Kang Youwei Engages India: His Travel Narratives (1901-1902) and Predicaments of Civilization and Nation

This book is the first annotated translation of the travelogues of Kang Youwei, one of the most famous intellectuals and modernisers of late 19th-century China. These travelogues offer insights into Kang’s perceptions of India, which influenced modern intellectual discourse on India in China. These perceptions not only had a great impact on the thinking of other intellectuals but were also responsible for the larger construct that China developed about India during the republican and post-liberation period. The texts provide meaning to many dilemmas and predicaments that enshrouded the concept of civilisation and its linkages with the modern concepts of nationalism and modernity in Asian countries such as China and India. They are a valuable prism in gauging the early 20th-century intellectual and Chinese moderniser mind as it grappled with the challenges and uncertainties of those times.