NEW DELHI: The projectors of Indian soft power are burning the midnight oil to execute the Director General Archeological Survey of India’s proposal to trace the spread of Buddhism from India to China by travelling from Kashi to Kashgar (in China).
Ministry of Culture, Archeological Survey of India, Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) and MEA have come together to make the expedition a reality. The contestation for the Buddhist legacy has many hitches as the route will pass through many sensitive areas in China and would make it uncomfortable behaving as a “Buddhist Superpower”. “I met the Foreign Secretary to discuss the proposal. But there has not been any forward movement so far,” Scholar of Buddhist Studies and President of ICCR Dr Lokesh Chandra said. The expedition will trace the spread of Buddhism from India to China, Myanmar and others.
In China the expedition is proposed to move through the Xinjiang Uighur Region, the centre of Islamic unrest in the country and thus China’s discomfort. The appropriation of the Buddhist legacy has been on for quite some time with China investing in a University of Buddhist Studies in Nepal’s Lumbini and projecting itself as inheritor of Buddhist heritage. “We know that other countries are trying to get the entire credit of Buddhism, saying that Buddha was born in so and so country (referring to Nepal) or that entire teachings of Buddha were absorbed by such and such country (China),” Secretary of Ministry of Culture Narinder Kumar Sinha said. Sinha admitted that there is some kind of competition. “We do want to ensure that proper credit of whatever has happened in Buddhism in India is coming to us.”
Dr Chandra is, however, hopeful that the Chinese can be turned around as they have the largest collection of about 1,000 Buddhist manuscript in Sanskrit and they would require the help of Indian scholars in deciphering them.