A recent social media post by Chinese scholar Keji Mao told an instructive story: “I gave two presentations on how China builds its industrial and technological ecosystem,” he wrote, “one for an Indian audience and one for a Vietnamese audience. Although the content was largely the same…, the feedback from the Vietnamese and Indian participants was strikingly different. When I discussed the gaps between Vietnam and China, my Vietnamese friends listened very attentively to my analysis of Vietnam’s weaknesses. They even proactively acknowledged Vietnam’s deficiencies and asked me to analyse more specific issues in greater detail. However, when I compared China and India, many Indian friends became quite argumentative. They tried to compete with or challenge the Chinese perspective on almost every point, to the point where I could barely develop my analysis. As a result, they might have won the debate, but missed a valuable opportunity to have a meaningful exchange. So,” he added, “I came to know which country would be the real winner for ‘China 1’ many years beforehand.”

This anecdote provides a jarring, yet necessary, mirror for a phenomenon frequently observed in intellectual and diplomatic circles. It echoes an observation of the late Canadian Ambassador David Malone, who once noted that a great failing of Indian diplomacy is that its practitioners are “better at winning arguments than at winning friends.” This is not merely a critique of our diplomats; it is a commentary on a broader cultural reflex.

Indian history is rich with the tradition of samvad — the art of dialectical discourse. Ancient Indian thinkers thrived on rigorous debate, where the goal was to........

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