Buddhism will be the common thread of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China, South Korea and Mongolia from May 14 to 19. The government is “keen on drawing up a Buddhist connect” as part of its “Look East, Act East” policy, a senior official said.
Ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit to Beijing on May 14, a senior Chinese Buddhist guru was in Delhi this week to mark 65 years of the establishment of India-China relations. “Buddhism is the way to improve bilateral ties,” “Vajra Master” Jinke Xuanlei told a parliamentary group on India-China relations.
“Mr. Modi is well aware of the connections that Buddhism has in the entire region, and who better to string it together than India, the home of the Buddha,” Tarun Vijay, BJP MP and President of the parliamentary group, said.
Rejecting the criticism that Mr. Modi’s outreach to Buddhism was not accompanied by similar connections to historic Islamic and Christian sites, Mr. Vijay told The Hindu that the reason for the government’s Buddhist message was that it was a “cultural one, not a religious one”.
During Mr. Modi’s visit to the East, officials are considering several options to take the Buddhist initiative forward.
In China, he will visit President Xi Jinping’s hometown of Xian, where Chinese officials say both leaders are expected to go see the Great Wild Goose pagoda, dedicated to famous Buddhist pilgrim Hsuan Tsang (Xuanzang). Xian houses the monastery where Hsuan Tsang wrote about his travels to India 1,400 years ago. At the Vibrant Gujarat summit, Mr. Modi mentioned Hsuan Tsang’s visit to his own hometown of Vadnagar, where ASI excavators are searching for Buddhist relics.
Bhutan’s PM Tshering Tobgay was taken on a tour of the sites being excavated in January.
In South Korea, Mr. Modi is expected to transplant a “Bodhi tree” sapling that India had sent to Seoul last March and has now grown to a height of 160 cm, diplomats say. The Prime Minister could replant it in Seoul or Busan, 50 per cent of whose population are Buddhist. Similar plans are being made for his visit to Ulan Bator, where 53 per cent of the population belongs to the faith.
In the past year, the Buddhist-arc initiative has been visible in all of Mr. Modi’s visits to Buddhist countries.
During the ASEAN-India summit in Myanmar in November 2014, Mr. Modi discussed packaging a tour of Buddhist sites across ASEAN countries for travellers, while India has made grants to maintain sites in Bhutan and Nepal during his visits there.
In Japan in September, he prayed at the famous Toji and Kinkakuji Buddhist temples, and in Sri Lanka this March, he addressed Buddhist monks at Colombo’s Mahabodhi Temple and prayed to the Mahabodhi tree in Anuradhapura.
