{"id":44395,"date":"2015-06-01T12:14:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=44395"},"modified":"2015-06-01T12:15:49","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:15:49","slug":"the-ties-that-bind-buddhism-at-the-heart-of-sino-indian-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/06\/01\/the-ties-that-bind-buddhism-at-the-heart-of-sino-indian-relations\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ties that Bind: Buddhism at the Heart of Sino-Indian Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Buddhistdoor International\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi’an. From famouswonders.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Modi tweets his visit to Giant Wild Goose Pagoda with Xi Jinping. From Twitter<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Abbot Kuanxu at Giant Wild Goose Pagoda with Xi and Modi. From rediff.com<\/div>\n
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A state visit to China this month by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi included visits to a number of Buddhist sites of historical significance in Sino-Indian relations. Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, for example, is famous for being one of the repositories of the sutras and statues that the Chinese monk-pilgrim Xuanzang (602\u201364) brought back from India in his acclaimed journey to the west. Modi also visited Daxingshan Temple (a short distance from Xi\u2019an\u2019s southern gate), which hosted the influential tantric master Amoghavajra from 756 until his death in 774. In both places, Buddhist scriptures of various schools were painstakingly translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, marking one of human history\u2019s most successful examples of cultural assimilation.<\/div>\n
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By visiting these hubs of Sino-Indian religious exchange, Modi offered Asia watchers, policymakers, and commentators a statement about the bonds that bring nations together to work toward shared prosperity and purpose. By paying tribute to a common tradition between his country and China, he was touting a bond that existed between the two countries long before they were even invented in the modern sense. Buddhism was the conduit connecting China and India while they were still civilization-states.\u201d Modi is well aware that cultivating all-important economic and geopolitical ties needs deeper cultural (preferably religious) symbolism to set legitimizing parameters for a\u00a0narrative of joint heritage and fortune shared.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0This is not Modi\u2019s first time to invoke Buddhism in international diplomacy: as the first country he went to as prime minister, he prioritized Buddhist Bhutan. Aside from developing Buddhist sites for the tourism industry, he has also made commitments to excavate and preserve such sites across 17 Indian states. Modi is also notable for being the third prime minister to commemorate Vesak\u2014official celebrations of this festival since Indian independence have been confined to 1956 and 2007. In his Vesak message, Modi positioned the festival within a much larger pan-Asian story, stating that the Buddhist teachings were a vital part not of India\u2019s heritage alone, but also of Asia\u2019s heritage as a whole.<\/div>\n
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While Modi was in China, the state-owned Chinese Film Corporation and Indian firm Eros International made a carefully timed announcement that actors Huang Xiaoming and Amitabh Bachchan would star in a co-produced film about Xuanzang\u2014an example, one imagines, of the far-reaching, reciprocal benefits awaiting cultural development and business. If envisioned creatively and coordinated competently, such partnerships between Chinese and Indian non-profits, state institutions, and private enterprises could extend beyond entertainment into other fields. For example, a new and modernized Journey to the West<\/i> route for sightseers, starting from Xi\u2019an and stopping at real-life locales mentioned in Wu Cheng\u2019en\u2019s novel, could be an imaginative economic and cultural investment.<\/div>\n
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Sino-Indian relations aren\u2019t perfect and despite Modi\u2019s political pragmatism, his government is not shy to express grievances. During his China visit, diplomats tiptoed around the disputed border issue in the Himalayas. Of much greater concern was Indian foreign secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar\u2019s claim that India was never approached about the Silk Road Economic Belt. The belt is a plan to resurrect the Silk Road for the 21st century by building a network of railways, roads, and ports from China and Central Asia to Rotterdam and Venice. It is the continental component of Xi Jinping\u2019s central geopolitical ambition, the One Belt, One Road\u201d vision, which also includes the littoral aspect of the Maritime Silk Road, embracing Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Mediterranean. Jaishankar pointedly called the Silk Road Economic Belt a Chinese initiative,\u201d hinting that it would be up to the Chinese to approach India for the latter\u2019s inclusion in the plan. Military disputes and wrangling over One Belt, One Road\u201d could therefore distract from initiatives for Buddhist-themed Sino-Indian development, which would require significant time, negotiation, and investment to enact.<\/div>\n
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Those who believe that Buddhism can play a constructive part in the Sino-Indian conversation should define the debate as a choice between diplomatic distractions and stagnation versus an unmatched opportunity to nurture the civilizational continuity\u201d between China and India\u2014with Buddhism at the heart of the narrative. There are grounds for optimism. Along with a slew of European and Asian countries, India is already a founding member of China\u2019s other great project, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As it claims to focus on integration and connectivity, it seems sensible for the AIIB, once it is fully established by the end of this year, to invest in projects that bring India and China closer while connecting the dots between sustainable economic growth and cultural and social development (Buddhism being among these cultural dimensions).<\/div>\n
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For centuries, Buddhist symbolism was deployed to legitimize the rule of monarchs across Asia.* This month, a contemporary form of Buddhist legitimation\u201d was appropriated by Modi to make a statement about the relationship between China and India. However, if his visits to Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and Daxingshan Temple are to have any meaning beyond the merely symbolic, Buddhism should function as a stimulus for sustainable and interconnected economic projects that encourage cultural and religious awareness as well.<\/div>\n
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Beyond India and China, Buddhism can serve as an impetus for deeper unity between the various regions of the world that share its heritage. Buddhist ties can be strengthened between countries like India and Mongolia, China and Thailand, or Japan and Vietnam, among many others. Even countries that have an archaeological history of Buddhism (not necessarily a living tradition), such as Afghanistan or Pakistan, could share in this endeavor. As Eurasia becomes ever more integrated, Buddhism could offer a universal language of peace to cultures increasingly diverse.<\/div>\n
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*Sinologist Erik Z\u00fcrcher explained how Buddhism, after the 4th century, sanctified Chinese emperors with Indian ideas like the chakravartin <\/i>(universal ruler), skillful means (upaya<\/i>), and the supramundane protection of the imperial court through the manifestation of Buddhas and bodhisattvas (Z\u00fcrcher 2013, 96\u201397).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For more information, see:<\/b><\/div>\n
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Indian PM Narendra Modi: 21st Century will never be a Century of Asia without Buddhism\u201d<\/a> (Buddhistdoor International)<\/div>\n
Indian PM visits China to strengthen ties<\/a> (Steppe Dispatches)<\/div>\n
India and East Asia: Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Buddhist Diplomacy\u201d<\/a> (Global Research)<\/div>\n
China-India Co-production about Pilgrim-monk Xuanzang Confirmed<\/a> (Buddhistdoor International)<\/div>\n
Modi Calls on China to Rethink Stances That Strain Ties to India<\/a> (The New York Times<\/i>)<\/div>\n
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References<\/b><\/div>\n
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Z\u00fcrcher, Erik. 2013. Buddhism in a Pre-Modern Bureaucratic Empire: The Chinese Experience.\u201d In Buddhism in China: Collected Papers of Erik Z\u00fcrcher<\/i>, edited by Jonathan A. Silk, 89\u2013103. Leiden: Brill.<\/div>\n
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Buddhistdoor International\u00a0 Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi’an. From famouswonders.com Modi tweets his visit to Giant Wild Goose Pagoda with Xi Jinping. From Twitter Abbot Kuanxu at Giant Wild Goose Pagoda with Xi and Modi. From rediff.com A state visit to China this month by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi included visits to a number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}