India, China, and Buddhist Soft Power

On October 1-4, Bhutan hosted an international conference on Vajrayana Buddhism. The event, which was held in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu, drew around 400 participants, 250 of whom were Buddhist scholars and high religious figures from 26 countries. Participants discussed an array of topics ranging from the philosophical aspects of Vajrayana Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness to its interface with artificial intelligence and a digital world. 

Geopolitics hovered over the conference.

The Thimphu event, which was organized by the Centre for Bhutan and GNH Studies and the Central Monastic Body of Bhutan, was supported by the International Buddhist Confederation (IBC). Set up in 2013 in India as a “common platform for Buddhists worldwide,” the IBC, which is funded by the Indian government, has among its patrons the 14th Dalai Lama. It has organized several global events and they, especially gatherings addressed by the Tibetan spiritual leader, have never failed to draw Chinese ire.

Buddhism’s core principles of non-violence and peace and the fact that it has millions of followers across Asia and the West makes it a valuable soft power resource. India sees itself as the natural leader of the Buddhist world – not only are the key milestones in Buddhism’s emergence associated with India, but also it was from India that Buddhism spread to other parts of the world.

In its bid to expand influence across a large swathe of Asia, New Delhi has been drawing on its Buddhist soft power resources. It has organized and supported Buddhist conferences in India and abroad, gifting Buddha statues and renovating Buddhist sites. It dispatched the Sacred Kapilavastu Relics (fragments of Buddha’s bones) for public display in Sri Lanka in 2012. In 2020, it pledged $15 million toward strengthening Buddhist ties with Sri Lanka. India has also revived the Nalanda University, a seat of Buddhist learning that flourished between the 5th and 12th CE, and made it a global collaborative initiative.

However, there are strong challenges to India’s claim to leadership of the Buddhist world.

China, which played a major role in Buddhism’s survival when it had declined and all but disappeared in India, is deploying its own Buddhist soft power to project a softer image of itself and boost its credentials as a guardian of Buddhism. Its World Buddhist Forum (WBF) organizes conferences that are attended by Buddhist monks and scholars from around the world. China has sent Buddhist relics on tours through Asian countries, too. In 2011, when China’s relations with Myanmar had soured over a suspended dam project, Beijing dispatched Buddhist relics to the country in a major outreach effort to the people of Myanmar.

As part of its outreach to Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Chinese government has encouraged cooperation among Buddhist organizations in the renovation of temples and joint hosting of Buddhism conferences. 

China has invested in Buddhist projects that enhance its economic and strategic objectives. For example, China is playing a major role in the development of Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, into “the premier place of pilgrimage for Buddhists from around the world.” Rail connectivity linking China with Lumbini will bring trains up to Nepal’s border with India.

In addition to separately deploying their Buddhist soft power in diplomacy with Asian countries, India and China have also collaborated on Buddhist projects to expand bilateral cooperation. In 2006, for instance, China helped restore the Xuanzang Memorial Hall in Nalanda and India simultaneously built an Indian-style Buddhist temple in the White Horse Temple complex in Luoyang in China. 

However, the India-China use of Buddhist soft power is largely competitive. In 2017, Beijing inaugurated the Nanhai Buddhism Academy in Hainan province, ostensibly as a counter to India’s Nalanda University.

Increasingly, Sino-Indian engagement on Buddhism is acrimonious. India’s soft power diplomacy involving Tibetan Buddhists has riled China. When the Dalai Lama and his followers fled Chinese repression in Tibet in 1959, India offered them refuge. India is home to around a 100,000 Tibetans today. The Dalai Lama and the heads of all four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism – the Gelug, Kagyu, Nyingma, and Sakya – are in India, as are hundreds of other high-ranking Tibetan lamas. Tibetan accounts of Chinese destruction of Tibetan religion and culture in Tibet are a strong reminder to the world that China is no guardian of Buddhism.

The Sino-India soft power battle over Buddhism is important especially in relation to the Dalai Lama’s succession. China has been mobilizing support among Buddhist monks and organizations worldwide for its appointees to key positions in Tibetan-Buddhist institutions. It has, for instance, used WBF congregations to showcase Gyaltsen Norbu, the Chinese Communist Party’s appointee as the 11th Panchen Lama. Gyaltsen Norbu delivers keynote addresses at WBF and other Chinese state-sponsored Buddhist events where he urges Buddhists to support the CCP and “religious theories that go with socialist core values.” 

Beijing can be expected to use the WBF to influence the Dalai Lama’s succession and secure endorsement for the CCP’s appointee as the 15th Dalai Lama when the time comes.

It is in this context that India and China’s support to Vajrayana Buddhist events must be seen. One of the three main streams of Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, which is an eclectic mix of traditional Buddhism, esoteric traditions and Tantric practices, is widely followed in Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal, and Mongolia. 

India’s soft power outreach to Mongolia has intensified in recent years. The Kapilavastu Relics were sent to Mongolia in June this year for an 11-day exposition at the Batsagaan Temple in Mongolia’s Gandan Monastery. India has also helped restore 108 volumes of the sacred Mongolian Kanjur (Buddhist texts).

India’s support to the recent conference at Thimphu is part of this outreach to followers of Vajrayana Buddhism in the Himalayas. The conference would have been closely monitored not just in New Delhi, Beijing, and Lhasa but also in Dharamsala, the headquarters of the Tibetan exile government.