Friday 27 February 2009

Belligerent China, Meek India

While China understands the importance of soft power and cultural integration, India doesn’t really care:

 

The great-grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi said Monday that he has launched a fundraising campaign to buy a rare collection of the Indian independence leader's personal items that are up for auction and bring them back to India.

 

China on the other hand, does this:

 

It has issued orders making it difficult for Christie's to do business in China after the auction house sold two Chinese cultural relics on Wednesday. 


And that, my dear friends, shows the difference in the attitude of the two neighbouring countries.


 

6 comments:

Prasad said...

well um sure the govt said " itz old stuff anyways!"

aaggghhhh!

Nautankey said...

ha ha...right pras reminds me of this joke.
Master[to a shivering servant]: How dare you break the clock. Do you know its value.Its 500 years old

Servant: Sigh.Thank god I thought its a new one.

On a practical note I don't see what the indian government cud have done.If not christie's the collection wud have gone on auction in the underground market,which is worse as we will have no idea as to who owns it.

There are innumerable relics of past cultures which are in the hands of art museums especially british ones as they were the thugs who looted most of the countries,a diplomatic aggression shud be shown rather than commercial one to get them back

Anonymous said...

well, I am french and that means I can hardly comment on my british neighbors knowing that we had our share of looting too.
About behaving and claiming artifacts, well, I think there is only one solution and that is law.
If an artifact has been bought officially on an open market, well is there anything to say?
More difficult is the war plundering,looting or ordinary thievery. In that case the "owner" has no right to sell/buy/keep the artifact.
To me, both behavior indicates that two different stories can be told bout these artifacts.

But I am no specialist, the thing that is missing is a good piece of information.

Anonymous said...

The damn gook Chinese are a bunch of fucking crooks anyways. Such a rabid bunch of pinko commie dogs doesn't deserve any praise whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

nice article posted by u.
Haiku Poems

Unknown said...

hey NG
Luckily the Gandhi items came back to India, but yeaah, that is the diffrence between India and China.
Wish u a very Happy Holi
take care
ciao