Why the world needs India more than China

India and China are two of the world’s most ancient civilizations and have a lot in common in the sense that both nations have been in existence a lot longer than all European and most certainly North American ones. They may not have existed as modern nation-states like in the present times, but there certainly was a global recognition of India and China as two well-defined regions of the world since the times of the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians.

Both nations made extraordinary discoveries and inventions that helped changed the shape of the world. India gave the world its numerals, the decimal system and the zero, whole China is credited with inventions like paper, gunpowder and the magnetic compass. Both nations suffered the consequences of colonial rule, though this was more direct in the case of India.

For much of their history, there was largely no conflict between the two nations. India was in many ways the spiritual godfather on account of Indian missionary monks introducing Buddhism to China, which quickly became one of its major religions. Buddhist monks, students and pilgrims had been coming to visit the holy Buddhist destinations as well as the great universities at…