Cultural Connectivity as a tool of foreign policy critical analysis of buddhism as India Leverage

Abstract

Foreign policy lexicon has come to include high-sounding terms like Cultural newlineConnectivity, Cultural Diplomacy, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, and Nation newlineBranding over last couple of decades. These concepts are in a way traced to the newlineconcept of soft power given by Joseph Nye. India and in other countries too, these newlinehave been practiced since ancient times. However, over the last couple of decades newlineits role towards conducting foreign policy has been markedly increasing and newlinecountries after countries have started exploring their soft power resource base and newlineare resorting to cultural diplomacy to deploy their soft power in furtherance of newlineNational Interests by building cultural connectivity. newlineIndia too cannot be left behind in this endeavour. Therefore, the thesis explores newlinethe concept of cultural connectivity and its interlinkages with other concepts newlineenumerated above within the contending framework of theoretical paradigm of newlinethe thesis in the first chapter. On the other hand, the researcher has tried to explore newlineBuddhism as a cultural asset as India s leverage that could be used to build newlinecultural connectivity. The researcher explores Buddhism as an advantage to India newlinegiven many of the Asian countries and many other countries outside Asia having newlinesubstantial Buddhist followers. Researcher has tried to build an argument that newlineIndia being the country of origin of Buddhism could be transformed into Mecca newlineand Jerusalem of Buddhists all over the world. Thus, second chapter of the thesis newlinehas discussed that Buddhism is not only a religion but a way of life and a huge newlinecultural resource of India which could be developed as soft power and deployed newlinein furtherance of building cultural connectivity. Lately, government of India newlineseems to have understood the underlying potentials of Buddhism towards newlinepromoting cultural diplomacy and cultural connectivity, with countries having newlineBuddhist followers. newline1Third chapter subsequently provides factual account of major Buddhist sites in newlineIndia and explores the present status of these sites in terms of