Obviously, 1962 accounts for the overwhelming bulk of the missing 0.1% in Wen Jiabao's historical arithmetic. But it has cast a disproportionately long shadow. We cling to the idea that India was attacked. Neville Maxwell in his India's China War held us primarily responsible for the border war. He was vilified in this country, although privately his views have considerable greater support amongst Indian scholars and experts.. An IFS luminary who was liaison officer to Zhou Enlai during that Chinese Premier's ill-fated visit to New Delhi in April 1960 bemoans that India blew a great opportunity of settling the border question at a time when the Chinese were also keen to close the issue. Sections of the Congress party along with Opposition MPs like Atal Bihari Vajpayee sabotaged Jawaharlal Nehru. It is poetic justice that BJP MPs are doing to Mr. Vajpayee on Pakistan what Mr. Vajpayee himself did to Panditji on China by speeches that were long on emotion and eloquence but short on substance and facts.

Some scholars, however, locate the roots of the 1962 conflict in domestic Chinese upheavals. In his monumental The Origins of the Cultural Revolution , Roderick Macfarquhar, the distinguished India-born Sinologist who teaches at Harvard, has called the 1962 battle Mao's India War. The truth is complex. Dr. Sarvepalli Gopal whose first death anniversary fell recently and who, along with Jagat Mehta, was responsible for formulating India's case on the border issue laughingly admitted before his death that had he been engaged by the Chinese as an independent expert, he could well have made out an equally valid and strong claim on their behalf. Three years back, two retired IFS officers and China experts C.V.Ranganathan and Vinod Khanna offered such a balanced perspective on the emotive border issue in their India and China: The Way Ahead that remains the most incisive and constructive work on this subject. Their conclusion: both sides have to give up territory and they must prepare their public for this inevitability.

A small fraction of the troublesome 0.1% that Wen Jiabao implied must surely be the period immediately following the May 1998 nuclear tests by India. In a most perplexing move, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote to President Bill Clinton pointing to China as the reason for India going nuclear. The letter became public. Soon thereafter, Mr. Fernandes himself was widely quoted as having said that China is India's enemy number one. He has, however, consistently denied ever having made such a statement. Fortunately, the damage by both the Clinton letter and Fernandes's purported statement was contained quickly. A measure of our maturity in handling the situation is reflected in the fact that Mr. Vajpayee's government having earned a Sinophobic image steadfastly refused to heed the protectionist pleas of Indian industry that raised the bogey of Chinese goods swamping Indian markets. Over the pas two-three years in a remarkable turnaround, large segments of Indian industry has developed self-confidence to compete with China both in India and elsewhere including in China itself.

While the two countries keep meeting to resolve the boundary question on the basis of landmark agreements signed in 1993 and 1996 and while the economic relationship expands, new scholarship keeps emerging to give contemporary meaning to Wen Jiabao's statement. The works of Chinese scholars like Xinriu Liu and Wang Bangwei have greatly enhanced our knowledge of the cultural contacts between India and China. A little over a decade ago, Tan Chung, the well-known Indian scholar of Chinese ancestry whose father set up the Cheena Bhavan at Santiniketan, brought, for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, a comprehensive volume called Across the Himalayan Gap that had described in detail the multi-faceted relationship between the two ancient civilisations. Then came Louise Levathes's When China Ruled the Seas, that looked at the colourful Admiral Zheng He's voyages to the Malabar coast in the very early 15th century. Subsequently, The Unknown Hsuan-Tsang, by the reputed historian Devahuti, author of an earlier classic on Harsha, appeared.

A couple of months back, as part of the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture that is directed by Professor D.P. Chattopadhyaya, a magisterial volume India's Interaction with China, Central and West Asia edited by A. Rahman was released. And just a few days back, Tansen Sen's absolutely fascinating Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade appeared in which he challenges conventional wisdom and meticulously explores the realignment of Sino-Indian relations during 600-1400, a period which saw the demise of Buddhism in India and its appropriation by the Chinese and other East Asians, a period in which Islamic networks supplanted earlier Buddhist networks and also a period in which regional maritime trade pivoted around the Cholas expanded leading to the spread of Hinduism in east and southeast China. Incidentally, this brilliant 35-year old historian, who grew up and studied in Beijing, married a Chinese and now teaches in New York, is the son of N.C. Sen, himself a noted China scholar now retired in Kolkota.

Zhang Zemin now the chairman of the Central Military Commission broke all protocol while greeting Mr. Fernandes. He joked that he likes meeting young people and since Mr. Fernandes is four years younger to him, he was very pleased to spend time with him. Jiang Zemin went on to add that since Mr. Vajpayee is three or four months younger to him, he is eagerly looking forward to the Indian Prime Minister's visit. The momentum and atmospherics generated by Mr. Fernandes's landmark trip should not be lost. One immediate offshoot should be greater support to Indian academics working on the 2200 years of Sino-Indian interactions that remain largely unexplored and that Wen Jiabao recalled in a Nehruvian fashion.