India to host maiden Global Buddhist meet next week

India will host the first-ever Global Buddhist Conference next week, taking forward the agenda it had outlined at the SCO international meet on shared Buddhist heritage last month.

The theme of the April 20-21 conference is 'Response to Contemporary Challenges from Philosophy to Praxis'. It will cover subjects such as Buddhism and peace, environmental crisis, health and sustainability, and the preservation of the Nalanda Buddhist tradition, as well as Buddhist pilgrimage, living heritage and Buddha relics, officials informed.

Abhijeet Haldar, director general of International Buddhist Confederation, which is the organiser of the conference, said the world is facing major challenges like war, violence, natural calamities and climate change. In this regard, an effort is being made to find a solution by bringing the best Buddhist thinkers from all over the world on a single platform, according to Haldar.


The conference will have 180 participants from 30 countries, including Mexico and Brazil. Thinkers and Buddhist religious leaders from across the nation will also take part.

It follows the two-day international conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on 'shared Buddhist heritage', a first of its kind gathering that brought together participants from Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia and Arab nations.

The SCO conference aimed to re-establish cross-cultural connections and looked for similarities between Central Asian Buddhist art, archaeological sites and antiquity in various museums of SCO nations.