Jia, Yan (2019) Beyond the “Bhai‐Bhai” Rhetoric : China‐India Literary Relations, 1950‐1990. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32203 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Beyond the “Bhai-Bhai” Rhetoric: China-India Literary Relations, 1950-1990 Yan JIA Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2019 Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies SOAS, University of London Thesis Abstract This thesis examines the multi-layered relationship between the literary spheres of the People’s Republic of China (1949-) and the Republic of India (1947-) from the 1950s to the 1980s. Drawing on previously underexplored materials in Chinese, Hindi, and English, this thesis focuses on a range of writerly, textual, and readerly contacts — three aspects of what, following Karen Thornber (2009), I call “literary relations” — between the two newly established Asian nation-states. Considering literary relations as inextricable from political relations, I argue that China and India embarked on similar and related paths since 1950, but in order to understand these relations we need to keep multiple frames in mind: of each country’s national culture and foreign policy; of bilateral relations; and of broader leftist internationalism, the anti-imperialist Third World solidarity movement, and Cold War world politics. Specifically, I identify and analyse five different yet overlapping trajectories that tied modern Chinese and Indian literatures together: first, a bilateral mechanism of writerly contact intended to enhance the China-India friendship; second, a multinational forum of Afro-Asian writers designed to advance cultural self-determination and literary solidarity in the Third World; third, India’s enthusiastic import of modern Chinese fiction under the rubric of “revolutionary” with the Foreign Languages Press acting as the main text provider; fourth, China’s systematic reception of “progressive” Indian fiction as part of the PRC’s model of world literature; and fifth, a counter-intuitive yet strikingly productive and cross-media transplantation of Hindi popular fiction in 1980s China. Although post-1950 China and India shared considerable common grounds for developing literary contact, nevertheless the ways they engaged with each other’s modern literature differed significantly due to their different literary cultures, political systems, and Cold War ideologies. The result is a landscape of literary relations that is markedly horizontal but nonetheless asymmetrical. Men and women grow old, if they give up their dreams; One remains young if one has faith, but one becomes grey with doubts; One is as young as one’s capacity, as old as one’s wrinkled brow; One is as young as one’s hope, as old as one’s despair; Life is in the struggle against the odds — And to love without concealed hates. Mulk Raj Anand, 1988 (A Poem for Wang Huaiting) 老之将至，男女皆同， 如若梦想不再。 无论是谁， 信念在，青春回， 疑虑来，精神萎。 智能存，保青春， 眉锁紧，老迈近。 希望高，身体好， 绝望深，厄运增。 生命在于与困难作斗争—— 还有爱人，对谁都不心怀仇与恨。 穆尔克·拉吉·安纳德，一九八八 (Wang Huaiting’s translation) Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..i Note on Transliteration and Translation………………………………………………. ii List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………..iii List of Figures………………………………………………………………………….iv Introduction: Mapping Post-1950 China-India Literary Relations ····················1 Beyond Buddhism and Tagore: Chinese and Indian Literatures in Comparative Studies ······6 1950-1990: Timeframe and Historical Context ··················································· 15 Literary Relations: A Framework ··································································· 24 Contributions of the Thesis ·········································································· 40 Chapter Outline ······················································································· 44 Chapter 1 | China-India Cultural Diplomacy and Writerly Contact in the 1950s · 49 Sino-Indian Relations in the Early Cold War Period ············································· 52 The Setup of China-India Cultural Diplomacy and the Role of Writers ························ 57 Traveling Writers and Travel Writings ····························································· 71 Conclusion ····························································································· 87 Chapter 2 | Toward Third World Literary Solidarity? India, China and the Asian/Afro-Asian Writers’ Conferences ··················································· 91 The 1956 Delhi AWC and Cold War Politics ····················································· 95 China’s Participation in the AWC and China-India Writerly Contact ························· 106 Debating Anti-colonialism in Tashkent ··························································· 117 Conclusion ···························································································· 136 Chapter 3 | Imagining the Land of Revolution: India’s Reception of Modern Chinese Literature in the 1950s ·····························································139 Chinese Publications in 1950s India and the Foreign Languages Press ······················· 144 Reading Chinese Revolutionary Canon Old and New ··········································· 162 Subterranean Translation: The Absent Presence of Shen Congwen ··························· 177 Conclusion ···························································································· 189 Chapter 4 | “Premchand is the Indian Lu Xun”: Indian Progressive Literature in Socialist China, 1950-1964 ···································································192 Locating India in the PRC’s World Literature ···················································· 196 Indian Progressivism, Chinese Context ··························································· 207 Affirmative Framing: Yan Shaoduan’s Translation and Interpretation of Godān ············ 218 Hao Ran’s Readerly Contact with Premchand···················································· 230 Conclusion ···························································································· 239 Chapter 5 | Gulshan Nanda’s Hindi Popular Fiction in 1980s China ···············241 Gulshan Nanda’s Transnational Popularity ······················································· 244 Kaṭī Pataṅg: A Relevant Indian Melodrama ····················································· 254 Re-evaluating Popular Fiction ······································································ 267 Between Indianisation and Indigenisation: Staging Kaṭī Pataṅg ······························· 276 Conclusion ···························································································· 290 Conclusion ·······················································································293 Appendix 1 | The Visits of Chinese Writers to India in the 1950s ································· 304 Appendix 2 | The Visits of Indian Writers to China in the 1950s·································· 308 Appendix 3 | Book-length Translations of Indian Works into Chinese, 1950-1962 ············· 312 Appendix 4 | Book-length Indian Translations of Chinese Works into English and Hindi, 1950- 1962 ······································································································ 316 Works Cited ·····················································································317 Acknowledgements First of all, I am immensely grateful to my supervisor, Francesca Orsini, for guiding me through this unforgettable intellectual journey with her knowledge, patience, and a perfectly balanced combination of encouragement and critique. My thesis would have not been the same without Francesca being a role model and pushing me to think beyond the limits. I am also grateful to Michel Hockx, Dongning Feng, and Rossella Ferrari, who were on my supervisory committee at different stages of my PhD, for sharing their knowledge and advice from different yet equally instructive perspectives. Special thanks go to my teachers at Peking University — Guo Tong, Jiang Yonghong and Wang Jing — for their enduring support and encouragement. This thesis would have been drier without the following scholars who shared their invaluable experiences and ideas during my fieldtrip in China and India: Liu Anwu, Yin Hongyuan, Xue Keqiao, Zhou Zhikuan, Lin Fuji, Huang Baosheng, Chen Lixing, Ni Peigeng, Deng Bing, Shi Haijun, B.R. Deepak, Bonnie McDougall in Beijing; Li Yuejin in Tianjin; Kunwar Narain, Apurava Narain, Shabree Mitra, Trinetra Joshi, Anita Sharma in Delhi; Alok Rai, Sara Rai and Doodhnath Singh in Allahabad; Miriya Malik, Deepak Malik, Kamal Sheel, Kashinath Singh, Gyanendrapati and Chauthiram Yadav in Varanasi; Amrit Gangar, Poonam Joshi, Ramesh Patkar in Mumbai; Anil Khetan in Kanpur. Liu Anwu,