Mr Modi is projecting India to the world as a civilisational entity with accumulated wisdom of millennia that is the solution to today’s global crises. Mr Modi showcases an India that is a microcosm of the world, a broad multicultural platform and a moral force.

A bit of China has arrived in Los Angeles, in the form of an extensive exhibit at the Getty Center that recreates an ancient landmark along the legendary Silk Road. [...] The Cave Temples of Dunhuang, also called the Mogao Caves, is a complex of almost 500 caves in northwest China that was active between the 4th and 14th centuries.

 However, India’s larger objective is to woo its neighbors through soft diplomacy. The Indian government has formulated a grand plan to promote tourism in places which are part of its "Buddhist Circuit." Accordingly, all of the relevant sites will have airports so that visitors will be able to travel between them with relative ease. 

As Japan gears up to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and caters to a surging influx of foreign visitors, the country faces a cultural dilemma: Should it stop identifying Buddhist temples on maps with the traditional “manji” symbol that is often confused with a Nazi swastika?

I was excited to take part in an international symposium last week on Buddhist-Muslim interfaith dialogue in the commercial crossroads of Southeast Asia and the capital of Thailand, Bangkok. Appropriately titled "Interfaith Dialogue and Peaceful Coexistence in Multicultural Societies."

Shahzia Sikander and Jim Shaw are two artists who keep accounts of the visual tropes that faith-based systems employ to disseminate, legislate and perpetuate the cultural codes prescribing and proscribing human behavior, yet react to these systems by breaking up the prescribed regiments that religious imagery imposes.

The fact that India and China are willing to have cooperative exchanges as part of soft or cultural diplomacy may seem accommodative and a positive effort to bridge differences. Between the lines, however, the Government’s efforts to push Buddhism by tracing commonality of roots indicate a subtle and smart move to steal a march over China, which is increasingly positing itself as the sole disseminator of Buddhist faith in the far-east and southeast Asia.