Just Friends

In October 1962, China and India went to war in the Himalayas. The war shocked the world and still shapes politics in Asia today. But for much of the prior decade, China and India championed peaceful coexistence and collaboration. People from Beijing and Bombay to Shanghai and Calcutta argued for friendship in the face of war in Asia and beyond. Delegations of monks, women's leaders, and factory workers promised that Asia's two largest countries would work together to show the world an alternative to blocs and empires. Just Friends takes people's clamoring for friendship seriously.

Drawing on archives from three continents and in five languages, Yasser Ali Nasser tells the story of a forgotten experiment in solidarity. Friendship, its advocates insisted, was stronger than brotherhood or comradery because it was chosen. Two very different countries hoped to show a continent riven by conflict and political differences a path forward from colonialism and towards a better future. But tying their dreams of a better world to their respective national aspirations was a dangerous gambit. At a moment when the Chinese and Indian governments proclaim the imminence of the "Asian Century", Just Friends recovers a bolder vision of what Asia's rise once promised, and a timely warning about how solidarity can curdle into enmity.