What happens when a project of solidarity between two countries comes to a disastrous end? Mass participation in Sino-Indian ‘friendship’ and increasingly ambiguous conceptions of ‘Asianness’ sowed the seeds for disaster in the lead-up to the Sino-Indian War in 1962. Friendship between China and India despite differing political alignments clearly contrasted with the ideological conformity expected of bloc politics and relied on the two countries acting as paragons of mutual respect for sovereignty and political particularities. Both states had successfully used the narratives of friendship in Asia to tie domestic and international priorities together, thus mobilizing vast audiences in support of their initiatives at home with promises of their regional significance. When their governments believed that their sovereignty had been violated in the aftermath of India’s acceptance of the Dalai Lama as a political asylee and Chinese incursions along the border, these same diverse actors’ advocacy of national sovereignty’s paramountcy to friendship pushed them to accuse their counterparts of acting contrary to the values of New Asia. Sino-Indian friendship’s promotion of nationalism as the heart of internationalism meant that when national interests clashed with transnational virtues, popular support for friendship evaporated and public pressure mounted on both states to make good on their commitment to defend national sovereignty. Rather than seeing conflict between the two countries as an inevitable consequence of immutable contradictions or long-standing border disputes alone, I suggest that friendship played a role in making the war possible to begin with.

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