In recent years, a new bridge has been built between India and Korea. In 2020 the government of India introduced Korean as a second language option in public education curriculum. In 2018 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was once denied entry to the USA following the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, won the Seoul Peace Prize. The prestigious award previously given to Angela Merkel and Muhammad Yunus, celebrates the Hindu nationalist leader’s contribution to ‘regional and global peace’ and future efforts in creating ‘progressive Asia’.[1] With the increasing economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries, myth has also turned into history. In November 2018 the legendary royal marriage between the Korean King Suro and an Indian princess was materialized into the Queen Huh Memorial Park in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, tracing the kinship between the two countries to ancient period.[2]

Although these developments are driven by contemporary economic and geopolitical agendas, Indo-Korean vision of new Asia has a deeper history. Both former colonies of empires, India and Korea saw parallel journey to freedom in the twentieth century. Philosophers of idealism, Buddhists, socialists, revolutionaries, and peaceful protesters from both countries took each other as a point of reference as they carried their own nation to independence on August 15^th.

Non-violent mass protest presents one key example of similar struggles and articulations of freedom. While Gandhi remains a global icon of peaceful march against colonialism, over a decade before the Salt March and the image of khadi (hand-spun cotton)-clad Gandhi appeared in the headlines of newspapers across the world, Korea witnessed a wide-spread non-violent mass protest in 1919 called the Sam-il movement. Although not widely recognized in exiting scholarship, those who led the Sam-il movement and the anti-colonial leaders in India took note of each other. One of the thirty-three leaders of the protest was an avid reader of Tagore’s works, while another closely followed Gandhi as a student in Tokyo. Tagore dedicated a poem to Korea which is still celebrated in the peninsula, Nehru wrote about the Sam-il march in his autobiography, and Gandhi also paid attention to the events unfolding in Korea. Yet, in existing scholarship these intellectual connections remain buried under the dominant historiography of Asianism which has centred around Japan and India.

From Brotherhood to Humanity: Korea and India’s Forgotten World Order, c. 1880-1950 excavates Indo-Korean entanglement in their paths to decolonization.The project has three thematic sections—brotherhood, fellowship, and humanity—to navigate the world orders envisioned and created by religious, cultural, and political actors. The first section will survey the changing tropes of brotherhood evoked at international religious events. From nineteenth century onwards, religion provided one access to internationalism for many activists from Asia. However, as I have argued elsewhere, encounters amongst Asian participants did not always lead to collaboration or mutual appreciation.[3] This section draws a critical genealogy of fraternity in religious internationalism from Asian perspectives to situate the terrain in which Korean and Indian religious universalists engaged with each other’s work.

Moving away from sites of internationalism to the utilization of global publics, the project then examines how transnational socio-cultural organizations created by Indian and Korean elites and the leaders of non-violent mass protests sought to reach and mobilize people. Specifically, it will analyze the evocation of ‘fellowship’ and ‘humanity’ in these movements, paying close attention to the vernacular differences in these concepts and in the mutual coverage of non-violent resistance against colonial regimes.

The intellectual contribution of this project is two-fold. By tracing the parallel journey of Indian and Korean decolonization, it brings out a new dimension to existing scholarship on Asianism. How do Indo-Korean visions of Asia and the world change our understanding of the history of regionalism and the region itself? Secondly, by examining vernacular sources in investigating Indian and Korean ideas, and mechanics, of brotherhood, fellowship, and humanity, the project de-centers our approach to internationalism, global publics, and democracy from west-centric narratives. Taken together, “From Brotherhood to Humanity” will offer a more rooted and critical history upon which the shifting ties of twenty-first century Asia can be built on.

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_{[1] ‘PM Narendra Modi  awarded Seoul Peace Prize 2018’, Times of India, 24 October 2018, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/pm-modi-conferred-seoul-peace-prize-2018/articleshow/66341708.cms; ‘모디총리 만난 김정숙 여사: 신남방정책함께 추진 원해’, Chosun.com, 05 November 2018}

_{http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/11/05/2018110504043.html}

_{[2] ‘김수로 왕 이야기 꺼낸 모디’, Chosunilbo, 18 May 2015.; http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/11/05/2018110504043.html}

_{‘모디총리 만난 김정숙 여사: 신남방정책함께 추진 원해’, Chosun.com, 05 November 2018}

_{http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/11/05/2018110504043.html}

_{[3] Jung Hyun Kim, Rethinking Vivekananda Through Space and Territorialised Spirituality, c. 1880-1920. PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge.}