Sixty years after first reading Pearl Buck바카라s 바카라My Several Worlds,바카라 a fresh perspective sheds light on her timeless observations about geopolitics and philosophy.
In December 1964 I bought Pearl Buck바카라s 25th book 바카라My Several Worlds바카라 (1954) from A.H. Wheeler for three rupees while on a rail trip to Rameshwaram- Dhanushkodi to perform 바카라Shraddha바카라 of my father who passed away in 1963. The tour was tormenting memory as a massive storm hit Dhanushkodi on December 22, three days after we returned to Madras, killing 115 passengers who took the same train as ours.
Buck바카라s description of geo-politics made no impression on a 27-year-old like me, stuck in a mundane police job in Nashik, then a backward Adivasi district in Maharashtra. However, rereading the same tattered paperback in 2024 brings out so many vignettes that makes an intelligence analyst like me wonder whether US-China relations could have been different had some of Buck바카라s ideas been recognized by the American leaders.
The first thing that strikes anyone reading the book is her deep love for China where she spent 바카라most of the first forty years of her life바카라 as her adopted son Edgar Walsh would say in 2013, while releasing her last book 바카라The Eternal Wonder바카라 the manuscript of which was lost for 40 years. She permanently moved to United States only in 1934 and died in 1973 when she was eighty. She published her second book 바카라The Good Earth바카라 in 1932 which brought her the 1938 Nobel Prize for literature, the first American woman to get it, for her 바카라rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces of her missionary parents바카라.
Buck compares Americans with the Chinese: 바카라To talk even with a farmer and his family, none of whom could read or write, was often to hear a philosophy at once sane and humorous. Compared to this, 바카라our people바카라 (Americans) have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy. That, perhaps, can only come to a people thousands of years바카라.
In this, Buck is remarkably like Jawaharlal Nehru who wrote in his 바카라Discovery of India바카라 (1946): 바카라The old epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely known among the masses, and every incident and story and moral in them was engraved on the popular mind and gave a richness and content to it. Illiterate villagers would know hundreds of verses by heart and their conversation would be full of references to them or to some story with a moral enshrined in some old classic.바카라
Buck felt that America, which was obsessively trying to control China, never understood the Chinese mind and made the original mistake in not supporting Sun Yat-sen. That was when he sought American help to stabilise China which was in turmoil due to the 14 May 1919 upheaval after the US dominated 1919 Paris Peace Conference gifted Shandong, the birthplace of Confucious to Japan. The Soviets had then deputed Adolph Joffe as their envoy to China in 1920: 바카라While the foreign ambassadors ignored him, the Chinese common people and intellectual alike welcomed him with feasts and friendship.바카라
In 1921, Sun Yat-sen accepted Soviet aid and promised that Nationalist Party 바카라would allow a Chinese Communist party to be strengthened and would accept its cooperation바카라, although China 바카라would not have a Communist government바카라. This was because Sun Yat-sen did not believe that 바카라Communism was suited to his people바카라. A Communist party was already formed through the efforts of Mao-Tse-tung, then 바카라an assistant in the library of Ch바카라en Tu-hshiu바카라s university바카라, Chou-En-Lai, leader of Chinese students in Paris and Chu Teh, 바카라the son of a wealthy landlord and an officer in a war lord바카라s army바카라 learning modern military science in Germany.
Although Sun Yat-sen said that the Nationalist Party would not adopt a Communist government, close cooperation with the Soviet advisers made him to reorganise the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) 바카라with the same discipline, the same techniques of propaganda, and the same political commissars바카라. He also sent Chiang Kai-shek to Moscow for military training.
The second mistake America made was blindly supporting Chiang Kai-shek when it was clear to all in China that he never 바카라commanded respect바카라 among Chinese peasants. When the Kuomintang-Communist split came, America supported Chiang. Part of the reason might have been due to Chiang바카라s marriage with the American educated Chirstian celebrity Soon May-ling, a former student of Wesleyan College.
Parallelly the Fourth Army under Chu Teh, mutinied in Kiangsi and emerged as the 바카라Red Army바카라, which 바카라became the nucleus around which all discontented persons could gather바카라, attracting peasants. Chiang gave jobs only to the educated, neglecting the peasants. 바카라Never in Chinese history has any government succeeded if there is a division between peasant and intellectual바카라.
Conversely, Buck praises Gandhiji for his foresight 바카라that made him know very early that both peasant and intellectual must be won to work together for their country바카라.
(The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat.)
Views expressed are personal