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One World, Many Voices: Revisiting Indian and Chinese Civilizations for Global Politics Amitav Acharya, Daniel A. Bell, Rajeev Bhargava and Yan Xuetong (Eds), Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China

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Published date01 April 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00208817241240852
AuthorPratip Chattopadhyay
Date01 April 2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/00208817241240852
International Studies
61(2) 214 –218, 2024
© 2024 Jawaharlal Nehru University
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00208817241240852
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Book Review
One World, Many Voices: Revisiting Indian and Chinese
Civilizations for Global Politics
Amitav Acharya, Daniel A. Bell, Rajeev Bhargava and
Yan Xuetong (Eds), Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing
Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China
(University of California Press, 2023), 318 pp. ₹2,775.
ISBN: 978-0-520-39098-0.
In the post-pandemic world talks are underway about India’s moment in world
politics following its successful G-20 Presidency in 2023, where India is
increasingly seen as a part of the solution to important global problems (Kumar,
2023). Sometimes in the zone of strategic friendship (trade and global forums)
and sometimes in the zone of strategic animosity (border issues), India and China
remain ‘strangers’ beyond the everyday distinction between friend and enemy. In
this context, the present book under review attempts to make a ‘cognitive shift’
(p. 27) to avoid prejudices about each other and to ‘(re)establish peaceful,
economically beneficial, and culturally enriching ties’ (p. 21) in the coming days
between India and China.
This edited volume is a first of its kind in India and China, reflecting on
political thinkers who ‘developed innovative thoughts and theories of interstate
relations that may still have lessons for today’ (p. 2). Spread over 14 chapters,
uniquely presented in a dialogic form between experts on the Indian and Chinese
model of moral leadership, amoral realism, empire, just war, diplomacy and
balancing, the edited book attempts to correct the perception of studying
International Relations from considering nation-state as the unit of analysis with
less than 400 years of history to considering civilizations as unit of analysis with
5,000 years of human history (p. 25).
Setting the tone of the book, Daniel Bell points at the recent Sino-Indian border
dispute (2020–2021) as the immediate context that triggered scholars to unearth
some civilizational values that can ‘recover the deep respect and mutual learning
between the two great Asian powers’ (p. 2). Bell distinguishes between the
Confucian school (Kongzi and Mengzi) of soft power and Legalism (Han Feizi)
school of hard power in ancient Chinese political thought as parallel to the
Brahmanical/Vedic school of morality/soft power and the Kautilyan school of
hard power reflected in ancient Indian political thought. Answering the research
question about the rationale behind such comparisons, Amitav Acharya argues

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