SHANGHAI does not lack visiting dignitaries who speak with great conviction and hope about a bright future for Sino-Indian relations, rooted in the everlasting values of the civilizations of the two great neighboring nations in Asia.

But it is rare to have an Indian visitor who comes here to give lectures on Mohandas K. Gandhi, known as the Mahatma.

In an exclusive interview with Shanghai Daily, Sudheendra Kulkarni, a prominent Mumbai-based political personality from India, said he believes that deepening understanding between the Chinese and Indian people can lead to an enduring relationship that promises to contribute to global harmony as well as global prosperity.

Kulkarni is chairman of the Observer Researcher Foundation in Mumbai and a columnist for the Indian Express. He arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday on a two-week-long visit to China.

During his stay in Shanghai he has given lectures at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong and other institutes.

Earlier, in Beijing, he gave lectures on the India-China relationship at Peking University, the China Foreign Affairs University, and the China Institute for International Relations.

The interview started off with Kulkarni paying a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the great Indian poet and litterateur who visited China three times in the 1920s. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He created considerable intellectual debate at that time with his call for a "spiritual Asia," which centered on "the crescent moon, adolescent heart and the quintessence of nature."

With hindsight today, we are in a better position to assess Tagore's legacy.

While lauding Tagore's role as a cultural ambassador, Kulkarni believes "heart to heart" cultural exchanges can be more enduring than ties formed on mere economic interests.

Kulkarni has been a strong advocate for deepening Sino-Indian ties from multiple perspectives - as a political activist of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in the Indian Parliament; as an intellectual who is chairman of the Observer Research Foundation Mumbai, which is India's leading non-governmental think tank; and as a prominent commentator in India's print and TV media.

Earlier he worked as a special aide to India's former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004).

He first visited Shanghai when he accompanied Prime Minister Vajpayee during the latter's ground-breaking visit to China in 2003.

"My current visit to China has been extremely invigorating and educative," Kulkarni said. "I am full of admiration for China's spectacular achievements in diverse fields. This visit has made me highly optimistic about major progress in India-China cooperation and friendship in the coming years. I want to make a modest contribution to this process by writing a book on the past, present, and future Sino-Indian relations."

Kulkarni is an ardent believer in the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, who is regarded by Indians as the "Father of the Nation."

His deep respect for Gandhi is evident in his 725-page book "Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi's Manifesto for the INTERNET AGE," Published this September by Amaryllis.

The book highlights the ethical values symbolized by Gandhi's humble spinning wheel - truth, nonviolence, justice, universal brotherhood, non-exploitative economics, simple living, respect for nature, and sustainable development. The spinning wheel was used as a symbol of nonviolent protest, showing that Indians could produce their own cotton textiles and did not need to import them.

Interestingly, it also argues that the Internet and other digital technologies supported by the Internet (such as nanotechnology, new materials, solar and other renewable sources of energy) have the potential to realize Gandhi's ideals, provided they are widely used.

Kulkarni said, "The Internet has transformed our world into one Global Family, making it more interconnected and interdependent than ever before in human history. This was Gandhi's dream. It is catalyzing friendships and conversations across the globe among people - especially young people - of various nationalities, cultures, religions, races, etc."

Cooperation

"This has created a strong constituency for peace and cooperation in the world, which also was Gandhi's dream. The Internet is not only helping in reducing poverty and underdevelopment, but it is also empowering netizens around the world. I have therefore metaphorically called the Internet an avatar (reincarnation) of the spinning wheel," he added.

While India and China are both emerging economies, their rise is viewed in the West with prejudice, because Western powers have achieved their own prosperity through plundering global resources and enslaving other peoples.

They do not know that we Asians tend to achieve a good life through cooperation.

As Gandhi wrote in 1921, while calling for a boycott of foreign cloth and appealing for the adoption of khadi (the indigenous cotton fabric produced by the spinning wheel), "We will not then be dragged into an imperialism which is built upon exploitation of the weaker races of the earth, and the acceptance of a giddy materialistic civilization protected by naval and air forces that have made peaceful living almost impossible."

Both Chinese people and Indian people enjoy a civilization that contains an antidote to crass Western materialism, which has created alienation between man and man, and also between man and nature.

Harmony

As Kulkarni writes in his book, "There is another, oft-neglected, form of alienation in the modern world caused by the economic and cultural tyranny of industrialism: man's alienation from his past as well as from his future. Increasingly, we are obsessed only with the short-term considerations and aspirations of our finite existence on this planet - with the 'here' and 'now'." But we can only profit by listening to the teachings of our sages, he says.

Kulkarni, who is a great admirer of Confucius, said, "You Chinese have an inspiring vision of 'Datong' (Perfect Harmony), where the Great Way prevails, the weak are taken good care of, in the absence of wars and thefts. In Sanskrit, we Indians have a similar wise thought - Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, which means, 'The whole world is one family.' Gandhi's spinning wheel propagated this vision of a united harmonious world."

While the spinning wheel symbol has become largely non-existent today, its moral message is still there, compelling as ever, and Kulkarni believes that the rising power of the Internet has the potential of serving as the technological carrier for that message.

Only a changed attitude towards life can bring about harmony among peoples, with our mountains, rivers and all the non-human species on earth. So-called development should by no means be achieved at the expense of Mother Nature. To drive home his point, Kulkarni quotes the Mahatma's profound thought: "Mother Nature has enough to satisfy everybody's need, but not everyone's greed."

Kulkarni ended the interview by citing what the Mahatma said in 1942, "As a friend of China, I long for the day when a free India and a free China will cooperate together in friendship and brotherhood for their own good and for the good of Asia and world."