China hits back hard at India over Indian Home Minister remarks
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NEW DELHI - Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh has come under fire in Beijing for comments made earlier this week stating that India had "culturally controlled and dominated China" for 2,000 years.
Speaking at a tourism festival, Singh was highlighting the attractiveness of Indian culture and referring to the spread of Buddhism from India to China.Quoting Chinese scholar Hu Shih, Singh noted that Hu had observed that India had, through Buddhism, "culturally controlled and dominated" China "without sending a single soldier". "That is the effect of India," Singh was quoted as saying.
The remarks haven't gone down well in Beijing.
"It is inappropriate to use the phrase 'culturally control and dominate' as culture simply integrates with each other, and China, as a country with a great civilisation, hasn't and will not be 'controlled or dominated' by any culture," Hu Zhiyong, a scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Party-run Global Times.
Zhang Yiwu, a Peking University professor, added that while "it is true that Buddhism originated from India, the religion thrived in China after it was localised to make it better adapt to the Chinese society".
"Buddhism has little to do with contemporary India, whose mainstream religion is Hinduism," the Global Times wrote.
Zhang, the professor, added that Singh was "merely trying to boost national pride and there is no need to overreact to his speech". That did not, however, stop the media and experts from dubbing the minister as "inappropriate".
