The ‘Sons of Saraswati’ have a shared destiny: Sanae Takaichi’s visit signals a new Bharat-Japan era

Ever since childhood, Japan has fascinated me. I could never quite explain why. Growing up during the 1980s and 1990s, there was little to justify such fascination. The two largest democracies in Asia hardly figured in each other’s strategic imagination. Politically, economically and diplomatically, Bharat and Japan were worlds apart.

As former Japanese ambassador Toshio Yamanouchi writes in his memoirs, India Through Japanese Eyes, the estrangement owed much to “both the geopolitics of the Cold War and the economics of India’s Licence-Permit-Control Raj”. But that is only part of the story. Professor KV Kesavan points to a deeper psychological divide. Indian policymakers increasingly dismissed Japan as a mere “client state” of the United States, while Japanese public opinion saw Bharat as another poor ‘Third World’ country that simply could not get its act together. Author Sanjaya Baru explains the situation aptly in The Importance of Shinzo Abe: “Tokyo was focused on the US, East and Southeast Asia, while New Delhi looked West.”

More from Opinion

Diplomacy separated Bharat and Japan. Civilisation brought them together. That invisible bond fascinated me long before I understood it. As I grew older and began studying the history of the two countries, I realised that millions of Indians and Japanese instinctively shared the same affection for one another — even during periods when their governments barely spoke.

History repeatedly bears witness to this extraordinary warmth. On October 1, 1949, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sent a 15-year-old elephant to Japanese children after hundreds of them wrote requesting one for Tokyo’s war-ravaged Ueno Zoo, whose elephants had died during World War II. Nehru may have been intellectually captivated by Europe, Soviet Russia and Mao’s China, but Japan retained a special place in his imagination.

So much so that Delhi refused to attend the 1951 San Francisco Peace Conference because it believed the proposed treaty compromised Japan’s sovereignty. Instead of endorsing what it regarded as a victor’s peace, Bharat signed a separate bilateral peace treaty with Japan, waived all reparation claims and established diplomatic relations in 1952. When the first Asian Games were held in Delhi in 1951, Japanese athletes were invited, allowing the Japanese flag to be raised at an international sporting event barely six years after the war. This was one of the first occasions on which the Japanese flag was hoisted after World War II.

These were not ordinary diplomatic gestures. They reflected something much deeper.

The emotional debt between the two nations runs both ways. Indians remember Japan’s unwavering support for Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army (INA), whose exploits actually made the British realise the days of the Raj were well past their expiry date; before him, other revolutionaries, led by Rash Behari Bose, found both refuge and support on Japanese soil.

The Japanese, in turn, have never forgotten Justice Radhabinod Pal. At the Tokyo Trials after World War II, Justice Pal was the lone dissenting judge among 11 Allied jurists. While every other judge convicted Japan’s wartime leadership, Justice Pal argued that the tribunal represented victor’s justice rather than impartial justice. In 1966, Emperor Hirohito honoured Justice Pal with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, First Class — one of Japan’s highest civilian honours. When the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe addressed the Indian Parliament in 2007, he acknowledged Justice Pal’s contribution and even travelled to Kolkata to meet his son.

The warmth remained through the first decade of Bharat’s Independence. Yamanouchi notes in India Through Japanese Eyes how the Nehru years represented “a bright spot” in bilateral relations. “Japan gave the first pledge of Yen credit to India in 1957 and till Nehru’s death in 1964 as much as 60 per cent of Japan’s Yen credit went to India,” he writes.

This special relationship weakened only after Delhi drifted decisively into the Soviet orbit while Tokyo remained firmly anchored to the American alliance. Politics shut the doors on each other; civilisation ensured a window was always kept open. Today that civilisation is calling them back together.

Why?

Because Bharat and Japan are, in many ways, the two sons of Saraswati. This is not merely poetic symbolism. It is a civilisational reality. Most people know that Buddhism reached Japan in the sixth century. Far fewer realise that Buddhism carried with it an entire Indic civilisational universe.

Across Japan, Hindu deities continue to be worshipped. Saraswati became Benzaiten; Lakshmi became Kisshōten; and, Ganesh became Kangiten. Brahma, Indra, Garuda, Vayu and Varuna all found honoured places in Japanese religious life. Incidentally, several Vedic deities that have faded from popular worship in Bharat continue to flourish in Japan.

Benoy K. Behl, in his remarkable work Hindu Deities Worshipped in Japan, quotes former Japanese Ambassador Yasukuni Enoki as saying: “Very interestingly, more than 80 per cent of Japanese Gods are originally Indian Gods. Most of the Japanese don’t know this. For example, I live in Kichijoji district, on the outskirts of Tokyo. Kichijoji means temple of Kichijo goddess and Kichijo is originally Lakshmi. Thus, I come from ‘Lakshmi Town’.”

Nothing illustrates this civilisational continuity better than Saraswati herself. She occupies a unique position in both cultures. In the Rig Veda, Saraswati is not merely the Goddess of knowledge but the “mother of all rivers”, around which one of humanity’s earliest great cultures flourished. Most scholars today refer to the Harappan civilisation as the Saraswati civilisation because of the archaeological concentration along the now-dry river system. More Harappan sites have been found along the dried course of the Saraswati than on the Indus and elsewhere. Interestingly, just like in the Rig Veda, Saraswati is also worshipped in Japan as the Goddess of rivers, and her image is generally installed in temples beside a river, lake or pond.

In Japan, Saraswati — or Benzaiten — is among the country’s most beloved deities. She is worshipped in hundreds of shrines across Japan, with a number of them in and around Tokyo. The great Todai-ji Temple at Nara records that as early as 722 CE, annual ceremonies honouring Saraswati and Lakshmi had begun there. Nearly 1,200 years later, they continue.

Edo Meisho Zue (Guide to Famous Edo (Tokyo) Sites), published in 1836, described Saraswati as one of the city’s most popular deities. A century later, Lady Chiben Sonnyo claimed mystical experiences with Saraswati, began writing Sanskrit despite never formally learning the language, and established the Bentenshu sect in 1952. Today its temple at Meiou-ji in Osaka houses the world’s tallest monument dedicated to the Goddess.

What stronger testimony could there be to a shared civilisational inheritance?

This is why Bharat and Japan cannot be understood merely through geopolitics. They are connected by something much older than nation-states. They are connected by civilisational memory, which is now bringing them together towards a common destiny.

That destiny has acquired fresh urgency today. Asia, and the world, is undergoing its biggest geopolitical transformation since World War II. China has openly resorted to hegemonic policies, shunning Deng Xiaoping’s “hide your strength, bide your time” mantra. Under Xi Jinping, Beijing believes its time has come to assert itself globally.

To make matters worse, the United States, especially since Donald Trump became President, is increasingly behaving unpredictably, targeting allies and friends more than rivals and adversaries. Worse, the old American security umbrella no longer appears quite as permanent as it once did.

For both Delhi and Tokyo, this changes everything. Bharat under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has embraced a far more proactive foreign policy. Japan, under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, is seeking to redefine its strategic posture after decades of post-war restraint. Their convergence is, therefore, inevitable and naturally complementary. Bharat offers scale, demographics, entrepreneurial energy and strategic geography. Japan offers capital, technology, manufacturing excellence, semiconductors, precision engineering and institutional discipline. One possesses the world’s largest young workforce. The other possesses one of the world’s most sophisticated industrial ecosystems.

The Delhi summit between PM Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Sanae Takaichi, is therefore much more than just another diplomatic engagement. It marks the reunion of two civilisations that were temporarily separated by Cold War geopolitics but never ceased to recognise one another, seeking to reset the democratic global order.

As the two leaders meet in Delhi today, Washington will be watching carefully, and Beijing has every reason to be concerned. Because a Bharat-Japan partnership built merely on security calculations would be significant, but the one rooted in shared civilisation has the potential to reshape the world.

The 21st century will not belong to the loudest civilisation. It will belong to the wisest. The ‘Sons of Saraswati’ have remained apart for too long. History gave them a shared past. Geopolitics has given them a shared challenge. Now, civilisation offers them a shared destiny.

Delhi may well become the place where that destiny begins to unfold.

(The writer is the author of ‘Bharat Rising: Dharma, Democracy, Diplomacy’ and ‘Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)