HIMALAYAN CHALLENGE: India, China and the quest for Peace

Category Politics Non-Fiction
Format Hardcover
Imprint Rupa
Price 595

ISBN: 978-93-90356-19-5
Pages: 256 pages
Date: 1st December 2020

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Filled with vivid personalities and declassified material, Himalayan Challenge, is, without question, the most important book written about the rise of China by one of India’s most interesting and original thinkers.

In September 1978, at the invitation of the prestigious Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, Subramanian Swamy, then a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament of the ruling Janata Party and an elected member of the Party’s National Executive, travelled to China as an envoy of the then Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, where he met senior leader Ji Pengfei. This led to the first contact, since 1962, between the ruling parties of both countries. Later, in April 1981, Swamy, the then deputy leader of the Opposition, was invited to meet China’s Supreme leader, Chairman Deng Xiaoping. In this historic 100-minute meeting, Swamy successfully persuaded Deng to reopen the Kailash Mansarovar route for Hindu pilgrims. In August that year, he also led the first delegation to the holy site, which he revisited as a guest of the Chinese government in June 2016.

It is this vast, first-hand experience that Swamy combines with a provocative exploration of historical sources and fascinating new insights to create Himalayan Challenge—the most compelling and definitive account of India–China relations. From uncovering the perfidy committed by the British vis-à-vis the McMahon Line in 1936 and the circumstances leading to the folly of war in 1962, to the current fluid situation at the border, this seminal work effortlessly blends meticulous scholarship and memoir-style writing in an intellectually rich fashion. Swamy breaks new ground when he suggests a middle path—grounded in pragmatism, and not carried out over fear or overreaction—that India must take in her interactions with China.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Dr Subramanian Swamy is an economist with a PhD from Harvard University. He worked with Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets and jointly published research with Nobel Laureate, Paul A. Samuelson. For several years, he taught graduate-level courses at Harvard University. He returned to India to be Professor of Economics at IIT, Delhi, but his scathing criticism of socialism and communism as being inapplicable in a democracy, invoked the ire of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; and his professorship was terminated in 1973.

However, in 1991, a Delhi court held the termination as null and void. But he resigned from this post after resuming his Chair for a day in order to participate full time in politics.

Dr Swamy has been elected six times to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, three times each, respectively. As a Cabinet Minister twice in 1990–91 and 1994–96, he helped Prime Minister(s) Chandra Shekhar and Narasimha Rao to launch economic reforms. He is well versed in law and has successfully argued a large number of public interest litigations in the apex court and in several high courts, resulting in the prosecution of certain notable public figures, and for restoring Hindu temples and historical sites. His most recent book, Reset, published in 2019, about regaining India’s economic legacy, is a national bestseller.