China, India must be wary of Western media

Of late, the top e-mails in my inbox have had anti-China angles - articles giving me my daily dose of "detest-China" medicine. Conventional and traditional media - cut in the West and pasted in India - are inundated with diatribe against China's aggressive behavior, militant nationalism and expansionist designs, thwarting my hope to see India prosper without the encumbrance of war.

An India-China relationship that is devoid of fear is unpalatable to the intellectual insurgents of the Henry Luce-kind. The "Luce-ist" insurgents penetrate minds through myriad conservative and liberal think tanks and media houses. They use their pens (rather keyboards) and publications to push another war down our throats, much in the same fashion as they had in 1962.

Henry R. Luce was the post-World War II American media mogul, the owner of Time, Life, Fortune and the March of Time film and radio documentaries. It was a time when "freedom of the press belonged to the man who owned one". Luce used the power of the press in the most blatant fashion both on China and India. He was a publisher guided by missionary zeal (in fact, he was the son of an American missionary and was born in China). He wanted to see China as a Christian nation, gravitating to perform its role as an American policeman in the Asia-Pacific region.