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The primary International Buddhist Summit hosted by India on April 20-21 brings collectively over 170 distinguished monks, students, and practitioners from 30 nations to deliberate upon how the infinite knowledge of Buddhism might be harnessed to unravel up to date worldwide issues. By convening such a various gathering of Buddhist thinkers, India is sending throughout a message that it has the imaginative and prescient to tackle the core management function within the sustenance of the timeless non secular heritage which originated in India and influenced giant elements of Asia over the previous two millennia.
India’s present keenness to don the mantle of the propagator of Buddhism’s information is in line with its historic legacy because the fountainhead from which the teachings of the Buddha unfold worldwide. The diffusion of Buddhism in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and Central Asia owed tremendously to empires based mostly out of undivided India, such because the Mauryas and the Kushans. Had it not been for the patronage and the cultural imaginative and prescient of emperors similar to Ashoka and Kanishka, Buddhism wouldn’t have grown wings and reached so many corners of Asia.
Right now, Buddhism is almost all religion in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Laos and Mongolia, and in addition a big minority religion in Japan, South Korea, China, and Vietnam. This phenomenon owes to India and the sagacity of its rulers, travellers and universities like Nalanda and Vikramashila. By consolidating the worldwide Buddhist universe and connecting it to the motherlode that’s India, the federal government is indicating that India is again to being what it as soon as was — a civilisational superpower — a vishwaguru.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion that “India has been following the trail proven by the Buddha”, and the coverage initiatives he has spearheaded to modernise and facilitate worldwide tourism alongside well-known pilgrimage websites of the Buddhist Circuit in India and to unify completely different sects and regional variants of Buddhism, have gained hearts of individuals in Buddhist nations. The institution of the Worldwide Buddhist Confederation, an organisation that unites Buddhists from everywhere in the world, is a serious institutional innovation by India that has echoed extensively in Asia.
Though Buddhists make up a tiny proportion of India’s inhabitants, in absolute numbers, they comprise a pretty big group. The 9.2 million-strong Indian Buddhist neighborhood, which thrives with appreciable non secular freedom and State help, is a residing testimony to the truth that India is as a lot a Buddhist nation as any Buddhist-majority nation. There was a lot hypothesis in regards to the supposed conflict between Hinduism and Buddhism in medieval India, when Adi Shankaracharya defeated Buddhist students by way of logical argumentation. But when one takes an extended historic view, Hinduism and Buddhism have coexisted for hundreds of years. Buddhism’s revival inside India and flourishing transnational ties between Indian Buddhists and their co-religionists in Asia augur nicely for India’s picture.
Mega conclaves such because the International Buddhist Summit even have a strategic dimension. China could also be the principle lender and buying and selling associate of all of the Buddhist-majority nations of Asia, however the soul-crushing nature of China’s Communist dictatorship and the cultural genocide of Tibetan Buddhists beneath Chinese language rule is thought. Seen from a Buddhist lens in, say Myanmar or Sri Lanka, India stands out as a extremely tolerant nation in distinction to the atheistic and tightly managed China.
In worldwide relations, realist thinkers dismiss cultural diplomacy and non secular outreach as irrelevant or wishful workouts as a result of materialistic elements similar to financial would possibly and army energy are in the end what matter in figuring out a rustic’s place and stature. However what if a rustic retains rising in laborious energy attributes whereas concurrently enhancing its gentle energy? The end result could be extra spectacular and it might guarantee heft in that nation’s strategic partnerships.
India can’t merely do Buddhist diplomacy and hope that its companions round Asia will flock to it and settle for India’s management. Moderately, the technique needs to be to additional improve financial and safety ties with key companions and overlay it with a heavy dose of Buddhist camaraderie, in order that it isn’t simply the State elites or company homes of these nations that need extra of India, but additionally the residents who see India as an upholder of dhamma.
The re-emergence of India as a frontrunner of world Buddhism is a part of the larger story of India’s aspiration to be a number one energy. Solely by investing extra within the former marketing campaign can the latter finish purpose be achieved.
Sreeram Chaulia is dean, Jindal Faculty of Worldwide Affairs
The views expressed are private
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