ICS Occasional Papers

As 2024 marked a hundred years since the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s 1924 China visit, the present moment is an apt time to reflect on its impact on cultural interactions between India and China. This paper aims to explore the perspectives of Ji Xianlin, an important Chinese scholar and a key historical witness to the tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Within China, divergent views surrounded Tagore’s visit, both during and after his stay, and Ji is one of many scholars who has written about this historically significant event. Ji’s perspectives emanate from his encounter with Tagore as a middleschooler in Jinan, Shandong Province. Six decades later, Ji was not only a world-renowned Indologist but also the translator of one of the key works on Tagore – Tagore by Fireside. Ji’s academic perspectives on Tagore were primarily unbiased by contemporaneous politics. Ji recognised the support and sympathies Tagore was able to draw towards China during the War of Resistance against Japanese aggression. Through the lens of Ji Xianlin’s research on Tagore’s thoughts and writings on China, this paper examines the footprints of how Tagore’s 1924 China visit influenced the Chinese perceptions of India and vice versa.