India, June 12 -- July will mark one year since India resumed issuing visas to Chinese nationals. This anniversary, part of a wider, hesitant rapprochement, will pass unnoticed by most Indians. It may even arouse some bitterness. But, a glance backward will show why India should not merely preserve contact with China but also deepen it.

It is a common trope in Indian diplomacy to speak of an age-old relationship between China and India. But, as Sinologists from Krishna Prakash Gupta to Rudolph Wagner have pointed out, for much of their history, China and India interacted "silently". Monks, merchants, scriptures, commodities, and stories crossed the mountains and seas, but there was no sustained, detailed understanding of the other, with ...