India doctor saved lives of Chinese during WWII, his sisters recall

English.news.cn

by Nie Yun

MUMBAI, July 8 (Xinhua) -- "This year's August 15 would be the 65th anniversary of the Chinese victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. During that war, our Indian senior brother Dr. Kotnis saved many fighters' lives by offering medical assistance in China," Dr. Kotnis's two younger sisters said here on Wednesday.

"After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, a U.S. journalist appealed to Nehru, leader of the Indian National Congress, that China was in danger of being occupied, and needed the urgent international aid. Later, Zhu De, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese communist-led Eighth Route Army, requested Nehru to dispatch a medical team to China," 83-year-old Vatsala, Dr. Kotnis 's existing youngest sister, recalled in an interview with Xinhua.

Manorama, aged 89, Dr. Kotnis's existing oldest sister, said Kotnis decided to give up his plan of medical study in Britain and join the medical aid mission of volunteer doctors to China. The mission was sponsored by the National Congress leaders who denounced the Japanese invasion of China.

Dr. Kotnis was born to a family in Solapur, the Indian western state of Maharashtra, and had two brothers and five sisters. He studied medicine at a medical college of the University of Mumbai. "He wanted to use his medical knowledge to help China in maintaining the justice." said Vatsala.

In June 1938, Dr. Kotnis, a member of the Indian medical aid mission, left Mumbai for distant China by ship. After reaching Yan 'an in northern China, he was warmly welcomed by then Chinese Communist Party leaders, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De.

He treated the wounded fighters in the caves' hospitals day and night, and succeeded in saving many young fighters' lives, recalled Vatsala.

As the fierce war went on, more and more fighters suffered from injures in the battles. Dr. Kotnis left Yan'an, and went to the dangerous front to treat the wounded, said the younger sister.

He once performed more than 800 operations in the mobile and stationary hospitals as a front doctor for the wounded fighters in a campaign, making many fatally wounded fighters survived, recalled the older sister.

In November 1941, he married a Chinese girl in his hospital in China. In the following year, his wife delivered a baby, Vatsala said happily.

In 1939, Kotnis joined the Eighth Route Army. He praised the flexible strategy of the troops in his letters to the Indian family. He said their troops adopted an effective strategy of hit- and-run, the Japanese invaders were fatigued to chase. He said in another letter that he liked local attractive operas in China, recalled Vatsala.

The other members of the mission safely returned to India after working several years in China's battlefields. However, Dr. Kotnis refused to leave China. He said many wounded fighters needed the urgent medical treatment, he could not return, Manorama said.

On December 9, 1942, he died of epilepsy due to overwork at age 32. Before his death, he regularly operated for over seventy-two hours to save more lives of the wounded, Vatsala said.

Mao Zedong sorrowed at the news of Dr. Kotnis's death on the frontline. On Dec. 29, Mao Zedong wrote, "The army has lost an arm 's helping, and the nation has lost a friend. Let us always bear in mind his international spirit."

After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, some Chinese government leaders visited Mumbai, and met Dr. Kotnis's family members, including then Premier Zhou Enlai in 1950 and the incumbent President Hu Jintao. Last May, as a friendly envoy of the two countries, Vatsala accompanied Indian President Patil to visit China, she said.

Vatsala said it has been several thousand years since the friendly exchanges started between the two countries, and she hoped the friendship between the two countries could endure forever.

Thanks for bringing us this very touching story. And yes... hopefully India and China will remain as friends for thousands of years later.

(a side note: I do believe that India and China shares quite a number of similarity and custom... and Buddhism was also brought into China from India too )

This man is the Indian version of Norman Bethune, a doctor much celebrated in China for helping out the Chinese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Unfortunately Dr. Kotnis isn't as well known in China.

We should not forget the sacrifices of men like Dr. Kotnis!

rhino123 said:

Thanks for bringing us this very touching story. And yes... hopefully India and China will remain as friends for thousands of years later.

(a side note: I do believe that India and China shares quite a number of similarity and custom... and Buddhism was also brought into China from India too )

Click to expand...

China and India traditionally don't have any problems with each other. In a broad sense, even Korea and Japan and China didn't have that much problems. Hopefully things will fix itself

hopefully . actually i think efforts are made. . if somebody who can post topics can post the link as a new topic and asking for comments/thoughts from others in the forum, it would be interesting to see the responses.

the content of the article


Indians may be suspicious of China and the Chinese of India. But it is the West which does not want to accept the strategic consequences of a rising Asia.

Behind the heavy typeface that the release of confidential American diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks has generated lie smaller stories which sometimes tell us more about the way in which our world is changing than the headlines themselves.

The U.S. ambassador in Paris met Michel Rocard, a former Prime Minister of France, in October 2005 for one of those sweeping, freewheeling chats that Gallic statesmen evidently specialise in. The bulk of the conversation deals with the French political scene but at the end, M. Rocard shares his concerns about the place of France and the United States in the new world order and proposes a joint Euro-American think-tank to prepare for the future. “Speaking of the growth of India and China, along with all the other challenges confronting both of us,” the leaked cable quotes the senior French politician as saying, “We need a vehicle where we can find solutions for these challenges together — so when these monsters arrive in 10 years, we will be able to deal with them.”

So there we have it. Even as the Indian elephant and Chinese dragon circle each other warily, wondering how each will cope with the rise of the other, the Occidental mind which has enjoyed dominating the world and the global commons for two centuries is worrying about how to deal with the combined arrival of these two “monsters.”

Happily for the West, the arrivistes are not exactly on the best of terms with each other. India is too wary of China's rise to exploit the opportunities this ascent provides. For its part, Beijing — which alternates between feigning indifference towards New Delhi and fretting over whether it might join hands with a “democratic bloc” led by Washington — is so self-absorbed that it is unable to harness the externalities that India's rise has generated in the region.

In a recent article, Kishore Mahbubani spoke of the triangular relationship between India, China and the U.S. and noted how the U.S. had better relations with both India and China than the two Asian giants had with each other. By being in the middle, he argues, Washington has a strategic edge. It also has an incentive to ensure a certain amount of tension between India and China, so as to cement its own presence in Asia as an offshore balancer.

Though Mahbubani does not say so, it would be naïve to imagine the problems the Indian and Chinese sides have with one another are the product of an American conspiracy. The fact is that India and China do not know each other well and have not paid enough attention to understanding the social, political and economic dynamics of the other. As a result, misperceptions and misunderstandings abound and have given rise to suspicions and even fear. That is why it is essential that a continuous and wide-ranging dialogue take place between different stakeholders: officials, politicians, the military, scholars, journalists, artists and others. Above all, there must be engagement on the big strategic questions of our time.

In a series of interactions held recently in Beijing at the initiative of the Observer Research Foundation and the International Department of the Communist Party of China, Indian and Chinese analysts had a surprisingly frank exchange of views on the state of the bilateral relationship, the problem areas and the new areas for potential China-India cooperation.

From the Chinese side, a number of scholars spoke of four specific problem areas with India. There is, first and foremost, the unsettled boundary and the fact that border territories are disputed. Second, the presence of the Dalai Lama and the so-called ‘Tibetan government in exile' is seen as a continuing irritant, especially in the aftermath of the disturbances which shook Lhasa and some other Tibetan pockets in China in 2008. Third, and this was surprising, the scholars acknowledged that China's friendship with Pakistan was a source of friction with India. And though they differed from the Indian side in characterising the current nature of the relationship, they acknowledged the fact that “balancing India” used to be a primary Chinese motive in the past. Their argument was that the rise of the Indian economy in the past decade has forced Chinese policymakers to de-hyphenate their South Asian policy. Finally, many of the Chinese interlocutors spoke of growing strategic suspicions that are made worse by a trust deficit. “Many people in China believe Indians look down upon them,” a professor from the International Relations department of Renmin University said. “India sees itself as close to the West and is willing to be used by the U.S. in its desire to become a world power.” Other scholars echoed the same view in different ways — that India might become part of an American-led effort to gang-up against China, that many in India subscribe to the ‘China threat' thesis.

My own assessment is that the boundary dispute and Dalai Lama are not major problem areas. Indeed, my suspicion is that part of the recent brittleness in the relationship is the product of artificially accelerated efforts to settle the boundary question. As for the Tibetan spiritual leader, it is true that his presence in India is a red rag to those in China who see him as working against the unity and integrity of their country. But the Chinese side can also well appreciate the consequences of his being asked to leave India. A Hollywood exile for the Dalai Lama would only serve to raise the salience of the Tibetan issue globally. Besides, it is time China and India also start paying attention to what might happen to the Tibetan question once the present Dalai Lama is no more. And start engaging each other, and Bangladesh as the lowest riparian, on Tibetan water-related projects.

Responding to Indian queries on China's plans to harness the Brahmaputra, a scholar from the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations spoke of the need for the comprehensive development of Himalayan hydropower resources. Citing Indian projects in Bhutan as a positive model, he said India's trust deficit with its neighbours like Pakistan and Nepal was coming in the way of the development of hydropower.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, it is obvious that China and India have a crucial stake in the stability of that country and need to discuss between them what they can do to help the situation there. The Chinese side is well aware of the emerging ideological and institutional fault lines in Pakistan. If there is any country other than the U.S. that has the ability to exercise leverage over the Pakistani military, it is China. Until now, however, China has been reluctant to use its influence. For more than four decades, Chinese strategic thinking on Pakistan has been dominated by the need to ‘balance' India. But with India having outgrown South Asia and Pakistan in danger of imploding as the problem of extremism and terrorism slowly gets out of control, Beijing cannot afford to remain wedded to this anachronistic mindset.

On strategic issues too, the Indian and Chinese sides have much to talk about. India and China are both officially committed to an open, inclusive architecture for the Asia-Pacific region. Both also have a stake in the freedom of navigation. During the visit to India by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, the two countries committed their navies to joint anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. A commitment was also made to discuss the wider issue of maritime security. These are all promising new areas of cooperation that should be actively pursued. One Chinese scholar spoke of the need for strategic transparency, another made a pitch to launch new security principles by updating the Panchasila concept. Of course, such an effort is unlikely to go beyond the reiteration of homilies unless China and India both recognise that the world and their own national profiles have moved on since the 1950s. It has become a cliché to say the world is big enough to accommodate the rise of India and China. Since the world is a finite place, this means those who are today squatting on strategic space despite their leases having run out will have to be displaced. Let the West have nightmares about demons and monsters. The elephant and the dragon cannot afford to be scared of each other.

oops! i thought i can't create a new thread. i can so don't bother posting again if anybody intended

siegecrossbow said:

This man is the Indian version of Norman Bethune, a doctor much celebrated in China for helping out the Chinese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Unfortunately Dr. Kotnis isn't as well known in China.

We should not forget the sacrifices of men like Dr. Kotnis!

Click to expand...

Well said, among all the other unpleasant image the two nations currently shed to each other, Dr. Kotnis is a figure that NO CHINESE WOULD HAVE BAD MOUTH at.

Although I personally think it is on some India official's political agenda to brought up this "friendship figure" at this time, I have absolute respect to Dr. Kotnis himself.

Remark: Like Dr. Norman Bethune, Dr. Kotnis is under THE INTERNATIONAL's instruction to go to China to help. And an Internationalist dose not necessary to be a communist (although they are, if I didn't remember wrong), and their sacrifice do not have any espionage plot of "taking over the world" at THAT freaking chaotic times, when GOOD PEOPLE simply wants to see NAZIISM and MILITARISM to die off. Anyone with cold-war kind of mindset regarding people like them, just please turn around and pi*s-off!!!