In 1966, Red Guards descended on the hamlet of Qufu, the home town of Confucius. The radicalised students removed the statue of the great sage from the ancient temple built in his honour, and tossed it into a bonfire. Unleashed by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, they were on a rampage to uproot traditional culture and clear the way for Communism. Confucius, considered the founder of Chinese civilisation, was top of their hit list.
Today, Chinese are again flocking to Qufu — but as tourists. Beijing’s officious planners have assured them an easy journey by building a Qufu stop on the new high-speed rail system. There they can gaze upon the Confucius statue restored to the temple shrine. No less a figure than President Xi Jinping made a pilgrimage to Qufu, during which he praised the traditional values his party once sought to destroy. But if Confucius is back in vogue, there is every reason to be cynical about his resurrection.
For much of its existence, the Chinese Communist party was a bitter enemy of China’s greatest philosopher. Confucius’s enduring influence, its cadres believed, was the reason China was weak and backward. If the nation were to modernise politically, economically and socially, Confucius had to be purged from society.