China’s Use Of Buddhism Has Created A Challenge India Cannot Ignore Anymore

In this interview, Sriparna Pathak – a Professor of China Studies and the founding Director of the Centre for Northeast Asian Studies at OP Jindal Global University – talks about the growing competition between China and India to use Buddhism as a tool of soft power, and why New Delhi may be reluctant to take an explicit position on the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation.

QUESTION:

How does China try to promote its state-managed form of Buddhism as a tool of soft power?

ANSWER:

Since Buddhism originated in India under Lord Gautam Buddha in the sixth century BCE and spread outward as a civilizational gift, China’s later adoption of it has long been secondary. Yet under the Chinese Communist Party, since 1949 the state has systematically subordinated the faith through the Buddhist Association of China, founded in 1953 as an arm of the United Front Work Department, to enforce patriotic loyalty, Sinicization, and political control over both Han and Tibetan traditions.

After near-eradication during the Cultural Revolution, the Party revived a tightly managed [form of] Buddhism from the 1980s onward, registering temples, vetting abbots, and embedding Marxist ideology, so that the religion could serve domestic stability, particularly by neutralising Tibetan independence and preparing state control over the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. Internationally, Beijing has weaponised this controlled version as soft power by hosting the World Buddhist Forum since 2006, dispatching relics on high-profile loans to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, funding temples and academies, and linking Buddhist exchanges to the Belt and Road Initiative in order to project China as the center of the Buddhist world and dilute/appropriate India’s ancestral primacy. The explicit aim has been both to improve China’s image amid criticism of repression in Tibet and to cultivate influence among Theravada and Mahayana communities across Asia, where it seeks to outbid India’s civilizational authenticity with state resources and institutional coordination.

QUESTION:

How successful have these efforts been?

ANSWER:

Success has been partial at best. While Chinese funding and forums attract participants from dozens of countries and generate some goodwill in Southeast Asia, the strategy is undercut by the Party’s official atheism, the well-documented destruction and Sinicization of Tibetan monasteries, and the exclusion of the Dalai Lama, rendering the effort more sharp power than genuine soft power. India’s deeper legitimacy as the land of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and first teaching, combined with its hosting of the Tibetan exile community and initiatives such as the Buddhist Circuit and International Buddhist Confederation, continues to confer a spiritual and historical advantage that money and managed spectacles cannot fully erase. In the end, China’s state-managed Buddhism remains a tool of political utility rather than living faith, while India’s connection rests on the irreplaceable sacred geography that first gave the world the Dharma.

QUESTION:

In more recent times, we have seen India double down on promoting its own link with Buddhism and project it in its own international diplomacy. What has led India to do this and how successful has it been?

Answer:

India’s intensified Buddhist diplomacy over the past decade, especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been driven primarily by the need to counter China’s systematic use of state-managed Buddhism as a soft-power instrument aimed at eroding India’s civilizational primacy as the land of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and first teaching. Beijing’s World Buddhist Forums, relic loans, temple funding, and Belt-and-Road-linked cultural projects in countries such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Nepal, together with its efforts to control Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation, created a competitive challenge that New Delhi could not anymore ignore amid border tensions and its Act East and Neighbourhood First policies.

In response, India has institutionalised its outreach through the International Buddhist Confederation (established around 2011–2013), the Buddhist Circuit infrastructure project, Global Buddhist Summits (including the first in 2023 and the second in January 2026), and high-profile relic diplomacy that treats sacred objects from Indian soil, such as Piprahwa relics and those of the Buddha’s chief disciples Sariputra and Maudgalyayana, as state guests. These relic expositions have drawn extraordinary public response: more than four million devotees in Thailand in 2024, an estimated 14 million in Vietnam in 2025, and large turnouts in Mongolia, generating genuine spiritual affinity that money alone cannot manufacture.

Compared with China’s resource-heavy but credibility-constrained approach, undermined by its official atheism, documented Sinicization and repression of Tibetan Buddhism, and exclusion of the Dalai Lama, India’s strategy rests on irreplaceable sacred geography and historical authenticity, allowing it to host diverse traditions without the same political preconditions. While China has scored some tactical gains through scale of funding and institutional coordination, particularly in infrastructure around sites like Lumbini, India’s efforts have proved more sustainable in building long-term goodwill and have narrowed the soft-power gap by converting civilizational legitimacy into concrete diplomatic and people-to-people dividends. In short, China’s managed Buddhism functions as an instrument of statecraft; India’s projection of its Buddhist heritage draws strength from being the authentic source of the tradition itself.

QUESTION:

When it comes to the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, China routinely warns India against getting involved. What do you think are Beijing’s concerns about India over this issue?

ANSWER:

Beijing’s primary concern is that India, by hosting the 14th Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala since 1959, provides the physical and institutional space for a succession process outside Chinese control. In July 2025, the Dalai Lama affirmed that the institution would continue and that his Gaden Phodrang Trust (registered in India) alone holds authority to recognise the next reincarnation, explicitly excluding Beijing; China immediately rejected this and insisted that any successor must follow its 2007 regulations requiring central government approval, the Golden Urn ritual, and birth within territory under its jurisdiction. Chinese officials routinely warn India against ‘external interference’, viewing any support for a free-world recognition process, or even passive hosting of related activities, as a direct challenge to the Party’s claim of exclusive sovereignty over Tibet (referred to by Beijing as Xizang, for strategic reasons, in addition to the objective of obliterating Tibet’s identity and existence) and its efforts to Sinicise Tibetan Buddhism. The risk is heightened by geography: the 6th Dalai Lama was born in Tawang (in India’s Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims as South Tibet), and a parallel 15th Dalai Lama recognised on Indian soil could strengthen India’s position along the disputed border while undermining the legitimacy of any Beijing-appointed candidate.

QUESTION:

The Indian government hasn’t taken an explicit position on the matter of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation. What could be New Delhi’s concerns about taking such a position?

ANSWER:

New Delhi’s reluctance to state an explicit position stems from a long-standing policy of treating the Dalai Lama as an honoured religious guest while formally recognising the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the People’s Republic of China (reiterated in the 2003 bilateral agreement) and avoiding official involvement in religious matters. After an Indian minister publicly endorsed the Dalai Lama’s authority in 2025, the Ministry of External Affairs quickly clarified that the government ‘does not take any position or speak on matters concerning beliefs and practices of faith and religion’, reflecting a desire not to escalate tensions at a time when both sides have been cautiously managing the post-2020 border standoff. India also weighs the practical risks of Chinese retaliation, ranging from heightened border pressure and economic measures to intensified diplomatic isolation of the exile community, against the benefits of strategic ambiguity that preserves room for manoeuvre. Also, given that now the US has been dreaming of a G2 [Group of Two, consisting of the US and China], partnerships with the US, even on Tibet or the reincarnation issue is difficult to count on. Maintaining strategic ambiguity and silently strengthening one’s own capacities, including on the reincarnation issue, is the best step forward, at the moment. Ultimately, New Delhi’s caution reflects a calculation that overt alignment could complicate its larger competition with China, even as the presence of the Tibetan leadership on Indian territory already gives it unique leverage that Beijing cannot ignore.

QUESTION

The US has taken a more explicit stand saying the Dalai Lama and the exile Tibetan community should be free to choose the next reincarnation. It may perhaps want India to take a similar position. How should New Delhi respond to such entreaties?

ANSWER:

Fortunately for the US, it does not share a land boundary with China. Fortunately for the US, it has not been subjected to repeated military aggression by China the way India has, in the 1950s, 1962, 1967, Doklam, Galwan, and the Yangtse Valley. Fortunately for the US, it does not have to contend with China appropriating a religion that originated in its own country, unlike India. Moreover, the US does not host the Central Tibetan Administration; India does.

India’s responsibilities toward the Tibetan cause are therefore far greater, given the strategic realities it faces, realities the US does not share. While India must protect the linguistic and cultural identities of Tibetans in exile, it also has to safeguard its own national interests. Pressuring India, or Indians, to abandon those strategic interests and adopt the posture of the United States, which can make statements from a safe distance, is not a sound approach.