Book Review| Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest by Vijay Gokhale

‘Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest’ by Ambassador Vijay Gokhale is an Indian perspective on the build-up to the much discussed ‘Tiananmen Square’ incident of 1989 in China. Much has been written & discussed on the brutality of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party. Vijay Gokhale was posted as an official at the Indian Embassy in Beijing, China at that time and has presented the sequence of events as they unfolded based on his first hand experience. He gives the historical context of the major players who were involved or may have been a trigger to this incident and explains the internal politics and functioning of the Communist Party of China. This book is an essential read for anyone interested in China because of the following five reasons :

  1. Amb Gokhale has written the book based on what he personally saw and his analysis of events that unfolded in the decade of 80's, when Deng Xiaoping became the core leader of Chinese Communist Party. His reading of the events are based on the discussions in the Indian embassy then and personal interactions with the students and the local population out in the streets. Most documentaries, books and articles on Tiananmen Square incident provide a western point of view, this book is a fresh attempt to look at the same events from a differing prescriptive. Although Vijay Gokhale does not prescribe motives to the key actors, he also does not absolve them of the brutality they committed.

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शब्द के आडम्बरों में अर्थ मेरा खो न जाये. OSD to Sh @pemakhandubjp| @TeachForIndia | @indfoundation | @ColumbiaSIPA |Quizzer|Like to write poems|Views personal

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Aaditya Tiwari

शब्द के आडम्बरों में अर्थ मेरा खो न जाये. OSD to Sh @pemakhandubjp| @TeachForIndia | @indfoundation | @ColumbiaSIPA |Quizzer|Like to write poems|Views personal