So near and yet so far

A book on the history of Indians in Shanghai, which was launched in the city on Aug 18, is seeking to provide an insight into this less well-known aspect of Sino-Indian relations.

The anthology of essays in English and Chinese, written mostly by scholars with knowledge of the two countries, touches on both the highs and lows of that past association.

While much of the writing in Stray Birds on the Huangpu: A History of Indians in Shanghai is dedicated to Sikh policemen, and Parsi, Sindhi and Muslim traders from India－communities with presence in the Chinese metropolis in the 19th and 20th centuries－others relate to India's freedom struggle and the China visits of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Despite the euphemistic title that includes the city's arterial river, the book's co-editors Indian author Mishi Saran and Chinese historian Zhang Ke steer their introduction toward a larger Asian resurgence brought about by India's independence from Britain in 1947 and the founding of New China two years later.

"It would be safe to say that most Indians here at that time had some direct experience of the creation of a new China. Taken all together, what we have in Shanghai are strands of two ancient civilizations that were accidental witnesses to the birth of each other's modernity," they write.