"Jawaharlal Nehru and China:A Study in Failure, or Misrecognition?" a Harvard-Yenching Institute Ingalls Lecture with Fellow Ramachandra Guha.
Date: Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
As both Prime Minister and External Affairs Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru closely directed his country’s foreign policy in the crucial years after independence. In this period, India’s relations with China moved from friendship to hostility, culminating in the war of 1962 in which Chinese troops put to flight their Indian counterparts. That military fiasco deeply damaged Nehru’s standing and may have hastened his death. Within India, Nehru’s China policy is widely regarded as his greatest failure. This lecture will argue that while Nehru undeniably made major errors of judgement, the conflict is best viewed in structural rather than personal terms, as emanating from the simultaneous emergence of two ambitious nationalisms which, as they expanded outwards, met and clashed on their contested borders.
Co-sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the South Asia Initiative For more information, contact strogatz@fas.harvard.edu or visit www.harvard-yenching.org/events
