In December 1928, a slight, bespectacled young man got his first glimpse of Gandhi. The Congress was holding its annual conference in Kolka...
In December 1928, a slight, bespectacled young man got his first glimpse of Gandhi. The Congress was holding its annual conference in Kolkata that year and thousands had flocked to it for a sighting of the famous leader – more than a lakh, according to the young man’s account.
That first sighting is described in the language of devotion. “His figure appeared rather frail but his face was shining and the eyes sparkling,” he wrote of Gandhi. “He spoke slowly in a rather low voice but with clear accent and beautiful tone. I was quite happy with this distant darshan and came back to Santiniketan satisfied in spirit.”
He was Tan Yun-Shan, a Chinese scholar who had just started teaching at Visvabharati University, founded by Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan. He would spend most of the next 50 years in India, setting up the Cheena Bhavana at Visvabharati and the Sino-Indian Cultural Society, shuttling between Delhi and Beijing with messages of goodwill even as the storm clouds gathered.
In 1931, Tan met Gandhi properly for the first time at Bardoli in Gujarat. Three years earlier, Bardoli had been the site of a major satyagraha and Chinese scholars travelling down to meet Gandhi were evidently still of interest to the...
