Parallel to Northeast’s emergence as spiritual corridor, India is building the architecture of Buddhist diplomacy
The past few years have seen a significant push towards promoting India’s Buddhist diplomacy. We find evidences from multiple directions both at domestic level as well as international level. From organising the Global Buddhist Summit with delegates from 40 countries in January 2026 to Union Budget 2026-27 announcement to develop Buddhist circuits across six northeastern states in February to hosting the first-ever international exposition with sacred Piprahwa relics at Jivetsal in Leh on the occasion of Buddha Purnima in May, represent the architecture which comprises of Buddhist Diplomacy.
From being born in Lumbini (Nepal), Buddha travelled across Indian soil, attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, delivered his first sermon at Sarnath, and passed into Mahaparinirvana at Kushinagar. Buddhism then sustained through intellectual and institutional infrastructure across Indian Universities such as Nalanda, Takshashila, and Vikramashila. Buddhism was promoted from emperors such as Asoka who helped spread the message across South East Asia and Central Asia. Scholars arrived from across Asia to learn Buddhist texts and its philosophical traditions and knowledge and returned to their home countries carrying not just manuscripts but entire intellectual frameworks. This article reflects on where India’s Buddhist diplomacy stands today and where it is headed especially in India’s Northeast.
The Northeast: Unlocking a Civilisational Gateway
The Budget 2026-27 announced the launch of the historic scheme for Buddhist circuits across six northeastern states: Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura. The scheme would involve the preservation of temples and monasteries and transforming the region into a powerhouse of culture, commerce, and connectivity. It aims to strengthen tourism infrastructure at key Buddhist sites and position the region as an important destination on the global Buddhist tourism map. This month, a regional workshop on “Development of Buddhist Circuit” in Tawang drew delegates from Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and multiple Indian states to discuss an integrated Buddhist tourism corridor in South Asia through women-led rural tourism. The Trans Arunachal Highway and the proposed Frontier Highway are expected to play a central role in making remote destinations like Tawang, Anini, Walong, Kibithoo, and Mechuka accessible year-round, transforming logistical connectivity into cultural connectivity.
It is interesting to note that these northeastern states represent the full eastern spectrum of India’s Himalayan and sub-Himalayan Buddhist heritage, each carrying distinct traditions, schools, and histories of transmission. Let’s take the case of Arunachal Pradesh, which alone houses the largest concentration of Mahayana Buddhist sites in India. Tawang, its most celebrated district, sits at a cultural and geopolitical crossroads. It is home to the Galden Namgey Lhatse monastery, the largest in India. Tawang is also the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama and holds the historical distinction of being the route through which the present Dalai Lama entered India in 1959. Also the sacred landscapes of Bomdila, Dirang, Mechuka and Tuting, and the thriving Theravada tradition in Namsai, the state reflects the diversity and depth of Buddhist culture.
Sikkim’s monasteries tell another enriching story though slightly different. Rumtek, the largest monastery in Sikkim, is the seat-in-exile of the Gyalwang Karmapa and a principal centre of the Kagyu school. Pemayangtse, one of the oldest in the state, historically administered all Nyingma monasteries in Sikkim. And Dubdi, the oldest monastery in Sikkim, was established in 1701 during the consecration of the first Chogyal. In Tripura, the Venuvan Vihara in Agartala, featuring a metal Buddha statue brought from Myanmar, represents the Theravada connection that links India’s northeast to the mainland Southeast Asian Buddhist world. Assam’s Buddhist traditions connect the Brahmaputra valley to the ancient Kamrupa kingdom and carries the Tai-Phake Theravada tradition. Mizoram and Manipur hold their own distinctive strands. Taken together, the six states of the northeastern Buddhist Circuit represent not a homogeneous heritage but a living dialogue between Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Theravada traditions.
Additionally, these sites are nodes in a network that once carried the Dhamma across the Silk Route and the sub-Himalayan passes to Korea, Japan, China, and the ASEAN world. Therefore, if we look at the regional connect, Buddhism and its sites have attracted thousands of tourists from across South Asia and Southeast Asia. Even the Dhamma Padayatra-2026, the third in its series, saw nearly 70 Buddhist monastics from Thailand and India walk a 400-kilometre pilgrimage from Kalaburgi in Karnataka to the Buddhavanam theme park at Nagarjuna Sagar in Telangana, arriving in Hyderabad in February 2026. This is people-to-people Buddhist diplomacy renewed the living connections between the two countries’ Buddhist communities.
To cite a very recent example on this, when the Vietnamese President To Lam, arrived in India on his first state visit, he began his journey not in New Delhi but in Bodh Gaya and offered prayers at the Mahabodhi Temple, participated in rituals at the Vietnamese Monastery, and then spend quiet time in reflection at the site where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Similarly, the gifts that India gave Vietnam’s President that is the unique Namoh 108 lotus variety (universal emblem of the Dhamma), a brass Buddha sculpture, and Banarasi silk from Varanasi were a reflection of Buddhist symbolism. That says more about the India-Vietnam relationship than any joint statement could.
Roots to Routes
Parallel to the Northeast’s emergence as a spiritual corridor, India has been building the institutional and symbolic architecture of Buddhist diplomacy at the national level. One of the most symbolically powerful effort was the repatriation of the Piprahwa relics after 127 years. Last year in May, Ministry of Culture intervened and halted the auction by Sotheby’s Hong Kong. Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the grand international exposition titled ‘The Light and the Lotus: Relics of the Awakened One’ in New Delhi on January 3, 2026. It is important to note that under PM Modi’s leadership, 642 antiquities have been repatriated to India in total.
Further the relics’ international journey in the past years have demonstrated what that connection means in practice. In Thailand, they drew over 40 lakh devotees across four venues. In Vietnam, relics from Nagarjunakonda in Andhra Pradesh drew 1.8 crore visitors across nine cities. In Mongolia, where India’s Buddhist diplomacy has deep institutional memory, the passage of the relics was received with the reverence of an ancient bond reaffirmed. In the Buddhist republics of Russia’s Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Tuva, scenes of deep public devotion repeated.
Beyond the relics and the circuits, India is building the institutional infrastructure. India hosted the Second Global Buddhist Summit in New Delhi on 24-25 January 2026. Organised by the International Buddhist Confederation in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture on the theme ‘Collective Wisdom, United Voice, and Mutual Coexistence,’ it brought together over 800 delegates from 40 countries, including nearly 100 Sangha representatives alongside diplomats, scholars, and practitioners.
Finally, Indian government has started the digital preservation of the knowledge that made India the source. Under the Gyan Bharatam initiative, the government’s effort to digitise India’s vast collection of ancient manuscripts. Many of those manuscripts are Buddhist texts in Sanskrit and Pali that form the intellectual foundation of Buddhist traditions across East and Southeast Asia. Making them digitally accessible to scholars globally is soft power of the most durable kind.
Geopolitically, it is of relevance as well. For over two decades now, China has been promoting Buddhist diplomacy via organising international Buddhist forums, funding monastery restorations across Southeast Asia, courting Theravada communities, and weaving Buddhist outreach into the Belt and Road Initiative. But it is ironic that the state has suppressed religion at home, dismantled the institutional foundations of Tibetan Buddhism, and forced thousands of Tibetan monks and nuns to disrobe during the Cultural Revolution. Even the Sinicization campaign, intensified under Xi Jinping since 2020, requires registered Buddhist institutions in China to formally align their teachings with CCP ideology as a condition of continued operation. Under 2021 measures, a database now tracks and monitors the behaviour of religious clergy.
The Shiv Nadar University’s analysis captures the essential asymmetry: China has ‘deep pockets’; India has ‘deep roots.’ This distinction produces a structural advantage that is difficult to erode. China can replicate Indian pilgrimage sites such as it has built a Brahma Palace in Wuxi designed to evoke Rajgir, but it cannot replicate the original. Finally, since 1959, India has been home to the Tibetan government-in-exile and to the most globally recognised living Buddhist teacher in the world. Dharamshala has become, over six decades, one of the great living centres of Tibetan Buddhist learning, drawing students, practitioners, and seekers from across the globe.
What Lies Ahead
The architecture of Dhamma Diplomacy is visible. What it requires now is institutional coherence, implementation seriousness, and the willingness to name what it is doing. The Northeast Buddhist Circuit scheme, if implemented, will produce economic benefits of the kind that the existing Buddhist Circuit in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar has already demonstrated. That circuit recorded over 61 lakh visitors in the first nine months of 2025 alone with the international airport at Kushinagar now providing direct connectivity to Buddhist-majority nations across Southeast Asia. And a Northeast circuit with similar investment and air connectivity would not merely boost regional tourism revenue, it would structurally reposition India’s eastern flank in the consciousness of the Buddhist world.
Further, it would position India’s proactive civilisational connect with its Act East vision. Even the relics exposition model in which India routed sacred relics for display in Buddhist-majority countries has proved its diplomatic value. It should become a regular diplomatic gesture, with ritual sensitivity and monastic involvement at every stage. The feedback from Leh exposition that visitors sought deeper engagement with the sacred rather than a purely visual experience is an invitation to do this better, not a reason to do it less.
These efforts, fiscal commitments, summit level meetings and diplomatic gestures, define the institutional intent and a signal that India has always been the true north of the Buddhist world. In the Northeast, that truth is most alive, most geopolitically consequential, and most urgently in need of investment. If that investment comes with the care, the institutional seriousness, and the civilisational confidence the moment demands, it will be among the most consequential acts of soft power.
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Dr Cchavi Vasisht is Associate Fellow, Chintan Research Foundation.
