India-Vietnam Relations
Pierre Asselin passelin@sdsu.edu
Thu May 17 16:00:13 PDT 2018
Comrades:
I'm in Hanoi at the moment. I noticed during a visit to a local bookstore a slew of recent books on the history of India-Vietnam relations. Any idea what accounts for the trend? Some anniversary? India's 70th?
Best,
Pierre
Pierre Asselin
Professor of History - Dwight E. Stanford Chair in US Foreign Relations
San Diego State University
History Department
5500 Campanile Dr.
San Diego, CA 92182-6050
Latest book:
https://www.amazon.com/Vietnams-American-War-Cambridge-Relations/dp/1107510503
“La médiocrité est un art; n’y excelle pas qui veut.” –Daudet fils, selon Asselin père
Shawn McHale mchale@gwu.edu
Thu May 17 19:38:59 PDT 2018
Given that India and Vietnam are both are concerned with China, and that Indian warships have visited Vietnamese ports (and defied China's claim over the South China Sea), I'm guessing that this is part of the larger long-term effort to build up Vietnam--India relations.
Shawn McHale
Balazs Szalontai aoverl@yahoo.co.uk
Thu May 17 21:53:31 PDT 2018
Yes, this is very likely. Notably, in 1986-1989, when both Vietnam and India monitored Sino-Soviet reconciliation with thinly veiled anxiety, both sides made considerable efforts to broaden their bilateral relations.
Balazs Szalontai
Korea University, Sejong Campus
elizabeth riley elyzabeth.riley@gmail.com
Thu May 17 23:16:36 PDT 2018
For a literary perspective, you might want to look into the work of Hồ Anh
Thái , novelist, journalist, diplomate and specialist in Indian studies
who introduced his readers to India in a series of books and stories,
including
Người đứng một chân 1995
Đức Phật nàng Sivitri và tôii 2007
Namaskar! Xin chào Ấn Độ 2008
Elizabeth Riley
Independent researcher
Castelnau de Guers France
Gerald Jackson gerald@nias.ku.dk
Fri May 18 00:17:31 PDT 2018
Dear Pierre
Interesting news.
I am curious exactly *what* books are on display – specifically if Natasha Pairaudeau's recent monograph on French Indochina's Indian minority is one of them. (An interesting sidelight of this study is the local Indian dimension to the Vetnamese war of independence.)
More details at http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9400-9788776941598.aspx should you be interested.
All the best
Gerald
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Lady Borton ladyborton@gmail.com
Thu May 17 22:41:06 PDT 2018
Hello, Pierre,
I doubt this emergence of titles about India in Vietnamese bookshops is because of anniversaries although, here in Hà Nội as elsewhere, an anniversary is useful for creating a deadline.
The long-term relationship between India and Việt Nam began during colonial times with the personal relationship between Hồ Chí Minh and *both* Nehru's (father and son) before the names "Việt Nam" and "India" as independent states appeared on world maps.
Sophie Quinn-Judge's *The Missing Years *contains a significant oversight, which confuses the two Nehru's and two international meetings and leads to a false assumption about Hồ Chí Minh's veracity. Hồ Chí Minh met "Elder Nehru" (Motilal Nehru, 1861-1931, the father, an ardent nationalist but not a communist) when Hồ Chí Minh was a Comintern representative at the Comintern-sponsored League Against Imperialism's Expanded Council's Planning Meeting in Brussels, December 9-11, 1927.
If you are still in Hà Nội, you can pick up *Stories Told on the Trail * (2013)*, *Hồ Chí Minh's autobiography (complete with documents and scans from President Hồ's three draft manuscripts) at the publisher's bookshop: NXB Thế Giới (World Publishers), 46 Trần Hưng Đạo, Hà Nội. Hồ Chí Minh describes the Planning Meeting, *not* the large League Against Imperialism International Conference with famous participants, including Jawaharlal Nehru (the son), in February 1927, which Hồ Chí Minh did *not* attend. Page 65 contains the documents that verify President Hồ's narrative about the *Planning Meeting* in December 1927. His report to the Comintern dated April 12, 1928
lists his participation in the Planning Meeting.
Poem 88-89 (meaning, two stanzas) in Hồ Chí Minh's *Prison Diary *is titled "For Nehru" ("Gửi Nêru"), written for Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964, the son, a patriotic nationalist and not a communist, who was imprisoned in the British Indian Empire while Hồ Chí Minh was imprisoned in Guomindang-controlled China). See *Toàn Tập, 1930-1945 *(Collected Works, 1930-1945), vol. 3, 2011, p. 400-401.
Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister of India (in office: 1947-1964). After the Vietnamese victory over France and the United States in the Battle at Điện Biên Phủ (May 1954), Việt Nam and France signed the Geneva Agreement (July 1954, with the United States never intended as a signatory). Article 34 states: "An International Commission shall be set up for the control and supervision of the application of the provisions of the agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Viet-Nam. It shall be composed of representatives of the following States: Canada, India and Poland. [New paragraph.] It shall be presided over by the Representative of India."
The government of the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (DRVN, which the world soon called "North Việt Nam") returned to Hà Nội on October 10, 1954. Hồ Chí Minh returned to the capital (Hà Nội) on October 15. Two days later, on October 17, at the Presidential Palace, President Hồ hosted Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the first post-war international visitor to Hà Nội. By then, Prime Minister Nehru's wife was deceased. He traveled to Việt Nam with his daughter, Indira Gandhi (1917-1984), whom Hồ Chí Minh welcomed as his *con nuôi *(adopted child).
Before Hồ Chí Minh's state visit to India (February 4-14, 1958), he met with the International Commission for the Geneva Agreement and separately with the Indian head-of-commission in Hà Nội. In Delhi, President Hồ Chí Minh met with Prime Minister Nehru several times and, of course, saw his *con nuôi, *Indira Gandhi.
If you look through the archives at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, TX, you'll see that, despite extensive US assistance to India during the famine (mid-1960s), Lyndon Johnson was never able to pressure Indira Gandhi into action against Hồ Chí Minh in Việt Nam, a quite different response from, say, Thailand and South Korea. My guess is that neither President Johnson nor his handlers had any idea of the deep relationship between Hồ Chí Minh and Indira Gandhi or between Việt Nam and India.
However, all that is history. If we return to more modern times, then Việt Nam still retains its geo-political location in Indo-China, that is, between two poles—India and China.
One of China's current foreign policy tenets is sometimes called the "cow's tongue." This characterizes the image China draws on the map for its reach from China southward throughout the East Sea all the way down to Indonesia.
(Some people who are not in Việt Nam or the Philippines call the East Sea by the name "South China Sea.") Chinese are buying up land and businesses in Việt Nam and, as elsewhere in the world, the markets here are flooded with Chinese goods. Indeed, I have spoken here in Việt Nam with some young Chinese visitors, who think of Việt Nam as a province of China.
For Việt Nam, India has been a steadfast, long-term ally. India now shares with Việt Nam a wariness of China. Vietnamese diplomats, thinkers, business leaders, researchers, and writers have long looked to India. My guess is that they continue to do so now with an added seriousness, which you saw reflected in bookshops.
*For arguably the best book on Viet Nam in English, see* Huu Ngoc's *VIET NAM: Tradition and Change*, edited by Lady Borton and Elizabeth Collins:
www.ohioswallow.com/book/Viet+Nam <http://ohioswallow.com/book/Viet+Na> *OR*
www.amazon.com/Viet-Nam-Tradition-Change-Southeast-ebook/dp/B01J7SYRIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490191978&sr=8-1&keywords=%22huu+Ngoc%22+Viet+Nam%3A+Tradition+and+Change
<http://ohioswallow.com/book/Viet+Na>
John Hutnyk johnhutnyk@tdt.edu.vn
Fri May 18 02:25:02 PDT 2018
Hi
first time I've wanted to respond on here, but as India is my long term research area and specifically the history of communism, and as there are many forms, I appreciate the detail shared just now. There are many more things to add I am sure, such as the West Bengal state government Left Front coalition renaming a street in Calcutta so that the USA Embassy address became #1 Ho Chi Minh Sarani (street) 😂 - through to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose having a refuge here in Sai Gon near the end of WW2 (Joe Buckley assent to investigate and may report). There must be more untold stories. I remember meeting people in Calcutta able to sing Ewan Maccoll's Ho Chi Minh song - specifically I remember the line 'every soldier is a farmer' sung by crowds in huge rallies in the 80s still.
lal salaam,
john
*John Hutnyk, PhD. (Univ. Melb).*
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Ton Duc Thang University;
19 Nguyen Huu Tho, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City,
Socialist Republic of Vietnam;
*Phone: +84 (0)16359141506*
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Joe Buckley 248264@soas.ac.uk
Fri May 18 06:44:24 PDT 2018
The first time I've been name-dropped, so I suppose I should oblige - some pictures of Subhas Chandra Bose's HCMC escape attached. Still there at 74 Hai Bà Trưng, behind the facade of the current shop. The cơm wallah outside was both surprised and pleased that I'd come looking for the place of the nhà cách mạng Ấn Độ.
Best,
Joe Buckley
PhD Candidate / Nghiên Cứu Sinh
Department of Development Studies / Khoa Phát Triển Học
SOAS, University of London / Trường SOAS, Đại Học London
Balazs Szalontai aoverl@yahoo.co.uk
Fri May 18 02:54:14 PDT 2018
This is very much true, but I still have certain reservations about the extent of concord between Nehru and the DRV leadership. In some respects, Nehru's firm commitment to non-alignment was less than satisfactory for the DRV. As Chris Goscha and others described, Nehru did consistently resist US calls to recognize the Bao Dai regime. At the same time, India was also reluctant to publicly side with Ho Chi Minh against Bao Dai (or later Ngo Dinh Diem). In October 1949, when the DRV and Bao Dai's State of Vietnam simultaneously applied for admission to the UN organization Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), India adopted a unique position by voting for the admission of both Vietnamese states on the grounds that "both governments were controlling economic policies and affairs in a fairly large sector of the area." This position sharply differed from both the Soviet one (which supported the DRV and voted against Bao Dai) and the Western one (which supported Bao Dai and rejected the DRV). For details, see this article (Straits Times, 1949.10.22): http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19491022-1.2.2 . It was quite in accordance with the general line of India's non-aligned policy, but I think that the DRV leaders, angered as they were by the admission of the State of Vietnam to ECAFE, did not consider it a friendly gesture.
Balazs Szalontai
Korea University, Sejong Campus