Perhaps India could learn a few lessons from China, but the role model approach wouldn’t work.
> Buddhist thought has historical played a major roles in both cultures
Buddhism was born in India, but never spread across country in any considerable amount, other countries took up on it. The place where Buddha was born and enlightened is in modern day Bihar, you rarely find any Buddhist there.
India is very diverse, we have 22 official languages (~1000 unofficial), and for many languages writing scripts change, within 100 to 200km dialects and languages keep changing. Food keeps changing, climate keeps changing. People's behaviour keep changing. Dressing style, music, dance,... keeps changing. Nothing stays the same.
Government have recently released a educational draft, indicating children should be tri-lingual (native language, Hindi, English) and many people straight out opposed it, indicating they don't accept Hindi, as in near future there language may go out of existence.
The main problem is we cannot communicate properly, with each other from other places.
India is in no way similar to China, except for huge population numbers.
Despite being colonized for ~800 years(600 years under Muslim rulers, 200 years under British), culture haven't changed, think how stubborn people are.
We are a mess in it's own way, but we somehow survive and flourish slowly.
A good modern day example would be, Indian election.
Indian media and left tried there best to spread anti-modi movement (~5 years), no media channel have expected modi to win majority in 2019, but it came to be quite opposite.
Even now, all media channels are doing some analysis, how did this happen.
There is an old saying ( loosely translated), If you are having a discussion with 5 chinese and 5 Indians about a problem. All Chinese come up with one solution, Indians come up with atleast 6 different ideas.
Thank you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_campaign_of_Ahmad_Shah_...
Ah yes humans really do thrive under totalitarian dictatorships
India is far more multicultural (multiple religions, multiple ethnicities, multiple languages) than China.
Easy rule of thumb for the last 2 millennia of history: China has spent most of its time unified, while India hasn't.
There were very few genocidal wars or wars of total annihilation. This strangely was a common problem not only in China but in Europe where loosing a war would mean total annihilation. This only came to an end in India with the Islamic invasion - whose strategy like in Persia or Mesopotamia consisted of raid, loot, murder and flee. When they found themselves more permanent rule it was mostly about conversion, taking slaves, destruction/defacement or appropriation(repurposing) of non-islamic buildings.
It is like saying the Soviet was united and the EU was never. The Soviet was held together by force, the EU is held together by consent.
However, I do feel that we can learn a lot from Chinese people and culture.
Why don't you learn from your Northerly neighbors (China) on how to run government? One thing I find in my travels to India, is how much abject contempt you guys have towards the Chinese way of doing things. Unbelievable - considering the cultures are very similar (Buddhist thought has historical played a major roles in both cultures), similar population sizes, etc..
No, let's follow a political system that has had no organic roots/development in the country and pretend all are literate folks who are capable of holding a debate on what policies are good for their country, while the politicians take out everyone to the cleaners.