were unanimous on one important understanding of our objective history: throughout the 20th century, the gaze of Asian thinkers was fixed on Europe and America. For a hundred years, the basic frame of reference for all knowledge revolved around the Euro-American experience. This framework developed over the course of a century into a highly resilient knowledge structure that created enormous difficulties for Asian thought. It brought about a narrowing of critical perspectives, excluding diverse historical experiences, which should have provided alternative frames of reference. Even more worryingly, Western modes of knowledge became virtually the only paradigm for knowledge. Of course, history has shown that this kind of knowledge is woefully inadequate as we try to comprehend, control and explain the environments in which we exist. At IACS we wanted to generate exchanges between thinkers from each Asian sub-region, make them see each other, turn the historical experience of each region into a potential point of reference for other Asian regions. To create new modes of knowledge and better explanations, we must transform and diversify the frames of reference that contain us. This shared understanding of Asian epistemology has been our guide for more than a decade.


When reviewing the past we would find that our effort has not been in vain. There may not have been a revolution, but the bonds of knowledge structures mentioned above have been loosened considerably. Changes over the last ten years are bringing about a world moving towards diversity. The shift towards the Left in South America, the forming of ASEAN 10+3, the rise of China and India, sustained economic growth in Africa, the handover from Bush to Obama, and the expansion of the EU...At the end of the 1980s, it felt as though 'globalization' meant the collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet regime, and the unopposed primacy of the United States. But over the past decade the development of multiple political and economic centers seems to have brought an end to the unipolar age. Knowledge systems that were once undeniable and rigid are quickly falling apart, along with their deeply believed values. The highly confident explanatory framework based on the historical experiences of Europe and America faces unprecedented challenges. In this period of transformation, it is time to slow down and take stock, to reconnect with all our intellectual resources rooted in the modern historical experience, to create the pathways we need to new conditions of knowledge. Ten years is very brief. IACS has not yet constructed a mode of knowledge ready for presentation, but we have at least made a start, made an attempt to follow the path of 'Asia as method'.


In Asia, as in other third world regions, responsibility for the long persistence of 'Euro-America as method' must be ascribed to world history. Continually pushed out from the Western centre, China, India and other regions are cast in the permanent role of catch up/overtake (overtaking the UK; struggling to catch up to the US). We learn from Euro-America (including, of course, learning Euro-American values). Academia and the production of knowledge are upheld as the key to the modernization of the nation and its people. Even if we set aside the inherent pitfalls in a knowledge structure predicated on catch up/overtake (does it not conflate normative goals with objective historical explanation?), we must at least start to ask this question: a century on, what exactly has the process of modernization turned these 'latecomer' countries into? We learned democracy, we learned science, but what has the application of these concepts brought us? In other words, should we not pause, and take a moment to share our experiences of catch up/overtake? Should non-Western regions not hold up a mirror to each other, uncover the routes they have taken to bring themselves to where they stand today? Moving forward depends on our ability to see, understand and fully explain. In this process, we may even find that the road of catch up/overtake has come to an end, and that it is time to change the direction.


The goal of knowledge is not some kind of unsupported knowledge for its own sake (presupposing a Truth with a capital T which encompasses the whole world and yet lies outside the existence of history). Knowledge is for explaining the problems and situations of each region, within the context of world history, and from a diverse range of historical experience perspectives. Through a process of comparison and cross reference, we gradually distill knowledge propositions which are relevant to world history. None of the theoretical propositions currently held to be universal are mature. Theories grounded in the reference system of the Euro-American experience can at best explain the histories of Europe and America. Expecting them to explain the historical condition of other regions is absurd. On the contrary: explanations in non-Western regions must be in terms of the region's own historical and developmental experience and pathways. One cannot simplistically, improperly apply the Euro-American experience as a measure by which to assess ourselves. I believe this is what visiting subaltern scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty means by his program of "provincializing Europe". It is also very much in the spirit of Professor Mizoguchi Yuzo, who passed away just this July, and his program of "China as method, the world as object".


If the Euro-American historical experience is only one possible reference, and comparing with the development experiences of latecomer countries, there must be a greater gap, then we must seek to transform our knowledge. Tejaswini Niranjana, feminist thinker, has proposed a strategy. She suggests that we create alternative frames of reference for non-Western regions. We move beyond the Euro-American reference frame, and by diversifying it, creating new mutual reference relationships among Asian and third world regions. Through the change of reference, we can use the differences among us to develop better explanations for our own historical environment. Niranjana's program takes it as axiomatic that closing off the region is unproductive; that the closed methods of nativism and nationalism can never clearly perceive the self that has been swept into modernity. All they can manage is to the smug satisfaction of basking in the glow of the past. But even if we are open to other countries, an openness oriented around the catch up/overtake of Euro-American has equally lost its meaning. We must find new reference systems, beyond the ideologies of nativism and cosmopolitanism stuck as they are in the nation-state and in Euro-America.


I believe as China's thinkers become conscious of the problem of developing new modes of knowledge, recognizing India as method will become a productive part of their research. However, a precondition for a dialogue between China and India is that they must both abandon the epistemology and methodology of catch up/overtake. They can no longer seek to compare themselves on measures of how backwards/advanced they are, on modernization, or on pace of economic growth. As I understand it: we must first set aside normative comparisons, and start with analysis. China and India must perceive our differences, then start to suggest explanations immanent in their own history.


India and China are enormous countries on the world scale and farmers make up the bulk of their populations. The latest data suggests that India is at present the second largest country by population, and by 2026 it will have overtaken China, with 1.5 billion people to China's 1.35 billion. In 2015, economic growth rate of India will surpass China's. In other words, if historical and cultural issues are left aside, from a sociological perspective, of all the countries in the world, India is the most comparable to China and no other countries match these two.


But there are enormous differences between the two states. India is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural nation, and it has no official language yet, deliberations in Congress are carried out through interpreters. Many important Indian thinkers, including Ashis Nandy, do not believe that India is a nation-state in the European sense at all. Rather, it is a civilization. In 1947, it freed itself from the identity of the colony. Before being taken over by the British Empire, India was not a united political entity. After independence, it struggled to tell a single national history covering its thousands of years of civilization. It has had to understand its past in a more multiple and complex way. Histories of many Indians groups is the legacy of the caste system, and that social principle still operates today. The political system must deal with this culture. Cultural process cannot simply be eradicated, so instead the polity creates mechanisms by which members of the lower castes can participate in the political process. Because of the many languages, cultural differences intersect with politics. There are local political parties, and some local politicians (such as provincial governors) even win election by virtue of regional fame and pride, having been stars in films in their local dialects. In this sense, India is the world's largest democracy, and the operation of democracy is based in the local. In order to govern effectively, national political parties must find ways to ally with local political forces.


On my own visits to India over the last decade or so, I always have more questions than I have time to ask them. The South Asian experience is very different to the East Asian, and comparing the two, the latter seems more unified because each region of the country has the same language and the surface of nation state is clear, and it does not have a multiple political parties. These interesting differences could be the basis for comparative research. However, most of my Chinese friends, no matter mainland, Hong Kong or Taiwanese, are all stuck in the habit of competitive comparisons via the logic of catch up/overtake: India, they say, was a colony for too long, so China is in a better position (never mind that Taiwan and Hong Kong were colonies, and Chairman Mao once said China is a "semi-colony", not even a whole colony); India's political system is a product of its colonial past, so China's is better, because it was established through the revolutions of Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong (again discounting the experience of colonies, and ignoring post-war third cosmopolitanism); India has the caste system, so China is better, having eradicated its feudal systems (but never pursuing how elements of India's past are linked to contemporary society, or looking back to see how their own society connects with the past, and whether it is really no longer feudal); Less frequently it is claimed that India's problem is its multiplicity of political parties, and Taiwanese who raise this point temporarily forget that Europe has many multi-party systems, and try to impose the USA's two party system, claiming that two parties is progress (but without the ability to ask the historical question: how did India's multiple and regional political parties form?); Sometimes I hear that India has cows roaming the streets of its major cities, it's not as advanced as China, we couldn't possibly take India as a reference point. For those determined to apply the simple logic of catch up/overtake, the simple logic of modernization as defined by Euro-America, we will see the economy of India overtake China's, for it to achieve global power status, before it is noticed by the Chinese. Until then, the future will tell!


In fact, communication and exchange must be two-way. And there will be many unavoidable misunderstandings along the way. For example, many of my Indian academic friends are interested in China not because of its economic rise, but for a variety of other reasons: the relationship between China's postwar socialism and its current economic development; the relationship between politics and long-term developments in peasant culture (this is a key concern of research into the working classes, exemplified by the work of Partha Chatterjee); women's liberation and the socialist system, and their interaction; how China understands the relationship between economic development and capitalist systems; what new, non-Western viewpoints China's greatly expanded academia will bring to the world; how China's scholars distil explanations of world history from their own historical practice. Third world scholars have a basic respect for China, and have certain expectations of Chinese thinkers. Both respect and expectation are very much connected to China's socialist political tradition; they are not a function of whether China has advanced, or whether it has achieved modernity. However, these issues are not the ones interest in Chinese thinkers, nor ones on which they are prepared to carry out a dialogue. (Even more frustratingly, as the third world looks forward to establishing a dialogue with China, it often finds that China's thinkers do not return the compliment. For the Chinese thinker, there is only Euro-American and China. They tell me: Don't play at political correctness! Asia does not exist, what value can there be in a dialogue with the third world.)


I hope that I have made clear the motivation behind 'India as Method'. Understanding India is a way to understand afresh oneself, China itself and the world. But our current condition of knowledge is enmeshed in a method of catch up/overtake that is difficult to escape. Euro-American values permeate academia. Even in socialist mainland China, intellectuals are following and even outdoing postwar Taiwan and Hong Kong in their eagerness to "escape Asia, join Euro-America". The speed at which Chinese thought is embracing Euro-American knowledge systems is shocking, far faster than our economic growth. So I do not hold out great hopes for this attempt to start a dialogue between China and India. All I can hope for is that those friends who want to find another avenue for understanding can begin to perceive India, in preparation for future exchanges.


The invited scholars, Prasenjit Duara is already familiar to many, because the history of China is his field of study, many of his works have been translated into Chinese, and the other scholars, whether currently residing in India or not, their structures of knowledge that are rooted in Indian society and history. They represent three generations of Indian scholarship: Ashis Nandy, born in 1937, is already a scholar of global renown in the 1980s; Partha Chatterjee, just retired, widely respected in India and internationally; while cultural theorist Tejaswini Niranjana is in the prime of her career, having made major contributions to post-structural translation theory in the 1990s.The translation of this READERs has been a major undertaking. We are aiming for giving readers in the World of Chinese an opportunity to understand the Indian society, history and culture in which these thinkers are. According to my understanding, this is not the first time any of these scholars has visited mainland of China. Each of them has a level of understanding and insight into China. We hope that their visit will give Chinese academia the beginning of an equally deep knowledge of India. It will be an opportunity for us to practice the self-transformation.


Finally, I must thank personal friends for agreeing to participate: feminist theorist Tejaswini Niranjana; social thinker Ashis Nandy; working class historian and political theorist Partha Chatterjee; working class historian Dipesh Chakrabarty; and historian Duara Prasenjit who is already so well-known in China; the art theorist Sarat Maharaj, whom I have not had the pleasure to meet; and world-famous postcolonial theorist Professor Homi K. Bhabha, whom I met on one occasion in Taiwan. Appreciate them for making time to come to China, and for granting us translation rights for the essays presented in these READERs.


I'd also like to give special thanks for the ready assistance offered by my friends Wang Xiaoming and Wang Anyi, and for the support of President Xu Jiang and professor Lu Xinghua, they have been responsible for organizing the dialogues with our visiting scholars. Thanks also to friends from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland who have agreed to be interlocutors for the discussion sessions.


This has been my first opportunity to work with Chang Tsong-Zung and Gao Shiming, and it has been a great pleasure. From them, I have been lucky enough to find alike minds with a common goal, and I have treasured the opportunity. Their boldness, openness and wisdom have reminded me that so long as we can come together and pool our contributions, there's always a hope.