The International Buddhist Confederation (IBC) and the Ministry of Culture, Government of India hosted the 2nd World Buddhist Summit in New Delhi from 24–25 January. Buddhist sangharajas and state-affiliated abbots and clergy, political leaders, senior diplomats, and lay supporters came from Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Russian autonomous republics of Kalmykia and Tuva, and all over India, including Ladakh and Assam, to participate in two days of a “civilizational dialogue,” as described by the organizers, around the themes of “Collective Wisdom, United Voice, and Mutual Coexistence.”  

The summit was timed for the celebrations on Republic Day. On this important day marking Indian democratic values as well as geopolitical finesse and military might, 180-plus monastics, of which more than 40 were national representatives of Buddhist communities and organizations, were hosted by IBC at a dedicated box to witness a grand parade, an important part of which were the display of India’s armed forces and military hardware.

Two important signals emerging from this “soldier-monk encounter” emerge. The first is that IBC, and indeed the Indian government, wanted to lead the pack in Buddhist leadership by claiming to embrace a diverse coalition of Buddhist leaders across Asia under the umbrella of India’s Buddhist diplomacy. As noted by Prof. Arvind Kumar Singh (Academic Consultant for IBC, professor at Gautam Buddha University, India, and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Chair for Buddhist Studies, LBU), “Buddhism offers a moral vocabulary capable of uniting diverse political systems and cultural traditions without erasing difference. Renowned political leaders and venerable spiritual masters . . . spoke on the potential of Buddhism in creating harmonious societies in multicultural settings.” (Diplomat Today)

When it was established in 2013, IBC put emphasis on the need to strengthen international support for Buddhism in India with friendly organizations and individuals. Through the 2010s but especially after 2023, IBC’s priority became to project Indian soft power and support for Buddhism through the same allies. This was a subtle and evolving but critical shift, demonstrating a recognition of changing realities. Buddhism has new priorities, even in the context of an informal, multinational coalition, to take part in national projects that project soft power. Empires and nations alike have similarly made such alliances with religious traditions, whether for pragmatic or ideological reasons.

This zeitgeist of empires and spheres of influence and leverage, now re-emergent, is one in which power is as much an determinant of a nation’s scope of options as moral legitimacy. The Indian government very much recognizes Buddhism as providing the latter. But it will not be lost on foreign affairs observers that aside from IBC’s monastic VIPs at Republic Day, the chief guests—in other words, the most important attendees—were European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. They were in New Delhi to sign a new free trade agreement, dubbed by von der Leyen and the wider press as the “mother of all deals.”

This landmark agreement could be expressed in milder terms as a need to “diversify from traditional trading partners amid economic uncertainty.” (The Conversation) But the broader geopolitical significance is epochal, especially since India and the EU are both on the receiving end of ongoing trade hostility from the United States. On 20 January, at the 56th World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian president Mark Carney gave his much-lauded speech identifying, articulating, and pinpointing the ruptured world order of America’s own making and actions. The speech was not significant because it proposed something new, but because it called out something that was developing in real time during Davos—US president Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland had reached a fever pitch at this time.

Carney quoted Thucydides: “The strong will do what they can, while the weak will suffer what they must.” While he captured something that was a frank and brutal reality for the Global South for decades—an inequality that Carney acknowledged—he proclaimed Canada to be the first industrialized country to “put down the sign,” cleverly and provocatively likening the prosperous West’s propping up of the “fiction” of the liberal world order under “American hegemony” to Václav Havel’s characterization of Communist self-deception.

There were murmurs of agreement with this enunciation in private discussions at the 2nd Global Buddhist Summit, particularly among diplomats of Southeast Asian countries seeking to form stronger ties with India. India, and indeed Canada and the EU, will continue to negotiate with the US—the newest deal between Modi and Trump being one example, wherein Trump lowered tariffs in return for a halt to Indian purchases of Russian oil. But India’s geostrategy takes into account that India is not a superpower, but a major regional power that can help the Buddhist-majority countries—many of them in the Himalayas and Southeast Asia—secure agency and unity in the face of a disintegrating liberal order and an increasingly predatory system favoring superpowers.

In Carney’s framing, this crumbling hegemonic system means that countries—specifically, middle powers—must stop with the self-deception and find their own way, serving as potential values-based beacons and building coalitions of mutual interest. This is precisely due to their lack of leverage relative to the great powers and their need to navigate a ruptured world. At the same time, they will articulate their own values of human rights, democracy, and power through moral example rather than unilateral force, which the American hegemon has reverted to.

Buddhists also lack power, and noticeably. This was what Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, in his signature incisive style, pointed out during a fireside chat at the 2nd Global Buddhist Summit. Yet Buddhism’s moral power and vocabulary, recognized by the Indian government for so long, has the potential to build coalitions between religious organizations from different countries, and between government bodies and non-profits. If Buddhists can navigate the tense geopolitical environment carefully—especially with avoiding being co-opted by special interests—Dharma values-based coalitions and alliances can serve as beacons of example and communicate moral authority to policies—in whichever country—that have the greatest potential to steer the world in a less volatile and violent direction.

Crucially, non-sectarianism and ecumenical unity is Buddhism’s strength. Ecumenical alliances have been attempted before, some successfully, as early as the inception of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in 1950 after the devastation of World War Two. As this post-war order recedes, there can be no standing alone. It will need more than ever a collective wisdom favoring mutual coexistence, expressed as a united voice. The new world of rupture is here, and Buddhists will need to offer a response sooner rather than later.

See more

From Buddha Dharma to Diplomacy: Collective Wisdom, Global Dialogue, and Civilizational Coexistence at the Second Global Buddhist Summit (Diplomat Today)
EU and India conclude landmark Free Trade Agreement (European Commission)
What the ‘mother of all deals’ between India and the EU means for global trade ( The Conversation)

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