sino soviet split happened due to ideological problems and intolerance towards various philosophical aspects of Marxism , like Stalin tito split happened due to market oriented socialism in the initial years of Yugoslavia which Stalin rejected , similarly chinese side were more aggressive towards fundamental issues of class struggle in which soviet sought out a holistic picture of the world . Soviets worked with Indians (centrists at that time) , Nasser and others where Mao sought out fierce ideological dogmatic positions in 3 world theory and labeling Soviets as social imperialism when Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia . Though it doesn’t matter much nowadays , Soviets are gone and China has gone through tremendous change , from Deng reforms , corruption , markets , businesses , SEZ , low wages to standard wages to innovation and then high tech development .
anyway, my point is that the “holy” image of India in western culture is as old as the 1960s, woodstock, hippies, and has little to do with libs “pushing that image”
China wasn’t an important rival of the US back in the 1960s.
In fact that’s when the Sino-Soviet split started happening
sino soviet split happened due to ideological problems and intolerance towards various philosophical aspects of Marxism , like Stalin tito split happened due to market oriented socialism in the initial years of Yugoslavia which Stalin rejected , similarly chinese side were more aggressive towards fundamental issues of class struggle in which soviet sought out a holistic picture of the world . Soviets worked with Indians (centrists at that time) , Nasser and others where Mao sought out fierce ideological dogmatic positions in 3 world theory and labeling Soviets as social imperialism when Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia . Though it doesn’t matter much nowadays , Soviets are gone and China has gone through tremendous change , from Deng reforms , corruption , markets , businesses , SEZ , low wages to standard wages to innovation and then high tech development .
anyway, my point is that the “holy” image of India in western culture is as old as the 1960s, woodstock, hippies, and has little to do with libs “pushing that image”